With new polling pointing
to a tightening
general election contest, Donald Trump's campaign is setting its sights on
Hillary Clinton's enduring and wide advantage among female voters. The former
reality show star is expanding his lead with men, which has neutralized and
even overtaken Clinton's "gender gap" edge.
If Bernie Sanders
supporters prove
unwilling to rally to Mrs. Clinton when she finally sews up the nomination
-- and if Trump can whittle down her lead with women, who will represent more
than half of the overall electorate in November -- he has a realistic shot at
beating her.
One argument Trump fans
offered on his behalf during the rancorous GOP primary was that he would be
willing drop rhetorical bombs on the Clintons in ways that other candidates
wouldn't ever dream of. Fact check: Mostly true.
Watch the a short online
clip the Trump camp posted
on Instagram, signaling that the billionaire fully intends to litigate Bill
Clinton's sordid history of sexual misconduct and alleged assault as a means of
undermining Hillary's positioning as a champion of women.
It's entirely plausible
that this tactic may backfire if voters believe Trump is unfairly using the
sins (and alleged crimes) of the husband to tear down the wife. People
may see it as mean-spirited, irrelevant and old news; after all, the 42nd
president enjoys strong
favorability ratings, despite his many known improprieties.
Then again, many younger
voters aren't very aware of just how unseemly President Clinton's behavior was.
A whole generation of
voters has likely never heard the name Juanita Broderick, whose accusations
against Bill Clinton have been emotional,
specific and consistent. She is one of several
women who have accused Hillary Clinton's husband of at least unwanted
sexual advances, several of whose voices are featured in the video above.
The extent to which she looked the other way or actively aided in the
smearing of his accusers ('nuts
and sluts') can be fair game -- especially as she postures
and preens with statements like this:
"To every survivor of sexual
assault...You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed.
We're with you." —Hillary
The inclusion of Hillary's
cackle at the end of the Instagram snippet feels like a cheap shot. The implication is that she derived maniacal glee from her husband's
conduct, and these women's allegations.
Though this will
undoubtedly thrill Trump loyalists, it could very well end up
being counter-productive. We'll see whether any
sympathy-driven, pro-Hillary blowback materializes.
Then again, if Hillary
chooses to go the indignant route in response, many Trump defenders will
inevitably point to a separate audio recording to bolster the spirit of
this attack.
Nearly two years ago, an
irate woman came forward to savage Hillary Clinton for engaging in a
blame-the-victim strategy that she said assassinated her character during
a 1975 child rape case.
Clinton represented the
accused rapist at the time, aggressively challenging the young victim's
credibility in court documents.
That girl, now an adult,
says Clinton took
her "through hell," and lied "like a dog" in making
"false allegations," resulting in a drastically reduced sentence.
A contemporaneous interview obtained by the Washington Free Beacon records Clinton chuckling
about the resolution of the case.
Though I defended her
decision to represent a cretinous client (whom she clearly believed to be
guilty) as a necessary component of the US criminal justice system, her
ruthless tactics against the alleged victim and weird laughter in an
after-the-fact interview are unsettling.
I'll leave you with the
presumptive Democratic nominee -- a platinum-level
lifetime panderer
-- lamenting Trump's "pandering"
to the NRA over the weekend:
"Unlike Donald Trump, I will not
pander to the gun lobby. We will not be silenced and we will not be
intimidated." —Hillary
Now seems like a
reasonable time to serve up a reminder that Hillary Clinton hit Barack
Obama from
the right on guns in 2008, and now has blasted Bernie Sanders from
the left on the same issue this cycle.
