Regarding question 1, I would break it down into two parts:
A) Memory: We know he mentioned something to his senate campaign manager, but precision is absent here. I am not sure he said anything other that a general “there’s something out there.” This is important because we now know via the cbs report from the attorney that Cain did not sign settlement documents. The claims were made against the corporation. Cain’s involvement was so minimal as to justify poor or nonexistent memories of the details.
In trial law class at law school, the prof ran us through an experiment where, without telling us it would be important, he rattled off a series of descriptive facts. Then he quizzed us, right then and there, within minutes of the reading. Our performance was abysmal. We didn’t think it was important at the time so we didn’t process it for long term memory. The prof went on to say this is why you have statutes of limitation and other practical measures used to capture event data while it is still hot, because once it grows cold, getting to justice may be impossible.
So holding Cain to a 12 year old event that was exceedingly trivial in his view at the time is inconsistent with the science of memory, and therefore probably grossly unfair.
Tactics. I have represented political clients. In one case I had a client who had a relatively minor drug offense that happened decades ago. You would think that something that actually happened to you of that magnitude would be something you strongly remembered. Not so in this client’s case. So poor was his memory of the event that he asked me to retrieve the court record so he would be ready to answer accurately should the issue be raised.
But did he lead with the negative? No. Politics is sales. You don’t start out selling a product by saying “pay no attention to the scratch on the paint job.” Tactical reasoning would demand that he let someone else bring it up first, especially it he personally viewed it as almost completely trivial.
Block’s failure here was not, I suspect, a lack of awareness, but a lack of imagination. He did not come into this understanding the ingenuity of the left in manufacturing such a potent “bracketing” context from whole cloth. In Cain’s and Block’s view, the events were truly trivial. Every reasonable person would know and accept that.
But the left are battle-hardened propagandists, and are quite good at “bracketing,” the art of taking any random victim and putting them before the public eye in a context of negative emotive associations. It honestly doesn’t matter whether the stories are true or not. The public is being “programmed” to reflexively link “Cain” with “Sexual Harassment,” thus tying him to the negative emotions associated with that.
Understand this for what it is. It is an attack on the enthusiasm gap. People can keep strong positive emotions that drive proactive behavior (like voting) where the basis of that enthusiasm has not been seriously challenged. Reprogram the public to throw some cold water on their own thinking (“we’re stuck with tainted candidate X.”), and you can put a serious dent in the enthusiasm and thus the vote count in the end game.
This is what they did to Palin, aided and abetted by several unworthy persons here on FR. Bracketing is effective. The only defense is a pervasive rejection of the irrational associations. Demand facts. Reverse the bracketing. Change the subject. But above all, don’t let the left control the conversation. As I said with Palin, I’ll say it again here. This is a hill worth dying on. Let them push us into their conditioned reflexes, and the battle is lost. We can’t go there.
As for question 2, I don’t have enough accurate information to comment on it, so I’ll pass on that. Running too long here anyway.
Thanks