Stop Looking for Scapegoats, Trump Fans

September 27, 2016

Donald Trump and his fans can complain about Never Trump and recalcitrant Republicans all they like. But last night, starting at 9 p.m. Eastern, in front of tens of millions of people, perhaps a hundred million viewers, nothing else mattered but the candidates. The ads, the surrogates, the rallies, the ground game — all of that fades away, and for an hour and a half, it's just Trump, Hillary Clinton, and questions from Lester Holt. There are no other outside factors, no distractions. Winning the race is all on him, and it's perhaps the single biggest moment of the campaign, his single best opportunity to lay out the case for himself and the case against Clinton.

If you're a Trump fan, and you feel like he did a great job, then great, you have nothing to worry about. If you're a Trump fan and feel he missed a lot of opportunities . . . that's on him. That's not the fault of Ben Sasse. That's not the fault of Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney or anybody who's refusing to support him.

There has been this inane argument that one or two senators, a couple of retired GOP figures, and some writers and bloggers and folks on Twitter are going to cost Trump the presidency by refusing to jump on the bandwagon. That's nonsense. That's scapegoat-shopping. We'll see if last night's debate changes the numbers in this race. It's been enough of a topsy-turvy year where it's quite possible Trump enjoys a surge; particularly for the first half-hour, he came across as a figure you could picture in the Oval Office. But there seems to be pretty broad consensus that she got a lot of attacks in, mentioned a lot of the unsavory or controversial parts of Trump's record, and made him spend a lot of time on the defensive. He never got around to mentioning some of her weakest spots — the Clinton Foundation, allegations of favor-trading, Benghazi, her support for arming the rebels in Syria. He barely mentioned Libya. The word "e-mail" came up four times in ninety minutes.

This morning he's blaming the microphone. Last night on CNN, Corey Lewandowski blamed Lester Holt. But the person who has more control over Donald Trump's debate performance than anyone else is . . . Donald Trump. No one else can go up there and make his argument for him. If his fans are disappointed this morning, they should be disappointed with him. And if they're mad, they should be mad at him.

Other thoughts . . .

Did the Republican presidential nominee just endorse stop-and-frisk on a national scale?

Sort of: "Now, whether or not in a place like Chicago you do stop and frisk, which worked very well, Mayor Giuliani is here, worked very well in New York. It brought the crime rate way down. But you take the gun away from criminals that shouldn't be having it."

Did Trump contend that Iran was "ready to fall" — referring to the 2009 protests, I suppose — and that now it was on the verge of being a major power?

But you look at the Middle East, you started the Iran deal, that's another beauty where you have a country that was ready to fall, I mean, they were doing so badly. They were choking on the sanctions. And now they're going to be actually probably a major power at some point pretty soon, the way they're going.

Aren't they a major power now? Isn't one of the core arguments against Obama's record that he's let Iran become the dominant power player in the Middle East?

More than ninety minutes of debate, and one fleeting mention of Syria?

A Trump administration would just rescind our defense assurances to Japan, huh?

Nuclear is the single greatest threat. Just to go down the list, we defend Japan, we defend Germany, we defend South Korea, we defend Saudi Arabia, we defend countries. They do not pay us. But they should be paying us, because we are providing tremendous service and we're losing a fortune. That's why we're losing — we're losing — we lose on everything. I say, who makes these — we lose on everything. All I said, that it's very possible that if they don't pay a fair share, because this isn't 40 years ago where we could do what we're doing. We can't defend Japan, a behemoth, selling us cars by the million . . .

Some wise voices have argued for a long time that it's safe for Japan's self-defense forces to expand and begin taking a role in global peacekeeping and counter-terrorism operations. But this is a whole different idea. (We've been importing Japanese cars by the million since the 1970s, and we kept that security alliance in place throughout the Cold War.)

If you wanted to turn Asia into an even bigger powder-keg than it is now, a good opening move would be the American president declaring, "We can't defend Japan."

As I concluded last night . . . the first debate was a terrible night for Trump, so he'll probably surge in the polls.

Hillary Clinton began oddly, with a lame knock on "Trumped-up trickle-down", and claiming Trump's main focus was to help the rich. (Is the "basket of deplorables" rich?) This is the exact same playbook she would have run against Ted Cruz, or Marco Rubio, or Jeb Bush or any other Republican. Of course, Trump is really different from a traditional Republican.

But after the first 15 minutes or so, she shifted to steadily working her way through the anti-Trump briefing book. She clearly had memorized a whole briefing encyclopedia on Trump's controversial statements, scandals, lawsuits, and worked in most of them over the course of 90 minutes.

I think if you look at Trump's face immediately after the debate, he knew he didn't have a good night. One could argue the topic selection played against him: a whole section on birtherism, extended discussion of his unreleased tax returns, whether he stiffed former contractors. The debate included nothing on immigration (!), border security (!), Benghazi, or the Clinton Foundation. The discussion of Hillary's e-mails was brief.

One of Clinton's key strengths of the night was keeping her cool as Trump bulldozed over moderator Lester Holt and brought his traditional relentless, jabbing, unstoppable style. A lot of Trump's GOP candidates never quite figured out how to deal with this human hurricane who doesn't care at all about time limits, what question he was asked, interrupting the opponent, and so on. Then again, none of Trump's primary rivals had the advantage of a one-on-one matchup.

Trump started better than he finished; he may be in better shape if the audience size declined over the course of the night. But on issue after issue, it was one missed opportunity after another.

It's a shame Lester Holt couldn't be there this evening; a lot of people wondered how he would perform as moderator . . . oh, he was there? I suppose he just forgot about the no-applause, no-cheering rule as the night wore on.

If this doesn't reverse the polls for Hillary Clinton, what can?

Thoughts from Folks Who Are Smarter Than I Am

Debate assessments from my colleagues:

David French: "She smacked his wealth and business success, and he just couldn't help himself. For several agonizing minutes, he threw a wall of words at viewers while she just watched — with a satisfied, frozen smile. By the end of the debate he was all over the place — on the defensive on multiple fronts. Why didn't he have a better answer ready for the birther nonsense? Has he still not done any homework on foreign policy?"

Jonah Goldberg: "Unpersuaded college educated white women didn't come away from this debate — at least not in large numbers — feeling reassured by Trump. Clinton was narrowcasting at the voters she needs. Trump was broadcasting to the voters he already has. Neither put anything away tonight."

Ramesh Ponnuru: "Viewers had a stronger sense of where he stood. He thinks we're losing at international trade, that our allies are taking advantage of us, that we aren't being respectful enough about the police, that she has been part of every problem for a long, long time. I don't think where she stood came out nearly as clearly."

Jeremy Carl: "Clinton really has much better command of facts (to the surprise of nobody) and has gotten in a few good one liners but she still is so wooden. She got less wooden as the debate went on but she still just is awkward and forced. Trump was scattered and not always in command of the facts, but he wasn't a disaster, and he didn't look like he had no business on the debate stage with Clinton. Given expectations for Trump that's a win for them."

Dan McLaughlin: "Was there a winner tonight? Not an obvious one to the informed viewer, but then any informed person would run from these two candidates in horror. Some of Trump's most effective moments were also his most demagogic, on TPP and Iraq and crime. If this debate moves the needle, it may be for reasons totally unrelated to reason."

ADDENDA: Join me on Facebook Live today, at 2 p.m. Eastern.

Michael Moore is convinced Trump is going to win. Is that a lingering pro-Bernie animus, or does he really grasp how the old auto workers will feel about Trump?

Okay, this time I mean it. The tech issues are resolved, and the new edition of the pop-culture podcast should be up today.