For months, Democrats argued that voters would get “serious” about the campaign once it reached the fall and would reject Donald Trump’s no-holds-barred approach.
They’re still waiting.
With fewer than 50 days left, polling shows a tightening national race and — most unnerving to Democrats — a Trump rise in key battleground states. But as Trump’s provocative appeal gains traction, Hillary Clinton is sticking with the traditional playbook: Lots of attack ads, a focus on getting out the vote and intense preparation for next week’s first general election debate.
Her approach underscores what’s emerged as a central question of the 2016 campaign: Can Clinton’s play-it-safe political strategy win against a chaos candidate?
Even President Barack Obama, who long dismissed the idea of a future Trump administration, has started ringing alarm bells, warning Democratic supporters to expect a tight race that Clinton could possibly lose. Recent polls suggest the Republican may have an edge in Iowa and Ohio and is likely in a close race with Clinton in Florida and North Carolina.
“We’re going through the roller-coaster rides of campaigns. All she can do is just keep plowing ahead,” said Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist who ran Obama’s Florida operation in 2008 and advised him four years later. “She’s going to win it by grinding it out.”
In other campaign developments:
• Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence is defending the son of his running mate after Donald Trump Jr. compared Syrian refugees to poisoned candy.
Pence told MSNBC in an interview Tuesday that the younger Trump was simply using a “metaphor.”
Trump Jr. posted on his social media account Monday the image of a bowl of multicolored candies called Skittles. He asked his Twitter followers, “If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you, would you take a handful?”
• Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is defending her decision to accept a $25,000 donation from Trump while her office was fielding consumer complaints about Trump University.
Bondi on Tuesday for the first time directly answered questions about the 2013 donation from Trump’s family foundation. She said she has no regrets about accepting the money from Trump and repeated that her office did nothing improper.
• A prominent member of the Kennedy family says former Republican President George H.W. Bush told her that he plans to vote for Clinton for president this fall.
Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend posted a picture of herself with Bush on Facebook Monday and added, “The President told me he’s voting for Hillary!!” Townsend later confirmed the conversation she had while meeting Bush in Maine to Politico, which shared a screen grab of the Facebook post.