I disagree. I believe a candidate’s temperament will be a huge factor in voter’s decision making in this year’s general election.
I haven’t heard abortion mentioned very often at all on the campaign trail this year. It’s important to remember that for virtually all women currently of childbearing age, reproductive freedom has been the law of the land during the entirety of their life. This is a losing general election issue for Republicans - Todd Akin, Richard Mourdoch, et al. I don’t understand your Civil War analogy and nostalgia reference, but I would suggest that the Republican platform is by and large based on nostalgia - “thing were better in the old days,” “make America great again” - as opposed to looking forward.
You’re probably right about that.
To some extent, yes. But as mentioned, ‘temperament’ will be a critical factor.
It’s easy for each side to highlight certain things to bolster their claims of whether or not things are improving or not. A lot of voters will remember how bad things were in 2008 at the tail end of the Bush years, and by contrast, how good things were under President Bill Clinton and President Obama.
In this election, it won’t be “who’s more likely to fix it?” – it will be “who’s less likely to break it?”
I don’t believe things are nearly as bad as your comments indicate. And voters have known Mrs. Clinton for decades - she has admirable qualities as well as not so admirable ones. However, her admirable qualities are already shining in relation to Mr. Trump.
The economy has recovered far more quickly in the past from far worse than 2008. It now appears it’s on another downturn. It really is time to let the “Blame Bush” thing go.
Likely my Civil War sword analogy was not a good one. My point was this. Other than abortion on demand, the Dem party has almost no overarching ideology or real plans to do anything other than to just keep on with the same policies Obama had, but with unknown modifications Clinton hints at from time to time. In talking about the “nostalgia”, I mean that the Dem party is “living off its patrimony” from the days when the Dem party really did do things for the poor and working people. I know. I was a Dem activist and party leader during the tail end of the times when it really did, though I did see it going rapidly downhill on that toward the end of my active involvement.
But I’ll admit neither party has done anything for the truly poor since the earned income credit, and that was Reagans.
Every important category of employment has decreased except for government and healthcare. Manufacturing, mining, construction jobs are all down. And even then, the net job increase was only 34,000 this past month. It takes at least 200,000 to simply keep up with the population growth. Last month’s numbers were adjusted downward as well.
There is simply no way to say that’s a good performance.
None of that is about “temperament”. That’s about policy. Hillary Clinton started a war in Libya that has turned the country over to terrorists. Even Obama now admits it was a mistake. That’s about policy, not temperament. Turning Egypt over to the Muslim Brotherhood was policy, not temperament. Running guns to Syrian terrorist groups was policy, not temperament.
And when we talk about “temperament”, nothing I have ever seen any politician do, without exception, is as macabre as Hillary Clinton’s laughing at the torture-death of Khaddaffi. The shrinks, I believe, have a word for that, but I’ll grant, that word is not “temperament”.
