Yes, her supporters can attempt to out Trump Trump if they want. Clinton should try to be above the fray.
Hillary is a mediocre candidate: she’s not a natural politician like Obama or her husband. But ironically, she’s the perfect foil for Trump. Trump has a problem with women, the only GOP competitor who got under his skin was Carly Fiorina. Trump plays mostly inane dominance games, but that doesn’t work as well with a female target. There are a number of ways that Clinton can remind the audience what the Presidency entails and I suspect that she can put across such a workmanlike argument.
Hillary’s goal is to win: she is running a safe campaign. I like that. My personal goal is a landslide, where Trump gets 35% of the vote. Because I believe his demagogic bigotry to be toxic.
Trump’s racism is only a notch more explicit than what GOP has been doing since 1964. His anti-Semitism really has no USA precedence.
Were there anti-Semitic politicians in the past in the USA? Sure: Theodore Bilbo, Hamilton Fish, etc. But not at presidential level.
Hofstadter tried to make the case that Bryan’s populism was anti-Semitic but that’s generally been rejected by historians.
Nixon was privately anti-Semitic but never publicly so.
So: it might be a slight distinction but the public embrace of the anti-Semitic right by a major party presidential campaign is new. [/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT] Hijack!: [INDENT][INDENT] Memo to libertarians & leftists: Trump is not anti-Empire. He just wants to turn an empire into an explicit protection racket. [/INDENT][/INDENT]
Regarding the OP, David Brooks ended his latest column with a decent zinger. Emphasis added: [INDENT][INDENT] This is less a party than a personality cult. Law and order is a strange theme for a candidate who radiates conflict and disorder. Some rich children are careless that way; they break things and other people have to clean up the mess.[/INDENT][/INDENT]
ETA:
Trump lacks message discipline. He’s easy to distract. You don’t need the Presidential nominee to troll him: basically anyone can.
ETA2: Factual litany (which won’t work) and I haven’t read: Reddit - Dive into anything
I agree that she shouldn’t even consider out-zingering Trump. I hope she learned her lesson with that “delete your account” mistake (I couldn’t remember what it was, but all I had to do was Google Hillary twitter Trump fail to find it).
But she’s already got the policy background to do nothing but study Tump’s businesses like an MBA depended on it. Have her staff put together complete dossiers of what worked and didn’t work, then apply that substantive insight to the right questions. She can rip him down by clearly bringing his faults as a business person to the fore, irritate him and put him on the defensive (per the original comment), and may even come across as business savvy herself.
Consider her comparing his building a wall with specifics of projects that went way overbudget and into bankruptcy with details. Or explaining why his ideas to restructure the debt would backfire based on several real-world examples of the damage he specifically did. Again, not zingers and not overplaying the hand, but since a lot of his candidacy is based on his business record it’s ripe for taking apart and ripe for application to a range of real-world issues.
The real attacks, IMO, will be leaks and surrogate statements. If they’ve successfully dug up dirt in Trump’s decades of flim-flammery, that won’t cost money to leak, and neither will surrogate attacks that get under his skin.
They hardly need to dig it up, theres many many investigative articles on Trump going back to the 80s. Theres so many that deciding which one to use is the hard part, Trump U? His connection to dodgy multi level marketing company ACN? Allegations he raped an adolescent on Jeffrey Epsteins sex island?
None of it seems to matter to Trumps supporters. But I am glad to see that Clinton is doing stuff like this now:
She tweeted this, but thats not enough she needs a bunch of personal stories like this, and to be getting them 10s of millions of views.
I’d assume shaming him into a corner could cause him to either explode or become so petulant that it makes people realize he isn’t qualified to be president.
Narcissists do not respond well to public humiliation. With news of the multiple rapes Trump is accused of committing, that may cause him to become unhinged.
It is beginning. Here is Kristof’s column from today’s Times.
His father set the policy, no doubt. Fred Trump was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1927 (presumably not for protesting the Klan) and Woody Guthrie, who lived in a Trump property, called him a racist. So they can attack Trump’s dad also. Trump can hardly call it unfair.
There is more about Trump wanting to fire the only black accountant at a casino and how they managers hid black workers when Trump came to call. Trump could probably get over it by saying he has matured, but I don’t expect that to happen.
Obama clobbered McCain in 2008 partially by using data. In 2012 the Republicans tried to do a data-driven campaign but failed. Trump says he doesn’t believe in this. I’m sure some of the money is being used for data analysis. They also are probably buying up TV time now when it is cheap. In 2012 Romney delayed and found he was forced to get bad slots that cost more. You think Trump is organized enough to do this right? If so, I have a slightly used Michelle Obama speech to sell you.
The Palin debate is an excellent example of how it works when one of the debaters is ignorant. And Clinton has an advantage, since Biden had to go easy on poor widdle Sarah. Trump is supposed to be a big tough man. If he starts crying unfair, he’ll look like a pussy.
Has anyone ever tried, on camera, to flatter Trump so much that -to a normal viewer- it becomes super awkward? And then show that Trump sees nothing wrong, and, in fact, even tries to top the praise?
Also, lets not forget, that actually Obama is a master troll. In his performance at the White House Correspondents dinner in 2012 you can see the fuming on Trumps face as he gets roasted. Obama has been hanging back, but I think he can provoke Trump into a tantrum as well.
