Logic says Clinton won, but what’s logic got to do with it?
The consensus of my media colleagues seems to be that Hillary Clinton won Monday night’s debate going away, if not on the strength of her own performance then on the weakness of Donald Trump’s. How I wish I could believe that.
Trump was, it is true, clueless. As others have noted, he had no good answers on the economy, no good answers on race, no good answers on security or defence or pretty much anything. He was by turns irritable, shifty, arrogant, unctuous and ill-informed, while Clinton was unflappable, goodhumoured, well-briefed, always in command. Logically, she should be the winner.
But if logic had anything to do with it, we would not be where we are today, in a two-point race with six weeks to go. In all fairness, Trump has never had any good answers. It has been obvious from the start that he lacks any of the qualities ordinarily desired in a president — qualities like competence, judgment, integrity, decency, stability, understanding of basic principles of constitutional government — and not in the sense of being deficient by the standard of most candidates but deficient by the standards of most Americans. You could drag 10 guys out of a bar on Third Avenue and nine of them would be better presidents than Trump. And yet he’s within another Clinton coughing fit of the White House.
So I’m not sure a poor debate showing will make much difference. What does it mean to “win” a debate, anyway? The only meaningful definition is, not who the press thinks won, or even who the public thinks won, in the sense of how they answer a pollster when asked, but whose performance translates into an increase in the number of voters willing to mark their ballot for them. So while 62 per cent of those surveyed told CNN’s pollster they thought Clinton won the debate, to 27 per cent for Trump, we shall see what that turns out to mean in terms of public support.
There is a correlation, as the noted number-cruncher Nate Silver has found: a gap of 35 percentage points in the who-won score would be expected to correspond to a four-point bump in the polls. But the data is, as Silver says, “noisy,” meaning the correlation is a loose one, with plenty of outliers. And there’s ample reason to think this election does not fit the usual template.
Who, after all, are the voters who remain to be persuaded? What sort of voter is still wavering between Trump and Clinton? I know they exist — the gap between the two candidates has opened and closed by five or six percentage points several times — but they must be an especially confused bunch. “I’m undecided: on the one hand, I kind of want a candidate who is knowledgeable, experienced and sane; on the other hand, maybe I want a candidate who is ignorant, unqualified and out of his mind. Toss a coin, I guess.”
HE WAS BY TURNS IRRITABLE, SHIFTY, ARROGANT, UNCTUOUS AND ILL-INFORMED.
How to reach those voters must baffle the sharpest political minds. One is reminded of the challenges facing those running against Rob Ford. What lines of argument will register with the sort of voters who, by their willingness to vote for a Trump or Ford, have signalled their imperviousness to any of the traditional criteria of eligibility? That they are personally unfit for office? That their policies make no sense? That they lie all the time?
What would those voters have seen last night? They would have seen, first, Trump and Clinton on the same stage, as equals, just as if Trump were a regular everyday candidate for president and not, say, a nineyear-old boy in the body of a 240-pound man — the ultimate normalization.
Second, they would have seen, through the first 15 or 20 minutes of the debate — after which viewership typically drops off sharply — Trump vigorously prosecuting Clinton on a charge of being insufficiently protectionist, with Clinton wanly protesting her innocence: “Isn’t it true that you supported the Trans Pacific Partnership?” “Yes, but that was in the past.” About all they differed on was who to blame for America’s ills: where Trump vowed to get tough with China, Clinton promised to soak the rich. Wonderful — a choice of trade war or class war.
But then, policy is probably not the strongest ground for Clinton. The more she polarizes the campaign on ideological lines, the more she risks driving traditional Republicans, notwithstanding their dismay at Trump’s personal failings, back into his camp. She scored better on Trump’s checkered business career, his history of erratic and offensive statements, his refusal to release his tax returns — if only because Trump could not resist rising to his own defence.
The results were entertaining, to say the least. I don’t know which was the more enduring image: Trump defending his serial refusal to pay his workers as “taking advantage of the laws of the nation,” or Trump claiming his fiveyear effort to sow doubts about Obama’s birthplace had “helped” the president, or Trump insisting the evidence he had been opposed to invading Iraq could be found in his conversations with Fox News host Sean Hannity, or Trump defending himself against charges of racist business practices by noting his club in Palm Beach did not bar blacks, or …
Will that sway anyone who was not already disposed against him? As I say, logically his performance should be disqualifying. But logic don’t much enter into it, do it?