My predicament is that I really don’t want either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton to be elected president. The country’s predicament is that unless something changes one of them will be.
I don’t have much truck with Ted Cruz but a one-liner of his from the the debate that was quoted in the media was relevant: “Nobody on this stage is a socialist and nobody on this stage is being investigated by the FBI”. I think he was wrong about the first part. Except possibly for Rand Paul they’re all socialists. Unless the only tax you find acceptable is a head tax, at the very least you’re a Fabian socialist and a large standing army of the sort that all Republicans apparently demand can’t be supported on the basis of a head tax.
How nobody seems to appreciate what low characters both of them are really sticks in my craw.
I don’t see where they’re all that much different in character from most of the rest. Hillary is probably the worst, but that’s really only a marginal difference.
Both are awful. If these are the two nominees I would prefer to not vote, but Trump is so bad I may have to vote against him. Hillary vs anyone else, and I probably just won’t vote. Cruz might make that a difficult choice. (Reminds me of when Philadelphia has Goode vs Rizzo running. It was Philadelphia’s most mayor in history running against the second worst mayor in history. Actually, might make an interesting topic. Which election in recent US history had the worst two candidates running against each other?)
Steve
It’s looking like I’ll be voting third party. No way will I vote for Hillary and similarly for Trump and the freshman Senators.
I will vote for Hillary. Frankly I think much of the objection to her is simple sexism. I don’t mean people actively hating women, or opposing equality for women, I mean that men see women in a different light than they shine on men. They have a template in their head, and she doesn’t match that template.
She was a good senator, a decent Secretary of State, she’s supported kid’s issues forever, she’s pro-choice, she’s pro defense, she’s smart, prepared and tough as nails. She’s also dishonest but this fact sets her apart from literally no one. She’s unimaginative – ditto. She is without question the most capable, rational, steady person currently running, with the possible exception of Mr. Kasich who is polling at margin of error.
Falling in line for the DNC means they can ignore what matters to me, therefore I will not vote for Clinton. I’ll vote for Trump so conservatives can get the train up to maximum speed before slamming into the mountain.
What makes me despair for the Republic is that their supporters have convinced themselves that the two candidates are much better than they actually are. Nearly every bad thing their enemies say about them is true. Their supporters simply discount them.
As of this moment I’ll probably vote for Bernie Sanders in the primary and third party in the general election.
Well, I’m an adult, so I’ll vote lesser of two evils, as I’ve always done. I have no interest in protest votes, I think they’re narcissistic and unserious. This is not about feelings, it’s not about the warm glow of smugness, we’re choosing someone to run a superpower.
Feel the same way about Trump, Clinton, Cruz, Rubio, and a few others. All awful. I only hope the R’s hold Congress for the full term of a likely Clinton presidency.
Well, I’m an adult, so I’ll vote lesser of two evils, as I’ve always done.
I agree with the premise but this particular matchup feels like a tie.
In my experience adults do not attribute to entire affiliations of people, stupidity, sexism, inherent evil, racism, homophobia…..
But as they say, your mileage may vary.
I’m not sayin, I’m Just sayin.
Every President elected brings thousands of appointees to Washington who ultimately form the inner circle of the administration. Their power can’t be discounted. We all know what a Clinton inner circle will look like, but what about Trump? I guess I think that despite his big mouth and loose tongue, He’s not radical at all, and certainly not a warmonger. My opinion.
Reynolds says those who attempt to build alternative political parties are children.
He also says Clinton was a “decent” secretary of state.
IOW, regarding the former, he’s projecting
I’ve never liked Hillary Clinton, let alone her, ideas, aggressiveness in personal gain, or politically raw shrewdness in getting what she wants. She is the epitome, IMO, of everything that is corrupt in DC today. However, she’s a democrat, and that makes her acceptable to the steadfast base of that party, similar to the base of the republican party who find it impossible to bypass an awful candidate in their own party. That’s the way the election odds seem to play out today — pitting pathetic against pathetic. This may be the first time I skip the category of POTUS altogether in the 2016 election.
I’m not fond of any of the candidates at this point, but … the next President may be appointing 3 or 4 Supreme Court Justices, a dozen or so Cabinet members, a hundred agency heads, several thousand senior-level civil service personnel, ambassadors, Federal judges …
I think I’d rather see Hillary Clinton making those appointments than any of current Republican candidates.
I think I’d rather see Hillary Clinton making those appointments than any of current Republican candidates
This is, IMO, one of the worst aspects of a Trump vs. Hillary matchup- it forces voters into a purely partisan decision making rubric. If you can’t find any positive reason to support the candidate on his or her merits, it really comes down to lesser of two evils with regard to the political parties’ ideologies.
CStanley — I dunno. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing, voting for a candidate as the lesser of two evils. I can’t predict, for example, just what Hillary or Jeb or the Donald will do the next time a big bank wants bailing out, but I can guess government regulators will be more skeptical of such a request if Hillary appointed some of them. (It might be a wrong guess, but …). I can guess OMB with more Democrats in places smiles a bit more at increased NIH spending than with increased numbers of Republicans. I can guess that Democrats will be more open to letting in Middle East immigrants, and more concerned about global warming, and so on. I can guess at the sorts of policies that might be followed by Republicans or Democrats in many areas, even if I’m actually quite ignorant of what individual candidates specifically proposed. So I can cast a “semi-informed” ballot despite my overall ignorance, and this strikes me as A Good Thing.
@mike- the problem is that the binary choices are false. We’re manipulated to think that what is most necessary is to avoid the things we despise or fear about the opposing ideology. but the people we elect then only pay lip service to those ideals anyway. Good governance doesn’t figure in as much as giving the appearance of being of the same side, in opposition to the other guys. When the party we support fails to deliver, it’s because they faced too much opposition, and you’d better keep supporting them lest those other guys gain power.
I can guess the types of policies that will be supported (in rhetoric) by a generic candidate from each side too- but for the life of me, I can’t see a connection between the rhetoric and policy and positive change, can you?
I guess the implication of CStanley’s comments is that the power struggle between the parties is more important than the actual accomplishments rhetorically promised by each party. Not seeing this pattern of incoherence or hypocrisy of party politics makes the voters seem like dupes, don’t you think? It’s reminiscent of the “fool me once…” admonition.
So maybe there’s a reason behind the strangeness of this 2016 election cycle, highlighted by the Trump/Sanders phenomena. Maybe it’s symptomatic of people resorting to “Hail Mary” attempts in latching on to “outsiders” because they are so fed up with the follow-through of the standard bearer DC insiders. The main difference between Trump and Sanders is that Trump people are demonstrating their outright rebellion to mainstream politics. Sander people, OTOH, are trying to revitalize the earlier idealism of the democratic party, personally maintaining a more sanitized image of themselves by voting for Sanders rather than caving to vote for a corrupt but more viable candidate named Hillary.