Donald Trump calling Hillary Clinton a ‘nasty woman’ dragged the political debate into the nursery

Yet despite it all, the third debate may have offered voters the clearest choice between the opposing visions of the candidates

Well that cleared things up bigly. Hillary Clinton is wrong about everything. “Wrong, wrong, wrong,” her prickly opponent, Donald Trump, said repeatedly, leaning as menacingly into the microphone on stage as he allegedly used to do with women he wanted to humiliate.

Wrong, what we have heard from the dozen women who have publicly asserted that they have been victims of Mr Trump’s unwanted approaches since that ‘Access Hollywood’ tape was released in which he spoke about grabbing womens’ genitals.

“Those stories have been largely debunked,” said the always defiant one. "Those people, I don’t know those people”. Actually, “I believe it was her campaign that did it.” That is to say Ms Clinton put them up to saying those things. If we are meant to believe that we were also meant to believe another of his claims, that moments of violence at his rallies, notably in Chicago last spring, was the same. Her campaign did it.

I have to interrupt myself here for this: “Such a nasty woman”. Just like that. Ms Clinton was detailing what she thinks should happen to President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms, when so-respectful Mr Trump almost spat it. Obamacare is increasingly a mess. But Mr Trump had a better way to debate the point.

Anyway. Let’s talk Russia, because considering what Vladimir Putin may or not be trying to do to influence the US election is less distasteful than, well, “such a nasty woman". And it provided a nice John Le Carre patina to the affair.

Is Mr Putin really responsible for ordering the hacking of emails pertaining to the US election? Ms Clinton said so. And she showed moral outrage, really for the first time on the stage in Nevada, if you don’t count not shaking hands with Mr Trump at the very start as an expression of moral outrage. (And again at its end.)

Seventeen US intelligence agencies have concluded that it is indeed Russia that has been ransacking the email accounts of the Democratic Party and of Ms Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, she asserted. That leaves no doubt, does it? (Except for those of us suspicious that even a country as big as this one can’t really have seventeen intelligence agencies). Moreover, Mr Trump has been “encouraging them”, she said, calling him a puppet.

This is when things started to get slightly exhausting after a relatively composed, even sleepy, first half an hour. Nope, “you’re the puppet,” he said in another menace-the-microphone moment. “You’re the puppet”. Who was meant to be pulling her strings, we never learned. As for those agencies and their findings, he told us not to believe a word they were saying.

It really is so confusing. Pity the American voter. We are even in a muddle over whether or not he should have won the Emmy those three times the Emmy was denied his Apprentice franchise he had with NBC. He apparently said when he lost those years that the Emmy’s were rigged. He didn’t deny it. (Watch out microphone, he’s coming again.) “I should have gotten it,” Mr Sulkypants says under his breath.

We will get back to the rigging business in a moment. Because that is where Trump removes the orange and replaces it with the noir.

But first let’s argue that this third debate did actually provide some clarity, certainly more than the last one that gave the lie to all that stirring propoganda about American being a beacon of democracy for the world. For some of the time on Wednesday night, it was possible to set the personalities of the candidates to one side and clearly see how far apart they are on vital issues. Mostly, it should be said, because Ms Clinton came to the stage totally in command of what she wants for the country.

Yes, she is committed to defending the abortion laws of the nation as they stand and prevent the slow erosion of a women’s right to choose. (He predicted that Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision of 1973 that set the current standards would be overturned, if he is president.) Yes, she wants to give illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. Yes, she wants tougher guns laws and no, Donald, she does not want to overturn the second amendment.

Hers was a vision of a progressive future, protecting progress on gay equality and healthcare for all, against the assaults of the right. And it was a message of inclusion. His was one of fear. Thanks to Ms Clinton and Mr Obama, Syrians “were pouring” into the United States. And Russia? They have 1,800 nuclear warheads ready to go. Fear and loathing.

Indeed his opposing outlook of dystopia demanding a tough Trump to straighten it all out was etched more clearly than ever before. He will build the wall on the Mexican border and deport illegals. What did he call them? Oh yes, “bad hombres”.

Pause again. (It’s hard to get “nasty woman” out of your head.) For sure, the vision he was presenting also had some coherence, in that those Americans already determined to vote for him will like and recognise it. Conservatives will celebrate his pitch on abortion and guns. Mr Trump was perhaps most effective on trade and economy, evoking the broken-down factories he has seen in the country and lives that have been ruined as jobs have gone overseas.

He would “rip up” the Nafta trade agreement - the word rip was also deployed gruesomely in the abortion segment of the night - unless he can get it renegotiated. His words were a reminder of how far American trade policy has fallen into peril. Even without him being elected, it has received body wounds. Ms Clinton vowed more convincingly than ever that she won’t sign the new Trans-Pacific Partnership. (Mr Obama, you’d better get it through before you leave.)

But Mr Trump, really? Nasty woman? The best he had apparently taken from the leaked emails written by Mr Podesta is that he allegedly doesn’t care for her very much. “John Pedesta said some horrible things about you and boy he was right”. Imagine an Oval Office address after a failed nuclear deal with, say, Mr Putin. “His armpits smelled, awful tailoring, nasty Vlad.”

Ms Clinton, by contrast, warmed up slowly and deliberately and then let loose, still in composed fashion (though there was a small I’m-enjoying-myself smile too), with a lethal fusillade of reasons why Mr Trump shouldn’t be president, starting, of course, with the women and their stories of his sordid behaviour.

But she hardly stopped there. His comments about allowing other countries to gain nuclear weapons were “terrifying”, so were his attacks on…so many people. The Khan Gold Star family with the dead son who spoke at the Democratic Convention, John McCain the POW in Vietman, who, in his mind shouldn’t have been captured, the judge who shouldn’t be presiding over his Trump University lawsuit case because of his Mexican heritage (actually born in Indiana).

But let's end with the contention of Mr Trump that this election - like those Emmy nights - is rigged against him. Chris Wallace the Fox News moderator, gave him the chance to state clearly that he will accept the results of the election on 8 November if he is defeated like a man. You know what he said already, I am sure. “I will look at it at the time”, he said. Because he is not a man. Which should mean he isn’t as scary as he sometimes seems.

Except Trump is scary if he does what we think he might do when America awakes to the results on 9 November and he finds he has lost and then cries foul. America the great Democracy, and Pennsylvania Avenue will be clogged for days - maybe months - with Trump forces trying to stop Ms Clinton from entering the gates of the White House. Which she will have won, fairly.