Clinton Wore Trump Down

By the end of 90 minutes, Mr. Trump, who has bragged about his vitality, as opposed to Ms. Clinton's fragility and low energy, looked spent and dissipated.

Hillary does have a high wattage smile and she used it effectively in the split screen set up, laughing at Donald Joffrey as he gave vent to his flight of ideas, his stream of consciousness, fleeing the hard questions about his sticking to the Birther lie long after it was clearly exposed. 

Along the way, he floated a few of the hard core beliefs of the off the grid crowd, T party Republican faithful:

1/ He paid no federal income tax lo these many years because he was too smart for the system and it was all perfectly legal and, anyway, if he had paid the Democrats would have "squandered" his hard earned money on social problems for the poor.

2/ He cannot see what is wrong with his whole Birther rag--he actually did Obama a favor by making him produce his birth certificate, missing the point that what he was saying and what his rabid fans truly believe is that NO Black man can be authentically American, least of all one who thrashes a white man for the Presidency. Obama is ispso facto, illegitimate because he is Black.  As the acting head of the DNC pointed out later, her own grandfather had no birth certificate because he was born a slave and in the South not having a birth certificate meant you could not vote. 

3/ He blames Hillary for not having solved the crisis in the Middle East, for allowing the rise of ISIS, for trade deficits with China, for the collapse of manufacturing in the rust belt, for violence in the inner cities, for, you name it, because, after all, she has been in government for 30 years and if she couldn't solve all those problems by herself, what good is she?  
Hillary, on her part, failed to point out in a democracy, unlike in a privately held company, you have to get other people to work with you, even if you are President. Not even Tom Brady could win games unless he has cooperation from those who play with him.  It takes a village, or a team, and Trump's Republican Tea party cohort does not want to play along in any way whatsoever. The Republican plan is to destroy government, except for the parts they like, like defense contracting, which supports most of the South, where nobody else, aside from the federal government is much interested in investing a dollar.

4/ And, oh. It's just fine to stiff the workmen who built your casinos--all you have to do is claim the quality of the work was poor and then grind them down with your lawyers, fighting them in court. 

But the big question is this: Was he not completely exposed as time went on?

I mean, I haven't seen flight of ideas, stream of consciousness, fragmentation of thought, grandiosity, delusions of grandeur, paranoid ideation like that since I did my rotation on the psych wards in medical school.

That man would have come up before the committee which decided who was well enough to go home and he would not have got a single vote. What he would have got was a decision for heavier medication.  

Or maybe a padded room.

Here's another question for the 2nd amendment, off the grid, super patriots:  If it is easy, can it be patriotism?  Does patriotism not demand risk or sacrifice?  If this is true, then how can Mr. Trump be any kind of patriot?  He doesn't even do the hard thing of paying taxes.

And we haven't even really talked much about those rapist Mexicans streaming across the border or those Muslims who all hate us.