Trump said it himself: “It’s over.” And he’s right. It is. He’s the nominee. But his victory speech and Q&A was deeply revealing – both in its power and its self-destructiveness.
I cannot remember a presidential campaign in my lifetime and perhaps in more than a century where the two nominees not only differed so much on policy (we’ve had plenty of that) but tonally in the most basic way they exist as candidates and public people.
Listening to Trump he was brimming with confidence (even for him) and totally coherent. His emphasis was very different. Trade. Stagnating wages. Clinton “destroyed this country economically” with NAFTA. The wall came up but it was an after thought. This is a powerful message, even if he may have no clear or plausible way to fix these problems. From anyone else, anyone without his mammoth negatives, this could be a potent center-right message.
But then at the end there it was. “I think the only card she has is the woman’s card. She’s got nothing else going. And Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5% of the vote. The only thing she’s got going is the woman’s card and the beautiful thing is women don’t like her, okay?”
You hear the first part and you think …well, maybe. And then, WOMP! No. The indiscipline and aggression is deep in the DNA.
