I call it a draw. Nobody will change their vote based on those performances.
Hillary came off as a shrill ex-wife. Trump came off a bit too bombastic. Hillary sounded too wonky. Trump wasn’t wonky enough. Trump let her get away with a lot of crap. But then her attempts at piling on seemed nasty. The moderator was clearly in Clinton’s camp, but Donald will use that to his advantage.
Draw.
Yep and draw favors Trump because the momentum is on his side. She needed to land punches and she failed, utterly despite everything Holt did to help her. No one’s mind was changed tonight.
Trump took Holt down on the Iraq War question. I mean he wiped the floor with him.
Hillary was baffled during the economy section. He won the national security section hands down.
He won the international section by pointing out the fact that our allies should pay their way and that IRan was a payoff and a ransom.
He won 3 out of 3 sections.
Hillary’s weak, textbook liberal policy proposals (negotiation...stimulus programs) needed something of a wonk to skewer them. She rattled them off so slickly that it takes a sensitive political ear to quickly translate them into the standard Democrat boilerplate that they are and skewer them as being no new ideas. That would be one area where Cruz would have outdone Trump.
You also needed a wonk to explain that “greed” didn’t cause the housing crisis, Fannie and Freddie did...or more broadly, liberal big government command and control of the economy.