The Quiet Ruthlessness of the Clinton Campaign
For the past sixteen months, roughly since Donald Trump’s insult of Senator John McCain (“I like people who weren’t captured”), the Republican Presidential nominee has been behaving in ways that were far outside the bounds of acceptable behavior for a Presidential candidate. For most of that time, it only seemed to make him more popular.
This changed with a series of events, beginning in the summer, that the Clinton campaign either orchestrated or exploited, and that caused Trump to become unhinged at a new, more self-damaging level.
.. Trump, who thinks of himself as a Seigneur surrounded by admiring and grateful servitors who call him “Mr. Trump” (at least until the moment when he tells them, “You’re fired!”), suddenly finds the social order reversed. The little people are attacking him, and he’s expected to grovel and beg for forgiveness. And that makes him blow up.
.. Clinton’s biggest mistakes, like setting up her private e-mail server, spring from excessive fear and caution, rather than excessive confidence