About Anita Hill

[marylandblue]

104. Ok, I have nothing against Biden. But this is going to be a highly negative campaign cycle.

After the Democratic candidates are done bashing each other and one emerges victorious, we get to hear it all over again, only this time it will come from Trump, much worse, and 24/7.

Every candidate is a human being and every human being has vulnerabilities that can be exploited. And if you have a long career like Biden's, you are going to have a lot of things in the distant past that Trump can exploit. Happened to Kerry. Happened to Hillary. It will happen to Biden. He isn't immune. And Trump is the master of the negative campaign. His one true talent is getting the stupidest BS covered by the news. Sort of an idiot savant that way.

The point is not whether it's fair or unfair. And it doesn't matter if it's true or not, because Trump is not trying to prove his point, but to change the conversation. As long as we are talking about Hillary's er, I mean Biden's past, we are not talking about real issues that matter. Trump loses on issues. He has no knowledge about any real issues, so he never wants to talk about them. But if we talk about what's wrong with Biden, if the media is digging into Biden's past, then Trump wins because we never talk about anything real. That's how Trump operates.

So my concern, with Anita Hill, and a few weeks ago, touching; and a few weeks from now, maybe busing; or maybe just some obscure vote he made in 1978; is that he can't shift the conversation back to where it needs to be, or at least he can't do it fast enough. He has not demonstrated this ability in the past. A really minor scandal took him down in 1988. He is not demonstrating this ability now. These non-scandals will weigh him down in the primaries. If he nonetheless survives the primaries, Trump will crush him in the general, simply by jumping from one non-issue to another, faster than Biden can react.

That's why I think "this" is an issue. Where "this" is not any real or imagined vulnerability but how skillfully he counters the attack and changes the subject. That's what I'm commenting on.

Biden is not my first choice, but I'd be happy if he were the President. I'm just trying to give Biden supporters some perspective on how this might play out. I don't guarantee it will happen the way I say it will. But don't be surprised if Biden starts sinking from these unfair attacks. Not because of the attacks themselves, but because he can't get a handle on how to respond and turn it around.

And this is also why I like Buttigieg. Because he does have the ability to turn attacks around, like he did with Pence. IMO, it's the number 1 requirement to beat Trump.