At the time I’m writing this, if you go to CNN’s website, nine out of the 12 articles at the top of the page are about Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. The deluge of Trump coverage in this election cycle is overwhelming, and it’s becoming more and more clear that the consistent mention of his name in headlines — no matter the context — is helping rather than hurting his campaign. But who else is it helping?
Protestors forced Trump to cancel an appearance in Chicago Friday amid safety concerns, The New York Times reported. The Democratic candidates had notably divergent responses to the cancellation. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a statement directly holding Trump at fault: “What caused the protests at Trump’s rally is a candidate that has promoted hatred and division.”
Fellow Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton responded by claiming, “The divisive rhetoric we are seeing should be of grave concern to us all.” She did not mention Trump’s name or specifically link his words to the protests.
Further, Clinton made the strange decision to touch on last year’s mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Clinton wrote, “Last year in Charleston, South Carolina an evil man walked into a church and murdered nine people. The families of those victims came together and melted hearts in the statehouse and the confederate flag came down. That should be the model we strive for to overcome painful divisions in our country.”
What?
Not only are the Charleston shootings irrelevant to the Chicago rally, but Clinton is clumsily insinuating, as many black voices on Twitter subsequently pointed out, that people of color should stand down in the face of racist violence. It is the same rhetoric with which white politicians consistently chastise black protestors, the same voices who tout Martin Luther King Jr.’s commitment to nonviolence and toss out his explicit advocacy for civil disobedience.
And this isn’t even Clinton’s only major mistake in the last week. Clinton gravely misspoke in an NBC interview, in the wake of former first lady Nancy Reagan’s death, championing her “very effective low-key advocacy” in the fight against AIDS during the disease’s outbreak in the 1980s.
In fact, the Reagans were shamefully deficient in their response to the AIDS epidemic that emerged in the United States in San Francisco in 1981. By the time former President Ronald Reagan first spoke of the illness in 1987, as ABC reported, approximately 20,000 Americans had died of complications from AIDS. BuzzFeed reported that Mrs. Reagan refused to assist friend and AIDS victim Rock Hudson in moving to a better hospital in France. Hudson died in 1985.
Clinton issued an apology on Twitter later on Friday. But it’s a tough pill to swallow for the LGBT community that was left devastated in the 1980s by the Reagans’ indifference to AIDS. It’s also difficult to understand why Clinton made this mistake. After all, it wasn’t necessary that she herald Mrs. Reagan for anything. When Associate Justice Antonin Scalia died, Clinton was short and respectful: “I did not hold Justice Scalia’s views, but he was a dedicated public servant.” She tripped on her own overcompensation.
And that’s not all. At a St. Louis, Missouri rally on Saturday, ABC reported that Clinton blasted Sanders: “I don’t know where he was when I was trying to get healthcare in ’93 and ’94.” Video emerged shortly after showing Clinton at Dartmouth College in 1993, thanking Sanders for his support on health care.
The Sanders campaign also released a photo that Clinton sent Sanders in 1993 of the two of them with a note that reads, in part, “Thanks for your commitment to real healthcare access for all Americans.”
These mistakes are both underreported and under-analyzed. Clinton has, in the past week, made racially insensitive comments, given inaccurate and offensive praise and leveled false attacks against her opponent. Yet she emerges seemingly unscathed, rebuked only by a small portion of the electorate and media paying careful attention to her statements.
Why?
As is the case with nearly every topic in this election, it’s Trump’s fault. His antics, his audacity, just his presence has monopolized the discourse and dwarfed Clinton’s blunders. The kind of stuff that would devastate a campaign in any other election seems inconsequential in the face of Trump.
While Trump is creating a spectacle out of effectively burning down the Republican Party, Clinton is quietly annexing the Democratic nomination. When the GOP finally puts out the flames, will the Democrats turn back and wonder if this is really what they wanted for themselves?