Was It a Mistake to Make It All About Trump?

Glenn Thrush: “It’s the obvious strategy to hammer Trump for everything he’s said – and the campaign has slashed at his jugular with mechanical consistency, producing a series of devastating ads intended to slay the GOP nominee with his own words. They have succeeded in pushing the Republican nominee off the popularity cliff (or at least nudged him as he jumped), trapping Trump below the critical 40 percent threshold in the vast majority of national and battleground state polls.”

“It’s not enough… The problem, and it has dogged Clinton since she first ran for office in 2000, is that she’s lousy at self-definition, doesn’t like to make the campaign about her (not one of Trump’s problems) and reveals herself only in jagged broken-mirror shards, not a portrait in full for voters to warm themselves by. Back in July, Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook told me he thought the only way people would get to know Clinton was to watch her govern.”

“But politics doesn’t work that way. Never mind questions of character: Many voters simply don’t have a clear idea of what her personality is, so it’s easy to accept caricature imposed upon her by her enemies. People don’t like her because they don’t know her – that’s the core counterargument from her intimates – but Clinton (who coined the term ‘zone of privacy’ in 1992 to define her attitude toward self-revelation) is an uncooperative client. So that makes her uncommonly vulnerable to events, or changes in campaign climate that undermine faith in her cause – such as her August-long hiatus to fundraise, various new stories on her emails and the Clinton Foundation, and the sudden professionalization of Trump’s messaging operation.”