Hillary Clinton is Trump’s Secret Weapon: New at Reason

Donald Trump is uniting the Republican party despite his best efforts to the contrary in large part because of Hillary Clinton.

The presumptive Democratic nominee could be the presumptive Republican nominee’s secret weapon, writes David Harsanyi:

Clinton rouses a special kind of disdain. So does Trump, who carries around historically low favorability numbers among female, black, Hispanic, and Asian voters. But we shouldn’t forget that a chunk of those numbers are already baked into the electoral cake for Republicans. The GOP candidate was going to lose those groups anyway, even if a soft-spoken establishmentarian had won the primary. Obama, for instance, won 73 percent of the Asian-American vote in 2012. What percent will Clinton win? 75? Right now, 62 percent have a favorable view of her. The numbers may be similar, but they are unlikely to be much worse.

Don’t get me wrong: Trump will almost certainly exacerbate the GOP’s minority problem in the long run and ensure that it’s a generational issue. But let’s put it this way: Although all the ugly things Democrats usually say about Republican candidates might actually be true this cycle, it doesn’t look like they will shake up the traditional dynamics of a partisan presidential election in the short term. The only way it seems Trump will suffer is if his own party turns on him (fingers crossed).

This is mostly due to the fact that Clinton is a galvanizing force for conservatives, like few others.

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