Everyone expected Sunday night’s town hall debate to get
ugly. It capped off one of the most explosive weekends in American
political history. The Republican nominee had been caught on tape making
vulgar comments about women, which caused an avalanche of GOP lawmakers
to rescind their support. The Democratic nominee was handling a mess of
her own—the leaked transcripts of speeches she had kept secret during
the primaries.
Nonetheless, the raw tension on the debate stage Sunday night still shocked.
There was Donald Trump calling Hillary Clinton the “devil,” a
person filled with “tremendous hatred” whom he would jail if he were
president. There was Clinton’s icy nod at Trump upon their greeting—no
handshake—and her almost immediately declaring Trump “unfit to serve.”
Discussions about policy frequently vacillated into personal attacks.
And at the end of the night, when an audience member asked each
candidate to say something nice about the other, they hardly hid their
reluctance.
So: Was this the nastiest, lowest moment in presidential
debate history. And what does it matter to the state of the race? We
asked some of the savviest political watchers and operatives to talk us
through what we just witnessed—“incomprehensibly demoralizing,” “a grim,
tawdry affair,” and “surreal, bizarre and often entertaining” were some
of their responses—and game out what it means for this highly unusual
election.
Read more: The Lowest Moment in the History of Debates? - POLITICO Magazine
