Hillary Clinton has campaigned tirelessly for women votes, including heralding her nomination as a historic moment for all women. However, she continues to be unpopular not only with voters as a whole but a majority of women. The new Washington Post-ABC poll shows her at a record low despite spending roughly $100 million in political advertisements and an overwhelming media barrage against Trump. While seen by supporters as more of an anti-establishment figure, Trump has equally shocking figures and even top Clinton in unpopularity with many groups. Voters continue to reject both Trump and Clinton but that overwhelming voter anger at these choices does not appear to matter in our political system. The importance of this poll is not to suggest that Clinton will win. Rather, for voters, many believe it simply does not matter. Their views of Trump or Clinton seem immaterial to a system that is detached from the wishes of the majority of the electorate. While the Washington Post reports that Clinton has halted the polling “swoon” in August, the overwhelming distrust factor from the earlier poll continues.
Clinton recently asked why she was not 50 points ahead of Trump, but it is now clear that voters continue to harbor deep distrust of Clinton. Her unfavorable rating have gone from 42 percent in July to 56 percent now. To some degree, it is not surprising. Polls clearly showed that the voters did not want an establishment figure so the DNC worked to guarantee the nomination to the ultimate establishment figure. However, it clearly goes deeper than that. Even against one of the most unpopular figures in history (Trump is even worse at 63 percent unfavorability), Clinton cannot even maintain a majority of women with favorability ratings.
Despite the missteps of Trump and controversial history with women, Clinton’s favorable rating among women has dropped from 54 percent to just 45 percent. Her support among Hispanics has fallen from 71 percent to 55 percent.
Vice President Joe Biden seemed to reflect this persistent problem today by remarking that “I know some of you, and some of the people you are trying to convince are not crazy about Hillary. I know that.” However, he insisted that Clinton has gotten an unfair deal. Of course, the Clinton campaign appears to have largely pursued the “lesser of two evils” approach that is all too familiar to critics of the power duopoly in this country. The result is tragic where the citizens are being given a choice between the two least popular presidential candidates in the history of modern polling.
Americans should consider putting John Ghotti in as President if they are considering electing HilLIARy cLIARnton. There would be less crimes and murders committed by government people then. His record is far better than her. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gotti Fewer people will die.
Do you mean Junior Gotti? Gotti Sr died in prison of cancer a number of years ago.
If Congress is held in such low esteme, then why won’t the voters replace their own Congress man or woman.
It’s all about the gerrymandering. According to the Cook Report, only 85 Congressional districts are actually competitive. The rest are all considered “safe” for their incumbent. People vote for “their guy” and expect other districts to vote out THEIR horrible representatives.
To some extent, it’s gerrymandering (a problem made worse by court decisions). You’d still have safe districts if you eliminated gerrymandering because large swaths of the country just are not competitive at the granular level. There are a dozen congressional districts entirely or predominantly within the City of New York. The Republicans are competitive in one or two, gerrymandering or no. You have a half-dozen congressional districts around DC. The Republicans are competitive in one. Conversely, north Texas (outside the Dallas metroplex) is safe Republican, no matter how you carve it up.
Look at Maryland, they have this farm sliced up pretty good.
A sensible map for Maryland is easy to draw given settlement patterns: 1 district containing the bulk of Montgomery County, 1 containing the bulk of Prince George’s County, 1 containing the bulk of Baltimore County, 1 containing all of Baltimore City and modest slices of Baltimore County and Anne Arundel County, 1 containing the bulk of Anne Arundel and Howard Counties. 1 containing the eastern shore and Harford County, 1 containing the 5 counties of western Maryland filled out with a notch of Montgomery County, and 1 consisting of southern Maryland and the left over territory from the DC suburbs and Baltimore exurbs. You have four districts entirely within your two large metropolitan settlements, two districts which consist entirely of small city, small town, exurban, and rural territory; one district which is about 85% metropolitan, 15% exurban; and one district which is about 30% metropolitan and 70% small city, small town, exurban, and rural. It would break about 5 to 3 for the Democrats. That wasn’t enough for them.
The point of gerrymandering is to make sure your opponent is isolated to their “safe” districts, and that you have comfortable margins in as many “contested” districts as possible.
Maryland and North Carolina are rated the two worst and Nevada and Indiana the two least gerrymandered. But there’s a lot in between and it explains the Republican majorities in the House and so many of the state legislatures, because Democrats outnumber Republicans all over the mao:
https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2014/05/gerry.png&w=1484
nd it explains the Republican majorities in the House and so many of the state legislatures, because Democrats outnumber Republicans all over the mao:
If it helps you feel better, go with that. In the world we live in, 60% of the population lives in states with Republican governors (states have fixed boundaries) and Democrats won just 45% of the ballots during the most recent congressional elections.
Professor,
The problem with single polling data is that it is often just skewed or inaccurate. Something so easily managed in this age of data aggregation.
Check the info at realclear politics and you’all see that Hillary Clintons unfavorables are actually declining, and her favorablea are on the rise:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/clinton_favorableunfavorable-1131.html
Nate Silver has her at a solid 78% to win now. And if undecided voters split 50/50, that goes to 85%.
If you’re tempted to believe the self-selecting online polls, I would only remind you how sure Romney supporters were that they were going to win.
The big question, I think, is that when Clinton wins, and that seems almost certain, will Donald concede to a peaceful transition like civilized democracies are supposed to, or will he go out screaming “foul!” Like the whiny little baby he appears to be?
Baghdad Phil
Trump bashed Nate Silver at his disastrous a townhall last night.
If Hillary wins, she will limp into the WH. It will shortly thereafter be revealed she has some type of longstanding neurological problem. She will look for sympathy and lie about her not knowing. HIPPA will then become the issue.
Dear God…and then we will have Kaine! Gross!
Pence.is very capable that is capable of looking in the camera and telling a flat out lie.
Cliffie – the real test is when, like Hillary, you can look the FBI in the eye and lie.
I don’t think we have gotten to the boiling point yet. If Trump wins maybe as Darren suggests a type of reorganization within the GOP will take place as people like Tom Cotton and Ben Sasse fight for control of the conservative wing and the others will just go along the Trump path wherever that might go.
If HRC wins and the senate remains in the hands of the GOP, then the country will be even further divided when they obstruct EVERYTHING she tries to do. We will get even more fed up with the BS and both parties will melt down.
That’s the option I’m hoping for. It will take another 4 years to really make the necessary corrections. I even predict an anti-corporate news channel will surface as well. After all, the current corporate media is part and parcel with the political parties and a major reason of voter disgust.
Here’s something to think about as well.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/22/need-for-nine-supreme-court/7SnAzJWXMveAxlTzOsDWzM/story.html
I agree. I have said before that real change is probably coming, and it will swallow up both of the current candidates along the way. I believe HRC is clearly the person who could do more damage before she gets swept under, but I feel that neither will be a second term prez. It’s sad we have to have Trump. I’ll open a can of worms for Wappy T-Spaz–I think it would be time for Pat Buchanan.
Pat Buchanan is 78 years old. He’s not running for public office. He’s also sui generis. There is no analogue to him in American journalism among the younger cohorts.
Age is just a number. But a fairly large number in that case. There sure isn’t an analogue to him these days.
She’s a woman of stupefying absence of scruple, something manifest in her professional conduct as early as 1974. Her marriage is a corrupt bargain of a sort seldom seen outside the realm of made-for-TV movies, and has been from the beginning. The willingness of various parties (especially higher education) to put large sums of money in her coffers is astounding. Her cupidity is astounding. Her mendacity is astounding. And, by all accounts, she’s always been a terror to work for. There really isn’t much there there but her appetites. The real mystery is why anyone regards her favorably.
Clinton is being helped by Obama’s high approval ratings.
Obama’s ‘high approval ratings’ exist only in your imagination. He was underwater with the public for six years and only recently acquired the acquiescence of a slight majority.
0bama is at 55 percent and yes he and Michele will help Clinton beat the birther.
Nope. The Gallup poll concluded on 2 October 2016 gives him a 52% approval rating. They take these bloody polls weekly. Obama has registered over 52% precisely twice since October of 2009. The mean reading of his 7 years and change in office is 47.9%. You’re welcome to your fantasies, but it’s rude to bother other people with them.
56 percent percent in the new CNN poll
Clinton News Network? Of course we believe those polls 🙄
Obama’s high approval rating due in no small part to the $500 million spent annually on his PR team and the media going easy on him.
The media have circumscribed influence, but they can move the needle among the nonaligned and that can be decisive in some circumstances. I think the full-court press against the President after Katrina (which included trading in a great deal of fiction) in 2005 is an example of this, as well as the agitprop in 1992 contra the first Bush Administration. The current incumbent has gotten away with things worse than what earned Richard Nixon and impeachment resolution courtesy the House Judiciary Committee, maybe because half the reporters in Washington have been hoping for a PR job with the administration or are married to Administration officials.
“Hello no, DNC, we won’t vote for Hill-o-ry” “Lock her up!” those were the enthusiastic chants at the DNC convention in Philly!!
the only Demoncrat currently in Congress that has any integrity is Tulsi Gabbard. She resigned from her position as co chair of the DNC so she could be a Bernie Sanders surrogate. An environmentalist and combat vet who chose to serve with her unit although she could have gotten an exemption – a real person of integrity. She is not afraid of the Clinton mahcine. Not surprisingly the MSM has ignored her. Even PBS only aired less than a minute of her speech at the DNC convention in Philly! Tulsi 2020 if we still have a country left!
Autumn, great points about TG.
Hopefully Russ Feingold will be back in the Senate where his brand is sorely needed.
Autumn, I like Tulsi on many levels!
He must do well in the next debate/townhall or it’s over for him. He had opportunity after opportunity to remind the country what she and the democrats are in the last debate. The once trusted FBI is a sham and a disgrace to national law enforcement. Each day more and more is revealed how they played an active role in the Clinton cover up. Women have always been more insightful then men and it amazes me why they have taken so long to see through one of their own.
If he does prevail in the election those republicans who came out against him might do well to find employment at coffee shops, I doubt that the voters will forget. Our nation faces some difficult days in the future and sadly there is no “Greatest Generation” who will escort her through those days.
Excellent post Karen S!!
Those females who are not brain-dead partisans fully reject HRC. We find her to be a frightening and despicable candidate. And yes, we embrace the deplorables description even if we are not Demoncrats. I keep telling my peeps that a vote for HRC is a vote for endless war, the TPP, environmental destruction and Monsanto. Alt/right newz is saying that Kaine is the Manchurian Candidate –that she is ill and if she wins that Kaine will serve the needs of the corporate masters. I think Pence is the same.
One quick way to help disrupt the death-grip of the duopoly is to never vote for an incumbent.
The duopoly parties will see the first year as a wake-up call and the second election cycle will smash the power structure presently in place. Even if both parties are still in control, the old guard will cease to exist.
That, would be a welcome alternative to what we have.
The old guard always exists. They reside on K street.
Darren, I have ranted here many times we need a grass roots movement to clean Congress. We could flip all the House in one election. The Senate would take a more sustained energy.
Amen.
I do not agree. The political system is like a gyroscope. We had the Tea Party and an electoral disaster for the Democratic Party. Then it was back to business as usual. It takes a real set of cataclysms (say, the economic implosion during the years running from 1929 to 1933) to upend things. That’s Chinese-interesting times, and you’re not going to like the change you get half the time.
I think part of the problem we have is that we used to be better than we are now. In a degraded culture, unscrupulous people with few if any redeeming features (the Clintons), or accomplishments but powerful shortcomings (Trump) do not provoke a saving revulsion. An empty suit with, again, few if any redeeming features (BO) does not provoke that either. Look over the last 25 years and see who the man of quality was among the competitive candidates for this office. Among the Democrats, you could have made a case for Bob Kerrey, Jerry Brown, Wesley Clark, and Bernie Sanders. Offering a mulligan, you could have made one for Paul Tsongas and Bill Bradley as well. On the Republican side, you could make the case for George Bush the Elder, George Bush the Younger, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee. Offering a mulligan, you might have suggested Bob Dole, John McCain (in 2000 only), Rick Santorum, or Ted Cruz. The Bushes won the presidency, but there’s as much to be said against them as for them.
Trump has already fractured the Republican Party. He has outed the RINOs and now they have to live with it. McCain is probably going to win in Az again even if he dies before the election. His war chest is too big. No way to fight it. However, they are saying that AZ is in play this year.
The RINO discourse is silly and needs to be retired. The Republican Party isn’t what you want it to be. It is what it is. When you’re the Republican presidential nominee (as John McCain was), you define what an authentic Republican looks like.
Since Eisenhower’s retirement, competitive candidates for the Republican presidential nomination have tended to be opportunists or Capitol Hill fixtures. That does not mean they advocate anything. It does mean that they’re careerists, with at one time a leavening of people motivated by a nebulous interest in ‘public service’. The people motivated by political principles would be Barry Goldwater, Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, John Anderson, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, Alan Keyes, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz. Rockefeller and Anderson were liberals of a sort and manifestations of a strand of thought you never see in the Republican Party anymore. Robertson, Buchanan, Forbes, and Keyes were all demonstration candidates who likely never intended to do more than rally a constituency or press an issue. Paul was a working politician, but he bore more relation to these demonstration candidates than he did to a serious aspirant. That leaves you with Reagan, Huckabee, Santorum, and Cruz. And Huckabee is commonly despised by the sort who chatter about RINOs.
This year, Trump has broken the mold completely. Whatever he is, he’s not a ‘conservative’ in the mold of Reagan, Santorum, or Cruz.
Essentially it boils down to this.
Trump became the republican candidate because the public was sick and tired of the failings of the Republican Party.
Clinton became the democrat candidate because of a corrupt political machine that is the DNC–which destroyed any other viable candidate among their ranks–and couldn’t care less how displeased the voters were.
Donald Trump is a protest candidate, just as Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger were in previous elections for state governors.
Hillary Clinton is the embodiment of what has gone wrong with Democratic Party: corrupt and the ultimate 1%-er; who is in bed with wall street and espouses most of the other things that the left professes to be against. The only thing she has going for her, as our host mentioned, is that she “is not Trump.”
If Hillary loses this election, the Democratic Party is going to fracture among its leadership and there will be a strong call to re-architect the party to shake out the malfeasance and scandal it presently has manifest. If she wins the election it will only be a few months into her tenure that she will start pissing everyone off and will become the most hated president in history within a year. She will guarantee her party losing subscribers in the future. My biggest fear is that her hawkishness, arrogance, and ambition will provoke a confrontation with the Russians that can be very damaging to both sides. Because, that is, persons such as her never have their ambition satiated by being the U.S. President, she must control everything beyond. That’s going to clash with Putin right from the beginning.
If Trump wins the election, I predict he will eventually split from or demand a reorganization of the Republican Party to be more in-line with what the more libertarian faction of Republicans want. If he doesn’t receive that kind of welcome or accommodation by the republican leadership Trump is in a strong position to establish and organize a viable third party that will disassemble republican party unity. If Mr. Trump goes this direction it will represent an existential threat to the Republican Party and could take many center candidates away from the democrats. Perhaps if this happens, after a few election cycles with a viable third party, we will hopefully see the barriers to such parties come down and an end to legal disenfranchisement of anything other than democrat or republican.
the best analysis of where the Repos are and may end up. Even with a Trump loss the Repos have a lot of work cut out to make them viable on the national scene. I mean look, they just nominated Trump as their best effort at a President. Sheesh.
You’ve nailed it.
It appears that no matter the outcome of the election, we are set for a major political evolution that has been a long time coming.
What do people think about the possibility of abandoning the party system altogether? There is no one political party that suits me perfectly, although I am a fiscal conservative, right of center on taxes, and left of center on some other issues. Is it logistically possible for people to just run on their own platform? Without being able to step in and take the reins of networking that belonging to a political party would establish? Could we remove much of the money in running for office, so that mega parties would not have an advantage?
Maybe people could just run on their own merits and set of ideas. But would that be feasible?
Karen S.
The two major parties are so well-entrenched that I can’t see the U.S. abandoning the party system.
There was an opening for Johnson-Weld to build upon the 8-10% support that they have ( had).
That could have been the start of a real challenge to the two party system, but I think that Gov. Moonbeam II has pretty much peaked out.
IMO, he and his campaign have been a big disappointment.
Dismantling, or more likely challenging, the two party system appears to be a milti-decade, probably multi-generational project.
Well maybe so. But she is still the best man in the race – able to stay up later, read more pages, retain more concepts, write a better draft, and give better answers than anyone else on the scene.
It must be the best of all possible worlds.
Well, with 30 + years of practice, would you except N E thing less?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438788/hillary-clinton-tax-plan-middle-class-tax-hikes
Hillary has always lacked connection with anyone who doesn’t pay her. She comes across as smug, disdainful, insincere, and of course there is her decades’ long history of lying. And that fake laugh that she uses as a pause as she thinks about what to say…
And then there is when she referenced an African America cop shooting an African American suspect, saying she was gong to talk to white people because this isn’t who we are. Then there is her comment that the half of America who supports Trump is a basket of deplorables (now there’s a great unifier.) Getting wealthy to the tune of a quarter billion dollars off of government work, contributions, selling State access, and giving over priced speeches to big banks.
Or there is her statement about wanting to raise taxes on the middle class, reduce prison sentences to reduce overcrowding (a similar policy has caused skyrocketing crime in CA), identifying with the anti-semitic BLM movement, having sex addict Anthony Weiner’s wife, Huma, as her advisor, who was dogged by controversy having been triple paid under Clinton through State and having been an editor for an extremist magazine for something like 12 years, being married to a possible sex addict Bill, who has been dogged by rape and sexual harassment claims, attacking the character of his alleged sexual assault victims, having her aides get immunity and plead the 5th all while claiming not to have broken any laws, Travelgate, Filegate, Benghazi (where she failed to respond to 600 requests for additional security and had to exit plan in place), setting up her own server to avoid FOIA and subpoena…
What’s not for women to love? She is a huge turnoff. There are far more charismatic, moderate, honest, and capable women in the DNC. All HRC has going for her is her gender. Even the media seems to believe she needs a lower bar, as mediators keep trying to help her out such as the attempt to get the mediator to fact check Trump, and only Trump, for her, the media keep helping her… No one seems to think she can do it on her own. Her entire platform seems to be Trump bashing.
Superb leadoff comment, Karen.
Thanks! She represents the Corrupt Establishment to me, and many women like me.
The white women that want a Muslim ban are not voting for her for sure. Neither are the ones that want to build the wall on the southern border.
Agreed! I would equate her to Satan but that seems too good.
Not with HIM
Congrats, you hit almost all the right wing talking points in one post.
There are far more charismatic, moderate, honest, and capable women in the DNC.
Hilligula is so awful that just about anyone who wasn’t borderline insane (say, Maxine Waters) would be an improvement.
The United States isn’t Norway. We have a working military and we do not have a Westminster system for which more collegial methods of leadership are advantageous. That makes the American presidency a ‘masculine’ institution, and there haven’t been many women in politics who seem suitable. Carly Fiorina does. Dianne Feinstein does. Conceivably Gov. Haley (who has a reputation for being a difficult boss).
Terrific!