Out of the two US presidential candidates which one do you think is worse, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?
Strange as it may sound, the question evokes in me a conflict between my gut and my heart. My gut reaction is the country is going into a period of anarchy where the better angels of our nature are betrayed and lost from sight. In that country, I suppose someone like Donald Trump is the better president, although I’m at a loss to say why.I don’t see Trump holding the country together, unifying or building. He seems intent on doing the exact opposite. I do see his movement as a reaction to the excesses of political correctness but for all the rhetoric, that seems trivial.Hillary I see as the president if I feel the country will last another hundred years. That there will be a United States to lead the world further in the directions of the Founders and the Age of Reason. That may sound opposite or obtuse to some who’ve internalized the rhetoric of Originalists, but I feel and think it’s accurate.The conflict between these two impressions sorrows me overall.
Why was Hillary a bad choice for a presidential candidate?
I’ll take a stab at it. This is my theory: Three nuanced attitudes became obvious in the 2016 election:1- Outsider = someone who is not part of the “political power structure or establishment”2- Change = someone who offered a new or different direction.3- New = someone new to politics.Donald Trump met all three of these attitudesBernie Sanders met two of them (1 & 2)Hillary Clinton met none of these but wanted to convince us she met all three.This is not a defense of Trump nor Sanders, rather an explanation of the choices and attitudes that drove those choices.The first problem with Hilary was that she didn’t meet any of these three attitudes in a year that demanded at least one of them. The second problem was the way she tried to convince us that she met all three. It was condescending, and a reminder that she is a political hack – what I mean is a political opportunist who knows how to work the system (data, donors, political power brokers) because she believes that’s all that matters; because in most cases it is … or was.I do not wish to re-litigate the many issues that confronted Hillary’s veracity – they've been detailed here – but there were many. In each case whenever an honest upfront answer was required, Hillary was unable to give one. I voted for Hillary in the general election (actually, I voted against Trump). Still, I believe national politics is beginning to move beyond the conventional political hack. Trump is a reflexive and perverted version of this shift. If the Democrats wish to climb back, they need to understand this dynamic beyond demographics, donors, and data.This election was a matter of Hillary missing the zeitgeist; worse yet, reminding voters what they didn’t want and why they didn't want it.
Marcus is gay?
YAY Marcus