She'll clean his clock! She'll run circles around him! She'll beat him like a drum!
Everyone believes that Hillary Clinton would demolish Donald Trump in a debate. And why wouldn't she? She is smarter, has in-depth knowledge of virtually all the political issues, and possesses well thought out, articulate positions. Despite her reputation for not being truthful, she actually is rated by most fact-checkers as being more accurate than any other candidate that has run this year. She is potentially getting one liner advice from the likes of Michael Moore, Bill Maher and Al Franken.
Donald Trump is the most supremely ignorant and arrogant candidate for President in our history. He is prone to the most brutal of gaffes. He routinely offends one group or another with his extreme and ill-thought rhetoric. He lies constantly.
So this should be a slam dunk for Clinton, right?
Wrong.
Oh, how I wish debates were scored simply like a high school or college debate. But the fact is, even those debates are often not scored as they should be.
I took debate in college and lost a debate to two college football players. And no, these were not that kind of college athlete who is also an academic overachiever - these were two who were trying to skate by with a minimum of effort.
I coached a debate team as a high school teacher, and our team placed third in the state - the highest placement the school had ever had. How? I was a first year coach with a school that had little in the way of resources compared to other schools (this was in the days before the internet). How did they win against superior, more well-trained schools? The affirmative team had one well prepared case, and they gave their presentation with blinding confidence and pizzazz. They had such utter certainty that judges were blinded by its intensity. Our negative team was arrogant and disdainful, and had brief cases built against all major cases affirmative teams could present, with devastating one liners that diverted attention from the paucity of evidence.
So, yeah. I played even a system that was supposed to be built simply on spitting out the most facts at the fastest rate, and got the team farther than they ever had before. And if we could win in a system based on judges and not an audience, what do you think someone could do with one judged by tens of millions of potential voters?
In 1960, Nixon lost the first televised debate because he had five o'clock shadow and was poorly made up. Those who listened on the radio though Nixon had won.
In 1976, Gerald Ford made one gaffe about Poland and how there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and he was sunk. Nothing else about the debates mattered.
In 1979, an early Republican debate began with a clash of debate rules, with Reagan getting upset and declaring, "I paid for this microphone!" and somehow, inexplicably to my way of thinking and how I view the world, it launched him to the front of the Republican contest, a position he would never leave.
In 1980 Jimmy Carter gave accurate, carefully crafted, substantive answers to questions and all that is remembered is that after Carter gave his brilliant answers, Reagan would begin by saying, "There you go again!"
In 1984 Reagan once again crushed his opposition by answering when asked about his age (he was 73 in 1984), "I won't hold my opponent's age and inexperience against him".
In 2000, Al Gore lost serious momentum by audibly sighing in one of the early debates. Oh, wait - Gore actually won that election. He just didn't win it by a decisive enough margin that he could prevent the state the candidate's brother led, and the Supreme Court largely put in place by Reagan and the candidate's father, from stealing it for Bushy, Jr.
So again and again, the debates have turned not on facts, but A MOMENT. Who can tell what that moment will be?
Yes, it's true Hillary is a good (notice I say good, not great) debater. And it's true she's more accurate and truthful than most politicians. But she is truthful in a way that looks over-cautious and calculating. It's true she's getting one liner instruction. But the odds are just as likely that she mis-delivers, or comes across as cold, arrogant or uncaring.
Drumpf is being coached by the best media manipulator in the business, Roger Ailes, the former head of Fox News. He also now has at the head of his campaign, Steve Bannon, the head of Breitbart News, the nastiest scandal rag in politics.
It's true that Drumpf lies pathologocally, that literally if his mouth is open he's lying. But he does it with such panache and supreme confidence that most low-information voters don't catch it. He has mastered the art of Goebbell's Big Lie concept used by the Nazis. Whereas Hillary tells the truth in such a parsed and cautious way, that her non-verbals sends the wrong signals to those same low- information voters.
So that is the true terror of these debates. Yes, on paper Hillary should trounce the naked emperor and leave him gasping without hope. But that may not be what happens.
Trump could be a single one-liner from getting back into the Presidential race.
So, Hillary supporter, and all thinking people everywhere, you need to be a little cautious in your optimism.
This whole thing could turn on one "There you go again!"
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