He wasn't an insufferable bully. Trump learned, took advice, and adjusted.
That Trump could be re-elected. The problem is that "normal" Trump made for a boring debate.
I returned e-mails during the debate and ate dinner. I write a political blog and watching the debate was work, so I stayed with it.
Last night we saw a reality that helps explain Trump's success, but also why Trump risks being a one-term president. The Trump Show is exhausting. It has devoted fans but it also turns people off.
Normally Trump is a whirling dervish of political theater, appealing to the resentments of his supporters, presenting bravado salesmanship of a can-do great America, with a great economy, the corner turned on COVID, jobs returned, all great again in America. Meanwhile liberals and Democrats are aghast. Some people want to cheer; some people want to tear their hair out. The people who cheer love the fact that those terrible liberal socialist woke coastal-elite baby-killing Democrats want to tear their hair out.
Last night we didn't get the Trump Show. We got something approximating a presidential debate. The CNN people are thrilled with explaining all Trump's lies and exaggerations and the Fox people are celebrating Trump's self discipline. The pundits and journalists have big exciting headlines, but they are trying too hard. They are pretending the debate really mattered.
It doesn't. Nobody cares.
People have already figured out how they feel about Trump, and Democratic and Republican ads are locking in those two views. Republicans say Trump is great and Biden is corrupt. Democrats say Trump messed things up and Biden is decent. Insofar as the debate matters even a little, the question was whether Biden would prove inept beside Trump. Biden was OK. He seemed tongue tied at times and we saw him stutter. Democrats who had watched Obama the night before could not help notice the contrast between the fluent and eloquent Obama and the Biden who could only articulate a position with clarity when he was looking at the camera and doing a set piece. Biden is no Obama.
But this isn't an election about Biden. It is about whether people can stand four more years of Trump's behavior.
Biden is good enough. So was the Trump we saw last night, appearing more or less presidential, actively defending his record the way a president and candidate would. But that Trump was not convincing as the "new Trump" and in any case the normal, presidential Trump isn't all that interesting. That's the problem for Trump. To be interesting enough to change people's minds about him, he would need to be the old, outrageous Trump.
Would a low information/low engagement undecided voter watch much of it, hoping to get a measure of each man? I suspect not. Even political bloggers like me could barely stick with it.
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