The Stupid and Desperate meme is being used by some now [View all]

[rpannier]

I've seen in a few places where they remind everybody that both Pres Reagan (1984) and Pres Obama (2012) had terrible first debates and recovered to go on and win
Leaving partisan politics aside, there are (IMO) two important things that are left out of this (ahem) thought

1. The temperament of Pres Obama and Pres Reagan were never really an issue with people. There were no stories about either President calling people losers, or making fun of their weight, or anything like that.
The question of ability and character was really on their opponent, not on them. In this case, the questions were about Il Douche and not about Clinton. Herr Oompa only succeeded in reinforcing what many people were thinking, "That he's a lazy jerk."

2. This is probably more important than the first, both Obama and Reagan are/were sitting presidents. They have/had the advantage of people knowing how they had governed, so being able to brush off a bad debate performance was not difficult for either man. They just picked up and moved on, something Il Douche has already shown he is unable to do with any grace.

There are other factors that make it far more difficult for Trump to undo the self-inflicted damage; most people who saw the debate do not think Lester Holt was unfair to Trump, many people were irritated by his constant interruptions, his post-debate rush to spin the debate in his favor looked desperate, his seeming inability to change and move away from the obnoxious horse's ass he was in the primary, the vocal opposition to him from prominent members of his own party (sorry Dixie Lee Ray you were not prominent), his taxes comment (guess what? most people don't think paying zero taxes makes you smart ask Al Capone and the jury), his refusal to let anything go, his uber macho campaign, and so on
But these are all just symptoms of what makes Hitlinni suck.
What makes the idea of comparing Trump's crappy first debate performance to the sub par debates of two sitting Presidents is that both of them had a track record in the White House for people to go with and a perceived temperament that didn't overly worry people about one debate performance.
Trump doesn't have that and, unless Hillary turns in two straight Trumpesque debate performances, little is going to wash away the damage he did tonight

I would also add, I think the second debate is critical. If she destroys him a second time, there will be few who will watch the third, exception of political junkies and those who enjoy watching train wrecks because if he gets killed twice, there will be nothing that can save him then