IS THIS the end for Donald Trump’s presidential ambition? It just might be.

A fortnight ago, as he prepared for the first presidential debate, the Republican nominee was almost level with Hillary Clinton in the polls. But after an offensive and intemperate performance on September 26th, followed by more blunders—including a ridiculous series of late-night tweets intended to slander a former beauty queen, who had decried his obnoxious treatment of her—the Republican nominee is trailing by five points.

And now this:

On October 7th the Washington Post posted a video on its website that included recorded remarks by Mr Trump which were repellent even by his low standards. They formed part of a conversation with Billy Bush, a television presenter, which was recorded in 2005, as Mr Trump was getting ready for a television appearance to publicise his cameo role in a soap opera. Mr Bush, who happens to be a nephew of George H.W. Bush, was accompanying Mr Trump on-set, initially aboard a bus, and seemingly wired up to a microphone.

The recorded conversation, which was leaked to the Post from NBC, starts with Mr Trump describing his attempt to seduce a host of the television show he is about to appear on: “I did try and fuck her. She was married.”

“I moved on her very heavily,” continues Mr Trump, who had married his third wife, Melania, four months earlier, “In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture. I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there, and she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything.”

Mr Bush, who does not emerge well from this either, then spots a television presenter positioned to greet Mr Trump. “Sheesh your girl’s hot as shit. In the purple,” he says, in the manner of a creep egging on a schoolyard bully.

“I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her,” says Mr Trump, silky smooth. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”

It is at this point that Mr Trump seems to boast of a predilection for sexual assault. “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Then there follows a brief exchange of mutual slavering, as Mr Trump, then Mr Bush, comment on the young woman sent to assist him. “Yeah those legs, all I can see is the legs.” “Oh, it looks good.” ”Come on, shorty,” “Oh, nice legs, huh?” “Oof, get out of the way, honey. Oh, that’s good legs. Go ahead.”

“It’s always good,” says Mr Trump, bringing the grunting to a close, “If you don’t fall out of the bus. Like Ford, Gerald Ford, remember?” In fact it was Air Force One that Ford once tumbled down the steps of. And it is fairly hard to think Mr Trump will now get his hands on that plane.

That is not only because being heard talking about grabbing women’s vaginas does not play well barely a month before a presidential election—and, indeed, two days before Mr Trump is due to appear in the second televised debate, in Missouri on October 9th. It is also because his behaviour is likely to go down especially badly with women, who are emerging as the agents of Mr Trump’s increasingly likely defeat.

For much of his campaign, he has been disliked by around 70% of American women—and it was never hard to see why. Mr Trump, who has often boasted of his past philandering, has described women as “dogs” and “pigs”; he suggested his only female rival in the primaries was ugly; and, when questioned about his misogynistic comments during a television debate, he retorted to suggest his interrogator must have been menstruating. Crucially, Mr Trump has consistently lagged Mrs Clinton with women by more than she has lagged him by with men; hence she has maintained a fairly steady lead over him.

It was in particular to fix this problem that Mr Trump hired a new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, in August. A highly regarded Republican pollster, and author of a book entitled “What women want,” Mrs Conway set about trying to make him appear more measured, more compassionate, less offensive.

It seemed to work for a while. He restrained himself; after five policemen were killed by a shooter in Dallas, he issued a statement calling for “strong leadership, love and compassion.” That, along with a couple of mishaps for Mrs Clinton, including pneumonia, helped Mr Trump rise to his erstwhile strong footing.

But it didn’t last, because, as Mr Trump showed in his disastrous debate performance, he is not restrained, but rather a chaotic bully. And this, predictably, has gone down especially badly with women. The latest polls show Mrs Clinton leading Mr Trump with women by 20 points; he leads her with men by twelve.

She also leads with college-educated white women by 30 points—though they are a group Mitt Romney, Mr Trump’s Republican predecessor, won by six points. Well as the demagogic tycoon is doing with angry white men, there are probably not enough of them to cancel out such a catastrophic haemorrhaging of support.

In short, so long as Mrs Clinton can maintain her lead with women, she will probably become the first woman president. And Mr Trump’s and Mr Bush’s double-act has surely made that likelier. Who would have thought that Mr Bush, a presenter of NBC’s “Today” news show, could end up playing a more influential role in this election than his cousin Jeb, whom many Republicans had expected to win it?

Immediately recognising how much trouble he was in, Mr Trump, who almost never apologises, swiftly did so—but weakly and cattishly, of course: “This was locker-room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course—not even close. I apologise if anyone was offended.”

Yet the condemnation of Mr Trump within his party has been fierce. He was due to appear in Wisconsin on October 8th at his first joint campaign event with Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives. Mr Ryan told him to stay away, then issued an admonition that sounded almost terminal.

“I am sickened by what I heard today. Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified. I hope Mr Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.”

Mr Ryan’s counterpart in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader there, also chipped in with uncharacteristically harsh criticism: “As the father of three daughters, I strongly believe that Trump needs to apologise directly to women and girls everywhere, and take full responsibility for the utter lack of respect for women shown in his comments on the tape.”

Two Republicans in Congress, Jason Chaffetz, a member of the House of Representatives from Utah, and Barbara Cornstock, a representative from Virginia, promptly announced they were withdrawing their endorsement of Mr Trump. So did the Republican governor of Utah, Gary Herbert, and more such second thoughts are likely to follow.

Indeed, it is fairly hard to see how upstanding Republican lawmakers could do otherwise after this latest embarrassment. They may also start to find their lost scruples a little easier to locate—now that Mr Trump no longer looks like a winner, but rather the opposite.