It Takes a Triangulator to Think This Is a Good Idea

Here’s a video from the Clinton campaign full of Republicans criticizing Trump for his attacks on the judge in his fraud case.

— Greg Sargent, Washington Post, this evening

Why, of course it’s a good idea, in a campaign that should be based largely on the likelihood that if elected, Trump would serve as Paul Ryan’s and the Koch brothers’ puppet, to undermine that argument.

Sure, Ryan said last week that Trump has assured him that he would sign a Ryan- drafted budget bill.  Sure, Trump has announced that he will return the federal bench to the Federalist Society.  (Okay, he doesn’t know what the Federalist Society is, so he doesn’t know that that’s what he said.  But Clinton knows.  I think.)

And sure, it would be really nice if, say, Russ Feingold defeated Ron Johnson in the Wisconsin Senate race.  But, hey, first things first.

And the first thing is to make sure that the five people who follow politics and don’t yet know what Trump said about that judge, and why, and that Republican pols are running far away from it, don’t enter that voting booth in November not knowing that the Republicans have distanced themselves from Trump’ statements about that judge.

They may enter the voting booth in November not knowing the specifics of what Trump and his mock University actually did, though, because far be it from the Clinton campaign to do a video showing quotes of the startlingly awful things Trump was having his employees do to people who were struggling financially.

Uh-uh.  That has nothing at all to do with ethnicity, race, gender or religion, so it’s not worth putting together a video about it.

Only things that undermine rather than make clear what should be one of your key fiscal policy arguments are worth putting together a video about.  Especially if you don’t think fiscal-policy arguments matter to voters, except the fiscal issues that are about one or another women’s issue.  As Clinton clearly doesn’t.

This is a campaign run entirely on algorithms put into a computer.  The algorithms are 1990s-vintage, though, and, well, you know.  Garbage in, garbage out.

This is a really awful campaign.  Clinton will win anyway.  But so will all those Republicans who said they don’t like what Trump said about that judge.  Or if a few of them do lose, it won’t be for lack of Clinton’s trying on their behalf.