I've had people say it's a hardening, actually ~ US presidential election 2016 part 9/11 never forget

trump needs to stop making musolini face but i'm pretty sure its his 'serious man' face like on this cover of this awesome book

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/517ndDjPaFL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

yeah if Trump is a poor man's idea of what a rich man is like then Adams is an idiot's idea of what a smart person sounds like

not that he likely put this much thought into it but trump was wise to avoid attacks on bill's conduct since it's liable that hillary had one of her more well-rehearsed responses on deck. also as people have pointed out it might make her look sympathetic

man what if the people in the town hall boo him

they laughed at him at the temperament comment last night

Trump alludes to Bill Clinton five minutes after the debate is over, to congratulate himself on his self-control in not alluding to Bill Clinton. That is some presidential zone.

Adams is an idiot's idea of what a smart person sounds like

no that's Newt Gingrich

https://media.giphy.com/media/3o7TKnxwpUqCkdb5Li/giphy.gif

I'm mesmerized by all the shimmying

thought that was another great moment for her. She laughed at Trump being ridiculous and looked both confident and human.

Gingrich is an idiot's idea of what a moron sounds like.

I feel like Hillary needs to bring up Curiel and the Khans again.. this moron cant stop bringing up his 'greatest hits'

how is Newt doing 'pro-Trump' commentary when he's on record saying "no one knows what Trump will do as president, including Trump"?

You may have missed the thing where a number of republicans give mealy mouthed support to Trump out one side of their mouth while expressing thinly-veiled contempt and dismay out of the other.

All that matters is what people feel at any given moment.

town hall probably a better venue for Trump cuz he will have an audience to play to

nah don't forget he's horrible at this too

http://i.imgur.com/gSGz4SS.gif

if they fill the auditorium with undecided voters then I can't wait to find out what this crowd of, to quote WGW, "diaper drinkers," comes up with

getting increasingly worried about Piers Morgan's mental health

This, remember, was his first ever one-on-one TV political debate, and overall Trump did a perfectly competent if not compelling job. [...] I admire [his] resilience, it’s what makes him a strong and very dangerous opponent.

don't think he's mentally ill fwiw, he's just a total prick

also completely idiotic about American politics

Conway told CNN that Trump was prepared to bring up Bill Clinton’s marital indiscretions during the debate, but that he made a “a split-second spontaneous decision” not to raise the issue. That will earn him points with female voters, she said.

“I think that whole exchange will grow in importance over the next couple of days,” she said. “Women will like that.”

quality strategizing, do go on

"Donald told me afterwards that he very nearly punched her right in the stomach, but he displayed amazing restraint and didn't resort to any kind of physical violence. I think those are exactly the qualities women are looking for in a presidential candidate."

begging for credit for not doing something bad is what a 6 year old does

Reaction roundup

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/09/27/daily-202-why-even-republicans-think-clinton-won-the-first-debate/57e9b033e9b69b3019a1e037/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_daily202-930am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

the biggest evidence that Clinton "won" is that today Trump's campaign is defensive + doing damage control + lashing out randomly and Clinton is just doing her usual boring workmanlike stuff. Trump has Giuliani out there bitching about the details of the stop and frisk ruling, Conway is clarifying that Trump doesn't think climate change is man-made, Trump is making pathetic refs to Lewinsky,, chewing out Machado, his microphone etc. This is not the picture of a campaign that feels good about its performance. The points its having to defend/address aren't going to go well with target demos (african americans, women, latinos, non-morons) which just means bad press for the next couple cycles. Poll numbers will drop a bit accordingly I suspect.

OTMFM. But, tbf, Trump would've found something to get whinily defensive about even if he'd somehow decisively won.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/upshot/prediction-markets-score-it-a-rout-clinton-over-trump.html

https://twitter.com/MajorCBS/status/780747025398763520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Dana Milbank writes, “Trump ostentatiously avoided preparation — playing the proverbial high school slacker drinking beer behind the bleachers while the teacher’s pet was in the library. But Monday night was the revenge of the nerd.”

god Dana Milbank is an asshole

I was half-listening to CBS's pregame show on their streaming news channel and was thinking "jesus who is that asshole who is saying this" and they had Peggy Noonan on screen

xpost I like to imagine him and Mark Russell as a performing team that bores the audience to death.

From that WaPo reaction roundup, the Clinton campaign was quick to come up with this ad (released at 3:30am today):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7ys8bmTf5U

I feel like they could've found better examples.

https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/simgad/18396173874955427539

HAN SHOT FIRST

guys i just watched the first 45 mins of this and here's my takeaway

- hillary will regulate our businesses out of existence
- trump wants to supercharge our businesses to compete with china

have i got that about right?

Hey everyone relax...Mark Russell is ON IT.

http://www.markrussell.net/

What I learned from the debate -- and I knew you'd ask: The best way to beat ISIS is for General Douglas MacArthur to stop and frisk Rosie O'Donnell.

Both candidates appeared presidential but in Trump's case, President Mussolini.

If mugging and eye rolling were statesmanlike traits, Trump would be George Washington.

Moderator Lester Hold was missing for awhile. Did he duck out for a drink? They should have tied a yellow ribbon around his chair.

Trump made a snide remark about people who weigh 400 pounds. There goes Christie's support.

Hillary recalled her father being in the drapery business. Which may explain the red pants suit.

In the end, we are left with the question: where are Trump's tax returns? Maybe somebody should frisk Jimmy Hoffa.

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters"

Isn't this basically calling his supporters idiots to their faces?

no because fifth avenue is presumably in NYC and a lot of his voters are cool with New Yorkers being randomly shot, as long as its not by terrorists

Yes, and they love it, please sir, can they have another?

yep what mh said, Trump's fascists think that people being shot is good.

NYC is a hotbed of the worst ppl in America if I remember correctly, it's up there with um maybe Hollywood

Isn't this basically calling his supporters idiots to their faces?

Don't forget he actually said "How stupid are the people of Iowa?" at a rally in Iowa, and then won Iowa

The good news for Clinton is no matter what Trump does next, she can likely use the exact same strategy to make his cool the next time around. Taxes, lawsuits, bankruptcies, lack of wealth. And if he brings up the Clinton Foundation nonsense, which has no real legs, she can bring up the Trump Foundation fouls, whose reporting has just begun and is already pretty damning.

Cruz won Iowa, so I guess Iowans are dumb

A rare time when Trump came up positive on a factcheck

:)

the plurality amongst iowa republicans is social conservative rural weirdos who live along the south dakota border. they'd take a complete idiot like santorum or cruz's santorum-lite (lol) pandering any day over trump

They are polling in favor of Trump right now, though, despite going for Obama in 2012.

really? I've seen some depressing tied polls, but none with Trump winning statewide

watching this debate if i was a white racist i would DEFINITELY vote for trump