A friend expresses astonishment and chagrin that someone he knows and apparently likes supports Donald Trump. “How could you,” he said, “support an obvious racist and misogynist?” His question underscored hopefulness that reason, and the public record, could change the Trump supporter’s mind. Sheer delusion, of course.
And therein lies a lesson for Secretary Clinton… and her supporters. There is no hope, no appeal, that will change the hearts and minds of anyone who is (fill in the blanks) enough to vote for Mr. Trump. Stop trying. Instead, Clinton… and her supporters… need to assure undecided, Progressive, and Independent voters that she will do three things:
First, that she’ll stop making inane, elitist, and empty promises like “…and we will train 50,000 new computer scientists!” Any kid who wants to be a computer scientist and has the brains to do it will do it without Clinton’s help. She should focus on issues like helping the expanding number of high school students with A averages who can’t make change for a dollar, and who spend months in expensive remedial education classes if they go to college.
Second, stop slamming Sanders’ supporters for their well-founded fear that a Hillary Clinton Administration will operate like a Bill Clinton Administration, an administration where you were sure of two things: Bill would make a beautiful speech on Monday about the American West, our hearts singing as we listened to his description of the purple mountain majesties. On Tuesday, he’d lease the mountains’ mining rights to PigsRuS and privatize the National Parks Service gift shops and cafes. Clinton needs to distance herself from her husband’s morally aphasic administration and vigorously disown the supply-side economic policies he embraced.
Third, Secretary Clinton should quit trying to prove how tough she is and tell voters how she’ll stop dumping trillions of taxpayer dollars into the infinite well that is the Middle East. We are not “at war” with terrorists. We are confronted by vicious criminal gangs and crazy, conscienceless religious fundamentalists, and should fight them with better intelligence, better propaganda, and more aggressive police actions. Clinton is tough enough to wage war, but is she tough enough to wage peace?