Donald Trump is holding a winning hand, but he is discarding his best cards.
I have made the point repeatedly that Donald Trump is far more formidable a candidate than my progressive readers understand. He could win.
Trump has a popular, winning message. A great many people believe the country is on the wrong course and that change of some kind is needed. Hillary Clinton represents continuity; Trump represents shaking things up. Democrats had an 8 year turn and there is some natural sentiment to try something new.
In addition, Hillary Clinton says there is a lot of xenophobia, misogyny and racism in the American psyche and Donald Trump is very adept at denying it exists and then appealing to that very xenophobia, misogyny, and racism. A lot of white males are frustrated with the way things are and Trump has helped them locate the source of their problem: bad trade deals and politically correct bending over backwards to help everyone except people like themselves.
And Trump is a master at manipulating the media. Even news outlets that actively and overtly dislike him focus story after story on him. MSNBC is all-Trump-all-the-time. So is the Huffington Post.
So what is the problem? Trump is a flawed messenger. He cannot seem to resist a fight, even a wrong fight.
Trump's message is that he can fix the problems of the world--a powerful message. Hillary's message is that Trump is psychologically unfit to be president--a pretty good message. Whenever Trump is talking about fixing the economy or making the average middle class frustrated person better off, or safer from bad guys, he is winning. Whenever the subject is temperament and mental health Hillary is winning.
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| Trump: "Unstable Hillary Clinton" |
Yesterday, in New Hampshire, Trump himself brought up mental health and fitness for the office--Hillary's home turf and her best subject to put at issue. "She took a short circuit in the brain. She's got problems," he said. He called her "unstable", "unbalanced", "totally unhinged", "incompetent", "melting-down", and "brainwashed." Trump just put up an ad in which Hillary mis-speaks a couple of times asking, "Is Robot Hillary Melting Down?". Watch it here: 30 Second Trump Ad
Trump is raising this issue in tweets, in the Windham, NH speech, and on the air. I consider this suicidal message discipline, but Trump could not resist a fight. Hillary has problems and inadequacies as a candidate, but competence and self control are not them. Indeed, as I observed up close in Portland, Oregon and in multiple occasions in New Hampshire, Hillary presents as the straight laced, over-prepared, A-student valedictorian, the person you would trust to be the designated driver. Hillary may not be fun and certainly is not free-spirited, but she is careful and self disciplined. Trump is attempting to sell an idea that is implausible on its face, and, worse, it continues to put at issue Trump's own vulnerability.
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| Newt: Trump's behavior is "very self destructive" |
Trump's problem of lack of message discipline is no secret. Trump's friends tell him, in public and frantically, to stay on message. Trump's failure to do this is news. Indeed, the headline after a recent Trump speech was not the subject of the speech but the fact that Trump actually rose to an occasion and acted responsibly on his own behalf and stayed on message.
But the fact that Trump does not do it, implies that he simply cannot do it. This isn't just a problem, it is problem-squared, because he cannot help himself. He must fight, even the wrong fight. Fighting the wrong fight (i.e. the war with Iraq) was supposed to the Trump's excellent issue. Trump claims he opposed the war and Hillary voted for it, and Libya. Trump's supposed brand is that he knows when to fight and when not to, yet here he is fighting with Hillary over self discipline after having just fought with the Khan family over the loyalty and Americanism of a self-sacrificing soldier and having ambiguously--was he joking?--over a crying baby.
Trump's campaign may consider this a "swift boat" style attack. Criticize the opponent at a point of strength. The idea could be to assert that both the candidates are crazy, so there is nothing to choose from between the two candidates on the issue of crazy, so the focus can return to winning issues for Trump. But the problem with this is that Trump is so vulnerable on the issue of un-presidential lack of self-discipline that Trump is doomed to compare unfavorably with Hillary if the issue is mental self discipline.
Objectively and apparently in both candidates' speaking style Hillary is controlled (and boring in comparison) and Trump is extemporaneous (and frankly entertaining.) No amount of salesmanship will change that.
Trump is revealing an important vulnerability: he cannot resist a stupid fight. It hurts his brand and helps Hillary in comparison.
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Off Message? Trump Frames Viral Media Messaging of “Unhinged Hillary”
The Trump campaign was ready in the war room to launch its official new video campaign ad, initially to his 22 million social media followers, entitled, “Is Robot Hillary Melting Down?” (You can view it everywhere across the social media spectrum, but here’s a Youtube links. http://goo.gl/gxycq1). With messaging timed to his rallies in a 48 hour news cycle, Trump pulled the media trigger by somberly stating in an Obama-like statesman’s voice that Clinton “may be unbalanced ***, unhinged”. The video showcases electrical arches from her mouth uttering “I may have short circuited”.
We’d expect frenetic coverage of “Hillary unhinged” by conservative media, but the test for messaging effectiveness is crossover. The New York Times published “A ‘Short-Circuit’ on F.B.I. Inquiry? Hillary Clinton Seeks to Explain” (NYT, http://goo.gl/6tObn3). Dovetaling in Trump campaign’s messaging that Hillary is afraid of news conferences, the NYT quoted RNC chair Reince Priebus: “It’s not hard to see why she hasn’t held a press conference in 244 days. Hillary Clinton is once again proving herself incapable of telling the truth.” NBC went with “Trump Calls Clinton 'Close to Unhinged,' Assures He's Pro-Baby” (NBCNews, http://goo.gl/avnTdE); Politico decided on “Trump portrays Clinton as mentally unfit for the White House” (http://goo.gl/N8iIko); and Yahoo News posted “Trump's New Attack against Clinton Uses 'Short-Circuited' Line Against Her”, embedding the “Robot Hillary” video. (https://goo.gl/QjRCkY). The Washington Post posted a news article—not a pundit piece—titled “Trump, in Series of Scathing Personal Attacks, Questions Clinton’s Mental Health” (WP, https://goo.gl/PSNP9V), and with advertising force you can’t buy, embedded a link to the Trump campaign’s “Robot Hillary Unhinged” video
“Hillary unhinged” has thus become legitimate debate. CNN’s “Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton is Unbalanced, Unhinged” (http://goo.gl/iy3k6q), deepened the context by reporting that to support his Hillary’s unhinged theme, “Trump quoted a book written by a Secret Service agent”, a reference to Gary Byrne’s controversial book, “Crises of Character”, recounting Hillary’s White House screaming, throwing things, and paranoid ranting about a “vast right wing conspiracy” stalking her. See, “Hillary Clinton 'Threw Bible at Secret Service Agent's Head'”, (Telegraph, June 21, 2016, http://goo.gl/XiePfs).
“Hillary unhinged” is part of an orchestrated Republican campaign message, started in 2015 by Thomas Kuiper’s book, “Hillary Unhinged: In Her Own Words”, (see Goodreads, http://goo.gl/f08AiQ), marketed innocuously at first as “a raw and humorous collection of quotes” by Clinton. But its not funny anymore. Clinton advisors are taking it seriously, and are trying to deflect it with anti-sexism stereotypes about men calling women crazy, reminding voters about Trump’s sexist references to Megyn Kelly’s menstrual “blood coming out of her whatever”. Thus, NPR’s Cokie Roberts used a CNN roundtable last night to launch the sexism counter-attack, resulting in today’s post, “ Cokie Roberts: Trump Calling Clinton ‘Unhinged’ Is Code For "We Shouldn't Elect A Woman" (Real Clear Politics, http://goo.gl/gxycq1).
I leave it to others to decide if elevating “Hillary unhinged” to the debate mantle of the “first woman president” is a good idea. But I have little doubt that unlike “Trump’s insane”, “Hillary unhinged” is going to have staying power. It is part of the campaign’s developed messaging, and will be no less durable than “Crooked Hillary”, but hopefully not as effective as “Lyin’ Ted”, “Little Marco”, or “Low Energy Jeb”. Never underestimate Trump marketing.
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