There’s a rule about battle that’s been true for millennia: if the other guy does, you probably have to do it too. It’s been true with every “advance” in military tactics from gunpowder to napalm — and it affects combatants in less life-or-death endeavors, too, producing things like the steroid era in baseball. It’s called a level playing field — and it often means dragging the playing field down into the mud. Politics by its nature seeks a level playing field, and it’s not known for its kindly discourse anyway. GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has taken name-calling to a new level — rivals in his estimate are routinely referred to as “disgusting” and “pathetic.”
This week the Clinton campaign has begun to respond in kind, unleashing Trump-style name-calling that makes one think “sticks and stones” might not be so bad. Ramping up its attacks on Trump, whose candidacy Clinton has described as “dangerous,” Clinton called Trump a “fraud. ” Speaking at Rutgers, Clinton addressed the controversial strong-arm practices of Trump University, but aimed her charge directly at its namesake, saying: “This is just more evidence that Donald Trump himself is a fraud. He is trying to scam America the way he scammed all those people at Trump U.”
