If you spend much time on Facebook and twitter, you probably assume that the whole country is watching what’s happening in the presidential contests. The Sanders and Clinton camps are hurling insults and accusations. Donald Trump is teeing up his next insult while the GOP establishment is fighting with itself to determine who might be the anti-Trump.
Instead, most of the people who will actually determine the outcome of the November election aren’t hearing much of this. Or if they are, it’s bits and pieces without a lot of context. That’s why all of those hypothetical general election polls are meaningless. Most of the presidential candidates are still largely undefined in the minds of the voters.
Only two candidates have more than a one dimensional profile in the minds of most voters. Only one won’t be shaped much by the negative attack ads that would come in the summer and fall. That’s because the public knows Hillary Clinton and have fully formed opinions of her.
She’s has been in the public eye for more than 20 years. They know her warts and her strengths. They’re aware that she comes with a bunch of baggage and vague scandals that never seem to amount to much. They know that her husband was a womanizer in his younger days and might still be today. They also know that she chose to stick with him and, really, that’s their business, not ours. They may even know that she and Bill cashed in after being president, making millions on consulting and speaking fees, but most of the middle-class working folks don’t mind somebody else getting rich as long as it’s legal. They may have a vague like or dislike for her but more information won’t change their overall opinion of her.
Donald Trump is the rich guy who fired people on a reality television show. He’s flamboyant and loud and never minces words. They know he’s abrasive and can be rude. For some people, these are admirable traits compared to all the mealy-mouthed politicians in Washington. For others, it’s arrogance and bravado that we don’t need in the White House. But Trump hasn’t felt the barrage of attacks that will be leveled on him in a general election campaign and the public hasn’t heard that side of the story.
The rest of the candidates are little more than names. Bernie Sanders is that old guy opposing Hillary Clinton and he seems likable enough, if a bit of an oddball. Jeb Bush may have a bit more of a profile, but that’s more related to being a Bush than anything he’s done so far. Rubio and Cruz are those guys with foreign names running on the Republican ticket.
These primaries have been contentious and fascinating for those of us who watch politics and are engaged in the process. For most people, though, they are little more than background noise to their daily lives. They may have opinions about what’s right or wrong with the country but they don’t have strongly formed opinions about the people running for president. And for many, the opinions they do hold can be changed with enough new information that they will undoubtably receive in the second half of this year.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Hillary, in my very own opinion, is completely and totally committed to Hillary. In my mind she, like all of the Republican candidates, epitomizes everything that is wrong, bad, sinister, and evil about politics and what is wrong inside the Washington beltway, nay, inside every hall of governance in this nation. So in that regard, I completely agree that Hillary is quite willing to take any position she thinks to be facilitating to her moving back in the White House.
Those set asides are known as compromise. However, you have to have a firm position first in order to compromise. That said, compromise doesn’t go all one way either. As far as change, incremental is the only way that change is going to occur. A total, complete, and utter 180 degree shift would be completely detrimental to stability. Just like evolution, change comes in small incremental steps. That is what is wrong with the Republicans now. The Tea Party movement wanted it all…or none. We got the likes of Cruz, Rubio, and Trump to prove it. We had a government shut down as further efficacy of uncompromising demand for radical conservative change; to no avail.
Citizens opened the door to the purchase of the political process, but it didn’t just happen. NAFTA didn’t just happen. They were culminations. TPP won’t just happen. But the less you hear, the more you should fear. In my opinion, any further erosion of the manufacturing capability and the middle class of this nation should be fought tooth and nail by any politician worth their collective campaign slogan. It is obviously clear and patently obvious that ‘free trade’ isn’t free. Perhaps that is the nexus of your statement, “…plutocratic economic suppression.”
As Bernie’s new ad points out, Dr. Martin Luther King expressly disagreed with your position: Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.
FDR’s economic policies were not incremental. You are free to reject your Social Security benefits if you wish – after all it wasn’t incremental.
Eisenhower’s infrastructure investments were not incremental. You are free to decline to travel on interstate highways – after all it wasn’t incremental.
Stability where America has a single digit approval of it’s Congress and massively profitable corporations like Apple and Boeing pay negative tax rates is not a good thing.
Stability as a treatment for cancer is a prescription for death.
It’s broke. Fix it!
I’m sure that there are any number of examples that can be put forth that run counter to the premise I posited; doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.
Social security was enacted and came on the tail of what great economic catastrophe? It wasn’t just penciled, papered, and enacted on a whim overnight.
The interstates were not a new concept but in fact born of that same economic depression that spawned Social Security. It just happened in a different country. But it took how long and a world war for that concept to be brought to this country from Europe? It was the culmination of economic boom post war, with the beginning of mass consumerism that automobile sales and use began a sharp climb. The roads we had were grossly insufficient. So we borrowed. That didn’t just happen overnight either.
And either you misread, misinterpreted, or simply misunderstood my use and implication of “stability”. What I meant was political stability. Currently the rules favor those corporations. There is nothing to stop them from leaving once that revolution you fathom starts moving. The people you think it would help would be irreparably harmed. Look what the exodus of jobs and manufacturing has done to the industry base of this state. Let them leave, but their capital stays right here. The rules have to change first for that to be possible.
Should Apple, Boeing, IBM, 3M, GE, or any other corporation be allowed to pay zero in income tax? Never. Since corporations are now people, they need to pay their taxes just like real people do.
Broken didn’t just happen. We’ve been limping along ever since Reaganomics started this freefall spiral downward with a minor respite during the Clinton years. The fix likewise isn’t a quick snap of the fingers contingent upon some revolutionary cliché. Had it not been for the 2nd Gulf War (which I am in no way endorsing) our economic collapse would have hit in 2004 rather than 2008.
Certainly it’s broken. Certainly, it needs to be fixed. But there is no pill that will provide an instant cure. That is the reality and that is the impetuousness of the new generations entering political awareness. Unlike many things perceived in that world, correction isn’t a key stroke or pill away.
Conviction is a necessary ingredient in change. Bernie forced Citizens United and income inequality into the dialogue, Hillary matched his positions in words, but reviewing the past behavior patterns of both candidates, there is no doubt she would be more likely to set them aside in the face of disagreement or challenge. The incremental change on these policies has all been in the wrong direction, so selling incremental change to progressives is ludicrous. Citizens United itself was not incremental but a tsunami of support for plutocratic economic suppression. The relentless cash it permitted purchased one of the two NC Senate seats for the Republicans.
Thomas, the fact that you left my previous comment in the blog is rebuilding my respect for you. I do hope you will build some bridges with progressive democrats. I do remember that you said you would be posting some platform elements in the first couple days after declaring your candidacy. If this available online, please post a link.
Bernie – One Dimensional?????
Trump and Hil Multidimensional????
The limits to your powers of observation and judgement have been shown to the world.
You are brutally unaware of the voter upheaval occurring right now.
Unless you change that tune, I will decline to vote for you in the primary.
I will vote for you on November, but one single vote by you on the Hill against Single Payer or Income Equality tax reform will make that the last vote I ever cast for you.
America’s approval of congress is in the single digits. Don’t be that guy.
Political analysis and political conviction can be easy confused and mixed together.
Is what you say backed up by visits with the common man? I can think of the restaurant out in Eli Whitney as a place to visit to get a feel of how far Social Media and TV have penetrated?
With the strong Quaker presence out there talk is measured. Whatever rose to the surface would then be a barometric reflection what was in the air, and getting through.
What is it that they watch on the ubiquitous public place channels these days? I haven’t been out and around in 4 years till now.
Likely it is that whatever ads you can get on a smartphone are the breakthrough way to get in their heads.
I’m thinking of your campaign in your country.
It is of interest that Semprius that is making high efficiency solar panels is in NC where it also got incentives.
In-Q-Tel VC is CIA and it is the only CIA funded company in Not Conscious. If it is that they sell to foreign countries, before the domestic market, or on guarantees in the government before the spies will take their profits then right?
What we’d really expect from Spy Company VC companies would be work in Anson County don’t you imagine?
If all the profitable work is done with manufacturing in Hong Kong or Mainland China, it would show us that our CIA cares nothing that the money all came from us.
I heard Henry Petroski the Grand Man of Letters in Civil Engineering will be on Diane Rhem Tomorrow?
I support poets, pilots, and engineers.
“The rest of the candidates are little more than names.”
So true. Ignorance is both the common denominator and overall strength of the Amercan electorate. At a recent forum in SC, Mark Halperin w/ Bloomberg Politics spoke with a group of soon to be voters about the current crop of Republican candidates. The majority knew absolutely nothing about John Kasich. For Trump supporters nationwide, they are the same crop who voted for George W. Bush.
The predominate and perpetual behavior of “people” who actually think they are versed in politics continues to erode this country.
#ignoranceisabadgeofhonor
Pretty accurate assessment of the current public mood.
One place where I would disagree, however, is in the idea that negative ads won’t shape Clinton as much as the other candidates.
Because the public’s memory of the Clinton baggage and scandals is so vague, the hired guns have a very fertile field to plow. They can come up with just about anything, and no matter how outrageous, it will appear “truthy”. Because EVERYBODY knows there ARE scandals that were never adequately addressed. That lack of accountability ( whether the offences were real or illusionary) is business as usual in DC, and the very last thing ANYBODY outside the Wall Street and Beltway bubbles wants is business as usual. They want justice – or at least vengeance – for Wall Street.
If the Clinton people were smart, they would already be getting ahead of this problem and having surrogates prepare positive “spin scandal”. For instance, the “Michael Corleone Appeal” – as in “Sure, inconvenient people surrounding the Clintons have ended up dead under mysterious circumstances. What’s it to you? If you’re gonna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs. You want to get anything done in Washington, sometimes ya gotta play rough. Capeche?” That worked quite well for the MK Ultra boys – Cheney and Rumsfeld. Everybody knew Cheney was boss and were too scared to confront him. So he got everything he wanted done. This tactic would put an end to her unappealing image as “America’s Mom” and Congress wouldn’t be calling her “Muffin” if she got the job, either.
Or perhaps the “Joe Kennedy Appeal”, who got the job as first head of the SEC because, as was argued on the floor of the Senate, “he knew every investment trick in the book the crooks use, because he participated in them, so he’s the best one to put a stop to it”. That could work, too. And it would neutralize the damage being done to her campaign by her close Wall Street ties. To bring Wall Street to heel, you must KNOW Wall Street.
If Clinton can’t embrace what she has become, a typical member of the 1% power elite, and sell that as a POSITIVE, then she has no path to victory, as she will appear either defensive and guilty, or arrogant and unaccountable in her special “above-the-law” status. It is going to be child’s play to attack and derail her with negative ads.
Have the eggheads running the show learned NOTHING from Karl Rove? Bush the Younger didn’t call him Turdblossom for nothing.
Make lemonade out of those lemons, or else you’re gonna be sucking on them without sugar.
If you’re with the Clinton campaign and you want some help, email me. Time is a wasting.
Mr. Mills is so about the Hillary campaign that he can ‘t see the forest for the trees – or doesn’t want to. My question to you is: what is your motivation for wanting to help elect another ‘establishment insider’ fraud to the White House ? Do the prospects of ever greater wars, more police state measures and unchallengeable subservience to the banking titans serve your purpose ?