| New York Daily News | - |
Sometimes
it seems like Hillary Clinton's plan is to let Donald Trump lose it for
her. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images). Mike Lupica.
LUPICA: Clinton's dream opponent in Trump may turn into a nightmare if she doesn't wake up
Sometimes it seems like Hillary Clinton's plan is to let Donald Trump lose it for her.
(Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)Clinton is not up against a rock star like Barack Obama this time, she is up against the candidate of a wall that he keeps insisting Mexico will pay for, and Muslim bans, and mass deportations; a candidate who somehow thought he could treat the parents of a dead Muslim-American war hero as if they were just more pushovers on a debate stage with him; a candidate who seems to be running for President of Breitbart.com, taking advice from the likes of Rudy Giuliani, who eight years ago ran one of the dumbest campaigns for President in all of recorded history.
Hillary Clinton runs against someone — Trump — who has steadfastly refused to reveal his tax history, while surrogates like Giuliani scream shamefully about Clinton's medical history. With all that, all the gifts that just keep coming, Clinton's strategy still seems to be to pass the ball around on the outside, the way they used to in college basketball before there was a shot clock in that sport. At North Carolina, under Coach Dean Smith, they used to run what was called the Four Corners offense when they were trying to run out the clock. Hillary Clinton seems to be running that kind of offense, with a full two months left before Election Day, merely a lifetime in politics.
She acts as if this is a traditional campaign against a traditional opponent. Run around with your hand out in August, start to make your run in September. But Trump is not a traditional opponent. This is not a traditional campaign. You know what the headlines are about Clinton these days, when they're not about more trouble with her emails? They are about how much money she is raising in places like the Hamptons. You know the last person who thought he could beat Trump with a great, big war chest of money? Jeb Bush.
Trump could win White House with help of an 'October Surprise'
Blunder-prone Trump has become Clinton's dream opponent. But her strategy, thus far, has failed to put him away.
(CARLO ALLEGRI/REUTERS)But even with the damage Trump has done to himself, and with the huge bump in the polls that Clinton got after her own convention, she does not pull away from him. Joe Biden wins this thing in a walk. So should Hillary Clinton, even carrying around as much baggage as she does. Sometimes you think that a much bigger problem for her than her old BlackBerry is that she still hasn't improved as a candidate. She is lucky her opponent isn't John Kasich, or even Jeb.
Sometimes Clinton acts as if her only real plan, other than money, in an election that is hers to lose, is for Trump to lose it for her. Maybe she thinks that begins with the first debate, believes as her old friend James Carville does that she will "mop the floor" with Trump at Hofstra, and then the two debates after that.
"She's a great debater," Carville says.
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We will find out in a couple of weeks. For now, we can't find Hillary Clinton often enough. Here was a headline in the New York Times on Saturday: "Where has Hillary been? Ask the Ultrarich?" According to the story, she jokes at one of these events that she is all that is standing between us and the apocalypse, meaning Trump. There still has to be more of a plan than raising big money, and waiting around for the next time Trump tries to shoot himself out of a cannon.
Clinton isn't supposed to lose this election. There should be no way. But she wasn't supposed to lose her party's nomination to Obama eight years ago. The best thing you can say about the campaign she is running is that it is better than the one she ran eight years ago. She truly does get a dream opponent here, maybe the only one she could beat, one who keeps finding ways for emails not to be the biggest story in the world. Hillary's job is to clean the guy's clock, not run it out.
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