Washington Post Political Correspondent Anne Gearan stated that Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign is “a bit hamstrung” when it comes to responding to GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and Clinton’s attempts to “deck” Trump haven’t worked on Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Hardball.”
Gearan said, “I think they really are a bit hamstrung when it comes to knowing what the right tone and what — right level of response is to Donald Trump. She’s tried to deck him a couple of times by pointing out that his policies on everything from immigration to Syrian refugees are, as she has said, dangerous. She has accused him of being an — essentially an ISIS recruiting tool. I mean, that’s one way of trying to deck him. It hasn’t really worked. They’ve also tried to take the high road, which is what you’ve seen her do over the last couple of days. And I think it has yet to be seen whether that has long term utility. But Trump’s response today shows that it certainly didn’t do him short-term damage. For Hillary, she really has to decide whether she considers him and the — sort the of double-edged sexism and woman problem allegations that he has been raising over the last few days are enough of a threat that she really needs to address it head on. Doing so would mean giving the Bill Clinton allegations of sexual exploitation more altitude than they currently have and it would be coming from her side instead of from outside the campaign, and that could be a problem.”
She later predicted, “I think that Donald Trump will lose both Iowa and New Hampshire, maybe not by much, setting up a midterm for the republican field where a Chris Christie or a Ted Cruz has a real clear shot at winning in march.”
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