Hillary Clinton’s team is nervous — and they should be


Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, second from left, speaks with Traveling Political Advisor Darren Peters, left,
Traveling Press Secretary Nick Merrill, and outside advisor Philippe Reines, right, on board her campaign plane at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood
International Airport in Fort Lauderdale, ... more >

The Washington Times - Wednesday, November 2, 2016

On the campaign trail yesterday in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump spoke at length about the failures of Obamacare and his plan on how to fix it.

Hillary Clinton, on the road in Florida, rolled out former Miss Universe Alicia Machado to remind white, educated women just how horrible Mr. Trump is.

One is on the attack, the other is in retreat. One is speaking policy, their vision for the country. The other is using scare tactics, aimed at turning out (or suppressing) a key voter bloc.

Oh, how this race has flipped in the past week.

Mr. Trump’s speech was substantive and relaxed. Even The Washington Post had high praise, calling it “very, very good.”

“Obamacare is a catastrophe,” Mr. Trump said. “The president said if you like your plan you can keep your plan, if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor — which may go down as one of the great political lies of the century. Even the skeptical Democrats believed him and approved the legislation. … No one ever read … the 2,700-page bill.”

True. Mr. Trump then promised to be the change-agent in Washington and to bring back the nation’s jobs — a very compelling message for independents and others living in the Rust Belt who have been devastated by a loss in manufacturing jobs.

Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, was on the defense. Although she’d like to spend the last week of her campaign talking about her vision for the country (maybe), the FBI’s bombshell that they’re reopening her email investigation has her team running scared.
So she’s trying to smear and tear down Mr. Trump — it’s all she’s got left.

“If you’ve got a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister, a mother, a wife, a good friend, someone like this becoming president who insults more than half the population of the United States of America?” Mrs. Clinton asked at her event in Florida Tuesday. “And what about our boys? This is not someone we want them looking up to.”

Her team dumped as much opposition research on Mr. Trump as they could over the weekend — which made little impact. Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia didn’t pan out in an FBI inquiry, The New York Times reported Tuesday, scuttling stories her team was promoting that Mr. Trump’s Russian connections are dangerous.

If they had more opposition research, they would’ve dumped it by now. They have nothing.

The polls are tightening. The most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted over the weekend have her and Mr. Trump tied at 46 percent apiece, and for the first time Mr. Trump was seen as more honest and trustworthy.

Early voting shows the black community isn’t turning out for Mrs. Clinton, especially in key battleground states North Carolina and Michigan. Mrs. Clinton had to add a stop in Detroit to her calendar before Election Day.

Her team pulled advertisements out of Virginia and Colorado months ago — and have never run ads in New Mexico and Michigan. This week, Mrs. Clinton’s team bought airtime for all those states.

Where’s the talk of Mrs. Clinton’s Electoral College blowout that was so confidently predicted by pundits and pollsters last week? Gone. The dynamics of the race have changed, and the wind’s now at Mr. Trump’s back.

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