It’s almost time. I’ve got Bloomberg TV fired up; they promise to do fact checking while the debate goes on.

Lester Holt is on. OK, here’s the candidates.

Achieving Prosperity: Jobs. Let’s go.

Hillary has a granddaughter! Who knew?

So far, so good for Hill. Raise minimum wage, fairer economy, do more to help those struggling to balance family and work. Paid family leave. Debt free college. Wealthy pay fair share; close corporate loopholes.

Trump: Jobs fleeing country, going to Mexico, China, and Trump is sending them. No, he didn’t say that. Thousands of jobs are leaving, etc., says he agrees with Hillary on child care. I think reasonable Trump is trying to show up  here.

Cutting taxes on business to expand business? That hasn’t worked in the states.

Hillary — Donald is proposing trickle down economics. He started his business with 14 million dollars from his father. The more you help wealthy people the better things are? I don’t believe that.

Invest in the middle class! She’s been reading Bernie’s speeches.

Trump says his father gave him only a little money.

Trump’s a one-note speaker — foreign countries stealing jobs.

He’s talking about tariffs. Tax goods coming in.

Oh, she’s taking it to him. He rooted for the housing crisis. He admits it. “That’s called business, by the way.”

Independent experts say that Trump’s plans would cost jobs and start another recession, she says. My plan would grow the economy.

He is interrupting her; she ignores him and keeps talking.

He says Obama doubled the debt. Fact checkers? He’s talking about trickle down economics; giving companies tax incentives to invest. Doesn’t work.

He’s losing it. He’s screaming about NAFTA. He’s interrupting her. Lester needs to reign him in.

Go to HillaryClinton.com for the facts, she said. Your plans would add $5 million to the debt. Raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for investments.

This has to be stopped. He’s on the edge crazy. He wants to cut taxes on the wealthy to help create jobs. Companies are fleeing because taxes are so high. They can’t bring their money into the country because of bureaucratic red tape? He’s not even making sense.

Broad-based inclusive growth is what we need in America, she said, not more benefits for the wealthy. He’s got nothing to say except everything is awful and it’s her fault.

Lester Holt asks him about his tax returns. He says he’ll be happy to release them someday. He says he can’t release the taxes because he’s being audited. Holt says that doesn’t stop him from releasing taxes.

Audience cheers Trump. They shouldn’t have live audiences in these debates.

Clinton — he doesn’t want the American people to know he has paid nothing in federal taxes. “That makes me smart,” he says.

My suspicious is that people who actually like Trump think he is winning. He’s really good at complaining about all the stuff that’s wrong,

She’s going into all the people Trump has stiffed. You’ve taken their labor and taken the work they produced, and you stiffed them.

He’s saying that you can’t blame him for cheating his suppliers because the laws of the U.S. let him do it.

Race — He’s calling for Lawnorder, like Nixon. He’s not addressing racial problems except in terms of disorder.

He’s calling for stop and frisk! Unreal!

She really is doing very well in this debate. I haven’t yet seen her put a foot wrong.

Lester Holt asked Trump about birtherism. He’s now blaming Clinton for birtherism. Now he’s not even making sense.

My guess is that this debate won’t change the trajectory of the polls that much. She’s doing very well; he’s an idiot. But I think the people who are stupid enough to have believed Trump all along are still going to like Trump.

He thinks we should have taken the oil?

He thinks Iran was about to fall? He just makes shit up.

The Donald keeps sniffing. There’s already an Internet rumor that he’s on cocaine.

Lester Holt is insisting that Trump was for the war in Iraq in 2002. He denies it.

I think Clinton has landed some blows during the segment on national security.

China should go into North Korea? And why would China do that?

He saying the Iran deal should have included something about North Korea? WTF?

Trump has been losing it in this last segment. I think several of his rantings in this last segment are going to come back to bite him.

Well, that’s it. In some ways it wasn’t as awful as I had feared. Clinton did very well and hit all the right notes, I think. As the night wore on Trump got more and more defensive and more and more irrational. He didn’t help himself at all, I don’t think, although he probably didn’t drive his core supporters away. She probably helped herself just by demonstrating she doesn’t really have fangs dripping blood, but I don’t think she made any mistakes.