So Hillary had a horrible week ending with the FBI releasing the summary notes on her interview. Essentially Hilly either couldn’t recall stuff which was basic to being Secretary of State or she played amazingly dumb. We know that the FBI played along and Comely decided to read a requirement of “intent” into a statute which is all about negligence. Oh well, Hilly dodged the bullet. Again.
Against this we have Trump in Mexico and Trump in a Detroit Black Church. For a xenophobic racist he managed to keep it together pretty well. So well that he was described as looking Presidential in Mexico and got a standing ovation in the Black Church.
Hilly, to be fair, was not entirely idle. She went to many nice parties where people wrote yuge cheques for the pleasure of her company. These will be converted into attack ads and that, and her big data ground game, gives her the election.
Or does it. Trump has, somehow pulled even in the polls. He is beginning to erode Hilly’s Latino support. One or two people of colour seem to be buying his analysis that blacks in America vote Democrat and are entirely screwed for their trouble.
I’ve said before that I think this election is going to be a landslide. Landslides start with a few rocks rolling. Little things like Virginia tightening up and Ohio being in play. But they can also start from really big things. A full on earthquake. Ten days of torrential rain. Anything which lets gravity have its way with the dirt and rocks which make a mountain or a hill.
Is there that shift in America? Hard to tell. But the “demonize Trump” strategy required Trump to do most of the work himself. If he can put together another good week next week and if Hilly remains in her bunker, that strategy is going to begin to fail.
But Hilly’s problems are worse than that. Between the emails, the lies and the Foundation Hillary is viewed with suspicion. Which she could survive if she was as well liked as her husband. She isn’t. She’s running against a man who rubs a certain sort of person very much the wrong way. Unfortunately for her, she rubs another sort of person the wrong way too.
At this point Trump can still lose the election simply by failing to be Presidential. By failing to remember that tone matters as much as content. The debates are looming. Trump’s campaign manager says Trump will be “respectful”. But that should not stop him from talking about Hilly’s lack of campaign performance, her idiocy regarding emails and her record of making some of the worst foreign policy judgments in modern history. And it shouldn’t stop him from asking, aggressively, why three weeks after the existence of her bathroom server was revealed, her tech guy had an “Oh Shit” moment and proceeded to BleachBit her servers and devices.
Most of all, Trump needs to be pushing positive policy out the door. What will he actually do for the people at the Black Church or for the hundreds of Caterpillar workers laid off this week? Can he come up with a way to get corporate America to repatriate 2 trillion dollars in offshore cash.
Right now Hilly is serving up reheated lentils and hoping no one will notice. Trump needs to offer the full meal deal with all the trimmings. He needs to look like a President, think like a President and actually talk about what he, as the President will do. We get the Wall. Great, what else will he do?
Right now I think the momentum has shifted. Just a little. But to win, Trump does not need a few rocks rolling down the slope, he needs the side of the mountain to become part of the valley.
So long as Hillary is hiding Trump has the field to himself. He needs to take full advantage knowing that when Hilly is finally let out of the stable she’ll be disoriented by the sunlight and shocked by the spurs of real questions.
Jay Currie 