No matter what Donald Trump wants to have us believe, Hillary Clinton brought him his head at the first presidential debate. Well, would you believe that next Sunday’s town hall debate could potentially go even worse? Well, Paul Waldman of The American Prospect thinks it could. He thinks the very nature of the town hall format could be a yuuuuge minefield for the Donald.
In a post at The Washington Post’s Plum Line blog, Waldman suggests that there are a number of reasons Trump should be afraid when he goes on stage next Sunday night. For one thing, the bulk of the questions will come from an audience of undecided voters. According to Waldman, questions from average Joes and Janes tend to be “much less predictable” than questions posed solely from a moderator, in part because they raise issues that haven’t come up much during the campaign. They can also come from “unusual angles.”
To Waldman, such questions are tailor-made for a candidate “whose understanding of policy is not only deep but broad.” As we all know, Hillary is the ultimate policy wonk, while Trump’s understanding of policy is as thin as his hairline is minus the comb-over. On the face of this, Hillary is in a far better position to sell herself in a debate format that, more than any other debate, is a 90-minute job interview.
Additionally, Waldman doesn’t think Trump is used to mixing and mingling with voters who aren’t fawning over him. While his plans to go after Hillary for standing by her husband, Bill, after he cheated on her might play well when he’s preaching to the choir on Fox News and on social media, Waldman isn’t so sure that will play so well with a town hall audience.
“It’s one thing to do that when you’re talking to Bill O’Reilly or calling in to Fox & Friends, but just picture the cameras picking up the shocked and disgusted faces of women in the debate audience as he launches some of those insults.”
The biggest potential problem for Trump, though, is that town hall debates aren’t just about how candidates respond to questions. It’s about how they connect with the audience. A textbook example of this came during the 1992 town hall debate between Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush. When a woman asked, “How has the national debt affected your lives?” Bush 41 gave a somewhat awkward response, even asking, “Are you suggesting that if somebody has means, the national debt doesn’t affect them?”
Bill Clinton, in contrast, got as close to the woman as he felt he could and asked her if she knew anyone “who have lost their jobs, lost their homes?” Watch here.
According to Waldman, the most important moment of that exchange was how Clinton seemed to try to understand what that voter cared about.
He adds that like her husband, Hillary is at her best when she can connect with an ordinary voter and “relate their particular question to broader concerns.” It lets her embrace her inner wonk while connecting with the average Joe and Jane. As we’ve already seen, Hillary is in her element when she is in a position when she can listen to voters.
As an example, he offered a clip from a town hall debate during the Democratic primary, in which Rabbi Jonathan Spira-Sevett asked Hillary how she can project the air of confidence we expect from a president and still remain humble. Watch here (hat tip to Yair Rosenberg).
Waldman isn’t convinced that Trump can answer such a question in a way that can “communicate some measure of empathy.” It may seem hard to believe given how often he blows up on Twitter, but Trump has never come across as “a people person.” From where Waldman is sitting, it’s hard to listen to him and think, “That guy really cares.”
All things considered, Waldman thinks that Hillary will be “right in her element” next Sunday, while Trump could potentially be in way over his head. When you combine that with Trump’s apparent unwillingness to admit Hillary boatraced him, it’s hard not to agree that, in Waldman’s words, this debate is “an outright debacle” waiting to happen.
(featured image courtesy DonkeyHotey, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
