To the Clinton campaign, the most powerful weapon against Trump is Trump

CLEVELAND — Campaigning in the battleground state of Ohio on Wednesday, Hillary Clinton ticked off her plans to lift the middle class. The Democrat leveled some zingers at her Republican opponent, telling the crowd that “friends don’t let friends vote for Donald Trump.” And she left the stage 32 minutes later to boisterous applause.

What Clinton didn’t do was break any new ground. The rally in a high school gym here was the latest in a series of workmanlike, largely news-free appearances by the Democratic nominee, who seems content to let Trump’s troubles dominate the headlines for now.

“When your opponent is committing suicide, you don’t have to commit homicide,” Hari Sevugan, a Democratic communications consultant and former campaign spokesman for President Obama, said when asked about Clinton’s strategy of laying relatively low.

Indeed, by the time Clinton arrived in Cleveland, it was already clear that the political news of the day was going to be the staff shake-up at Trump’s struggling campaign. It was the latest in a near-daily dose of developments on the Republican side dominating the agenda on cable news shows.

In a move expected to generate local headlines but be ignored by the national press, Clinton toured the recently rebuilt high school in which she would later speak, surveying the use of robotics, 3-D printers and other innovative teaching aides. She ignored questions shouted by reporters about what Trump’s reshuffling says about the race.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/to-the-clinton-campaign-the-most-powerful-weapon-against-trump-is-trump/2016/08/17/a7d2515e-6493-11e6-8b27-bb8ba39497a2_story.html