Yeah, I know it's too late and there's a 99% chance Hillary will be the Democratic nominee for president ( Bernie has about a 1% chance now after those Nevada and South Carolina results ), but hear me out; I've got a point to make.
Now that Donald Trump is ( remarkably ) the favorite to win the GOP nomination, I find myself worrying that the Democratic process to pick a nominee ( the process by which they pre-ordained Hillary as the nominee, and threw all their resources behind her ) is going to pick the wrong kind of candidate to run against Trump. However, before we discuss the wrong kind of democratic candidate to run against Trump, let's discuss the right of candidate to run against Trump.
The best kind of candidate to beat Trump is actually no candidate. If you polled all Americans on whether or not they wanted Donald Trump to be president, "No" would win in a landslide. However, the opponent matters a lot here. If Donald Trump was running for president against David Duke, Trump would win in a landslide, and all of Trumps fiercest liberal critics would line up early in the morning on Election Day to vote for Trump.
No, the Democrats can't run "nobody" for president, but they would have been a lot better off running a relatively anonymous politician, who isn't disliked by a large portion of the country. Let's make no bones about it, Hillary is disliked, and not just by conservatives who always vote for the GOP anyway. Just go to facebook and see what Bernie Sanders supporters have to say, and consider that a certain percentage of them will stay home in November if Bernie is not on the ballot. Also consider all the undecided moderates who are not big fans of Hillary. Trump's certainly unpopular, but so is Hillary. She's a little bit less hated than The Donald, but the margin between Trump's unfavorable ratings and Hillary's unfavorable ratings isn't enough to allay my fears about November.
This is where Barbara Boxer comes in ( or would come in, if it wasn't too late, which it is ). Barbara Boxer has been serving in the Senate for more than 23 years, and I really only know two things about her.
1) She was one of the two women elected to the U.S. Senate from California in 1992.
2) She's not Dianne Feinstein.
I don't say this to diminish Barbara Boxer's career. I'm sure she's done a lot of fine work in the Senate since January 1993, but unlike some people ( I'm looking at you Chuck Schumer ) she's not on TV every 5 minutes talking about it. My point is that if a person like me ( who writes political blog posts for fun ) can't tell you much about Barbara Boxer, she hasn't been in the spotlight too much.
And for a Trump-vs-DEM match-up in November, having somebody who is not too famous on the "DEM" side of that match-up is actually a good thing.
Anyway, it's too late to do anything now, but it's something that might be fun thinking about ( in a masochistic way ) as you pull your hair out worrying about Hillary's unfavorable ratings over the next 8+ months.
Rich
No comments:
Post a Comment