During the 90 minutes of tonight’s first Presidential debate, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton demonstrated who they are at their respective cores. Trump, despite a fairly strong first 30 minutes, could not or would not moderate his style as the debate went on. Clinton was not particularly inspiring, but she absolutely knew her stuff and was ready for her opponent at every turn.

In the beginning, there was Donald Trump. And he talked about bad trade deals, and losing American jobs. And it was good. Trump was passionate, almost articulate and willing to go after Clinton (and her husband) for supporting free trade deals for years. He actually aimed his comments at states that he must have to win the presidency — Ohio, New Hampshire and the like. Hillary was fine, but it was a general recitation of talking points (like much of her performance) on an issue that most of us don’t really understand.The Donald was also able, if only for a moment, to almost put Hillary on the defensive with his repeated referrals to her decades in public life and government service. In a year where two-thirds of the electorate believes the country is headed in the wrong direction, it was, and should have been a very effective attack. Clinton has been around a long, long time and built up a long record that can and should have been a feast for Trump to pounce on.

But it was not to be. As the debate moved into its second and third stanzas, Hillary Clinton began placing land mines in Donald Trump’s path; and he stepped on every one of them. How much money he makes, being sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination, stop and frisk, race relations, whether he supported the invasion of Iraq, Hillary was able to keep Trump defending himself rather than pivoting to an issue that mattered. Here is why preparation for these things matters: The Clinton campaign knows, as we all do at this point, that Trump simply cannot allow an attack to go by him.

When Trump did try and attack Hillary, she was prepared for it. Trump speaking of many of his rallies around the country said to Clinton, “That’s okay, you were at home.” Clinton didn’t miss a beat. “You know what else I did? I prepared to be president.” Boom. She had a few other one-liners I’ve never seen in a Presidential debate. She called Trump crazy, to his face, on the stage, in front of 100 million people. After Trump’s condescending and unhelpful answer on stop-and-frisk, Clinton basically called him a racist. As the Trump Train picked up speed and the incoherence increased, Clinton dead-panned, “Just listen to what you heard.”

For the Donald Trump campaign, this debate was a case-study in an unprepared candidate and missed opportunities. Hillary Clinton has plenty of deeds and misdeeds from which Trump could have chosen to disqualify her as the next President. Between the actions of she and her husband during the 1990s — on NAFTA or mandatory minimums. On a very real and credible hit about President Barack Obama’s lack of leadership in Iraq and the Middle East for most of the last eight years. When Lester Holt asked about cybersecurity, Hillary Clinton left herself wide open to a clean shot on the ultimate hypocrisy that her answer was. Instead, Trump lashed out like a rabid porcupine — pissed off and running around shooting quills in every direction.

As the debate came mercifully to its close, Trump couldn’t complete a complete thought on national security. Either he didn’t know the answer and couldn’t talk his way into one or he’d shut down mentally after more than hour under the lights. To top it off, after blowing spit bubbles for 20 minutes, he claimed the mantle of better temperament to be president than Hillary Clinton. Really, he did that. Perhaps the perfect coup de grace to Trump’s night was the non-sequitur attack (again) on Rosie O’Donnell. What planet are we living on?

Fans of Donald Trump will begin singing the siren song of blaming the mainstream media and Lester Holt for running a rigged game. Holt let the game play out for the most part. The Twittersphere was already abuzz that Holt hadn’t challenged Hillary. Maybe that’s true, but Trump didn’t either, really. For Team Clinton, they’ll be drinking until dawn in Brooklyn. During debate prep, you might hope to land one, two, maybe even three set-piece shots on your opponent. They ran the table tonight.

Hillary Clinton did what she needed to do this evening with high expectations. All Donald Trump had to do tonight to exceed the extremely low expectations we all set for him was not set himself on fire. It took him about 45 minutes to dump the jerry can over his own head and light the match. Going to be a long six weeks.