The More She Talks, The More She Loses Them

In case you missed the comments beneath my previous posting, "The Smartest Thing Hillary Clinton Could Do"....

shel emm said...

I completely agree that her focus needs to be on her message and not engage with Donald Trump. In the debates (despite your recommendation, she should attend), she should make it clear that it will not be a debate but a conversation. She should explain how we got to where we are on issues like health care, the economy, foreign policy, and how she intends to go forward.

A good deal changed to the state of the Democratic Party in 2008. The focus before then was reaching the independents and perhaps sympatico Republicans. In 2008 and 2012, the focus was soley about getting out your own vote. Stop convincing others, just get your own people to the polls. It was practically a miracle in this time period that states expanded voting rights by adding additional days and hours for voting. This completely backfired on the Republicans as African Americans proved far more likely to take advantage of early voting than the rest of the population. The most important stumbling block will be in states that have made efforts to curtail voting rights. Republicans have learned from their mistake, and have been in high gear to roll back voting rights.

jim leff said...

She can't win a debate. If she fails to really vigorously return his attacks and just wonks out on policy, she'll not only disgust the un-winnable Trump supporters, but she'll anguish her own supporters, who emotionally want to see someone stand up to Trump. But almost no one but the most died-in-the-wool Clinton supporters want to see her snarl at him. She just can't get away with it.

The smug, oily way she speaks about him almost (almost!) makes him more appealing to a centrist/moderate like me. The best analogy I can make is to the scene in "Bowling for Columbine" where Michael Moore badgers Charlton Heston. I hate Heston's politics on guns, but in that scene Moore made himself so stridently, obnoxiously sanctimonious that I was moved to sympathy for Heston (though certainly not his politics). I think Clinton, and the button she pushes, does the same for many people (especially independents like me). She's absolutely not the person to carry an anti-Trump message. She's the worst possible person for that, and will exhaust and dismay even left-leaning voters who aren't bought-in to Hillary-ism. The more she talks, the more she loses them. That's been demonstrated time and time again.

At this point, blessed with her third (out of three) seemingly un-closeable lead in a national election due to a seemingly weak opponent, she has nowhere to go but down. Not one thing she does, not one word she says can help her in this election. My posting is not a wry "modest proposal". It's quite clearly her best bet.

Consider at least this: Bernie supporters are WAY more likely to vote for Hillary-as-an-abstract-symbol than Hillary-as-an-actual-person. She's not going to "grow" on them. She doesn't "grow" on people. That's just not her forte.