It happens every election season. Why should we even be surprised? It must be written on Page One of the Republican dirty pool manual:
-Find out your opponent's advantages over your candidate, and then attack their strengths as if they were weaknesses.
Season after season. Running a war hero? The Republicans will attack him as a coward. The guy they run can be an actual coward, who pulled strings to get out of the draft, and then went AWOL from his country club division. But the Republicans will get the attacks out against your actual war hero on day one, so when you respond all the voters hear is “he said, she said.”
Are you running one of the most disciplined, on-target men in politics against a human weathervane? The attack against your man's vacillation will come out on day one. Running a modest, competent man against a braggart and a bully? Your man's huge ego will be on page one. Are you running a man who looks more like today's America than any other candidate? The attack claiming he's from somewhere else will never die.
And if you're running one of the sleaziest, most secretive, most dishonest candidates ever put up as a presidential candidate against a person who has been subject to the highest levels of scrutiny for decades, which despite exhaustive efforts has repeatedly proven her to be above reproach and superlatively honest, what is going to be your first angle of attack?
You will attack her as secretive. You will paint her as corrupt. You will allege that, despite all the decades of scrutiny, there is some horrible secret just out of reach.
Of course you will. Because that is what you do. That is Page One in the manual of Republican dirty pool: attack your opponent for your candidate's actual weakness.
Let's be real: Donald Trump could never get any other government job. He could never pass the background check for a security clearance. He couldn't get hired as a government contractor even. The minimum level of scrutiny required for any public position is not one he could pass, because he has mob ties and is being propped up by Russian money. He has long-standing family connections with terrorist groups like the KKK, and he has been bankrupt so many times that almost nobody will lend money to him anymore. He has been the target of thousands of lawsuits for fraud. He is under Federal investigation for fraud. He would be manifestly vulnerable to blackmail.
And none of that is going to move the dial an inch, because the first thing they did was poison the public space with spurious attacks on Clinton's secrecy, lies, untrustworthiness, etc. Anything you can say about those matters will just go in the "he said, she said" file.
We have to learn a lesson. We have to go after not the actual weakness, but the perceived strength. It's time to let loose the dogs after Trump the Failure.
Hillary Clinton has been an incredible success at everything she has done. She got into the best colleges. She graduated at the top of her class – she was the first student ever to give a commencement speech at Wellesley, and she got a standing ovation for it, smashing success. She was one of only three women to work on the Nixon impeachment inquiry – groundbreaking success! She was the first female partner ever at the Rose Law Firm – glass ceiling-breaking success! She was incredibly successful as both a Senator and as Secretary of State, and many of the foreign policy coups we’ve scored over the past decade have her fingerprints on them. Even the Clinton Foundation stands out as a successful charity for its low overhead and high percentage of donations that actually end up going for charity.
Everything she has touched has been successful, and why? Because she is a great manager and a great leader.
Her opponent, on the other hand, has been a dismal failure in everything he has tried to do. He has managed to get his name on a lot of things, but he doesn't own them. In point of fact, he is practically broke. The hundreds of millions his dad gave him have been frittered away in incompetent management and failed fraudulent endeavors like the defunct Trump U. You guys want the best steak money can buy? Sorry, failed. You guys want to fly on a Trump shuttle? Sorry, bankrupt, gone. You want to visit the Trump Dubai? Sorry, failure again. You guys want to gamble at Trump's casino? The only thing he ever owned on that was the name. And that name is worth less every day, as bookings at anything with a Trump on it go down month by month. The Trump Foundation? Under Federal investigation. At least you can drown your sorrows in some Trump vodka, right? No, that failed too. The man is such a failure he can't sell vodka to a Russian.
The name Trump should be synonymous with failure, because that is what it has meant for everything it got slapped on.
Here's what the Clinton campaign should be saying:
For the moment, forget about politics. It doesn't matter what your goals are if the person you put in charge of reaching them is truly, deeply incompetent. We might disagree on a lot, left and right, but one thing we can all agree on is that we don't want this nation bankrupted like a Trump business and sold off for pennies on the dollar. We might like the image of a shiny name up in lights, but the reality is that name being hauled off in a rusty pickup for scrap metal.
Trump is a failure. Everything he has tried to run has been a failure, except his campaign for the Republican nomination. This is his last shot, to try to extend his failure, his putrefying touch, to the whole country. Don't let him take this country down with him. Don't bail him out of the deep pit of his failure with your hard-earned money.
Vote for success. Vote Clinton. She will run this country with the same competence, efficiency, and success with which she has run everything else.
Trump=Failure. Clinton=Success.
