A recent study conducted at Carnegie-Mellon University showed that, in campaign speeches, Trump talks at a level just below 6th grade. I turns out that part of his campaign strategy is closer to kindergarten: the mighty “I know you are but what am I”.
It was bizarre enough that, after Clinton attacked him as being temperamentally unfit to be president, Trump started attacking Clinton as...being temperamentally unfit to be president. Then, Clinton attacked him for his racism, so Trump started calling her a bigot.
Now, the candidate who’s widely known for running a campaign based on hate and insults that’s mostly devoid of actual policy proposals, has said of Clinton: “Clinton is running a policy-free campaign. She offers no ideas, no solutions. And only hatred and derision.”
This is a truly bizarre claim to make about a notorious policy wonk like Clinton. If one visits her website, one can find detailed policy proposals on about three dozen issues.
But facts don’t matter to 5-year-olds taunting their peers in the schoolyard. And that’s the level we’re dealing with when it comes to Donald Trump.
This wouldn’t be that big a deal if not for the fact that it seems to be working for him. If there’s one thing that Trump is good at, it’s salemanship. He knows better than anyone how to play to the lowest common denominator. He knows that, when you have no argument, the way to succeed is to confuse the issue. So, even though the attacks against him are supported by facts, he can succeed by merely parroting them back at Clinton, thereby canceling things out in the minds of the ill-informed.
The Clinton campaign seems not to know how to respond to this, and the media keeps letting him get away with it. Since there are no consequences to the behavior, we can expect him to keep repeating it, just like any child would.