US presidential candidate Donald Trump is frequently to the left of Hillary Clinton. Credit:AP And apart from that, Clinton told no more of the story of Machado's interacting with the former beauty pageant entrepreneur Trump, save for belting a seemingly stunned Trump around the ears with the news that the woman was now a naturalised US citizen - and she'd be voting on November 8. It's what Donald did on Tuesday morning, engaging in a cocooned debate post-mortem with friendlies on Fox News that leads to questions about upping his medication. After all, if he had the smarts on Monday night to work out that Clinton "did a good job", why double down on the Machado story on Tuesday morning? It was a given that the world's media would beat a path to Machado's door - to put meat on the bones of the story alluded to by Clinton in the debate. It was also highly likely that the Clinton campaign would be directing the traffic. Yet, this is what Trump told the gang on the talk show Fox & Friends of Machado, a Venezuelan who, at age 19, was crowned Miss Universe 1996: "She was the worst we ever had … "

Hillary Clinton speaks to supporters after the first presidential debate. Credit:AP Worst? What was she up to - using the pageant as cover for running drugs, bank robberies or worse? If Trump was insisting that Machado was no Mother Teresa, what was she - a terrorist? No - Machado's worst, as articulated by the man who on Monday needed to convince women voters in particular, that he was presidential material, was this: "She gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem." Trump cited "unfair questions" posed by the moderator of the first debate, Lester Holt of NBC News. Credit:AP Trump ought to have known that the Clinton gang would be lying in waiting. They were.

They dropped a smartly produced video starring Machado and - political gold! gold! gold! - with footage from a 1990s interview, in which Trump complains that Machado had gone from 117 or 118 pounds to 160 or 170 pounds, before Trump casts Machado out as a sinner: "so this is somebody that likes to eat". Alicia Machado is crowned Miss Universe. Credit:AP Flustered in the debate, Trump might have been forgiven for his dumbfounded initial response to Clinton: "Where did you find this? Where did you find this … where did you find this?" before seeking a way out by lashing another of his female targets - the comedian Rosie O'Donnell, whom he told the debate audience "nobody felt sorry" for, because she deserved his earlier epithets that had included "pig", a "total degenerate", and a "slob". And on Fox & Friends, Trump just kept on digging, saying of Machado - "I know that person, she was a Miss Universe person and she was the worst we ever had - the worst, the absolute worst." We're still waiting for reliable national polling to reveal the political fallout from the debate. But having slept on it overnight, the pundit class and political consultants seemed to vote strongly for a Clinton win.

The aftermath didn't look pretty for Trump in swing states: Politico magazine's Insiders panel of 100 swing state activists from both parties gave the night to Clinton - by a whopping 79-21 vote.

In a focus group of 21 in Pennsylvania, 16 declared Clinton a winner; only five went with Trump.

In Florida, 18 of 20 undecided voters corralled by CNN picked Clinton.

In Ohio, none of 29 undecided voters backed Trump; and while only 11 in the group plumped for Clinton, the group figured two-to-one that Clinton had the better tone and came across as more knowledgeable.

In more general snap polling, a CNN/ORC poll found that Clinton had won - 62-27; a poll by Public Policy Polling put Clinton on top - 51-40. The Trump camp savaged the debate moderator - NBC news anchor Lester Holt - for questions that favoured Clinton. But they were silent on their own candidate's abject failure to control much of the debate, especially in directing it to issues that he needed to inject, if his objective was to wing Clinton. A stated Clinton objective in the lead-up to the debate was that it would not be sufficient to reveal Trump as a liar - that she had to get under his skin to the point of provoking him to demonstrate how temperamentally unfit he is for the offices of president and commander-in-chief. Consider this from The New York Post's very conservative John Podhoretz: "He was exciting, but embarrassingly undisciplined. He began [strongly,] but then due to the vanity and laziness that led him to think that he could wing the most important 95 minutes of his life, he lost the thread of his argument, he lost control of his temper and he lost the perspective necessary to correct these mistakes as he went."

Shying away from complimenting Clinton, Nation Review's David French still panned Trump's performance: "You don't need to be good when your opponent is bad." Here's The Washington Post's conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin: "Trump needed to control his temper … and appear ready to be president - he didn't." And Nation Review's Jonah Goldberg: "Clinton was narrow-casting at the voters she needs. Trump was broadcasting to the voters he already has." And Roll Call's Walter Shapiro: "It is hard to imagine there was a single moment in the debate that would have convinced a wavering woman in the Philadelphia or Cincinnati suburbs to vote for Trump." Dan Senor, who helped in debate prep for Republican candidate Mitt Romney in 2012, doffed his hat to Clinton: "Clinton did something tonight that no journo has been able to do: surgically take him apart on his tax returns. She explains why it matters."

Trump's lame responses to Clinton on tax seemed to confirm the ugly traits ascribed to him by his opponents - yup, he didn't pay tax and why should he, when the money would only have been squandered on services for the people and the nation whom he wants to vote for him; yup - he seemingly had stiffed the architect, sitting in the audience, who had designed one of his golf clubhouses; yup - what's wrong with a strategic bankruptcy here and there - "we used certain laws that were there". And to blame such an expansively poor performance on a faulty microphone, as he tried to do, was akin to a five-year-old explaining to his Dad that he wet his pants because he couldn't get his zipper down. Loading There were mixed messages on how Trump should approach the next debate - scheduled for St Louis on October 9. His surrogate in chief and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani suggested that maybe Trump would be better off skipping it. But - uh, uh - not Trump. Always the self-believing "counter puncher," Trump said that next time, he'd just have to "hit her harder".