The Angle

The Angle: Woo, OK! Edition

Slate’s daily newsletter on Monday night’s debate.

Hillary Clinton greets supporters during a debate watch party on Monday in Westbury, New York.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In control: Michelle Goldberg watched Hillary Clinton’s performance last night with no small amount of relief. Clinton stayed icy cool and steady, even as some of her supporters freaked out.

Making it up: Donald Trump is usually pretty good at improvisation, but last night’s performance showed that this strength will only carry him so far, Franklin Foer writes. “Without a plan for controlling the debate,” Foer argues, “Trump failed to get to some of his core issues”—like immigration, which didn’t surface until the very end of the night.

Thief-in-chief: Trump believes that the canny businessman will naturally avoid paying up wherever possible; last night, in discussions about his relationship with vendors and the IRS, that belief came out into the open, Will Saletan writes.

ISIS, founded when? Trump’s continually thin grasp of foreign policy was on display last night in conversations about ISIS, Putin, nuclear weapons, and Iran. “If anyone still thinks Donald Trump should be president after Monday night’s debate, I’d like to know the reasons,” Fred Kaplan writes.

“Miss Housekeeping”: Clinton’s reference to Alicia Machado—the former Miss Universe Trump publicly shamed for gaining weight and privately mocked for being Latina—was one of her finest moments, Jeremy Stahl argues. (This morning, Trump doubled down on his critique of Machado.)

#SlatePitch of the day: Hey! Moderator Lester Holt was actually pretty good, Isaac Chotiner would like to propose.

Where she faltered: On the economy, Jordan Weissmann writes. Next time, Clinton needs to steer away from Trump’s attacks on her record on trade, and refocus on this theme: “Donald Trump only cares about people like Donald Trump.”

For fun: Watching the debate with the sound off. All of Trump’s sniffs. And Hillary does a mean Jim Halpert.

And now we wait for the polls,

Rebecca