How Hillary Clinton Will Fight Donald Trump’s Unpredictability [View all]

[BlueMTexpat]

http://time.com/4328519/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-unpredictable/

Taken together, the GOP has provided Clinton a playbook of things not to do: don’t stoop to Trump’s level, don’t ignore him until it’s too late, don’t merely call him sexist, don’t trust in policy above personality.

“Trump seems like a boorish insult comic, but he is actually incredibly disciplined about driving a single specific contrast narrative: Cruz is dishonest, Jeb is weak, Rubio isn’t up to the job,” says Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser and message maven to President Obama. “The Clinton campaign and larger Democratic infrastructure needs to settle on a similar narrative and hammer it as relentlessly.”

Hillary Clinton has so far resisted the urge to jump into the fray. When Trump charged that she “enabled” Bill Clinton’s infidelity, she let the line slide and instead pivoted to hammer him for refusing so far to release his tax records. “When you run for President, especially when you become the nominee, that is kind of expected. My husband and I have released 33 years of tax returns,” Clinton told a crowd in Blackwood, N.J. “We’ve got eight years on our website right now. So you have got to ask yourself: Why doesn’t he want to release them? Yeah, well, we’re going to find out.”

In traditional campaigns, communications teams develop message plans and calendars to systematically relate their agenda to voters — and to sync up with advertising buttressing the themes. But running against Trump there is no “jobs week.” Rather, every day threatens to be dominated by whatever new insult or attack the former reality-television star dreams up. “A constantly reacting campaign is a losing one,” one Clinton ally says. “If you’re responding knee jerk, you’re going to need knee-replacement surgery by November.”

There are some good things at the link.