General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It would be nice if the centrists in this party did some introspection, too. [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)is that, while Trump was indeed providing plenty of material for a negative campaign, going negative on the guy-much as he deserved it on a very deep level-wasn't flipping any votes our way at all.
Our support level was basically on a flatline throughout the campaign.
When the campaign saw-as the polling should have showed it by at least mid-September-that the negative tactics weren't gaining us votes and were, in a way, actually solidifying Trump's voters behind him, it should have switched tactics and focused on presenting the case FOR our candidate and our platform. There was a great focus on her qualifications, but qualifications were not going to be enough in the eyes of the voters. Since any message needs reinforcement, there should have been constant reminders of what we proposed.
I agree that making a case for your candidate and your platform is going to be controversial, but then again, any effort to elect anybody for any reason is going to be controversial. The focus on Trump's personal sordidness was also controversial-and unfortunately, the presence of our nominee's husband on the campaign trail was always going to make it easy for the other campaign to deflect on the sordidness issue. The voters hadn't forgotten about that.
If I had been in charge of the campaign, I probably would have tried to limit the presence of the nominee's husband at campaign appearances, or if he was going to be there, I'd have had him say something "unlike Mr. Trump, I admitted that what I did then was wrong and I willingly paid the price for it on a public and personal level".