She’s ahead in the polls by roughly three to four points. Given her opposition, however, Hillary Clinton ought be doing a lot better than that.
Consider Clinton’s structural advantages over Donald Trump.
Whereas top Democratic Party officials are so supportive of her that they even cheated to defeat her primary opponent, hundreds of leading Republicans – including the speaker of the house and the last two presidential nominees – have declared war against him. She’s been wildly outspending him in televised political advertising. She has campaign field offices in most counties; he doesn’t have any in most states. The news media despises him.
Then consider her personal advantages.
Trump is a novice, never having run for political office. She has served in the cabinet, presented herself for the Senate twice, run for president, weathered countless scandals and political storms. Whereas he rants and raves incoherently, her experience has taught her how to debate, crisis manage, issue sound bites, and carefully calibrate her every phrase for maximum impact and minimum risk. His main advantage is the perception of authenticity – and it’s a big one, having gotten him where he is now – but it has come at a huge price as all his years of running off at the mouth on and off camera are coming home to roost weeks before election day.
Donald Trump has infuriated more than half the voters: women. He has insulted one out of 10 male and female Americans: Latinos, some of whom are registering to vote just to cast a ballot against him. And let’s not forget Muslims.
Given all that, why is he doing so well? Why is she doing so badly – or more accurately, so not well?
Part of Hillary’s problem is personality. Truth be told, she really isn’t “likeable enough.”
“The vote for president is a ‘feel’ vote,” Chris Cillizza wrote in The Washington Post. “Do you think this person is someone who understands you and the problems (and hopes and dreams) you have for yourself and your children?” Polls have consistently shown that most Americans think she doesn’t.
It’s not all sexism: Clinton yells into microphones and overly enunciates. Her voice is objectively irritating. Then there’s her incredibly ugly, unbelievably hideous wardrobe: it’s hard to like someone who makes your eyes burn.
But let’s face it. Hillary Clinton, probably like you and definitely like me, can’t do anything about her personality. At 68, that stuff is baked in. Still, there’s a lot she could do to close the deal against Donald Trump — to widen her within-the-margin-of-statistical-error lead to a chasm, the insurmountable landslide that her institutional and other advantages would have guaranteed a better candidate.
It’s about policy, stupid.
Recommendation #1: Guarantee Bernie Sanders a high-profile position in the cabinet. (She should have made him vice president, but it’s too late for that.)
Even after the Democratic convention in which Sanders endorsed her, more than a third of Bernie voters – roughly 1/6 of the electorate – still weren’t behind her. Annoyed that Clinton didn’t grant any significant concessions to the party’s progressive base, many of them will vote for Jill Stein or stay home. I’ve been prognosticating about American politics for decades, and I’ve never been more certain of a prediction: a firm guarantee that Bernie Sanders will have a seat at the table for the next four years would singlehandedly put an end to Trump’s chances.
Recommendation #2: Promise to be a one-term president.
One thing that drives voters crazy is politicians who spend most of their time in office weighing every decision against their future reelection campaign. Nothing would do more to allay voters’ worries that she is a slave of her Wall Street masters than to turn herself into a lame duck on day one — and free herself of the burden of worrying about 2020. Anyway, Hillary Clinton is old and not in the greatest of health. Can anyone really imagine her finishing out the presidency at age 77, the same age as Ronald “Alzheimer” Reagan?
Recommendation #3: Turn her weaknesses into strengths by promising to finish her own unfinished business.
One of Hillary Clinton’s biggest weaknesses is her support of NAFTA and other job-killing “free trade” deals. Since she can’t run away from her record, why not embrace it by calling for a major national jobs retraining and financial assistance program for people who lose their jobs to globalization, as well as a $25/hour minimum wage? Similarly, her awkward reluctance to concede that Obamacare is too expensive should be replaced by an acknowledgement of what everyone already knows – the Affordable Care Act should have at least included a “public option” – and a promise that she will add one in January. She could also claimed that she learned a valuable lesson from her email scandal; she could promise to be the most transparent president in history by putting a live camera in the oval office and the cabinet, and promising not to conduct government business (other than national security matters) in private.
Recommendation #4: No more optional wars.
You know you’re on the wrong side of an issue when Donald Trump is the calm reasonable one. On foreign policy, Hillary Clinton has quite the reputation as a warmonger. She voted for wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, even though neither had anything to do with 9/11. As Secretary of State she encouraged President Obama to finance the Islamist fundamentalists who turned Libya and Syria into hell. Now she’s saber-rattling with Russia. Americans hate these endless wars. And militarism does us a lot more harm than good. Hillary Clinton should issue an October Surprise: if elected, she should say, she will never deploy American military power anywhere on earth other than to directly defend the American homeland.
I know she probably won’t take my advice. But here’s the thing: she’ll win if she does.
(Ted Rall is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form. Please support Ted by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
22 Comments.
Kankles can promise me the moon and the sky, but the biggest public perception about her is that she’s a psychotic LIAR. The crypto-Jewess is not only a liar, but she’s also a vicious warmonger. If she becomes pResident, America will have war with Russia. She wants the entire human species to know that she’s got more balls than — not only Bubba, but also — Putin.
So in the mean time, before that prospective war, she promises Bernie a cabinet post, and then has him rubbed out a week before her inauguration. “The Clinton Body Count” is not just an urban legend.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/BODIES.php#axzz4MNGtjj00
DanD
> she’s a psychotic LIAR.
Given the track record of recent office holders, I’d have to say that is likewise a qualification for the highest office in the land. Just sayin’
But what brand of psychosis are we talking about here? T-rump is a “common” class bully, and mostly wants to be the biggest frog in the American pond. It’s one of the reasons he so admires Putin. It’s a big-frog thing.
On the other hand, Hillary’s psychosis is apocalyptic. To her, winning is being the last contestant standing. She doesn’t want to compete with Putin’s Russia, she’d much prefer to wipe it out.
As I’ve said, Trump is a populist, and loves the show. Hillary is a (not-too-closeted) malice-infused tyrant, and much rathers that Americans (we –) give up to her superior wisdom without a fight. Personally, I feel that the quicker she’s taken out, the less likely my country will be annihilated.
Of course, let’s not forget BarryHO here. All he needs to do is get his Mossad assassin-contractors to take out T-rump AND Billary at the next impending debate, immediately declare martial law in order to preserve the status-quo, and then dare anybody to disagree with his wisdom.
For the last half-year or so, I’ve hoped that it’s only the drugs I don’t remember taking last night, and they’ll eventually wear off in just a few more days. I’m not feeling too lucky about that.
DanD
DanD
Hillary would win IF she could convince the electorate she was a thusly changed woman.
But if she really was a changed woman she’d have lost her reasons for winning and lose for her loss of enthusiasm.
Would the war party even want her absent her instinct for the vicious?
This is Kankles confessing that she is an unmitigatable liar of the oligarch-class.
Leaked emails show Clinton professing different messages to Wall Street and the public on trade
http://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-emails-clinton-private-speech-trade-2016-10
She establishes for the people she really works for just how triangulatedly unconditional her loyalty to them really is.
T-rump is at least a populist. WWIII would only get in the way of his lower-rent capitalist goals. Contra-wise, Hillary wants to be the hive-queen of a de-populated planet. So, what if she’s living it in an opulent bunker while inbreeding with her grandkids? Bubba will love it.
DanD
> … her experience has taught her how to debate, crisis manage, issue sound bites …
hmmm, those sound like qualifications for high political office. Just sayin’
Wow, I didn’t think there was anyone rational left on this site!
She will not follow any of this advice because she is sure she will win.
Trump is a strange beast. He’s a liar, a con artist, racist, sexist, and runs his mouth like a drunkard with Tourette’s.
But when he’s right, he’s right, and not just in a broken clock at that time of day sense, either. Through the gibberish and bile, he periodically comes out with bits of long overdue, unvarnished truth, among them:
These “free trade” treaties have been a bad idea
Making enemies overseas when we don’t have to is a bad idea
and my favorite
This presidential election is entirely rigged.
Hillary Clinton has been scheduled to be sworn in as President in January 2017 for some years now. A little thing like a vote count won’t change that. Trump is a known con artist, and this years event looks a lot more like a con than an election. He is a former wrestling promoter, and the part he is playing looks more like a “heel” than a “candidate.” Trump will be exactly as unappealing as he has to be to lose, the only surprise being just how epically unappealing a person has to be to lose to Hillary Clinton. It quacks like a duck. This is not a real election.
If this were an election, and not just HRC’s pre-inauguration theatrical event, then the surest way for Clinton to keep Trump from winning would be to drop out and let her place be taken by a relatively unknown, random Democrat, because a random, unknown Democrat would beat Trump easily. The surest way for Trump to keep Clinton from winning would also be to drop out, because a random, unknown Republican would beat Clinton easily.
But this isn’t a real election. It’s a team building exercise for a three thousand mile wide corporate plantation. With enough fear mongering, they figure they can get a critical number of people supporting a government they don’t want for another four years.
Nice post, WT
And when Trump speaks these unvarnished truths he doesn’t sound as though they had been crafted by a marketing agency, tried out before a test audience observed from behind a one way mirror, and wired for skin response.
Trump has an immediacy and authenticity that Hillary has had trained out of her, if she ever had it at all.
I say this as a committed Stein supporter.
Herr Hair’s problem is that he simply cannot duplicate these incontrovertible “unvarnished truths” in two consecutive rounds of talking.
We are certainly habituated to the “long lie,” repetition of promises during a campaign that are ignored after the election is won – sometimes accompanied by a contemptuous “fuck off” to those who voice their legitimate, “professional left” complaints about the switch.
But Herr Hair changes policy almost as frequently as does the voltage in your wall socket.
The surest indicator that this election is rigged is the fact that Bernie Sanders ran as a Democrat instead of Independent. He could have easily taken the White House against these two corporate-sponsored establishment figures. He played the game according to the script, but the back-room boys were surprised at how successful he played it.
HRC’s biggest problem is HRC. She has flip-flopped on so many things that there’s just no way to extend any real degree of genuine trust to her. I genuinely do not know if she actually believes in anything other than what is most expedient at the moment to advance her career and ambition. She reminds me of one of those middle management types who reads “Who Moved My Cheese” and suddenly thinks that “whiny employees” are the problem. Next week, she’ll read “What Color Is Your Parachute” and the problem will be that people don’t take charge of their own lives. Then it’ll be “The Secret” and she’ll lecture people about the way to success being positive thinking.
A full-blown conman like Putin will eat her alive.
St Redbeard has promised to liberate Syria just as she liberated Libya, without the loss of a single life! Putin says Syria is a strategic Russian asset. St Redbeard says, if Putin does not step down, she’ll liberate Russia. All her advisors have studied the situation, and they have observed that the Soviet military disintegrated with the Soviet Union, and Russia’s military is at a par with Qaddafi’s Libyan military. If Putin does not back down, regime change in Russia will be as easy as, or easier than, regime change in Libya.
Meanwhile, the MSM say that a vote for Trump is a vote for a nuclear holocaust, but a vote for St Redbeard is a vote for a peace under the umbrella of US hegemony.
St Hillary thinks she should be ahead by 50% of the voters. She is actually ahead by 6%, close to a majority, and has all the swing states leaning toward her instead of Trump. But that’s not enough.
St Hillary is likely to have a majority Democrat Senate, but laws and Supreme Court appointments need at least 60 votes, which St Redbeard ain’t got.
So, how will it be done tonight? A derelict RPG? Or maybe some old G-to-G missile that was confiscated in Afghanistan a few years back. BarryHO has his perfect false-flag opportunity tonight. The projected consequence? Being pResident-for-life!
With just a little help from his friends (in the Mossad) ~
DanD
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/tourists-with-a-license-to-kill-a-look-at-the-mossad-s-assassination-squads-a-678805.html
http://revisionisthistory.org/palestine26.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/7254807/Mossads-licence-to-kill.html
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mossad-the-history-of-israels-deadly-assassins-202192
How is it that I received an email only an hour ago with a link to your post dated Oct. 19th?
This site is screwed up (again)! 🙁
I wondered the same thing, but I think I figured it out.
Because there’s more than one link the post must be moderated. So it only shows up when someone approves it – that might take a while.
@ CrazyH –
I don’t think that’s it. Your post made it to my email inbox almost immediately. There’s something screwed up.
For a while, I wasn’t even getting email notifications at all, but I visited the articles where I knew I had posted. I saw new posts that hadn’t triggered the “Notify me” function.
Right – my notification showed up immediately because there weren’t any links in it.
When I post something with multiple links, it doesn’t show up immediately, instead I get a small banner that says “your post is awaiting moderation.” Eventually (days, usually) it turns into my post and notifications are sent out then.
I think the bit about no notifications at all is unrelated, I experienced the same thing for a while.
@ CrazyH –
That wouldn’t explain why Dan’s post from 12:06 PM on the same day didn’t arrive at all in my inbox although the one from 12:17 PM did.
Sumpin’ ain’t right.
I admit I’m speculating – I don’t know what the site looks like on the inside.
OTOH – if you miss one of Dandy’s posts, you haven’t actually missed anything important. 😉