I have no doubt that Hillary had a plan to deal with Trump if he "went there" on Bill, and the only plan that would be effective is a moral equivalence attack.
Why would you think so? Why, in fact, would Clinton need to respond at all? The only people likely to react positively to Trump's "attack" are those already pretty much guaranteed to support him. Maybe he gains by motivating more of them to vote.
I disagree with that. I've read more than one analyst speculate about the impact this has on Millennial voters. Remember a lot of them weren't alive during the allegations about Bill, or were too young to understand. They have, however, been raised with a completely different set of views on sex and sexuality. The attacks that were used real time to try and paint the accusers real time as women of questionable morality are super offensive to Millennials that have been raised with a firm belief that sexual history is irrelevant to morality.
Given party demographics, something that would cause Millenials to not vote, or worse switch votes had to be addressed. Hence the moral equivalence attack, make it so that the only to defend himself is to accuse women of lying about his sexual advances and you've just killed what could have been a big issue.
But the people on the fence, or the people who don't support Trump already?
Voter demographics and manipulation has advanced way beyond the idea of "people on the fence" to where there are statistics available to campaigns about dozens of categories of "on the fence" voters and which issues and issue mix matter to them. For old and already decided voters, you may be correct, the emphasis there is to discourage them. Nothing discourages a morality voter like making it clear they are choosing between two evils.
They see such a personal attack on Clinton's spouse's actions as just more of the same Trumpian behaviour that would tend to disqualify him as being temperamentally unfit for the presidency.
Baffling that Trump is engaging in a personal attack, yet Clinton does the same or worse through proxies and no consequence. There's no question which campaign has tighter controls on message and on which hate and lies they tell, why do you hold the campaign that does less with intent and malice aforethought as the more culpable?
Any Clinton response would neither affect his true believers, nor would it improve how her supporters think of her; although granted, they might be more motivated to vote, but since Trump has already thrown so much red meat to Clinton's supporters, it's hard to imagine this would go very far to further motivate them. She really doesn't gain much if anything by reacting to this particular attack.
I'm almost to the point where I don't believe there are Clinton supporters. Maybe middle age white women, maybe a few other outliers. Most voters are with Clinton because they are either Democratic block voters, single or primary issue voters or anti-Trump. I literally only know one person who is excited about voting for Clinton and even he hems and haws trying to justify it, couple that with literally hundreds I knew who were excited about voting for Obama and it's easy to see why this election hasn't been put away at this point (though its darn close).
From D. W.
Just to be clear Seriati, you find the timing of the video release odd, or the reaction to it? (Women coming forward)
There's nothing odd about the timing of the release of the video. This was carefully held and the timing specifically decided upon (no chance there wasn't media collusion to make that happen by the way).
I found it odd that a clump of women popped up specifically at this time to denounce his response, almost like they were primed and ready to do so. I was pointing out that such accusations would have been treated as credible at
any point in this election, so I'm not seeing a reason a woman would have waited to bring them until that exact point. You'd really have us believe that this was the straw that broke the camel's back for a group of women all at once in an election where Trump has been perceived as anti-woman the entire time? It's kind of implausible.
And that's discounting the incentive women have had for
decades to bring a claim that was credible against someone who is rich and in the public eye to get a settlement, if nothing else. We're also talking about adult women, not just children, in some cases even women in the press without any reason to protect, in some cases with strong personal dislikes for him and no reason to believe their claims would not have been supported.
Not saying it didn't happen, just saying the actual way it played out was clearly scripted.
