Live from Trumpland: Josh Barro: Why Hillary Clinton Won the Debate:
The political events of the last 15 months have ruined my confidence in my own ability to predict how the electorate will react to events...
So here are a few pieces of evidence, aside from my own impressions from watching, that Clinton got the best of Trump at Monday's debate.
Prediction markets moved toward Clinton during the debate.... TV news focus groups said Clinton clearly won.... Trump's own surrogates won't argue forcefully that he won.... One focus group participant said something telling. A CNN panelist who gave the win to Clinton noted, approvingly, that she "took control of the situation." This is true.... Trump skipped a post-debate victory party he was supposed to attend and went straight home....
My mind keeps sticking on... Clinton drove the debate. This was a big shift from the primary debates, of which Trump was the dominant star, and that undermines one of his big appeals to his fans--that he's the strong guy in charge of everything. We'll have to see over the next few days whether the debate mattered at all for the polling, but those are a few signs she got the best of it.
