Swap Russia for Climate Change!

The Final Debate and Wikileaks 

Last night, the claws came out for the third and final presidential debate. Many of us were waiting for the Wikileaks emails to be brought up to see whether Clinton would deflect the question back to Trump’s misgivings or if she would face the topic head on.watch-hillary-clinton-and-donald-trump-face-off-in-their-final-presidential-debate

Moderator Chris Wallace incorporated an excerpt from one of Clinton’s paid speeches released by Wikileaks in a question about her immigration policy. “In a speech you gave to a Brazilian bank… you said this… ‘My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders’,” Wallace asked, “So… is that your dream, open borders?” You can read the full exchange here, but I would specifically like to highlight the first part of her response.

CLINTON: Well, if you went on to read the rest of the sentence, I was talking about energy. You know, we trade more energy with our neighbors than we trade with the rest of the world combined. And I do want us to have an electric grid, an energy system that crosses borders. I think that would be a great benefit to us.

After this brief explanation of the quote (which has been interpreted and confirmed by fact checkers), Clinton goes on to pivot off the question to attack the Russian government for international espionage and to turn the tables on Trump, who is clearly benefitting from the hacks. This is a strategy previously prescribed in my last blog post, The Email’s Leaking Again.

Missed Opportunity

Although pivoting back to Russia has become a clear strategy for her campaign, I think Clinton missed an opportunity to turn the conversation in a Global warming hoax.more positive direction by spending more time on her push for clean energy. By highlighting and further clarifying the content of the paid speech, Clinton could have a) still pivoted away from the Wikileaks question b) clarified the meaning of “open borders” c) attacked Trump for the fact that he has called climate change a “hoax” and d) guided the conversation towards a topic that younger voters care about and has been largely overlooked in all three debates.

Due to the fact the Clinton is ahead in the polls, I think this more positive spin on the Wikileaks question may have been a better strategy for this debate. She could have continued to delegate the Russia pivots to her surrogate speakers (like spokesman Glen Caplin) while also appearing to be above the name-calling and mudslinging of the debate by focusing on the policy issues.