SOME men are so slick that even scandal cannot stick. No matter how blithely Donald Trump stampeded over basic political decencies, his enabling supporters were steadfast. Fully embracing his own invincibility, Mr Trump once boasted that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York and not lose any voters.

But after the Washington Post released unseen footage from 2005 of a lecherous Mr Trump explicitly bragging about his genital-grabbing ways, Republicans in Congress, who had previously tolerated his innumerable indecencies, began ditching their standard-bearer en masse.

The denunciations piled on by the hour (see chart 1). At least 50 Republican governors, senators and representatives have publicly rebuked him, with some calling for the embattled nominee to step down. John McCain, the Arizona senator who lost the 2008 presidential election to Barack Obama, also withdrew his endorsement, leaving Bob Dole as the sole past Republican nominee for president who still supports Mr Trump’s candidacy.

Last night’s debate with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, was Mr Trump’s chance to staunch the bleeding. Abandoning the “restraint” of his first debate, a defiant Mr Trump dismissed the lewd video as “locker-room banter” and instead levelled scathing allegations of sexual assault and harassment against Bill Clinton.

Mrs Clinton for her part tried to ignore the antics of her increasingly irritable rival. Even when Mr Trump darkly threatened to jail her if elected, she blandly directed viewers to her website. Throughout the debate, the Republican nominee was consistently more negative than his opponent, a sentiment analysis of their word choice shows (see chart 2). After a veritable festival of mudslinging, the only sunny moment came in the final moments when an audience member asked the candidates to name one thing they respected about the other. Just a flesh wound As a former reality-television star, Mr Trump has the brio and bluster of a master showman. But even for a man who emerged unscathed from his disparaging of Muslims, Mexicans and American prisoners of war, last week’s video—and the open revolt it has provoked in his own party—may prove too much.

The latest Economist/YouGov poll, conducted on the day of the video’s publication, shows Mr Trump trailing Mrs Clinton by six percentage points. A few days after his leaked obscenities, white women, long a mildly Republican-leaning group, are drifting further from the GOP’s nominee. More than 60% of American voters now hold an unfavourable opinion of him (see charts 3 and 4). Defending Mr Trump has never been an easy vocation. Witness the agony of Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the house, who announced today that he would not publicly defend Mr Trump, only to face harsh recriminations from the candidate’s devoted supporters.

Ceaseless self-made scandals have been the name of Mr Trump’s campaign from its inception. In any normal election year, a pitched revolt from one’s own party would sound the death knell—2016 is anything but. Even if not fatal, a chink may have finally appeared in the Trumpian armour. But American politics may only get more toxic for it. A wounded animal is the most dangerous.