Let's Share Hillary Clinton's Final Pitch on Prime -Time TV on Election Eve :“Tomorrow let’s make history together”

Hillary Clinton delivers her closing argument in a two-minute ad to be aired Monday night 

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will make her final pitch to voters nationwide in a two-minute campaign ad that’s scheduled to run Monday during prime time slots on TV.

In the direct-to-camera commercial, Clinton vows to “work my heart out” and be a president “for all Americans.”

Wearing white and backlit by soft white lighting, Clinton looks directly into the camera the entire time to deliver her final pitch without ever mentioning her opponent by name:


Our core values are being tested in this election, but everywhere I go people are refusing to be defined by fear and division. . . . Look, we all know we’ve come through some hard economic times and we’ve seen some pretty big changes, but I believe in our people.

She pledges in a calm tone, “I will work my heart out as president to make life better for you and your family,” adding, “We won’t always get it right, but you can count on this: I’ve never quit, and I never will.”

The candidate acknowledges, “I think we can all agree. It’s been a long campaign.” She adds, “But tomorrow, you get to pick our next president.”

The former secretary of state, senator and first lady who is vying to become the first female president of the United States says, “Tonight I’m asking for your vote, and tomorrow let’s make history together.”

Watch the ad above:

Clinton’s campaign estimates that the ad, set to air during NBC’s “The Voice” and CBS’ “Kevin Can Wait” — the prime-time network shows with the greatest audience — will reach an audience of about 40 million people nationally and  via shared  social media over 100 million.

The ad is a marked tonal shift from a Clinton ad released on Friday that depicted the terrifying hellscape that a President Donald Trump would usher in during his first year in office:

Clinton also made a final national pitch to newspaper readers in a USA Today op-ed published Monday morning.

“Everything I’ve done, as first lady, senator, or secretary of State, I’ve done by listening to people and looking for common ground, even with people who disagree with me,” Clinton wrote. “And if you elect me on Tuesday, that’s the kind of president I’ll be.”

Here are the four priorities she outlined in print for her first 100 days:

First, we will put forward the biggest investment in new jobs since World War II. We’ll invest in infrastructure and manufacturing to grow our economy for years to come. We’ll produce enough renewable energy to power every home in America within a decade. We’ll cut red tape for small businesses and make it easier for entrepreneurs to get the credit they need to grow and hire — because in America, if you can dream it, you should be able to build it. We’ll pay for it all by asking the wealthy, Wall Street and big corporations to finally pay their fair share. And this commitment will go far beyond the first 100 days. Creating more good jobs with rising incomes will be a central mission of my presidency.

Second, we will introduce comprehensive immigration reform legislation. The last president to sign comprehensive immigration reform was Ronald Reagan, and it was a priority for George W. Bush. I’m confident that we can work across the aisle to pass comprehensive reform that keeps families together and creates a path to citizenship, secures our border, and focuses our enforcement resources on violent criminals. This is the right thing to do, and it will also grow our economy.

Third, to break the gridlock in Washington, we need to get secret, unaccountable money out of our politics. It’s drowning out the voices of the American people. So within my first 30 days, I will introduce a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. We should be protecting citizens’ rights to vote, not corporations’ rights to buy elections.

Fourth, we need to get started on end-to-end criminal justice reform. Too many people have been sent away for far too long for non-violent offenses. I believe our country will be stronger and safer when everyone has respect for the law and everyone is respected by the law.

Let's Share Hillary Clinton's Final Pitch on Prime -Time TV on Election Eve :“Tomorrow let’s make history together”

Hillary Clinton delivers her closing argument in a two-minute ad to be aired Monday night 

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will make her final pitch to voters nationwide in a two-minute campaign ad that’s scheduled to run Monday during prime time slots on TV.

In the direct-to-camera commercial, Clinton vows to “work my heart out” and be a president “for all Americans.”

Wearing white and backlit by soft white lighting, Clinton looks directly into the camera the entire time to deliver her final pitch without ever mentioning her opponent by name:


Our core values are being tested in this election, but everywhere I go people are refusing to be defined by fear and division. . . . Look, we all know we’ve come through some hard economic times and we’ve seen some pretty big changes, but I believe in our people.

She pledges in a calm tone, “I will work my heart out as president to make life better for you and your family,” adding, “We won’t always get it right, but you can count on this: I’ve never quit, and I never will.”

The candidate acknowledges, “I think we can all agree. It’s been a long campaign.” She adds, “But tomorrow, you get to pick our next president.”

The former secretary of state, senator and first lady who is vying to become the first female president of the United States says, “Tonight I’m asking for your vote, and tomorrow let’s make history together.”

Watch the ad above:

Clinton’s campaign estimates that the ad, set to air during NBC’s “The Voice” and CBS’ “Kevin Can Wait” — the prime-time network shows with the greatest audience — will reach an audience of about 40 million people nationally and  via shared  social media over 100 million.

The ad is a marked tonal shift from a Clinton ad released on Friday that depicted the terrifying hellscape that a President Donald Trump would usher in during his first year in office:

Clinton also made a final national pitch to newspaper readers in a USA Today op-ed published Monday morning.

“Everything I’ve done, as first lady, senator, or secretary of State, I’ve done by listening to people and looking for common ground, even with people who disagree with me,” Clinton wrote. “And if you elect me on Tuesday, that’s the kind of president I’ll be.”

Here are the four priorities she outlined in print for her first 100 days:

First, we will put forward the biggest investment in new jobs since World War II. We’ll invest in infrastructure and manufacturing to grow our economy for years to come. We’ll produce enough renewable energy to power every home in America within a decade. We’ll cut red tape for small businesses and make it easier for entrepreneurs to get the credit they need to grow and hire — because in America, if you can dream it, you should be able to build it. We’ll pay for it all by asking the wealthy, Wall Street and big corporations to finally pay their fair share. And this commitment will go far beyond the first 100 days. Creating more good jobs with rising incomes will be a central mission of my presidency.

Second, we will introduce comprehensive immigration reform legislation. The last president to sign comprehensive immigration reform was Ronald Reagan, and it was a priority for George W. Bush. I’m confident that we can work across the aisle to pass comprehensive reform that keeps families together and creates a path to citizenship, secures our border, and focuses our enforcement resources on violent criminals. This is the right thing to do, and it will also grow our economy.

Third, to break the gridlock in Washington, we need to get secret, unaccountable money out of our politics. It’s drowning out the voices of the American people. So within my first 30 days, I will introduce a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. We should be protecting citizens’ rights to vote, not corporations’ rights to buy elections.

Fourth, we need to get started on end-to-end criminal justice reform. Too many people have been sent away for far too long for non-violent offenses. I believe our country will be stronger and safer when everyone has respect for the law and everyone is respected by the law.

Oy Vey The deplorable election goes completely negative in the final five days

In Final Days, Clinton and Trump Go Negative 

“Scorched earth” is how some of Hillary Clinton’s allies on Thursday described Donald Trump’s final days as a 2016 presidential candidate. “Nasty” was President Obama’s summary of the entire election, as he, too, threw some rhetorical accelerant on the contest while stumping for the Democratic nominee in Florida.

Even the launch of last-blast negative ads by both campaigns Thursday helped guarantee that America’s most venomous and lurid presidential election in modern history will slither to the finish line.

Clinton, sensing the fierce urgency of tighter battleground polls, abandoned thoughts of an entirely uplifting script in her final five-day sprint. While going high about her own presidential vision, she continued to go low about Trump’s.

In North Carolina, where Clinton believes African-Americans, women and younger voters could sway the contest for 270 electoral votes, she concentrated on Trump’s bumpy record on questions of race. 

“He has spent this entire campaign offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters,” the former secretary of state said. “He retweets white supremacists and spreads racially tinged conspiracy theories. And you better believe he's being heard loudly and clearly. Just a few days ago, and I want you to hear this because this has never happened to a nominee of a major party … Donald Trump was endorsed by the official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan.” Meanwhile, the GOP nominee, who barnstormed through four rallies Thursday, has been cheered by polls showing a closer contest in the wake of negative news coverage about Clinton’s emails, Affordable Care Act premium increases, and the late-breaking decisions by many GOP voters to back their party, despite misgivings about the nominee. In the RealClearPolitics four-way polling average, Clinton leads Trump by a scant two percentage points.

Trump is finishing the race the way many Republicans wished he could have run it from the start: fiercely on message and on offense.

Campaigning in Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday, the business mogul painted a bleak picture of what life and governance would be like under a Clinton administration. If elected, Clinton “is likely to be under investigation for many, many years,” he said, invoking a scenario of impeachment. “This is not what we need. This is going to be a mess for many years to come.”

Trump has largely adhered to his teleprompters and resisted controversial tweets this week. As Clinton campaigned a few days ago with Alicia Machado, the former Miss Universe winner with whom Trump has infamously feuded, the GOP nominee focused primarily on higher costs for Obamacare and the revived FBI investigation into emails pertinent to Clinton’s private server. The campaign believes those issues bolster his closing argument that Clinton is corrupt and a vestige of old politics, while he says he’s an agent of change. On Thursday, Trump pounced on a Fox News report citing sources that claimed the FBI is investigating possible pay-to-play allegations involving the Clinton Foundation. Other news outlets have reported heightened tensions between Department of Justice and FBI officials over the agency’s handling of the revived email probe and other matters. But the FBI has not publicly confirmed a formal investigation of the foundation. Trump claimed the Justice Department is likely to seek an indictment against Clinton, but there is no evidence to support that prediction under this administration.

While appearing more focused and on-script, Trump has continued to occasionally abuse the facts. He forecast that Clinton will be engaged in an “unprecedented constitutional crisis” and that the FBI’s email probe “is likely to conclude in a criminal trial.” But the FBI concluded earlier this summer that its probe was complete, and that no reasonable prosecutor would charge Clinton with a crime because there was no evidence of intent to break the law by the former secretary or her top aides.

Trump’s campaign released an ad Thursday titled “Unfit,” in which a narrator says Clinton’s emails were found on “pervert” Anthony Weiner’s laptop, referring to the former New York congressman. But the FBI has not said whether the emails discovered on the disgraced Democrat’s laptop were sent to or from Clinton, or that they contained any sensitive government information. Weiner’s estranged wife, Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, reportedly said she was unsure how communications that may have been hers or passed through her custody ended up on her husband’s computer.

“America’s most sensitive secrets, unlawfully sent, received and exposed by Hillary Clinton, her staff, and Anthony Weiner. Hillary cannot lead a nation while crippled by a criminal investigation,” the Trump ad’s narrator intones. 

Trump repeated the ad’s claims during his address in Jacksonville. He also attacked Clinton on foreign policy, claiming “Hillary brought death and disaster to Iraq, Syria and Libya, she empowered Iran, and she unleashed ISIS.” The GOP nominee continued lashing his opponent during two subsequent stops Thursday in North Carolina, a must-win state where he is currently tied with Clinton in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

For the first time since her controversial address during the Republican National Convention, Melania Trump appeared on the trail in Philadelphia and delivered a more positive message on behalf of her husband, designed to appeal to women voters. 

“He certainly knows how to shake things up, doesn’t he?” she said during a prepared and much-previewed speech to a crowd in Chester County, a key Philadelphia suburb that swung just barely for Mitt Romney in 2012. Using a teleprompter, she spoke of her immigrant background, describing herself as an “independent woman” and a legal migrant to the United States from Slovenia.

Melania Trump said she would “advocate for women and for children” as first lady and identified bullying on social media as a concern she would address. "We need to teach our youth values: kindness, honesty, respect, compassion, charity. Our culture has gotten too mean and rough,” she said. While her first solo appearance was well received by the crowd, the tone of her remarks stood in stark contrast to her husband’s.

The rivals’ full-on attacks at the campaign’s bitter end are intentional and tactical: negative information that keeps Trump in the spotlight lifts support for Clinton among voters, according to polling and data analyses. In the reverse, Trump’s newfound discipline in avoiding unforced errors combined with Clinton’s troubles help boost his standing with some voters.

An October study authored by Geoffrey Skelley, the associate editor of University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato’s website Crystal Ball, found that “Clinton and Trump have the highest unfavorable ratings of any major party nominees in modern history,” which complicates life for each when they linger in the limelight for lengthy periods. Why? Because when they are leading the news, they are most often there because of predominantly negative media coverage. The spotlight, Skelley found, is dangerous.

Nonetheless, that fact has not curbed Trump’s tendency to taunt and criticize the press when he knows it pleases his supporters. During a rally in Florida on Wednesday, for instance, Trump singled out NBC News political correspondent Katy Tur for what he claimed was her network’s failure to report the size of his rallies, even though the campaign controls the camera setups and networks often show the crowds. 

At the same rally, Trump hinted at how his advisers are likely coaching him to resist such urges in the contest’s final stretch.

“Stay on point, Donald, stay on point,” the GOP nominee said, his hands moving up and down gently in the air. “No side tracks, Donald. Nice and easy."

At her North Carolina rally Thursday, Clinton pointed to Trump’s self-coaching with a sneer, telling her supporters that her rival could not change who he is at heart.

“Stay on point, Donald. Stay on point,’” Clinton said. “His campaign probably put that in the teleprompter.”

Obama offered another in a series of high-wattage endorsements to his former Cabinet secretary during Florida rallies Thursday. But like the Democratic nominee, he mixed the high with the low.

Obama assailed the GOP-controlled Congress for what he said was its devotion to gridlock and its disingenuous political motives, and he took on Sen. Marco Rubio, who is running to keep his seat in Florida after losing badly in the GOP presidential primaries.

“You are somebody who will say anything or be anything, be anybody just so you can get elected or cling to power,” the president said, pointing to Rubio’s opposition to Trump, followed by the senator’s subsequent reversal. (Obama is supporting Democrat Patrick Murphy for Senate.)

Obama conceded Thursday during his remarks to a predominantly young audience in South Florida that the presidential election has been so relentlessly caustic, it has turned some voters off. His goal at the rally was to inspire Floridians to vote, and like Clinton, his technique aimed to frighten them into rejecting Trump by Nov. 8, even if he failed to persuade them that Clinton is as outstanding as he says she is.

“You're out there and you're looking it, and you're saying, 'Man, this is really nasty,'” the president conceded.

“It’s tempting to want to not really focus on our government and our politics. But this election is critical. And the good news is, once you get past all the noise and all the distractions, and all the okey-doke, the choice could not be clearer,” he said.

“Donald Trump is uniquely unqualified to be president,” he added. “I’m not just asking you to believe in Hillary’s ability to change things. I’m asking you to believe in your ability to change things.”

It may have been the most positive message of the day: Voters will soon decide.

Oy Vey The deplorable election goes completely negative in the final five days

In Final Days, Clinton and Trump Go Negative 

“Scorched earth” is how some of Hillary Clinton’s allies on Thursday described Donald Trump’s final days as a 2016 presidential candidate. “Nasty” was President Obama’s summary of the entire election, as he, too, threw some rhetorical accelerant on the contest while stumping for the Democratic nominee in Florida.

Even the launch of last-blast negative ads by both campaigns Thursday helped guarantee that America’s most venomous and lurid presidential election in modern history will slither to the finish line.

Clinton, sensing the fierce urgency of tighter battleground polls, abandoned thoughts of an entirely uplifting script in her final five-day sprint. While going high about her own presidential vision, she continued to go low about Trump’s.

In North Carolina, where Clinton believes African-Americans, women and younger voters could sway the contest for 270 electoral votes, she concentrated on Trump’s bumpy record on questions of race. 

“He has spent this entire campaign offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters,” the former secretary of state said. “He retweets white supremacists and spreads racially tinged conspiracy theories. And you better believe he's being heard loudly and clearly. Just a few days ago, and I want you to hear this because this has never happened to a nominee of a major party … Donald Trump was endorsed by the official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan.” Meanwhile, the GOP nominee, who barnstormed through four rallies Thursday, has been cheered by polls showing a closer contest in the wake of negative news coverage about Clinton’s emails, Affordable Care Act premium increases, and the late-breaking decisions by many GOP voters to back their party, despite misgivings about the nominee. In the RealClearPolitics four-way polling average, Clinton leads Trump by a scant two percentage points.

Trump is finishing the race the way many Republicans wished he could have run it from the start: fiercely on message and on offense.

Campaigning in Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday, the business mogul painted a bleak picture of what life and governance would be like under a Clinton administration. If elected, Clinton “is likely to be under investigation for many, many years,” he said, invoking a scenario of impeachment. “This is not what we need. This is going to be a mess for many years to come.”

Trump has largely adhered to his teleprompters and resisted controversial tweets this week. As Clinton campaigned a few days ago with Alicia Machado, the former Miss Universe winner with whom Trump has infamously feuded, the GOP nominee focused primarily on higher costs for Obamacare and the revived FBI investigation into emails pertinent to Clinton’s private server. The campaign believes those issues bolster his closing argument that Clinton is corrupt and a vestige of old politics, while he says he’s an agent of change. On Thursday, Trump pounced on a Fox News report citing sources that claimed the FBI is investigating possible pay-to-play allegations involving the Clinton Foundation. Other news outlets have reported heightened tensions between Department of Justice and FBI officials over the agency’s handling of the revived email probe and other matters. But the FBI has not publicly confirmed a formal investigation of the foundation. Trump claimed the Justice Department is likely to seek an indictment against Clinton, but there is no evidence to support that prediction under this administration.

While appearing more focused and on-script, Trump has continued to occasionally abuse the facts. He forecast that Clinton will be engaged in an “unprecedented constitutional crisis” and that the FBI’s email probe “is likely to conclude in a criminal trial.” But the FBI concluded earlier this summer that its probe was complete, and that no reasonable prosecutor would charge Clinton with a crime because there was no evidence of intent to break the law by the former secretary or her top aides.

Trump’s campaign released an ad Thursday titled “Unfit,” in which a narrator says Clinton’s emails were found on “pervert” Anthony Weiner’s laptop, referring to the former New York congressman. But the FBI has not said whether the emails discovered on the disgraced Democrat’s laptop were sent to or from Clinton, or that they contained any sensitive government information. Weiner’s estranged wife, Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, reportedly said she was unsure how communications that may have been hers or passed through her custody ended up on her husband’s computer.

“America’s most sensitive secrets, unlawfully sent, received and exposed by Hillary Clinton, her staff, and Anthony Weiner. Hillary cannot lead a nation while crippled by a criminal investigation,” the Trump ad’s narrator intones. 

Trump repeated the ad’s claims during his address in Jacksonville. He also attacked Clinton on foreign policy, claiming “Hillary brought death and disaster to Iraq, Syria and Libya, she empowered Iran, and she unleashed ISIS.” The GOP nominee continued lashing his opponent during two subsequent stops Thursday in North Carolina, a must-win state where he is currently tied with Clinton in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

For the first time since her controversial address during the Republican National Convention, Melania Trump appeared on the trail in Philadelphia and delivered a more positive message on behalf of her husband, designed to appeal to women voters. 

“He certainly knows how to shake things up, doesn’t he?” she said during a prepared and much-previewed speech to a crowd in Chester County, a key Philadelphia suburb that swung just barely for Mitt Romney in 2012. Using a teleprompter, she spoke of her immigrant background, describing herself as an “independent woman” and a legal migrant to the United States from Slovenia.

Melania Trump said she would “advocate for women and for children” as first lady and identified bullying on social media as a concern she would address. "We need to teach our youth values: kindness, honesty, respect, compassion, charity. Our culture has gotten too mean and rough,” she said. While her first solo appearance was well received by the crowd, the tone of her remarks stood in stark contrast to her husband’s.

The rivals’ full-on attacks at the campaign’s bitter end are intentional and tactical: negative information that keeps Trump in the spotlight lifts support for Clinton among voters, according to polling and data analyses. In the reverse, Trump’s newfound discipline in avoiding unforced errors combined with Clinton’s troubles help boost his standing with some voters.

An October study authored by Geoffrey Skelley, the associate editor of University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato’s website Crystal Ball, found that “Clinton and Trump have the highest unfavorable ratings of any major party nominees in modern history,” which complicates life for each when they linger in the limelight for lengthy periods. Why? Because when they are leading the news, they are most often there because of predominantly negative media coverage. The spotlight, Skelley found, is dangerous.

Nonetheless, that fact has not curbed Trump’s tendency to taunt and criticize the press when he knows it pleases his supporters. During a rally in Florida on Wednesday, for instance, Trump singled out NBC News political correspondent Katy Tur for what he claimed was her network’s failure to report the size of his rallies, even though the campaign controls the camera setups and networks often show the crowds. 

At the same rally, Trump hinted at how his advisers are likely coaching him to resist such urges in the contest’s final stretch.

“Stay on point, Donald, stay on point,” the GOP nominee said, his hands moving up and down gently in the air. “No side tracks, Donald. Nice and easy."

At her North Carolina rally Thursday, Clinton pointed to Trump’s self-coaching with a sneer, telling her supporters that her rival could not change who he is at heart.

“Stay on point, Donald. Stay on point,’” Clinton said. “His campaign probably put that in the teleprompter.”

Obama offered another in a series of high-wattage endorsements to his former Cabinet secretary during Florida rallies Thursday. But like the Democratic nominee, he mixed the high with the low.

Obama assailed the GOP-controlled Congress for what he said was its devotion to gridlock and its disingenuous political motives, and he took on Sen. Marco Rubio, who is running to keep his seat in Florida after losing badly in the GOP presidential primaries.

“You are somebody who will say anything or be anything, be anybody just so you can get elected or cling to power,” the president said, pointing to Rubio’s opposition to Trump, followed by the senator’s subsequent reversal. (Obama is supporting Democrat Patrick Murphy for Senate.)

Obama conceded Thursday during his remarks to a predominantly young audience in South Florida that the presidential election has been so relentlessly caustic, it has turned some voters off. His goal at the rally was to inspire Floridians to vote, and like Clinton, his technique aimed to frighten them into rejecting Trump by Nov. 8, even if he failed to persuade them that Clinton is as outstanding as he says she is.

“You're out there and you're looking it, and you're saying, 'Man, this is really nasty,'” the president conceded.

“It’s tempting to want to not really focus on our government and our politics. But this election is critical. And the good news is, once you get past all the noise and all the distractions, and all the okey-doke, the choice could not be clearer,” he said.

“Donald Trump is uniquely unqualified to be president,” he added. “I’m not just asking you to believe in Hillary’s ability to change things. I’m asking you to believe in your ability to change things.”

It may have been the most positive message of the day: Voters will soon decide.

A quickie from the Bard of Bat Yam, Poet Laureate of Zion .Putin and Me, a Limerick by Donald Trump

Putin and Me, a Limerick by Donald Trump


Are you confused by the Trump/Putin relationship? Donny J Trump has helpfully written us this limerick:


Meet Putin? I did not … or did.
No one hacked, just to help with my bid.
But what a great plan!
Hey Putin, my man,
Hack those emails that Hillary hid.

A quickie from the Bard of Bat Yam, Poet Laureate of Zion .Putin and Me, a Limerick by Donald Trump

Putin and Me, a Limerick by Donald Trump


Are you confused by the Trump/Putin relationship? Donny J Trump has helpfully written us this limerick:


Meet Putin? I did not … or did.
No one hacked, just to help with my bid.
But what a great plan!
Hey Putin, my man,
Hack those emails that Hillary hid.

Leaked Emails Offer Clues to How Clinton Would Govern by Alexis Simendinger ( Republished with permission of the author and Real Clear Politics (polls) in which the article first appeared.)

Emails released by WikiLeaks -- allegedly hacked from the Gmail account maintained by longtime Clinton adviser John Podesta -- have sparked partisan outrage on the right, and we-told-you-so head-shaking among liberals who worry that Hillary Clinton’s leftward promises during the campaign could prove temporary, based on aides’ exchanges.

Which begs the question: What do more than 20,000 emails released to date, unverified but not refuted by Podesta and the Democratic nominee’s team, foretell about how Clinton might govern if she defeats Donald Trump?

Within the leaked communications, which the campaign asserts hackers stole at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin to bolster Donald Trump’s candidacy, Clinton herself emerges largely as a shadow. In the chatter, she is relentlessly interpreted and swaddled by handlers, dissected (sometimes unflatteringly) by allies and stakeholders, and heard from directly only rarely.

But Clinton’s long tenure in politics and service in two branches of government, render the emails, which WikiLeaks says it is releasing in batches until Election Day, as more than a campaign embarrassment. There have been no smoking guns – at least not yet – but the communications offer insights about governance questions and ways of operating inside the modern White House.

Here are some examples:

Rationale for a Clinton Presidency: The Podesta emails, covering everything from internal campaign spats to Italian cooking tips to entreaties from climate-change warriors seeking to fund-raise off the candidate, offer insights into one of the essential challenges all presidents face: What are his or her core beliefs? Without the vision thing – which is not the same as a policy agenda – presidents throughout American history have struggled to lead and succeed.

The emails reveal how Clinton’s team labored to lock in a rationale for the candidate’s second bid for the White House, especially in a political environment in which her 1990s-era bona fides and her determination to stick close to President Obama cut her adrift from Americans who saw her as yesterday’s choice. Bernie Sanders, on the left, and Trump, on the right, encouraged frustrated voters eager for change to view Clinton as a disappointing appendage to Bill Clinton’s presidency as well as to President Obama’s White House tenure.

While writing the address that launched Clinton’s campaign in the spring of 2015, her speechwriting team chewed on the problem before the candidate reviewed an initial draft.

"`The Vision Thing,’" wrote lead speechwriter Dan Schwerin in an email that distributed an early text to colleagues. “This remains a challenge. As you read, does it feel like a vision for the future comes through? If not, that's a place we really need to focus.”

Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who worked for President Clinton, privately analyzed the former first lady’s “core message” last January, at Podesta’s invitation. Focused on Clinton’s remarks at a town-hall event in Iowa, he described in a lengthy email how off-kilter he thought Clinton’s pitch had become in comparison to Sanders’ (the Democratic socialist who took his bid for a “revolution” all the way to the Democratic National Convention in July).

“I think the overall message is tone death [sic] on what is happening in the country and even more, in the Democratic primary electorate,” Greenberg wrote. “Your core message is about the past. It is about Clinton’s character and qualities as a leader. The message is not economic, and it is not about the country.”

Joel Benenson, Clinton’s campaign senior adviser and a veteran pollster who worked for Obama’s presidential campaigns, searched for the aspirational signposts guiding the candidate a year after her campaign was underway.

“Do we have any sense from her what she believes or wants her core message to be?” he asked colleagues in February. “[I]t is still not clear what her singular message is.”

Benenson’s efforts to identify what his client “believes” was reminiscent of a similar challenge Clinton faced in 2008 against then-Sen. Obama. Surrounded again this cycle by message experts, pollsters, speechwriters and ad makers, Clinton’s decisions to tailor some of her positions to the electorate, as she did with her change of heart about the merits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact she initially helped negotiate, suggest a capacity for shape-shifting that could follow her into the West Wing.

Because pollsters have predicted Clinton could be elected with help from a percentage of the electorate that strongly opposes Trump rather than passionately admires her, any capitulations or compromises while in office could undermine public trust in her as president.

Preparation to Govern. Clinton has navigated – not always smoothly -- some of the thorniest governance challenges of the modern era, from health care reform and the shrinking middle class to the Iraq War and the rise of the Islamic State. President Obama tells voters that his former Cabinet official is the most experienced presidential candidate ever to face the voters.

The emails underscore what Clinton has argued on the stump: She would enter the White House with reams of policy positions she has internalized, accompanied by budget breakdowns, and gaggles of advocates and experts flapping over each.

Clinton is a politician who has been publicly rebuked for lacking vision while also being commended for a lifelong commitment to the good that government can do. She is a planner who favors control, and she does not relish the high wire of improvisation. Clinton is comforted by a command of the smallest details -- and the hacked emails once again showcase her dependency on a tight circle of loyalists who give her the briefings and materials to appear a mile wide on policy as well as 10-feet deep when it comes to her opponents.

Even the swiftest public responses in a 24/7 political environment during this campaign were drafted for Clinton and hastily reviewed and approved by a tribe of senior advisers, the WikiLeaks emails indicate. No detail seemed to escape scrutiny or preparation, even as Clinton’s aides discussed criticism that the candidate was perceived as inauthentic. Her 140-character tweets were devised by advisers with the same care as major statements, and carefully posted with Clinton’s approval.

Micromanaging is a tough trait to overcome in the Oval Office. In one of the most famous examples, Jimmy Carter, in his first six months as president, personallyreviewed and approved the use of the White House tennis court.

As first lady, Clinton was knee-deep in her husband’s major policy initiatives. But she also became immersed in smaller concerns: She banned smoking and removed ash trays at the White House in her first week, and later decided with staff that news crews’ camera equipment on the North Lawn looked unsightly wrapped in black garbage bags. Customized green canvas covers appeared.

If elected, Clinton’s natural caution and committee-driven decision-making could be valuable. But as she told the Las Vegas debate audience Wednesday night, not all presidential decisions occur after lengthy deliberations. Some of the most significant ones are reactive. While campaigning in 2008, Clinton argued in a “3 a.m. phone call” campaign ad that she was ready to lead in emergency situations. In this election, she has approached the same idea by asserting that Trump is too rash and explosive to make swift life-or-death decisions in a dangerous world.

“The bottom line on nuclear weapons is that when the president gives an order, it must be followed,” she said during the final debate with the Republican nominee. “There’s about four minutes between the order being given and the people responsible for launching nuclear weapons to do so,” she added.

Transparency. Presidents since Richard Nixon have promised Americans they would be transparent, accountable and committed to the truth while in the White House.

Clinton, as illustrated by the continuing controversy over her handling of her State Department emails, sought to control access to her official government communications in ways the FBI subsequently determined were “extremely careless.”

If elected, her instinct for secrecy, her guardedness when facing critics and political opponents, combined with concern about the cyber-breaches of the Democratic National Committee and her campaign are likely to make Clinton less transparent than some of her predecessors.

(The Obama administration, which has not publicly affirmed that the Russian government was behind the hacking of Podesta’s emails, last week encouragedEcuador to cut off WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s access to the internet. Assange, who created the whistle-blowing site in 2006, has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for more than four years to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces an arrest warrant on allegations of rape.)

Clinton already had a reputation for strained relations with the news media. The digital evolution in media, and changes in the public’s news consumption habits since she and her husband last occupied the White House, would encourage Clinton and her staff to fortify their information lockdown if she’s elected.

The WikiLeaks emails reveal a team tackling communications with practiced techniques designed to maximize control and to minimize damage. The news angles and information sought by news outlets and individual reporters were circulated internally in real time, according to Podesta’s Gmail inbox. Copies of news articles, reporters’ tweets, blog posts, and television broadcasts were constantly monitored. Clinton’s traveling spokesman, Nick Merrill, emailed daily reports to headquarters about questions posed to Clinton on the campaign trail, her answers, and his enthusiastic assessments about her performances on the stump.

If a reporter approached a Clinton ally seeking information, the ally circled back to the campaign via email to offer staff members an early warning. If the campaign frowned on a journalist’s news coverage or inquiry, the campaign advisers instructed one another to ignore the journalist or deliver pushback.

In the modern White House, a president’s control of information and efforts to work with what the Clinton campaign called media “friendlies” is referred to as “message discipline.” Journalists less charitably refer to some techniques as propaganda.

What works for candidates inside campaigns is almost always imported into the West Wing because presidents typically tap political aides to fill out senior White House positions. (Some presidents, including Bill Clinton – who arrived late to the recognition that campaigning and governing were different endeavors – expressed regret about some early staffing decisions.)

In Clinton’s case, her top advisers are veterans of the Clinton administration, or worked with her in the Senate or at the State Department. Many became familiar with White House operations under President Clinton or Obama, or both. Clinton is known for her loyal, insular crew, and has been faulted over the years for favoring aides who catered to her idiosyncrasies.

After talking with State Department staff members in June 2015 about emails received by Secretary Clinton on her private server from longtime friend and former journalist Sidney Blumenthal, spokesman Merrill described a proposed strategy to his campaign colleagues. He said State ought to blunt the impact when the department turned Blumenthal’s emails over to the House Select Committee onBenghazi. The plan: Unveil the information in advance of the committee’s release via outreach to a “friendly” reporter at the Associated Press.

“They [State] do not plan to release anything publicly, so no posting online or anything public-facing, just to the committee,” Merrill wrote. “That said, they are considering placing a story with a friendly at the AP (Matt Lee or Bradley Klapper), that would lay this out before the majority on the committee has a chance to realize what they have and distort it,” he added.

Lee and Klapper’s coverage appeared on June 25, 2015, including input from State Department officials, Merrill, and committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy.

Political Instincts, Temperament and Judgment. Even Clinton’s most ardent admirers have fretted about her tendencies to favor friends who present conflicts; her reluctance to publicly admit mistakes; and choices that somehow balloon into self-inflicted wounds.

Clinton has weathered a failed health care reform effort in the 1990s, her Senate vote backing the Iraq invasion, her push for a military intervention that left a vacuum after Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi was removed from power in 2011, a transparently expedient about-face on TPP, and multiple investigations of her private emails that dominated headlines for nearly two years.

Former White House aide George Stephanopoulos, in his 1999 book “All Too Human,” contrasted Hillary and Bill Clinton during his time in the West Wing.

“Her husband looks soft, but his accommodating nature cushions him; Hillary looks hard, but her often brittle exterior masks a more vulnerable core,” he wrote.

Neera Tanden, a former aide to Hillary Clinton who succeeded Podesta as president of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, functions as a close adviser to Clinton’s campaign. In a January email to Podesta, she applauded one of the former White House chief of staff’s campaign tweets, which he complained had initially been “held.”

“Got held by who? Hillary. God. Her instincts are suboptimal,” Tanden replied.

To nudge Clinton to publicly apologize for her email “mistakes” proved a protracted ordeal last year, according to exchanges among top campaign officials and Clinton allies. “Apologies are like her Achilles heel,” Tanden wrote in September to Podesta and campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri. “But she didn't seem like a bitch in the [NBC] interview. And she said the word sorry. She will get to a full apology in a few interviews.”

Throughout the WikiLeaks disclosures this month, such glimpses of Clinton’s foibles and her team’s ambitions for the candidate reinforced impressions of her political vulnerabilities. But leading up to Nov. 8, thousands of stolen communications may be a preview of Clinton’s governance traits, as well.


Alexis Simendinger covers the White House for RealClearPolitics.

Leaked Emails Offer Clues to How Clinton Would Govern by Alexis Simendinger ( Republished with permission of the author and Real Clear Politics (polls) in which the article first appeared.)

Leaked Emails Offer Clues to How Clinton Would Govern by Alexis Simendinger ( Republished with permission of the author and Real Clear Politics (polls) in which the article first appeared.)

Emails released by WikiLeaks -- allegedly hacked from the Gmail account maintained by longtime Clinton adviser John Podesta -- have sparked partisan outrage on the right, and we-told-you-so head-shaking among liberals who worry that Hillary Clinton’s leftward promises during the campaign could prove temporary, based on aides’ exchanges.

Which begs the question: What do more than 20,000 emails released to date, unverified but not refuted by Podesta and the Democratic nominee’s team, foretell about how Clinton might govern if she defeats Donald Trump?

Within the leaked communications, which the campaign asserts hackers stole at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin to bolster Donald Trump’s candidacy, Clinton herself emerges largely as a shadow. In the chatter, she is relentlessly interpreted and swaddled by handlers, dissected (sometimes unflatteringly) by allies and stakeholders, and heard from directly only rarely.

But Clinton’s long tenure in politics and service in two branches of government, render the emails, which WikiLeaks says it is releasing in batches until Election Day, as more than a campaign embarrassment. There have been no smoking guns – at least not yet – but the communications offer insights about governance questions and ways of operating inside the modern White House.

Here are some examples:

Rationale for a Clinton Presidency: The Podesta emails, covering everything from internal campaign spats to Italian cooking tips to entreaties from climate-change warriors seeking to fund-raise off the candidate, offer insights into one of the essential challenges all presidents face: What are his or her core beliefs? Without the vision thing – which is not the same as a policy agenda – presidents throughout American history have struggled to lead and succeed.

The emails reveal how Clinton’s team labored to lock in a rationale for the candidate’s second bid for the White House, especially in a political environment in which her 1990s-era bona fides and her determination to stick close to President Obama cut her adrift from Americans who saw her as yesterday’s choice. Bernie Sanders, on the left, and Trump, on the right, encouraged frustrated voters eager for change to view Clinton as a disappointing appendage to Bill Clinton’s presidency as well as to President Obama’s White House tenure.

While writing the address that launched Clinton’s campaign in the spring of 2015, her speechwriting team chewed on the problem before the candidate reviewed an initial draft.

"`The Vision Thing,’" wrote lead speechwriter Dan Schwerin in an email that distributed an early text to colleagues. “This remains a challenge. As you read, does it feel like a vision for the future comes through? If not, that's a place we really need to focus.”

Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who worked for President Clinton, privately analyzed the former first lady’s “core message” last January, at Podesta’s invitation. Focused on Clinton’s remarks at a town-hall event in Iowa, he described in a lengthy email how off-kilter he thought Clinton’s pitch had become in comparison to Sanders’ (the Democratic socialist who took his bid for a “revolution” all the way to the Democratic National Convention in July).

“I think the overall message is tone death [sic] on what is happening in the country and even more, in the Democratic primary electorate,” Greenberg wrote. “Your core message is about the past. It is about Clinton’s character and qualities as a leader. The message is not economic, and it is not about the country.”

Joel Benenson, Clinton’s campaign senior adviser and a veteran pollster who worked for Obama’s presidential campaigns, searched for the aspirational signposts guiding the candidate a year after her campaign was underway.

“Do we have any sense from her what she believes or wants her core message to be?” he asked colleagues in February. “[I]t is still not clear what her singular message is.”

Benenson’s efforts to identify what his client “believes” was reminiscent of a similar challenge Clinton faced in 2008 against then-Sen. Obama. Surrounded again this cycle by message experts, pollsters, speechwriters and ad makers, Clinton’s decisions to tailor some of her positions to the electorate, as she did with her change of heart about the merits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact she initially helped negotiate, suggest a capacity for shape-shifting that could follow her into the West Wing.

Because pollsters have predicted Clinton could be elected with help from a percentage of the electorate that strongly opposes Trump rather than passionately admires her, any capitulations or compromises while in office could undermine public trust in her as president.

Preparation to Govern. Clinton has navigated – not always smoothly -- some of the thorniest governance challenges of the modern era, from health care reform and the shrinking middle class to the Iraq War and the rise of the Islamic State. President Obama tells voters that his former Cabinet official is the most experienced presidential candidate ever to face the voters.

The emails underscore what Clinton has argued on the stump: She would enter the White House with reams of policy positions she has internalized, accompanied by budget breakdowns, and gaggles of advocates and experts flapping over each.

Clinton is a politician who has been publicly rebuked for lacking vision while also being commended for a lifelong commitment to the good that government can do. She is a planner who favors control, and she does not relish the high wire of improvisation. Clinton is comforted by a command of the smallest details -- and the hacked emails once again showcase her dependency on a tight circle of loyalists who give her the briefings and materials to appear a mile wide on policy as well as 10-feet deep when it comes to her opponents.

Even the swiftest public responses in a 24/7 political environment during this campaign were drafted for Clinton and hastily reviewed and approved by a tribe of senior advisers, the WikiLeaks emails indicate. No detail seemed to escape scrutiny or preparation, even as Clinton’s aides discussed criticism that the candidate was perceived as inauthentic. Her 140-character tweets were devised by advisers with the same care as major statements, and carefully posted with Clinton’s approval.

Micromanaging is a tough trait to overcome in the Oval Office. In one of the most famous examples, Jimmy Carter, in his first six months as president, personallyreviewed and approved the use of the White House tennis court.

As first lady, Clinton was knee-deep in her husband’s major policy initiatives. But she also became immersed in smaller concerns: She banned smoking and removed ash trays at the White House in her first week, and later decided with staff that news crews’ camera equipment on the North Lawn looked unsightly wrapped in black garbage bags. Customized green canvas covers appeared.

If elected, Clinton’s natural caution and committee-driven decision-making could be valuable. But as she told the Las Vegas debate audience Wednesday night, not all presidential decisions occur after lengthy deliberations. Some of the most significant ones are reactive. While campaigning in 2008, Clinton argued in a “3 a.m. phone call” campaign ad that she was ready to lead in emergency situations. In this election, she has approached the same idea by asserting that Trump is too rash and explosive to make swift life-or-death decisions in a dangerous world.

“The bottom line on nuclear weapons is that when the president gives an order, it must be followed,” she said during the final debate with the Republican nominee. “There’s about four minutes between the order being given and the people responsible for launching nuclear weapons to do so,” she added.

Transparency. Presidents since Richard Nixon have promised Americans they would be transparent, accountable and committed to the truth while in the White House.

Clinton, as illustrated by the continuing controversy over her handling of her State Department emails, sought to control access to her official government communications in ways the FBI subsequently determined were “extremely careless.”

If elected, her instinct for secrecy, her guardedness when facing critics and political opponents, combined with concern about the cyber-breaches of the Democratic National Committee and her campaign are likely to make Clinton less transparent than some of her predecessors.

(The Obama administration, which has not publicly affirmed that the Russian government was behind the hacking of Podesta’s emails, last week encouragedEcuador to cut off WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s access to the internet. Assange, who created the whistle-blowing site in 2006, has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for more than four years to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces an arrest warrant on allegations of rape.)

Clinton already had a reputation for strained relations with the news media. The digital evolution in media, and changes in the public’s news consumption habits since she and her husband last occupied the White House, would encourage Clinton and her staff to fortify their information lockdown if she’s elected.

The WikiLeaks emails reveal a team tackling communications with practiced techniques designed to maximize control and to minimize damage. The news angles and information sought by news outlets and individual reporters were circulated internally in real time, according to Podesta’s Gmail inbox. Copies of news articles, reporters’ tweets, blog posts, and television broadcasts were constantly monitored. Clinton’s traveling spokesman, Nick Merrill, emailed daily reports to headquarters about questions posed to Clinton on the campaign trail, her answers, and his enthusiastic assessments about her performances on the stump.

If a reporter approached a Clinton ally seeking information, the ally circled back to the campaign via email to offer staff members an early warning. If the campaign frowned on a journalist’s news coverage or inquiry, the campaign advisers instructed one another to ignore the journalist or deliver pushback.

In the modern White House, a president’s control of information and efforts to work with what the Clinton campaign called media “friendlies” is referred to as “message discipline.” Journalists less charitably refer to some techniques as propaganda.

What works for candidates inside campaigns is almost always imported into the West Wing because presidents typically tap political aides to fill out senior White House positions. (Some presidents, including Bill Clinton – who arrived late to the recognition that campaigning and governing were different endeavors – expressed regret about some early staffing decisions.)

In Clinton’s case, her top advisers are veterans of the Clinton administration, or worked with her in the Senate or at the State Department. Many became familiar with White House operations under President Clinton or Obama, or both. Clinton is known for her loyal, insular crew, and has been faulted over the years for favoring aides who catered to her idiosyncrasies.

After talking with State Department staff members in June 2015 about emails received by Secretary Clinton on her private server from longtime friend and former journalist Sidney Blumenthal, spokesman Merrill described a proposed strategy to his campaign colleagues. He said State ought to blunt the impact when the department turned Blumenthal’s emails over to the House Select Committee onBenghazi. The plan: Unveil the information in advance of the committee’s release via outreach to a “friendly” reporter at the Associated Press.

“They [State] do not plan to release anything publicly, so no posting online or anything public-facing, just to the committee,” Merrill wrote. “That said, they are considering placing a story with a friendly at the AP (Matt Lee or Bradley Klapper), that would lay this out before the majority on the committee has a chance to realize what they have and distort it,” he added.

Lee and Klapper’s coverage appeared on June 25, 2015, including input from State Department officials, Merrill, and committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy.

Political Instincts, Temperament and Judgment. Even Clinton’s most ardent admirers have fretted about her tendencies to favor friends who present conflicts; her reluctance to publicly admit mistakes; and choices that somehow balloon into self-inflicted wounds.

Clinton has weathered a failed health care reform effort in the 1990s, her Senate vote backing the Iraq invasion, her push for a military intervention that left a vacuum after Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi was removed from power in 2011, a transparently expedient about-face on TPP, and multiple investigations of her private emails that dominated headlines for nearly two years.

Former White House aide George Stephanopoulos, in his 1999 book “All Too Human,” contrasted Hillary and Bill Clinton during his time in the West Wing.

“Her husband looks soft, but his accommodating nature cushions him; Hillary looks hard, but her often brittle exterior masks a more vulnerable core,” he wrote.

Neera Tanden, a former aide to Hillary Clinton who succeeded Podesta as president of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, functions as a close adviser to Clinton’s campaign. In a January email to Podesta, she applauded one of the former White House chief of staff’s campaign tweets, which he complained had initially been “held.”

“Got held by who? Hillary. God. Her instincts are suboptimal,” Tanden replied.

To nudge Clinton to publicly apologize for her email “mistakes” proved a protracted ordeal last year, according to exchanges among top campaign officials and Clinton allies. “Apologies are like her Achilles heel,” Tanden wrote in September to Podesta and campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri. “But she didn't seem like a bitch in the [NBC] interview. And she said the word sorry. She will get to a full apology in a few interviews.”

Throughout the WikiLeaks disclosures this month, such glimpses of Clinton’s foibles and her team’s ambitions for the candidate reinforced impressions of her political vulnerabilities. But leading up to Nov. 8, thousands of stolen communications may be a preview of Clinton’s governance traits, as well.


Alexis Simendinger covers the White House for RealClearPolitics.

Donald Trump and his Foundation of Fakery :Trump Foundation is no charity at all: New York AG says Trump lacks certification to collect funds.The Washington Post is out with another blockbuster report on Trump's "foundation of fakery"

Trump Foundation is no charity at all: New York AG says Trump lacks certification to collect funds.The Washington Post is out with another blockbuster report on Trump's "foundation of fakery"


(Credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson)


Two weeks after New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced he had opened a broad inquiry into Donald Trump’s troubled foundation, a new report alleges the Republican nominee never actually obtained the certification that the state requires before charities can legitimately solicit money from the public.

According to exhaustive reporting by David A. Fahrenthold of The Washington Post, the Donald J. Trump Foundation never obtained the necessary certification to solicit money from the public during its nearly 30-year existence, an investigation by the state’s attorney general’s office has found.

ABC News has also confirmed the report.

New York law states that any charity that asks for more than $25,000 per year needs to obtain a special registration before soliciting offers. The Post, citing tax filings, reported that the Trump Foundation had raised more than $25,000 from outsiders in each of the last 10 years. The Post specifically detailed cases involving $2.3 million that raise questions about whether the money should have been taxed as income and whether that income was properly reported:

If New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) finds that Trump’s foundation raised money in violation of the law, he could order the charity to stop raising money immediately. With a court’s permission, Schneiderman could also force Trump to return money that his foundation has already raised.

Despite claims of giving away millions of dollars of his own money, Trump has not donated to his namesake foundation since 2008.

Another Post report earlier this week claimed Trump spent $258,000 from his foundation to settle lawsuits that involved his businesses – an apparent violation of laws against “self-dealing,” which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves.

Of course, the Trump Foundation has adopted a very charitable definition for its charitable giving, which included a $25,000 campaign donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi just four days before her office decided not to participate in a lawsuit against Trump University.

The Daily Beast also reported Friday that in 2010, the Trump Foundation gave $10,000 to Jenny McCarthy’s Generation Rescue, a nonprofit group whose primary goal is to promote false links between vaccinations and autism.

“McCarthy’s charity promotes ‘alternative vaccination physicians’ and has a grant program to provide families with autistic children with vitamins, minerals, and supplements; urine testing; and ‘dietary intervention training,’” The Daily Beast noted.


I am being proven right about massive vaccinations—the doctors lied. Save our children & their future.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2014

So many people who have children with autism have thanked me—amazing response. They know far better than fudged up reports!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2014

Playboy Magazine endorses Hillary Clinton .We Have to Suffer Two More Debates, but at Least There’s Alcohol

We Have to Suffer Two More Debates, but at Least There’s Alcohol By Lucy Steigerwald ( Republished with permission of the author and Playboy Magazine. Playboy Magazine has endorsed Hillary Clinton) 

By most measures, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s debate was a tortoise-and-the-hare battle. Trump started strong, but got flustered and tuckered out. Clinton was shaky and trying too hard (which always trips her up), but she finally and settled into her element and, if nothing else, acted presidential. Our first non-politician cum presidential candidate in decades seemed peeved, and the more hot and bothered he got, the more he annoyingly barked “excuse me.” Clinton just smiled. She just doesn’t have to do anything at all, she thinks, and she can still beat him in November. On the other hand, the fact that the race is as close as it is does not reflect well on Clinton as a politician, or on America at large.

The moderator, NBC’s Lester Holt, mostly kept himself out of things, only occasionally putting his foot down as the candidates ignored their time limits. Trump did this more often than Clinton, either because he’s like that, or because a woman being as rude as Trump would never fly in this world. Probably both.

Unfortunately, just because Clinton may have pulled ahead and “won” (whatever that means), doesn’t make her less awful. Yes, Trump lies about everything small and petty, but they’re both arrogant warmongers with dishonest suggestions, specifically when it comes to criminal justice reform.

Trump always lands a good dig, and sometimes at worthy targets like former Vice President Dick Cheney, but for him it’s not about hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis or whether he really opposed the war from the get-go. It’s about Trump being right. He’s neither a pacifist nor a real isolationist, especially when he obsesses over how America should have stayed in Iraq and stolen the Middle East’s oil.

Clinton may have been more polished (and as stiff as wood), but she also made staggeringly daft decisions, such as hitting Trump on his continued refusal to release his tax returns, because “probably he’s not all that enthusiastic about having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are, because it must be something really important, even terrible, that he’s trying to hide.” Considering her on-going email scandal, her refusal to release transcripts of her speeches to Goldman Sachs and her general attitude of privacy for “me” but not for thee, it’s dense of Clinton to go on about Trump’s financial documents.

A debate full of bickering is always more fun than fake politeness; however, their incoherent stances and pandering on war, transparency, crime and the economy are growing tiresome. Trump spent his time going for the jugular and reminding America what Clinton wants to forget—that she once called black men “superpredators” in the 1990s when she was backing her husband’s now disfavored crime bill. Clinton, on the other hand, is on the reform bandwagon. She cares a lot about racial disparities in the system, damn it, and bad things like New York City’s stop and frisk are no cure.

They’re both arrogant. America knows this, but is unable to stop it. Trump has the bombast of an empty-headed know-nothing who is sure he can do everything better than you. And Clinton is indeed the Platonic ideal of the politician. She changes when it suits her and when it’s safe to do so. They both want power way too much. Clinton wants the presidency so badly she’s starting to salivate. Trump, somehow, still comes off as if he’d be happy losing just enough to be able to forever claim that “they” took the Oval Office from him because “they” were corrupt and scared. Altogether, the first debate made it clear that these candidates are fighting not for national gains, but for personal ones. Cheers, America.

Tags

• 
  

Playboy Magazine endorses Hillary Clinton .We Have to Suffer Two More Debates, but at Least There’s Alcohol

We Have to Suffer Two More Debates, but at Least There’s Alcohol By Lucy Steigerwald ( Republished with permission of the author and Playboy Magazine. Playboy Magazine has endorsed Hillary Clinton) 

By most measures, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s debate was a tortoise-and-the-hare battle. Trump started strong, but got flustered and tuckered out. Clinton was shaky and trying too hard (which always trips her up), but she finally and settled into her element and, if nothing else, acted presidential. Our first non-politician cum presidential candidate in decades seemed peeved, and the more hot and bothered he got, the more he annoyingly barked “excuse me.” Clinton just smiled. She just doesn’t have to do anything at all, she thinks, and she can still beat him in November. On the other hand, the fact that the race is as close as it is does not reflect well on Clinton as a politician, or on America at large.

The moderator, NBC’s Lester Holt, mostly kept himself out of things, only occasionally putting his foot down as the candidates ignored their time limits. Trump did this more often than Clinton, either because he’s like that, or because a woman being as rude as Trump would never fly in this world. Probably both.

Unfortunately, just because Clinton may have pulled ahead and “won” (whatever that means), doesn’t make her less awful. Yes, Trump lies about everything small and petty, but they’re both arrogant warmongers with dishonest suggestions, specifically when it comes to criminal justice reform.

Trump always lands a good dig, and sometimes at worthy targets like former Vice President Dick Cheney, but for him it’s not about hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis or whether he really opposed the war from the get-go. It’s about Trump being right. He’s neither a pacifist nor a real isolationist, especially when he obsesses over how America should have stayed in Iraq and stolen the Middle East’s oil.

Clinton may have been more polished (and as stiff as wood), but she also made staggeringly daft decisions, such as hitting Trump on his continued refusal to release his tax returns, because “probably he’s not all that enthusiastic about having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are, because it must be something really important, even terrible, that he’s trying to hide.” Considering her on-going email scandal, her refusal to release transcripts of her speeches to Goldman Sachs and her general attitude of privacy for “me” but not for thee, it’s dense of Clinton to go on about Trump’s financial documents.

A debate full of bickering is always more fun than fake politeness; however, their incoherent stances and pandering on war, transparency, crime and the economy are growing tiresome. Trump spent his time going for the jugular and reminding America what Clinton wants to forget—that she once called black men “superpredators” in the 1990s when she was backing her husband’s now disfavored crime bill. Clinton, on the other hand, is on the reform bandwagon. She cares a lot about racial disparities in the system, damn it, and bad things like New York City’s stop and frisk are no cure.

They’re both arrogant. America knows this, but is unable to stop it. Trump has the bombast of an empty-headed know-nothing who is sure he can do everything better than you. And Clinton is indeed the Platonic ideal of the politician. She changes when it suits her and when it’s safe to do so. They both want power way too much. Clinton wants the presidency so badly she’s starting to salivate. Trump, somehow, still comes off as if he’d be happy losing just enough to be able to forever claim that “they” took the Oval Office from him because “they” were corrupt and scared. Altogether, the first debate made it clear that these candidates are fighting not for national gains, but for personal ones. Cheers, America.

Tags

•