One difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump
Republican Senator Ben Sasse has written an open letter to America. I agree with a great deal of it, but I wanted to take issue with something.
Here’s an excerpt:
In the history of polling, we’ve basically never had a candidate viewed negatively by half of the electorate. This year, we have two. In fact, we now have the two most unpopular candidates ever ”“ Hillary by a little, and Trump by miles (including now 3 out of 4 women ”“ who vote more and influence more votes than men). There are dumpster fires in my town more popular than these two “leaders.”
With Clinton and Trump, the fix is in. Heads, they win; tails, you lose. Why are we confined to these two terrible options? This is America. If both choices stink, we reject them and go bigger. That’s what we do.
Remember: our Founders didn’t want entrenched political parties. So why should we accept this terrible choice?
Sasse goes on to suggest a non-Trump non-Hillary candidate (not himself, by the way), but he doesn’t say who that person would be.
I like the idea, but not naming such a person is one of the problems. If one such person existed—if there was that much consensus between/among the factions in America today—that person would probably be running for president already, and succeeding. But the war between the parties, and the abominable choices we face, represent factions of Americans (not just parties) that are in ideological war with each other. The people’s elected representatives in Congress are reflections of a very real impasse, and it’s not just between two groups, it’s among many. Compromise? Compromise has been shunned and rejected by the voters, too, as representatives who are too moderate are driven from office.
I’m not saying it’s good or bad, I’m just pointing out that I don’t see a moderate electorate right now.
The other thing I want to point out is that Trump and Clinton have differing amounts of support from their respective party movers and shakers. Imagine, if you will, those smoke-filled rooms of yesteryear, composed of party leaders choosing their standard bearers with little or no input from voter primaries. Does anyone for a single moment believe that Donald Trump would have been the GOP choice under such conditions? I thought not. But Hillary Clinton would almost certainly have been the choice of the Democrats.
In other words, Clinton expresses her party’s wishes, and Trump (who may not even really be “of” his party) does not.
What’s more—although I’m having trouble finding exact figures on this—Hillary Clinton also represents the choice of the majority of Democratic voters who have bothered to vote in the primaries, and Donald Trump does not represent the same for GOP voters. Even if the support for Hillary among Democrats is lukewarm, she is more liked by more of her party’s voters than Trump is by his (although his actual supporters are often very excited about him and quite fervent in their support).
In sum, whoever Hillary is and whatever she is proposing to do is more in line with the wishes and principles of her own party than Donald Trump is in line with his. He is the protest candidate, the hostile-takeover candidate, and he is leading in spite of the party leadership—or, rather, in reaction to their perceived failings—rather than because the party leaders would choose him as their nominee.
That is their dilemma. If they fall in with him and get on board, they are committing a form of suicide. And if they oppose him they’re doing the same thing (at least in the short term). This is most definitely not the dilemma the Democratic leaders face. And that’s a big, big difference.
[ADDENDUM: I see that a similar point of view to mine has been expressed by streiff at RedState.]
I read Ben’s post and posted on his FB page a comment. I think his hope or wish for someone else to step in as a candidate is pure fantasy.
I thought it was silly. We have a binary choice. I’ll even go with Peggy Noonan’s phrase: Crazy Man v Criminal. I pick the Crazy Man.
Sasse also asserted Fremont is the center of the universe. Not quite. It is Silicon Valley and then Omaha.
If Sasse shows up at the Trump event on Friday, I’ll talk to him.
Inside baseball: Creighton’s new president is also from Fremont and they are friends. Fr. Dan Hendrickson, S.J. is a great guy. Wish he was Senator but he is doing better work at Creighton.
Those are some very good points. I think it’s assumed that Sasse himself would run (at least, everyone but Sasse assumes that).
Also, remember, the reason that the parties got rid of the back rooms was Nixon. The Republicans chose him for the ticket five times. Unlikable and corrupt. The system had to be scrapped after that.
Cornhead:
I don’t see them as Crazy Man vs. Criminal. I see them as different flavors of the same statist, tyrannical, lying brew.
To be more exact, Trump is hardly crazy. “Crazy” involves a random, out-of-control person out of touch with reality. I disagree with much of what he proposes, a great deal of what he says, and I find his character abominable. Same for her. But neither is crazy.
As for “criminal,” it’s a fine distinction without all that much of a difference. Is Trump a lawbreaker? I don’t know. But he uses the law in a thuggish way to get what he wants, and he does not respect the law.
What I’m getting tired of is radio talk show hosts (a couple whom I know personally) beating there listeners (and me) over the head with “You must vote for Trump or you’re voting for Hillary!” and “If you don’t, you’re an idiot!”
Nick:
And yet Nixon won. Twice. So America certainly didn’t dislike him that much.
What’s more, you are wrong about the primary system and its history:
At that point, most primaries were non-binding. They were indications to the leadership what the people preferred, but the leaders could ignore that.
See more here:
The article goes on to explain that it was the McCarthy/Humphrey convention, and criticism by McCarthy, that propelled the process that led to the modern primary system, and it occurred in the Democratic primary.
The Republicans followed:
Nothing to do with Nixon.
Ed Bonderenka:
You’re just NOW getting tired of radio talk show hosts 🙂 ?
From the don’t-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry file: Trump’s new finance chair, Steve Mnuchin, a Wall Street hedge fund manager, ‘has deep ties to the Democratic Party – including working for George Soros”.
Neo
Many, many other reasons not to vote for Hillary. SCOTUS capture by Libs. Total meltdown in foreign affairs. She’s dumb as a stick. Old and tired. Bad, bad economy. Way more expensive energy. Obamacare. More race wars. Cultural decay. Open borders. Etc.
Trump is not the Establishment. He could not do any worse than Hillary.
All irrelevant and not going to matter in the long run…
its gotten to silly proportions of prediction as if everyone was dial a psychic and more… people with such great predictive ability should be billionairs themselves..
Cornhead:
I’ve heard many criticisms of Hillary, but never that she’s dumb—much less “dumb as a stick.”
I’ve listed the reasons I think Trump could be worse, so I won’t go into them again here.
I don’t know who ever said Trump was the Establishment. Certainly not me! I find him much worse than they are on everything but immigration. And since I don’t trust anything the man says at this point, I don’t trust him on immigration either (although he’s said so many different things I suppose one will be true).
I see his foreign policy as chaotic, too. And I think that world leaders will be more inclined to SEE it as chaotic than with Hillary, so they will act in a chaotic reactive way.
Neo:
Only a complete idiot would send and receive national security secrets on an unsecure private server. Or some one very keen to keep her bribery info private.
And a long history of terrible judgment.
I’ve seen her in person. She’s dumb. Not impressive at all.
Neo,
Not only will foreign leaders see him as chaotic, leading to less trust of the US and less willingness to cooperate with us, but opponents of our allies’ leaders will use all his ignorant comments to rile their populations and establish a far less friendly government. I wish more Americans would realize that every stupid thing an American says goes around the world and is used to feed anti-Americanism.
Pure fantasy is an odd description of the observer who remarks that the Emperor’s New Clothes aren’t clothes at all, but a disgusting nudity posing as clothing, and being taken by the silence of so many other observers as if that nudity were clothing.
Cornhead Says:
May 5th, 2016 at 4:13 pm
Mega-dittos.
She’s a plodder and plotter.
All scheming — zero thinking.
THE “–gate” queen.
Travelgate
Benghazigate… on and on…
expat Says:
May 5th, 2016 at 4:15 pm
Neo,
Not only will foreign leaders see him as chaotic, leading to less trust of the US and less willingness to cooperate with us…
%%%%
Hillary presents Moscow with an “Overcharge” button.
Hillary twists Barry’s arm — gets us deep into Libyan fiasco.
Hillary falls down in Iraq — the SoS is supposed to grease the skids for international treaties — like a forces agreement — NOT the president. She was AWOL.
She was on deck when Barry Soetoro ruptured our relations with our allies. She didn’t even squeak a peep.
Her State Department was mixed up with Kiev and worse.
Instead of doing her job — she was off flying to and fro — accomplishing NOTHING.
Trump looks towering by comparison.
blert:
I don’t see how that last sentence of yours (in your 4:42 comment) follows from the rest.
She looks awful. So does he. To me, he looks potentially even worse, particularly if I try to look at it from the point of view of other countries.
I see no echoes of FDR at all in Trump, except that he comes from a rich family and is mostly a liberal.
See this for a post on a related topic.
Cornhead:
Once again I strongly disagree about the word “dumb” applied to Hillary.
She is arrogant and drunk with power. That sentence accounts for her behavior re the server, not being dumb. And she nearly got away with it, and may indeed get away with it. Nothing dumb about that.
You may have seen her in person, but I’ve listened to her for the twenty-five years she has been in the public eye. She is not dumb, IMHO. More importantly (to voters, anyway), she doesn’t sound dumb. She’s usually very articulate and organized in her responses. Every now and then she slips up, but that’s to be expected. And sometimes she tires. But she does NOT come across to the average person as dumb, and perceptions are very very important.
Neo
Maybe my total hate of all things Clinton colors my judgment. I recall very well reading the WSJ explaining her cattle futures payday and I have grown to hate the two of them even more.
Either arrogance or stupidity, the email thing is a disaster. And it is all on her. I say it is more stupidity than arrogance. If she makes that kind of mistake, what kind of error does she make in the WH.
I agree with you, Neo, that Clinton doesn’t come across as dumb at all, and she can make her points very effectively. This video clip of her talking with Anderson Cooper about Trump being a “loose cannon” is a good example. She’s going to do very well in her debates with Trump.
Cornhead:
I agree that a Clinton presidency would be a disaster. I just think a Trump presidency might be (not sure) an even bigger disaster.
And as I said earlier, I don’t think Clinton is stupid. Not by a longshot. I don’t think Trump is stupid, either.
Nor did I think Reagan, George W. Bush, or Obama were stupid. And that respect for their brains was irrespective of whether I supported them or not.
They have different types of intelligences, though, particularly Clinton and Trump. Hers is more academic and conventional, his is more of the gut in terms of fighting his opponents and dealing with the media. They are both con artists, but he is a better con artist, because he does it with that populist touch.
Both pernicious, pernicious.
Agree with neo. Hillary is many things but not dumb. If she appears that way to you, it is probably her awkward attempt at seeming personable or relatable to the common folk. IQ-wise, I’m sure she can eat Trump’s lunch. Which she most assuredly will do at the debates. While Trump is muttering on about yuge, beautiful, and believe me. I hope he’ll be on a 5 second delay for national broadcast because I’ll actually be surprised if he doesn’t call her the c-word. Which brings me to where I disagree with neo. Trump does have self-control issues or he would not say some of the stuff he says. I think. Maybe it was an elaborate plot to see how low he could go in appealing to the lowest common denominator. I guess we’ll get to see. Lucky us.
“Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to November
But the undecideds grow tedious when you reach September
When the autumn pollsters turns the campaign to flames
One hasn’t got time for sleazy Clinton games”
Thank you very much. I’ll be here all week.
Larry Correia reads my mind. “Well, we’re boned”. “It’s going to be huckster fraud democrat against lying criminal democrat.”
Blert,
I think Hillary didn’t ever want to stand up to Obama or his friends. This doesn’t mean I think she is smart on foreign policy. Her world is one of giving talks about women’s rights and healthcare. She will sacrifice anything to live up to the utopian dreams she had 40 years ago. As long as Obama let her run free and do her thing, she wasn’tt going to buck him. And remember, Powers and Rice are women. We all know that women’s voices need to be heard.
expat…
Instead of performing her sworn duties, Hillary was merely burnishing her CV — for this year’s White House run.
The other reason she took the office: as quid pro quo the US government picked up ALL of her remaining 2008 campaign debt.
It was so large that it would’ve kept her out of the running this go-round.
I believe that Barry put her in as SoS for JUST that reason.
That brainstorm very likely came from Bill Clinton.
Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina. Thats is all you have to know about the difference between djt and hrc. Beyond that they are exactly alike except djt is more bombastic, while hrc is slightly more craven.
Parker, there are universities that would deny your first sentence. Heck, both candidates might.
According to Twitchy, a few hrs ago in WV mr smart guy told the voters not to vote in the primary, save their vote for the general. I’m sure everything will work out well. Stuff like this and the stuff we can’t even imagine yet that will probably happen a lot is what makes me think it would be better to live to fight another day.
For Cornhead specifically,
Ted Cruz on Tuesday:
CRUZ: I’m going to tell you what I really think of Donald Trump. This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying.
He accuses everybody on that debate stage of lying. And it’s simply a mindless yell. Whatever he does, he accuses everyone else of doing. The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist. A narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen.
Donald Trump is such a narcissist that Barack Obama looks at him and goes, ‘Dude, what’s your problem?’ Everything in Donald’s world is about Donald. And he combines being a pathological liar, and I say pathological because I actually think Donald, if you hooked him up to a lie detector test, he could say one thing in the morning, one thing at noon and one thing in the evening, all contradictory and he’s pass the lie detector test each time. Whatever lie he’s telling, at that minute he believes it.
Cruz on his wife:
CRUZ: The man is utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him. It’s why he went after Heidi directly and smeared my wife, attacked her. Apparently she’s not pretty enough for Donald Trump. I may be biased, but I think if he’s making that allegation, he’s also legally blind.
Cruz said Trump’s insecurity is the reason why he “builds giant buildings and puts his name on them.”
CRUZ: Every one of us knew bullies in elementary school. Bullies don’t come from strength, bullies come from weakness. Bullies come from a deep, yawning cavern of insecurity. There is a reason Donald builds giant buildings and puts his name on them everywhere he goes.
And I will say there are millions of people in this country who are angry. They’re angry at Washington, they’re angry at politicians who have lied to them. I understand that anger. I share that anger. And Donald is cynically exploiting that anger, and he is lying to his supporters. Donald will betray his supporters on every issue.
If you care about immigration, Donald is laughing at you. And he’s telling the moneyed elites he doesn’t believe what he’s saying. He’s not going to build a wall. That’s what he told The New York Times. He will betray you on ever you issue across the board. And his strategy of being a bully in particular is directed at women. Donald has a real problem with women.
Cornhead, if you believe the man you campaigned for in Iowa, then Donald Trump is pathological and disconnected from reality. He compartmentalizes to the extreme point of believing what he is saying at any given moment no matter how contradictory. Cruz’ statement that Bullies come from a deep, yawning cavern of insecurity explains Trump’s personal attacks and also his extreme weakness. Combine these two facts – pathology and insecurity – and you have a disaster waiting.
What KLSmith says, better to live to fight another day.
“But the war between the parties, and the abominable choices we face, represent factions of Americans (not just parties) that are in ideological war with each other.”
I’m not sure how much of this is true. Political parties may reflect faction, but they are also designed to further faction. Neither party benefits from issues where there isn’t disagreement. In a world where political identity is an increasingly larger share of personal identity, I think we have a problem. The conservative response is to encourage a variety of institutions (church, voluntary organizations, etc.) such that one institutional identity isn’t monolithic. The response of the Left appears to be simply to try to shame the counter-identities into submission.
The Left wins either way.
It’s all too easy for me to imagine Hillary starting WWIII and
the Second Civil War all in the same week. Heck, the same day!
Perhaps more politicians should spend time building a wall in the desert. Maybe it’d keep them from bothering people in the rest of the country? World? Maybe…?