Hillary: "Smug Know it All" or "Confident and Prepared"???

How did Hillary strike you?

I had an email exchange with a prominent local businessman, someone socially and intellectually sophisticated, someone comfortable with diversity and women in positions of power.

Smug?

"You missed that Hillary came across as smug.  She was laughing at Trump and had a know-it-all attitude.   I bet the polls go up for Trump.  The media just hates him."  

I did not see it that way.   I thought Hillary looked calm and confident, like she knew how to handle a complicated situation.  

I know that feeling from the inside.  It was how I felt going into a meeting with a client, back in my working days as a Financial Advisor, when I knew I was thoroughly prepared, when I knew I was the experienced professional in the room, and I absolutely knew how to handle a tough situation.  It was a great feeling of confidence and empowerment.  Those meetings nearly always went well.   I assumed I appeared, to the client, calm, confident, experienced, and professional, which I assumed was a big part of why the meeting went well.  They believed my professionalism.

Know it all?

But, obviously, my impression of the debate was not universal.  Some people read Hillary's manner negatively.   This helps expose a significant fault line in this election.   Trump and Clinton are selling two very different things.

The website www.breitbart.com has become the semi-official media organ for the Trump campaign and more broadly Trump-ism and the whole Trump movement.   Their lead article this morning starts like this:

Clarifying the campaign contrast

"In a series of three campaign events post debate Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump rolled out a new campaign theme highlighting his populist nationalism and contrasting that with Hillary Clinton's elitist globalism."

Populist nationalism vs. elitist globalism.   Breitbart is signaling a kind of "swift boat" style attack, an attack on an opponent's point of greatest strength, turning the strength into a weakness.  There are two ways to look at Hillary's professionalism:  either it is a sign of strength and competence--as I perceived it--or it is a sign of unflattering and dislikable elitism--as some people perceive it and can be made to perceive it more acutely if the point is driven home in attacks.

The "nationalism" portion of the Trump attack is a clear contrast with Hillary.   Trump's warm up act at rallies is one of several mothers who have lost children to crime committed by an immigrant here illegally.  Trump's nationalism is we vs. they, inside the border vs. outside the border.   The mothers say Hillary is responsible for murdering their child.   Tough stuff.  Trump uses crimes by the undocumented as the weapon.

Trump's "populism" ties Hillary to economic elites (including most certainly the prominent man who wrote me to say Hillary struck him as "smug.") and a weapon available to Trump is to use Hillary's professionalism against her.   Trump accuses her of being in charge for thirty years.  Trump accuses her of having rich friends.  Trump accuses her of being what she most certainly is: elite, by way of education, socialization, and manner.   Hillary attempts to claim her mother's poverty and her father's small business background, but the result of a lifetime of preparation for the presidency is that Hillary has become, undeniably, professionally elite in the very tough business of politics.

Hillary considers that a strength.  Obama praised her by saying she was the most qualified person to run for the office in history.   

Trump calls it a weakness, a disqualifier.  And if people interpret Hillary Clinton as "smug"--and especially people who are undeniably well into the economic and social 1% see her as "smug", rather than "prepared and professional", then it shows this attack has more traction  and believability than I had understood.

Note to Hillary supporters:   I have suggested before that this election is far more favorable to Trump than today's polls suggest.  Take no comfort in some 2 percent supposed edge.  Indeed, I expect Trump to win.   One of Trump's assets is that Sanders revealed the anti-elitism divide in the Democratic Party, and some votes that Hillary's supporters logically think she should get on the left are lost to her.  Hillary is the enemy, period, more liberal than Trump but no better than Trump.The margin of loss will be the votes she loses to Johnson and Stein.  

Another of Trump's assets is that Hillary's great strength, her competence and professionalism, has a weakness built into it.  Some people find it smug.   

President Trump.

Click Here for the podcast. Will Trump fall into the trap Hillary set?

The podcast is a spirited conversation between me and Thad Guyer, an attorney who represents whistleblowing employees, with an international practice.   He watches the election from home base in Saigon.   This week we discuss Trump's rise in the polls, and Hillary's having messed up her message on crime.   We conclude by talking about the debate and what would be the best strategy for Hillary and for Trump.   What would Trump do to blow it, and the election?  My own view is for him to look like a bull in a china shop.