Friday, October 14, 2016

Hate versus hate versus the odds

The Clintons are widely hated.  Neither is it a dull, aching hate of the kind reserved for run-of-the-mill bumbling interventionists.  No, Clinton-hate is a sharp, piercing hate, so strong it is experienced as visceral.  People manifesting this condition hate Bill Clinton.  Why?  Because the formerly “charming” Bubba might be a rapist and played a key role getting the FBI off his wife’s back.  

Clinton-haters hate Bill because he’s married to Hillary.  And they hate Hillary because “she’s a corrupt tool of the establishment.”  They hate both Clintons because they get away with murder and get richer doing so.  They hate Hillary’s big money speeches.  They hate her smug contempt for working people.  They hate her support for the Iraq war.  They hate her foreign policies of aggression.  They hate her love of big government.  They hate her public - private positions on Wall Street. They hate her because she’s a Machiavellian, power-lusting politician.  They hate her.

But that’s not all.

In the mainstream media Hillary won the election even before she declared herself a candidate.  In the MSM Hillary walks on water.  No Wikileak could ever alter this view.  Clinton-hate now includes hatred of the MSM.  The MSM will shamelessly say anything to get her elected — or not say anything, as the case may be. 

Clinton-haters support Trump.  Reason: Trump is not Hillary.  Reason two: Trump is not the Establishment.  Reason three: The Establishment even within his own party is undercutting his campaign at every turn.  Trump against the world, how cool is that?  

Trump has no consistent message, other than the nebulous make America great again. Trump therefore is an unknown quantity.  Unknown quantities can wreak havoc.  In politics at this level the likelihood is high that he will wreak havoc.  He doesn’t know what he’s doing, other than slamming the system that has methodically already brought havoc to everyone except the politically-connected.  

Hillary is a known quantity.  Clinton-haters are thoroughly familiar with that quantity.  

Hillary calls Trump supporters deplorables.  Half of them, at least.   The deplorables are bigots.  Trump has “lifted them up” with mean rhetoric.  But—

But—

There’s the other half of Trump’s supporters.  They are not bigots.  They are  “looking for change in any form.”  She urged her supporters to “empathize with them.”  Since she has a lock on the status quo, her supporters could empathize with them by voting for Trump.

But Hillary didn’t mean this, haha.  The ones to be empathized with should be brought over to her side.  These people will be indispensable for a win.  Perhaps a landslide win.  

But care is in order.  We all know deplorables don’t read much of anything, other than tinfoil conspiracy stuff.  But the indispensables, they aren’t quite as dumb.  Since they’re a confused lot, being in support of Trump, they might be swayed by whistleblowers.  They might believe she really said the things she said that had been kept under wraps.  They might think and draw conclusions unfavorable to her side.  Trump’s indispensables might stay with him, or almost as bad, vote for Johnson.  

Johnson won’t win but he could be a spoiler.  Question: Whose campaign would he spoil?  Answer: Both.  He could prevent the winner from gaining a majority of the popular votes.  It’s hard to see how a contest between a hated Democrat and a hated Republican could end any other way.

Unless the election is rigged, which of course it is.

Earlier this year I wrote:
In 2008, of the 231 million eligible voters in the U.S., 131 million cast ballots, leaving 100 million eligible voters who didn’t vote.  
The population in 2008 was 304 million, which means 173 million Americans — more than half the country — had no say in the election outcome, either by choice or by reason of being ineligible.  
The winner in 2008, Barack Obama, received 69 million votes — less than half of the 173 million who didn’t show up at the polls. 
Barack Obama promised “change,” but of course we got more of the same.  Perhaps some of the people who didn’t show up knew what was coming.
Perhaps they also knew that the candidates were carefully vetted so that anyone threatening to rock the establishment’s boat would be removed one way or the other, as Republican elites are trying to do now with Donald Trump. 
Perhaps they also believed in the saying that those who count the votes decide everything.   
Perhaps they also knew that it wasn’t the popular vote that would elect the president, but the members of the electoral college.  
Voting for anyone makes little sense.  But people vote because it makes them feel they had a say in what the government should do.  Voting is a way of venting anger, and this year there’s a lot of anger ready to turn loose.  But voters don’t understand the federal government.  It’s an animal running on its own, for its own welfare, with its own agenda.   Voting is a courtesy they allow its subjects.  It eases the strife of holding power.

This is not to say something wonderful couldn’t happen on Election Day.  It could, though the likelihood is infinitesimally small: A long shot candidate such as Gary Johnson could pull off a miracle.

It’s happened elsewhere in life.  Here’s one time when it did.




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