They're the bad-news heirs
AS is often the case, Ronald Reagan said it best. In his closing argument against incumbent President Jimmy Carter in a 1980 debate, Reagan asked voters to look at the election this way: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Most were not, and with the Iranian hostage situation dominating headlines, Reagan won 44 states.
That history contributes to the assumption that events always have a vote. When there is good news, the incumbent party gets a boost on the theory that its policies are working. When the news is bad, the challenger benefits because the incumbent looks to be failing.
The pattern led me to believe that, most things being equal, Donald Trump could be sitting pretty come November. Most people are not happy with the country, and not many good events of national significance are likely to happen before Election Day, so Trump should get an advantage.
But recent developments are revealing limits to his ability to make hay from bad news. For one thing, Hillary Clinton’s experienced War Room is adept at rapid response and spin. And her spin is bolstered by President Obama’s use of the bully pulpit to further shape mainstream media’s already-liberal bias.
A second issue is whether Trump is nimble enough, and has enough money, to exploit his opportunities. He’s getting better, but still lags the Clinton-Obama tag team.
Brexit presents several lessons. With the winning “leave” arguments offering parallels to Trump’s cries of “America First” and “Make America Great Again,” British liberation should give him a boost.
It did, in the immediate aftermath. Trump had urged a “leave” vote and declared victory, saying Brits “took their country back” from EU bureaucrats. Clinton and Obama, on the other hand, conceded defeat while cautioning about impacts to come.
But Clinton also cleverly used the bad news for her to repeat her major knocks on Trump: that he is a reckless, unacceptable alternative. “This time of uncertainty only underscores the need for calm, steady, experienced leadership in the White House,” she said in a statement.
She didn’t mention Trump, but didn’t have to. Her goal is better achieved by letting voters silently supply his name.
And the Brexit impact is just getting started. The dive in stocks could last and deepen, and economic aftershocks could be dramatic in Europe and here.
In that case, the power of bad events could flip and help Clin- ton and hurt Trump because of their initial positions, as she wouldn’t hesitate to remind voters in a tsunami of TV ads. He doesn’t have nearly as much money to magnify his message.
She and Obama also shamelessly tried to use bad news as an advantage after the Orlando massacre. Their quick move to blame the attack on the availability of guns, and to reduce the slaughter to another “hate” attack on gays and lesbians, was pathetic — yet successful in their liberal echo chamber.
The day-long sit-in by House Democrats to demand more gun control got the Pavlovian dogs barking at The New York Times and MSNBC, with the result that gun control became more of a talking point than Islamic terrorism.
And Trump’s inexperience showed when he got into a confusing squabble with the Na- tional Rifle Association, thus playing on Clinton’s turf.
There were also stories about whether shooter Omar Mateen had gay lovers, which muddied the far more important question of whether Mateen had contacts with Islamic State or other jihadists.
The Islamic State angle, along with stories examining how the FBI missed Mateen before he struck, could harm Clinton and help Trump. But the incumbent team threw up enough distractions — including Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s psychobabble about “love” — that terrorism is just one of the story lines about Orlando, reducing Trump’s gains.
An obvious conclusion is that Trump can’t count on wall-towall “free” media coverage the way he could in the primaries. The novelty is diminishing, and media bias for Democrats is growing.
Coverage of the fact that Clinton still faces possible indictment over her e-mails has all but vanished from most outlets. Similarly, her claims to be a feminist and human-rights leader are undermined by the millions she takes from Saudi Arabia and other oppressive regimes, but most media act as if those issues are minor or settled.
Meanwhile, everything Trump ever said or did continues to be fodder for new investigations. It means the GOP candidate is playing against the referees as well as the other team .
While I believe he can overcome an uneven playing field and all the other hurdles, he’s got a lot of work to do and little margin for more errors.
That means the advantage, even assuming more bad news events, still rests with Clinton.