Before I start, let me state right here I have little training, formal or otherwise in debate.  What I do have is this…My mother, known as “ED” by all her students and ‘kids’ used to coach speech in the 50’s and 60’s and I picked up quite alot watching.  She also trained me when I took up an interest in Retoric in high school and collage.  Finally we used to watch the Presidental debates, togeather when we could, and apart when we couldn’t and later critique the participants later.  We did not, really, go into the political points but just talked about how well each made their points and defended their positions.  I still do this even though she no longer can.

OK, then…Lets get started:

I’m scoring last nights debate as a clear TKO for Hillary.  Trump did have one decent round but after that Hillary had it all.  What follows is what I think happened to Trump and why.

First and Formost is that he did not do a single moot debate before the actual debate.  This is the sign of a rank amiture.  Trump did well in the mass scumes that were the GOP debates but he never had a real one-on-one debate then and it showed last night.  Last night was a formal debate and as anyone who has participated in a formal debat will tell you, they are like no other debate.  They are both physically and mentally tiring, even short ones, which last night wasn’t.  Most of what happened to Trump can be traced back, in part or whole, to not rehursing his debate style.

To support this I would like to point out the following things Trump did that could have easily been corrected with just one or two rehursals.  He was NOT ready for the 90 minutes of split screen.  Nor was he ready for just how devastating being ‘Fact Checked’ in real-time could be.

Trump was not ready for 90 sold minutes of close-up camera time.  Yes he has many many hours of time in front of the camera but most of that time the camera could and was subject to being stoped and the shots edited for later showing.  This was Live and Unedited.  Every facial response was recorded for all time.  Every little side comment goes out for all to see.  As I do not know Trump personally and can not say this is true or not but  fear that Trump is one of those people who’s relaxed facial expression is what Momma used to call ‘The Frown’.  It actually is more of a scowl and too many unfortunates have it.  It can be trained out someone, but first you must know you have it and this means you have to have someone tell you you have it.

All thru the debate, when ever Trump was listening to either Hillary, or the Moderator he would fall into, what can charitablely be call a scowl of concentration.  None the less it was scowl.  Before anyone jumps in, yes Hillary scowled too.  But she also had many more other facial responses.  Also her default expression seems to be what Momma used to call “Yes, I’m Listening” and when she did it, it was the height of neutrality and non-commitment.  Any practiced diplomat, or poker player, learns how to do this early on.

This has gone on long enough so I shall post this know and pick up later.