Yesterday was a big day for Democratic e-mails.
I began getting emails within minutes of Donald Trump thinking out loud about policy on abortion when talking with Chris Matthews.
In some way what was most newsworthy was not that Donald Trump said that women who had abortions should have some sort of punishment, and then almost immediately began backtracking. What is interesting is that 9 months into the campaign Trump has been able to get away with Policy-on-the-Fly without it blowing up in his face.
His instincts have been sure footed enough, and sufficiently in touch with the gut response of millions of Americans, that when Chris Matthews asked him if women should be punished for having abortions Donald Trump clearly hadn't thought much about it but went ahead and gave an off the cuff answer.
Donald Trump was obviously thinking out loud and making up policy on the fly.
Trump is new at this. He is coming up with policy live, in real time. He didn't say he wanted to reflect and get good advice. He answered.
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| Washington Post Lead Story |
In some way what was most newsworthy was not that Donald Trump said that women who had abortions should have some sort of punishment, and then almost immediately began backtracking. What is interesting is that 9 months into the campaign Trump has been able to get away with Policy-on-the-Fly without it blowing up in his face.
His instincts have been sure footed enough, and sufficiently in touch with the gut response of millions of Americans, that when Chris Matthews asked him if women should be punished for having abortions Donald Trump clearly hadn't thought much about it but went ahead and gave an off the cuff answer.
Donald Trump was obviously thinking out loud and making up policy on the fly.
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| Matthews: You can't dodge the question. |
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| Policy on the fly |
Trump's off the cuff instincts have usually served him well enough. When he said Mexicans immigrants are criminals, rapists, except maybe a few: lots of people actually liked it. When he said we should ban Muslims from coming to America: turns out to be popular with Republican primary voters.
This time he stepped on a hornet's nest. He appears to be attacking women, not abortion, when he mentioned punishment.
Planned Parenthood was ready, and I got similar letters from Move On and Act Blue.
Trump did something he rarely does: walks something back, as the current phrase goes. He "clarified" his remarks. Doctors get punished, he said, not women. He would leave it to the states.
This is unusual behavior for Trump, an exception to the "double down" tactic that has been part of his brand, where he re-affirms the validity of his first gut instinct.
1 comment:
Peter Sage note: An anonymous comment was placed on the "Fear Motivates" post. I am copying it here and repeating it in the post on Trump's mis-step, because it adds to the discussion. Trump's logic was indeed perfect--at first. He now says he believes something is deeply wrong; abortion is murder. We punish murderers. So the woman should be punished. It made sense in every respect except the GOP formulation for hypocrisy. They recognize that the public opposes abortion but does not actually condemn the woman as a murderer and indeed sees her as a victim. Trump was too new to politics to have learned the little dance steps. Any Republican candidate for State Representative or County Commissioner would have learned this formulation, but Trump is a gifted amateur, not an experienced politician, so he walked into the mess using logic. This anonymous commenter notes the illogic of the political dance.
Here is the comment:
Here's Trump's logic: Let's say you hire a hit man to kill someone. Let's say he did it, but you both got caught. So, you both go to jail. Now, let's say you're a woman wanting an abortion. You hire a doctor to kill your unborn child. He does it. Trump says the doctor should go to jail and the woman who hired him to kill does, too. Makes perfect sense. That was his thinking.
There was probably a million abortions performed last year. They're going to have to build a lot of jails. I think the one word that explains this election is "noise". Lots of it. And none of it means anything.
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