Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump - two highly flawed candidates for the office of President of the United States, the most powerful office in the world.
Hillary has been part of and instrumental in the course in foreign affairs and agreements reached during Obama's reign. She has shown time and again that she really has no clue about the real world and what's happening. Her primary concern seems to be about her and protecting her position in the governing body. She put together a health plan during her husband's administration that even the Democrats couldn't swallow. When the incident in Benghazi blew up, she lied like a sailor to cover the state departments culpability in the whole affair. She had a private server installed in her own residence so that her e-mails would not be open to inspection by any government agency and proceeded to perform government classified activities on that unprotected server. Then she continued her lies when caught, stalled and erased thousands of e-mails from the server before the FBI could get their hands on it. Her story is that the documents that she received and transmitted at the time where not marked as classified. That's about the lamest excuse any public figure, especially the Secretary of State, can use to avoid prosecution for handling of classified data. She's supposed to know what's classified. On top of that, a former member of her staff has said that she directed that the classification markings on some documents be deleted before being transmitted.
Donald has tapped into a couple of sensitive issues for the blue collar workers and has exploited those issues to win a large lead in delegates to the convention. The problem he has now, is that he has left a trail of blood behind him. Personal insults levied at any and all of his opponents that dared to really challenge him. Now that he needs the party to unite behind him he has alienated everybody in sight. He didn't have to do that. His message was obviously resonating with enough voters to produce that lead. He didn't have to get personal with the other candidates. He managed to open his mouth and and say politically incorrect things that are often perceived to be an insult women, Hispanics and other minorities along the way. He probably was just being Trump, with no skill in playing the political game. The people who have known him for years say emphatically that he is none of those things. But, he has generated a prolific amount of potential sound bites for Hillary's campaign in the general election. Reality means very little in the political area, perception is everything. He is not going to do well among that group come November. And, without at least 25 to 30 percent of that group, you don't win.
A lot of key Republicans (the establishment),are frankly dubious about his ability to win in November. So what is the party to do? They see themselves losing the White House in an election that should have been a slam dunk. Even the local dog catcher could beat Hillary. They're afraid that Donald will take the party down with him and they might lose control of congress. As a result there is a lot of effort to force this primary into a open convention, where they feel that they may be able to field a better candidate. They look at the polls, break down the demographics, and see no way the Trump can win. Of course those same polls show that the next likely candidate, Cruz, can't win either. Unfortunately the polls show that the candidates that could win have been driven out of the race.
To set both Trump and Cruz aside at the convention would raise a storm within the party. A lot of their supporters would just stay home. There really is no way out of this conundrum. The only thing the party should hope for is that Donald will surprise every body again, just as he has throughout this whole campaign. In the beginning he was so incorrect in his statements all the pundits wrote him off. But, look what happened.
At this point Trump doesn't have the nomination wrapped. He's really the only one with a chance of doing so. Cruz may get close and challenge at the convention. Especially with the well funded and massive campaign being waged by the Republican establishment geared on stopping Trump from gaining the nomination on the first ballot. I think it would be best for the party if Trump did sew up the nomination before the convention. The last thing the party needs at this point is a floor fight over the nominee.
The question in November will be which candidate is the most disliked. Both have a large unfavorable rating.
We'll see how it plays out. For political junkies, this is a joyous time.
