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Douglas Schoen: Hillary Should Be Running Scared
Friday, July 22, 2016 08:58 AM
By: Sandy Fitzgerald
Hillary Clinton and the nation's Democrats should be concerned after Donald Trump's speech to the Republican National Convention, which raised "the stakes of the election" while defining the contest in "his own terms," former Bill Clinton pollster Douglas Schoen writes in a Fox News column Friday.
"Law and order, crime in the streets, and terror," said Schoen, now co-host of the "Fox News Insiders" program. "He managed to make the argument, compellingly, that these challenges were the central ones America faced and that given the failures of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his way of change was the only way to go."
Trump was speaking to a "specific constituency of Americans" concentrated mainly in the Midwest's swing states, notes Schoen, and the 70 percent of Americans who say they feel the nation is on the wrong track and offered them a new way forward.
Schoen admits most pundits probably won't give Trump's speech high marks, and he agreed that Trump didn't do what he has not done before during his campaign.
"But what he did do is present a vision of America, a path forward, and a vision of leadership that is very, very different than what the country has had for the last eight years," said Schoen.
The speech was more non-partisan and did not focus on traditional Republican values or conservatism, as he was "speaking to commonsense, American concerns about safety and security," Schoen continues in his op-ed.
However, he does not think the speech will be enough to push Trump solidly into a lead, but it will help him in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Now the challenge will be Clinton to respond to the atmosphere of the Republican convention, said Schoen, as it did not broaden the GOP's demographic reach.
"It was a white convention," he writes. "Clinton will almost certainly highlight substantial numbers of blacks, Latinos, and Asians."
But Clinton also needs to address the issues Trump did; law and order, safety, and security, Schoen said, and to address globalism, which Trump ruled out.
