CNN commentators and guest analysts offer their ta

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CNN commentators and guest analysts offer their take on Sunday night's second presidential candidate debate. The opinions expressed in these commentaries are solely those of the authors

CNN's poll found that by 57-34%, a majority of voters watching them thought she got the best of him.

Hmmmmm, CNN and Gergen or HOT, Poem, Cash.......Buellar?..........Buellar?.......

Yeah I'm gonna go with Gergen. LOL!

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/10/opinions/clinto...e-roundup/

David Gergen: Trump blows a big one

Whatever chance Donald Trump still had of capturing the White House largely evaporated Sunday night in his second debate with Hillary Clinton.

Coming off the worst 10 days of any campaign in recent history, Trump desperately needed a win in order to reverse his slide in the polls. He was indeed better than in the first debate and she was not as commanding.

Even so, he blew his opportunity for victory in the first 20 minutes and could never fully recover. CNN's poll found that by 57-34%, a majority of voters watching them thought she got the best of him.

His loss came through a series of bizarre moments. The first was his surprise pre-debate appearance with four female accusers of Bill Clinton. While a case can be made for re-hearing their claims of long ago, the event seemed like a stunt and Trump never made real use of it in the debate.

But more damning still was the way he handled the disgusting video from 11 years ago in which he made vulgar sexual remarks. Trump could possibly have achieved a measure of forgiveness if he had issued a sincere, thoughtful apology about his past as well as some ugly incidents in this campaign. But his apology was limited in scope, seemed slightly dismissive, and went off track when he mixed ISIS into the conversation.

Adding insult to injury, he then went into an incredulous rant about Hillary's deleted emails. It was an entirely legitimate attack until he vowed that if elected, he would "instruct" his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue her and that if he were President today, she would be in jail.

Say what? Those are the way tin-pot dictators act, jailing their political opponents. If he had done a half hour studying up (something that seems beyond him), he would know that under the law, a president can request -- but not order -- the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor and Justice must then make a decision independent from White House control. Trump has a strange tropism toward Richard Nixon, forgetting that such safeguards were put in place precisely because of his abuses of power.

Overall, Trump's debate performance may have given heart to his base supporters, stopping his slide, but did little to bring new voters into the fold, especially women. Voter preferences are now hardening, and more trouble could lie ahead.

In the next few days, we will learn whether the RNC and other GOP stalwarts rally behind him or pull more plugs. We will see, too, whether he and his vice presidential pick, Michael Pence, patch up their differences.

Having told moderator Anderson Cooper that he never actually groped or assaulted any women the way he bragged about in the tape, Trump's apology also leaves him wide open to new women contradicting his claims and to new tapes of scurrilous remarks.

Hillary's team shouldn't yet measure the drapes in the Oval Office, but I bet their transition folks are now working with fresh energy. Victory -- and perhaps a big one -- seems almost within their grasp.

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