“Her name is Alicia Machado”: Clinton’s pièce de résistance

[muriel_volestrangler]

Libby Nelson of Vox analysed how Hillary got under Trump's skin a couple of days ago. I thought the last one was particularly effective, for the number of ways it got at Trump:

But it was Clinton’s next lines that drew Trump into the final trap: “And one of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest. He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them. And he called this woman ‘Miss Piggy.’ Then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name.”

This is a stiletto to the ribs, a multilayered attack:

Clinton is calling Trump a creep. There’s a big difference between saying that Trump loves beautiful women and that he loves “hanging around” beauty contests. In the first scenario, he’s a stud; in the second, he’s a pathetic voyeur. All women know the guy who hangs around.

She’s reminding viewers of his attitude toward immigrants and Americans of Hispanic origin; the “Miss Housekeeping” reference is one of the rare mentions of Trump’s animosities on this front.

And finally, she’s trying to draw Trump into asymmetric warfare against a private citizen. And not just anyone, but an immigrant beauty queen who just became an American citizen, no less. It’s hard to think of a more likable protagonist than that, except for maybe the Khans, the immigrant parents of a fallen US Army hero who spoke at the Democratic National Convention. Trump’s attacks on the Khan family after Khizr Khan spoke at the convention were the lowest point of his campaign.

http://www.vox.com/2016/9/27/13074956/hillary-clinton-debate-win-trump-bait-reaction

I thought at the time that the "hanging around" beauty contests line was great. It paints him as skeevy. Not as the businessman running a contest (because, let's face it, he delegated all that, and he bought the contest, rather than starting it), but as someone using his money to be where he's not wanted, for creepy purposes. This stops him even being an aspirational figure for guys thinking about how to get women (unless they're complete psychopaths, in which case there's no hope in thinking you'll get their vote). And as noted, it reminds all women of some guy they really wanted to go away, and leads into his anti-Hispanic bigotry, and his nasty attacks on immigrants in general.

[Demsrule86]

1. Absolutely true.

And Donald creepy. He is the guy who takes you out to dinner, whatever and then expects sex in return. Yuck.