The Battle of the Negatives Is About to Begin

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Barring an act of God, both major political parties now have their presidential nominees, and the mud’s about to fly.

Hillary Clinton’s loss in yesterday’s Indiana primary is merely an annoying speed bump on her way to being the Democratic nominee. Donald Trump’s win in the Hoosiers’ GOP primary clears his way to the nomination.

Clinton has the early edge because nationally there are more Democrats than Republicans. She also benefits from having a lot more friends in the media. It’s to Trump’s advantage, though, that Clinton still has that pesky Bernie Sanders to contend with, while he can focus on the general election and her.

Clinton, like her husband, also has a history of sidestepping events and actions that would have ended the careers of other politicians. Most voters continue to believe, for example, that Clinton broke the law by sending and receiving classified information through a private e-mail server while secretary of State, but just 25% think she is likely to be indicted for it.

While there’s been some initial verbal sparring between the two, Trump not surprisingly has been the first to up the ante, first with an Instagram posting of Clinton barking like a dog intercut with footage of a laughing Vladimir Putin. More recently, he’s taken to calling his likely opponent Crooked Hillary, the latest in a series of nicknames that have spelled trouble for his GOP foes.

While Clinton has publicly countered with the message that “love trumps hate,” you can be sure that her smear agents Sidney Blumenthal and David Brock have been working hard behind the scenes to craft a vicious anti-Trump narrative. In the days ahead, the New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, are sure to feature “exposes” on every aspect of Trump’s business and personal life, including his behavior as a child.

Clinton is pitching herself as a better Obama, advancing the current president’s big government agenda even further than he wanted to go. Sanders is pushing her hard, too, to move left in a number of areas. Clinton’s also counting on mobilizing the Democratic base of minorities, women and younger voters with the battle-tested strategy of painting the Republican candidate as extreme, calling Trump anti-woman and, of course, a bigot for his proposed Muslim ban and his hard stance on illegal immigration.

Trump’s strategy recalls the mantra which propelled Clinton’s husband into the White House in 1992 - “It’s the economy, stupid.” He’s been critical of the recent economic - and national security - policies of both Democrats and Republicans and is promising to bring a businessman’s competence to the presidency. With this message, he hopes to reach economically stressed blue collar voters, so-called Reagan Democrats, and bring them into the GOP fold again.

Clinton has already shown that she’s prepared to cry “sexism” anytime she’s criticized, but Trump also has shown that he isn’t worried about the long-standing caution that male politicians have to handle female rivals with kid gloves. He also isn't hesitant to play the victim himself when attacked despite the hard hits he hands out. In short, it looks like we’re in for a long and nasty campaign.

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