Sure Clinton Is The Lesser Of Two Evils, But Does She Have A Winning Message?

Trumps and Clintons

Polls have consistently showed that Bernie Sanders does better than Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. That is partially due to specific issues, but does anybody really believe that all the independents who support Bernie are as far left as he is? I think that the reasons Sanders does better than Clinton among independents include factors such as that Sanders, as opposed to Clinton, stands for something, along with matters of character.

Often voters will support a candidate who simply stands for something and appears sincere in their beliefs. This does not apply to the leaders in either nomination battle.

Both Clinton and Trump have very high negatives. If they are the general election candidates, both will try to make voters fear or hate the other more. If Clinton can maintain the electoral college advantage which Democrats now have, it might not matter, but if the election gets tight Clinton cannot count on winning by demonizing Trump as voters do not trust her either. Attack ads which might work for some candidates will not be enough for Clinton to win.

Clinton has been hurt in her campaign against Sanders because of lacking any real message or justification for her campaign. Believing  that it is her turn is not enough.

Trump is by far the smarter of the two politically. He defeated a large field of Republicans with surprisingly little difficulty–fooling many of the otherwise smart pundits. In contrast, Clinton lost to an inexperienced Barack Obama in 2008, and is having difficulty against Bernie Sanders this year.

Trump took down opponents one by one with effective attacks against them. Danielle Allen might be right that Clinton is walking into Trump’s trap for her.

Donald Trump has set a big, fat trap for Hillary Clinton, and so far she has stepped right into it. He turned his attacks against women against her. She is, he argued, playing the “woman card.” And Clinton anted up, offering her supporters the chance to buy a “woman card.” From now until Nov. 8, Trump will surely continue to insult women. If Clinton routinely responds to those attacks, Trump will turn her into the “women’s candidate,” and she will lose. She is already perilously close to being that candidate.

Let’s be honest. Polling shows that Trump has a problem with women, but it also shows that Clinton has a problem with men. Thanks to Bernie Sanders’s pushing and prodding over the course of the primary, Clinton’s vision has expanded, but we all know its core: She is a battle-tested warrior for women and children.

While I don’t agree with all of Allen’s arguments, and Trump’s misogyny should also be damaging to him, she is right that Clinton is taking a risk if she does not run as anything beyond a woman’s candidate. Beyond women’s issues, Clinton is a rather unaccomplished conservative/establishment candidate of the authoritarian right portion of the political spectrum. Her husband’s record, which includes policies she supported,  falls apart on close analysis. Her own record is one of poor judgement and failures. She botched health care reform terribly as first lady. She has no accomplishments in the Senate, and what she did promote, such as to make flag burning a felony, often sound more like ideas we’d expect from Donald Trump. She was a failed Secretary of State, between promoting excessive military interventionism such as in Libya, to unethically making decisions regarding parties making payments to her husband and the Clinton Foundation.

Sure there is a lot to attack Trump with, but the truth is that both candidates have atrocious ideas, and neither is fit to be president. They share similar right wing ideas on civil liberties. Trump’s xenophobia is as repugnant as his misogyny, but as Susan Sarandon pointed said,  “I’m more afraid of, actually, Hillary Clinton’s war record and her hawkishness than I am of building a wall, but that doesn’t mean that I would vote for Trump.” If Clinton doesn’t come up with positive reasons to support her, it is possible that by next November more voters than she expects might vote for him. Democrats would be wise to go with a stronger candidate, such as Sanders, while that option remains open.

Update: There have been some comments on Facebook questioning if Trump is really the greater evil of the two.

I’d give the title of greater evil to the candidate who is openly campaigning on racism and xenophobia, and who advocates torture and targeting the families of terrorists. While Clinton is wrong to oppose Medicare for All, Trump is worse in also opposing the reforms in the ACA.

Still, the post shows that Clinton is also quite an evil on her own, with neither being worth voting for. Plus, for those Democrats who think that she is the way to stop Trump, Sanders offers both a more electable choice, as well as one which is not evil.

Also note that the question of which is the greater evil is different from the question of which would do more harm. There is the danger that Clinton triangulating and compromising with Republicans could push the country further to the right than Trump as Democrats would go along with Clinton’s right wing policies and wars while resisting Trump.

4 Comments

  1. 1
    Philo Vaihinger says:

    Bernie will not be the nominee and if he were the GOP would red-bait the hell out of him.

    That might not bother radical youth but it would bother a lot of Democrats who are NOT self-described socialists.

    Trump just might win over enough white men and the elderly (in his PA ads he made a point of saying he wanted to protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare) to overcome his losses among women and non-whites.

    This race is not a done deal for the Democrats, at all.

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    Independents prefer Sanders over Clinton by a large margin. While you might be conned by the red-baiting, most voters this year are not. Those who will fall for the red-baitng are primarily people who would never vote for any Democrat, seeing them all as socialists.

    Clinton has the lead now (although a much smaller lead than Sanders) over Trump. A lot of things can change by November to allow Trump to win, but Clinton is far more vulnerable than Sanders is to falling behind Trump. She has far more negatives to be exploited. Plus by tying herself so closely to Obama, if anything bad happens this fall, she could share in the blame.

  3. 3
    KP says:

    Something not helpful (maybe even bad) is likely going to happen this fall and may be coming out of the FBI.

  4. 4
    Ron Chusid says:

    I don’t think the FBI will take action against her, even if lower level people have been prosecuted for less. The mishandling of classified information is a side issue. The real problem regarding the email was violation of rules to promote transparency and evade FOIA act requests. It might also involve cover-up of influence peddling at the State Department.

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