Who won the first presidential debate?

Very clear cut question, who do you think did better in the debate? For me, Trump by a nose, Biden was much more together than I've seen him before.

 

It was about 50/50.

All anyone expected from Biden to "win" was not have a visible brain glitch or go wandering off the stage. He did well. He does look physically very frail.

Expectations were higher for Trump. He was less of a bully than Biden was with the name calling. He didn't talk up his many accomplishments as much as I would have liked. He looks physically and mentally strong.

Chris Wallace lost the debate. He challenged Trump with hardball questions and asked Biden to explain things with softball lobs. Generally, he lost control and participated in a lot of cross-talk instead of finding a way to stop it.

Win for Trump: Law and order messaging.
Loss for Trump: Too much interrupting. Biden probably would have stepped on his own toes, if allowed.

Win for Biden: When he spoke directly into the camera saying that this is about the American people (not about candidate's families).
Loss for Biden: Calling Antifa an "idea, not a group".

Based on expectations, I'd call it a tie, but when there were almost zero expectations for Biden, that isn't saying much.

 

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) CNN says Putin was the winner.

 

I agree. Trump went out there knowing that -- whether subtle or blatant -- Chris Wallace would favor Biden and thus would at least attempt to block and cover for him. That was the problem. Expecting the moderator to be partisan, Trump carried a sledgehammer with him and used it on both Wallace and Biden whereas he should have simply chastized Wallace for being partisan and then LET BIDEN SPEAK.

The meds were clearly starting to wear off at a certain point and all Trump needed to do was let Biden be Biden. Hopefully Trump will be more strategic minded in the other debates.

 

That was the 2016 POTUS election.

 

Outside of making a few, short, strangely-constructed sentences that didn't make any grammatical or thematic sense at all, Biden didn't experience a total brain lock-up... and that was something his 'handlers' probably rejoiced in after the debate.

Trump shouldn't have started launching his total "Blitzkrieg" counterattacks until after ol' Joe had had the opportunity to make an ass of himself, which, actually, he did not do because he never had a chance.

Trump was like a lover who's in such a hurry to "get with it" that he falls down on the floor while trying to take off his pants....

 

It has been a mistake to concentrate on Biden's ''senility'' in the past few months.
This was clearly untrue and last night exposed the lie.
Only one man looked Presidential and it wasn't the President.
Biden on the other hand made the mistake of getting dragged down into the gutter.
He looked best when he just shook his head, shrugged his shoulders and smiled when Trump was interrupting.
Trump lost tactically but may have won strategically by ensuring a low turnout with the whole ****-show.
Low turnout was how he won last time.
No loyalists on either side will ever be swayed by these debates but the swing voters may just decide to sit it out again not being able to back either clown.

 

I don't think so. We saw what we got when we did that last time and it won't happen again. I don't think most people, even most conservatives, knew just how bad Trump was going to be in 2016 and how imperative it was that he come nowhere near to actually acquiring the Presidency. There is a real feeling that if we let Trump in again we won't be able to get rid of him forever this time.

Also, these debates show that people are fed up to here with the Republican "tactic" of character assassination on the opponent. Calumny is a downright ugly thing, especially when it's largely a projection of yourself and you double down instead of backing off when that becomes obvious as happened in 2016.

Biden is far more of a "sympathetic" person than Hillary was or Trump can even conceive of being I was just waiting for Trump to call Biden's one war-hero son a "loser" when he started in on Hunter. The most despicable thing about Trump is the way he attacks our military from the position of being a cowardly draft-dodger himself.

 

Thanks, that was funny.

That was a clear win for Biden. Trump needed to change the debate, and that just didn't happen. It stayed focused on him. His ego is always his first step to failure.

The reactions of independents in 'instant polls' favored Biden.

 

I hope you're right.
I've lost faith in the electorate though.
I hope I'm wrong.

 

Trump won in pure scoring but I voted neither because he made so many fouls that he should have been disqualified.

 

Oh, for heaven's sake! Go back to about the first of just this year and look at all the times that Biden has "misspoken" and then tell yourself that he's not senile! And you guys are happy with something like THAT in the Oval Office?!

. "Well, I would be!"

 

Both NYT and Fox have noted that "who won" is debatable, but both also agree that the American people lost. Looks like the left and right can come together now and then.

 

What? The left are pros at character assassination even doing to their own party. Kamala tried to portray Biden as racist in the Dem debates and the left has no problem doing it to the right.

The only difference is that Trump is so blunt about his character assassinations and it's harder to maintain the illusion of civility. Still, an illusion it is.

 

Keep it up.
See where it gets you.
Biden did not look senile last night and no conspiracy theories about earpieces and performance enhancing drugs are going to change that.

 

Are you saying that his word stumbling was due to something else or are you just blotting that from your memory so that you can believe what you want?

 

Keep it up.
It's a losing strategy.
There was nothing more than a stutter last night.

 

You are right on that point, it is a losing strategy. Trump needs to set Bidens standards higher so that peoples expectations are higher and Biden has a greater difficulty in meeting them.

I am just surprised sometimes about how biases can really change what people focus on and remember in situations they see.

 

Both sides do this indeed; but attacking your opponent's character is one thing and downright calumny as was seen in 2016 is something else again, the level then being so high that many leftists, who really should have known better, believed it at least partially and some still do. The result is that one of our least actually scandal-ridden high-level pols is today still seen as some sort of a mastermind assassin and secret spy for the Soviets (yes I know they're all dead but that's part of it) out to overthrow our government and deliver our children en masse to George Soro's Lizardmen for orgies followed by being made into pizza.

It really has gotten this ridiculous and that's mainly because this type of thing is largely Trump's whole stock in trade. Fortunately, Biden's reputation is such that it's water to a duck and that was shown to some advantage last night. Trump looked like a floundering con man at some parts and fell back on bullying. I was hoping Biden would take advantage of it, particularly when Trump started to say how the "media" was against him, but he took the high road, or maybe he was just waiting for Trump to further hang himself. Whatever, I think the next debate will be most interesting based on this one.

 

Overall, a pretty good take... I'll add my commentary below:

Even though I voted that Trump kicked his ass, I fully understand and appreciate any answer saying a marginal win or a 50/50 draw for one line of reasoning or another. There is no way in hell that anyone can say that Joe even marginally won, or kicked Trump's ass...

This is where I understand the 50/50 take on the debate. There were VERY low expectations for Biden, and he met those abysmally low expectations. While he had a fair amount of minor "dementia" moments, he successfully avoided any major/memorable ones... I agree that he looked very frail/tired, and just doesn't have the energy and youthful vigor that Trump has.

I was surprised that Biden turned out to be the bigger bully with regard to name calling. Usually that is Trump's thing, but Biden was the one calling Trump a clown (and then catching himself in a "foot in mouth" moment a couple seconds after doing so) and telling Trump to shut up and etc...

Trump seemed to have rattled Biden with his regular interruptions while Biden was speaking. Seems like Biden doesn't do well under stressful/hostile situations and lets people get into his head... I was also somewhat disappointed that Trump didn't tout his various accomplishments as well as he could have done, especially with regard to what he's done for blacks, but do realize that there's only so much that can be said in such a format. He got some of them out there though. And yes, very physically and mentally strong indeed.

My thoughts exactly.

This was about the only memorable part of the night, and is an issue that I think people will care about more than others, so that's why I say that Trump handily won the debate. This is also where Trump challenged Biden to think on his feet rather than parrot rehearsed lines by asking Biden to name just ONE police endorsement that he has received, of which Biden failed to do.

The other win in my book was the whole judicial bit where Biden refused to go on record and completely avoided the question about "packing the court" and avoided the request to release a list of SCOTUS nominees. Trump also won by continuously hammering on how long Biden had been in office and continuously asking him why he didn't do [insert whatever here] during all of that time that he had. (the whole "47 months vs 47 years" thing)

This one I can see both ways. I can see it as a loss, since Biden tends to say stupid stuff when given the chance to, yet I can also see the strategy to constantly interrupt him to get him visibly flustered and to make it harder to recite his talking points, especially if he did the earpiece thing, and also to fluster him since he is not very good at extemporaneous speaking.

My big loss for Trump is that Trump didn't get in a jab at Biden's whole "Scranton working-man" appeal that he always does... Something along the lines of "it's been over half a century since you've worked a real job, in Scranton or anywhere else", something that would have clearly made the point that Joe is completely disconnected from the working class American and doesn't produce anything, doesn't provide a service, doesn't contribute to society in any meaningful way, etc...

Agreed. That was a solid "emotion" moment for him, even though it was a complete line of bullshit on his part. He would've had another one with the "Beau" mention, but Trump adequately diffused that one immediately afterward.

Yup, this was my big loss for Biden as well. That answer is not going to go over very well with suburbanites, me thinks... He lost BIG on the law and order segment of the debate as a whole. He also lost on the judiciary commentary (packing the court, SCOTUS list, and etc) by not giving any answers about it.

Agreed. They both generally met expectations (Trump's being much higher than Joe's). I call it a Trump trouncing mostly because of the law and order segment, but also because Trump hurled out many more specifics than the zero specifics that Biden did.

 

The only losers were the American people.

 

They are going to wait for poll results.

The American people have been losing for almost 4 years now.

Trump has been consistently behind. He was the guy that needed to put on a good show, and we both know that is never going to happen.

The swing voters that pushed him over the top will still be swinging. But now he's the incumbent, that's bad news for Trump.

Even worse, he made a number of unforced errors, and that is also bad news for the Orange One.

Lastly, he didn't use the plan they worked up for him. I don't think he is able to do something like that.

Trump has been trying to change the story of the election for months, and every attempt has failed, with some of them backfiring.

At this late date, I don't see that changing.

 

There was no winner, no real substance. Perhaps the next one they can put each in sound proof booths and cut their mic's when it is not their turn to talk and then have a third one with just them and they can duke it out.

 

Wallace really showed his colors with the white supremacy card he threw, is he really that ignorant of the facts and Trumps previous statements? Why didn't he ask the same of Biden and the BLM and Antifa racist anarchist.

 

And then Trump showed his.