How Do You Solve a Problem Like Trump?

(..) How could a candidate with as much baggage as Trump be neck-and-neck with one of the most admired, best credentialed and most broadly experienced nominees in the history of the Democratic Party?

The reversal has come quickly, as my colleague Nate Cohn pointed out on Tuesday. Last year, on July 15, Clinton led Trump 53.3 to 33.7 in the RealClearPolitics aggregation of polls. As recently as March 23, she had a solid 11.4 point lead, 50.4 to 39.0, over Trump.

How did Clinton lose her advantage?

The unrelenting assault from the right and the left on her integrity and competence, conducted both by Republicans and by her opponent for the Democratic nomination, appears to have taken a toll. Clinton has been under attack from the right throughout her 25 years in the national arena. The Sanders critique from the left has served to deepen her negative ratings.

The current barrage has several central themes. The first is that her acceptance of millions of dollars in speaking fees and in campaign contributions from Wall Street banks suggests that her loyalties lie with financial elites, not with the electorate. The second focuses on Clinton’s use of a personal email server to conduct State Department business, the subject of a Republican-led congressional inquiry that has lasted longer than the Watergate investigation. The third is a revived focus on Bill Clinton’s sexual escapades by the thrice-married Trump — himself a notorious sexual braggart and a confessed adulterer — who wrote in “Trump: The Art of the Comeback”:

If I told the real stories of my experiences with women, often seemingly very happily married and important women, this book would be a guaranteed best-seller (which it will be anyway!).

Clinton’s response to these attacks has been faltering. (..)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/25/opinion/campaign-stops/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-trump.html?_r=0