It was really too easy. The Hillary Clinton campaign wanted to bait Trump and his followers into doing something that would illustrate its talking point about his abusive attitude toward women. So, at the very end of the Monday debate, Clinton made a reference to a woman who claimed to have been wronged by the billionaire. And so Alicia Machado made her entrance in American political history and enabled us to see everything that is wrong with Donald Trump’s campaign.

Trump took the bait and attacked Machado. Worse than that, his supporters have spent the days since Monday night attacking the former Miss Universe’s character, mocking her weight gain, and generally behaving in exactly the manner that the Clinton machine hoped they would. In 2012, Democrats were falsely asserting that the gentlemanly Mitt Romney and the entire Republican Party were waging a “war on women.” In 2016, they don’t have to even say the words. Trump’s acolytes are so busy waging total war on any woman who dares to cross the Donald it is unnecessary for Democrats to do more than stand aside and to watch.

It doesn’t matter whether Machado’s past has a few skeletons in it or if she was obliged to stay slim while wearing the contest’s crown. What matters is that the Trumpians are attacking a woman who was insulted by Trump. You don’t have to be a Clinton supporter to understand that having Trump surrogates like Newt Gingrich mock a woman about her weight isn’t just absurd; it’s political malpractice.

Just as stupid is the belief of Trump and his sycophants that the smart response to the Clinton attacks on his record with women is to talk about Bill Clinton’s misconduct and his wife’s willingness to stand by her man and attack women who accused him of bad behavior. They appear to be insensible to the basic fact that mentions of Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers make Trump look like a hypocritical bully and Hillary a dignified victim. What matters is that this discussion turns the election into a referendum on Trump’s character and temperament and that guarantees that he will be defeated.

Let’s concede that those already in the GOP candidate’s camp aren’t going to abandon him because of any of this. The same is true of the Democratic base’s reactions to proof of Clinton’s corruption and lying. Nothing has demonstrated the power of blind partisanship in American politics than the ability of the two most unpopular presidential candidates in memory to hold onto their core voters. But every time the Trumpkins open their mouths or take to Twitter or Facebook to disparage female critics of their idol, they make it less likely that he can be competitive among one of the few remaining groups of persuadable voters.

Trump gained ground when he stayed on the script Kellyanne Conway gave him about issues, and the focus was on Clinton’s record rather than his conduct. Yet all it took was one barb to get him to blow that strategy up and start feeding the Democrats more fodder for their attack ads. Any week that Trump spends making voters wonder whether someone with such a thin skin and hair-trigger temper should be given access to the nuclear codes is one that brings her seven days closer to returning to the White House.