The October 20, 2016 Thread

PRESIDENT
NATIONAL–Quinnipiac–CLINTON 50, Trump 44
NATIONAL–The Times-Picayune/Lucid–CLINTON 46, Trump 36
NORTH CAROLINA–Civitas–CLINTON 45, Trump 43
NORTH CAROLINA–National Research–CLINTON 44, Trump 42
PENNSYLVANIA–Emerson–CLINTON 45, Trump 41
NEW HAMPSHIRE–Emerson–CLINTON 44, Trump 36
NEW HAMPSHIRE–WMUR/UNH–CLINTON 49, Trump 34
MISSOURI–Emerson–TRUMP 47, Clinton 39
ARIZONA–Arizona Republic–CLINTON 43, Trump 38
WISCONSIN–Monmouth–CLINTON 47, Trump 40
NEW YORK–Siena–CLINTON 54, Trump 30
KANSAS–KSN News/SurveyUSA–TRUMP 47, Clinton 36
UTAH–Emerson–MCMULLIN 31, Trump 27, Clinton 24
VERMONT–Vermont Public Radio–CLINTON 45, Trump 17
WISCONSIN–PPP–CLINTON 50, Trump 38
MAINE 2ND DISTRICT (1 ELECTORAL VOTE)–Clarity Campaign Labs–CLINTON 39, TRUMP 39
OHIO–Univ. of Akron–CLINTON 41, Trump 38

A new CNN/ORC poll finds Hillary Clinton won the final presidential debate with Donald Trump, 52% to 39%.

Taegan Goddard’s reaction to the debate: “Clinton was methodical in her approach, but she showed that Trump lies very easily and has major flaws as a person. He took her bait nearly every time. He even called Clinton “such a nasty woman.” By the end of the debate, Trump had collapsed into his basket of flaws. But the scariest part of the night was Trump refusing to say he would abide by the election results, saying, “I will look at it at the time.” Trump refused to commit to the peaceful transfer of power following an election. It was appalling and a massive political mistake.

Ted Cruz foresaw how bad Trump would be debating Clinton. Any 3rd-term congressman could've done better.https://t.co/57hvzBKzQZ

— Paul Kane (@pkcapitol) October 20, 2016

Glenn Thrush: “Truly historic moments are rare in politics. But this was a thunderbolt that might have spelled the end for Trump’s dynamic, disorganized and self-destructive campaign and the elevation of the first female major party nominee, whose precision and preparedness has often been overshadowed by her flashier opponent.”

Andrew Sullivan: “In my view, this was easily the most decisive debate. She devastated him. He melted down. His refusal to accept the results of this election disqualifies him automatically from any office in the United States. There were several areas where he was utterly incoherent, grasping at “facts”, without any understanding of policy. His personal foulness emerged.”

Jonathan Chait: “Hillary Clinton has used all three presidential debates to make the case that Donald Trump is unfit for office. Trump has proven himself unable to recognize this strategy, or to learn from his failures, or change his behavior in any way.”

Jonah Goldberg: “I dissent somewhat from the conventional wisdom is the notion that Trump was doing great until that one response. He lied repeatedly and shamelessly, most importantly about all of the stories of his sexual advances being debunked. They haven’t been. (I loved him saying — over and over — that ‘nobody’ has more respect for women than he does. Nobody?) He was doing better than he has in previous debates and he was even scoring real points, but he simply wasn’t doing anything to get voters to see him in a fresh light. And when you’re this far behind, you need to add voters to your column. He didn’t do that. He didn’t even try. And that should be unforgivable.”

Ezra Klein: “The third and final presidential debate has ended, and it can now be said: Hillary Clinton crushed Donald Trump in the most effective series of debate performances in modern political history.”

Stephen Hayes: “Almost every Republican leader I’ve spoken to over the last several days believes Trump cannot win on November 8. They were hoping for a debate performance that wouldn’t cause down-ballot Republicans any more trouble. That didn’t happen.”

3 winners and 2 losers from the final 2016 presidential debate https://t.co/wbgVsTQ171

— Vox (@voxdotcom) October 20, 2016

“Donald Trump’s rocky performance on the final debate stage did little to allay his party’s concerns that the GOP is headed for an electoral catastrophe up and down the ticket,” Politico reports.

“With Trump’s prospects for securing 270 electoral votes growing dimmer by the day, many Republicans have turned their focus to the gritty, unpleasant task of protecting the party’s congressional majorities. Trump, they said, did little to buttress the GOP ticket — and may have worsened its position by repeating his claim that the election is rigged, something congressional Republicans are sure to be pressed on in the days to come.”

Trump leaves a gaping caldera where his presidential campaign once stood. https://t.co/hZx7X0Iq6v

— Dana Milbank (@Milbank) October 20, 2016

Jeet Heer:

At the end of Wednesday’s third presidential debate, Donald Trump said something so awful that it disqualifies him from ever holding any political office, let alone the position of commander-in-chief. Repeatedly prodded by moderator Chris Wallace to answer the question of whether he “will absolutely accept the result of this election,” Trump kept dodging and finally said, “I’ll keep you in suspense, okay?” It was a fundamental assault on a bedrock principle of democratic society. As Hillary Clinton rightly said, Trump’s remarks were “horrifying.”

This moment was the climax of the three debates—Trump’s final act of petulant self-destruction, and Clinton’s final moment of calmly smiling triumph—and it didn’t spring from accident or purely from Trump’s own anti-democratic malevolence. Rather, this moment—the one in which Trump revealed himself to be someone who is willing to risk the tradition of a peaceful transition of power rather than accept that he’s lost—came about because of the masterful way Clinton had handled all three debates.

In her acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, Clinton said that Trump was someone so weak that he could “be baited with a tweet”—and in the debates she proved, again and again, that he can be baited by a sharp, quick-witted woman too. Her constant trolling, which involved maintaining a steely resolve in the face of his own slimy provocations, won her the debates and settled the most fundamental question of the election: Who has the temperament to be president?

Clinton to predominantly Hispanic crowd in North Las Vegas, Bill by her side: "our family will support your family" pic.twitter.com/g6c1C6PUv0

— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) October 20, 2016

Brian Beutler says it’s over:

Barring some unexpected Clinton campaign collapse, and with the outcome of the election increasingly clear, there is an argument to be made that she should be subjected to the kind of scrutiny befitting an elected president. But there is only one debate at a time, and there is only one election to be had. For that reason, it is crucial we not lose sight of the fact that, absent the black swan scenarios I traced above, the basic choice voters are confronted with is unchanged.

That’s why this race is over. Not in the sense that all votes are in and ballots counted, or that we know for sure who will win, but in the sense that there isn’t much left for a debate to reveal to us about these two extremely well-known candidates. Wednesday night proved as much.

That feeling when you win three straight debates. #DebateNight pic.twitter.com/KlH090F57W

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 20, 2016

The key tell of the evening: A smiling ectastic Hillary leaves the stage and hugs her daughter and then proceeds to stay and shake hands with all the guests. A dour Trump remained behind his podium until Clinton left the stage (so as to avoid shaking hands with her) and then waiting on stage, looking grim and tired, until his family came up onto the stage to see him. And then he left immediately.

She absolutely destroyed him. And then he destroyed himself. Yes, he gave relatively calm and coherent, although reprehensible, answers in the first 30 minutes. But all it took for him to go off the rails was minor needling by Hillary about his Vegas Trump Tower being made of Chinese steel, his choking in Mexico, his hiring of undocumented workers, and his being a puppet for Putin.

Josh Marshall:

When Wallace pressed him again he said: “I’ll keep you in suspense, okay?”

That kind of ‘suspense” is precisely what makes democratic polities collapse. Vicious cycles of civic violence and violations of democratic norms have the pernicious effect of distorting and transforming the behavior of those who actually do believe in democratic institutions. They create a setting in which it becomes rational to take steps that undermine them further. If you really don’t know if your opponent will accept the result of the election, you start taking steps to guard against what happens if he doesn’t. You take steps to protect yourself, your political future, maybe even your safety and property. This is the death spiral of democracies.

It is hard to weigh in the balance Trump’s violations of our democratic order and judge which is the worst. But this was a considerably greater violation than the pledge to jail Clinton if he becomes president, though that was, as former Attorney General Michael Mukasey accurately put it, “a watershed.” Yet they are both parts of the same civic cancer: politics through raw power and violence, as opposed to a combat of political forces, often unruly, mediated by the rule of law and respect for democratic institutions. The universal acceptance of those core rules allows everything that is vital in politics take to place. It’s really that bad.

What I find notable is that Trump not only has little respect for our democratic institutions, his mindset and worldview make it impossible for him to answer that question in a truly democratic, American way. For Trump, life is deal making and power plays. It’s dominance. Who negotiates with himself? Sure, I’ll probably accept the results but let me keep you guessing. Like anyone who deals in zero-sum adversary negotiations and operates in a mental world of dominance, the answer makes perfect sense. Why should I show you my cards when I don’t have to? But of course, in a democracy, under the rule of law, there are lines we never cross. We all genuflect at the altar of elections. Because of his primitive mentality and indifference to democratic government this was impossible for him to see.

A competent, qualified woman debated a blustery, clueless man. Again. https://t.co/R078m7jMNx

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) October 20, 2016

My take: "Clinton Nukes Trump's Remaining Chances" https://t.co/EbVdTY7PyX

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) October 20, 2016

Democracy. pic.twitter.com/phoZNcoXkQ

— caroline paul (@carowriter) October 20, 2016

Josh Barro:

I actually agree that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg should not have injected herself into the election by calling Trump a “faker,” even though he is one. But that’s not what’s important right now.

What’s important is that, when Donald Trump was asked what he thinks the Supreme Court should do with its power, the first thing he thought was important to address was that the justices on the court should be nice to him — and that he had made one of them apologize to him when she wasn’t.

This should not reassure conservatives who have somehow convinced themselves Trump’s approach would be to appoint judges who would closely follow the Constitution, rather than judges who show sufficient respect to him personally.

And over and over again during the debate, Trump brought matters back to himself — to his own detriment.