I read this NY Times article just now. It reports the result of a study evaluating what people are hearing in the media regarding the two candidates. Here is an extract laying out what I found disturbing:
The type of information getting through to Americans varies significantly depending on whether the candidate in question is Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton. Americans’ daily reports about Mr. Trump are directly tied to what he is doing and saying. If Mr. Trump talks about Muslim parents and their son who was killed in action, that’s what the public remembers. If he goes to Mexico or Louisiana, that’s what they recall reading or hearing about him. If Mr. Trump calls President Obama the founder of the Islamic State, “ISIS” moves to the top of the list of what Americans tell us they are hearing about the Republican candidate.
What Americans recall hearing about Mrs. Clinton is significantly less varied. Specifically — and to an extraordinary degree — Americans have consistently told us that they are reading and hearing about her handling of emails while she was secretary of state during President Obama’s first term. In eight of the past 10 weeks, “emails” has been the most frequently recalled word in Americans’ reports of news about Mrs. Clinton — the exceptions being the week of the Democratic convention, when emails fell to second place, and this past week when “pneumonia” and “health” eclipsed emails. [emphasis mine]
In other words, people are hearing what Trump says: his message is getting through. However, people are not hearing what she is saying; instead, they are hearing the same old hackneyed pseudo-scandals regarding Hillary Clinton. But in effect, that means Americans are hearing what Trumps wants them to hear both about himself and about Hillary Clinton. In other words, Trump is controlled virtually the entire content of the media representation of the two major presidential candidates in this campaign.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think he is doing this through the normal levers used to manipulate political campaign (bribery, extortion, nepotism, ...). Instead, he is doing it via his ability to attract the attention of the media audience, by being interesting. (I recently wrote about this here.) That is, the media (including the blogosphere and social media) has made the collective decision that the most important factor in their editorial decision-making about what to publish is how interesting a given piece of content is, and that almost invariably, Trump is just more interesting (i.e., better at attracting viewer attention, or click-bait if you will) than Hillary Clinton.
Was this conscious on his part, or is it just kismet? I think think the former. After his years of success as the equivalent of click-bait in several different media categories, plus years of observing other successes, and also years of observing various recent presidential campaigns (none more relevant than that of Barack Obama), he became convinced that he could use his reality TV talents to produce a very effective presidential campaign. And, as the article I linked to illustrates, he may be pulling it off.
This creates an enormous problem for everyone but Trump. Basically, anything said by Hillary Clinton, whether delineating her own agenda, beliefs, and positions, or criticizing those of Trump, is just going to be drowned out by the next bit of glittering click-bait produced by Trump. Even if the media decides to turn its attention to Hillary Clinton, there is nothing about her agenda, beliefs , and positions that even comes close to being as interesting (in the above sense) as her emails, her health, or even Bill’s wandering hands.
This state of affairs is not only due to Donald Trump’s skills as a performer, it is also due to the fact that people (especially media people) feel they already know everything there is to know about Hillary Clinton, so it is very unlikely that she will have anything interesting to add to it. I believe that Trump recognized that full well, and that it is why he has resorted to completely unbelievable and outrageous statements—because people already know Donald Trump. But they didn’t know he wanted to build a Wall or create a religious test for entry to the US or expel millions of undocumented workers and their families. Those were new and...interesting.
Will Donald Trump become boring? Even the best reality TV does, eventually (actually, from my point of view, it does as soon as the words “reality TV” are uttered). But reality TV scenarists are very good at coming up with new twists and turns, and so The Donald, who is one of the best at this, may be able to keep it up for the few remaining weeks of the campaign.
What can be done? What can make the conversation turn to Hillary Clinton’s campaign?
I think all she has are the conventional tools of political campaigns, and I think that just as Trump is a master of the media-centered, reality-TV-based campaign, she is a master of the conventional campaign. Furthermore, her campaign is by no means ignoring new media. So her best shot is to continue in that vein.
This campaign is basically a contest between the serious (Meet the Press) and the entertaining (The Apprentice) for audience share.