My thoughts have shifted greatly this election season. I went from thinking it possible to have the most compassionate president America has ever seen to considering voting for a third party very seriously, to surrendering to the madness.
I am always examining the evidence, so my thoughts may change by the time I actually vote, but at this point we pretty much have as much information about the candidates as we can have unless something new should arise.
First I will discuss Hillary. I do not like her. She is very insincere. At the beginning of the campaign she went on a tour to find out what her platform should be. While it could be admirable to do such a thing, it also shows a lack of self conviction. Bernie Sanders did not need to take a tour to create his platform. He was wholeheartedly convicted of his issues long before he ever ran for president.
Hillary has consistently changed her platform to adopt policies closer to Bernie's because of his success. The problem with that is ultimately her lack of conviction. I have little faith she will carry through on any of her campaign promises.
She tries to take the middle ground between Wall Street and the average American, but she does not get that there is no middle ground. Wall Street wants all the money and basically wants citizens to be their slaves. Her pandering to them will lead to America's downfall.
She has a hit and miss record regarding war decisions. She seems to simply go with whatever everyone else is feeling and that is often times a bad thing. I do not believe Hillary would be able to avoid a war like Obama has.
I do not find her to have as much compassion and seems very jaded by her time in politics. I also know that she has done some very shady things to become the nominee. In other words, she is a typical corrupt politician.
And I believe anyone holding Bill's infidelity against her should ask themselves how they would feel if their spouse cheated on them and then everyone blamed you. Through my research I have found there are two ways to look at Hillary's actions regarding Bill's infidelity. You can view it as trying to cover it up and bully Bill's mistresses or you can view it as a natural reaction when faced with the woman who your husband cheated on you with. It's really in the eye of the beholder. I personally see it as a natural reaction to being faced with one's husband's mistress and I have a hard time blaming her for the things she said regarding them.
As a side note, unrelated to this but brought up in this regard, I do not believe there is any good evidence Bill ever raped anyone. The one claiming he did changed her story and claimed she received nothing from the Clinton's. I don't know which story of the mistress to believe so I am choosing innocent until proven guilty.
In any other election, Hillary would almost easily be the worst candidate... but then there is Trump.
I believe anyone who believes Trump and Hillary are equally horrible candidates are over simplifying the issues. They certainly both have their faults, but Trump is far and away the worst here.
The reason I did not bring up abortion in regards to Hillary is because there is no difference between her and Trump. Anyone who buys that Trump will spend 3 seconds thinking about abortion has not been paying attention to anything he's said prior to declaring his run for office. If anyone was ever using the issue of abortion to get into the White House, it is him. He's been a Planned Parenthood supporter for decades and even complimented them during the first Republican debate. So kid yourself if you want and believe he's made some miraculous turn around, but I do not buy it for a second.
Probably because next to every thing Trump says is a lie. The first evidence I submit to you is his Politifact record. You could try to say they are bias, but that doesn't explain why almost all Republicans and Democrats have nearly the same percentages on truth and lies... except Trump. Trump has about the same record as internet memes... And honestly, I'm pretty sure internet memes are where Trump gets most of his information. I mean really, Cruz's father shot Kennedy? Really?!
Hillary has told lies, that is for sure. But when compared to the sheer volume of lies that Trump has told, Hillary does not even come close.
Then we can discuss the 32+ lies in the first presidential debate or his equally bad record in the second one. The inability to remember what he himself said. Most people remember that he said "uh, yeah, I guess" when Howard Stern asked him if he thought we should go to war with Iraq. What most people forget is that he immediately followed that with "we should have gone in sooner." He did not just want to go to war with Iraq, he did not know why it took us so long.
Trump has already had his share of sexual harassment suits. But when added with the context of bragging about sexually assaulting women, it is hard not to believe at least some of those cases are legit. And anyone who thinks that was "locker room" talk is either a sexual predator or needs to report some people because what he said is illegal. Then when asked about it in the debate, Trump did not even seem to understand that what he said was sexual assault, nor did his apology include anything about denouncing sexual assault.
Trump cannot negotiate peace with the Republican party. How well do you think he'll do with a hostile foreign power? It is all fun and games until he is President and tells a Naval Destroyer to blow Iranian civilians out of the water for making inappropriate hand gestures. Then we go to war. And apparently all anyone has to do to stop Trump from peace negotiations is withhold the plane ladder.
If Trump got his way, he would be a ruthless dictator. He wants to appoint a special task force to put Hillary in jail even though she has already been tried on a federal level. Say whatever you like about the 30,000 emails but we don't know what was in them and it was not her deciding to delete them, it was her attorneys. They complied with the subpoena. If we have a problem with something it should be the subpoena as it was worded. And if you want to blame a person, you'll need to blame her attorneys as they were the ones making the decisions.
But assigning a task force to jail your opponents is default dictator behavior. That's exactly how things work in Africa.
Trump is a compulsive liar who will start a war his first week in office. He's stated multiple times he's willing to use nuclear weapons. He has serious problems.
Ultimately I feel the way the Pinocchio fact checker states in an interview. Hillary is playing chess. Trump is playing checkers... badly.
I held out hope that a third party (anyone but Gary Johnson) would rise in the polls, but that hope is gone. None, including Gary Johnson, are even doing as well as Ross Parrot did in the 90s. And it's far too late in this election to believe that will change.
I wanted to vote third party anyway, but I feel like at this point that would be merely trying to avoid being blamed for what either candidate will do. But that feels like a cop out to me at this point. I know Hillary or Trump will win, and I know Trump is just horrifying. We can bounce back from Hillary, but I fear Trump will start a war we can't win. And while he is alienating our allies, the war will be brought here.
I can't cop out on this. I have to cast a vote that is most likely to keep Trump out of office.
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