Those who tuned in to Sunday night's debate hoping or expecting to see the next great Donald Trump disaster were either disappointed last night or just gave up and tuned out after about 30 minutes.
Trump didn't have the train wreck that would have essentially ended his campaign. However, he by no means won Sunday's spectacle (which, thanks to the pussy-grabbing tape will likely set an all-time debate viewing record). But he likely achieved his No. 1 goal -- to continue as at least a somewhat viable candidate.
The first 30 minutes of the debate, as would be expected, were brutal for Trump. This was a town hall style debate, which yielded a total BS opening question about how the campaign would affect children, but as soon as the moderators got hold of the questioning, it turned to sex. Hillary Clinton pretty much tore Trump a new asshole, as you would expect. Her attack was obviously prepared but nonetheless devastating -- saying she had opposed many Republican presidential candidates but had never, until now, considered one unfit for office.
Trump pretty much repeated his old apology that the incident was locker room banter and then tried to pivot into an attack on Bill Clinton's past infidelities (he even had three previous Clinton "victims" at the debate). As I've previously noted, whatever Bill Clinton and others may have done doesn't excuse Trump's own bad behavior, but it did set the tone for Trump's strategy for the night.
Trump's goal was to stop the bleeding. Since the tape broke, dozens of GOP lawmaker have ditched Trump, saying there is no way they will vote for him because of his sexist comments. As a result, Trump on Sunday night made a clear strategic move to play to and firm up his base of very conservative Republican voters. He fed them a constant stream of red meat responses: Cut the income tax rate to 15 percent, get his Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor because Clinton belongs in jail over the ill-advised email server; and make sure his Supreme Court nominees are another Antonin Scalia (God forbid!!!!). All of this stuff played great with the hard-core crowd and should guarantee that they won't be deserting him. His success with the GOP base also will make it much more difficult for more Republicans to jump ship.
However, as successful as Trump may have been about reassuring his own voters, I seriously doubt he made any headway toward the ultimate goal of winning the election. If the suburban soccer moms who are so critical to GOP success were already bailing on him, this debate is unlikely to have changed that.
Despite the strong opening salvo, Hillary again declined to try to go for the jugular. She again played it safe. Trump did land some punches -- on the emails and the new WikiLeaks release that purport to reveal excerpts from some of her paid speeches -- but Hillary basically just ducked them and changed the subject.
I'm sure some of Hillary's supporters would have liked to have seen her go for the kill, but she continued her "play it safe" strategy.
Interestingly, after the first debate a number of print writers called Trump the winner. This time, despite Trump having an arguably better performance (he stayed in control and didn't get flummoxed like in Debate 1), no one -- except for writers for Fox News (of course) -- was calling Trump the winner. He survived the debate, and if that was his goal, I guess he was a winner of sorts. But clear advantage Hillary, who at this point merely needs to stand back and let Trump implode.
BTW, with so many major issues going untouched -- immigration, race relations and job outsourcing, most notably -- the content of the questions for this debate was just pathetic. Who let these lousy questions carry the day, and going forward, are town hall debates really worth the wasted opportunity? The result was we spent a lot of time on Syria (an important issue, but not big enough to take up one-third of the debate), and got a lame final question asking the candidates to say one nice thing about each other. (Yes, they both did come up with one!)
The moderators in this debate didn't lose control, as happened in Debate I, but the format severely restricted this from becoming a serious discussion of the issues.
Trump did make one HUGE potential error: By declaring that he had never groped or kissed a woman without her permission, he left himself open to having women come forward saying he did. He better not be lying, or he's likely to really regret making that statement.
Big picture: Trump isn't going to have to resign, and likely won't be annihilated barring further damage. But he made little to no progress toward expanding his support into the winnable range.
I once said this election was Trump's to win. Now it's Hillary's to lose. And it would take something truly amazing from WikiLeaks (she killed Vince Foster?) in order for this to happen. Well, at least the hard-core conservative branch of the GOP can say they got a candidate who wasn't a closet moderate.
Fur its hard to say how the income tax issue falls. Americans have weird mixed feelings. Although many on the left are worked up about it, many other Americans dont begrudge the wealthy because they are hoping to join them! It may be by winningthe lottery or becoming the next star rapper, but theres always a chance, true or not.