It's pro wrestling.
It's not a real political debate. Yeah, they're standing up there discussing competing political platforms with each other, but it isn't an actual contest for office, it's a choreographed piece of theater.
Donald Trump is playing the bad guy. He knows he's playing the bad guy, he knows companies making more money isn't actually what's best for most people, he's OK with it, he gets to live the lifestyle of being rich, and he gets more attention than he ever could have otherwise. (More than that, he gets a place in history).
Trump has literally done this in the WWE before, he's played the part of the rich businessman, and gone and wrestled with people in the ring on television, in an artificial and choreographed but still live event.
Hillary's the next president. She is, as the moderator said, treating the debate as her job interview with the American people - getting Donald Trump in on the act is the only way to get 100 million people and millions of disenfranchised millenials to pay any attention to an old-format political circus. The other debates will offer a similar opportunity, but realistically, many of the people who tuned in for the first won't watch again after seeing how boring a political debate is.
She's said her parts, and while there are areas like foreign policy where she's certainly going to continue the ineffective and destructive path we're on, she addressed many of the important issues - student debt, taxes and jobs, criminal justice reform, the environment, minimum wage, just to name a few.
More than that, it was her chance to address Americans, letting them know what she expected and what she had to offer (and, to an extent, what she wasn't offering).
Of course, none of her views are originally her own, they're all crafted by the political establishment and adopted to maximize appeal, but in reality they reflect the wants and needs of the population, tempered by realism and a desire to preserve the system and avoid drastic change.
Donald Trump's views, on the other hand, are literally a joke. His platform is just what would benefit him, as a billionaire businessman - lower taxes, less regulations, taxes on foreign companies so he can compete with them more easily.
He calls out racism, distrust of government and politicians, and the general dissatisfaction with change among a large segment of the population, by appealing to them in a crude manner, and offering no real solutions. He's just collecting the votes of unhappy people most of whom will do better under Hillary anyway.
He has no plans for when he's elected president, because he knows it isn't going to happen - he's put together, essentially, a joke set of plans based around how he personally would like to see things.
And he ended the debate with an outright endorsement of Hillary Clinton - pending her inevitable election.
It isn't all bad. At least we have the future president offering a consistently progressive platform, if not real change.
And the Republicans, and their entire mindset of moralist, capitalist, traditionalist thinking, are obsolete. Trump was only able to be elected because the mainstream Republican platform is hypocritical and outdated, he called it out on its flaws, and through his skills as an entertainer and as a bombastic roleplayer, he won.
But if you are still under any illusions that this is a true election, that it is a genuine choice by the public and not just an artificial validation of the establishment-vetted political platform as democratic as North Koreas, then you did not understand the debate.
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