Democrats grapple with Trump effect as primary draws near

Bernie Sanders would beat Donald Trump 51-38 in a general-election match-up, according to the latest poll from Quinnipiac University. Trump asked the crowd four times where Clinton had gone. “When I said Hillary got “schlonged” that meant beaten badly”, Mr. Trump tweeted Tuesday evening, referring to the “mainstream media”. “No, it’s too disgusting. Don t say it, it s disgusting”.

Six in 10 women said they would be “embarrassed” if the real estate tycoon were president, compared to four in 10 men, the poll found. “Drugged Out” Trump’s blunt and sometime outrageous style and comments about Hispanics, women, Muslims and his rivals for the nomination have set much of the tone for the Republican race.

By all appearances, the back and forth between the two is entirely honest, but the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent had a good piece yesterday explaining that both candidates are likely “very happy to be embroiled in this spat”.

Clinton wouldn’t say if she thought Trump’s targeting her with the term was sexist.

Meanwhile, Clinton, who drew criticism from opponents and independent fact-checkers for claiming during the debate that Islamic State recruiters use videos featuring Trump as recruitment tools, doubled down on the sentiment. He has repeatedly described her as lacking the strength and stamina to be president and invoked the image of her putting on a trouser suit before heading to work.

The Clinton camp has cheerfully fed the flames of this fight, in what appears to be a concerted effort to boost Trump among GOP voters.

At the same rally in MI, the billionaire businessman also mocked Mrs Clinton for taking a brief toilet break at a Democratic debate she had attended at the weekend.

“And it turned out to be a lie – she’s a liar!” “She lost. She lost”.

Clinton was not the only woman mentioned on Monday night.

Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, also tweeted a scathing response. And he questioned why Time picked German Chancellor Angela Merkel as its “Person of the Year” instead of him.

After supporting charter schools for decades, she seemed to be walking away from that position in November suggesting they ‘don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them’.

I think this is a reference to Hillary going to the bathroom again.

In a odd segue in which he defended Russian President Vladimir Putin from widely reported allegations that he has ordered the killing of journalists, Trump went on to consider whether he himself would consider killing reporters, whom he then blasted as “lying disgusting people”. “She lost, I mean she lost”, he said, apparently turning the noun “schlong” – a penis – into a verb.

“I would never kill them”. The answer is that all of the Mexicans, they’re criminals and rapists, we’ve got to hate the Mexicans. Late in the rally, a woman began screaming at Trump. “Well, she doesn’t sound very tough”.

TODAY ON THE TRAIL with ABC’s CORINNE CATHCART: With just days until Christmas, most candidates are down for the holiday.