Debate: Hillary must play for millennials, not wait for Trump to lose them

Monday’s debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will very likely be the most-watched political event in American history. These two candidates have great potential for a night of combustible, frenetic, political theater.

Clinton, a dynastic politician with such rigorous command of policy and procedure that she sounds like a pant-suited technical manual, will be squaring off with an outsider who is loud and arrives ready to fight.  

{mosads}Whoever performs best at the debate — and it is a performance, make no mistake — stands a good chance of capturing what could be the largest voting bloc this November: millennials. Millennials don’t just watch a ton of TV — they also read blogs, tweets, and comment sections. The days following the debate are going to be a storm of think pieces where every aspect of the debate will be dissected ad nauseum.

When a candidate gives a speech, it is anything but off the cuff. Debates offer a real-time look at how participants play off of each other, how they answer questions that require them to adjust their rote sound bites, and how they interact in a more normal setting than a campaign stop. It is a chance for voters to witness politicians having an actual conversation and being required, theoretically, to provide solutions to thorny problems.

Clinton needs people — millennials, especially — to leave the debate saying things like:

“Wow! I expected her to be so much more robotic!”

“Hey! She actually made me laugh!”

“She seemed authentic!”

“She seems like something of an iconoclast! I had no idea!”

Ultimately, Clinton’s biggest problems when it comes to millennials are not about where she stands on the issues … they’re about her as a person.

The former Secretary of State’s lack of authenticity and allegedly cold and stuffy demeanor have been a godsend for satirists and comedians. She’s been a good sport, but the fact that showing “more humor and heart” must be part of her strategy shows that she knows there is an issue. The need to conjure up forced merriment that feels spontaneous must be excruciating. But she has to try.

She also has a tough hill to climb when it comes to her status as a political insider. Millennial voters don’t want “business as usual” when it comes to politics. It’s a challenging proposition, to have to appear as a political outsider when the name “Clinton” conjures up images of the platonic form of a political insider.

It’s even rougher when you consider how Bernie Sanders was the poster boy for what an outsider actually looked like. Millennials flocked to Sanders because he didn’t sound like anyone else and he wasn’t saying what everyone else was saying. Sanders said he was angry and when he talked about outrages, it was easy to believe that he felt every bit of that anger. Many of those supporters want nothing to do with Clinton, who reeks of bureaucracy and inauthenticity.

Clinton’s strategy up to this point has been largely passive. When someone like Trump is always on the verge of something outlandish, lying low isn’t a dumb decision. But it is now too late in the game to hang back, waiting for Trump to finally do something that will ruin his chances and forfeit his claim to the Oval Office.

It is time for Clinton to show young voters, in an authentic and meaningful way, that she truly cares about making life better for all Americans. She must actively outline her plan for a brighter, more inclusive future for the nation instead of just relying on Trump’s sound bites to do the work for her.

It would also be in Clinton’s best interest to consistently steer the debate back to social issues and immigration. When it comes to these issues, Trump wins big with his base but risks appearing closed-minded and bigoted to Independents and millennials. If Clinton is smart, she can paint Trump as, quite possibly, the least inclusive presidential candidate this country has ever seen.

Sometimes, a chess master can lose to a player with less skill. This typically doesn’t mean the lesser player won, only that the master made a mistake. Trump is no master, but if Clinton waits for him to lose instead of convincing everyone that he must lose, she might be in for a very rude awakening on November 8.