Presidential debate: A race between the tortoise and the hair

Monday night’s presidential debate was between the tortoise and the hair. And as a tortoise supporter, I admit to being nervous for the first five minutes or so.

The fact-checkers were not kind during the Trump – Clinton debate

Donald Trump sprinted off the starting line, hitting Hillary Clinton with the TPP flip-flop and the “you’ve been around for 30 years and haven’t fixed things” type of talk. He came out sounding like a change-maker. He held his own for that part of the presidential debate. I think of Trump as sort of a know-nothing, but he was matching Hillary point-by-point.

The hair falls behind in the presidential debate

However, as the presidential debate went on, the man with famous hair and legendary stamina seemed to run out of steam while his opponent appeared to gain energy. By the end of 90 minutes, I kept hoping the debate could go for another hour or two because Trump appeared to be flailing for air while Hillary was doing push ups at the finish line. Even my conservative co-host, John Curley, saw Hillary as the “hands-down winner.” In his mind, “All she had to do was appear to be alive and get under Trump’s skin, which she did. Trump does not appear to be presidential, so therefore, people sitting there watching it say ‘Golly, I hate her, but he seems to be unraveling.’”

That may all be true, but there’s one reason I think Trump might have won the debate. How many people do you think watched the whole thing? I can imagine people tuning in for the first 20 minutes or half hour and feel they got a sense of the personalities, then flipping over to the Mariners game or Monday Night Football. And because of that, I think Trump has a chance to come out of the debate OK. If you watched the marathon in its entirety, I think his support will be frozen.

Hillary didn’t necessarily knock the debate out of the park, but she proved that her slow-and-steady stamina can win this race.