“There is an adage in politics: Don’t get in the way of a train wreck,” said Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, a top campaign aide to presidential candidates Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. And, as Reuters reports, Clinton’s advisers say they see little benefit in her going toe-to-toe with Trump over every personal accusation, generating sound bites that would dominate cable news broadcasts. Rather, they are happy for him to be embroiled in controversy while Clinton focuses on policy.
Her national press pool, which seldom gets to question the candidate, often waits as she conducts interviews with local news outlets.
She has granted few recent interviews to national outlets and rarely holds press conferences, a strategy her critics say is calculated to avoid questions about her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state, and the relationship between her family’s global charity, the Clinton Foundation, and the State Department.
If you haven’t heard a lot about what Hillary Clinton thinks of a string of controversial comments by Donald Trump that have generated round-the-clock coverage on cable news broadcasts, there is a reason – it’s by design.
Since becoming the Democratic nominee last month, Clinton has been touring toy manufacturers, visiting tie makers and dropping in on public health clinics, where if she mentions Trump at all, it is usually to contrast their policies.
Her swift condemnation at a Wednesday campaign rally of Trump’s remark that gun rights activists could stop her from nominating liberal U.S. Supreme Court justices was a rare instance where she has directly engaged her Republican rival in the 2016 race for the White House.
Aides say Clinton’s strategy is simple: let Trump be Trump.
And perhaps there is more to that ‘strategy’ than means the eye. As Brent Budowsky asks at The Hill – Is Trump deliberately throwing the election to Clinton?
In August 2015, I wrote a column for The Hill titled “Is Trump a Clinton plant?” At the time, I wrote that I was not seriously suggesting that Donald Trump is running as a Hillary Clinton plant for the purpose of bringing a second Clinton to the White House, but noted some facts. – READ MORE
