Time: Clinton's "anti-Trump game plan" response at March 13 Democratic forum was "borderline weird"

[Miles Archer]

To Take out Trump, Hillary Clinton Must First Dispense With Her Inner Politician

The most important question of the 2016 presidential campaign was asked by an Indian-American doctor and poet named Amit Majmudar in a Democratic forum on March 13. It was so important that the moderator, Jake Tapper, had Dr. Majmudar repeat it to both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The doctor said his family was afraid of Donald Trump. “I am going to have one mission heading to the ballot box, which is to keep him out of office,” he announced. “Leaving aside the negative rhetoric and attack ads, none of which have worked so far, can you share with us three specific points of your anti-Trump game plan?”

Sanders’ response was very Bernie: Trump was a pathological liar and a billionaire. But Clinton’s was borderline weird, and now that she has reinforced her status as the likely Democratic nominee, it bears some scrutiny. She began with the spurious argument that she’d received 600,000 more votes than Trump in the primaries. Then she tried the victim-martyr route: “The Republicans have been after me for 25 years,” she said to applause from the faithful. “And there isn’t anything they haven’t already said about me. And in the course of dealing with all of this incoming fire from them, I have developed a pretty thick skin.” Then she made an oblique threat: that there were other arguments against Trump–the product of opposition research, she implied–that she was holding in reserve. “I’m not going to spill the beans right now,” she said.

Her final Trump card was foreign policy experience. She said that leaders of other countries had contacted her privately to say they hoped she’d win–an argument with less than zero impact on most American voters. She concluded, more relevantly, by contrasting her knowledge of the world with Trump’s bombast and inexperience.

***

Clinton seems particularly ill equipped for the task. She is our very own quinoa and kale salad, nutritious but bland. Worse, she’s the human embodiment of the Establishment that Trump has been running against. “I am not a natural politician,” she has admitted, and Tapper asked her what she means by that. She said she couldn’t speak “in poetry” the way her husband and Barack Obama can. True dat, but poetry is only the beginning of Clinton’s deficiencies. Indeed, her real problem is that she’s too much of a politician. She still speaks like politicians did 20 years ago, when her husband was President. This year, the candidates who have seemed the most appealing–Trump, Sanders, John Kasich–don’t use the oratorical switchbacks that have been beaten to death since John F. Kennedy: “We need a uniter, not a divider.” They also, sadly, don’t take carefully nuanced positions. Asked about fracking in her Flint, Mich., debate with Sanders, Clinton split hairs with a microlaser, leaving everyone confused. Sanders simply said, “I do not support fracking.”

http://time.com/4262504/to-take-out-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-must-first-stop-acting-like-a-politician/

[djean111]

1. It doesn't matter in the least if HILLARY has a thick skin. This is not about her feelings.

It is about how voters perceive her when they hear the details of her baggage - what they will see, it seems, is someone who says "So what?" to something they just might find objectionable in a candidate.

[geek tragedy]

2. she should be in no hurry to crawl into the mud with Trump

there will be plenty of time where she has to get into a street fight with him