How Hillary should debate Donald

[rwetmore]

How Hilary should debate Donald

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... trump.html

I have to admit this is a very thoughtful piece; however, I still think Trump is going to fall short of the magic number of 1237 and not get the nomination.

[lennygoran]

however, I still think Trump is going to fall short of the magic number of 1237 and not get the nomination.

They'll be a lull in the voting now until March 22 and after but I see right now Trump seems to be ahead in Arizona, Utah and Wisconsin--sure hope that changes. The NY Times didn't seem to do much predicting but I was disappointed to learn one bit of poll info they gave out for PA on April 26-very disappointing. Regards, Len

[John F]

Franklin and Marshall College is where my father taught English for many years before moving on to Brown University. In those days it was an island of liberal Democrats in a solidly Republican county. That is, the faculty was; the students' politics didn't count as most of them weren't old enough to vote at the time.

The polls at those colleges are puzzling. What are they supposed to tell us? Without a link there's no context.

[lennygoran]

The polls at those colleges are puzzling. What are they supposed to tell us? Without a link there's no context.

Didn't see where or if the NY Times provided any further info but do hope PA will change by April 26. Regards, Len

[rwetmore]

Well, I predict Trump will not make it to 1237. I can only conceive of him getting the nomination if he gets to that number, but I suppose it's still possible even if he doesn't. We'll see.

[lennygoran]

Well, I predict Trump will not make it to 1237. I can only conceive of him getting the nomination if he gets to that number, but I suppose it's still possible even if he doesn't. We'll see.

Well if he doesn't get the nomination there may be riots. Regards, Len

"Donald J. Trump warned of “riots” around the Republican National Convention should he fall slightly short of the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination and the party moves to select another candidate.

The remark from Mr. Trump, in an interview on CNN’s “New Day,” came less than 12 hours after he won the Republican primaries in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina and extended his delegate lead to roughly 200 over his closest competitor, Senator Ted Cruz.

The front-runner, who has alternated between saying he wants to unite the party and savaging his rivals and critics, predicted a “natural healing process” in the party once the primaries end and the Republican convention takes place in Cleveland beginning on July 18.

“I think we’ll win before getting to the convention, but I can tell you, if we didn’t and if we’re 20 votes short or if we’re 100 short and we’re at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, because we’re way ahead of everybody, I don’t think you can say that we don’t get it automatically,” Mr. Trump said. “I think it would be — I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots. I’m representing a tremendous, many, many millions of people.”

He added:” If you disenfranchise those people and you say, well I’m sorry but you’re 100 votes short, even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I believe that. I wouldn’t lead it but I think bad things would happen.” "

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-d ... onvention/

[rwetmore]

I highly doubt there would be riots if he fails to get the nomination having the largest number of delegates. Protests maybe, but not riots. However, if he does get the nomination there may be riots from the same groups, i.e. move-on.org and 'black lives matter', who staged what they did at Trump's scheduled rally in Chicago last weekend.

Trump's supporters are not rioters or disrupters. Have there been any protests and disruptions from Trump supporters at Bernie or Hillary rallies? No. The only disrupters and protestors I've seen are those on the democrat side who are against Trump -- not for him.

[rwetmore]

Now, I do agree that if he has the most delegates by a significant margin he should get the nomination, but the rules don't stipulate that at all. More than likely it wouldn't be taken away from him by someone who's running, but someone who is not. Like Romney.

[John F]

Trump is flattering himself. He doesn't represent "many millions of people"; in the primaries so far, at least as many have voted against him as for him. If the voters don't give him the number of delegates he needs for nomination on the first ballot, he can't talk or bully the Republican Party into giving him those delegates. And if there actually is a riot at the convention, Trump will now be blamed for encouraging it.

[rwetmore]

It is true though that many millions have voted for him and support him. More than any of the other candidates on the Republican side. While surely some have cast a vote mostly against him and not for other candidates, it's not fair or objective to say all of those votes for other candidates were solely anti-Trump votes.

[John F]

Clinton prepares for Trump’s insult machine, which has already turned her way
By Abby Phillip and Anne Gearan
April 4

Hillary Clinton’s campaign and her allies are planning an aggressive, sober defense of their candidate in response to businessman Donald Trump’s trademark personal attacks, which have begun coming her way. As he did with other candidates, “lyin’ ” Ted Cruz, “low-energy” Jeb Bush and “little” Marco Rubio, Trump has slapped labels on Clinton that he hopes will stick: weak and incompetent.

Clinton’s allies believe that Trump is intentionally zeroing in on a character trait that they see as her key strength — her work ethic. They think the Republican front-runner is trying to neutralize that strength and turn it into a weakness, with insinuations about Clinton’s health, fatigue level and even her appearance. To stop Trump, the campaign and Clinton’s network of supporters have begun planning a swift and aggressive response, they say.

“There’s no doubt that this is one of his tactics,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a Clinton supporter. “He tries to portray someone in a way that he thinks is going to hurt them, and he does it very pointedly.” Klobuchar added: “He seizes on things that he’s hoping that people are predisposed to think. That’s what really bothers me about this, because it couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Adding to the challenge is a long-standing conservative narrative about Clinton’s health and stamina that began with her high-profile illness and fall in 2012, which left her with a concussion, at the close of her tenure as secretary of state. Clinton has fueled that narrative, even among some of her own supporters, with a series of stumbles that aides have attributed to the normal fatigue of a vigorous campaigner. But these aides vehemently deny that there is any underlying stamina problem for Clinton — and in fact, they say that nothing could be further from the truth. They also say the accusation is sexist.

They hope that, given Trump’s mounting troubles in the GOP-nominating contest, the time is right for an effective counterpunch. “I don’t think anybody else would get that question,” said Anita Dunn, a chief strategist for Obama in 2008. “I think a lot of people are going to push back on [Trump] and call foul.” “The purely sexist attacks on Hillary, the slightly veiled ones, are going to backfire [in the general election] in a way that they don’t in a primary,” she added.

Clinton’s aides, who are well into their preparations for a possible general-election matchup against Trump, have begun executing a strategy to counter Trump’s pattern of personal insults by “going big” on policy and substance — and also by being unshy about noting her penchant for marathon work days. Aides have described in detail, for instance, how Clinton responded to the Brussels terrorist attacks as Americans awakened to the devastating news. After arriving in Seattle at roughly 2 a.m. local time for campaign stops later in the day, Clinton was awake and preparing to place a series of phone calls to the major television networks by 5 a.m., when coverage of the attacks was well underway on the East Coast.

Hours later came another set of on-camera interviews with cable television hosts. In each sit-down, Clinton appeared sober and knowledgeable of world affairs while she also condemned Trump and other Republicans for their responses. “I don’t think we want to be inciting more fears,” Clinton said that day in an interview with NBC. “I don’t think we want to be playing to people’s concerns so that we turn against one another.” “I think we have to have a slow, steady, smart, strong response, and we don’t need to be panicking,” she added.

Clinton’s press secretary, Brian Fallon, said the campaign will continue to be aggressive in countering what it expects will be a barrage of attacks from Trump. “We know Donald Trump’s response to Hillary Clinton challenging him on his positions or his offensive statements is to sling personal insults at her, but that is not going to silence her,” Fallon said.

That formula has worked well for Trump so far. He has used it to fell opponents in the Republican nominating contest, including Bush, a former Florida governor, Rubio, a senator from Florida. “I was very rough on Jeb,” Trump said in an expansive interview with The Washington Post last week. It was “Jeb: Low energy. Little Marco. Names that were devastating.” Trump came up with his latest moniker for Clinton — “incompetent Hillary” — just as she began ramping up her criticism of his foreign policy knowledge. Before that, he accused her of lacking “stamina,” prompting a round of scrutiny of Clinton’s appearance and performance on the trail.

Although Clinton’s allies say the labels have no basis in fact, they are aware that his insults have a habit of sticking. “He throws these epithets at people, and sometimes they stick, sometimes inappropriately,” said J.B. Pritzker, a longtime Clinton supporter and donor. “And it’s demonstrably hypocritical to call her low-energy when his very first public dispute that got a lot of press was his unwillingness to sit through a two-hour debate.” “I’ve never seen Secretary Clinton complain about the length of debates, or about the length of her day, which by the way begins earlier than a man has to,” he added.

Aides are also aware, though, that Trump is seizing on real optics. He began harping on Clinton’s stamina at a time when she had been campaigning at an intense clip in her unexpectedly competitive primary fight against Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Her aides say that, since the Iowa caucuses in February, she has focused heavily on medium-size rallies and time-intensive, hand-to-hand retail politics, where aides think she is more likely to excel compared with the massive rallies that have become the bread and butter of both Trump’s and Sanders’s campaigns.

All of it has taken a toll: Her grinding days begin early and end late, often leaving her on the verge of losing her voice or, in the midst of important speeches, coughing — then whispering — her way through her remarks. Those moments have helped fuel questions about her fitness, even among supporters. At a January event, a woman stood during a town hall in Iowa to ask about rumors that she heard on television about Clinton’s health. “They talked about how your health was ill, that you were really not equipped to be in the White House because of that,” the woman said. Clinton laughed off the suggestion: “I’ll match my endurance against anybody.”

She also has had to navigate some real stumbles. The most damaging came after a week of campaigning and fresh off a cross-country flight to California for former first lady Nancy Reagan’s funeral; Clinton ignited an uproar among LGBT activists when she praised Reagan for “starting a conversation” about HIV and AIDS. Aides chalked up the mistake to fatigue, and they spent the next 48 hours working to reassure disappointed supporters and allies. Aides characterized the gaffe as normal fatigue, and they don’t plan to make changes to her schedule based on Trump’s attacks.

Other allies say that Trump’s obsession with Clinton’s stamina is more than a little hypocritical. As a case in point, they describe how Trump was in the midst of his longest-ever, 10-day hiatus from the campaign trail when he made this observation about Clinton in a recent interview with CNN: “I think she doesn’t have the stamina. You watch her life. You watch how she’ll go away three or four days; she’ll come back.”

It irks supporters that Trump, who is also older than Clinton and has more grandchildren, could take shots at Clinton that hint at her age as a liability. “Oh, I just think that’s silly. He’s older than she is,” said Hilary Rosen, a longtime Democratic strategist. “She doesn’t have to prove this to anyone. She’s been doggedly on the campaign trail for months with multiple events a day. And look what she did as secretary of state: downright Energizer bunny.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html