Sometimes, it's what doesn't happen that is at least as important, if not more so, than what did happen.
So, too, with Monday's presidential debate.
We all saw what did happen, and many Hillary supporters are happy and many Trump supporters continue to live in the land of denial where they seem to want to think he did wonderfully, came across as “presidential” and was coherent (or at least that's their story and they are sticking to it).
But lets step back a moment.
The one thing that had both presidential candidates' supporters a bit on edge before was what the first presidential debate this year had the potential to do: to be a major game-changer that could establish The Donald as presidential-caliber material, giving him a huge momentum boost just when the race was virtually tied and hurtling him to the position of front-runner to win the Nov. 8 election.
That was likely the worst fear of many Hillary supporters. And it was the deepest hope of Trump the supporters. In fact, many political pundits have been saying since the convention that the next major opportunity for Trump to turn the tables on Hillary and shake up the race would be...the debates.
Now, granted, “the debates” are not yet over. There are two more to go (assuming The Donald and his campaign want to proceed with them (and, to my way of thinking, they have literally nothing to lose since it would be hard to imagine him doing much worse in any of the upcoming debates than he did Monday.))
So, technically, Trump still has an opportunity to use one or both of the upcoming debates to do what he was unable to do last night: change the entire narrative of the presidential campaign and establish himself as presidential material and a viable alternative to Hillary to a majority of voters. (Like Mitch-A-Sketch Romney did in the first presidential debate four years ago, when he came out of it as the newly crowned front-runner in many polls.)
Of course, if Trump was unable to use the first presidential debate to turn the entire campaign on its head, it will likely be even more difficult going forward. Especially since Hillary and her campaign came prepared for exactly what Romney did four years ago: The Gish Gallop. That’s the infamous debate technique whereby a candidate just constantly spews outrageous lie after outrageous lie to throw their opponent off and come across looking like the more aggressive leader. Unfortunately for Trump, Hillary came prepared for the Gish Galloping Trump last night and cut that strategy out from under his knees in the first half of the debate.
Hillary and her campaign are likely aware that a completely different Trump could appear at one or both of the next two debates, and are probably preparing her for that possibility, as well as the possibility that he will simply double-down on an even more outrageous Gish Gallop than Monday.
Regardless of what may or may not happen in the future, one thing is for sure. Monday's debate did not do what Trump's campaign has desperately been trying to do since the conventions ended: to dramatically change the presidential campaign narrative in his favor. In fact, not only did it not achieve that, it is quite possible that Hillary may have come out of it having most voters perceiving her as having “won” and firming up her support among certain key constituent groups, as well (millennials, by raising the issue of climate change; minorities, by establishing herself as the one who “gets it” when it comes to racism; and college educated whites who were already a bit skittish (or is that skittles-ish?) about Trump to begin with).
We don't know for sure yet whether Hillary did firm up her support among key groups and won't until some more polls come out in the next few days. But what we do know is that Trump did not come out of the debate having demonstrated that he has the right “temperament” to be president. (Someone on his campaign needs to tell him that yelling and screaming hysterically about how he has the temperament to be president doesn’t actually demonstrate presidential temperament.)
But one thing we do know is that Hillary prevented Trump from using the debate to change the narrative of the campaign. And that, my friends, was her primary objective. Everything else is gravy.
