The Battle Is On Between Dangerous Donald & Crooked Hillary

Trump Clinton Celebrity Death Match

While I will not entirely give up hope of an upset in the Democratic race by Bernie Sanders, the media is getting set for the showdown between Dangerous Donald and Crooked Hillary. Those are the current nicknames each has chosen for other, and they are both right about the other. I had planned to call them greater evil and lesser evil, but found that too many readers disagree as to which is which, even if we agree both of them are too evil to be fit to be president, or hold any other elective office.

Dangerous Donald is trying hard to win over the Republicans. He already has the racist and xenophobic base of GOP voters, but reaction to him is mixed among the more ideological GOP leaders (who never figured out that the base doesn’t really care about their economic theories). Trump is backing away from one of his more dangerous and controversial ideas. He now says that banning Muslims from entering the country was “only a suggestion.”

It hardly sounded like only a suggestion when he first stated: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

By this logic, does Trump think that Hitler’s rants in Mein Kampf were only suggestions?

Will he let Clinton get away with saying her proposals for military intervention in Iraq, Libya, and Syria were only a suggestion?

Will the media continue to play softball with Trump, or will they start asking him the types of followup questions which he does not appear capable of answering?

But here’s another sign that Trump is getting more moderate. He has disavowed his butler after he called for the killing of Barack Obama. A month ago Trump would have probably backed the proposal at his rallies.

Meanwhile it hasn’t been a good week for Crooked Hillary. As I warned months ago, the moment the Republicans settled on a candidate, the winner would look more like a serious candidate and would get a bounce in the polls. As I noted Tuesday, the election has become a virtual tie based upon the polls. Since then, a Reuters/Ipsos survey released on Wednesday also shows Clinton leading by just one percent. While the news media has generally been biased towards Clinton, CNN has posted an article entitled Why Sanders is a better bet against Trump on Thursday.

We might be seeing a lot of additional information demonstrating why Crooked Hillary deserves her name. While Sanders didn’t use such scandals against Clinton, there is no doubt that Trump will. Today there were reports that Clinton Charity Aided Clinton Friends.

While I have been far more concerned about the violations of policies regarding government transparency and the influence peddling by Clinton, the FBI investigation has dominated talk in the media. Clinton has tried to downplay this, saying it is just a security inquiry. This week, FBI Director James Corney has contradicted Clinton’s statement. Security inquiry is not a thing. This is an investigation. Still, I continue to doubt that Clinton will be indicted considering her position, even if lower level people have been prosecuted for less. However, nobody knows for sure what will happen, and it makes no sense for a major political party to even consider nominating Clinton under the circumstances.

Clinton has also faced difficulties policy-wise too this week, with Huffington Post and Common Dreams chastising Clinton for refusing to Rule Out Any and All Benefit Cuts to Social Security. On the other side, I’m sure there are a lot of Republicans who are angry with Dangerous Donald for not promising to cut Social Security.

While Sanders remains Clinton’s major challenger for the Democratic nomination, there might be members of the party establishment who will not accept Sanders but realize that Clinton is a major liability for the party. There seems to be some who are out floating a Biden/Warren trial balloon.

Quote of the Day: Conan On Trump

Conan Photo

A former speechwriter for John McCain said Donald Trump has an unstable personality. This is coming from the guy who wrote the words, “Please welcome my running mate, Sarah Palin.” –Conan O’Brien

Focus Group & Further Polls Show Clinton Could Have Difficulty Beating Trump

Trump Sanders Clinton

Bernie Sanders is projected to win the West Virginia primary, and additional polls out today showed that he would make the stronger candidate against Donald Trump. Public Policy Polling shows Clinton in a very tight race with Trump, with Clinton losing support to the likely Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and likely Green Party candidate Jill Stein:

PPP’s new national poll finds that Republicans have quickly unified around Donald Trump, making the Presidential race more competitive than it has previously been perceived to be.

Hillary Clinton leads Trump 42-38, with Libertarian Gary Johnson at  4% and Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 2%. In a match up just between Clinton and Trump, her lead expands to 47-41. That’s because supporters of Johnson and Stein would prefer her over Trump 36-18. Although there’s been a lot of talk about third party candidates drawing support away from Trump, they’re actually taking a little bit more from Clinton at this point…

Bernie Sanders continues to do the best in general election match ups, leading Trump 47-37 with Johnson at 3% and Stein at 1% in the full field, and leading Trump 50-39 head to head. The difference between how Clinton and Sanders fare against Trump comes almost completely among young people. In the full field Clinton leads 46-24, but Sanders leads 64-18 with voters between 18 and 29. In one on ones with Trump, Clinton leads 49-27, but Sanders leads 70-14.

The undecideds in a Clinton-Trump match up right now support Sanders 41-8 in a match up with Trump, so the bad news for Clinton is that she has work to do to win over a certain segment of Sanders supporters in the general, but the good news is that they are at least somewhat Democratic leaning and she has the potential to increase her advantage over Trump by a couple points if she is eventually able to get them in her corner. Democrats lead a generic question about which party people would vote for President 49-41, so that may be somewhat of a forecast for where the race could be headed if/when Sanders supporters unify around Clinton for the general.

It remains to be seen how many Sanders supporters will vote for Clinton versus voting third party or staying home. While there has been talk of Donald Trump losing Republican voters to third parties, pundits often ignore the fact that Clinton’s views are further from the mainstream of her party than Trump’s views, making it likely that there will be Democratic voters who will not vote for Clinton under any circumstance. While the numbers backing third party candidates are small, this could be enough to cost Clinton the victory in a close election.

I find the views of both Stein and Johnson to be far preferable to the views of either major party candidate from the authoritarian right segment of the political spectrum. While unlikely, there has been more talk recently of an even better third party candidate–Bernie Sanders.

Sanders still hopes to be the Democratic candidate, having an increasingly strong argument that he is more likely than Hillary Clinton to beat Donald Trump. In addition to the Public Policy poll above, a new Quinnipiac poll shows Clinton in a tight race in three key battleground states–Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Sanders does better than Clinton in all three states.

With a campaign between Clinton and Trump expected to be a battle to get votes to fear and hate the other major party candidate more, The Washington Post reports that Democratic focus groups are showing that swing voters are not believing the Democratic arguments against Trump. Bloomberg points out that, compared to Obama, Clinton has serious negatives in such a battle:

Clinton has been subjected to a quarter century of political and personal attacks, many of them vicious, more than a few outlandish. For every smear of President Barack Obama as a Kenyan anticolonial socialist or terrorist enabler, Clinton can probably cite two similarly inspired delusions — that she killed White House aide Vincent Foster or, for reasons no one ever seems able to explain, that she preferred to let a handful of Americans die in Benghazi rather than use her powers as secretary of State to protect them.

But the differences between Obama and Clinton are at least as telling as the similarities. More than half of Americans consistently have rated Obama “honest and trustworthy” during his presidency. Of nine Gallup measurements taken between 2008 and 2015, Obama fell below 50 percent only once, in 2014. In April 2008, the spring of his first campaign for president, 60 percent of Gallup respondents said Obama was honest and trustworthy.

By contrast, in a March 2016 Washington Post/ABC News poll, 37 percent of adults agreed that Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy, and 57 percent said they don’t think she is. Even Democrats aren’t sold. In Wisconsin, where Bernie Sanders defeated her on April 5, exit polls showed only 57 percent of Democratic voters rated her honest and trustworthy. Two weeks later in her home state of New York, which she won, only 60 percent of Democrats leaving the polls said she was honest and trustworthy.

Neither Sanders in 2016, nor Obama in 2008, aggressively attacked Clinton’s integrity. She finds herself in this hole as a result of conservative attacks on her and of doubts she raised by her own actions. History weighs on her.

Of course fact checkers have also demonstrated a large number of false statements coming from Trump. Trump beats Clinton in terms of number of falsehoods, but there is a major difference between the two. Trump tends to make up facts regarding policy matters. In contrast, Clinton’s lies tend to be to either cover up unethical actions and as part of a Rovian style smear campaign against political opponents. I suspect that Clinton’s type of dishonesty might be a more serious issue should the presidential campaign come down to character.

It Is Sad To See Some Sanders Supporters Acting Like Clinton Supporters & Republicans

Sanders Clinton CNN

We are accustomed to seeing Clinton supporters spread misinformation, ignore facts, and try to prevent those they disagree with from expressing their views. It is a shame to see some Sanders supporters using the same tactics.

There are many valid sources of information about Hillary Clinton which are relevant to the campaign. There are also right wing sources which spread misinformation which Sanders supporters would be wise to stay away from. I recently found a Sanders supporter spreading bogus claims about Clinton, claiming that being on Coumadin should disqualify her from being president.

The claims were written by Jerome Corsi, one of the writers who spread the Swift Boat Lies against John Kerry. The article they linked to was one of many on the same topic posted by him at World Net Daily. The source is a second reason for Sanders supporters to be skeptical.The article uses pseudo-science to make claims which are contrary to current standards of medical care. The source of the information is a quack physician who lost his license due to holding views which could jeopardize the lives of his patients.

As both a physician and long-time Sanders supporter I attempted to correct this misinformation after it was reposted in the Progressive BERN Party Facebook group. Besides noting the medical fallacies in the argument and how untrustworthy the source was, I pointed out that if Sanders had a medical condition which required the use of such a medication we would be defending his ability to still be president.

There are enough valid arguments against Clinton being president. There is no benefit in repeating  bogus claims from the far right. This is true of this particular argument, as well as many others from right wing sources which are sometimes repeated by Sanders supporters.

The reaction at the Progressive BERN Party Facebook group was to ban me from the group after pointing out the medical facts. That is certainly an intellectually dishonest and cowardly way to respond to being corrected on the facts. We might expect such thinking from Clinton supporters, and from Republicans. Unfortunately it is also seen in some Sanders supporters. Besides, if the goal is to really promote a new political party along the lines of Sanders’ views, and in opposition to Clinton’s views, what sense does it make to ban someone who has been promoting such views for quite a long time? Sanders supporters should be seeking to broaden their groups, not play games such as this.

SciFi Weekend: The Big Reveal on Game of Thrones; Orphan Back; Person of Interest; DC & Marvel News; Star Trek; The Handmaid’s Tale

Game of Thrones Jon Snow

While technically a spoiler for those who have not seen lase week’s episode of Game of Thrones, there was little doubt that Jon Snow would return in some form. While he has returned to life, so far all we have seen is his eyes open and beyond that he might not be entirely the same. Vulture looks at some of the possibilities, including that his wounds might never heal or that he might not have his memories. They also speculate that his death might have terminated his vow to to the Night’s Watch which “shall not end until my death.” If so, this would allow him to take other roles, such as leading the North and/or returning to aide the surviving  Starks.

Regardless of what happens to him, Kit Harrington is happy that he no longer has to lie to everyone.

Orphan Black Donnie

Orphan Black started out the season with a bit of a reboot and simplification of all the various conspiracies. The show is always at its best in dealing with the characters as opposed to overly complex conspiracies. While Tatiana Maslany is generally the show, supporting characters do have a lot to add, such as seeing Donny and Felix posing as a gay couple as part of the investigation of one of those conspiracies. It got even better when Donnie called Alison to help him provide a sperm specimen with phone sex in yet another classic scene in this series.

Person of Interest returned for its final season on CBS. A sneak peak from Comic-Con is above. The AV Club spoke with executive produces Jonathan Nolan and Greg Plageman. Here is a portion:

The A.V. Club:Since the beginning, this show that’s ostensibly been about artificial intelligence is really about human connection. What’s it like to thread that needle and how has it evolved over time?

Jonathan Nolan: It’s a great question. And it’s a big challenge. I remember Greg and I talking from the beginning about the collision between the more esoteric ideas in the pilot and how we were going to draw emotions and humanism and a recurring interest from the audience out of all those ideas. There are a lot of ideas in the show, and it’s something I’m very proud of. It’s funny, it’s not a normal show for CBS, but people kind of found it, which is exciting.

That link between the big ideas of the show and the characters—we’ve concentrated on it so hard from the beginning, because we wanted to explore all these crazy ideas about the surveillance state, big data, and AI—and the collision of all of that on a personal level. And from the beginning, I’ve felt like there was a great connection there between big data and the kind of “normal” violent crimes that you find in a major city like New York. I’m just kind of fascinated by the idea of the collision of all of those things. But the thing that people keep tuning in for is the characters. Week in, week out, you’re looking not for ideas, necessarily, although it’s great when your shows have ideas in them, but for the characters to become extended family. Especially in broadcast TV, that’s what happens on that level: When you’re on weekly, your characters come back and you connect with them every week. So, as you said, threading that needle becomes the challenge throughout all five seasons.

AVC:One of the great things is how you were able to connect to The Machine, even on a very personal level. The Machine was gendered female, whereas Samaritan has stayed relatively genderless. Can you expand on that?

JN: I think the gender question, you know, they’re obviously connected. If you want to understand the impact that any SI, or super intelligence, will have—and it’s pat, but it’s accurate—but it’s as if there were no gods and we made them, right? God has often been gendered in the West in a masculine light, which is absurd, but it evolved sort of organically, talking about The Machine as a person. Finch always referred to The Machine as “it” or a thing, but for Root there’s always been more of a personal connection there, a belief in The Machine as a being. So her personification of it—sadly, in the West, we have to gender things to personify them—it seemed most apt that she would think of it in those terms. There’s also something else we’re doing with that: If you’ve paid close attention to the show and where we’re going, there’s a little bit of foreshadowing there as well.

AVC:It seems as though The Machine went through a rebellion phase when it really started to only speak through Root. Will this season be about The Machine becoming more mature in that sense and answering to everybody?

JN: I’m picturing a hormonal artificial super intelligence.

Greg, what are you thinking?

Greg Plageman: I think the interesting relationship for me is Harold Finch and his creation. And there’s always been a troubling conundrum for Finch, building this thing that’s so powerful yet that could overtake us. He’s never been quite comfortable with the idea of an ASI—building something that’s more intelligent than us and us expecting that we could still actually control it. So he’s always had that dilemma that he’s been grappling with, and that caused him to put a limiter on The Machine. What Root has always implored Harold Finch to do is take the gloves off the thing because we’re losing—we’re losing to a much more diabolical creation.

So I think the evolution of that relationship of Harold Finch and his machine this season, in terms of reconstituting it, and how it’s going to be different this time, it’s almost like, what’s the point? What’s the point, Harold, if you’re going to put a limiter on this thing all over again, as Root has always told him in terms of her wanting to let this thing go and to see what it can do. It becomes an exploration of Harold Finch’s character that I think the audience is going to find very fascinating.

AVC:Do you think that if we had been watching the team behind Samaritan from the beginning, rather than the team behind The Machine, that we would be pro-Samaritan?

JN: I think that’s one of the delicious things about what we’ve been doing with this storyline and where we’ve gone with it in this last season. I’m always most excited about and drawn to villains who have a point of view and have a plan. One of the most exciting things about The Joker in The Dark Knight is, he may be a villain in your eyes, but he’s the only person who hasn’t broken his own rules. Everyone else has, everyone else has corrupted themselves, but he’s in many ways one of the most ethical people in the film in terms of their own ideas. He had an idea, and it drives the story forward. We applied a similar approach here, but even more rationally. A lot of things that Samaritan espouses are believed by the people who work for Samaritan, the same way that I’m sure people who work for Facebook don’t believe that they’re working for the company that will destroy the world. But, you know, they are. And everyone gets through the day rationalizing their own existence.

GP: It’s sort of fascinating right now what’s happening in Russia with Putin’s control of the media and the way the everyday Russian views the West now or the United States. It just depends on who’s telling the story. There was a moment where Root met Greer and he sort of said these things to her: “You and I are not all that unalike.”

Supergirl

CBS has not decided yet about renewing Supergirl, with cost being an issue. Ideas being considered include moving the show to Vancouver and airing fewer episodes. It might also move to CW with the other Berlantiverse shows. (If necessary to make room for all the superhero shows, I’d suggest cancelling Legends of Tomorrow and airing Supergirl instead).

At ABC, it has not been decided whether to return Agent Carter or go ahead with Marvel’s Most Wanted. If they don’t air the second, I wonder if they would write Adrianne Palicki and Nick Blood back into Agents of SHIELD. With the way they were written out, it wouldn’t be hard for Coulson to decide he doesn’t care what the Russians think and bring them back–especially as they are operating secretly. We should have news on May 17 from ABC.

Needless to say, there has been a lot out in the past week on the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the release of Captain America: Civil War. To avoid spoilers I will postpone discussing this until a later date. Here is one link of interest–the backstory from the comics of the history of fights between Captain American and Iron-Man.

CBS All Access remains on track to begin the new Star Trek series in January, 2017. They will be releasing one episode per week.

Hulu will be showing a ten-episode miniseries based upon Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale  in 2017. It will star Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men) had will be written by Bruce Miller of The 100. Miller will c0-executive produce the series along with Daniel Wilson (who worked on the movie version of the book), Fran Sears (The Sophisticated Gents) and Warren Littlefield (Fargo). I suspect they will also be releasing an episode a week as they did with the adaptation of 11.22.63.

Speaking of Mad Men, here’s a chance to explore Don Draper’s apartment in 3-D. It would be even more fun to have an apartment like this to spend some time at in Manhattan.

Sanders Doesn’t Sound Very Interested In Being Clinton’s VP Despite Media Hype

Sanders CNN

I saw several headlines today along the lines of  Sanders leaves door open to Clinton VP spot. Reading the headlines does give the impression that Sanders might be interested, but the actual interview does not really suggest this:

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders on Friday left the door open to being Hillary Clinton‘s running mate if she were to offer him the position after the party’s convention this summer.

“Right now, we are focused on the next five weeks of winning the Democratic nomination. If that does not happen, we are going to fight as hard as we can on the floor of the Democratic convention to make sure that we have a progressive platform that the American people will support,” Sanders said during an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer broadcast on “The Situation Room.”

“Then, after that, certainly Secretary Clinton and I can sit down and talk and see where we go from there.”

Asked if Sanders would drop out of the race if he were offered the VP slot now, the independent Vermont senator responded, “I think that that is a hypothetical that will not happen.”

Clinton has all but clinched the Democratic nomination but she has shied away from directly calling for her opponent to drop out of the race

Sanders has insisted that he’ll fight until the party’s convention in July, hoping to play a role in crafting a more progressive party platform.

“We’re going to be in this until the last ballot is cast,” Sanders reiterated Friday.

Sanders said that while he will continue to differentiate between his and Clinton’s positions, “What’s most important is we defeat Donald Trump.”

“Hillary Clinton and I disagree on many issues, I think her judgement on the war in Iraq was bad, I think her judgement on trade policies where she supported virtually every one of these disastrous trade policies was bad, I think the fact that she supports a $12 minimum wage when clearly we need a $15 an minimum wage, I think that’s bad. I think her creating super-PACs and raising money from Wall Street and other powerful special interests, not a great idea,” Sanders said.

From both this description and watching the video of the interview, it looks to me like Sanders pretty much ignored the question of being Clinton’s vice president to get back on message about continuing to run against Clinton on the issues. The headlines are technically true that Sanders did not close the door, but I think that is more because he wanted to talk about other things, not because he is interested in the position.

If not for the degree to which the Democratic Party (including Democratic-leaning independents) are divided this year, it normally would not make much sense to have both Sanders and Clinton on the same ticked, in either order, due to their age. It would make sense for either to have a younger running mate.

This year there is the outside chance that if Clinton wins the nomination she might offer the vice presidency to Sanders as many Sanders supporters are currently unlikely to turn out to vote for her if she is the nominee. Having Sanders on the ticket would probably lead to some Sanders supporters to hold their nose and vote for the ticket.

Establishment Democrats are also upset to see that Donald Trump is repeating (and to some degree exaggerating) Sanders’ charges that Clinton has poor judgment. While that could hurt Clinton in a general election, the fact is that this is true about Clinton. Rather than blaming Sanders for speaking the truth, they should never have done so much to rig the nomination battle in Clinton’s favor. While Clinton currently has a strong lead, should she lose to Trump, the fault would belong entirely to those who have backed a candidate such as Clinton who is unfit to be president.

Sanders also discussed how he would make the strongest candidate against Donald Trump due to his greater support from independents. Numerous polls have demonstrated that Sanders does significantly better than Clinton in head to head polls against Donald Trump. He also repeated that if he is not the nominee he would do everything he can to keep Donald Trump from being elected president.

The full video of the interview is below:

Sanders Protests That Democratic Convention Is Rigged Against Him

Sanders May

I’m sure it wasn’t any surprise to  Bernie Sanders that the Democratic establishment would rig the convention against him, and I see his protest more as an effort of Sanders to continue to fight for the nomination, despite the odds against him. Politico reports:

In a letter to the chairwoman, Sanders noted that of the 45 names he submitted to Democratic National Convention committees, Wasserman Schultz appointed only three.

“I believe the composition of the standing committees must reflect the relative support that has been received by both campaigns,” Sanders wrote in the letter dated May 6. “That was why I was so disappointed to learn that of the over forty people our campaign submitted at your request you chose to select only three of my recommendations for the three standing committees. Moreover, you did not assign even on of the people submitted by our campaign to the very important Rules Committee of the Democratic National Convention.”

Sanders said that if the disagreement over convention committee appointments is not resolved, he would have his delegates move to change the platform on the floor of the convention.

“It is my hope we can quickly resolve this in a fair way,” Sanders wrote. “If the process is set up to produce an unfair, one-sided result, we are prepared to mobilize our delegates to force as many votes as necessary to amend the platform and rules on the floor of the convention.”

As I discussed recently, the system is heavily rigged to prevent insurgent candidates such as Sanders from winning the Democratic nomination. The Democratic primary system turned out to be even more rigged and less Democratic than the Republican. Despite the likelihood of Sanders beating Clinton in the upcoming primaries, the system has guaranteed that Clinton will go into the convention with a majority of delegates. Sanders’ only remaining hope is if superdelegates defect from Clinton to him.

It is unlikely that the superdelegates will support an outsider over the establishment candidate. This could only happen if the situation changes considerably between now and the convention. There is the long shot possibility that superdelegates could change their mind if they saw how much weaker a candidate Clinton would make against Trump than Sanders, but I fear that many establishment Democrats would rather lose with Clinton than allow Sanders to take control of the party.

As I discussed yesterday and Gawker discussed today, Clinton is capable of blowing it against Trump, despite her considerable lead at the present. She has demonstrated both in 2008 and this year that she is a terrible candidate and makes many mistakes with messaging. While she currently has a strong lead over Trump, she would be facing a very tough race against virtually any other Republican, and it is not impossible that Trump could overcome his deficit in a race against a candidate who is as unpopular and flawed as Clinton.

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.

Trump Clinches Control of GOP While Sanders Continues To Fight Clinton For Democratic Nomination

sandersindiana_0

Who would have predicted that Donald Trump would clinch the Republican nomination while Hillary Clinton still has an opponent in the race after the Indiana primary, even if Bernie has a huge uphill battle to pull it out? Sanders’ only hope is that something major happens which erodes support for Clinton among the remaining primary voters and/or the superdelegates. While many Republicans continue to oppose Trump, it is hard to see any way to stop him now that both Cruz and Kassich have left the race.

While I do not want to give up all hope of an acceptable presidential candidate emerging from a major party, the pundits are concentrating on a Clinton versus Trump race, as horrible as those options are. Clinton certainly starts out with the advantage when you consider both the advantages for any Democrat in the electoral college, along with how Trump as alienated so many groups, including women and some minorities. On the other hand, the decline in Clinton’s support must raise the question of whether she can survive a general election campaign.

Some Republicans are even talking about voting for Clinton over Trump. Perhaps this will be like the PUMAs of 2008 with the majority ultimately voting for Obama despite initial threats to vote for McCain in protest over Clinton’s defeat. Trump is at a greater risk of a real defection this year. While he is wrong on many, many issues, Trump’s views are vastly different from the GOP mainstream. A neoconservative, DLC Democrat like Clinton is  not very far ideologically from the faction of Republicans which are not outright bat-shit crazy, and the old Goldwater Girl would actually be a sensible choice for many Republican voters. Neocons have already been talking about supporting Clinton for quite a while, and she has received the endorsement of Robert Kagan.

It certainly makes sense for Clinton to try to attract Republican votes, and such votes might make up votes Clinton will lose from those on the left who will not vote for her out of principle. A small percentage of Sanders supporters might even prefer Trump over Clinton. On paper Trump is preferable on foreign policy, showing far less interest than the ultra-hawkish Clinton in military interventionism and regime change, but I would also fear that he would blunder us into a war. Many Sanders supporters  prefer Trump over Clinton issues such as trade and legalization of drugs. Many other issues will make it unlikely for Sanders supporters to vote for Trump.

Sanders showed that his campaign is very much alive with his upset victory in Indiana. Many Clinton supporters are now calling on Sanders to leave the race, but they miss the point. Sanders has been facing an uphill battle from the start, but there is a need for a candidate to present an alternative viewpoint to those of Clinton and Trump. Hillary Clinton still has major negatives leaving a long shot chance of her campaign still being stopped, and even if she cannot be prevented from winning the nomination, voters in remaining primaries deserve an acceptable choice. This is also a campaign over principles and the future direction of the Democratic Party, regardless of whether Clinton wins the current nomination.

Donald Trump Returns Conspiracy Theories To The Campaign

Enquirer Cruz

Donald Trump’s long list of faults makes it easy for some to be overlooked. His belief in conspiracy theories has not been mentioned much during the campaign. Previously Trump had been a leading proponent of the Birther theories that Barack Obama is not an American citizen. Climate change denialism is also largely a conspiracy theory, with proponents believing that everyone promoting climate change, presumably including the vast majority of scientists, are using it as part of a plot to destroy capitalism. Now we have a new one from Donald Trump to add to the nomination battle–implicating Ted Cruz’s father in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Politico reports:

Donald Trump on Tuesday alleged that Ted Cruz’s father was with John F. Kennedy’s assassin shortly before he murdered the president, parroting a National Enquirer story claiming that Rafael Cruz was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963.

A Cruz campaign spokesperson told the Miami Herald, which pointed out numerous flaws in the Enquirer story, that it was “another garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage.”

“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said Tuesday during a phone interview with Fox News. “What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.”

The Cruz campaign has denied that it was Rafael Cruz in the picture which led to this story.

Trump has also been spotted shopping for more fiction to peddle in his campaign, having lunch with Edward Klein. Klein is one of the leaders in a cottage industry of writing anti-Clinton books. While there is a lot to criticize Clinton for, including her conservative political views, her long history of poor judgment on the major issues during her career, and her ethics, writers such as Klein concentrate on fiction as opposed to Clinton’s actual faults. I suspect that this is because the conservative readers his books are marketed to don’t care about the same matters which those on the left criticize Clinton for. Plus Clinton’s actual faults overlap tremendously with the fault of Republican politicians, and an honest criticism of Clinton would hit too close to home.