By Elizabeth Titus
Former Pennsylvania Governor
Ed Rendell said Thursday he’s skeptical that Republican Donald Trump will take
part in the three debates against Democrat Hillary Clinton scheduled for this
fall.
“He not only doesn’t put any
meat on the bones, I think if you asked him for specifics he couldn’t tell you,
and that’s why I think he may duck the debates,” Rendell, a Democrat, said at a
Bloomberg breakfast in Philadelphia during his party’s national convention.
Trump could upend the pattern
of the last six presidential elections and win Pennsylvania thanks to a
“simple” message that appeals to angry and unemployed voters, Rendell said. The
most recent Republican to win in Pennsylvania was George H.W. Bush in 1988;
Barack Obama won the state in 2012 by over 5 percentage points.
Rendell spoke alongside
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who said that he was “very confident”
Clinton will win his politically divided state if current conditions hold,
partly because Trump has alienated Colorado Republicans who vote on “family
values.”
Debate Advice
Rendell said Americans
consider the general-election debates “sacred,” but they thought the same about
presidential candidate releasing their tax returns and Trump hasn’t done that
either, citing Internal Revenue Service audits.
If he were advising Trump,
Rendell said he would tell him to study three hours per day for the debates. If
Trump didn’t want to do that, Rendell would suggest an adviser such as former
UN Ambassador John Bolton travel with Trump for a week.
“Trump is not a dumb man, he’s
a very smart man,” Rendell said in the question-and-answer session with
reporters, calling the billionaire real estate developer “complex” and
“charming.”
“He’s not insane by any
means.”
Inner Circle
Rendell said it’s “absolutely
a problem” that Clinton appears to surround herself with people who won’t
challenge her opinions. There’s “no question” that if she had, it would have
saved her some of the political trouble she ran into for using a private e-mail
server as secretary of state, he said.
“They should occasionally
bounce some stuff off other people,” Rendell said.
Hickenlooper spoke of another,
positive side to the remarkable loyalty he has observed among Clinton’s
longtime aides. It could help Clinton alleviate her problem with the high share
of voters who consider her untrustworthy or dishonest, he said.
“Somehow the Clinton campaign,
somehow they have to figure out how to get this sense of loyalty and devotion
that people have towards her” out into voters’ view, Hickenlooper said. On
trust issues, “she has to live with it” and “she’s also got to work at it.”
Suffolk Poll
Clinton led Trump 50 percent
to 41 percent among likely voters in a Suffolk University poll of Pennsylvania
released Thursday. Trump had a 3-point lead among male voters while Clinton had
a 19-point lead with women. The poll was conducted July 25-27.
Still, Rendell said Trump has
“already made inroads” with traditionally Democratic voters, based on
registration figures. That’s despite Rendell’s view that advancing technology,
not the international trade agreements that Trump regularly trashes, is the
more likely culprit for many of the job losses in Pennsylvania’s manufacturing
sector.
Trump’s likely gains among
Democrats will probably be offset by Clinton’s pick-ups in the Pennsylvania
suburbs and among independents, he said.
Clinton can’t recreate
President Barack Obama’s turnout in key areas of the state, but “this president
is on fire” to help her, Rendell said a day after Obama spoke on
Clinton’s behalf at the convention.
“He may work harder to
generate turnout than he did for himself,” Rendell said.
Pennsylvania is “right up
there among the primary targets” for the fall contest, Rendell said. Trump is
an “X factor” for the state who is also polling strongly in the battleground
state of Florida right now, he said.
“The Russia thing should hurt
him but nothing has,” Rendell said. Trump said
Wednesday that he hoped Russian hackers could find thousands of e-mails
from her time as secretary of state that Clinton deleted from her private
server because she said they were personal.
Effective Surrogates
Senator Bernie Sanders of
Vermont, Clinton’s primary-election opponent, could be Clinton’s best surrogate
in Colorado, Rendell said. Hickenlooper added that Obama and his wife, first
lady Michelle Obama, could also be very effective for Clinton.
On Clinton’s struggle to
appeal to white male voters, Rendell said Representative Joe Crowley of New
York should have been tapped to help put Clinton’s name into nomination at the
convention -- beyond just having a pre-primetime speaking slot -- because he
“looks like the white man we’re trying to get” and was impacted by 9/11, a key
issue for Clinton when she served in the U.S. Senate.
Reflecting on a sense that
voters are hungry for change after eight years of a Democrat in the White
House, Rendell said, “if you’re hurting, it’s hard to convince you that you
should vote to keep the people” who are already in office.
He said he suggested to
Clinton aide Huma Abedin that when Clinton talks about the Black Lives Matter
movement, she also say that the majority of police officers are good. Rendell
said he was pleased to see that message incorporated into the convention, along
with support for the U.S. military -- a traditionally Republican theme.
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