Why Hillary is in Trouble
The 2016 Presidential election race is shaping up to be quite different from what we are used to. This is because what people are looking for in the candidates, at least at this early stage in the race, is unlike anything politicians have offered for a very long time. People on both sides of the political aisle are looking for basically one thing -- authenticity. And that is not something politicians are particularly known for. The narrative that career politicians are incompetent and have no interest in the betterment of the people has largely caught on. Which explains why people like Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina are rising in the polls.
Interestingly, the people’s interest in an authentic candidate is coming at the expense of what in the past was of the essence: policy. People seem to be a lot more interested in the character of the candidate than in what he stands for. For example, Donald Trump is no conservative on healthcare. His lack of opposition to Canadian style single payer healthcare would make any true conservative cringe, but that didn’t stop him from getting a thirty thousand-person crowd in Alabama. Conservatives are just so enamored with his strong and authentic personality that they are missing the fact that he is not a conservative Republican, but merely a patriotic American.
The same holds true on the Democratic side. Bernie Sanders is an avowed Socialist. Enough said. Yet, he too is able to draw crowds of over twenty thousand people. The ecstatic fans at his rallies seem not to care that socialism has and will never work. That is irrelevant to them. His followers simply see him as an honest man who wants to create prosperity for those who don’t have it. As much as you may dislike the man for his extreme economic vision for the country, it is impossible to say he is not genuine. He is authentic, he says what he means, and he truly cares for the American people. That is why he, too, is climbing in the polls.
None of this bodes well for Mrs. Hillary Clinton. She lacks all the qualities that have newly become fashionable. She is a politician, she is inauthentic, she has no charisma, and she clearly can’t relate to the vast majority of the American people. If that is not enough, she is now ensnared in a scandal that accentuates all of these qualities. As much as the majority of Americans can understand of the ongoing email scandal from watching the news, which is not much, they can understand that she is hiding something. The whole scandal is turning her into the poster boy (or girl) for the now vilified “establishment politician.” She is beginning to exemplify the non-transparent, untrustworthy, disconnected, and uncaring politician, and more and more people are starting to lose faith in her. Putting her up against the likes of non-politicians like Donald Trump or Carly Fiorina will not make her image look any better, which means that unless the climate of disillusionment with the political class fades in the coming months, Hillary Clinton is in deep trouble.
The Democratic Party sees this. It realizes that people are not all that excited with Hillary. And in an election that will probably be extremely close, excitement means everything. The side that has more people excited to vote will win the election. This means that the Democratic Party has a choice to make: either stick with Hillary and risk losing an election which up until recently looked like a sure win, or get another candidate in the race to compete with her. The latter option, in my opinion, is the correct route, and will be the route Democrats will take. Joe Biden, the only establishment candidate who can compete with her, will jump in the race in the coming weeks. This will give the party the ability to see which candidate can get the base more riled up, and the candidate who does that will win the nomination. The candidate could still end up being Hillary, but it doesn’t hurt to have someone else enter the race just to make sure the party isn’t selling itself short.
