Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of self-dealing and racism and he attacked her long political record as empty and ineffectual as the two rivals bared their deep personal dislike Monday in a slashing and sharply pointed first presidential debate.
The two differed — among many issues — over taxes, the state of the economy and how to mend the country’s fraught race relations.
Mostly they clashed over the virtues of a career spent in public service, as Clinton has done, versus the role of a political neophyte, like Trump, who has devoted himself to building a personal real estate fortune and fame as a reality TV star.
Clinton accused Trump of favoring massive tax cuts for the well-to-do, such as himself, in a return to the kind of trickle-down economics that led to the Great Recession.
“I call it Trumped-up trickle-down,” she said, suggesting it would add trillions of dollars to the national debt and pitch the economy back into recession.
Trump asserted she was wrong and said his plan would have a galvanizing effect, creating millions of good-paying jobs and contrasting that with Clinton’s “all-talk” approach to economic policy.
“Typical politician,” he scoffed.
The 90-minute session on the campus of Long Island’s Hofstra University was testy from the start. Within moments, the candidates began talking over each other as they argued about their histories, their plans and comments each has made over the course of the rancorous campaign.
Trump, in his eagerness to one-up Clinton, made some unforced errors that Democrats were certain to jump on, including a near-concession that he paid no taxes.
The first debate of the fall general election campaign was preceded with a Super Bowl-level of hype and the audience for the 90-minute session was expected to approach that of the nation’s biggest annual television gathering, with perhaps as many as 100 million viewers tuning in.
Less certain was how many minds would change based on what the Democratic and Republican rivals said and did during their time on stage.
History shows that debates tend to reinforce preexisting perceptions rather than move a mass of voters or cause a significant number to change their minds and switch support
Still, in a competitive contest between two candidates who evince passionately held views — both positive and negative — the prospect of a direct, face-to-face confrontation produced one of the most widely anticipated political events in memory. The event fell just over six weeks before election day on Nov. 8.
Adding to the drama was the asymmetric nature of the confrontation.
Clinton was by far the more experienced debater, having participated in more than three dozen going back to her first run for U.S. Senate in New York in 2000, and if often showed.
For Trump, the session was his first one-on-one encounter with a political opponent and he often vented his frustration by interrupting Clinton with glib remarks or appealing to Holt to allow him to continue speaking beyond his allotted time.
Clinton entered the debate in the stronger political position, holding a consistent lead in most national surveys and, more significant, an advantage in the route to 270 electoral college votes.
The two major independent candidates, Libertarian Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein, were excluded from the debate stage, having failed to meet the level of support in polls that was set by the debate organizers as a threshold to participate.
Clinton and Trump are scheduled to debate twice more, on Oct. 9 in St. Louis and Oct. 19 in Las Vegas.
Their running mates, Democratic Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, are set to debate a single time, Oct. 4 in Farmville, Va.
(LA Times)
