He had been called a racist, a bigot, and even a fascist, but it is likely that for the Washington elite no epithet attached to Donald Trump was more meaningful than Hillary Clinton calling him incoherent.

"Americans aren't just electing a President in November," Clinton told a crowd of supporters and military personnel in San Diego in early June. "We're choosing our next commander-in-chief—the person we count on to decide questions of war and peace, life and death."

This was Clinton's first direct and sustained attack on Trump, and though Democrats had been preoccupied with the unsavory identity politics of the presumptive Republican nominee, Clinton devoted only a few lines to calling out Trump's habits of "demonizing Muslims" and insulting women, Mexicans, and the disabled. Most of her speech went after Trump's utterances on foreign policy. "Like many across our country and around the world, I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for President cannot do the job," she said. "Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different—they are dangerously incoherent. They're not even really ideas—just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies."