Saturday, November 4, 2017

Wanted to Add...

I don't post as much about Trump because there's plenty of other people out there, saying the same things I would say.  He is deeply unpopular.  I know of a very, very few people who outright support him...

So I speak up when Hillary Clinton's name comes up because there still seems to be a large number of people who seem to think she was the best candidate in 50 years, and that the only reason she didn't become president was because of sexism, Russian interference, or the Comey investigation.

I  have heard plenty of people acknowledge the flaws in other candidates while still saying they will support them.  Heck, that's sort of how I am most of the time...you pick the candidate that seems the lesser of two evils, or the best you can get out of the choices you're given. 

Hillary Clinton had a problem with her high unfavorability from the get go.  The thing her supporters shouted the most (that she had been under the spotlight for so long that nothing new could come, that she was proven and tested) was actually the thing that hurt her the most.  That is, after decades in the spotlight almost everyone had already made up their minds about her and it would be very difficult to change that.  Especially since so many had a negative impression.

She was supposed to have 'electability', but how can you judge electability right when you totally ignore those unfavorables?

This isn't actually about Hillary Clinton herself, you see.  I don't know her well enough, she sounds like a very complicated lady, and while I have not been too impressed with her character and judgement that's just my personal opinion.

The reason I keep speaking up isn't about her, so much as the party base that is so unwilling to question her candidacy.  The one that dismisses every criticism as part of the "vast right wing conspiracy", tolerates any character questions as "that's just what politicians do.  Everyone else does it, too."  Yes, there are people on the right who rabidly hate on the Clintons.  I shuddered to think of 4-8 years of Republican witch hunts, which you know would have happend if she'd won.  But that 'vast right wing conspiracy' would have targeted Obama, too.  You could say that they did.  It's just that the whole birther thing was so ridiculously stupid that only fringe elements bought into it.  It never gained the traction of something like the Lewinsky scandal or Hillary's e-mails. 

There's a reason for that.

Hillary's supporters get really, really, really upset at the Bernie bros, or Russia, or Comey, or whoever it is they blame for Hillary's loss without ever questioning what sort of system puts two of the least liked politicians ever in a competition for the presidency.  (I keep asking myself how, in a nation of over 300 million people, we wound up with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the leading contenders for the presidency.  I know we have better choices out there!)

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