It’s clear that the upcoming debate will not be about issues but about perception: about who is perceived to have won.
Hillary Clinton’s allies are apparently suggesting she simply give Trump the rope to hang himself — to stand back and to let himself look bad. This is terrible advice.
His saying outrageous things doesn’t hurt him because people don’t like him for his policies. They like him for who he seems to be: a strongman and a bully.
So Clinton has to defuse his image of strength.
Then she has to rebrand him.
All the branding of him as a typical racist fail because that’s not what he really is at core. He is different than the typical KKK racist. Nor does he really fit the image of a Russian stooge or any of a million other things they’ve tried.
He is, above all, a bully and a celebrity attention whore, the pus oozing out of a cultural disease.
Clinton has to brand him as the unprincipled, empty, lying con man that he is.
To do that, she has to humiliate him.
To humiliate him, she has to press his buttons and get him to react instinctively, to lose control. He’s got to be flustered.
And then she has to step six-inch heels into his charred soul.
We need one of those “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” moments. But that’s got to be set up.
It truly is, sadly, as Jane Goodall suggested, a chimpanzee fight. I hope Hillary’s up for the challenge. Trump understands this game and is going to be doing the same thing.