Close, nasty campailn
cided independents, who make up about 20 percent of the electorate, of her history fighting for their causes — and by painting Trump as unusually dangerous.
Trump’s path to victory has two lanes: Pound away at the anti-establishment message, and woo back Republicans who have been sharply critical and stayed away from last week’s convention.
Trump needs to keep the campaign narrative focused on the throw-the-bums-out mood that rocketed him from politically nowhere to the GOP nominee. Trump’s other challenge is to keep people outraged for three more months. Circumstances can help. WikiLeaks is promising more data releases aimed at embarrassing Clinton.
Democrats had better be ready, said Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, a former Democratic chairman. “I hope they’re going through every single email that they’ve had and to look at it and get on top if it ahead of time,” he said this week in Philadelphia.
There’s potential for another sort of email drama. Republicans won’t let voters forget about Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.
Clinton will counter by painting Trump as inept, incompetent and all but insane.
“Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons,” she said in her convention speech Thursday. “I can’t put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started — not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men — the ones moved by fear and pride.”
The next pivotal campaign moment is likely Sept. 26, when Clinton and Trump are scheduled to debate in Hempstead, N.Y. Two more debates are to follow, in St. Louis on Oct. 9 and Las Vegas Oct. 19. Vice presidential candidate Mike Pence, a Republican, and Tim Kaine, a Democrat, are to debate Oct. 4 in Farmville, Va.
Chances are Trump and Clinton are too well-known, and too widely disliked, to suddenly become likeable figures in the next few months. The debates are their single best chance to soften those images.
Odds are they won’t, and as a result, said Miringoff, “there’s an awful lot of negative voting going on.”