From the October 9 edition of CNN's Debate Night in America:
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WOLF BLITZER: Jake Tapper, Donald Trump came into this debate behind in the polls and also facing a mass defection from members of his own party. Did tonight change any of that?
JAKE TAPPER: The first 20 minutes, half hour, I thought Donald Trump was erratic and going off the rails and then I thought he turned it around to a degree. I think that he prosecuted the case against Hillary Clinton that was effective and stayed with the them about she has been in Washington for a long time, it's all words, no action. And so, I thought this was a much better debate performance than his first debate performance. He may have staunched some of the bleeding that we’ve seen in his campaign in recent days. Obviously you have 16 Republican US senators abandoning his bid, saying they won't vote for him and he should maybe think about quitting the ticket. So I think he did himself a favor with that regard. I think his base, his supporters will be very happy with tonight's performance. Did he add to his voters? I don't know that he did.
My impression is basically that this might be something of a wash. Hillary Clinton was okay. She was effective, she obviously knows much more about policy. Her temperament was much more even throughout, but there were times when he landed his gloves on her metaphorically in terms of the e-mail issue specifically. And I don't think she was as effective of a counter puncher as I think a lot of people probably though she would be, especially armed with this tape that came out, this Access Hollywood tape from Friday. Probably the strategy for Clinton going into this was have a fine debate. If it's a wash, that's fine. If he self-destructs, even better. But he is still losing and he will have to really have an amazing performance over the next 30 days to beat her. So overall looking at this through the lens of an undecided voter, I think probably this didn’t move the needle. It probably stopped some of the bad news for Donald Trump that might have come tomorrow in terms of further defections. But I think Hillary Clinton is still in the lead in this race and we still have 30 days to go or a little less than that and there’s still a lot more oppo that is about to be dropped.
