2016 Presidential Debate - Who Won - Analysis

So the first presidential debate of 2016 general election occurred this evening. How did it go? Look, folks, everybody has an opinion on politics. I'm not here to give you my political opinions, but I do want to share with you my analysis from a pure communication standpoint. I am hard pressed to come up with a presidential debate where there was a more clear cut winner on points without a knockout. Perhaps. But if you add up the sheer number of points that Hillary Clinton made on substantive issues, when you look at all the encounters where Donald Trump was on the defensive, whether it was allegedly not paying taxes, calling women pigs, claiming that he was not in favor of the Iraq war, the, the whole birther issue, time and time again he was on the defensive. The questions from Lester Holt, while I think were completely fair, were much more critical and negative than, for example, the Matt Lauer interview just a couple of weeks ago. I can't imagine that anyone on Team Trump was satisfied with the performance. I can tell you everyone at the Hillary Clinton campaign is popping champagne corks now. They are extremely impressed with their candidate. The big question, of course, will this change the fundamental dynamics of the campaign? I am absolutely not confident that it's going to change the numbers in any big way. Now, in the last few weeks, the momentum has been for Donald Trump. He's gone from a deficit of about eight points nationwide to one and a half, two points in some polls, even a couple states, even ahead where he was even a few weeks ago. So the momentum was in Trump's favor. If he'd had a spectacular debate, if he'd really rattled Hillary, I think there would have been more momentum. For the life of me and folks, let me just say I have been criticized roundly by a lot of Democrats. For example, when I roundly praised Mitt Romney's debate skills in past debates. So I'm really not coming at this just by telling you my person whose policies I favor is always going to win the debate. That's not it at all. But I have to tell you, I think that Hillary Clinton really won at every single level in this campaign, this debate, from the smile, the demeanor, the humor not being rattled, the final 20% of the debate or so she seemed as if she were just smiling, happy, just coasting, as if she knew she won big time. Donald Trump seemed just horribly defensive, like he knew that he was kind of losing it. She was clearly getting under his skin. She was needling him with things like, you know, maybe you're not rich, maybe you don't pay your taxes on and on and on now, I'm not going to proclaim that this is going to switch a lot of votes in her favor. I don't think we're going straight back to where we were a month ago, where she was up eight points. But if nothing else, she stopped the damage. She stopped the leaking of votes in her favor. And it's going to at least generate positive news coverage for the next few days, perhaps weeks. The data is pretty clear that presidential debates don't typically change the outcome of elections. They occasionally have a blip up and then they go back down. A lot of what's written about presidential debates is later determined to be nonsense. For example, there really isn't that much evidence that Nixon won the debate on people who listen on radio and Kennedy on tv. There's a bit of mythologizing going on there. But all things being equal, yeah, candidates want to do well in debates and they want the press coverage to be that they won. Hillary Clinton is going to win a lot of press coverage. The people who like to complain that she doesn't smile or that she yells or she's too strident, they didn't have a lot of ammunition after this debate. I think if you are a hardcore Hillary hater and you love Donald Trump, well, you'll still love Donald Trump. There was nothing he did in this debate that made you shake your confidence. But at this point, I'm not sure what would. All in all, a very good night for the Hillary Clinton campaign. Donald Trump, one of the beauties he has is, I'm sure when he's on all the talk shows tomorrow, he'll just proclaim that he won. He'll spin that he won. And for some people didn't watch the debate, they may in fact find that credible. I'm T.J. walker. Thanks for watching and listening to this special episode of speaking with TJ Walker. What do you think? Post your comments on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, our blog, any place you are hearing or seeing this commentary. Thanks. See you again tomorrow.