The grimier Hillary’s campaign gets, the whiter her outfits become. Looking like a white-suited Las Vegas magician (when the camera panned out), Hillary at the final debate in Nevada was again shrill and scripted, and oddly defensive for a candidate the chattering class has already crowned president.

No sooner had the debate ended than the pundits in her pocket resumed their tedious discussions about Trump’s imperviousness to the expected optics. He called her “nasty,” they gasped. She is. He is going to “refuse” the election results. He won’t, unless evidence of voter fraud justifies that conclusion.

As usual, the chattering class devotes most of its time to judging debate performances (and campaigns) according to whether or not they conform to their superficial categories. Hillary has spent millions of dollars and hired an enormous staff to keep her safely within those categories at all times. That is what makes a candidate “presidential” today. Who cares if she is a liar? Who cares if she has committed felonies? Who cares if she favors such policies as near-infanticide?

Hillary’s debate performance on Wednesday night was that of the corrupt insider, cheaply playing to the prejudices of the powerful at the expense of a gauche outsider. Hence, she considered it a devastating riposte to mention repeatedly that Trump’s experience included hosting Celebrity Apprentice. Her reliance on such canned cheap shots makes her more pathetic than Trump, who noted that her more exalted experiences didn’t make her any wiser. He admitted that he couldn’t compete with her government résumé of “bad experience.” He also noted that he built a booming business while she joined an administration that doubled the national debt.

At the beginning of the debate, moderator Chris Wallace asked the candidates about gun control, with Hillary faking up a fear for the “toddlers” exposed to gun violence. Moments later, she was defending abortionists, presenting herself as the eternal defender of “Planned Parenthood.” In what passed for a tough question in the debate, Wallace asked her why such support extends to partial-birth abortion. She said that “heartbreaking cases” justify it. Translation: she still supports near-infanticide for disabled unborn children. This from a candidate who plays the moral superior to Trump for having “mocked” a disabled reporter. This from a candidate who says “America is great because America is good.” Later in the debate she said that the government has a responsibility to take care of the unhealthy. Apparently not at the beginning of life. In Hillary’s America, unhealthy babies do not enjoy the same rights as healthy ones. Up to moments before their birth, Hillary sanctions their killing.

Hillary acidly referenced Trump’s support from the NRA, as if toddlers have more to fear from it than from her pals at Planned Parenthood. To his credit, Trump said that de facto infanticide is okay with Hillary “but it is not okay with him.”

Trump also nailed her on open borders, as she desperately tried to change the subject from that revelation in the WikiLeaks documents to Russian hacking. “That was a great pivot away from the fact that she wants open borders,” he said.

Hillary’s tactic of trying to bait Trump — saying that “he choked” and he called a beauty contestant an “eating machine” — didn’t work as well in this debate as in previous ones. When not clearing out her cupboard of opposition research on him, she was throwing red meat to the special interests of the Democratic Party, promising “free tuition,” LGBT-friendly justices, amnesty, and class warfare.

She promised to “go where the money is” for tax revenues, which guarantees a tax hike for the middle class. She made noises about fighting “climate change.” And she allowed herself some bewildering anti-Trump demagoguery about the Orlando shooter hailing from Trump’s place of origin, Queens.

For a candidate whom the press says is winning so easily, it was a strangely strident and ugly performance. She didn’t stay above the fray. She didn’t “go high when they go low.” She went lower. Having been traumatized by other failed coronations, she is determined to retain this one by the most Machiavellian means possible. As the hacked emails show, the Dems under her Nixonian paranoia are instigating violence at Trump rallies. Yet as the evidence of her dirty tricks grows, the media treats Trump as “unpresidential” for daring to question a ruling class that has ignored them.