When Hillary Clinton takes to the debate stage next week, in the opener of a three-act tragedy that will rivet most of the nation, she should keep in mind that the campaign really isn’t about her.
I say this not because, when she talks to voters, Clinton too often has a tendency to frame her campaign as the necessary capstone of her long, lonely, twilight struggle of a career, rather than as a vehicle for reform — although she does.
I say it not because Clinton can come across as aggrieved, a victim of venal Republicans and craven media who is biding her time until she can settle all the old scores, like Carrie at the prom.
No, I say it because at this point the campaign really isn’t hers to win or lose, and probably nothing she says will change its trajectory. It’s all about her opponent now.
Barring some cosmic meltdown from Clinton, these debates will unfold as a test for Donald Trump. We’re about to find out whether he can pass himself off as a credible entrant for the job and, perhaps more to the point, whether he actually wants it.
At bottom, presidential debates are always about something, beyond all those banal answers to predictable questions. The 2000 debates, for instance, were essentially a test of whether George W. Bush knew enough to be president. The 2004 debates were a chance for John Kerry to show he had some clear convictions about terrorism and economics.
If Clinton had almost any other opponent (like someone who was, say, an actual Republican), the debates would probably be a clear referendum on her and on the Obama years.
She is running effectively as an incumbent, seeking an exceedingly rare third term for the party in power. She is the oldest Democratic nominee in history, the first woman in either party and a controversial figure in American life for 25 years and counting.
But that’s not where we find ourselves. Whether from incompetence or instability, Trump has managed to make himself not the default alternative to a candidate who is deeply distrusted by the electorate, but rather the dominant and more divisive figure of the twoRather than play along with Trump’s “Dancing With the Stars” kind of campaign, Clinton has largely receded to the shadows offstage, content to watch while Trump gyrates and boogies himself into all kind of grotesque poses, alternately amusing and reviling much of the viewing audience.
And so, improbably, the election is now a referendum on him. Clinton’s support is probably inelastic at this point; assuming she slogs cautiously through the debates in her admirable if uninspiring way, she can do little to change the minds of those who already know how they feel about her, which is pretty much everyone.
Whether that’s enough to deliver her the White House is almost entirely a question of whether Trump can yet persuade some segment of disenchanted, moderate voters that he meets the very lowest threshold for a plausible president — someone who won’t destroy the world, at a minimum, and who might not embarrass them every day of the week for the next four years if they get really lucky.
Specifically, we’re talking about white voters with college degrees, who make up more than a third of the likely electorate. According to some fascinating research from the Democratic group Third Way, it’s been more than 60 years since any Democratic candidate won that population outright. Four years ago, Mitt Romney carried these voters by 14 percentage points.
In recent polling, however, Clinton continues to lead among college-educated white voters by as much as 7 points. Clinton may not be able to replicate President Obama’s numbers among more heavily Democratic constituencies, but if the trend among these historically Republican voters holds, it’s hard to see how Clinton isn’t elected.
This is the most critical audience among the 100 million or so Americans who are likely to watch the debates and assess Trump’s fitness to serve. If he lapses into more assurances about the size of his member (and yeah, I know no one wants to relive that moment, but we have to acknowledge it happened and talk about it before we can really move on as a nation, people), chances are nothing else will matter.
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