When Hillary Clinton kicked off her presidential bid last year, the press corps literally chased her "Scooby" van all over the place trying to catch pictures of her. Why? Because instead of talking to them, she was talking to actual voters, specifically at round tables like the one she did with young DREAM activists within the first several weeks of her campaign.
It was no accident. She thrived in these one-on-one interactions—connecting with real people played to Clinton’s strengths. And so the entire roll out of her candidacy was orchestrated around them.
Trump, by contrast, did YUGE rallies, bragging about crowd size and touting every new poll that came out. He also literally “phoned it in” to friendly shows and outlets like Morning Joe, Fox News, and compromised his standards on occasion to call in to a Sunday program. He specialized in talking at people, not with them.
The next presidential debate on October 9 will be a town hall format, which holds pitfalls for any candidate. But for Trump, talking to anyone who doesn't absolutely adore him and think he's tremendous(!) is Kryptonite.
Trump doesn't like people who don't believe in his tremendousness. It messes with his worldview. How do we know? Just look at his juvenile effort to shame Alicia Machado—the Latina Miss Universe he once disparaged as "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeper"—after Clinton wiped the floor with him during the debate for demeaning Machado.
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Now just imagine someone like Machado asking Trump if he feels regret for degrading women for gaining "a massive amount of weight." Remember how well that went for Fox’s Megyn Kelly during the GOP primary? Or imagine gold star parents asking Trump if he regrets attacking Khizr and Ghazala Khan.
Trump is like a walking Dumpster fire just waiting for some gasoline to unleash a pyrotechnic eruption. Nothing was more evident during Monday night's debate than his bottomless need to defend himself against even the smallest unflattering remark, like the fact that he started his company with a "small" million dollar loan from his Daddy.
His outsized defensiveness isn't occasional or optional, it's compulsive. You can count on it every time. That's not something you can train out of someone in a couple weeks. In fact, Trump's campaign staff couldn't even properly prep him for the very controlled environment of one moderator and one opponent. Relatively speaking, a town hall will be more like pushing that Dumpster fire over a field of land mines.
In the meantime, Clinton's interactions with real voters have been so powerful that her campaign has regularly featured them in videos and ads. Remember the video of her meeting with the "Mothers of the Movement" for Black Lives that played at the Democratic National Convention? Or this ad of Clinton talking to a little girl about bullying at a town hall event?
Granted, some of the queries Clinton will get during this debate will inevitably come from voters who don't like her. But Clinton was the perfect Happy Warrior throughout Monday's debate even as Trump lobbed rocks at her like a petulant child. Former Mexican president Vicente Fox observed that it was like watching "the beauty and the beast."
On October 9, "the beast" will be unleashed on regular citizens—a performance that’s sure to draw endless follow-up interviews from Trump reinforcing how right he was to be so beastly.
By the way, you can apparently vote on which questions you would like to see asked on October 9. Check it out!
