I only caught the middle of the debate between flying in late and collapsing from jetlag. But it still seems to me that the author is discussing the wrong argument... The argument both are arguing over is "the established system will continue to improve the country". Hillary aligns herself with Obama, talks about the grounds they've covered already, and pushes for further reforms. Unemployment and crime are down. She gives examples of mental health, prison, and college policy changes that will patch present problems without axing entire departments, firing half of Washington, etc. Trump criticizes her and Obama's contributions to the present problems and tries to convince people that The Status Quo is Fucked. It doesn't matter if he's still working out his plan because anyone's hands are better than those who brought about the War in Iraq, crime wave in Chicago, ISIS & terror attacks, gov't corruption etc. In this argument, Hillary wins by convincing people that the US is better off than it was in 2008. And by pointing to the specific actions she took to improving <insert metric relevant to topic here>. Trump wins by convincing people that the Iraq / Afghan surge, free college, Obamacare, The Recovery Act aren't worth the debt they put us in. That they don't work and we should consider <tarriffs My opinion is that the racist housing, racial profiling, etc, aren't going to win over the voters who are still on the fence or thinking about 3rd party. At this point, it feels to me like the Bigot angle is just a well-beaten horse, rhetorically speaking.When it comes to strategic messaging, most political debates involve all of the participants sending the same underlying message: “I am the best candidate for the job.” Because these messages are mutually exclusive – after all, they can’t all be the best person for the job – one candidate’s deliberate messaging is not likely to reinforce or support the underlying message of their opponent(s). Everybody is playing the same game, and the winner is determined by who avoids making the most mistakes while scoring the most points.
Your argument, then, is that the winning strategy for political office is to play up one's unsuitability for public office. I'm not going to dismiss that out of hand, but it's not a statement that should be accepted at face value. Do you have examples of other protest candidates that have used this strategy effectively?
tax changes
deregulation|pro-business initiatives> instead. He wins by aligning Hillary/Obama with any and all failed 2000-2016 policies and finding underlings in other areas of the gov't who wanted their bosses to Do Things DIfferent.
The fundamental issue is this: Supporters of Hillary Clinton feel they have benefitted under the past 30 years of geopolitics. Supporters of Donald Trump feel they have suffered under the past 30 years of geopolitics. Clinton's very real problem is that undereducated white people over 40 have been fucked in the past 40 years and do not understand the nuance and complexity of why. Trump's very real advantage is that those same people are willing to believe there are simple solutions that are being withheld from them because they've been forgotten by establishment politics.