Joe Klein: “Winning the news cycle is one of the more odious concepts in American politics. It is a recent media invention that rewards superficiality and punishes substance; it is, at best, a nano-measurement of micro-momentum–but anything measurable is news, and therefore easier to cover than subjects that may require actual thought. Which makes it perfect for Donald Trump. He uses the daily contest brilliantly, with an almost demonic perversity. He almost always wins the day.”
“Clinton, by contrast, does not win many news cycles. Her most notable days are those when negative events spin beyond her control–when the State Department’s inspector general scolds her for cutting corners with her emails; when Bernie Sanders or his supporters do violence to her sense of inevitability. This is rightly seen as a problem for her; Trump is always on the offensive, in every sense of the word.”
