The 2016 Presidental debate

The first 2016 presidential debate is a clear showing of the entire presidential race this year. On one end you have Hilary Clinton, a candidate who while having worked a long time in government and probably is the most qualified for the position, but has had a fair bit of controversies bring her morality into question. While on the other side you have Donald Trump, a man who seems more interested in stroking his own ego and getting a crowed to cheer for him and will LITERALY say anything to do so. At this point, each party has resigned themselves to these not so stellar choices and are just hoping that their candidate will end up causing less damage than the other would. Meanwhile, undecided voters have to look in horror and make their decision based on who they think is ultimately the lesser of two evils. With this being the state of things, this first debate was essentially what everyone expected. Hilary calmly expressed her ideas and plans while keeping her cool while Trump complimented himself, showed only the vaguest of planes, and interrupted and shouted down everyone who wanted to speak. 

So with a bleak election and a debate that went exactly as planned, who ‘won’ this debate. I would say that Hilary won the debate. She did very well appealing to people’s logic by clearly laying out the issues she was going to tackle, and did very good appealing emotionally by bringing up the struggles that everyone is aware of. There was one thing that Clinton did that put her far above her opponent- she wasn’t Donald Trump. 

While one could argue that Clinton really only did what any other candidate would have, Trump did none of it. He didn’t appeal ethically, he didn’t appeal logically, and didn’t appeal emotionally. The only resounding theme in Trump’s segments were ‘I’m so great, I have the best everything’ going so far as to compliment his own temperament as the ‘best’ temperament, when literally everyone knows he’ll have a twitter meltdown at the drop of a hat. He barely discussed any sort of plan, and when he did, they were incredibly vague, his only real response being ‘we’ll take care of it’ or ‘they’ll take care of it’. Not to mention the crowning achievement of Trump’s own ego stroking, where he essentially admitted to tax evasion, a FELONY, just so he could say how that made him smart somehow. One of Trump’s ‘assets’ is that he is able to stir up a crowd with is ‘emotional’ speeches. Well, the only real emotion on display from Trump was shouting. Whether it was his opponent or even the moderator, when he wanted to interrupt someone, he would not stop until they did, and if he felt like someone was interrupting him, he would do the same. I don’t personally think Hilary is the ideal candidate, but I would rather have her run the country than someone with the debating skills of a 5-year-old.