50 days: What could go wrong?
Unforeseen obstacles can ditch campaigns
50 days to go. After a campaign that started more than a year ago, nearly every American has formed an opinion of the presidential contenders, millions of dollars in TV ads have been aired, and early voting in some states has begun. But there’s still plenty of time for some sort of development, deliberate or out-of-the-blue, that could alter the trajectory of an unpredictable contest — especially one that has tightened to the margin of error between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Consider the explosions this weekend in New Jersey and New York and the stabbing in Minnesota that may have been inspired by the Islamic State. In short order, both candidates spoke out: Trump demanded toughness; Clinton called for patience until more was known.
Aides in both camps have been braced for these or unexpected turns over the next seven weeks that could scramble a year of strategic planning.
“There’s a sense that everything that happens has more weight than it probably should,” says Katie Packer, deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney’s presidential bid, recalling the final weeks of the 2012 campaign. “You’re trying to focus on everything, and it’s hard to distinguish the things that really deserve your full attention.”
In the final stretch four years ago, she says, Romney’s team didn’t initially realize how much the candidate’s comment in a debate — that he had gathered “binders full of women” to consider for jobs when he was Massachusetts governor — was going
Donald Trump’s campaign tried Sunday to bury the “birther” issue and denied any incitement to violence against Hillary Clinton.
Democrats said the Republican nominee continues to make statements that encourage racists and extremists.
“This is a pattern that has been repeated over and over again, and I think this doesn’t belong in any race, much less a race to be president of this country,” Clinton running mate Tim Kaine said on Fox News Sunday.
Kaine was discussing comments Trump made Friday in Miami. The New York businessman, claiming that Clinton wants to take away gun rights, suggested her Secret Service guards be “disarmed” and “let’s see what happens to her. Take their guns away. OK? It would be very dangerous.”
Kaine described Trump’s words as an incitement, “or at a minimum, an expression of indifference to whether violence would occur.”
Trump running mate Mike Pence, speaking on ABC’s This Week, called the idea of a threat “nonsense” and said Trump was commenting on how a public figure is surrounded by armed guards but wants to “deny the right of law-abiding citizens to have a firearm in their home to protect their own families.”
He said, “I think what Donald Trump was saying is if Hillary Clinton didn’t have all that security — she’d probably be a whole lot more supportive of the Second Amendment.”
Democrats served notice they would continue to challenge Trump over the false suggestion that President Obama was born in another country.
Trump, who bolstered the birther movement for years, made a short statement Friday that he believes Obama was born in the USA “period.” He did not offer a reason for his change of belief. Kaine said on ABC’s This
Week that Trump pushed a “bigoted lie” designed to undermine the legitimacy of the country’s first African-American president and needs to be pressed about whether he really believed it.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told CNN’s State of
the Union that birtherism is a “done issue.”