Winner: Hillary Clinton
Judge: Prof. Ian Lising
Although this a lopsided win for Clinton, she missed several opportunities to put this one to rest completely. She took a defensive posture on the Second Amendment issue, rather than challenging Trump on what no restrictions would look like. And though she did utilize the Supreme Court segment to solidify the women’s rights issue, she got caught up with the specifics of the late-term cases. She won the point, but just not as cleanly as she could have.
On the other hand, Trump repetitively used hyperbole in attempt to substantiate his facile assertions. His strange response to whether he would accept the result of the election was staggering. Clinton’s response to his, “we’ll see. I’ll keep you in suspense” was her finest moment. She used that time to further reveal Trump to be what President Obama called him last week, the consummate whiner. Trump’s poor performance on television tonight will once more will win him no Emmys. And if the result of this debate is any indicator, no elections either. Trump’s manner and matter were squarely pedestrian and he didn’t create enough momentum to move the needle past the level of stuff-I-heard-in-Trump-rallies.
The moderator Chris Wallace did a surprising fair job throughout the debate, but it would have been better to let the debaters develop the arguments to respond to. Having the moderator do this is akin to giving higher speaker points for a great point of information to the debater that didn’t even offer it.
Full disclosure here, I am an American and I will be voting during these elections. But take pride in my long experience as a professional debate adjudicator with the ability to remove bias from my decisions. That being said, this was a clear win for Clinton.
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