When TRUMP wins...

Any questions?

Any questions?

Clinton campaign’s debate strategy extends far beyond the stage

Both Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine had a larger goal in mind than winning their debates: To create a series of compelling sound bites that they planned to weaponize against Donald Trump for the remainder of the campaign.

Armed with pre-planned Web videos, television ads and tweets, the campaign has used key debate moments this week and last as a cudgel against the Republican ticket, showing a level of discipline and organization largely absent from Donald Trump and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s campaign.

“Kaine had a very clear and simple plan for the debate: remind a national televised audience of all of the offensive things Trump has said and done in this campaign,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to President Obama. “The Clinton campaign was smart enough to know that who ‘wins’ or ‘loses’ the VP debate doesn’t move votes.

Instead it’s an opportunity to communicate a message to a very large audience.”

“I don’t see a single thing that Pence did that moved the needle for Trump in any way,” he added.

"bickerfest."

But the Reaganization of Trump suffered a serious blow on Monday when Reagan’s son, the conservative commentator Michael Reagan, revoked his earlier endorsement of Trump in a series of tweets after Trump suggested in a speech, without basis, that Hillary Clinton was unfaithful to her husband.

“No way do I or would my father support this garbage,” he wrote, saying Nancy Reagan would have voted for Clinton and that she was “appalled” before her death when people likened Trump to her husband. “Not the Party of Reagan,” he tweeted, and, “If this is what the Republican Party wants leave us Reagans out.”

The most obvious difference may be style: Reagan was sunny and gentlemanly; Trump is gloomy and crude.

Trump talks of the American military as a “disaster,” in “shambles,” with generals reduced to “rubble.” Reagan blamed civilian leaders but hailed the generals and their troops as “guardians of freedom, protectors of our heritage . . . keepers of the peace.”

Trump calls the Iraq War a “disaster” and a “huge mistake” with “absolutely nothing” to show for thousands of American lives lost. He suggested some U.S. troops stole cash in Iraq. Reagan, by contrast, hailed those who fought in another failed war, the “noble cause” of Vietnam, and said we shouldn’t “dishonor the memory of 50,000 young Americans who died in that cause.”

On immigration, Trump talks of building a wall, banning Muslims and Syrian refugees from entering the country and deporting all 11 million illegal immigrants. Reagan supported amnesty for illegal immigrants who put down roots in America, and he memorably called America home “for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness.”

Reagan proudly updated Gen. George Patton’s phrase that wars are “won by men” to “men and women.” Trump, who declared that Patton is “spinning in his grave” because of the situation in the Middle East, derided the “geniuses” who “put men and women together” in the armed forces.

And Reagan, of course, spoke with great moral force about the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union and the “barbarism born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights . . . and seeks constantly to expand and dominate other nations.”

Now, a Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, is returning to these Soviet-era abuses, and Trump praises him as a strong leader he can work with, while disputing charges that Putin has killed journalists and meddled in the U.S. election.

Essentially, they’re not smart enough to realize they’re dumb.

And if one is under the illusion that they have sufficient or even superior knowledge, then they have no reason to defer to anyone else’s judgment. This helps explain why even nonpartisan experts — like military generals and Independent former Mayor of New York/billionaire CEO Michael Bloomberg — as well as some respected Republican politicians, don’t seem to be able to say anything that can change the minds of loyal Trump followers.