Could Hillary Clinton See a ‘Negative Bounce’ From the Democrat Convention?
As we explained during the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump is communicating on a totally different wavelength and to different audiences than your typical Republican politician.
He is communicating on a brand level while typical Republicans, and certainly the Democrats this week at their convention, are still mired in trying to sell policy—frequently to the detriment of their brand.
While Trump built his brand with videos and speeches by his wife and children, the Democrats have been destroying their brand by failing to display American flags at their Convention, failing to honor fallen police officers, while prominently displaying the families of thugs who fought with the police and lost, and failing to mention ISIS and Islamic terrorism, while prominently featuring gun control and climate change, the top issue of concern to only 9.2 percent of Americans.
And then there was Bill Clinton’s 45-minute infomercial on Clinton sleaze, reminding voters that electing Hillary Clinton would also bring him back to the White House.
If a typical establishment Republican like Mitt Romney was the GOP candidate this year, he would no doubt be earnestly trying to explain the “conservative” solution to climate change, but not Donald Trump.
The big story at the Democratic convention for most of Wednesday was not the Democrats—not Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine or even President Obama, the evening’s star speaker. It was Donald Trump, who put another hole in the Clinton-Democratic brand by jokingly inviting the Russians to release the emails Clinton deleted from the server before turning it over to the FBI.
Trump’s provocation came on the heels of the unflattering revelations contained in emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee, a security breach that drove Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz from her post, and that the Democrats blamed on the Russian government.
The Democrats and their allies in the media deluded themselves into believing that Trump’s remarks were a gaffe that played directly into the Democrats’ hands by making Trump look reckless, unknowing and naive. But, as The Washington Post’s Dan Balz put it, “that is partly because the Democrats were thinking by the conventional standards of political logic, which has never been Trump’s way.”
While Trump’s supporters and the millions of other center-right voters who heard it on talk radio and social media got the joke, the Democrats and their allies in the media took the bait.
Clinton’s senior policy advisor Jake Sullivan said in a formal statement issued by Clinton’s campaign, “This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent. That’s not hyperbole, those are just the facts. This has gone from being a curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security.”
Sullivan did not explain how the e-mails, which Clinton said were about nothing more than her “yoga routines” and wedding planning for her daughter, could possibly pose a national security risk to the United States thereby reminding Americans once again about the lies attendant to the Clinton email scandal and giving conservative talk radio and social media more ammo with which to attack Clinton.
Center-right voters and talk radio listeners are already well aware that the FBI has had the server, that it was long ago disconnected from the internet and that Clinton’s damage to national security, intentional or otherwise, has already been done.
But the media in their phony outrage over Trump’s comments about Russia hacking Clinton’s server also put air under Donald Trump’s central message, “If it is Russia,” Trump said of the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s email system, “it’s really bad for a different reason: because it shows how little respect they have for our country.”
Trump’s brand communication strategy is driving the Democrats and Hillary Clinton nuts to the point that, as The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway put it, “Donald Trump Is Living Rent-Free In The DNC’s Head.“
And while Democrats and their media allies fumed about an imaginary alliance that has Donald Trump playing footsie with Putin and respond to every Trump jibe and provocation as if it were the sinking of the Lusitania, Trump has now taken the lead in poll after poll.
Indeed, Trump is now up by a point in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls.
CNN has Trump topping Clinton 44 percent to 39 percent in a four-way matchup including Gary Johnson (9 percent) and Jill Stein (3 percent) and by three points in a two-way head-to-head, 48 percent to 45 percent. Trump’s new edge rests largely on increased support among independents, 43 percent of whom said that Trump’s convention in Cleveland left them more likely to back him, while 41 percent were dissuaded. Pre-convention, independents split 34 percent Clinton to 31 percent Trump, with sizable numbers behind Johnson (22 percent) and Stein (10 percent). Now, 46 percent say they back Trump, 28 percent Clinton, 15 percent Johnson and 4 percent Stein.
And more importantly, the respected USC Dornsife/LA Times tracking poll shows Hillary Clinton actually getting a negative bounce from the Democratic Convention. The poll by the Los Angeles Times and the USC Dornsife Center surveyed 3,000 Americans.
According to that poll’s findings, Donald Trump has increased his lead during the DNC from +3 on Sunday to +7 on Wednesday.
And even the Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll, which has been generally unfavorable to Trump, now has him ahead among likely voters, with Trump leading 40.2 percent to 38.5 percent for Hillary.
Hillary Clinton is getting a negative bounce in the polls from the Democratic National Convention because Democrats have failed to change public perception of her brand.
The climate change message may help with the 9.2 percent of voters who think it is one of the top issues, but it is killing Clinton and the Democrats with voters in coal and oil states and other working people who wonder if the industry that employs them will be next.
In the world of commercial and retail mass marketing no one would hire Bill Clinton to sell anything, especially his wife.
It is no different in politics—unless you are a Kool-aide-drinking liberal—no one wants to buy anything from the crude, grasping, Bill Clinton.
And just by showing up he’s a one-man reminder of the scandals, the avarice, the lies and the two Americas—the lawless elite and the rest of us—that Obama and Clinton have created.
Likewise, when 68 percent of the general adult population feels the police in their community are excellent/pretty good at being helpful and friendly—a number that rises to 72 percent in rural communities and 70 percent in the suburbs, and 62 percent believe the police do not use excessive force and treat people fairly regardless of race, the Democrats made anti-police activists the stars of their Convention. (Harris poll numbers from before the Dallas and Baton Rouge murders of eight police officers.)
The Clinton brand has, in our view, taken the worst hits from the small details, many of which are in the non-verbal communications and politically correct silence emanating from the Democratic National Convention: the failure to display the American flag, the prominent role given to the families of thugs who fought with the police and lost, and perhaps most importantly, when terrorism tops the list of voter concerns, by the Democrats’ failure to mention ISIS or radical Islam on the day a French priest was killed by Muslim terrorists.
The negative perception of Clinton’s brand is solidifying and the messages coming from Philadelphia are only making it worse for Hillary.
George Rasley is editor of ConservativeHQ, a member of American MENSA and a veteran of over 300 political campaigns, including every Republican presidential campaign from 1976 to 2008. He served as lead advance representative for Governor Sarah Palin in 2008 and has served as a staff member, consultant or advance representative for some of America’s most recognized conservative Republican political figures, including President Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. He served in policy and communications positions on the House and Senate staff, and during the George H.W. Bush administration he served on the White House staff of Vice President Dan Quayle.
