Of course, I have to weigh in on the post debate analysis. Debate analysis is 90% of the news cycle today, as it was during the 2 days before. It reached a fever pitch yesterday; on NPR, there were at least 4 stories per hour analyzing what Hillary and Trump needed to accomplish in the debate. I’m not sure if the pundit road maps represented what “the American people” wanted to see or what the campaigns wanted to accomplish or what the pundits thought would be a good approach to the common voter (whatever that is) or what is savvy politics. I do think the barrage of analysis subtly planted parameters in the viewing audience’s minds, even if it was not a main criteria, they were at least asking, “did Ms Clinton show a softer less formal persona?” as the pundits suggested.

What audience were the candidates hoping to influence? It seems that most people have already made up the minds. There is the Trump base, which can’t be dislodged no matter what the candidate does or says. Clinton supporters are solid if only because they don’t want the Donald. Polls suggests that there may be no more than 10% undecided, some of whom switch back and forth. There may also be some third party supporters who will decide to go with either of the two main party candidates. It’s plausible that most of these undecided were in the viewing audience. With the polls indicating a tight race, a small percentage of voters may well decide who will be the next POTUS.

What did I think? Honestly, it was pretty boring. There were no surprises. We have never seen Trump for a whole 90 minutes in an event, particularly one he did not control. He seemed to hold his own in the first segment, presenting his doomsday scenario of the United States and his solutions in as much detail as he has ever mustered- tax cuts for businesses with freedom from regulation will create a tremendous economic boom which has never been seen before. His other plank is the need to renegotiate trade agreements with trading partners who currently taking advantage of US. He used his limited stable of adjectives- tremendous, enormous, huge, amazing, beautiful, disastrous, beyond belief, the worst in history- to full effect. But his stamina didn’t last. Early on, he worked the theme that Clinton, as a government official, had been involved in the steps that have sent America down what he has characterized as the wrong path, clearly playing to his base. It started to go off the rails when he doubled down on his claim that Obama and Clinton created ISIS as a response to the question, “ what would you do to defeat ISIS” by saying that it would not be a problem if she hadn’t created ISIS. Even later he snapped that Clinton had been fighting ISIS for her entire adult life. If that were true, she wouldn’t be old enough to run for President, having reached adulthood in 2013.  As he became increasingly unsettled, he sniffled a lot; he often appeared with a curious smirk/scowl where he actually looked like the oldest presidential candidate ever, which, he is. He was often on the defensive, in the course revealing his unrealistic world view divorced from the lives of most Americans. He lives in another stratosphere.  It’s good business to cheat contractors out of payment with the excuse that you didn’t like their work. What happened to “your word is your bond?” He settled a federal discrimination suit, brought against many other companies as well, by pleading no contest, as if no contest meant he hadn’t practiced discrimination. His evidence that he doesn’t discriminate is that he built an exclusive club in Miami Beach that has both African American and Hispanic members. It’s smart not to pay taxes. He is under-leveraged, a self description that would not occur to many. Whenever he mentioned a city, he inevitably added that he owned property there, but that seemed to be all he really knew about the place. I can see him swooping in on his private jet and seeing only the route to and from his meeting through darkened limousine windows. Despite months of campaigning at big rallies, he has spent little time in communities except of late with his much discussed appeal to African-Americans, a showman’s slight-of-hand meant to reassure white voters that Trump was less racist than he sounds while simultaneously demonstrating his ignorance of the diversity of Black communities and their concerns. He had no trouble lying once again about the Birther Movement, despite abundant public evidence, this time claiming that he got Obama to release his birth certificate and need not apologize for it. I believe Hillary got in a zinger here when she talked about how hurtful it was to the President. As Trump became more defensive, the candidate who accepted the Republican nomination under an enormous gold TRUMP, focused exclusively on the “I”; for instance, he was the reason, not Bernie Sanders, that forced Hillary to change her stance on the TTP. And then there was the rant about nobody asking Sean Hannity to confirm his opposition to the Iraq war. Hannity is on TV every day;  he should be to speak up any time. Maybe the Donald should ask him. He recovered with the phrase that Hillary has experience but it’s bad experience. Trump ended the debate by whining that he restrained himself from saying something vicious about Hillary because that was “not nice” but that Clinton had spent millions of dollars on untruthful smear ads that were “certainly not nice”. In response to Holt’s question about whether each would support the outcome of the election, Trump rambled through a strange story about possibly 1800 people who should have been deported that were instead made citizens. In that context, the master of innuendo suggested simultaneously that this incidence was indicative of an effort to rig the election and a veiled reference to previous calls for supporters to check whether some immigrants should really be voting. And then he said he would support President Clinton if she won.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton gesture during the presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., Monday, Sept. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

So how did Ms Clinton do? She was the Clinton we expect. She didn’t get any warmer or softer as the pundits wanted. She laid out her positions and policies. She seized the initiative to needle Trump about taxes and called him out for lies. She managed a bit of humor and by the end, she was smiling like a Cheshire cat as Trump was melting down. Clinton held her own as she apologized for the email server which put that topic to rest, much to her relief I’m sure.  She did stumble a bit over stop and frisk, getting mired in whether crime rates came down after it was initiated. Clinton should have stepped away from muddy attributions of falling crime rates to stop and frisk to emphasize its discriminatory implementation and the likelihood that it would inflame relationships between police and communities of color. Hillary wrapped up succinctly with the importance of voting to determine the country’s fate demonstrating her concern for the country as a whole in contrast to Trump’s self-involvement. Did she sound like a politician? Yes she did because that is what she is. And that is why she is more likely to get things done in Washington. Every Presidential candidate in the last 3 decades has promised to reform the federal government. Under each subsequent administration, the bureaucracy has continued to expand and the ways of Washington have remained unchanged if not made worse by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

I spoke with a friend last night who watched the debate and poopoo-ed the polls. He thought Trump could clearly be seen melting down, in no plausible way a suitable candidate for President. He believes that the people who say they are supporting Trump in polls will, in the privacy of the voting booth, vote for Clinton. My friend can’t imagine that any women will actually vote for Trump; they are avoiding conflict with spouses and neighbors by staying mum. It sounds a little chauvinistic to me, but peer pressure is real. He contends that many of the women may want a return to times with better economic circumstances are realistic enough to know that Trump can’t make that happen. Based on neuropsychological research, my friend thinks women are inherently smarter than men. And as an eternal optimist, he believes in the end, it will be a Clinton landslide. After all, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans as statistic which Republican have steadfastly attempted to change by limiting Democratic voting in many states through voter IDs; reduction of polling places and hours in predominantly Democratic districts; limitation of early voting periods and legislative gerrymandering of districts. Of course, Democratic districts is surrogate for districts of African-American, Hispanic and the poor, which we should remember is still predominantly white. As for the polls, remember the 2012 victory that Romney believed would be his that morphed into an Obama rout.

I don’t think many people changed their minds last night. I am biased but I can’t see that Trump won over many. Hillary may have persuaded a few of the uncertain, particularly because Benghazi and the Clinton Foundation never came up and emails were mentioned only fleetingly, skirting issues of trustworthiness.  Clinton may have gained a few unhinged by Trump. Regardless of the impact of this first debate, there are still 2 more. Either may contain a definitive blow that will shift voters just a few percentage points to determine the outcome. In the interim, we have only those unreliable polls to provide clues.