Trump Won the Debate—But Won Bigly the Post-Debate

Final thoughts on the debate: The moderator Kristen Welker was far better than the prior debate and town-hall moderators, in avoiding the scripted stuff like the Charlottesville distortions and ‘when did you stop beating your wife’ questions. That said, she interrupted Trump far more than she did Biden, and focused more on Biden-friendly questions. But most importantly, Trump kept his cool, was deferential to Welker, and was tough but not cruel to Biden.

Ian Macfarlane

  Victor Davis Hanson  "There was a low bar for Joe Biden in the first debate, given his cognitive challenges. Because he exceeded that pessimism, he won momentum. 

"In opposite fashion, there was similarly an expectation that a disruptive Donald Trump would turn off the audience by the sort of interruptions and bullying that characterized the first debate. 

"He did not do that. He instead let a cocky Biden sound off, and thus more or less tie himself into knots on a host of topics, but most critically on gas and oil. So likewise Trump will gain momentum by exceeding those prognoses. 

"But far more importantly, the back-and-forth repartee will not matter other than Trump went toe to toe, but in a tough, dignified manner and beat Biden on points. Biden did not go blank — although he seemed to come close, often especially in the last 20 minutes. Had the debate gone another 30 minutes, his occasional lapses could have become chronic.

"What instead counts most are the days after.  The debate take-aways, the news clips, the post facto fact checks, and the soundbites to be used in ads over the next ten days all favor Trump. In this regard, Biden did poorly and will suffer continual bleeding in the swing states. 

"We will know that because by the weekend Biden will be out of his basement and trying to reboot his campaign and actually be forced to campaign. 

"So we are going to hear over the next week that Biden simply denied the factual evidence of the Hunter Biden laptop computer, the emails, the cell phones, and the testimonies from some of the relevant players as a concocted smear, a Russian disinformation attack. That denial is clearly a lie. It is absolutely unsupportable. And Biden will have to drop that false claim.  

"Biden will suffer for unequivocally denying what is now a demonstrable fact: there is evidence that his family ran a systematic shake-down operation to peddle inside access and influence for millions of foreign dollars in profits. In the debate, Biden seemed bewildered why anyone could ever conclude the obvious." . . .