Over the last six weeks Donald Trump has made that classic pivot from primary candidate to Presidential nominee.  Some may say he took too long after the convention to make that adjustment. The fact he essentially spotted Hilary a ten point lead that stuck until the end of August gives some credo to that claim.

But he did make the transition and frankly as reserved about the big “D” as I have been, I am impressed with his move to ‘Presidential’. Trump has outlined far more details leading into this first debate than Hillary has on specific policy and he has been extremely on point, on message.

Meanwhile Hillary continues to be plagued, and rightfully so, on her health issues and of course the endless email scandals. Our Soviet style media continues to stay firmly in the tank for America’s first major party female Presidential candidate. It is a rather disgusting display of nation’s complete lack of objective journalism. What if Bernstein and Woodward had ignored the evidence against Nixon in 1973? The evidence then was a fraction of what they have on Mrs. Clinton. Nixon would have finished his second term and Jimmy Carter may have never sat behind that coveted chair in the oval office. But Woodward and Bernstein did not sit on their hands. Where is today’s version of those two guys? They are out there, they just only go after Republicans apparently.

So the debate… Well I knew about a third of the way through that Trump was in a little trouble. Donald was nursing a cold and had the sniffles which definitely wasn’t helping him. But he spent way too much time on defense defending issues he did not need to defend and he took Hillary’s bait a number of times. Donald Trump had several golden opportunities to crush Hillary and failed to take the initiative. There is no way that anyone scores this as a win for Donald Trump, but Trump didn’t really lose any ground either.

Trump can take Hillary to the woodshed if he can just control the urge to interrupt and if he can avoid taking Hillary’s bait. He wasted too much time chasing Hillary’s accusations and wasting valuable time that he could have been roasting Clinton over a fire.

He killed it on the trade deals but failed miserably on the taxes issue. Hillary claimed that trickle down economics failed and led to the 2009 recession. That is a huge line of BS. Trickle down economics was during Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s and it led to the largest sustained period of growth in US history. It was so good that President Bill Clinton didn’t touch Reagan’s tax policies. Bill Clinton skated on Reagan’s policy successes. Donald Trump knows this, my God he built his empire on the great economy provided by Ronald Reagan’s policies. trump just got his ass kicked on taxes and that surprised me.

On the security section, Donald Trump should have beat her senseless but instead that was more of tie with a leaning in favor of Hillary. She was composed throughout most of the 90 minutes and controlled the debate effectively. She however didn’t win by nearly as large a margin as she could have given her experience in these one on one debates. Any candidate that can take control of a debate the way Hillary did literally, the puppet master over her opponent, should have come out with the election in her pocket, but somehow it was just a win not really a death-blow.

I felt the moderator’s questions clearly favored Hillary. He gave her softballs and hit Trump hard. But Trump has only himself to blame for a lackluster effort as opportunities for killing blows were there and he just missed them. It was like Donald had a wide open receiver dancing around alone in the end zone but he he dumped it off short.

If Trump takes this debate as a learning experience, Hillary will be in trouble at the next debate. If Trump stays the same Hillary will destroy him next time.