Hillary Clinton is the winner of the first presidential election television debate, according to Peter van der Heiden. The parliamentary historian set his alarm for 2.50 AM and analysed what he saw for Vox.

It looked like a slightly flat debate last night – I was even wondering if it was a smart move to set an alarm for this – but it did bring some fireworks eventually. The first debate was convincingly won by Hillary Clinton. Not with a knock out, but definitely with a very big lead.

Beforehand, Donald Trump seemed to have everything in his corner. He has momentum in the polls, he can attack an experience politician, who has operated in and around the centre of the power, and above all: the expectations were low. Trump only had to look a little more presidential than usual, and Clinton had to show that she can handle a disruptive bully like Trump.

‘What is he hiding?‘, asked Clinton, ‘maybe he isn’t paying any taxes?’

And she could, with a little help from Trump himself, who, as always when he is under pressure and does not stick to the auto cue, said some weird things. That pressure mostly came when he refused to publish his tax papers. ‘What is he hiding?’, asked Clinton, ‘maybe he isn’t paying any taxes?’ Trump did not react with a denial, but said: ‘I had the way the government spends the taxes’, basically admitting that he does not pay taxes. Easy score for Clinton: ‘That means zero dollars for our troops, zero dollars for housing, zero dollars for schools.’

Dept
But above all, Clinton and Trump were Clinton and Trump. Clinton the well-prepared, very experienced but slightly boring, almost unavoidable president. Trump the disruptive, swaying and truth-denying (‘I was against the Iraq war’) challenger. Trump did not answer the question why he lingered so long on the ‘birtherism issue’ – the question whether or not Obama was born in the USA, but tried – unconvincingly – to blame Clinton for that. Oh, if only Reagan would have been up there, to put this matter to bed with a simple ‘here we go again’. And Clinton stayed distant. Where the best feature of her husband’s campaign was his connection with the normal American (‘I feel your pain’), Hillary mostly spoke about policy, racism, jobs – but too little about the people this concerns.

Switch
Clinton was clearly the best debater and the winner of this debate, and the polls will undoubtedly reflect that in the days to come. But will this have much effect? I dare to doubt it. In the extremely polarised United States of America, no Republican will make the switch to Clinton after last night, and no Democrat will even consider voting for Trump based on this debate. But that was never the intention anyway.

Last night’s debate was for the undecided voter, and there are so many of them this year that they will decide who becomes president on 8 November. That is why Trump tried to keep it down as best as he could, and Clinton tried to look as calm and moderate as possible. They both did not show too much soul, but this could possibly change as the race develops. I sure hope so, even though I keep on thinking it is unbelievable that the two big parties have not been able to find better candidates than the two most disliked nominees ever.