The debate

Kevin Drum on the debate:

I guess the only thing anyone cares about is who won. I'd give it to Hillary Clinton pretty easily. She handled her facts well, she spoke well, she didn't get baited, she laughed at some of Trump's more ridiculous statements, and she attacked him pretty effectively. "Just listen to what you heard," she said when Trump tried to pretend that he did everyone a favor by forcing Obama to release his long-form birth certificate. I suspect that even Republicans in the audience laughed at that.

Trump, by contrast, was like a manic version of his usual manic self. He spoke too fast, he got practically red faced at times, he repeated the most obvious lies, and he could barely keep a coherent thought together for more than a few seconds before wandering off to something else...

Rob's comment:

As expected Trump was dumb and ignorant, but he also seemed a little nuts. The more I see of him, the worse he seems, reminding me of what James Fallows said months ago: "This is not a well man." On the other hand, the more I see of Hillary the more I like her. That's a result in large part to my ideological bias as a Democrat. But Hillary is a serious person, and Trump just is not.

Trump is a blowhard who doesn't know what he's talking about. As a rich guy, he could have hired experts to draft some kind of Dummies Do Public Policy documents so he could at least pretend to discuss issues seriously. He was too lazy to even do that. It didn't matter during the Republican primaries, but it does now. The more Trump talks in these debates, the less convincing he's going to be.