Self Inflicted Wounds

"Do it yourself " reputation damage.

The big fear candidate for office have is that an opponent will destroy their reputation.  It is a valid fear.

A candidate can also be hurt by nothing and nobody.  But the biggest risk is the guy in the mirror.  

Made to look silly

I can think of some examples.   Michael Dukakis put on a helmet to ride around in a tank at a tank factory.  Tanks are loud inside and the helmet had the earphones in it, so wearing it was necessary.   He was photographed in it as he smiled at the camera.  He looked sort of silly, or at least the media said he looked silly so that is how the public saw it.   Here is the ad: 30-Second Ad

In hindsight a candidate who was serious to a fault was made to look silly.

No one wants that.   

Donald Trump's insults had the effect of diminishing his opponents: Little Marco, Lying Ted, Low Energy Bush, and now Crooked Hillary.   Donald Trump's birther campaign had its effect.  The media found him irresistible when he went around selling the idea and GOP officeholders found it best to sound like they were privy to some secret, saying that they, themselves, did not know whether to believe the State of Hawaii or other evidence so they considered this an open question and mystery.   Political attacks work.  No one wants to be subject to this, and it is what people fear.

But the worst things that happen to a candidate's reputation are self-inflicted, or inflicted by ones allies.   Voters discount what opponents say about the opponent.  Negative ads apparently work and damage is done, but criticism from an opponent doesn't have credibility as to a candidate's real character the way that ones own words do.

Hillary Clinton's comment on Friday that half of Trump's voters are racist hurts her because it suggests contempt for a large swath of voters.  As I wrote yesterday, it is not about whether there is merit or truth in the assertion that half of Trump's voters have racist inclinations.   The point is that she showed contempt for those people.

It is a huge and ongoing problem for Hillary.  Her campaign posits that the culture has habits of misogyny and racism which are a barrier to the fair and equal treatment of women and minorities, and the perpetrators and beneficiaries of those attitudes are white American men.  The problem is us.  Not surprisingly, the people accused don't like it, and the polls document it.  She loses to Trump approximately 58-30 among white men without a college degree.  This isn't a minority group.  White men are the "regular" American, the group that doesn't need a descriptor, the default American, the man in the Army recruiting poster and the Norman Rockwell painting.

30 Second Ad. Click Here

She is accusing them of racism and Friday she put a number on it: half were deplorable.  It would be fatal for her except that she is running against a person with similar self-destructive habits.

It is equivalent to Trump's comment on Judge Gonzalo Curiel, saying that a person of Mexican extraction was himself "Mexican" and that he couldn't do his job.   That showed contempt for Mexicans, or more broadly Hispanics, or more broadly yet, 2nd generation immigrants.

Shaking and moaning

The strongest ads Clinton runs are the ads which show Trump sounding self important and careless.  One ad, titled "Role Model" shows young children watching Donald Trump on the stump, telling people to "go f---- themselves."

Another self inflicted wound is his apparent mocking of a reporter with a disability.  The five seconds of video of Trump making a face and shaking his head create an indelible image of Trump-the-bully.   Nothing Hillary could say about Trump would be as persuasive as video of Trump himself.

Trump and Hillary Clinton are both under the peril of having dangerous allies: The alt-right websites that support Trump say and write things which Trump must not say.  Trump's hesitancy to disavow David Duke reflects on Trump.

Hillary Clinton has allies at Black Lives Matter who say things she is associated with that are picked up and repeated by Fox News and other conservative media outlets.

  Hillary's Guilt by Association

This trickles down to a local State Senate race I am watching closely.  A regular reader of this biog is an attorney and he called me yesterday to say he had just been polled  on his views on the state Senate race.  The poll asked the normal questions about voting frequency, and the presidential race, and then the actual area of poll interest, the State Senate race.   It asked an odd final question:.  How did he feel about a local nonprofit agency, an alcohol and drug addiction rehabilitation agency.  Was he very favorable, favorable, etc.    

He is the second person to report that poll to me.  One of the candidates, Tonia Moro, is on the board of the organization.   The poll question has created a flurry of questions, rumors, and nervousness within the civic volunteer community.  Is a non-profit organization now going to be a political talking point?  Have they become controversial?  Can board members get into political trouble for being associated with an organization?  Is someone out to get the candidate by attacking the non-profit agency?  Is the non-profit the target?

It isn't fair.  A candidate's motives can be questioned even one has done nothing whatever.   No one knows where the poll came from, or who authorized and paid for it.  But it stands as a document that causes interest.  It's origin may someday be explained, or not.   But campaigns make people suspicious.  There can be collateral damage.  

But people are wondering about motives, which is the problem for candidates.  Neither candidate is in control of their own reputation regarding their own intentions and motives.  Voters are the sovereign.  They have a right to worry and wonder and speculate, based on very little information, and that is what they will inevitably do.  It is possible that neither candidate knows anything about the poll, yet their motives are being talked about based on the apparent existence of a poll.  Someone commissioned it.  Someone is interested in attitudes toward a previously low profile agency.  Who?  Why?  Is someone out to hurt the non-profit agency?  Why would they do that?

Politics is a hard business.   Ones motives can be questioned and assumed to be malevolent and it can come from a multitude of directions.  Why malevolent?  Why not?  Why else would someone spend real money to poll on a question.  That isn't reasonable and fair?  Exactly.   That is my point.

 Ones reputation can be hurt by ones opponent.  The candidate can so something that hurts him or her self by a thoughtless word or act.  One can be hurt by something an ally does, even if one has disavowed the ally.  And one can be hurt by something done by someone completely unknown to you.

Wait!  There's more! "Two Left Eyes" is a podcast prepared by Attorney Thad Guyer and me.  We have a back and forth discussion of the polls and messaging as it relates to Hillary and Trump.   We try to be objective, and our objective assessment is not good for Hillary.  If you listen to podcasts try downloading this to a device then giving us a shot.   In this one, we express our belief that Hillary is in real trouble.  Check it out:  Click Here