Hillary’s campaign doesn’t dominate any news cycle, unless it’s a negative message about her emails, her health, or the deplorables.
She’s running lots of TV advertising, an idea that wasn’t completely effective even in 2012, and that probably hasn’t worked perfectly since the 1990s when Bill Clinton ran for president. As we pointed out in “Is Ignorance Bliss”:
Taken together, major network and cable TV accounts for 26.5 million viewers, or only 18.2% of registered voters.
Moreover, we said that more Americans are going elsewhere for information, specifically to mobile:
70% of those ages 18-29 either prefer, or only use mobile for getting their digital news, compared with 53% of those 30-49, 29% of those 50-64 and just 16% of those 65+.
Hillary was on a high right after the Democratic convention, largely because she articulated a positive vision for the country. But she was seduced by Trump’s gaffes about the Khan family who spoke at the convention, and went negative about the Pant Load for several weeks. After that, she seemed to go into a “run out the clock” strategy in August, interrupted by the “deplorables” comments and her lack of candor about her health.
Now it’s September, and she’s continuing to lose the news war, by not returning to promoting a positive vision that people can understand. She’s lost weeks, while ceding the floor to Trump and his spurious claims about her, and about the state of the country.
And she’s losing the millennials. Their attention spans aren’t attuned to the Clinton message, or to the medium that she uses to deliver it, while Trump is employing the number one axiom of celebrity: Stay in the picture, make noise, use mobile technology to deliver the word!
And Trump supporters understand that The Donald is a flawed messenger, but, like it or not, they hate Hillary, and what other people like Hillary stand for.
So that’s where we are with 50 days to go to the election. Hillary’s challenge is to reclaim her platform, and to speak about what will be different and better in America if she wins the election.
Playing down to the level of her opponent is likely to lead to a loss.
Here are a few links you might have missed:
After the bomb exploded in NYC, Uber customers discovered that Uber had doubled their fares. The Uber app said: “Fares have increased to get more Ubers on the road.” After complaints, they deactivated their surge pricing algorithm for the affected area in Chelsea. Uber was clearly following the advice of Rahm Emanuel: “Never let a crisis to go to waste.”
In some US cities, police are collecting DNA from people not charged with, or suspected of, any particular crime. Police in Florida and other states are building up private DNA databases, by asking for, and collecting voluntary samples. If you are innocent, why not comply?
ISIS has reportedly banned women wearing the burka in northern Iraq after claiming that its fighters have been targeted by a veiled female. Seems ironic that ISIS and the French are now on the same side, banning the burka for the same reason.
Chinese companies are quietly acquiring businesses in Rust-belt states. Chinese companies are setting up shop in Ohio and Michigan, key voter battlegrounds in November, where traditional manufacturing has been hollowed out — in many cases, by trade…with China. Fuyao Glass took over a GM facility and got a $9.7 million tax credit from the (Republican-run) state of Ohio, which also kicked in a $1 million grant for road work.
314 Springsteen songs ranked from first to last. Caryn Rose, of New York Magazine’s Vulture blog, ranked every Bruce Springsteen song. She put the list together in four days in a NYC hotel room. You know that the #1 song was “Born to Run”.
Tuesday calls for bonus music: Here are Dave and Phil Alvin, who founded the roots-rock band The Blasters in 1979. After not working together for years, they recorded an album in 2013. Now they’re back with “World’s in a Bad Condition” from their 2015 album, “Lost Time”:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
