Hillary Clinton gave a stem-winder of a speech today in Washington trying to put Donald Trump on the defensive.

Mrs. Clinton must be stunned by the turnaround in the polls, especially in states like Florida and Ohio, which she needs to win.

Therefore the Clinton campaign had to make a statement and chose the personal route.

The main theme of her talk was that Trump is personally unfit to be president:

HILLARY CLINTON: “Donald Trump looks at President Obama after eight years as our president, he still doesn't see him as an American.  Think of how dangerous that is.  Imagine a person in the Oval Office who traffics in conspiracy theories and refuses to let them go, no matter what the facts are.  Imagine someone who distorts the truth to fit a very narrow view of the world.  Imagine a president who sees someone who doesn't look like him and doesn't agree with him and thinks that person must not be a real American.  ((EDIT))  In addition to the president, Donald Trump looks at a distinguished federal judge born in Indiana and he sees a Mexican, not an American.  He looks at a Gold Star family and sees them as Muslims, not patriotic Americans.  He looks at women and decides how our looks rate on a scale of one to ten.”

Now it is clear that Secretary Clinton is playing the invective card.  There was little policy in her speech today.

It was all about re-demonizing Trump as an unstable man who is hostile to a variety of Americans.

Will that tactic work?

Probably not because those who believe as Mrs. Clinton does are already in her camp.

By this time the 10% of Americans who are still persuadable have heard all the anti-Trump stuff before.

Now the big reason Hillary Clinton went after trump in a personal way is to refocus negative media attention on him, thereby taking it off her.

Today in the L.A. Times daily tracking poll, which bounces around a lot, Trump is now up by six after two weeks of press scrutiny on Hillary.

And the more extensive national polling from Fox News and others has Trump either beating or very close to Hillary Clinton among likely voters.

That has shocked the Democratic Party because Mr. Trump is an unusual candidate, to say the least, and has major baggage, as any big-time businessman would.

But Secretary Clinton's resume problems are far more extensive than Donald Trump's because of the FBI investigation and others.

That is holding Mrs. Clinton back.

For his part, Trump seems to be listening to his new team, which has imposed discipline on the campaign.

Today in Washington some generals endorsed Trump, concentrating on national security and the military.

In that exposition Trump spoke for less than 30 seconds dealing with the birther issue.

TRUMP: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period.  Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.  Thank you.”

Ironically, just before Trump said that, President Obama actually helped him out, unwittingly:

OBAMA: “We’ve got other business to attend to. I was pretty confident where I was born. I think people were as well.  My hope would be that the presidential election reflects more serious issues than that.”

So Trump caught a break today with Mr. Obama assisting in getting the birther issue off the table.

Going forward there are 10 days until the first debate.

Both candidates will be doing serious prep work for their presentations on Monday September 26th at Hofstra University on Long Island.

The whole world will be watching this debate and there is no coming back if you screw up.

Big-time pressure.

So it would behoove -- word of the day, behoove -- both of the candidates to avoid controversy before the debate.

Personal attacks at this point will most likely hurt the attacker.

It was almost pathetic today to watch the ravings on cable news by anti-Trump zealots.  Did you just find out about the birther issue?   If Trump is conceding, why the vitriol?

Again, hatred never plays well with the folks.

What fair-minded Americans really want are solutions to vexing problems.

They want specifics, they want clarity, they want consistency.

Whoever delivers that best from here on will win the White House.

And that's the memo.