Can Hillary Clinton succeed where Marco Rubio failed?
Although Clinton has long professed to be eager for a general election matchup with the presumptive Republican nominee, most of her campaign’s attacks on Trump have been lame.
The Clinton camp’s “Dangerous Donald” nickname has been ridiculed even by Democrats and anti-Trump conservatives. Her appeals to “thoughtful Republicans” merely remind voters that Trump doesn’t march in lockstep with his party’s unpopular leadership.
It is reminiscent of the “Saturday Night Live” skit about the Republican presidential debates in which the actor portraying Jeb Bush asks, “Wolf, may I take a desperate swing at Donald now?” Granted permission, he says, “Well, guess what? You can’t insult your way to the presidency.” Later he adds, “Trump? I mean, this guy’s the chaos candidate, am I right?”
Worse, it is reminiscent of the real Jeb Bush campaign.
But in recent days, Clinton has begun to hit Trump where it just may hurt. She has seized on Mitt Romney’s criticism of Trump as a fraud and a phony. She has capitalized on his contentious Tuesday press conference about donations to veterans, arguing he wouldn’t have given the money if it weren’t for media scrutiny. And she is hitting the billionaire hard on Trump University.
Rubio started to raise Trump University toward the end of his campaign, clearly rattling Trump in a debate. But he cluttered that message with a series of off-color jokes that Trump himself described as a bad Don Rickles impression and for which the Florida senator ultimately apologized.
Why do the veteran donations and Trump University potentially matter while other flaps have not? Trump is winning in part because he has convinced many working-class Americans and veterans that he understands and cares about their financial problems while the political establishment in both parties does not.
Low Energy Jeb, Little Marco and Crooked Hillary not only support the bad trade deals and one-sided immigration policy ripping off American workers. They are too weak and corrupt to stand up for people like you. This is the core of Trump’s argument.
Trump University in particular concerns promises the billionaire and those speaking for him made to use his powers as a businessman to better the lives of ordinary people. Not only did he not deliver on his promises, complainants alleged, but he ripped them off.
Few hardcore Trump supporters’ minds will be changed. But Trump’s path to 270 in the Electoral College and expanding upon Romney’s 2012 map runs through the industrial Midwest. Outside of the caucuses and John Kasich’s Ohio, he ran well there in the Republican primaries. Many of these voters supported Bernie Sanders on the Democrat side.
Trump has done well speaking to their economic anxieties. Sanders has too, but he is pushing Clinton to oppose fracking and pursue other environmental policies much of Middle America views as a threat to their livelihoods. This is a region where Trump can potentially grow his base without much improving his support among minorities and millennials.
“So far, the crass New York billionaire has played brilliantly on middle-American resentments, many of them well-founded,” writes Chapman University’s Joel Kotkin. “He promises repeatedly to ‘cut a better deal’ for them.”
The point of Clinton’s attacks is to undermine the idea that Trump cares about ordinary people and undercut public confidence in his ability or willingness to cut that better deal. Instead she wants voters to see themselves as veterans he was slow to cut checks for and Trump University students he potentially cheated through get-rich-quick schemes.
It won’t work if it is intermixed with dumb jokes and halfhearted attempts to get down to Trump’s level. Neither will it work if her own scandals distract from the details. Plus Trump will counterpunch against Heartless Hillary much harder than Sanders ever did.
So far, Trump has defined his opponents before they could define him. Now he enters the general election more of a known commodity himself with a more diverse electorate. Clinton can’t let him bond with a new set of workers or she’ll meet the same fate 16 Republican presidential candidates did before her.
