Attacks, sparks fly in first debate
COMBATIVE CLINTON PUTS TRUMP ON THE DEFENSIVE Bay Area viewers see billionaire fade as barbs exchanged
On a night when he once again accused Hillary Clinton of lacking stamina, Donald Trump appeared to wither under the spotlight of the first presidential debate, repeatedly losing his composure as Clinton attacked his business record and his treatment of women.
With polls showing the presidential race nearly deadlocked, Trump started the night seemingly intent on appearing measured and calm, but he quickly became the aggressor, frequently interrupting Clinton and contorting his face as she spoke.
“It wasn’t so much the words as the image,” said Jack Pitney, a former Republican Party official who is now a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. “He had to show that he was presidential, but someone watching the debate with the sound off and looking at Trump would not think that he looked like a president.”
At debate “watch parties”
around the Bay Area, Democrats appeared giddy about Clinton’s performance. Some Republicans acknowledged that Trump seemed to struggle as the debate wore on, but they cautioned that he has been defying political gravity for months.
“He continued to make the important points that many people feel are not being addressed by our political elites,” said Sue Caro, the former chairwoman of the Alameda County Republican Party and a candidate for Congress. “He does it his own way.”
A CNN post-debate poll, however, found that 62 percent of respondents said Clinton had won the evening, compared with 27 percent for Trump.
The worst moment for Trump, Pitney said, came as he refused to acknowledge that he had initially supported the Iraq War when pressed by the moderator Lester Holt, of NBC News, calling it “mainstream media nonsense.”
“That will invite fact checkers for the next few days to reverberate that he flat out lied,” Pitney said.
Late Monday, it was still too early to tell if the debate would impact a race that has tightened into a dead heat in recent days as swing voters struggle to line up behind the two least popular major-party presidential candidates in recent memory.
“His people are still going to be his people,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a veteran political analyst at the University of Southern California. “I don’t think his numbers are going to collapse, but in a race that was so close, even a point or two could be critical.”
The debate began on a cordial note, with Trump first referring to his opponent as “Secretary Clinton,” saying of the title: “I want to make you very happy.” The words “Crooked Hillary” never came out of his mouth, even as the debate turned increasingly nasty.
Trump began the debate strong with a familiar theme blasting trade deals as job-killers and trying to cast the race as a battle between failed insiders like Clinton and an outsider such as himself.
“We have to stop our jobs from being stolen from us,” Trump said.
But Trump’s discipline faded and his temper flared as Clinton, who called her opponent “Donald” the entire night, went on the offensive about Trump’s refusal to disclose his tax returns and his multiple bankruptcies.
“That makes me smart,” Trump said when Clinton said that several of his previously released tax returns showed him paying no income taxes.
“That means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools and health,” Clinton responded.
“I have to believe that the people who prepared her knew the one issue that would get under his skin was criticism of his business acumen and his finances,” Bebitch-Jeffe said. “And if you watch, you can see that is exactly what happened.”
Ron Wolf, a 72-year-old Palo Alto resident, laughed when Clinton jabbed Trump about his tax returns during a debate watching party at the Democratic Volunteer Center in Mountain View.
“I’m quite surprised Trump is winging it,” said Wolf, a retired journalist. “I thought he’d be more prepared. I’m just astonished at how he’s being a mean bully.”
Still, Wolf didn’t think either candidate won the night.
“I’d tell her to go after him much more directly on many more issues,” he said. “But I’d tell him he has to grow up and be an adult.”
Robert Varich, a small business owner and vice chairman of the Santa Clara County Republican Party, took umbrage with Clinton’s remark that all Americans – not just police officers – have biases. “She doesn’t know me or my background or my history or my upbringing,” he said. “I have no bias, and have many friends of many races.”
Watching the debate with other Republicans at a San Jose Round Table Pizza, Varich said that Trump could have done better and questioned the moderator’s impartiality. “Lester seemed to interrupt Trump more than Hillary and didn’t bring up the Clinton Foundation questions,” he said.
Andrew Gerbetz, a 28year-old former Bernie Sanders supporter from San Jose, was happy with Clinton’s performance in a debate that got ugly quickly.
“There were a few moments she was a little slow to respond, but you can tell she was definitely prepared,”
His favorite part was when Hillary quoted first lady Michelle Obama’s line from the Democratic National Convention about Trump’s repeated accusations that President Obama was born outside the United States: “When they go low, we go high.”
“I hope Hillary continues to take the high road in this election,” Gerbetz said.
Clinton threw Trump off his game “almost instantly,” and still managed to come across as “calm and approachable,” said Melissa Michelson, a professor of politics at Menlo College in Atherton. “She had a little shoulder wiggle. She was smiling a lot. I think she did really well addressing the concerns about her being likable.”