Is half a loaf better than none? Coal miners?
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A disaster of a governor and candidate for the presidency presents the other side of Trump from his perspective along with others. (See 1,1a and 1b below.)
Then, the other side. (See 1c below.)
Never have seen something like this regarding Obama's younger days either.
You decide.
This from a dear friend and long time memo reader:
"Dick,
As you know, I always love hearing your opinions and the thought behind them. As you may also recall more than a year ago, I recoiled at the thought that our party would put forth Trump for our candidate when there were so many excellent, well qualified, and in my opinion superior alternatives. While Trump was far from my choice, I fear the degree of party fighting has been and still is detrimental to our bigger cause of beating the Democrats, so I wonder, if now, before we split more delegates in FL (and other states) in a four horse race, it isn't time for Kasich and Rubio to withdraw to let the party choose between the "Trumps" and the "Anti-Trumps" [Cruz]. What do you think?
By the way, I tend to respect the law and regardless of my overall opinion of Trump agree to his questions of the citizenship legitimacy of Obama and now Cruz. (I never questioned McCain's legitimacy because my understanding is that he was born of two American citizens on an American base while serving America.) By contrast I don't know how Cruz claims citizenship nor the claim's legal standing. Do you? Could you make comment on the issue?
With all best regards,
S------"
My response:
S------
I ceased being hung up on the legitimacy of citizenship issue after we gave Obama a pass.
As for contenders leaving the race, it is their right to run and pay the consequences of their personal actions.
On the one hand they have an obligation to their contributors to fight to the end unlike Newt who cut and ran and deserted both his Party and those who supported him. Would it be a rational move to let Cruz and Trump fight it out? Perhaps, but they are really cut from the same mold. Cruz somewhat more appealing because of the way he has mostly conducted himself but he turns me off frankly. I would rather stick with Kasich, despite the fact that his personality is not conducive for the times, because I believe you support the best qualified and go down with the ship.
Hope this is responsive. Me
From a family source:
Dick,
Trump is a Clear and Present Danger, (thanks author) He " doesn't know what he doesn't know" Trade wars historically backfire and will kill the economy, Foreign policy is a disaster,will make us more like obama. Demanding money from our allies to pay for our troops in South Korea, Germany and other countries is ridicules we would label them as mercenaries.
His tax plan will not help employment. His plan is to partner with Russia, try to make a deal with Palestinians and Israel. He is clueless on HISTORY The thought that he will find Billions in Waste and Fraud to cover the Deficit is unrealistic. Read Robert Gates book "A Passion for Leadership." .A must read.
In My opinion, and others, the best book ever written on Leadership In Government,Business, and Universities. He covers that subject. I recommend it. Lastly His choice of the best people for Government positions in His administration is really open and will tilt toward business experience in areas requiring other skills.
Finally his hand on the red button is frightening. He will start out and fail in the most important time in our history. Similar to Obama. His Ego will Reign. The Apprentice in all its glory. A-----
My response:
A-----: In total agreement with most everything you say but if I have a spoon and a fork to cut a steak with, I must go with what is the best of the worst. I cannot abide Hillarious and you have not given a response about her. I find her repugnant in virtually all aspects and I must punt or not play in the game and I always vote.
Hillarious has been tried and found wanting in virtually every thing she has tried. She has lied,she has failed to respond and her policies are anything but positive including her tax initiatives etc.
Kasich remains my favored candidate but that is not going to happen though it should if talent and proven accomplishment is what we seek. Me
Netanyahu cancels meeting and The White House treats it as a snub.
Though I will never know, I suspect "Bibi" did not want to be pressured on restarting , again prematurely, negotiations with Abbas on a two state solution while Abbas's supporters are hacking to death Israeli citizens and yesterday, an American tourist.(See 2 and 2a below.)
Biden said in Israel Wednesday, should Iran break the terms of The Iran Deal the Administration is prepared to act. First, the Iran Deal is drawn so loosely and favorably towards Iran, they could attack America and not be in violation and as for the Administration acting, I guess Obama is threatening to buy another can of red paint. (See 2b below.)
I have attended the AIPAC Policy Conferences in the past but it is getting too much to walk the cavernous halls and I refuse to ride or be pushed in a wheel chair. I get much of the discussion through other means.
===
I posted this many months ago but in view of the desire on the part of Progressive politicians to offer free tuition (Hillarious and Bernie) all to be paid by tax payers , many of whom could not afford their own college costs or even go to college, I thought it worth re-posting.
If you want more of something make it free or subsidize it. That is why we have more poverty (Trillions spent on War on Poverty etc.), more dependency and the list of government related handouts (more Food Stamps etc.) just expands like Topsy.
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1)President Obama Created Donald Trump
After the cool, weak and endlessly nuanced Obama, no wonder voters are going for a strong, blunt leader.
President Obama doesn’t get enough credit for his accomplishments. I know this because he often tells us it is so. I happen to agree that he doesn’t get enough credit. No, not for slowing the rise of the oceans or healing the planet, as he immodestly claimed he would, even before taking office. He has succeeded handsomely, though, in living up to his vow to be a transformative president, like Ronald Reagan, and not an incremental one in the Bill Clinton mold. Mr. Obama has accomplished many changes—they just aren’t the ones we were waiting for.
Mr. Obama has alienated allies like Israel while encouraging adversaries like Iran and Cuba. He has fostered Americans’ record-breaking dependence on government programs and record-low participation in the workforce. He has expanded the power, size and expense of the federal government in unprecedented ways, all at the expense of Americans’ freedom, standard of living and economic well-being.
But the president truly doesn’t get enough credit for creating one of the most polarizing forces in American politics today. No, not Hillary—that is more Bill’s doing. Let’s be honest: There would be no Donald Trump, dominating the political scene today if it were not for President Obama.
I believe that voters tend to act in open-seat presidential elections to correct for the perceived deficiencies of the incumbent. In 1980, after four years of President Carter’s telling us to turn up the thermostat and wear a cardigan, while the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the Iranians invaded the U.S. Embassy, the fed-up American people elected a cowboy to the White House who made it clear that the evil empire’s days were numbered.
After eight years of President Reagan’s supply-side economics and broadsides against welfare queens, we got a kinder, gentler President H.W. Bush. After four years of international diplomacy without the “vision thing,” we got a loquacious Arkansas governor promising to invent a third way forward focused on the economy at home. After eight years of Clintonian empathy and skirt-chasing, we got a plain-spoken President George W. Bush, who promised to restore integrity to the Oval Office. After Hurricane Katrina and post-Hussein Iraq, we got the professorial President Barack Obama, who seemed to many to promise competence.
After seven years of the cool, weak and endlessly nuanced “no drama Obama,” voters are looking for a strong leader who speaks in short, declarative sentences. Middle-class incomes are stagnant, and radical Islam is on the march across the Middle East. No wonder voters are responding to someone who promises to make America great again. You can draw a straight line between a president who dismisses domestic terrorist attacks as incidents of workplace violence and a candidate who wants to ban Muslims from entering the country.
Mr. Obama likes to bemoan the increasing partisan divides across the country, as if he were merely a passive observer at best and a victim at worst.
Uncharacteristically, the president is being too modest. He has created the very rancor he now rails against. Imagine how different things would be if Mr. Obama had pursued a stimulus bill that included targeted tax cuts and infrastructure spending balanced with gradual entitlement reforms—instead of a stimulus that merely dusted off congressional Democrats’ wish list of pork-barrel projects and ideological experiments.
Imagine if Mr. Obama had actually worked with Republicans in an open process to bring down health-care costs—instead of pushing through, on a partisan vote, the largest expansion of government-welfare programs in a generation. Or if he had listened to the message that voters sent in the first midterm election by putting Republicans in charge of Congress—instead of petulantly relying on executive orders, and using an eraser and whiteout on the Constitution, to shove the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies deeper into Americans’ lives.
Over the past seven years America could have been transformed in an inspiring way if its education system had been opened up, if its energy policy had been liberated, if the entire approach to governing had been overhauled. President Obama chose the opposite approach, favoring a closed education system that fails millions of children and an energy policy that chains the economy to his green agenda.
President Obama loves to construct straw men so he can contrast his heroic self against them. But Donald Trump needs no characterization; he is capable of being absurd on his own, no outside help required. Without President Obama, there is no Donald Trump. Mr. Trump often diagnoses the ills Mr. Obama has caused, but his prescriptions are just as often wrong. America deserves better. They just don't get it, still don't!
Mr. Jindal is the former governor of Louisiana
1a)
1a)
Democratic Fictions About the GOP and Trump
Liberals are savoring his rise, pretending that Republicans invited it and blithely ignoring history.
The prospect of Republicans nominating Donald Trump for president has the party of Lincoln and Reagan teetering on the edge of the abyss. Democrats are enjoying the spectacle, but that doesn’t mean they should be allowed to revise history.
The conventional wisdom on the left is that the GOP brought the Trump phenomenon on itself. For years, insists the New York Times, Republican leaders have embraced and exploited “the darkest elements of the party’s base.” The Washington Post adds that the party “has subtly and not so subtly played on racial resentment.” Other liberal pundits have cited the tea party movement as evidence of supposedly ascendant GOP white nationalism. Republican leaders, in other words, have greased the skids for this New York vulgarian and now want to feign shock at his success.
The tea party charge might be the most absurd, and not just because the movement abetted the election of racial and ethnic minorities such as Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio. Liberals who are eager to ascribe racial motivations to the tea party are ignoring activists’ pre-Obama anger at George W. Bush’s spending policies.
In truth, the GOP leadership has made concerted efforts in recent years to expand the party’s appeal to nonwhites. More can and should be tried, but the notion that the GOP has been waiting and hoping for a Trump figure to lead the way is an MSNBC fantasy. Mr. Trump’s commanding lead in the polls can be attributed primarily to his celebrity status and strong support among economically anxious working-class voters who don’t trust professional politicians.
In 2002, after Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi lauded Strom Thurmond’s 1948 Dixiecrat presidential bid, President Bush condemned the statements before a group of black ministers in downtown Philadelphia and then helped orchestrate Mr. Lott’s ouster from his leadership post. In 2006 Mr. Bush addressed the NAACP’s annual convention and spoke openly about his party’s racial history. As head of the Republican National Committee (RNC) from 2005 to 2007, Ken Mehlman spoke to more than 50 black audiences nationwide, including the major civil-rights organizations. He acknowledged that in the past the party had tried “to benefit politically from racial polarization” and that “we were wrong.” In 2009 Michael Steele became the first black chairman of the RNC.
This is rather odd behavior for a party playing to the darkest elements of its base. So is the fact that the Republican presidential nominee was John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012—hardly the first choices of immigration hard-liners. Mr. McCain denounced the birthers, and Mr. Romney refused to make an issue of Mr. Obama’s controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Both men acted in the interest of racial comity, and if they hadn’t, charges of racism surely would have ensued. That those charges ensued anyway says something about the left’s heads-I-win-tails-you-lose racial politics.
After Mr. Romney’s defeat in 2012, the RNC released a 100-page assessment of its missteps and outlined a strategy for moving forward. “The Republican Party must focus its efforts to earn new supporters and voters in the following demographic communities: Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Islanders, African-Americans, Indian Americans, Native Americans, women, and youth,” the report said. “The pervasive mentality of writing off blocks of states or demographic votes for the Republican Party must be completely forgotten. The Republican Party must compete on every playing field.”
Donald Trump is not the answer to the GOP’s problems. He was not part of their future plans. He wasn’t really invited to this party. He crashed it. And judging from the primary election results so far—he’s winning pluralities, not majorities—most Republicans want him to leave. Democrats and their friends in the media are much more eager for Mr. Trump to be the face of the GOP than are Republicans, even if liberal pundits are pretending otherwise.
Today, it is the Democratic Party that stands to gain the most politically from racial and ethnic division. And no one knows this better than the Obama administration. The president counts Al Sharpton as an adviser; has dispatched Vice President Joe Biden to tell black audiences that conservatives want to put them “back in chains”; and used his attorney general to stir up the Democratic base by claiming that Republicans are trying to disenfranchise black voters.
Most people who follow politics assumed that Mr. Trump would fade eventually if he didn’t implode first. The window is closing but it’s still a possibility.
A new ABC News/Washington Post polls finds that just 42% to 45% of voters who lean Republican “call Trump honest and trustworthy, say he understands their problems, think he has the right personality and temperament, or say he has the right experience to be president.” Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio score much higher on those attributes, from 50% to 64%. Mr. Trump’s lead is shrinking. The more voters learn about him, the less they seem to like.
Mr. Riley, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and Journal contributor, is the author of “Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed” (Encounter Books, 2014).
1b) The GOP’s Trump Divide
Two more wins for the frontrunner disliked by half of his own party.
Donald Trump scored at least two more primary victories on Tuesday even as two new national polls revealed the deepening Republican Party divide over his candidacy. Political parties don’t usually nominate someone whom half of their own voters view unfavorably, but that is where the GOP now finds itself.
Mr. Trump’s impressive victories in Mississippi and Michigan underscored his unmovable support with at least a third of the GOP electorate across the country. His Mississippi win was especially resounding with about 48%, as he won in a rout among voters who decided more than a month ago. He lost late-deciders to Ted Cruz, who finished second, but Mr. Trump again won in a conservative state that was supposed to be the Texas Senator’s home field.
The race was closer in Michigan, where Mr. Trump was held to about 37% but still won comfortably by taking nearly half of those who had decided more than a month earlier. He lost late-deciders to Mr. Cruz and John Kasich, according to the exit polls, but they were only a quarter of the Wolverine State electorate.
This timing matters because the rest of the GOP field began to address Mr. Trump’s political vulnerabilities only in the last two weeks. According to the Cook Political Report, citing the media consultants at CMAG, only 9% of all ads in the GOP race targeted Mr. Trump in the first week of February. That changed in the first week of March when nearly half of such ads hit Mr. Trump.
The businessman derided the attacks in his hour-long, free-association press conference Tuesday night that covered everything from his golf prowess to defending the quality of Trump Steaks. But the real test of the message and impact of the ads against him will come next week in Ohio and Florida.
A pair of national polls released Tuesday showed that Mr. Trump is increasingly disliked in his own party. In the Wall Street Journal/NBC survey, his net negative rating is now up to minus-39%. A new Washington Post/ABC poll found that only 45% of Republicans consider him “honest and trustworthy” and only 51% say they’d be satisfied with him as the nominee.
The other striking result, in the Michigan exit polls and the two national surveys, is that Mr. Trump nearly always loses a hypothetical one-on-one matchup with each of the other GOP contenders. None of the three wants to get out of the race, however, and none of them seem to be practicing the strategic campaigning that Mitt Romney advised last week to deny Mr. Trump more delegates.
Marco Rubio must win his home state of Florida, but Mr. Cruz wants Mr. Trump to win there to knock out the Florida Senator. Yet that could end up being against Mr. Cruz’s long-term interest since it would mean 99 more delegates in the winner-take-all state for Mr. Trump.
Mr. Kasich must win in Ohio, where he is a popular Governor, and he came on strong in Michigan to contest Mr. Cruz for second as we went to press. But he trails badly in the overall delegate count and he’d need a rush of new money to be competitive in the later states.
All of which leaves Republicans with a frontrunner in Mr. Trump who divides his party almost as much as President Obama has divided the country for more than seven years. Mr. Trump once again called himself “a unifier” on Tuesday, but only after deriding, in no particular order, “lyin’ Ted,” “little Marco,” Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, and more. Mr. Trump may win the nomination, but he’ll need more than opposition to Hillary Clinton to close this Republican chasm.
1c)
Peter attended high school with Donald Trump 50 years ago
by Peter Ticktin
As a law firm, we at The Ticktin Law Group do not like to get involved in politics. As soon as we endorse one side, we risk alienating everyone on the other side. Also, our lawyers and staff are, themselves, on both sides. Politics is not our game. However, Justice is!
If you saw a guy get publicly smeared, and you knew him well from the days you were friends and seniors together in high school, if you knew him to be a decent and honest man, would you want to say something? This is why I need to share what I know.
I was aghast at watching last night's debate. It was a set-up.
The moderators, Cruz, and Rubio were all like little alligators trying to take a bite out of Trump. Yes, Donald Trump has had some failures, but he has been exceedingly successful. None of this came out.
Instead, there was a general attack. Rubio simply makes up lies. He pretends that Trump has small hands and makes fun of him for something which isn't even real. He pretends that Donald wets his pants, and makes fun of him, as though it was true, and then he calls Donald Trump a "Bully."
Instead, there was a general attack. Rubio simply makes up lies. He pretends that Trump has small hands and makes fun of him for something which isn't even real. He pretends that Donald wets his pants, and makes fun of him, as though it was true, and then he calls Donald Trump a "Bully."
I am not suggesting that you should vote or not vote for anyone. I just need to defend a former friend who is being smeared.
Like Donald Trump, I attended New York Military Academy ("NYMA") for high school.
In fact, in our senior year, together, Donald was my captain, and I was his 1st Platoon Sergeant. I sometimes joke that I ran his first company for him, Company "A."
People don't really change much from the ages of 17 and 18, and I know this guy.
I know him to be a good decent guy. We lived and breathed an Honor Code in those years. It wasn't just a rule. It was our way of life. Neither Donald, nor any other cadet who graduated with us would ever lie, cheat, or steal from a fellow cadet. These values became irreversibly intertwined in the fabric of our personalities, of who we are.
Of the 99 guys (no girls in those days) in our class, there is not one who I know who has a bad word to say about Donald Trump. Think of it. With all the jealousies which arise in high school and thereafter, with all the potential envy, not one of us has anything other than positive memories of this man.
How could we? He was an "A" student, a top athlete, and as a leader, he was highly respected.
We never feared him, yet we never wanted to disappoint him. He had our respect. He was never a bigot in any way, shape or form. He only hates those who hate. Of course he denounces the KKK.
As to the discussion with the New York Times, it is his choice to release the 'off the record' remarks. However, if he does, it opens the door for all political opposition to make that demand for everyone, and that means that our press will never get those 'off the record' remarks which help them to understand the realities of the campaign.
Moreover, the idea that Donald Trump confessed some alternate theory of his position is preposterous. Can anyone believe that all those NY Times reporters are walking around knowing some deep dark nasty secret about a guy who is seeking an endorsement?
The Republican establishment is afraid of Donald Trump. Why? They are afraid that he will lose to Hillary. They don't hate Donald. They hate her. They are so fearful that they fail to see that by expanding the base of voters for Trump, he is more likely to win.
Watching the chorus of whiners, decriers, denigrators, and self-righteous put-down experts from so many directions, from Mit Romney, to Megyn Kelly, Little Mario, it has to make you wonder. Why? Why are so many people so angry with Donald Trump, that they are lying, name calling, ridiculing, and demeaning him as they do. Either they are afraid, or they know him to be evil.
This is why I feel the need to speak out at this time. I know this man.
He is a lot of things, but he is not evil. He is a decent honest guy who loves this country, and who is willing to sacrifice so much of what is left of his life, because he knows that this country needs to be fixed, and that it is going to require someone who can do the job. He just doesn't see anything around him other than political hacks, so he is willing to take this huge responsibility.
I'm not saying that he is the only one who can do the job. My point is simply as to his motivation and his goodness.
This next decade is going to be one of major changes. We all see the climate changing, and the world food supply is getting lower. Our fish stock around the world is running low. Oil prices will cause countries to fail. The Middle East is beyond repair, and we have become weak and ineffective around the world.
Donald Trump sees the issues and knows that he can assemble leaders who would have the best chance of fixing things.
This is why he is running. He does not need it for his own aggrandizement. He doesn't need another big jet or to take up residence in the White House. He just wants things to be fixed, and he knows that the politicians won't fix anything.
I knew Donald Trump and was close to him in our senior year in high school. I just want you to know that there is nothing to fear from him. His character is as good as it gets. He is a patriot, taking on a heroic task, and being thanked by massive abuse.
If you want to see a true reflection of a man, look at his children. Need I say more?
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When it comes to the strained relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, even a single missed meeting is cause for grievance and accusations.
So it was on Monday, when Mr. Netanyahu abruptly canceled a trip to Washington that was to have included a visit with Mr. Obama. The decision was quickly interpreted as the latest evidence of a lingering rift between two leaders whose public break last year over the Iran nuclear deal brought the American relationship with Israel to a bitter low.
Mr. Netanyahu had long planned to travel to Washington next week to attend the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential pro-Israeli group known as Aipac.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Monday that he would not attend the conference because he had not been offered a meeting with Mr. Obama. The White House later dispatched a spokesman for the National Security Council to insist that it was Mr. Netanyahu who had turned down a chance to meet with the president. The spokesman also noted pointedly that Israeli officials had not personally informed Mr. Obama’s team of the prime minister’s change of plans.
“We were looking forward to hosting the bilateral meeting, and we were surprised to first learn via media reports that the prime minister, rather than accept our invitation, opted to cancel his visit,” the spokesman, Ned Price, said on Monday.
Mr. Price said that the Israeli government had requested a meeting on March 17 or 18, and that White House officials had offered one on the 18th.
Israeli officials said that no snub was intended. In a statement, the prime minister’s office said that Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador, had told Mr. Obama’s team on Friday that while Mr. Netanyahu appreciated the offer for a meeting, there was “a good chance that the prime minister would not be coming to Washington.”
The officials said that Mr. Netanyahu had merely wanted to stay away to avoid any perceived interference in the American election.
The rationale echoed the one given by Mr. Obama a year ago when he declined to invite Mr. Netanyahu to the White House while the prime minister was in Washington to address Aipac and speak to Congress to denounce the Iran agreement. That visit came a few weeks before Mr. Netanyahu faced re-election.
Mr. Netanyahu, who now plans to address the conference via satellite, was also concerned about meeting with the president before the two nations have ironed out differences over the size of a new 10-year American military aid package, officials said.
The latest tension unfolded just as Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was to travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories for meetings with Mr. Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president. The prime minister’s office said Mr. Netanyahu looked forward to the visit.
2a)
2a)
It’s Okay for Netanyahu to Say No
3)
Bernie Sanders trounced Hillary Clinton by more than 20 points in February’s New Hampshire primary. But it’s the exit poll that ought really to worry Clinton, her campaign, and her fans in the media. Why? Because a third of the Democratic primary electorate said honesty was the top quality they are looking for in a presidential candidate. And these voters broke for Sanders by one of the most whopping, staggering margins I have ever seen: He won them 92 percent to 6 percent.
For Hillary Clinton, Honesty Is Such a Lonely Word
Mediacracy
The same thing happened in the Iowa caucuses. Sanders and Clinton basically tied, but there, too, the Vermont senator benefited from distrust of Clinton. About a quarter of Iowa Democrats said honesty was the most important quality in a candidate. Sanders won these voters 83 percent to 10 percent.
Remember: These are Democrats we are talking about. If a Republican won on honesty by similar margins in a general election, Clinton’s dream of returning to the White House as president would be over. Honesty and trustworthiness aren’t just issues for Clinton. They are potentially fatal weak spots. They could doom her campaign.
I bring these numbers up because for months Democrats and journalists have argued that the honesty gap wouldn’t be a problem. Whenever the former secretary of state has been caught lying about her private email server, her apologists have said that the serial dishonesty is a meaningless distraction that won’t affect how people vote. Shows you what they know.
Back in June 2015, for example, Time magazine published a story asking: “Does Hillary Clinton’s Trustworthiness Matter?” The Democratic pollsters quoted therein said no, it does not. “People are looking first and foremost for someone who will look out for them, fight for them, get things done for them,” said Geoff Garin. “At the end of the day,” said Celinda Lake, “the trust dimension that matters to people is what they will do to look after them.”
These assumptions have driven a lot of the messages that come from the Clinton campaign. The Time piece quotes campaign manager Robby Mook—who may be the former campaign manager by the time you read this article—as saying, “I am absolutely confident when she lays out her case it will be very clear to people that she will be that champion to stand up for them every single day.” Indeed, Clinton is always talking about how she’s going to fight for you—unless of course you happen to be a Republican or a member of the NRA, in which case she’s going to fight against you.
But the problem for Clinton is that her assumptions are wrong. Not only do Democrats care about honesty and integrity, they also do not trust Clinton to “fight” or “look after” or “care” for them. The quarter of Iowa Democrats who said that “cares about people” was its top candidate quality went for Sanders 74 percent to 22 percent. And the quarter of New Hampshire Democrats who said the same went for Sanders 82 percent to 17 percent.
Thing is, Hillary Clinton’s shoes are so muddy she can hardly walk. And she has nothing approaching her husband’s political talent and ability to escape from compromising situations.Another way to spin the honesty gap is to say that other issues will matter more in a general election. “We are still 18 months from the general election,” Ed Rendell said on MSNBC last August. “And this email stuff is playing out now. Will it be pertinent come September, October, November of next year? I doubt it.” Ed has a point—maybe the FBI will come for Hillary before summer turns to fall.
Greg Sargent, the liberal blogger for the Washington Post, reassured his audience by citing academic research. There are “studies,” he said, “that show a weak correlation between such personal traits and the outcomes of presidential elections.” Economic and social conditions “matter more than personal attributes in determining electoral outcomes.” So, as long the economy is good and President Obama is popular, Hillary can lie and cheat all she wants.
There’s no way of forecasting what the world will look like in November, though the global economic outlook is troubling to say the least. But we can say that conditions did not help Clinton in the first caucus and primary. Clinton does best among the well-off—among the sort of voter who may have been in the audience at one of her speeches to Goldman Sachs. She won Iowa caucus goers who make $100,000 or more a year by 20 points. But a plurality of Iowa caucus goers reported annual incomes of less than $50,000. And these voters went for Sanders 53 percent to 44 percent.
After eight years of a Democratic presidency, an incredible 80 percent of New Hampshire Democrats said they are worried about the U.S. economy. And Sanders took these voters two to one: 65 percent to 34 percent. If the Democratic primary electorate is this dissatisfied with the present state of America, explain to me again how national conditions will benefit Clinton in the fall.
Ronald Brownstein, of National Journal, has written the most sophisticated explanation for why Clinton can overcome the honesty gap. As he put it last year, “empathy, faith in her competency, and ideological compatibility will count more than integrity in shaping voters’ verdict on Hillary Clinton—just as they did for her husband.” Brownstein points to the 1996 election, when Bill Clinton won reelection despite 54 percent of voters who said he wasn’t honest or trustworthy. “Bill Clinton’s experience suggests that if Americans believe she can walk in their shoes, they will accept plenty of mud on her own.”
Thing is, Hillary Clinton’s shoes are so muddy she can hardly walk. And she has nothing approaching her husband’s political talent and ability to escape from compromising situations. Note that it was only a slight majority that said Bill Clinton was dishonest in 1996. The number that says his wife is untrustworthy is far greater. And note too that 20 years of scandal and controversy have passed since the public delivered its ambivalent verdict on Bill Clinton’s first term. Only four years after Clinton’s reelection, George W. Bush won the Electoral College by pledging to restore honor and integrity to the White House. Who do you think he had in mind when he said that?
Hillary Clinton is a weak candidate distrusted by the voters in her own party. But she has a secret weapon. “You can still win an election and be underwater on trustworthiness if the other candidate is even worse than you,” Republican pollster Neil Newhouse told Time magazine. Hard to think of someone the public would trust less than Hillary. But if anyone fits the bill, it would be the man whose last name rhymes with grump.
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