A few thoughts about a very strange debate.

1. For the first 20 minutes Trump almost melted down with a combination of attacks on Bill Clinton and then saying he would call for a special prosecutor and ultimately jail Hillary Clinton.  I think deliberately, Hillary let him have the stage here keeping the focus on him.  (As noted below, she may have played it a little too carefully here.)
2. If the debate had stayed there, Trump might have indeed melted down. Instead it moved onto other topics like Obamacare and energy policy.
3. During this next hour, Trump was about as effective as a Fox news personality.  By this I mean he did fine with his base of Republican partisans, but did nothing to broaden his coalition or try to recover among married suburban women who lean Republican.
4. According to Kevin Drum, the “jail” thing did not play well on CNN.  Banana Republic and all that.  (Mrs. Center Left and I needed to get away from the debate so we watched the rerun SNL from Saturday and John Oliver.)
5. In the first debate Hillary had the perfect balance of let Trump be Trump, but then calling him on his obvious mistakes.  She really deserves a lot of credit for that earlier performance.
6. In this debate, she missed some opportunities to hit Trump, like when he said Captain Khan would be alive if Trump had been President.
7. The CNN poll had Clinton winning the debate, which is not surprising given the state of the race and the slightly more liberal tilt of debate watchers.
8. I think the post debate spin and coverage will be largely anti-Trump. He’s now claiming that the “pussy grabbing” was theoretical rather than something he had done. This won’t play well. Also, there are lots good sound bites of him denying his past statements which make for great before after Youtube videos.
9. The majority of Americans are disgusted with Trump, and that will be the tenor of most coverage the rest of the way.  His style of interrupting and literally lurking behind Hillary add to that sense of disgust and rudeness.
10. Ultimately, we will find out just how big the “deplorables plus Republican partisans” portion of the electorate actually is.  I think its maximum is about 42 or 43 percent.  Mr. Center Left Sr. has been saying all along it has to be less than 40.  We’ll see.
11. I still think the Obama 2008 victory margin of 7.6 percent is a good estimate for the this November, plus or minus about 2 percent.