Man with a Plan

Hillary Clinton is giving Trump rope to hang himself.  The meta message is that Trump has a plan to do something.    Watch out, Hillary.

Everyone who has watched TV or movies has seen a version of the scene.   The protagonists are in a grim spot.  One turns to the other and asked if they had a plan to get out of the jam.  A person advances an uncertain, dangerous idea.  The questioner says the plan is crazy, that it will get them killed.   He is asked if he has a better idea.  He doesn't.    So they proceed with the bad plan because at least it is something.   

In comedies and caper movies, the plan works.  (Usually.    Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were in trouble, with lawmen closing in.   What to do?   Butch: "Let's go to Bolivia."  A plan!  Later, Butch and the Sundance step into a hail of bullets.)   

A bad plan is better than no plan.   

Trump has a plan, and so does Hillary.  Her plan is to let Trump self destruct by letting him be seen as an untrustworthy carrier of his message--indeed any message.  She is playing rope a dope.   She is hanging back.   Let Trump make news.  She is near-invisible.

Meanwhile, Trump is out in front, talking, making news.  

Anyone paying any attention at all knows that Trump has an analysis of what is wrong with America and a simple solution.   America is weak and the economy bad, he says, because foreigners are taking advantage of us.   Immigrants, legal and illegal, are taking our jobs here at home and jobs are moving offshore because of bad trade deals.   We are unsafe at home because bad people are here, and come here, and we should protect ourselves better with walls on the borders and internal surveillance of those suspicious people.   Normal, regular, white native born Americans have been saps, letting others take advantage of us, and he will stop that on day one.    That summarizes Trump well enough.

Worse than worthless as a way to sell herself.

I have attended Hillary Clinton speeches once in Oregon and four times in New Hampshire.  She lists what she wants to do:  allow refinancing of student loans at lower costs, make college scholarships available to lower and middle class families, deal with comprehensive immigration reform.  There's lots more.  (I went to her website to refresh my memory.)   

Her problem could be summarized with this screen shot taken directly from her campaign website.   She and her campaign list 112 reasons (and counting) for her to be elected and they perceive this as good and persuasive.   It is worse than persuasive: a list of 112 communicates muddle and lack of purpose.  It communicates "nothing will get done."   It communicates status quo because nothing is super-important.  

It communicates hopelessness in the face of problems.  Even Butch and Sundance, surrounded by lawmen, had a plan: Jump off a high cliff into a deep river, escape, and go to Bolivia to rob banks there.  ("I can't swim."  "It's ok.  The fall will probably kill you.")  Still, it was a plan, and better than nothing, so they jumped.

Experience shows:  In Presidential politics "patriotism" beats "competence"

Hillary's plan for change is incremental improvement, which I rationally understand to be the plausible way that progress in a democracy can sometimes happen.   It is an approach but it is not one that persuades.  

We have seen this before.  Michael Dukakis presented himself back in 1988 as the competent one, the successful practitioner of realistic governance.   That was his point of differentiation.  His opponent, George H. W. Bush, sold a very different idea: His point of differentiation was greater patriotism, American pride, and law and order.  Bush was the candidate with flags everywhere, the one who said the pledge of allegiance defiantly implying Dukakis said it reluctantly or with his fingers crossed.  Bush said it should be required in every school.  And Bush said he was the law and order candidate.  Bush paraded Willie Horton, a black man Dukakis released from prison.  In the debate Dukakis was the one who kept a cool head when asked about his wife being raped and killed; Bush was the one who sounded angry and indignant when American values weren't championed.   Bush came from behind in the polls and won in a landslide.   The Trump-Clinton race has some parallels to the Bush-Dukakis race.

Trump's version of Willie Horton

My Democratic friends keep looking at the Real Clear politics polls and think to themselves that they have a big lead, that everything will work out, that the electorate is different today than it was 20 years ago, that the lead is insurmountable in states with 270 electoral votes.  I think this is a mistake.  Voters want hope and change.  Hillary's gender is not change and competence is not hope.   And besides, her lead in the polls is evaporating.

Trump is catching up

1992: "It's the economy, stupid."   The message on the wall for Bill Clinton back in 1992 was to communicate a message simply and clearly.  Hillary has not communicated a clear brief message of change that even a daily blogger like myself can articulate in a paragraph.   And if I cannot do it then the millions of undecided and swing voters cannot do it.  

Hillary's rope a dope is not enough.  Competence is not enough.  Being not-Trump is not enough.  She needs to tell us what she would do with her competence and the direction she wants to take us.  She has to be clear and passionate and persuasive.  

Even a bad plan is better than no plan.