"I can take whatever Donald Trump wants to throw at me — I know how to deal with a bully."

"But what I cannot and will not accept is the way this man goes after entire groups of Americans. His comments about the way he feels entitled to grope women are deeply disturbing — but he says it's just 'locker room talk.' When pressed on Sunday night, he doubled down on his excuses and refused to admit he'd done anything wrong."

Says Hillary Clinton in email I received this morning. She's hitting me up for a contribution. (I never contribute to any candidate.) She says "He's shown us again and again how deeply unfit he is to be president. I'm absolutely unwilling to take even the smallest chance that he might win — are you?" That's a good pitch.

Anyway, I disagree with the statement that Trump, at Sunday's debate, "refused to admit he'd done anything wrong." I don't even accept that he said "it's just 'locker room talk.'" He said it "was locker room talk," but not that it was just locker room talk. He also said that he was "not proud of it" and that he "very embarrassed by it" and "I hate it." He also apologized — to his family and to the American people. And he segued to saying ISIS is way worse and, later in the debate, what Bill Clinton did to women was "far worse." To say something else is worse is inherently to say that something is bad. To apologize is to say that what you did was wrong. And to say you are "not proud" of something is to say it was wrong. So even though he began by calling his remark "locker room talk," he didn't stop there.

I know that many of his defenders do stop there. That hurts him. Helps him with hardcore fans, but they're not enough to win, and they drag him down. I think he fought hard for his cause on Sunday night, and he did about as well as he could, but he doesn't have supporters of a kind that could detoxify him. Without middle-of-the-roaders capable of conceiving of embracing him, he's getting smeared up stinkily by those who love him best.

He imagined himself as the star who "can do anything": "They let you do it....  Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything." Now, he's even more famous, and he's toxic — so repellent that Hillary can raise money off the fear of "even the smallest chance that he might win."