I'm generally of the school of thought that nobody wins presidential debates. The debates are a show where both candidates just do more campaigning, just aimed at each other. It's not a real debate. Neither side argues merits or fully obeys the rules and almost never directly answer questions properly.
In parliamentary Westminster based systems, such as the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc, only the judiciary is truly a separate branch of government from the rest. Unlike the US congressional system where legislative, executive and judicial are all seperate, in Westminster parliamentary systems, the judiciary is separate but the executive is made up of a subset of the legislature. The two are linked and ministers of the government, like secretaries of departments in our system, all have a vote of their own in the legislature, as does the head of government... E.g. The prime minister in parliaments and the president in our system.
The reason I bring this up, is that parliamentary systems such as these generally have what's known as question time. A time of the day, every day, where members of the lower house in bicameral systems, (generally called the house of representatives like ours is, but called the house of commons in the UK) ask the members of the house who are part of the selection of members who also make up the executive, the cabinet, questions that they are supposed to have to answer. Now in practice they of course do everything they can to dodge embarrassing questions and spend a lot of time just outright attacking each other.
Our presidential debates are the closest thing we have, apart from some small similarities in the form of the state of the union address, to the question time in those systems. It's quite similar in actual practice. Both candidates are asked questions they routinely dodge the answer too, and frequently just go on the attack on their opponent. Our debates are much more like a parliamentary question time than they are like a real debate. We just call it a debate.
And there are no winners or losers. If you're a supporter of Clinton you think she win, if you're a supporter of trump you think he won, and that's the way its always been. How would you even to about objectively declaring a winner? Is the winner the one who made the best argument for their platform? Cause trump barely mentioned a platform and spent most of his time attacking Clinton. Clinton mentioned more in the way of plans but like all political plans preeleection they are vague and nonbinding. Is the winner whoever comes out of it with the biggest boost to their odds? In that case Clinton won.
Perhaps there should be a hundred supposedly undecided voters who until now have been paying little attention to the election, and whoever the majority of them declare the winner by the end of the debate is the winner? That's somewhat similar to how Australian prime ministerial debates have worked on some broadcast networks. But the network itself can be biased in choosing the audience. Should the moderators decide?
Who wins is whoever you already were leaning to anyway for most people. I pretty much hated both prior to the debates, my personal view is that if there is a winner,it was Clinton. The first debate was more of a toss up for me, but the second felt to me like brutal defeat for trump. Now obviously trump supporters won't see it that way. They see him on the attack against Clinton, which they love to see, and agree with everything trump says about her. But that's hardly an objective way to pick a winner. All the Clinton voters or trump haters will see what they want to see, and say the same unqualified victory only for Clinton.
Even I don't think I can be unbiased here. But to the best of my attempt to do so, going based on what I think their behavior in the debate did for their chances for victory, which seems to me to be the only sensible way to declare a winner given the whole point of the so called debate to start with, to convince the America people to vote for them. On that basis, I would have called the first debate, which I admir I didn't see all of, I missed the first 20 minutes,something of a toss up. But the second one was a major loss for trump. Not because Clinton did so well but because he did so poorly. Clinton DID do well IMO. I felt she came off as likable, relatable, personable, which is all the things I'm sure her campaign has been training her how to do leading up to it. It's all an act. But that combined with not letting trump get her too off message, she did fine. Good enough with what she had to work with.
Trump on other hand, I felt he did more damage to himself that she could have ever hoped to have achieved. All the things he has troubles with to begin with. Seeming arrogant, dictatorial, like a bully, like a disgusting person who's low attacks are unbefitting a man who would be president. And not only that, like a crybaby too. Dominating the debate. Neither of them completely stuck to the rules, but he went so far outside the rules it was impossible to ignore. Problem is. Clinton would go a little over time,so in his mind he had to one up her by going a little bit more over time. Then getting mad when the moderators stepped in. Getting off on tangents' about bill Clinton. But that was stupid. Bill Clinton's affair is long forgotten, all bringing it up did was to further cement the ideas of sexual assault, and Donald trump, as connected in the minds of the moderates and fence sitters and swing votees. The ones that matter.
All his worst liabilities, he reenforced. Maybe Clinton didn't win the debate, but trump definitely lost.
And indeed you're right. Trump is at a major disadvantage. Hillary Clinton is an expert politician, in the debates, this is her element. Her world. It's not trumps, and worse than that he doesn't seem to listen to his advisors to, even if he can't really win, at least not do more damage to his campaign than his opponent did.
I've watched every debate since I got into politics when I was about 15-16 or so, back with the second george w bush election in 04.
The second Clinton v trump debate is the only one where I felt someone truly won since Obama. And Obama only won because, and don't get me wrong, I hate Obama even more than Clinton. But Obama is nothing if not an excellent public speaker.
I mean... I felt Sarah palin did a better job in her vp debate than trump did in the last one.
God knows what train wreck will be in store for the final debate.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
