Do you want to be punched in the face or the gut? Would you rather be pushed down a flight of stairs or thrown off a garage? Would you rather vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?
Most Americans have decided who they are voting for, but those who haven’t must wonder if they’re trapped between an island of poisonous snakes and an ocean of sharks when it comes to their choice for president.
Hillary Clinton is a corrupt, power-mad, money-hungry, career climber willing to do or say anything to obtain what she wants. She sells access, influence and anything not nailed down, as long as there’s nothing in writing. She’ll trample anyone, destroy anyone, forsake anyone to win.
Donald Trump is a blowhard narcissist with no core values or principles in the political arena. A man who buys influence and funds anyone if it serves his purposes at the moment. He’s easily distracted and holds a grudge long after victory.
Hillary is married to a serial philanderer; Trump is a serial philanderer. The only difference is Trump’s conquests were willing; some of Bill Clinton’s weren’t.
Hillary smeared and destroyed the lives of women her husband used; Trump dated or married them.
Neither are moral people.
One would ruin the country by continuing the failed progressive policies and animosity toward the Constitution of the past eight years; the other would ruin the country with protectionist economics and constitutional ignorance.
Trump just accepted the Republican nomination in Cleveland –a festive event which should have launched his general election bid and turned the focus to Clinton and the difference between their visions for the future. Instead, less than 12 hours after accepting the nod, he focused on Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, taking petty swipes and rehashing smears on his family.
If Donald Trump would learn to ignore his instincts when it comes to settling scores with other Republicans, he could win this thing. But he’s his own worst enemy. You don’t curse at the people in the rear view mirror; you go after the battle ahead.
Yet Trump simply seems incapable of moving past anything. Winning wasn’t enough, accepting the nomination wasn’t enough. Trump lied about Cruz’s speech, saying the senator had ad libbed lines not in the submitted text. But all the words Cruz spoke were in the script and on the teleprompter.
So why tell such an easily disprovable lie about someone you’ve spent that last six months referring to as ‘Lying Ted?’
Hillary, on the other hand, lies not only about things that matter, such as emails and classified material, she also has a history of lying about things that don’t matter. Claiming to have landed in Bosnia under sniper fire, recounting in specific detail how she had to run from the tarmac at the airport, knowing there was video of her smiling, greeted by children and accompanied by her own daughter. Recounting the story of how she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mt. Everest, even though she was born long before he had set foot on the mountain or become famous.
She’s so weak a candidate that even though she served as secretary of state, she had to choose a running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who could shore up her foreign policy credentials. She couldn’t even trust her longtime bagman and now-governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, to deliver his purple state.
Both candidates inspire fierce loyalty in their die-hard supporters, but neither has demonstrated the ability to reach beyond it. Hillary is a known commodity – the Edsel of candidates – and there’s no polishing that mess. The undecideds have decided they can only vote for her by voting against someone else.
Donald Trump is that someone else. He’s known – he’s been a celebrity since the 1980s – but his political beliefs were (and to a large extent remain a) mystery. The country spent a week trying to unravel that mystery, then the next day he focuses on attacking someone he’d already beaten. Four days of forward-looking talk undone by an obsession on unimportance.
If you told me both were trying to lose, I’d be inclined to believe you.
Barring a major change by one of these two people, November could see extremely low turnout as this election devolves fully from a battle for the future to a race to be the least unpopular.
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