Both a comedy and a tragedy

A week ago, I blogged that Nate Silver thought that the week that followed would be crucial in determining whether or not the Democrats needed to panic due to Trump's surge in the polls.

Hillary's situation has improved slightly. Right now FiveThirtyEight's projection gives her a 60.8% chance of beating Donald Trump. But Silver's advice is to keep your eye on the post-debate polls. The debate Monday night, he points out, will have a far greater impact on the race than the events of the past week.

It will be fascinating to see whether The Donald actually manages to do a credible impersonation of someone qualified to be president. In the Republican debates, of course, that didn't matter; all Trump had to do was to give an outlet to people's anger. He could be as outrageous and as unreasonable and as outright bizarre as he pleased, lie about every and every matter of open public record, and be as much of a public jackass as he pleased, and nobody cared. That will not be the case this time.

The independents and fence-sitters who are The Donald's only hope simply won't put up with it.