Thread by @Nate_Cohn

I rewatched and had the same impression. Yet what's interesting is that Clinton was judged the victor at the time.

I found myself thinking that evaluations of Trump are just a reflection of our assumptions about whether Trump's shtick works.
Trump was just Trump in the debates. If you thought that was a joke in '16, he was a joke. If now you take it seriously, now it looks effective

Or put differently, if you went through all of 2016 assuming the Trump act was an electoral catastrophe, you would have undoubtedly come away thinking he had blown it yet again. If after the 2016 result you revisit that assumption, you'd undoubtedly reinterpret the debate as well

And at this point, I do think it's fair to say that many people have internalized an assumption that the Trump act works, because it has before. The polls say something very different. But it's part of how you get people sure he's going to surge because of Kenosha and so on

Anyway, I think the outcome of '16 totally colors everything about how people analyze the superficial dimensions of politics, particularly for Trump. I don't think the reevaluation is 100% wrong, but the polls certainly suggest that there's danger in overcorrection

That you assume Trump's shtick is extremely effective, bc it seemed to work last time, when it doesn't seem to be working at all this time