Hillary Clinton is walking into Donald Trump’s trap

Donald Trump has set a big, fat trap for
Hillary Clinton, and so far she has stepped right into it. He turned his
attacks against women against her. She is, he argued, playing the
“woman card.” And Clinton anted up, offering her supporters the chance
to buy a “woman card.” From now until Nov. 8, Trump will surely continue
to insult women. If Clinton routinely responds to those attacks, Trump
will turn her into the “women’s candidate,” and she will lose. She is
already perilously close to being that candidate.

Let’s be honest. Polling shows that Trump has a problem with women, but it also shows
that Clinton has a problem with men. Thanks to Bernie Sanders’s pushing
and prodding over the course of the primary, Clinton’s vision has
expanded, but we all know its core: She is a battle-tested warrior for
women and children.

Consider her slogan, “Fighting for us.” For
many men, this slogan would have to be experienced as emasculating. A
woman fighting for them? Rightly or wrongly, the slogan rubs the wrong
way in relation to traditional notions of masculinity. Her slogan itself
reveals a limited conception of who she seeks to represent. This is a
potentially fatal flaw in Clinton’s campaign. The more that Clinton
takes Trump’s bait around the issue of his denigration of women, the
more powerfully this flaw in her own campaign will show itself.

Hillary Clinton is walking into Donald Trump’s trap - The Washington Post