David Mastio

USA TODAY

With the possible exception of Jefferson Davis, Donald Trump will be the worst president in American history. I know that sounds extreme. No, not the Jefferson Davis part. Everyone agrees about that.

But with the Democratic National Convention barely over and the sound of Hillary Clinton’s voice still grating in the ears of Bernie Bros across the land, I understand how it could seem a little early to write off candidate Clinton.

The election is still 102 days away. Clinton’s historic candidacy has a special appeal to the smarter half of the American electorate, and it is backed by both of America’s first black presidents. The Clinton machine features such finely tuned fundraising machinery that Tesla engineers turn greener at the very sight. Its battle-hardened communications apparatus has already set records in selling high efficiency American-fueled natural gas furnaces to Saudi royalty.

Despite polls showing the deeply unpopular Clinton behind in the race against reality-TV Republican Donald Trump, only a fool would bet against her. And yet, every time a Clintonite attacks Trump, it is getting hard not to giggle, or at least titter, depending on your jocular orientation.

When Trump launches into a spittle-flecked tirade against those #BlackLivesMatter radicals who think police should shoot fewer unarmed black men, the racism is so obvious it might as well have been written in the sky by the Blue Angels.

But no one is listening anymore. When mild-mannered technocrat Mitt Romney was running for president, Clinton’s obscure Obama-administration colleague Joe Biden told a black audience that Republicans “are going to put ya’ll back in chains.” If you listen to Democrats, every Republican who has run for anything in my lifetime has Klan robes in their closet and secret Confederate memorabilia collection.

When Trump joked that maybe Russian President Vladimir Putin could find Clinton’s missing emails, the Hillary-friendly precincts of Twitter erupted with accusations of #TrumpTreason. In a nationally televised speech, Clinton’s obscure Obama-administration colleague Leon Panetta tut-tutted at an “irresponsible” Trump asking one of our “adversaries to engage in hacking … against the United States of America.”

Of course, foreign data theft is nothing to laugh at. But the pilferage of old yoga schedules and plans for a wedding long-consummated hardly seem the kind of thing to require the involvement of an old CIA director long-retired.

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And, well, calling Russia an “adversary” seems unnecessarily dramatic. It wasn’t long-ago that Clinton’s obscure Obama-administration colleague Barack Obama was laughing at the previous wild-eyed lunatic nominated by Republicans as their presidential candidate. Mitt Romney had called Russia a “foe.”

“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years,” Obama smirked. Perhaps it was funny because Romney used a one-syllable word when any worthy Oval Office aspirant would use at least three or, preferably, seven.

Before the convention, Hillary Clinton herself launched an attack on Trump that blew past titters and giggles and straight into guffaw territory. Trump is terrifying enough with the power of social media, she intoned, but “imagine if he had not just Twitter and cable news to go after his critics and opponents, but also the IRS."

Yes, imagine a president who would abuse the powers of the IRS. Not to paint Clinton with the unfair and overbroad brush of guilt by association, but the administration in which she served as secretary of State, twice, accidentally, released the private taxpayer information of its political opponents at moments that, perhaps inadvertently, were politically damaging. And then there was the “targeting” of the administration’s Tea Party opponents by the Obama administration IRS while Clinton was coincidentally serving as secretary of State. For non-political reasons no doubt, the Obama administration is still fighting in court to keep the full details of those events from the public eye.

Then on Thursday night in her big speech, Clinton attacked him again. She rightly pointed out that all a foreign leader has to do to get a rise out of Trump is launch a malicious tweet. God save us when Trump can respond to digital provocations by replying with megatons instead of megabytes. No tweet would ever get a response from Clinton. She doesn't respond unless she gets served with a subpoena; engraved in stone; in triplicate.

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Which brings us to another Trumpian weakness. The guy is hiding his tax returns in an effort to avoid public scrutiny of whether he has fulfilled his most basic duty as an American: to pay his fair share to support the nation we all love. He should release those tax returns now.

But … and here come those titters again … who are the very last people on the planet who could possibly lecture Trump on the need for openness? That would be anyone who thinks Clinton should be the next president of the United States.

Yes, when Trump becomes our president in January, it will be a disaster. There is no way I would ever vote for a guy with the temperament of a rabid weasel, the maturity of a drunken kindergartner and the depth of a California reservoir. If we're lucky, he'll get himself impeached during the transition.

But I don’t care how much Hillary Clinton spends on attack ads revealing the full awful truth about Donald Trump. As long as she is talking, nobody is going to hear a word over all the laughter.

David Mastio is the deputy editorial page editor of USA TODAY. Follow David Mastio on Twitter: @DavidMastio

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