And that might very well be the way Hillary Clinton wants it.  By failing to disqualify himself in a pyre of fascistic madness, the US Republican party is now stuck with the damaged Donald Trump campaign for the grueling final month until the election.

Commentators called the debate "dark" and "small".  In past US presidential debates, candidates used the occasion to lay out ambitious visions for moving forward the world's most influential democracy, largest economy, and largest military.  That didn't happen at all on Sunday night at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri.  But in Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton's defense, the 90 minutes was spent chasing down fallacies and outright lies told by the Republican Donald Trump.

It wasn't even clear that the debate would happen, as most of Sunday was spent wondering if Donald Trump would show up.  From Friday night, he's been on the back heel because of the release of a videotape from 2005 in which he bragged about kissing women without their permission and grabbing their genitalia.

Shortly before the start time, Trump's people summoned reporters into a nearby hotel conference room to witness "debate prep".  It turned out that Trump was waiting there with four women who made sexual abuse allegations against former President Bill Clinton while he was still a local politician in Arkansas.  Bill Clinton isn't running for office, and the four's allegations have never come close to being proven.  Trump's campaign later seated the women in the front row with the candidate's sons and daughters. 

The candidates came out and did not shake the others hands, signalling the tense and acrimonious atmosphere for the rest of the evening.  One of the first questions was about that now infamous videotape; Trump repeated his half-hearted apology from earlier, brushed it off as "locker room talk", but then attempted to pivot to Bill Clinton's accusers seated with his family.  If this was the nuclear blast meant to intimidate the Clintons into throwing them off their game, it failed.

Then the lies started.  Trump again lied about opposing the Iraq War; in fact, he supported it.  He lied about the US economy having its slowest growth since the Great Depression in 1929; the truth is that the US economy is expanding at a rate of 2.4 percent.  Trump lied about his Twitter war against a former Miss America contestant, and denying that he urged people to "check out" her "sex tape";  he did, even though the tape doesn't exist.  Trump claimed Islamic State operates in 32 countries; it's more like six, and definitely fewer than ten (.pdf link).  He lied about American taxes being the "highest in the world".  He lied about knowing Vladimir Putin and doing business with the Russians.  I could go on for several pages.

Trump's behavior could prove to be fatal to his presidential ambitions.  Like the first debate, he sniffed and snorted through the 90 minutes.  But he also paced about the stage, and appeared to loom over Hillary Clinton as she made direct eye contact with the people in the audience who asked questions, engaging with them and referring to them by name.  Social media users said Trump appeared to be menacing, like a stalker - which probably isn't the best look for a guy who was just caught saying he grabs women by the genitalia.

But most disturbing was Trump's threat to appoint a special prosecutor to go after Hillary Clinton and throw her in jail - which commentators pointed out is not the American Way.  In the 240 years of the country's history, no American leader has ever used the Justice Department is such a blatant way to persecute political rivals in the way that happens in dictatorships and malformed developing nations.  Some called it a threat to American democracy.

After the debate ended the verdict came in:  Hillary Clinton won with a strategy of merely laying back and allowing Trump to hang himself.  Hillary stuck to the facts, while reporters will spend the next few days talking about fact-checking Trump