Goodness it's hard to keep a blog up. It's like the damn gym...You go, you feel great, you take ONE day off for a good reason and a day turns into two, into a week...
I really need to set aside 30 minutes/day to do this. No matter how bad some of the results may be! I have some topics in mind. I think I'll be posting more over the next few weeks!
On to the topic-du-jour.
OK. Like almost everybody, certainly the GOP establishment, I underestimated Trump. Early on in the primaries I wrote a blog predicting that his popularity was sure to fade once the field started to thin. That amateur hour would be over once things really got going by the Summer the stage would be set for a battle royale of Hillary vs. Jeb.
I guess I got it half right - although Bill's wife certainly did her part to make me completely wrong, more on that later.
Jeb Bush - what a mess that turned out to be!.I actually believe he IS the "smart Bush." Say what you want about George Bush Sr - but he is a brilliant man who accomplished a lot - check his resume. As time went on it was obvious that Jeb also had the charisma of his Dad and lacked the "folksy charm" (to put it nicely) of his brother. His "please applaud" moment was cringeworthy. It knocked his campaign from life support to dead. I definitely got it wrong there.
In regards to Trump, he capitalized on a large (much bigger than I understood) segment of Republican voters who have intense disdain for anything having to do with the current Government. He has run a campaign with zero substance, laughing all the way. He understood. His main appeal is that he's not Senator Trump, Governor Trump - just an outsider who didn't give a hoot about playing the game by the old rules.
The lack of a formidable challenger certainly helped. It was almost comical how Kasich's name was in the conversation as long as it was. The guy won one primary. Nobody took him seriously except the media.
Oh - and the unabashed racists love him.
On the left it's not as bad, but it's hardly good. Six months ago it was generally accepted that Hillary was running unopposed. Bernie Sanders trailed by exponential margins and was mocked by talk show host for looking like that crazy Dr. from the Back to the Future movies. He was an unabashed socialist. He was old. REALLY old.
And yet - no candidate was able to connect with young voters better than him. He's won. He's won a LOT. 18 primaries as of this writing. If you're going by delegates - he's won 45%, He'd still be in the game except Clinton has 93% of the SUPER delegates. It's a crappy system - but Hillary got screwed the same way in 2008.
While Hillary was never seriously challenged, she did manage to remind us that she's still an awful politician. She looks just plain uncomfortable, stiff, with people on the campaign trail.
Hillary should win the general election going away. Despite the vitriol that Republicans will spew, they continue to neglect that only appealing to straight white guys isn't enough to win the general election. Donald Trump has alienated a LOT of the voting segment - and yes the Republicans need a decent portion of the black and hispanic vote if they want to win. They don't appear to want to win.
But Mrs. Clinton faces her own challenges. You can make it about emails, Bhengazi, or policy all you want, but the fact is too many is that a strong man is a leader, a strong woman a bitch. The vitriolic attacks she's going to face are going to be ugly - and she really needs to step up her game from her performance in the primaries. Fox News is already fawning all over themselves to kiss up to Trump - who essentially made this same news channel look like fools throughout the process. Trump will get 42% of the vote no matter what he does. Probably closer to 45%. Very few people vote on issues anymore - they vote what their favorite new channel tells them to.
Is anybody inspired? God no. Hillary began her run for the White House the second her husband passed the torch in 2000. Like Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney you get the impression she's the nominee because it's her turn - not because anyone is really excited about it.
Of course elections bring out the worst in social media. Get ready for nonstop memes and links to stories on biased websites. It's more painful every time. Dialogue is dead - and this election proves it's not going to improve anytime soon.
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