Oh, that nasty woman

Sometimes there are October moments. They come in presidential debates. We casually come to realize that we have passed over from near-certainty to full certainty that a race is over.

There was George H.W. Bush looking at his wristwatch to see how much longer he'd have to endure his shellacking in a town-hall format from Bill Clinton, who was showing off by telling how much bread and milk cost at the supermarket.

There was Michael Dukakis giving a passionless and clinical answer to a question predicated on his wife's being raped and murdered.

Then there was the moment Wednesday night. "Such a nasty woman," Donald Trump huffed, writing Alex Baldwin's line and performing Baldwin's shtick ahead of time.


There was such frustration, such resignation, evident in those four words of interruption--always with this guy and the interruption, talking over the little woman.

Trump was referring to Hillary Clinton. She'd just stung him hard by--well, which time was it, exactly, considering that it happened on four or five occasions?

Oh, yes, it was near the end of the debate when she said she would pay for her new expenditures with higher taxes on the richest people such as Donald and herself unless Donald could find another way around paying any.

The big man--this Putin strongman wannabe, this admirer of the Assad chemical-weapon leadership model--got his feelings hurt. "Mommy, it's not fair. Hillary has practiced for a debate again," he was crying out to America.

Like most such moments, this one had been building--when Hillary said that the hotel Trump was bragging about was made with Chinese steel, and when she said Donald was recording Celebrity Apprentice when she was in the Situation Room for the Osama bin Laden raid, and when she said whining about not winning was a lifelong pattern with Trump, such as when he tweeted--always with the tweeting--his protests that Celebrity Apprentice didn't get an Emmy.

"Should've gotten it," Alex Baldwin quipped with the perfect timing.

Wait: Was that Trump himself? It's hard to tell.

I'd predicted to the LifeQuest class on Wednesday morning that Hillary would nurse her lead and seek to deflect and remain above the fray. I was wrong. She knew best. When he stuck his pouty face out like that, she went ahead and punched it.

"Such a nasty woman" now becomes the T-shirt. I simply must have one. I'm looking for a triple-X in dry-fit for tennis wear.

Forgive me for repeating myself, which happens only because Trump keeps repeating his style. But it remains true: This race is all about women.

Here's why: Trump hangs in the polls somewhere between 37 and 40 percent, depending on how offensive he's been lately and how much attention can seep through his nonsense and onto Hillary emails.

Forty percent won't win. But 46 or 47 percent might, with Gary Johnson getting 6 or 7 percent and Jill Stein a point or two.

To get from 40 to 46 or 47, Trump needs to appeal to white, upper-class, suburban women who normally vote Republican in presidential races because they find the likes of John McCain and Mitt Romney acceptable.

But they cannot imagine the boorish Trump as president.

Trump had three chances in these debates to behave himself properly for these women. And he proved constitutionally incapable every time.

He at least could have said "such a nasty person." Better yet, he could have kept his mouth shut until his turn to talk and then countered with calm and rational substance that drew a contrast with her sarcasm.

But his interrupting to say "such a nasty woman" caused an audible response from the woman in my house, and no doubt from women in millions of homes across the country.

There was a five-letter word he obviously wanted to say. It rhymes with what makes you want to scratch. And women hear it every time they stand up to a big old vainglorious hulk of monstrous manhood.

It's cartoonish manhood. As columnist Maureen Dowd put it, the presidential race is one of those movies mixing real characters and animated characters. She said we must never forget that Trump is the cartoon character.

There is this thing I insist on doing, which is making social-media posts immediately at the ends of these debates in which I dare to declare my winner before I hear a syllable of talking-head analysis.

On Wednesday evening shortly after 9:30, I posted: "She did better because she is better."

One of my eternally angry right-wing friends or followers replied, "And melanoma is better than pancreatic cancer."

I appreciated the agreement, if not the metaphor, as well as the frustrated resignation it betrayed among those who yearn to beat Hillary but know Alec Baldwin is the last guy on earth who could do it.

I mean Trump. I mean the cartoon character.

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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 10/23/2016

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