Did Donald Trump deconstruct Hillary Clinton with marginal voters?

One way to look at Monday's night presidential debate: Both candidates were speaking, time and again, to marginal voters. Specifically, to young Americans, and for a considerable time to young black Americans in particular, people who may or may not choose to vote, may choose to vote for a third- or fourth-party candidate or may (Democrats hope) turn out to vote in large numbers for Hillary Clinton. Clinton's strategy of replicating the 2012 Obama 51 percent majority requires high turnout among groups that over history have had a low propensity to vote — blacks, Hispanics, young people. Trump's strategy, given his unpopularity with young voters, is to deter them from voting for Clinton, especially considering that the black and Hispanic percentages among young people eligible to vote is higher than those percentages among older people.

"She's been doing this for 30 years," Trump said near the beginning of the debate, while talking about trade. The number's not quite accurate: Clinton has been a national figure for only — only! — 25 years, since Bill Clinton began running for president in 1991, but she was also, as speakers at the Democratic National Convention mentioned over and over, a public policymaker starting at least when Bill Clinton was first elected governor in 1978, 38 years ago. "And Hillary, I'd just ask you this," Trump said some minutes later. "You've been doing this for 30 years." There's no clear antecedent for "this" — Trump was riffing about energy, debt, trade — but the point was made again. He even lapsed into absurdity — "You've been fighting ISIS your entire adult life" — which is impossible because the Islamic State didn't exist for most of that time. Much later in the debate, he chimed in on ISIS. "So she talks about taking them out. She's been doing it a long time." And near the end of the debate, he chimed in, "Hillary's has experience, it's bad experience."

Trump also went after her on flip-flopping, which is to say, sincerity. He brazenly predicted that she would push the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement she's currently and then recalled, accurately, "You called it the gold standard of trade deals." Young people, it seems safe to say, value sincerity and dislike candidates who switch positions for political reasons.

Trump missed a chance to skewer Clinton for her secret email server in response to a question on cybersecurity, but earlier, when moderator Lester Holt (otherwise mum on the emails) asked her to respond to Trump's mention of them, he said, "That was more than a mistake. That was done purposely. OK?" At which point he repeated the previous two sentences. "When you have your staff taking the Fifth Amendment, taking the Fifth so they're not prosecuted, when you have the man that set up the illegal server taking the Fifth, I think it's disgraceful."

So on three critical characteristics Trump tried to get across the message that Clinton is antique, expedient and dishonest — qualities that young people presumably abhor. He underlined the concerns that have young people in some target state polls casting more than 20 percent of their votes for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein or no candidate rather than the Democratic nominee.