First of all, I think Hillary Clinton did an excellent job making clear how incoherent and dishonest is Donald Trump. And yet, this exposé apparently resonated not at all among his supporters. I know many people are going to offer suggestions to Clinton as to how she can do better at this next time, and yes, that’s what I’m doing right here.
The question I asked myself was, how can Clinton make Trump’s lies, arrogance, and greed matter to his supporters? Is it even possible? After all, those individuals like Trump because they basically just want to stick it to Americans who are not like them and don’t agree with them, including most politicians. For them Trump’s dishonesty, etc., just makes him more human; the constant revelations of his dishonesty make him seem, perversely, more honest to his supporters—honest in the sense of more real, like an honest portrayal, or an honest emotion. They have completely lost their faith in the truth. For them, true or false is abstract: emotion is real.
And yet, although this isn’t on their minds, a dishonest, greedy, and arrogant president would have an immense impact on their lives, along with the lives of just about everyone. At some level, they may know this, but it is still abstract. It doesn’t touch them and it doesn’t move them. So what will?
I think there is one thing that probably would bother Trump’s supporters even more than Hillary Clinton, and that is being conned. Being had. Taken advantage of by a rich New Yorker developer. If they came to believe that that was what Trump had done and wants to do more of, then I think they would abandon him. I doubt they’d vote for Hillary Clinton, at least not in large numbers, but they would definitely not vote for the one who was trying to tell them a bunch of lies to get them to buy what they were selling.
So, I think that it would be useful for Hillary Clinton, before, during, and after the next debate, not only to continue pointing out the lies, greed, and arrogance, but to use those ingredients to create a narrative showing how Trump is taking advantage of the anger and credulity of millions of Americans in a bald-faced attempt to con them out of the presidency. Each lie would have a connection to that narrative. A perfect example is the Trump tax plan, that would enormously benefit his own family, but I don’t think that many of them will be that direct. Instead, it will be necessary to talk about how Trump and other ultra-wealthy Americans will benefit from the Trumpublican agenda in general, on the backs of the rubes.
I haven’t thought enough about this to give sufficient examples of how to do it, but the general idea is that Hillary Clinton should narrative that showed Trump supporters how they as a class, along with other Americans, would lose so that Trump can win could be a way of connecting together the countless lies, boasts, and examples of greedy behavior that constitute the Trump campaign. People need narratives to understand things. And as each new example comes along, it can be placed into the existing narrative, making it more compelling.
Hillary Clinton actually did make a move in this direction when she discussed Trump’s failure to release his tax returns. The same kind of thing should be done with as many of his other statements as possible, the whole being knitted into a narrative in which the victims include many of his supporters (which is true).