What, really, is there to say? We have come to the end of a truly unique and disturbing Presidential election, and in the end, most people will reject Donald Trump's twisted view of America and his repeated assertion that only he can fix our problems. Yes, I know that many on the left, and some on the right, are rightly appalled that he's stayed so close in the race through November. Why isn't Hillary Clinton trouncing him in the polls? What's wrong with the Republican Party? Where's the outrage?
The honest truth is that it was always going to be far more difficult electing a woman to the presidency. Overt sexism is alive and very well in the United States, and, more specifically, at Harvard University, and while I can't say that it's more or less virulent than racism, it does seem to manifest itself on a broader level in society. More people, it seems, see racism and treatment of African-Americans as more unjust, more obnoxious and more unfair than our historic treatment of women, and I think it's because mistreatment of women cuts across all ethnic and racial groups. Seeing women as second class citizens and/or as sex objects is still a cultural norm.
That Hillary Clinton will likely become the first female president will be a significant milestone in the country's development. She will have overcome an opponent who represents the worst of America and who reminds us that we are not a nation that wants to turn the clock back to a time when it was fine to refer to woman as inferior or to question someone's judgement because of their ethnicity. Three debates and countless news stories have shown that Donald Trump is not the kind of person most people want to lead our country. It will be close. In the end, it won't matter. Hillary will be the president and she will have the power of the office.
It will then be up to the Republicans to decide whether they want the country to move forward. Will they make good on their promise to block any Supreme Court nominee that Clinton send them? Will they threaten to shut down the government? Will they refuse to compromise on tax reform, immigration reform and background checks? We cannot afford four more years of one party believe that the other party's presidents are somehow illegitimate. It's time to move forward.
Make sure you get out and vote on Tuesday.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
Sunday, November 6, 2016
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Stop The E-Mail Panic! Hillary Will Still Win!
Come on now, be honest. Did you panic on Friday night? Are you still panicked over the emails that might cost Hillary the election and you your sanity? Are you angry that Hillary set up a private email server in the first place? Even angrier that FBI Director James Comey had the gall to insinuate himself into the election?
I'm here to tell you that you are wasting precious emotional and intellectual capital by doing any of those things. Hillary Clinton will be elected president on November 8 and chances are good that the Democrats will control the Senate, if only because Vice president Tim Kaine will be around to break ties.
What makes me so confident you say? First and foremost, there doesn't seem to be anything that indicates this new batch of (10,000+) emails came from Clinton's server. They are messages that Huma Abedin had because she was printing them out or they were duplicates of emails that Clinton had already given to the FBI. Of course, there could be some messages that we don't know about or ones that Anthony Weiner saw and shouldn't have, but that's what the FBI is looking at. The GOP can say all it wants about investigating Clinton's server, but that's not an issue here.
Also, the Clinton campaign will make this about James Comey, and will do so effectively. He will need to defend his actions when other Justice Department officials told him that they opposed releasing such a bombshell so close to a presidential election date. He will ultimately need to say that he doesn't know what's in these emails and that to conclude that the are in any way incriminating would be wrong. Then the GOP will attack him and the story will continue to be about James Comey, not Hillary Clinton.
I understand why he sent his letter to Congress, because to sit on this information until the election was over would open him up to accusations that he wasn't following the law. And obviously if there was something incriminating he has his duty to release it, but there isn't any. In fact, his letter to FBI employees states specifically that they don't know what's on the computers. This is irresponsible. Imagine if you did that on your job. The job you would then lose, I mean.
The other nonissue is that most voters have already made up their minds and either have voted or wouldn't dream of voting for Trump. This is where polarization works to Hillary's advantage. If the GOP had a reputable candidate and the election was close, then I could see being worried. But Donald has already overreached by calling this as big as Watergate and I'm assuming that Comey will need to clarify that the FBI doesn't know what it has, so that will undercut Trump's attempts at blaming anything specific on Hillary. Plus, the email issue is nothing new and it won't erase the terrible things that Trump has said over the course of the campaign.
What about the polls, you say? The polls have been tightening, right? Well, yes and not-so-yes. The margin by which Hillary has been leading, since July, I might add, is getting a bit smaller, but that seems to be because recalcitrant Republicans who were repulsed by Trump's misogyny are coming back to the party. They'll regret it later, but Trump's improvement has been almost entirely built on his getting a greater share of GOP voters than he did earlier this month.
Most state polls, which are the ones that we should be watching, show that he's behind in most of the swing states and has never led in the Electoral College projections since the campaign started. He could even win Ohio, Nevada, North Carolina and Florida and still lose, assuming that Clinton wins Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, which she will, so I don't know why you're bothering me about this. Probably because you've been consulting the mainstream press, which has an interest in creating uncertainty so you'll continue to consume their messages. Please stop.
The most important thing that Democrats can do now is to vote. I know that some thought that Hillary had this in the bag, but that's not true if people don't vote for her and Democrats for House and Senate. Vote early if you can. This election is too vital not to.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
I'm here to tell you that you are wasting precious emotional and intellectual capital by doing any of those things. Hillary Clinton will be elected president on November 8 and chances are good that the Democrats will control the Senate, if only because Vice president Tim Kaine will be around to break ties.
What makes me so confident you say? First and foremost, there doesn't seem to be anything that indicates this new batch of (10,000+) emails came from Clinton's server. They are messages that Huma Abedin had because she was printing them out or they were duplicates of emails that Clinton had already given to the FBI. Of course, there could be some messages that we don't know about or ones that Anthony Weiner saw and shouldn't have, but that's what the FBI is looking at. The GOP can say all it wants about investigating Clinton's server, but that's not an issue here.
Also, the Clinton campaign will make this about James Comey, and will do so effectively. He will need to defend his actions when other Justice Department officials told him that they opposed releasing such a bombshell so close to a presidential election date. He will ultimately need to say that he doesn't know what's in these emails and that to conclude that the are in any way incriminating would be wrong. Then the GOP will attack him and the story will continue to be about James Comey, not Hillary Clinton.
I understand why he sent his letter to Congress, because to sit on this information until the election was over would open him up to accusations that he wasn't following the law. And obviously if there was something incriminating he has his duty to release it, but there isn't any. In fact, his letter to FBI employees states specifically that they don't know what's on the computers. This is irresponsible. Imagine if you did that on your job. The job you would then lose, I mean.
The other nonissue is that most voters have already made up their minds and either have voted or wouldn't dream of voting for Trump. This is where polarization works to Hillary's advantage. If the GOP had a reputable candidate and the election was close, then I could see being worried. But Donald has already overreached by calling this as big as Watergate and I'm assuming that Comey will need to clarify that the FBI doesn't know what it has, so that will undercut Trump's attempts at blaming anything specific on Hillary. Plus, the email issue is nothing new and it won't erase the terrible things that Trump has said over the course of the campaign.
What about the polls, you say? The polls have been tightening, right? Well, yes and not-so-yes. The margin by which Hillary has been leading, since July, I might add, is getting a bit smaller, but that seems to be because recalcitrant Republicans who were repulsed by Trump's misogyny are coming back to the party. They'll regret it later, but Trump's improvement has been almost entirely built on his getting a greater share of GOP voters than he did earlier this month.
Most state polls, which are the ones that we should be watching, show that he's behind in most of the swing states and has never led in the Electoral College projections since the campaign started. He could even win Ohio, Nevada, North Carolina and Florida and still lose, assuming that Clinton wins Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, which she will, so I don't know why you're bothering me about this. Probably because you've been consulting the mainstream press, which has an interest in creating uncertainty so you'll continue to consume their messages. Please stop.
The most important thing that Democrats can do now is to vote. I know that some thought that Hillary had this in the bag, but that's not true if people don't vote for her and Democrats for House and Senate. Vote early if you can. This election is too vital not to.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
Sunday, October 23, 2016
Hillary Dumps Donald: The Debates Do Their Job
I love the presidential debates. Why, especially in a campaign that
will go down in history as one of the nastiest? Because the debates
uncover what the candidates want to cover. They ultimately show us the
character of the candidates. And they tell us a great deal about how
each person would rule, should they win the election.
This year was no different than any other.
For most of the campaign, the media reported that Donald Trump was unique and that he could say anything without exacting any penalty from the electorate. We were also told that Hillary Clinton was a flawed, unpopular, programmed candidate who could do nothing but damage herself in the debates because, surely, Trump and the moderators would pummel her with the emails and the foundation and Benghazi! It turned out that exactly the opposite was true.
Hillary Clinton's performance in the three debates will become mandatory viewing for anyone who aspires to national office. She utterly defeated, deflated and defanged Donald Trump with clinical efficiency and cool professional effectiveness. She turned questions about her weaknesses into attacks on Trump, and was able to deflect the more damaging accusations into her past with a smile. Of course, we all want candidates to answer for their sins, but part of being a great debater is knowing how to parry and evade. Clinton did that; Trump did not. By the end of the third debate, it was crystal clear that Trump did not prepare or have any strategy other than to bully, interrupt, cite questionable evidence or hurl accusations.
And this is where the debates were so instructive. They really did show us that the Trump campaign is a Potemkin operation, built on personality and the teachings of Chairman Breitbart, with the GOP's greatest conspiratorial hits from the 1990s thrown in. They also showed that Trump is not suited for the presidency. Given the biggest stage of the campaign, he didn't prepare, and it showed. His answers were short and scattered, he didn't press advantages that he did have, and his behavior was abominable. For someone who was supposed to be able to use his television experience, his body language showed him to be too aggressive, and his constant interruptions came off as ill-mannered. He went for every piece of chum that Hillary threw at him and he got angry, which rarely plays well on the tube (contrast Trump with Reagan's "I paid for that microphone" line to see the difference between power and tantrum).
Clinton was not perfect, but she was close. Trump helped by letting her off the hook on many occasions and by reacting too emotionally when she brought up things that he didn't expect, which is part of debate preparation. She interrupted him at times despite her promise to "go high," but she understood that she had to seem even more in control because she's a woman, so she couldn't back down. At the third debate, where she essentially closed the deal on the election, Clinton spoke forcefully and in command of the issues. She's clearly thought a great deal about them over the course of her adulthood and she enunciated them impeccably last week. Trump played along for a while, but his lack of preparation, personal control, and content sunk him.
In the end, we learned a great deal about each candidate. Clinton did her due diligence, Trump did not. She displayed a command of events and issues and explained them in cogent, factual terms. Trump was able to do that on occasion, but he then got caught in rhetorical whirlpools which led to what unfortunately became signature moments that didn't help his campaign. She was able to put him on the defensive and keep him there; he tried, but didn't have the intellectual stamina to press his points. He called her names and accused Clinton of conspiracies and plots that the right has manufactured for almost 30 years. He also, fatally, said he would not accept defeat.
As for Trump being able to say anything he wanted and get away with it, those days ended for good with the groping tape. Trump had always been penalized for what he said, rarely polling over 42% nationwide and never leading in the electoral college count, but the media couldn't fold up its tent in July, so they continued to feed us the story that this campaign was different and that political correctness was on the run. Yes, there is a sizable group of people in this country who support Trump and what he says, but there are far more who finally saw through his tactics and are abandoning him with impressive speed.
The record low for a major party candidate in a presidential election is a popular vote of 39%. I predict that Trump will poll lower on election day. He'll cry fraud, but he's the only fraud in the race. Clinton beat him fair and square in three debates because she's the most qualified of the two, and of many more, to be president.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
This year was no different than any other.
For most of the campaign, the media reported that Donald Trump was unique and that he could say anything without exacting any penalty from the electorate. We were also told that Hillary Clinton was a flawed, unpopular, programmed candidate who could do nothing but damage herself in the debates because, surely, Trump and the moderators would pummel her with the emails and the foundation and Benghazi! It turned out that exactly the opposite was true.
Hillary Clinton's performance in the three debates will become mandatory viewing for anyone who aspires to national office. She utterly defeated, deflated and defanged Donald Trump with clinical efficiency and cool professional effectiveness. She turned questions about her weaknesses into attacks on Trump, and was able to deflect the more damaging accusations into her past with a smile. Of course, we all want candidates to answer for their sins, but part of being a great debater is knowing how to parry and evade. Clinton did that; Trump did not. By the end of the third debate, it was crystal clear that Trump did not prepare or have any strategy other than to bully, interrupt, cite questionable evidence or hurl accusations.
And this is where the debates were so instructive. They really did show us that the Trump campaign is a Potemkin operation, built on personality and the teachings of Chairman Breitbart, with the GOP's greatest conspiratorial hits from the 1990s thrown in. They also showed that Trump is not suited for the presidency. Given the biggest stage of the campaign, he didn't prepare, and it showed. His answers were short and scattered, he didn't press advantages that he did have, and his behavior was abominable. For someone who was supposed to be able to use his television experience, his body language showed him to be too aggressive, and his constant interruptions came off as ill-mannered. He went for every piece of chum that Hillary threw at him and he got angry, which rarely plays well on the tube (contrast Trump with Reagan's "I paid for that microphone" line to see the difference between power and tantrum).
Clinton was not perfect, but she was close. Trump helped by letting her off the hook on many occasions and by reacting too emotionally when she brought up things that he didn't expect, which is part of debate preparation. She interrupted him at times despite her promise to "go high," but she understood that she had to seem even more in control because she's a woman, so she couldn't back down. At the third debate, where she essentially closed the deal on the election, Clinton spoke forcefully and in command of the issues. She's clearly thought a great deal about them over the course of her adulthood and she enunciated them impeccably last week. Trump played along for a while, but his lack of preparation, personal control, and content sunk him.
In the end, we learned a great deal about each candidate. Clinton did her due diligence, Trump did not. She displayed a command of events and issues and explained them in cogent, factual terms. Trump was able to do that on occasion, but he then got caught in rhetorical whirlpools which led to what unfortunately became signature moments that didn't help his campaign. She was able to put him on the defensive and keep him there; he tried, but didn't have the intellectual stamina to press his points. He called her names and accused Clinton of conspiracies and plots that the right has manufactured for almost 30 years. He also, fatally, said he would not accept defeat.
As for Trump being able to say anything he wanted and get away with it, those days ended for good with the groping tape. Trump had always been penalized for what he said, rarely polling over 42% nationwide and never leading in the electoral college count, but the media couldn't fold up its tent in July, so they continued to feed us the story that this campaign was different and that political correctness was on the run. Yes, there is a sizable group of people in this country who support Trump and what he says, but there are far more who finally saw through his tactics and are abandoning him with impressive speed.
The record low for a major party candidate in a presidential election is a popular vote of 39%. I predict that Trump will poll lower on election day. He'll cry fraud, but he's the only fraud in the race. Clinton beat him fair and square in three debates because she's the most qualified of the two, and of many more, to be president.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
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