Why Trump passed up the kill shots

Judgybitch explains how Donald Trump avoided the minefield of defeating Hillary Clinton in the first presidential debate:

He understands he can’t win a fight with a woman, and certainly not with a woman who signals her femininity as strongly as Clinton did last night. Trump has some massive strikes left in his arsenal. Benghazi. The Clinton Foundation. Her private server. Immigration. The Second Amendment. Death Taxes. Bill’s rape roster. Big strikes. If and when he pulls them, he is risking the paradox of fighting with women. Nailing her to the wall can backfire on him badly, because many people simply cannot stomach seeing a woman take a massive punch from a man. No matter how much she begs for it. No matter how justified. For many people, you simply don’t hit women.

Trump is walking a fine line, and he is taking his cues, it appears, from Hillary, which is the smart thing to do. He stood on the debate stage, and let her walk up to him. He’s the alpha, she’s the supplicant. That was perfect. He is very gently laying on a spanking, but only with her consent, and again, that’s exactly how you do it. I’m not an advocate of spanking children ever, but grown women are another story altogether. She may not know she needs it, but she probably does.

As long as Hillary never seems staggered by Trump’s blows, he can hit her. The minute the public perceives that he is actually hurting her, he loses. She gains the pity vote. Trump looks like a bully. A few whiny feminists insist he is a bully, because anyone who disagrees with a woman is a bully, period. But average people are watching to see if Trump can constrain himself and not lose it and just beat the crap out of her. If Trump were up against Bernie Sanders, it would be no holds barred, but he can’t do that with Hillary.

Trump won, because he spanked Hillary just enough to let her know her place, but not so hard he triggered the latent white knight in undecided viewers.

As irritating as this is, Judgybitch is probably right to advise restraint. While most of the readers here would like to see Trump unleash on Clinton and trigger her into collapsing in convulsions on stage, the fact is any such action might well render him unelectable in the eyes of most women and more than a few men.