Trump "Swift Boats" Hillary

Swift Boat:  To attack an opponent at their strong point, saying they are a fraud.   It works.   Ask President John Kerry.

Trump is swift boating Hillary right now, attacking her on three points of her presumed strength and his presumed vulnerability.  The tone of the attack on Kerry in 2004 was one of anger and outrage:  how dare you claim to have courage under enemy fire.  Your medals were bogus, you fraud!   

That is what Trump is doing:  outrage in the face of alleged fraud.  The burden of proof is reversed.   Now Hillary is on the defensive, attempting to re-assert and prove what she assumed was obvious and undeniable.

He is saying she is the anti-woman candidate.  

He is saying that she doesn't understand foreign policy.    

He is saying she is the candidate with troubling business connections.

Hillary is anti-woman

Hillary is anti-Women.   Trump accuses Hillary of being an enabler of the worst sex abuse in the history of American politics ever, and that she was a co-conspirator.   This is now a part of the Trump rally talk--which is a new addition.  In September, November, and February when I heard him speak he did not bring up this theme.  At that point he focused on his GOP rivals.   Now it is Hillary.

 "Hillary was an enabler and she treated these women horribly.  Just remember this.  And some of those women were destroyed not by him but by the way Hillary Clinton treated them after everything went down."

Click here: Trump is in full fury at the outrage

Trump has changed the subject from a point of his vulnerability, his multiple disparaging comments about women, his divorces and marriages, a lifetime of New York high life around beautiful women in pageants and as decorations at parties.  These were things significant enough that they were the first question out of the mouth of Megyn Kelley in the first debate.        Now Trump and Kelly have reconciled.  She simpers and smiles at him. See for yourself in this Daily Show satire of the interview   Now he is the accuser.

Hillary does not understand foreign policy.   Objectively, as a First Lady who acted sometimes like a co-president and was criticized for it, as a US Senator, and as Secretary of State Hillary has an extraordinary resume for leadership in foreign policy.   Trump is swift boating her.   This morning he is implying that Hillary is somehow culpable for the downed flight from Paris to Egypt or that her policies enabled it or at the least that she does not understand it.    

Plane goes down.  Trump attacks Clinton

Trump echos and cites Sanders in two specifics.  She voted for the Iraq war!  Trump says that he opposed that war, early but privately.  Hillary advocated deposing Gaddafi, which Trump says was the wrong move. 

But most of the time Trump is simply general and in his charges.   Hillary was a "total disaster."   Our policy is "weak" or "completely incompetent".    Trump asserts we should do more in some places but was idiotic for having done more in others.  We should have bombed more except where America was crazy to bomb.  Trump does not articulate a consistent positive policy but he is very clear that things are wrong and that Hillary is at fault.

The burden of proof has shifted.  Trump, whose foreign policy background and experience is equivalent or lower than any regular reader of a national newspaper, is in the strong position--accuser.  He speaks from his gut, which puts him in good sync with a broad voter constituency who want things clear, and simple: America wins, America respected, others back down in fear.  It is not careful or sophisticated but it is simple and persuasive to many.

Hillary is put in the position of defending the balances and tradeoffs and compromises of foreign policy, defending a flawed and inconsistent ally, Saudi Arabia; our need to keep Turkey in NATO while recognizing their interest in maintaining sovereignty over the Kurdish region: gaining leverage with Iran over their nuclear buildup, etc.   

Actual foreign policy is complicated but Trump makes it simple: if you elect me I will be competent and do things right, while Hillary is a disaster.  Enough said.   This is not enough for TV pundits and editorial boards, but their authority is no longer widely respected.  It is enough for most American voters.  It rings true.  We should be strong, feared, and respected.  What's to argue?

Hillary is corrupted by Wall Street and special interests.   Trump has just appointed a former Goldman Sachs partner to help him raise a billion dollars for a SuperPAC.  But this is not the issue because Hillary is being swift boated.  It is not about Trump, it is about Hillary and she is corrupt because she has received speech money and campaign money from Goldman Sachs people.  

He has named her "Crooked Hillary", and is deeply part of the political party funding apparatus.  The swift boat technique is not to argue details of the point: it is to assert the point with anger and outrage.  "Crooked Hillary"  assumes the point under debate.   Sanders  supporters, both liberal and independent, are primed to assume that political parties and  fundraising is corrupt.  Both Democrats and Republicans do it.   Trump is now doing it.  Trump is accusing Hillary for being corrupt for doing it.   Republicans blame Hillary for being corrupted by it, and under Sanders' withering attacks so do many Democrats and Independents.   She is the one on trial.

Trump is not all wrong.   Swift boat attacks only work if there is some truth in the accusation, and Trump has located and highlighted that vulnerability.   Hillary did, in fact, reluctantly stand by her man back in 1999.  Hillary voted for the Iraq war.   Hillary is a practitioner in Democratic party politics which means raising money from rich people.  So the charges have some merit.   

If this were a balancing decision Trump's misogyny far outweighs Hillary's, but it is not.  Hillary is the accused.   If Trump's careless comments on foreign policy were considered by foreign policy experts and practitioners--and they have been--then Trump is appallingly uninformed and careless, but they are not the judge; the public is, and they hear Trump clearly.  Trump has been the shady wheeler-dealer and influence buyer, but Hillary is the one given the name "Crooked", by Trump. 

Efforts to swift boat Trump in return have not worked so far.   The Trump University enterprise has lawsuits and victims, but as yet has not proven a vulnerability.  Vulnerable students have not yet made the case Trump is a pure villain.    Nor have the casino bankruptcies hurt Trump badly, and if there are pitiful victims who were destroyed by Trump walked away from debts he owed contractors and employees they have not yet surfaced as accusers.  No women have come forward claiming shocking abuse.  Credible foreign policy experts (retired generals, perhaps) have not yet come forward saying Trump is a disaster.    

Trump tries to make Clinton a beta-male

Oddly enough, the piece of swift boating against Trump that got traction in the public and by Trump himself is trivial on its face but which clearly bothered Trump.  It was the assertion by Marco Rubio that Trump is a sexual fraud, that he has small hands and by implication a small penis.

Trump actually rose to that bait!  

Trump defended himself in an area of his presumed primacy, that he is a successful ladies man.  Trump's identity involves being the alpha male, so Trump took Rubio's mocking as something important to justify.  Alpha males are highly sexed and can command trophy consorts.

 Notice, too, that even as Trump was arguing that Bill was alpha in the past Trump is busy asserting that Bill Clinton has now been made beta by Hillary.  This is very telling positioning effort by Trump.   There is room for only one alpha male.  And, worse, Hillary is guilty of the greatest crime of womanhood: diminishing her man, wanting him close where she can stifle his alpha.  Trump's women (young, beautiful trophies) glorify and validate Trump, and prove his dominance.   Hillary is a emasculating bitch, or at least she had better be, Trump is implying.   Lose-lose for Hillary.

A key element of Trump's brand is that he is the dominant guy.   He is the bully.  Yesterday he said, 

Fighting for dominance 

"We're not going to be the stupid country anymore. . . . We're a big, big sloppy bully that gets punched in the face and goes down.  You ever see a bully get knocked out?   It's a terrible thing, unless you're doing the punching.   Then it's OK."

Trump's point of vulnerability, if someone can raise it, is whether Trump is indeed the biggest bully. Trump cares about protecting that part of the brand.

Ideal for Hillary would be for a woman to come forward and say that Trump has a small penis and is bad in the sack--that she had a relationship with him but cut him off because he was unsatisfactory that way.   Trump would not let that stand.