Today’s NYT 's editorial hammered Trump and praised the poise-under-fire demonstrated by Hillary Clinton. One particularly insightful observation in the editorial notes that:
Sniffing and glowering, Mr. Trump prowled behind Mrs. Clinton as she presented herself again as the only adult on stage, the only one seeking to persuade the great majority of Americans that she shares their values and aspirations. Mr. Trump, by contrast, fell back on the tricks he has learned from his years in pro wrestling and reality television, making clear how deep his cynicism goes.
www.nytimes.com/...
I have been struggling to adequately characterize Trump’s demeanor from last night. It was his trademark, campaign persona—arrogant, pugnacious, belittling all performed with a series of well-rehearsed Mussolini gestures and expressions. But there was something else and it’s the WWE smackdown quality. Trump played this like a scripted pro wrestling match where was going to dominate and shame the weaker and softer opponent (and following the Vince McMahon script). It was as though, Trump believe that with the accusation of his opponent being the devil, dire warnings about imprisonment, the invocation of Bill Clinton’s infidelities, and the I will body slam stalking, he expected Hillary to crack and who knows maybe even cry.
To her great credit, Hillary Clinton maintained her calm and poise and never looked the least bit rattled. Until she really hit her stride in recounting her 30 years of public service, she did look uncertain about how to respond to this torrent of verbal attacks and lies. By taking the high road, Clinton’s early-debate responses allowed Trump to have some degree of free reign but, as we are seeing in the post-debate recounting, that has played to Hillary Clinton’s decided advantage.
However, I confess to having misread the debate. After it was said and done, I felt that Trump had done much better than expected (in terms of the political theater not the substance). I believed that it would buttress Trump’s standing with the GOP base (and quell the GOP establishment’s public renouncements) but probably not move the overall polls.
But an opinion piece on Slate, showed the error of my way viewing the debate (and everyone else who called it as a draw):
Often when pundits evaluate a political performance, they’re imagining how it might work on people who know nothing about politics and are unmoved by facts. It’s not even theater criticism, since the theater critic bases her opinion on her own subjective experience. It’s more like children’s theater criticism, in which the critic must imagine how the show will go over with people who are unsophisticated and easily manipulated. By this standard, maybe Trump did win. If so, we should be using another standard.
Michelle Goldberg www.slate.com/...
Here is what I did not expect, given the degree of impunity that Trump has received from the mainstream media to date on his campaign rhetoric. In the context of the “grab them by the pussy” video leak, however, Trump trying to engage in a WWE style game of intimidation and bullying against an icon of 2nd wave feminism, a devoted public servant, and one of the most accomplished individuals (man or woman) to ever run from president, and who displayed the grace of a saint, crossed a line of decency; Trump compounded his moral failing.
Some diarists have noted that the CNN and MSNBC talking heads were eventually shamed into recalibrating their initial, “this was a good night for Trump” assessments. I think shame is exactly the right word. At some point, the message got through that political theater is not an event that occurs in a vacuum. While those of on the left see Trump’s campaign as an affront to human decency (full stop), the media so locked into horse race prognostications and the play-it-safe logic of false equivalency, have over the course of the campaign normalized many aspects of Trump’s reactionary campaign of hate. But, in this very human context, the dark side of the Trump could not be ignored.
In the same Slate editorial, the author Michelle Goldberg notes that in the demographic breakdown of the postdebate YouGov snap poll, a substantial majority of women deemed Clinton the winner (50% to 38%), whereas men, by a fairly narrow margin, judged Trump the victor (46% to 43%). The closes of the male sample (with all due caveats about the validity of snap polls) is telling. Trump played to every macho stereotype in the book and as one Republican strategist proclaimed, Trump won because he was the aggressor). Yet almost as many men did not automatically see the aggressor as “a winner” but rather as a loser (and I would presume as a very unattractive and dislikeable villain to use another WWE character type).
On that note, Trump came off as Gorgeous George—vain, arrogant, selfish and willing to break the rules whenever it serves his personal interests, whiney, histrionic, pathetically over confident, and ultimately a coward when his bravado is challenged. He was the “heel” watched because you love to hate him. In other words, Trump drew a crowd for the wrong (or at least unelectable) reasons.
As more and more negative post-debate reactions emerge, I suspect that a reasonable portion of that favorable 46% (assuming for arguments sake that it is an accurate survey) will also rethink their judgment and its implications.
I have been very hesitant to write Trump off (never underestimate your enemy) but I can’t see Trump recovering from the events of the last four days. Now the game is to not let the GOP save face and distance themselves from their cartoon villain nominee.