Pressure is on Clinton, Trump in first debate
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Who is going to win? Who is going to choke? The pressure is intense for Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton — phenomenally different candidates — who clash in their first debate today.
Stakes are as high as they get since there are just six weeks until the Nov. 8 election. Polls show a close race, with Clinton, 68, enjoying an edge.
As many as 90 million Americans, some estimate, will be glued to their television to catch the showdown.
Many analysts said debates usually don’t win a candidate the election, but can well lose it for them. A single sentence, or the slightest slip, can do serious damage.
Plenty of American voters will have made a decision by now, to be sure. Most have.
But nine percent by some estimates still don’t know who to vote for, after a long campaign in which bitter attacks have often replaced substance.
And this year has been like none in the past, with Trump, 70, using social media around the clock in combative fashion, while often making mistakes, misstatements and blunders without troubling his base. On Saturday, the New York
Times endorsed Clinton, who ahead of the debates has been cloistered with aides and her papers at home in Chappaqua, north of New York, even practicing with relatives playing Trump.
She has been focusing on his psychological profile, with a goal to get Trump to crack, to show that he can’t control himself and lacks the evenhanded temperament a president needs.
If he reacts by attacking, Trump also risks losing women’s votes; he already has a harder time with women voters, and they make up 53 percent of those who turn out. And any slip is sure to be a TV news sound bite.
Clinton’s campaign released a long list of lies it attributes to Donald Trump ahead of the debate.
Trump in turn says preparations are “going very well,” strying to at least appear relaxed. Friday he won the endorsement of former conservative rival Senator Ted Cruz.