Nicknames and bumper stickers are the blunt instruments of campaigns, and there’s a lot to be said for more sophisticated tools. There’s also a lot to be said for trying to win on your own turf, not your opponent’s, and Trump is a champ at insulting nicknames.
But Crooked Hillary, the one he seems to have settled on, isn’t one of his best. It can be, well, trumped.
Politico has a piece about Donald Trump and the Art of the Nasty Political Nickname.
“Political discourse in the United States is characterized by high productivity of coining nicknames for US Presidents,” writes Dr. Anna Gladkova, who wrote a 2002 paper on the practice. She counts 430 nicknames for (at the time) 43 American presidents. Many of these nicknames are complimentary, but aside from Honest Abe, the positive ones don’t stick around very long—quick, who was Handsome Frank? Smiling Bill? It’s the vicious ones that people remember.
Hillary Clinton has been having trouble countering her Republican opponent on this front. (The choices so far? “Dangerous Donald.” “Poor Donald.” Bernie Sanders has chimed in with “Mr. Macho”—which is, oddly, sort of a compliment.) The problem is, Democrats today don’t appear to possess the requisite adolescent glee necessary to finding just the right few words that will stick like napalm and burn, burn, burn.
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But at least one Kossack had that “requisite adolescent glee” (though I can’t remember who it was). I submit:
- It’s short (like his, um, fingers).
- It’s punchy.
- It calls him by his first name, as Hillary, brilliantly, does, not by his “brand” surname – the one he applies to towers and stakes and vodka and “universities”.
But most of all:
It’s true in every sense. His entire candidacy, not just his tax returns or his “university”, is a con.
Spread the word.
Don the Con.