Over at his excellent Kristol Clear podcast (to which you should most definitely subscribe,) Bill Kristol argues that Monday’s debate could be a really big deal. His reasons include:
– In open-seat presidential years, more voters are automatically in play because of the nature of the race.
– Clinton has chosen to make the race a referendum on Trump’s basic fitness for office, and this debate will be the single most important showcase for that proposition. So voters will either see Trump as a plausible president, or they won’t.
I can see that possibility—to which I’d add that because the two candidates are widely disliked, it’s possible that voters could be open to switching sides–very few people have fallen in love with one candidate over the other. And finally, as Jay Cost points out, once you add “undecided” voters to the percentage of people currently supporting third-party candidates, you’re looking at 15 percent to 20 percent of voters who are theoretically persuadable.
So it’s kind of a big spot.
But I’d like to propose a contrary view: You can see your way to a scenario in which the debate matters less than you might think.
Of course, it’s always possible that there will be an iconic, defining moment that changes the campaign. Maybe Trump starts ranting about Ted Cruz’s dad and Lee Harvey Oswald again. Or perhaps someone destroys one of Hillary Clinton’s other horcruxes, causing her to stagger and collapse right there on the stage.
Yet it seems equally possible that the two candidates will simply remind voters why they’re disliked and harden their existing support without doing much to change the trajectory of the race.
The reason I’m inclined to this view is that Clinton and Trump have been famous for so long that I find it hard to believe that their stocks aren’t fully priced.
Think of it this way: What could Trump do in this debate that would be more shocking than what he’s done so far? This is a guy who went to war with a Gold Star mother, but openly praises Vladimir Putin. He has said that America has blood on its hands, but that he admires the Tiananmen Square massacre. He’s said he was for the Iraq war, but also against the Iraq war. He recently accused President Bush of treasonous acts, and also spent years claiming that President Obama held the office illegitimately.
I mean, what’s left? For voters who haven’t found anything Trump has said disqualifying so far, I find it hard to believe that he will say anything to disqualify himself on Monday night.
Or to put it another way: If you’re a Trump supporter, stop for a minute and ask yourself–just as a theoretical exercise—what could Trump say at the debate that would lose your vote?
And on the flip side, it’s hard to see how Hillary mints herself many new supporters. For starters, as a pure politician, she’s terrible. Terrible. It’s not an accident that for the entire course of her electoral career she’s always done best when she’s off-stage. This isn’t a judgment on her character–just an observation of her candidate skills. She’s the political equivalent of William H. Macy in The Cooler.
And like with Trump, it’s hard to see how she drops supporters, either. Because if #You’reWithHer at this point, surely you know what you’re getting into. Hillary Clinton is a political opportunist who thinks she’s above the rules (and the law), who lies as a matter of course, and who is willing to betray anyone, at any time.
So who is going to watch Clinton lie at the debate and decide that that’s the lie that makes them quit her?
I suspect that the most likely outcome from the debate is that few undecided voters are moved but that both sides have their bases energized. In the short term, all other campaign narratives will be subsumed by the debate coverage, but in the medium term the race will be pushed back toward its natural equilibrium.
Mind you, this view makes a couple of big assumptions—the biggest of which is that the race even has a natural equilibrium. My sense, from looking at the long view of the polls, in light of all of the supposed ups and downs, is that it does, and that the equilibrium point is basically Clinton +4, give or take.
Your mileage may vary.
Part of the reason I think this race has an equilibrium point is that both candidates seem to have ceilings of support—and that those ceilings are pretty low. Clinton lives between 45 percent and 47 percent most of the time; Trump lives around 41 percent. And even when everything has gone right for him, Trump has only touched 46 percent in the Real Clear Politics average once, and only for a heartbeat.
Everyone knows these two dismal candidates and by this point voters have priced pretty much everything into their stocks. So when you see movement in the polls, it’s tended to be not the result of conversion from undecideds, but from base voters temporarily falling off the wagon. So after the conventions and Trump’s jihad against the Khan family, a bunch of his soft supporters got cold feet. But they came back to the fold. Perhaps they recalled who Trump is running against.
Clinton’s fall has been caused in large part by millennial supporters falling into a lower energized state. (The dramatic turnaround in the race has really been Clinton losing 4 points and Trump picking up 2.) I suspect the millennials will come home as the news cycle grinds onward.
I know a lot of Republicans are placing their hopes on Clinton’s health scare to change the race. But I’m dubious about that, too.
When it comes to health, I hope and pray that both candidates have long, happy lives. That said, if the angel Gabriel came down and, without naming names, said that whoever wins this election, they will be called home by the Lord after 12 months in office, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but would you see that as a bug, or a feature?
I kid!
Here’s the problem with viewing the health scare as a real vulnerability for Clinton: If you think that her health is an issue for voters, then, just like with Trump’s temperament, you’re setting a very low bar for her in the debates. If she’s vigorous, then suddenly she’s exceeded expectations and put that dog to bed.
Which is why I don’t tend to buy that the health stuff is more than a temporary news cycle problem for Clinton.
Of course, it’s not Clinton’s health that’s the real issue, but (as always) her lying about it. Remember how fast we went from “nothing’s wrong,” to “it’s the heat,” to “it’s dehydration,” to “she’s a little sick,” to “it’s just pneumonia, no biggie” to “SHE SHOULD GET A MEDAL FOR POWERING THROUGH THIS HORRIBLE ILLNESS!”
But again, I just don’t believe that there are a large number of voters who support Clinton but will be scandalized to see another example of her adversarial relationship with the truth.
She’s a Clinton. It’s what she does.
