I wrote this on Facebook earlier today:
So, the pundit class is all agog over how Trump went where no Republican has gone before by going after W for Iraq and the WMD lies. Is it really that shocking? Wasn’t that a high hanging curve waiting to be whacked over the left field wall, and Trump had the brains to do it?
Upon reflection, however, I think there’s more going on than meets the eye.
Trump doesn’t need to go after Jeb! like this. He’s already eviscerated him. I had developed a contrarian view on this, but the polls in South Carolina prove me wrong.
So, what was Trump’s purpose? If he moved a few more of Bush’s voters (not many left, mind you) he’d likely be moving them to Rubio or Kasich. Hardly seems worth it.
Trump, it seems, is playing a long game. He knows that winning the nomination and losing the general wold be a pretty ignominious fate.
So, he just brilliantly outflanked Hillary on her left here. And he did it by reference to WMD. You know why? Because the video footage of Hillary’s war mongering based on the WMD scare is devastating. She can own up to her mistake all she wants, it won’t help when the footage from 2002 starts to get more play. She was the neocon’s neocon. The contrast between the two here is “yuge” and, for Clinton, quite ugly.
And this is not the only place where Trump’s positioned himself left of Hillary. He has her right where he wants her on trade, “gold standard” and all.
And campaign finance.
I can’t remember the last Presidential election where the Republican had positions clearly left of the Democrat.
Does Clinton have a firewall with minority voters? Maybe, but here’s the thing. She won’t do as well as Obama did with Black voters. She may do as well in percentage terms (but no better), but in sheer numbers she won’t draw as many to the polls. Yes, she’ll clobber Trump with Latinos, but Obama did really well on that front as well. So, there’s not that much room to improve on Obama’s performance with minorities.
At the same time, there are plenty of white Obama votes to lose.
Could Trump position himself this effectively against Sanders?
No way.
But he’s banking on not having to.
And it’s not a bad bet.
Why does it have to be left to the donald to bring up 9-11 and iraq war lies. republicans never stop talking about benghazi or clinton not killing bin ladan in 1998 or try to blame obama for isis. Oh yea! hillary voted for the war so we can’t talk about it or attack bernie for doing so.