FuzzyLumpkins
10-24-2016, 03:22 PM
Instead of threatening to bring forward new Bill Clinton allegations or mimicking Hillary Clinton falling down, Trump seemed to be honing a plausible message for a candidate running as a populist outsider: draining the swamp of Washington, D.C., and advocating for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on Congress.
Here was the Trump that Clinton feared much more than one who went “scorched-earth” — the toned-down, issues-oriented version of the candidate who managed to tighten the race to a dead heat between mid-August and mid-September. Then Trump stepped onto the debate stage at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Wednesday evening — and didn't mention those political reform plans once.
For Clinton’s top aides, that moment encapsulated the dilemma that was Trump: the gap between the campaign-coached nominee who should have shown up and the instinct-reliant one who did. And it was how Clinton managed to dominate the three debates, and, in some ways, the entire election cycle: by baiting her opponent so that he never stopped being Trump.
Now, as the candidates head into the final 15 days of the 2016 presidential election, Clinton’s plan is to keep goading Trump from afar while trying to deliver a positive closing statement to voters that will make her likely election about something more than a simple rejection of Trumpism.
She spent the weekend dismissing Trump — “I don’t even think about responding to him anymore,” she said Saturday, turning her attention to down-ballot races that she hopes will go Democratic and deliver congressional margins that might allow her to see some of her priorities become law. And on Monday, she campaigns with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of Trump’s fiercest tormentors, in New Hampshire — an opportunity to prod the Republican nominee while elevating Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan in her Senate race against incumbent Kelly Ayotte. (Hassan's race is one of six that could ultimately determine control of the Senate, and Ayotte has nose-dived in the polls after saying during a debate that Trump was “absolutely” a role model. She later tried to walk back the comment.)
Throughout the general election campaign, Clinton operatives have expressed anxiety over what might go wrong — and it usually had to do less with Clinton blowing it than with Trump simply shutting up. They have fretted that a Trump Tower staffer might change the password on the boss' Twitter account, or that the Republican nominee would somehow stay on the teleprompter for long enough to stop creating new content for Clinton’s ad makers and opposition research team.
In television commercials and on the debate stage, Clinton’s most effective contrasts and attacks have been to simply repeat Trump’s own words back to him, or to air raw footage of Trump speaking. “Donald Trump has been a victim of self-inflicted wounds throughout this campaign,” said Clinton’s senior strategist, Joel Benenson.
The third debate was where Clinton used her tactics to finish him and move onto this final phase of the race. “A lot of people may have expected her to go into the final debate playing it safe, but she didn't,” said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon. “She used it to make her closing argument and begin putting him away.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/trump-clinton-strategy-election-230208#ixzz4O2IgEPrf
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
Here was the Trump that Clinton feared much more than one who went “scorched-earth” — the toned-down, issues-oriented version of the candidate who managed to tighten the race to a dead heat between mid-August and mid-September. Then Trump stepped onto the debate stage at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Wednesday evening — and didn't mention those political reform plans once.
For Clinton’s top aides, that moment encapsulated the dilemma that was Trump: the gap between the campaign-coached nominee who should have shown up and the instinct-reliant one who did. And it was how Clinton managed to dominate the three debates, and, in some ways, the entire election cycle: by baiting her opponent so that he never stopped being Trump.
Now, as the candidates head into the final 15 days of the 2016 presidential election, Clinton’s plan is to keep goading Trump from afar while trying to deliver a positive closing statement to voters that will make her likely election about something more than a simple rejection of Trumpism.
She spent the weekend dismissing Trump — “I don’t even think about responding to him anymore,” she said Saturday, turning her attention to down-ballot races that she hopes will go Democratic and deliver congressional margins that might allow her to see some of her priorities become law. And on Monday, she campaigns with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of Trump’s fiercest tormentors, in New Hampshire — an opportunity to prod the Republican nominee while elevating Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan in her Senate race against incumbent Kelly Ayotte. (Hassan's race is one of six that could ultimately determine control of the Senate, and Ayotte has nose-dived in the polls after saying during a debate that Trump was “absolutely” a role model. She later tried to walk back the comment.)
Throughout the general election campaign, Clinton operatives have expressed anxiety over what might go wrong — and it usually had to do less with Clinton blowing it than with Trump simply shutting up. They have fretted that a Trump Tower staffer might change the password on the boss' Twitter account, or that the Republican nominee would somehow stay on the teleprompter for long enough to stop creating new content for Clinton’s ad makers and opposition research team.
In television commercials and on the debate stage, Clinton’s most effective contrasts and attacks have been to simply repeat Trump’s own words back to him, or to air raw footage of Trump speaking. “Donald Trump has been a victim of self-inflicted wounds throughout this campaign,” said Clinton’s senior strategist, Joel Benenson.
The third debate was where Clinton used her tactics to finish him and move onto this final phase of the race. “A lot of people may have expected her to go into the final debate playing it safe, but she didn't,” said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon. “She used it to make her closing argument and begin putting him away.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/trump-clinton-strategy-election-230208#ixzz4O2IgEPrf
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook