Hillary Clinton Can’t Let Donald Trump Win the Corruption Issue
By Jonathan Chait
Donald Trump’s campaign is signaling that its new, post-first-debate message will be an attack on Hillary Clinton’s finances, under the catchphrase “Follow the money.” This is probably Trump’s most fruitful avenue of attack. The Clinton Foundation has created appearances of a conflict of interest, and the Clintons’ policy of accepting speaking fees from any source as long as the check would clear the bank has tarnished her image, and months of bashing at the hands of Bernie Sanders left her branded in the mind of many young liberals as a handmaiden of Wall Street.
And yet the notion that a voter ought to support Trump over Clinton on grounds of financial ethics or transparency is insane. Trump is corrupt on a world-historic scale. Andrew Prokop’s summary merely skims the surface of a career that has left hardly any rule or norm of business conduct un-violated. It is not only Trump’s history of misconduct, or even his ongoing abuse of his foundation for personal gain, but his astonishing promise, if elected, to continue to abuse his power to enrich himself by having his children manage his branded business that he will enhance via public office.
Even if none of that were true, it remains the case that Trump has shattered modern precedent by refusing to disclose his tax returns. How on Earth can a candidate run on the slogan “Follow the money” while stonewalling any questions about his own money? The only possible context in which this makes sense is a myopic, context-free focus on Clinton’s ethical shortcomings, combined with the assumption that Trump’s dangerous lunacy amounts to some kind of independence from big moneyed interests.
That the latter is not the case is a point Clinton ought to press more forcefully. A Gallup poll finds that, for voters under 35 years old, the only issue on which Trump beats Clinton is “government regulation of Wall Street and banks.” This is an understandable heuristic based on a combination of Clinton’s paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, Sanders positioning himself to her left on financial regulation, and the uncertainty with which Wall Street views Trump.
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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/clinton-cant-let-trump-win-the-corruption-issue.html
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Get some better surrogates out there. Yes, things are for the moment going well for the moment in terms of coming off of debate #1 which Hillary clearly won and tRump lost embarrassingly. But some of the spin I've seen post debate by some of the camp Clinton surrogates has been WEAK. I normally don't watch CNN and certainly not MSNBCRNCTMZ, but post debate #1, this IS the time I start paying attention to polling, interviews etc. and some of what I'm seeing in terms of team Hillary surrogates makes me a bit nervous. Yes, I know not every surrogate can be a Flotus/Potus, James Carville, Donna B. @ CNN, Liz Warren, Joe Biden, Jennifer Granlhom and a few other great surrogates out there I'm missing, but the stakes are HUGE now and you better have the best of the best out there talking in your behalf, and those surrogates can't be all over the place--especially not the Flotus/Potus. But with not that many days LEFT until November 8th, You can't have these weak-sauce surrogates out there allowing tRump surrogates to talk over them and get their messages--no matter how bad/wrong they are--out/across while the Dem surrogate sits there like a bump on a pickle being all polite and nice. This is not the time for being polite and nice. You have to get in there and TALK. Not be rude but firm in what you want out there in terms of messaging. tRump surrogates are ALWAYS void of ANY facts, truths, as lying comes extremely easy to them, and on top of that they're not very bright. However for as bad as they are, they stay on message. It might be a lying, corrupt and ignorant message which is all they have but they stay on message. In a way what I'm saying ties into what you're saying: Don't allow camp tRump to win the corruption issue.
Phew, I've been seeing Anita Dunn for YEARS and the woman is one of the lamest surrogates out there. She talks and talks and blinks and blinks and never says much of anything. I'm happy to not see Jamal Simmons out there because he's lame too. But Dunn, goodness gracious, I've seen this woman for over 25 years or so and she's still pretty lame IMHO. She must be a very good friends of the Clinton's to have been as lame a surrogate as she's been over all these years--and she's still out there talking.
Sorry op .... 
