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In order to embarrass his republican opponents, Donald Trump merely needed to come up with the kinds of attacks and punchlines which play well with the conservative voters who choose their party’s nomination. And that’s worked across the board. He simply understands how the conservative mind operates, and he puts that knowledge to use. Bullying works on that side of the fence. Half the republican candidates are now paying the price for having defied him, and the other half are now kissing up to him out of fear they’ll suffer the same fate.
But in order for Trump to use that same strategy against Hillary Clinton, he has to figure out how to attack her in a manner that political moderates will respond to. After all, the moderates are the only ones who can be convinced to switch sides during a general election. But thus far he hasn’t been able to put his finger on anything that speaks to middle of the road crowd. It’s not that Hillary doesn’t have vulnerabilities. She does. It’s that he can’t figure out how to exploit them in the eyes of the relevant voters.
Now Trump finds himself reduced to criticizing Clinton for taking too long to use the restroom, the kind of antics which play well with his own far-right base but land with a thud when tried out on the mainstream. He just doesn’t seem to know what to hit her with. Part of the difficulty is that Trump’s inherently distasteful rhetoric doesn’t appeal to moderates to begin with. And they’re not particularly poachable this time around anyway, because moderates tend to like Hillary.
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