This debate was a real eye-opener, as it unintentionally revealed why so many Americans are disaffected with politics. Hillary's performance in the first half-hour, if you read the same Wikileaks dumps that I have, was surreal. Her performance was so detached from the scandals surrounding her, I found myself wondering how she could pull it off. No wonder it's so fashionable nowadays to call professional politicians sociopaths. She stuck to her wish-listing, her reference to projections that are likely to be as inaccurate as the ones about Obamacare, and showed a blitheness that was glaringly at odds with what was simmering under the surface about her. I saw how Donald Trump has been able to get so far as he has. "Positive" politicking has become so surreal, it's no wonder that politicians sound sincere when they're on the attack. This growing surreality might well be the reason why attack ads have gone from fallbacks to standard procedure.
I can't think of any better example of this surreality that Hillary quoting Michele Obama - "when they take the low road, we take the high road" - and then, after she got her applause, taking the low road against Trump.
Trump himself was shrewd in branding Hillary as "all talk, no action." You can say that a disturbingly large part of American politics period is all talk, no action - mere talk - filled with wish lists and promises that tend to be empty.
The surreality of the opening part did break, thanks to the moderators allowing a few questions about the Email leaks. It broke the ice in a sense, as both Trump and Clinton appeared more sincere. Interestingly, Hillary was at her most passionate when she complained about Donald Trump's taxes. It's as if she saw the #1 job in politics as being a tax collector. Donald was his most passionate when decrying the practice of pre-announcing where the U.S. will strike next: he used the specific example of Mosul. He very clearly believed that pre-announcing a strike was the stupidest thing imaginable. That part showed a slice of he real Donald Trump: Donald saying what he really believed, rather than what he thought his supporters believed.
He also took to heart the criticism of his performance from the last debate; in so doing, he showed his flair for stealing the show. Trump not only escalated the red meat, focussing on the Wikileaks revelations, but also dropped a bombshell you may have heard of. He promised to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Email scandal. Later in the debate, in one of his interruptions, he said to Hillary: "You'd be in jail."
The moment he announced the special prosecutor certainly broke the ice in a different way!
Overall, Trump is showing that he's growing into the role. Although his words were overwhelmingly criticism, he showed a lot more confidence in talking politician-talk. He's becoming good at the job. It showed by the fact that he included a lot less braggartry in his talk.
Near the end of the debate, Clinton showed another spell of sincerity when she described her own track record as an individual. Perhaps she did so to deflect her deplorable laughter at the expense of a child-rape victim on that notorious 1982 recording, but she did sound sincere when taking about the work she had done for the Children's Defense Fund, et. al.
Overall, I have to say that Donald Trump won the debate. He fielded the locker-room-banter scandal by directing the audience's attention to what Bill Clinton had done. In an abstract but salutary way, he reminded us that there's a big difference between mere talk and real conduct. He not only dragged out the red meat, he stole the show by that special-prosecutor announcement. Hillary did have her sincere moments, but her stage-actor skill meant that some of her performance was indeed surreal. Perhaps in a more low-information environment, she could have pulled it off.
The debate points to the possibility of a new kind of politics in which politicians narrow the trust gap by deprecating the wish-list "issues" approach and instead talk about what they have done. We seem to have gone too far in the direction of mere words.
(Image from this Twitter account)