As I look back over these unfolding stories, I see at least 40 or 50 that would have had that campaign-ending potential in any previous year. The mocking of first John McCain and then the Captain Khan family? The “Mexican judge”? The “grab ‘em by the pussy” Access Hollywood tape and subsequent complaints? The de-facto admission that he’s paid no taxes, and the trail of fraud and buncombe left by his businesses and “charities”? The refusal to provide tax information at all? The disprovable-even-as-he-said-them series of lies? The ever-more evident intrusions on his behalf by a foreign government? “She should be in jail”? “It’s all rigged folks, I tell you”? I alone?
To put these into perspective, just think back to the comparatively pipsqueak “scandals” of a more innocent time: Whether Sarah Palin really read newspapers. Whether Barack Obama called some people “bitter.” Whether Mitt Romney thought 47 percent of the public might be freeloading. Whether Rick Perry had to leave the race because he forgot one of his talking points in a brain-freeze on stage. Whether Dan Quayle could spell “potatoe.” Whether Al Gore exaggerated his role as a founder of the internet. Whether the young George Bush had had a DUI. The chagrin these episodes caused to their victims is almost touching. The candidates’ embarrassment indicated that they believed there was a standard in public life they needed to live up to.
.. But there is no sane argument that it has deserved even one tenth the press attention it has received this year.
.. No one looking back on the America of 2016 will think that the real question its voters should have been grappling with was how Hillary Clinton handled her email.
.. (There’s a parallel to press coverage in the 2000 campaign that I won’t take the time to spell out right now. Essentially, the minor annoyances of Al Gore’s persona were presented as equally important as the policy views the Bush-Cheney team would bring into office.)
.. People who are standing with Trump are doing so with eyes wide open. (Of course so are people who are standing with Hillary Clinton. But as The Atlantic argued in its editorial endorsing her, her strengths and weaknesses are within the range we have seen from most past presidents. Trump’s are outside the known range.)
What We’re Watching for in the Second Debate
The biggest shock is their charade of it, because the recording revealed nothing new. The Trump it captures is the Trump that we’ve all heard, seen and known from the beginning. The only difference is that he’d pretty much reached his end by the time the recording came out. His revolting words enabled Republicans who were increasingly certain of his defeat in the presidential election and were itching for an exit route to wrap themselves in moral outrage as they skittered to one.
.. But why should Trump the Lech be the final straw any more than Trump the Bigot or Trump the Racist? What precisely about his grotesque banter with Bush was more damning than the way he clung to the birther conspiracy and congratulated himself for it? Or his dismissal of a Mexican-American judge? Or his adoration of Vladimir Putin? Or so much else? He disqualified himself repeatedly — and long ago.
.. But if Sunday night’s debate doesn’t stanch his bleeding, look for a new tactic and an altered message: that a Clinton presidency is inevitable and that voters with apprehensions about it should make sure that she’s restrained by a Congress in firm Republican control.