1. I don’t want to do any Trumpish bragging, but I called how the Fiorina-Trump confrontation was going to go all the way back in August.

2. Even Trump-haters seem to be careful to argue that Trump’s weak performance last night might not have really hurt him that much. They seem to think that Trump has already endured so many firestorms, that his stubborn supporters will stick with him. Some will stick with him, but I think that Trump’s support is softer than it appears.

I was listening to the top local conservative radio show, and many of the callers were down on Trump, and you could hear them reaching for other candidates (Fiorina and Rubio seemed to be the favorites.) I think this gets at a key part of Trump’s appeal. Many of Trump’s supporters disagreed with him on most issues. Many of his supporters knew that he was a bad guy (or rather that he portrayed a bad guy on television.) They accepted that he was a monster, but he was the invincible monster that we needed.

The terms of this support made Trump seemingly invulnerable. His supporters were unfazed by revelations of his liberalism and cronyism. They didn’t care when he said horrible things. He was their invincible champion.

But nobody is invincible. Romney lost debates. Obama has lost debates. Reagan lost his first debate with Mondale. Abe Lincoln probably had some bad days in the Illinois legislature. You can survive a debate loss if people basically agree with you, and think you are a good guy. It is much tougher to keep your support if the aura of invincibility is your chief asset. The Donald got beat up by a woman yesterday, and the only time Walker made an impression was when he slapped Trump around.Trump had an implicit deal with his supporters. His supporters would suspend their concerns about his character, policy preferences, issue knowledge. Trump’s end of the bargain was that he would not show weakness. Trump showed weakness yesterday.

2. The headlines belong to Fiorina (and rightly so), but I think that Kasich had a very good night. He wasn’t spectacular, but his presentation as a responsible, conservative (sort of), pragmatic governor is going to appeal to a certain kind of upper-middle-class Republican voter. He avoided showing any snobbish contempt for conservatives, and his I-love-Reagan stuff sounded sincere. I think many voters who would otherwise have supported Bush and Walker are going to be taking a close look at Kasich. I don’t think Kasich will rocket up as fast as Fiorina, but I think he has a better chance at the nomination.

3. While claiming to oppose the Iran deal, Kasich was actually making Obama’s arguments in favor of the deal. Kasich’s opponents should be making the argument against the weakness of the verification requirements of the deal as an argument for scrapping it right away. This could be a weakness for Kasich – if his opponents are willing to put in the work to make a slightly more detailed case than the one they made yesterday.

4. Rubio has better tactical public relations instincts than anyone else in the race (on the GOP side), and Republican voters want to love him. My guess is that if Rubio had stuck to his 2010 immigration positions, he would be leading the polls and there would not have been an opening for Trump.

The more distance we get, the more important Rubio’s flip-flop appears. He was the most prominent of the Tea Party insurgent senators elected in 2010. His surrender to the establishment on the issue that most divides the party elites from the grassroots poisoned the well. It seemed to turn all of electoral politics into a joke. Trump took advantage of the resulting bitterness and alienation.