<p>An hour and 18 minutes into Wednesday night&#8217;s debate, Donald Trump effectively acknowledged his coming defeat.</p> 
<p>&#8220;Lotsa luck, Hillary,&#8221; he said, after a peroration on the humanitarian disaster in Syria and how it is going to consume much of the next president&#8217;s time over the next four years.</p> 
<p>What will she need luck for if she&#8217;s not going to be president?</p> 
<p>Ten minutes earlier, Trump told moderator Chris Wallace he will let us all know on election night <a type="internal">whether he is going to accept the results of the Nov. 8 balloting.</a> It was a shocking and cravenly irresponsible thing to say, the sort of thing that threatens to rend our national fabric, and for that alone, Trump has earned his place in the history of American ignominy.</p> 
<p>But who needs to wait? Consciously or not, the guy ceded the race. Live. On television. On Oct. 19. Lotsa luck indeed.</p> 
<p>Hillary sure did luck out having him as her rival. She can basically take the next three weeks off. But why would she? She can just spend the time taking the most luxurious pre-victory lap in American history.</p> 
<p>Trump will make that phone call on Nov. 8 or he won&#8217;t, and he will or won&#8217;t make that speech in which he tells his supporters, &#8220;I just congratulated Hillary on becoming the next president and we must all come together.&#8221; There&#8217;s no telling.</p> 
<p>This is a test of character, but Trump has a different understanding of such tests of character &#8212; and he might believe he will only pass such a test by doing what he can to continue to be the expression of the American id&#8217;s rage and disappointment.</p> 
<p>His refusal to do so would be the mark of a tragic decline in our polity, as would the refusal of some significant numbers of his supporters to accept the results as well. But this is the story of 2016.</p> 
<p>He refused to do other things as well &#8212; like concede the fact that the Russian government is attempting to interfere with the election. Hillary Clinton said three times that 17 different US military and intelligence agencies have determined that this is so.</p> 
<p>Due to his truly bizarre unwillingness to say anything really negative about Russia&#8217;s dictator, Trump just said no to that &#8212; and handed Hillary her sound bite of the night: &#8220;He&#8217;d rather believe Vladimir Putin than the military and intelligence people who are sworn to protect us.&#8221;</p> 
<p>How was the debate? Well, it was reasonably substantive, largely due to Chris Wallace&#8217;s absolutely perfect work as the moderator. And if you went moment by moment and point by point, you would probably score it reasonably closely.</p> 
<p>Trump zinged her on several patent dishonesties, and as usual, she handled the zinging badly. On the other hand, every time she needed a way out of a corner, she baited him with something &#8212; women he&#8217;d said bad things about, or the money he&#8217;d borrowed from his father &#8212; and he&#8217;d fall for it every time.</p> 
<p>But let&#8217;s face it: Do you really want me to tell you who I think won the exchange on entitlements? I mean, who cares? Does it bother me that Hillary Clinton said she was going to apply a strict left-liberal litmus test to her Supreme Court appointments?</p> 
<p>Yes, it does, but I knew that already, and if you follow the issue, so did you.</p> 
<p>Very few people are voting in this election on matters of conventional governmental policy. A great many will vote for the team they&#8217;ve long been signed up with, while everybody else will be voting against one of these two extremely unattractive and unpopular candidates.</p> 
<p>Trump just told us he knows she has more people voting in her favor and he has more people voting against him. He just told Hillary to measure the drapes.</p> 
<p>He can spend the rest of his life never conceding, and she&#8217;s still going to be the 45th president of the United States.</p>
Donald Trump just ceded the presidency to Hillary Clinton