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Borrowing a phrase from obama’s minions, Matt Continetti says it’s time for Hillary to “wet the bed.”
In early July, during another rough patch for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Dan Pfeiffer took to CNN to reassure his party. Pfeiffer used to be President Obama’s top communications aide. The title of his op-ed was “Stop the bed-wetting: Hillary Clinton’s doing fine.” Bed-wetting, Pfeiffer explained, “is a term of art in Obamaland.” Ah, the president and his acolytes. Such sophisticates.
Clinton shouldn’t panic, Pfeiffer argued, because she remains ahead in polling and in fundraising, because Bernie Sanders “is not Barack Obama,” and because “Hillary Clinton circa 2015 is not Hillary Clinton circa 2008.” Elections, after all, “are about fundamentals,” and “the fundamentals point to a decisive if hard fought victory for Clinton.” Of course, “A lot can change in the coming months.”
No kidding. As we enter the fall campaign season, Pfeiffer’s case seems laughably self-assured and unpersuasive. Now is precisely the time for Clinton and her team to wet the bed—indeed, they may already be doing so. …
Dems are now the “no diversity party” according to Victor Davis Hanson.
In the jubilation of the Obama election victories of 2008 and 2012, the Left warned Republicans that the party of McCain and Romney was now “too old, too white, too male — and too few.” Columnists between 2008 and 2012 ad nauseam berated Republicans on the grounds that their national candidates “no longer looked like America.” The New York Times stable crowed that the Republicans of 2008 were “all white and nearly all male” — not too long before McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running-mate. In reaction to the defeats of McCain and Romney, Salon and Harper’s ran stories on the “Grand Old White Party” and “Angry White Men.” …
… Liberals had reversed the vision of Martin Luther King Jr.: The color of our skin, not the content of our character, is what matters. Superficial appearance, the ossified politics of the tribe — the curse of the world outside the United States, where corpses have piled up in the Balkans, Rwanda, and Iraq — alone mattered. Identity politics dictated that a shrinking white insular conservative party lacked the Democrats’ “inclusiveness” and “commitment to diversity.” Icons like Barack Obama were what mattered.
So we come to 2016, and the Democrats, of all people, are suddenly in danger of being the washer calling the dryer white. Who exactly are the serious and not so serious presidential candidates of each party?
On the Republican side, there is plenty of diversity as defined by liberals — Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio.
And on the Democratic side? The only representative of “diversity” is Hillary Clinton, who counts by virtue of being female, but who is white and soon to be 68, a fixture on the national political scene for more than a quarter of a century. …
John Fund thinks Trump’s mouth will catch up to him before the Iowa caucus in February.
… Trump is perfectly suited for the current media age. He provides enough outrageous quotes and distractions to remain such a source of endless fascination that the press has trouble catching up with his contradictions. D’Antonio says Trump “understood that in the media age, the frontier that might challenge a man or woman was found, not in the wilderness, but in the media. The boundary of this wilderness was marked by propriety, which was an elastic concept.”
Donald Trump has tested the media’s limits of propriety for three decades, and he’s usually succeeded in expanding them.
We will learn in the next four months just how far Trump can expand the equivalent political limits. As much as he may have mastered many of the lessons of the Robert Ringer classic Winning Through Intimidation, he might have forgotten a key one. “The secret to bluffing is knowing when not to bluff,” Ringer told me. “Some people don’t know when to stop, and they always regret it.”
Sean Davis says Jerry Seinfeld knows how to handle someone like Donald Trump.
… By many indications, Donald Trump appears to believe a man’s worth as a human being is based solely on his monetary wealth, while a woman’s worth is based on her looks. After all, this is a man who complimented his own daughter by saying he would probably date her if she weren’t his daughter, on account of her “very nice figure.”
This kind of behavior, and these kind of statements, are not the fruits of a healthy outlook on life. While many people regularly mock Trump for his outlandishness, I actually feel bad for him. I pity the desperate need for external affirmation through fame and wealth. As I wrote when Trump first announced his 2016 candidacy, I don’t think Donald Trump needs a campaign; what he needs is a hug. I legitimately feel bad for the guy.
Which brings us to Jerry Seinfeld’s advice for how to handle someone like Trump.
During a reddit AMA in 2014, comedian Jerry Seinfeld was asked how he handled hecklers who disrupted his sets. His answer provides a perfect blueprint on how Republican strategists, pundits, and presidential candidates should handle Donald Trump, who is basically a C-list comedy club heckler masquerading as a White House contender.
Here’s what Jerry Seinfeld said: …
Jim Geraghty spots the missing words in Trump speeches.
Did you ever think you would see the day when the GOP front-runner rarely uttered the words “freedom” and “liberty”?
Perhaps some Republicans can be accused of loving liberty and freedom too much — or at least using those words as rhetorical crutches. Donald Trump is not one of them. The current GOP presidential front-runner rarely uses the words “freedom” or “liberty” in his remarks at all.
Trump didn’t use the words “freedom” or “liberty” in his announcement speech. He didn’t use those words in his Nashville speech on August 29, or his Nashville rally on August 21, or his appearance at the Iowa State Fair on August 15, or his rally and news conference in New Hampshire on August 14, or his news conference in Birch Run, Mich., or his press conference in Laredo, Texas, on July 23.
He didn’t use those words while discussing his signing of the Republican National Committee’s pledge last Thursday, or in his contentious interview with Hugh Hewitt the same day.
Trump did use the term “free-market” once …