* Another Trumpster scorpion strike. This time it wasn’t about targeted immigrants or NATO allies or nuclear adversaries. This time it was Donald Trump going after his presumptive presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton. He accused her of playing “the woman’s card” because, well, “She’s got nothing else going.”
Bad move, even for him. It’s not just a belittling insult. Those are givens. Ask Carly Fiorina, Heidi Cruz and Megyn Kelly.
No, this is just dumb stuff that even his savvy, new advisers can’t prevent.
Trump is what he is, a bullying, blustering billionaire who’s been given a pass by a plurality of disaffected GOP primary voters, which isn’t nearly enough to win a general election against a formidable opponent with appeal to independents and non-apocalyptic GOPsters. He’s still the loudest guy buying a round at “last call,” not the sort who’s about to wax informed, fair-minded–or presidential.
For openers, women are a majority of the electorate. Right now Trump’s negatives among women are hovering around 70 percent. Makes you wonder how long the other 30 percent can hold out.
So he hands Clinton a Trump card.
Not surprisingly, Clinton did not respond in kind, however tempting. Her surrogates and the non-Fox media can hammer home their observations–from misogyny and hand-sanitizer fetish to glaring gaps in foreign policy and trade policies. But she handled the cheap shot like an experienced candidate who happens to be female and on the cusp of history.
“If fighting for women’s health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the ‘woman card,'” retorted Clinton, “then deal me in.”
We haven’t heard the last of this line, and she can pivot from it to her credentials–what else she’s got going, as it were–that include being Secretary of State and a twice-elected senator from New York. While she would be looking to make history as the first female president, Trump, it will be noted, would be looking to make history by being the first president to have never held elective, military or cabinet office.
* Timing is everything, as we know, especially in politics. Imagine, for example, if a viable Republican choice this cycle were someone other than a Cruz missile or a Trump implosion. Maybe someone such as Jon Huntsman, who ran last time. A moderate Republican who was a respected governor, a successful businessman and a former ambassador to China who speaks fluent Mandarin. He even looks presidential–as opposed to Cruz’s Joe McCarthy flashback or Trump’s caricature brand.
Well, look who just endorsed Donald Trump: Jon Huntsman. That, alas, might have said more about the status of the Republican Party–and its priorities–than anything Trump himself has uttered so far.
* We know about past brokered conventions, and we remember the Bush-Gore debacle of 2000. But a worst-case perfect storm? How about an electoral tie (269-269)? In which case, the newly-elected House of Representatives would elect the president–and the Senate would choose the vice president. Really.