Trump's a sore loser, Florida is hard to win, and other things we learned this week

Trump is too insecure to deal with defeat

Plenty of candidates have dusted themselves off after disappointing debate performances and dug deep so they can do better next time. Barack Obama, after his first showing against Mitt Romney in 2012, immediately springs to mind.

Then there is Donald Trump, who has responded to Monday's drubbing – in which he was unable to keep up on complex topics, easily goaded into saying enormously unhelpful things (including seemingly boasting about not paying taxes and rooting for a housing crisis), and unable to hit his opponent on most of her vulnerabilities – by acting like a schoolyard bully who can't process that a kid he thought was weaker beat him up in front of everyone.

The Republican nominee has lashed out at fellow Republicans who suggest he did poorly. He has cited self-selecting online polls, stacked by his supporters, to try to refute more scientific ones that said he lost. Most damagingly, and bizarrely, he has been unable to get past Hillary Clinton's invocation of his sexist disparagement of a former beauty queen; more than 72 hours later, he was up in the middle of the night tweeting vicious and seemingly untrue things about the woman in question.

None of this augurs well for Mr. Trump's willingness to prepare more diligently for the next two debates. It raises the question of how, notwithstanding his pledge on Monday to accept the election's result, he will respond if he loses. And it leads to all sorts of alarming thoughts about how he will respond to setbacks if he actually winds up in the White House.

Clinton is at least decent in one aspect of campaigning

The Democratic nominee has spent much of the year admitting that campaigning is not her strength. It's not false modesty: At rallying a crowd, seeming genuine in a medium that requires performance, appealing to people on their own level, she is sub-par.

But one thing she does know how to do is prepare for a confrontational situation, keep her cool, and emerge unscathed while opponents look diminished. And lucky for her, that can be enough during the campaign events that draw by far the biggest audiences.

She wasn't outstanding during Monday's debate and we'll never know how she would have done against a stronger rival. But under the circumstances, she did what she needed to do.

It will be interesting to see how she fares during the second debate on Oct. 9, in a town hall format that could highlight her struggle connecting with live audiences. But it's a safe bet she'll at least come in having done all her homework.

Trump's policy people think policy is boring

Most policy advisers pride themselves on being able to walk reporters through the weeds. Mr. Trump's most senior one evidently does not fit that bill.

In a radio interview on Monday, Sam Clovis said that it is better to "provide outlook and constructs for policy" than give "specific details," because the latter would bore readers to tears and get the campaign "murdered in the press."

In fairness, he was cutting to the heart of much of Mr. Trump's success. Speaking in plain, easily digestible terms – concise declarations about end results, rather than the means to get there – has worked on the stump. And it facilitated Mr. Trump's few good minutes in the debate, when he seemed to be speaking plainly on trade policy while Ms. Clinton hedged.

But it helps explain why members of Mr. Trump's short-lived Washington policy shop essentially gave up. And it serves as reminder of how little we know about what a Trump presidency would actually entail.

The Sunshine State is a struggle

As usual, Florida – the biggest of the battleground states – is becoming more and more of a focal point as election day approaches. And on Wednesday, Politico reported that Florida Democrats are in "panic mode" over Ms. Clinton's failure to inspire minority voters who are essential to her winning it.

The next day it was Republicans doing the panicking, courtesy of a Newsweek report that a company controlled by Mr. Trump secretly violated the U.S. trade embargo by doing business in Cuba during Fidel Castro's presidency.

That revelation may not seem like a big deal to everyone, now that U.S.-Cuba relations are being normalized. But it's liable to seem like a huge deal among anti-Castro Cuban-Americans – the one Hispanic group Mr. Trump is relying upon for votes.

Mr. Trump needs Florida more than Ms. Clinton – there is almost no chance he can win without its 29 electoral votes, whereas for her it just represents the surest way of blocking his path to 270. But both candidates are expected to invest an enormous amount of effort there in the weeks ahead, as they try to overcome their own liabilities.

Rudy Giuliani is a bad influence

Still dining out on whatever goodwill remained from his handling of 9/11's aftermath, Rudolph Giuliani was cited as someone who might bring a little professionalism to the Trump camp when he joined it last winter. And maybe the former New York mayor has been useful in building bridges with the Republican establishment, or helping convince the candidate to occasionally read off a Teleprompter.

But it seems as though Mr. Giuliani – whose hysterical speech at the Republican National Convention did not exactly scream "voice of reason" – also reinforces Mr. Trump's worst instincts.

Following Monday's debate, Mr. Giuliani attacked moderator Lester Holt more aggressively than did Mr. Trump, and said he thought Mr. Trump should skip the next two debates if he won't be treated nicer. But that was just peevish; his indication of what he thought the "too gentlemanly" Mr. Trump should have said about his opponent was much worse.

"After being married to Bill Clinton for 20 years, if you didn't know the moment Monica Lewinsky said he violated her that she was telling the truth, then you're too stupid to be president," Mr. Giuliani.

Mr. Giuliani was trying to make a point about Ms. Clinton's feminist credentials being undercut by her complicity in the demonization of a young intern who slept with her boss. Reasonable people can debate that argument, but it would be a bad idea for Mr. Trump, whose dubious history with women includes very public extramarital activities of his own, to take it up.

And it would be a really bad idea if he did so in the extraordinarily offensive way "America's Mayor" – who himself has some experience publicly humiliating spouses – seems to think he should.

Follow Adam Radwanski on Twitter: @aradwanski

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