A few random thoughts on the state of the election.

Obviously Clinton did very well in the debate.  Mrs. Center Left and I both thought she was getting under his skin after just 15 minutes.  I want to credit Clinton for doing a great job.  She didn’t just let Trump be himself.  She provoked him. And we he got hot and showed his poor temperament, she brilliantly let him interrupt without stopping her speech most of the time.  Obviously she was pleased to see him over reacting.  But if every time he interrupted, she just stopped talking, she would have looked weak.  I think she handled it perfectly.

The trap her team set with Alicia Machado worked perfectly. Trump took the bait and couldn’t let go all week.  He was still tweeting insults about Machado at 3:00 a.m. four days later.  He wasted several days of campaign time. As with the Khans, everyone who is not an extreme Republican partisan (or a racist, or nationalist) can see that Trump is easily baited, undisciplined, and unfit to be President.

At a minimum, the partial release of his taxes from 1995 noting his loss of $900 million and that he probably paid no taxes for 18 years, takes him off message, reinforces his lack of transparency, raises questions for the media, and wastes his campaign days. I don’t actually think the not paying taxes angle hurts him all that much.  Lots of conservatives and some centrist voters believe taxes are too high, and government is wasteful.  But to the extent the narrative can be spun toward the rigged system where the rich who lose money get some type of bailout (in this case likely from investors in a new public company) and tax relief, while the middle class just loses, could hurt him a lot.  Plus it begs the question of how did you lose $900 million anyway?  Not such brilliant business man after all.  So far, his defense is that he’s smart to avoid paying taxes, and he’s the only one who knows how to fix the tax system. This is a weak defense.  I expect the tax issue to be a negative for at least another week.

Looking forward to the VP debate.