"In fact one of the prides of this country is the
peaceful transition of power, and that no matter
how hard fought a campaign is, that at
the end of the campaign, that the loser
concedes to the winner, not saying that you're
necessarily going to be the loser or the
winner, but that the loser concedes to the
winner, and that the country comes together in
part for the good of the country — are
you saying you're not prepared now to —" "What
I'm saying is that I will tell you at
the time, I'll keep you in suspense." "Well
Chris, let me respond to that because that's..."
What she did here is actually visible in
the polling: on the eve of the first
presidential debate, she was up by 1.5 points.
By the second, she's up by 5.6.
By the third, it was over
seven points and that is a a huge lead
and not a normal one; most presidential debates
actually don't move polls, it's very rare — if
you look at the political science here — to
find a debate series have actually has an
enduring effect
on the shape of the race. These ones did.
Now, the way Clinton won is
nontraditional, it's not the way we're used to candidates winning.
We're used to candidates winning because they themselves
did a good job, they delivered a brutal
zinger they just killed on the answers.
And Clinton did some of that, but
the real way she won the the real
achievement here and it is one of the
most stunning political achievements
in modern campaigning
was it she figured out her opponents weaknesses
and goaded him into basically completely collapsing.
"To replenish the social —"
"Such a nasty woman."
She and her campaign
analyzed Donald Trump,
figured out what it was they could exploit,
and then relentlessly
ruthlessly
did so.
You can see it begin in in the
first debate, she just started calling him "Donald."
"Donald,
it's good to be with you ."
Nnobody really knows why Donald Trump hates
the sound of his first name so much
but he does, he immediately tries to shame
Clinton into referring to him with more respect."
"Secretary Clinton,
yes?
Is that okay? Good? I want you to be
very happy.
It's very important to me.
Clinton isn't having it.
And this really sets up the way all these debates
will go. Trump, every time, begins calm,
cool, collected. He he gives answers that sound
quasi-presidential: "Well the DC versus Heller
decision was very strongly, and she was
extremely angry about it..." But pretty quickly Clinton gets
under his skin. She needles him, she goads
him, she makes fun of the fact
that he got his business started with a
loan from his father. She attacks whether not
he's actually that rich. Whether not he pays
taxes. Every time, Trump just begins taking the bait,
and taking the bait, and taking the bait.
there something for him
about being attacked and being humiliated by a woman
on national television,
that he absolutely cannot handle.
And so at about the thirty minute mark in
every single debate, he just begins to lose it.
"No puppet, no puppet."
"You're the puppet."
"You won't admit that the Russians..."
He becomes less coherent, he's not able to focus on the
questions he's asked.
Instead goes back to things Clinton said about him
awhile back. He just tries to throw any attacks
he can
think of up against her. It's a bad
look for him, it'd be a bad look
for anyone, but it really really shows
the effectiveness of her strategy.
But the big way in which she
managed to dominate these debates, was that at the
first debate she sparked a meltdown in Trump
that weeks later he was still working his way
through, and it came here at the end:
"And one of the worst things he said
was about
a woman in a beauty contest (he loves
beauty contests, supporting them, and hanging around them.)
And he called this woman Miss Piggy
then he called her Miss Housekeeping because she
was Latina
Donald she has a name —"
"Where did you find her?" "Her name is Alicia Machado,"
And she has become a U. S. citizen
and you can bet she's going to vote this November
That Alicia Machado trap and it was a trap
they had a web video ready they had
a whole press tour for Alicia Machado.
That Alicia Machado play, that was a beginning of the conversation over Donald Trump's language and treatment of women.
It was the context for the leaked Access Hollywood tape that came out later.
It was the context for the sexual harassment claims that came out later.
It forced Trump into a corner. He was so angry that he began trying to lash back in any way he could think of.
In ways that were completely non-strategic.
An example was in the next debate, right before it he held a press conference with three women who had accused Bill Clinton of assaulting them.
Whatever you think of the Bill Clinton— assault allegations this was an insane strategy. He should have been preparing for the debate.
He should've have been on his own message. He should have been finding a weakness of Hillary Clinton's.
Instead he did something that not only made no sense but scared other Republicans about whether or not he was truly figuring out a way to turn this race around.
It was a disaster for him. And a disaster Clinton and the Clinton campaign goaded him into.
In every debate, Clinton has managed to both push Trump into nonsense and mistakes. While being herself, prepared, clear, calm, disciplined, and cautious.
In that way she created a preparation gap between the two candidates. Trump would be there really offering just total nonsense gibberish answers.
And then Clinton would basically exhale an entire briefing book of knowledge. Trumps campaign bragged
a little bit about how little the candidate was preparing for the debates. But in the end it really hurt him.
And Clinton's over preparation, her tendency to know absolutely everything on a topic—a tendency that often makes people mock her a bit.
See her as robotic, see her as over-prepared. It really worked here. It really showed
that one of these candidates knew something about the issues facing the country. And the other didn't.
Look, it's easy to underestimate what happened here. It's easy now to look back and think of Trump's total collapse as completely inevitable.
But remember Trump triumphed in debate after debate against a sixteen person Republican field—that included what many thought
were some of the most talented Republican politicians in generations of politicians who had been in many
debates before. Who were experienced, who were skilled, who were effective. He was good at
bullying them and taking over the stage. He had a macho, insulting, blustering demeanor that really worked
particularly against other male politicians.
Jeb Bush: [unintelligible] Trump: Let me talk. Quiet.
Somehow Clinton short-circuited all of that. He was not ever able to get his footing in the debates.
She kept him completely off-balance. She attacked him in ways that worked
and upset him. As opposed to ways which you saw over and over again in the Republican debates that strengthened him and made the attackers look bad.
She was able to use her gender and his chauvinism and his weaknesses and her discipline to put him into trap after trap that he never figured a way out of.
Trump is losing and he's losing a part because he himself is a flawed vulnerable candidate. But Clinton is winning because she had a strategy
a fairly high-risk strategy actually. And she executed it. She stuck to it. She did it at every single debate and it actually worked.
This is not the way we're used to seeing candidates win debates. We're used to seeing them win debates because of how they performed
not because of how they were able to trap their opponent into performing. But the fact that this is a non-traditional kind of win—
a win that relies on Clinton's unique skills and characteristics and not the things we're used to from other politicians
that doesn't make it less impressive, it makes it more impressive. After three debates, Donald Trump's campaign is in smoking
ruins and that's because Hillary Clinton turned in a truly effective, strategic, and ruthless performance.