The important thing to remember about hacking the upcoming presidential election is that the hacks don’t have to be successful, they just have to be visible. Attempted hacking is just as good as actual hacking and a lot easier.

Why? Because the reason for the whole hacking conversation started by Donald Trump is simply to give him a way to put the election results in doubt. A news story about cyber attacks on polling stations is all he needs, and the press is going to play right into this. If the cyber attacks are not visible, they won’t be of much use.

Never mind that the only hacking so far in the election has been in support of Trump by the Russians. If he looses due to the actual vote, he will claim that the electoral system has been hacked.

If he wins, he will say that he would have won bigger had there not been any hacking, even if the truth is the opposite. He has not really been overly concerned with the facts during this campaign.

If Donald Trump starts sinking in the polls, look for him to step up the hacking references. And look for the Russians to do some clumsy hacking on election day to help him out.

I asked a friend last week how she liked the debates. “Did you see Hillary shimmy? She did a move like this!” and shows me. This was the first thing out of her mouth. I asked, “Was it good or bad?”. “I think it was bad,” she answered.

Now I missed the shoulder shimmy so I looked it up. It came after a long rant by Donald Trump on Hillary Clinton’s temperament that did not reflect all that well on his own. Clinton just smiled and when it was over she took a deep breath, said “woo, okay”, did a shoulder shimmy and got a big laugh from the audience. The internet loved it and it was a clear ‘winning moment’ for Clinton.

This is why Clinton is in trouble. My friend is a middle class senior citizen and lifelong Democrat. One would think she would be a supporter, but instead she has a visceral dislike of Hillary Clinton. She won’t even give Clinton credit for something that was clearly a win for her. Will she vote for Trump, I asked? “No way!” But later she says, “It wouldn’t be so bad if Trump won. The country would still be here.” I mentioned that the country still existing was a pretty low standard for a successful presidency, and she reluctantly gave a bit of ground there.

There are many Americans like her. Their hatred of the Clintons, and Hillary in particular, is amazingly powerful. Why? Here are a few reasons:

• Bill Clinton was a popular president in a time when partisanship skyrocketed. A popular president is a threat, and he, and his wife, were constantly under attack and when the search for substance failed the attacks went personal. They have stayed that way.
• If you repeat something often enough and long enough, people will start to absorb it. The attacks on the Clintons have been going on for 25 years now. Never mind that Politifact scores her as one of the most truthful politicians
• The Clintons, and particularly Hillary, have built up defensive walls around themselves and therefore appear to be hiding something and dishonest.
• Hillary is a woman and she is trying to break the ultimate glass ceiling. People of a certain age / background / culture still feel more comfortable with a man in the top spot. Hillary is not the woman we picture when we think of a president, mostly because we don’t think of a woman when we think of a president.
• And finally, if a woman is to break the glass ceiling, is Hillary the best representative of womanhood to do this? She is far from perfect and every one of her real and imagined flaws have been spotlighted for so long that to many people it seems wrong that she should be the first woman president.

During the debate Monday night Hillary Clinton told the viewing audience that she had set up her web site to fact check Donald Trump’s assertions in real time. Good idea, although it does not seem like anyone expects Donald Trump’s pronouncements to actually be factual. The bar he is being held to is that his ‘facts’ need to make a great sound bite, not actually be true.

In any event, if you bothered to check out her website during the debate you would have been greeted by a splash screen asking you to provide your email address and join her campaign. It was only after you studied the page for a minute or two that you would figure out that you could enter the site by clicking on the stylized ‘H’ in the upper left corner. One more click and you finally got to the fact checking page.

What kind of overpriced nincompoop consultant designed that navigation?

Why not have the fact check page be the splash screen during the debate?

Why make it hard on people?

The answer is that her campaign is probably run by a committee, and no one had the authority to use a little common sense.

Maybe Hillary Clinton will get a small bump in the polls after yesterday’s debate and maybe she won’t. Either way the candidates are likely to remain neck and neck until election day. If Clinton is to win, she will need the help of a big segment of voters that are not all that enthusiastic about her: Bernie Sanders’ supporters.

Bernie said he would campaign for Hillary but he is not making any headlines doing so. One reporter had to chase him into an elevator where Bernie finally said that he would be campaigning “as hard as I can” for her.

But there really is not a lot of evidence for this. Bernie is talking to the political press and saying the right things, but none of his supporters pay any attention to that. Is he organizing rallies? Is he spending a lot of time on the road? During the debates he posted a “sad Bernie” selfie that made him the center of attention and his wife tweeted an message that could be interpreted as Bernie suggesting that his supporters vote their conscience.

There is one school of thought that says that Sanders should work really hard to help push Clinton over the top because if she wins, she will owe him and he and his movement will gain influence in her administration and the Democratic party.

If he does not work hard and she still wins, he won’t be owed a thing and that will not be good for his movement.

On the other hand, Bernie may feel that the only thing that will really propel his movement into power is the popular backlash that would come if Donald Trump were elected president. This might be true, but he would be setting the country up for four years of what he considers to be awful government to get that. And in four years, Bernie will be 79 years old.

If he does push as hard as he can and she wins, maybe he can negotiate for Secretary of Commerce or Treasury. That would be interesting!

Adding Breitbart News chief Stephen Bannon to his campaign team has proven to be a very wise move by Donald Trump. Expected to reinforce Trump’s tendency to bombastic and incendiary remarks due to his heavily right wing, Tea Party political orientation, Bannon has instead presided over a, well, more presidential candidate. Under his management, Trump has reigned himself in and actually appeared more centrist. It is almost like the idea of giving a hyper active child a stimulant to get her to calm down (hello Ritalin).

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton needs the opposite. She is sinking in the polls and cannot seem to mount a catchy and effective attack against her opponent. Does she have an anti-Bannon on her campaign team? Maybe she needs one.

Ever notice that whenever Donald Trump comes up with new nicknames for his rivals it is when he is feeling some heat himself? Trump gets some criticism for being too ready to bomb the shit out of ISIS, so he comes up “trigger-happy Hillary” for Hillary Clinton.

Ted Cruz accuses Trump of lying about his plans to build a wall along the Mexican border and the next thing you know Trump has come up with “Lyin’ Ted Cruz”.

Marco Rubio belittles Trump’s claims of strong leadership as a bunch of puffery and Trump comes back with “Little Marco”.

And so on. I think the shrinks call this ‘projection’.

During the final 60 days of the US presidential campaign, the media will be reporting a lot of news. My guess is that it will be good news about Donald Trump and bad news about Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s new team came in and everyone said they would let Trump be Trump. However, he has mostly not been the Trump we knew from the primaries. His wilder statements have been curtailed. He is starting to moderate his views. The media is waiting for major gaffes, and they may not get them, but they are addicted to the Trump story so they will report whatever they can. And it will be mostly positive.

Trump has set an extremely low bar for himself – there really isn’t anywhere go go but up. Anything remotely moderate or statesmanlike that comes out of his mouth will be a win. Any increase in the polls will be a win. It will not be hard to make the tone of the news about him positive.

Clinton has the opposite issue. Almost everything she touches generates negative press for her. The email issue keeps coming up. Despite (or more likely, because of) 3 years of investigations, Benghazi continues to be in the news. The Clinton Foundation is now a target. The issue is conflict of interest (president Trump’s conflict of interest potential is so much bigger, but this is getting no press).

The only thing that has generated positive coverage for Clinton lately is when she attacks Trump, for example calling his politics bigoted. But this means she has to play scrappy, and Clinton is anything but scrappy.  So the news on her is likely to continue to be mostly negative.

Given sixty days of mostly positive news about one candidate and negative news on the other, which one is likely to win the election?

According to the press, the professional Republican political class is bemoaning the fact that Donald Trump has not started spending a bunch of money on political ads. (Some of these folks might be the indirect beneficiaries of such spending, but I am SURE that fact plays no role in their opinions). But why should he spend any money? He is not having any problem whatsoever in getting his message out.

Trump is just dominating. Go to any news website, and 80% of the time the top political headline will begin with “Trump . . . “. From his perspective, it does not matter if the story is favorable or not as long as he is in the press.

The top political headline almost never begins with “Clinton . . .”, in fact there is hardly any Clinton news at all unless it is about her e-mail or some other negative. Clinton has a successful rally or says something about policy? You will never see it because no one will click on it. And clicks are what matters.

Trump has so completely mastered the press that Clinton’s only way to get any message out is to spend on advertising. The money that Trump’s campaign is collecting? Well, a lot of it will probably be spent on hefty consulting fees to his kids and close associates. And offsetting the cost of his plane. And helicopter. And boat. And . . .

It has been three weeks since the conventions and despite numerous ‘gaffes’ by Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton is less than 10 points ahead of him in the polls. He and his party have done such a good job of painting her as Crooked Hillary that she really has no chance of pulling his supporters over to her side. Her best hope is that they stay home on election day.

The best way for that happen is to make Trump’s supporters disillusioned. Make them think that he is a fraud and not really representing their interests. And it cannot be the Democrats with this message – it has to be a third party, preferably a Trump supporter or expected Trump supporter or a Wikileaks.

How to show that Trump is a fraud? Demonstrating that he does not pay taxes like you and me is one way. But Trump will not release his tax returns, so that will be difficult. Maybe Hillary can ask Russia to hack Trump’s accounting firm to get his tax returns – no, I don’t think that will work.

How else? Well, Hillary’s team will have to study up on con artists and see what works against them. Conald Trump is appealing to the gut, Hillary is appealing to the mind. If she wants to make Trump supporters disillusioned her team will have to work on his fraud factor and find something that punches his supporters in the gut.