Posts Tagged ‘Hillary Clinton’

Why is Hillary Clinton’s height still a mystery?

September 15, 2016
clintons-vital-statistics-daily-mail

clintons vital statistics – daily mail

Why is Hillary Clinton’s height such a mystery? Is it 5’5″ or 5’7″? Why should it matter?

After her fainting fit on Sunday at the 9/11 commemoration, and the revelations about her pneumonia, she has now released some information about her various medical conditions.

But not her height and weight.

I observed this exactly a year ago:

Hillary Clinton is still growing.

Back in 2008, she was 5’5″ tall. But she has now reached 5’7″ according to most media and internet sources and, above all, Google. Her campaign has released some of her medical records but is silent about her height. Questions about her height are not answered. …….. So, 5’5″ should be nothing to be so ashamed of. Queen Victoria was only 5′ tall. Queen Elizabeth I was between 5’3″ and 5’5″. And Carly Fiorina with heels is at 5’6″.

No change in the secrecy about her height since a year ago.

Of course one reason could be that it makes it easier to get away with using a “body double” who is actually a different height. Just another conspiracy theory perhaps.

But anybody hearing her coughing fits and observing her behaviour last Sunday, will conclude that a cover-up about her health is continuing. They may well also conclude that the “health conspiracy theory” is turning out to be true.

The body-double theory is a little more far fetched – at least at first sight. Certainly the photographs taken at the 9/11 ceremony and those taken later in the afternoon show a recovery bordering on the incredible and provide much fuel for the “body double” conspiracy. The Clinton campaign’s secrecy around her height also supports the use – perhaps for quite some time – of a body-double. One wonders if the double goes so far as take some of the medical tests when required.


Related:

Now Hillary Clinton reaches for “average” as 5′ 5″ morphs to 5′ 7″


 

By Clinton’s arithmetic slightly less than 33 million Americans are deplorable

September 11, 2016

She started the ruckus by saying that half of all Trump’s supporters were “a basket of deplorables”.

She later backed away from that but only to the extent of saying that the “half” was “wrong” but implied that many – without specifying how many – were still “deplorable”.

les-deplorables

image from theconservativetreehouse.com

The US population is now about 320 million and voter turnout in November will be about 42% of the total population. Of 135 million votes Trump will get – win or lose – about 67 million votes.

Even Hillary Clinton’s grasp of arithmetic should be capable of drawing the conclusion that she has just said that

  1. about 33 million Americans are deplorable, and with her non-apology
  2. something slightly less than 33 million Americans are “deplorable”.

Having used the word “half” she can no longer claim that she actually meant that anything much less than about 33 million Americans are “deplorable”. It could be 49% of 67 million or even 45% but it certainly could not be down to 40% (26 million). It will take some disingenuity for her to get past this.


 

A matter for the Gods, but what if God is female and Republican?

August 26, 2016

Donald Clinton or Hillary Trump?

I don’t suppose that either is (yet?) the “Chosen of God”. If God is female or a Republican or a Democrat the result is a foregone conclusion. If God is a female Republican then She has a dilemma. If God is a feminist She may abstain from this election.

Hillary Clinton wins if God is female (but not a Republican) If the one true God is Allah, Trump is immediately disqualified, but so is Hillary for being female. If the one true God is Jehovah, He could choose Trump. Donald Trump wins by default if God is a Republican Goddess. He also wins with a Vengeful God. A Compassionate or a Loving or a Caring God has little choice but to abstain. A God for the Meek would also have to abstain. A God of Power would favour Trump while a God of Intrigue would plump for Hillary. A Goddess of Wealth (a Laxmi) would need to decide whether Clinton’s gender was sufficient to offset Trump’s wealth advantage. (If the Clinton Foundation is taken into account, Laxmi would have to choose Clinton). A God of War might well choose Clinton as the most likely to prolong death and destruction in the Middle East. Brahma and Shiva might have reservations about Trump carrying their banners but a Durga could see Hillary Clinton as an acolyte.

If God is black then Clinton wins in the reflected shadow of Barack Obama. If God is a ruddy pink then Trump wins by a landslide. Freyja is the Goddess associated with love, sex, beauty, fertility, gold, war, and death. A Freyja supremacy would speak overwhelmingly for Clinton (with reservations for the sex component). A Crusading God would charge Trump with winning back Constantinople and Jerusalem. Zeus (Jupiter) and his ability to win games of chance would identify himself with Trump. Hera (Juno) might have some difficulty identifying with Hillary.

In the short term the winner will impact the wealth and misery and the deaths of many. For true believers the winner – whoever it is – must have been, and will be, the Chosen One. It is not possible for the winner not to be the Chosen One. It is equally unthinkable for God to have chosen wrong.

It could be that God does not much care who wins.

But in the long term, it does not really matter whether it is Donald Clinton or Hillary Trump who wins.


 

Murdered DNC leaker to Wikileaks is latest addition to the Bill and Hillary body count

August 11, 2016

The “Bill & Hillary body count” is unusually long. It is more reminiscent of that of a dictator of a banana republic than of a leading “democratic” country. Now one more joins the list.

The number of people from the Bill & Hillary Clinton “inner circle” who have died mysteriously is between 50 and about 80. It seems that potential “whistleblowers” who may have had information implicating the Clintons are particularly vulnerable. I recall the apparent suicide of White House Counsel, Vince Foster in 1993 and the strong speculation that, in fact, he was eliminated because he had found something incriminating while investigating Bill Clinton’s finances.

Seth Rich, a DNC worker, was murdered on 10th July, apparently the victim of an armed robbery. But now it seems – from what Julian Assange says – that Rich was the source of the leak of information from the DNC to Wikileaks. And, he implies, Rich was murdered to prevent his testifying to the FBI. The speculation continues that he had information about the Clinton campaign’s activities (via the DNC) against Bernie Sanders and his murder was to shut him up.

[Seth

Seth Conrad Rich

Inquisitr: 

Seth Rich Murdered For Leaking DNC Emails?

Seth Rich may have been the source of the DNC email leak, the founder of WikiLeaks suggested this week about the murdered Democratic National Committee staffer.

Rich, who was murdered in Washington, D.C., back in July, has been the subject of a number of conspiracy theories. There were reports that he was planning to speak to the FBI about potential election fraud being committed in the Democratic primary, a report that turned out to have no basis, and now there are reports that he was the one who supplied the organization WikiLeaks with access to tens of thousands of emails from the DNC.  

Speculation had started to build that Seth Rich could have some connection to WikiLeaks when the organization’s founder, Julian Assange, announced this week that he was offering a $20,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest in his death.

Assange took the speculation a step further, insinuating in an appearance on a Dutch television show that Seth Rich was a “source” to the organization. The Gateway Pundit had a transcript of Assange’s appearance and his reference to Rich.

Julian Assange: Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks. As a 27 year-old, works for the DNC, was shot in the back, murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington.

Reporter: That was just a robbery, I believe. Wasn’t it?

Julian Assange: No. There’s no finding. So… I’m suggesting that our sources take risks.

The statements from Julian Assange kick-started a new round of speculation that Seth Rich may have been murdered for his role in uncovering fraud on the part of the DNC. While the allegations about election fraud during the Democratic Primary have been debunked as a misunderstanding about the nature of exit polling, the possibility that Rich was an informant opened up a new avenue for conspiracy theories.

whatreallyhappened.com is maintaining a list of the “Clinton body count”.

Their list has well over 50 names and they have the following entries about Vince Foster and Seth Rich:

Vincent Foster

Deputy White House Counsel

Died: July 21, 1993

Found dead in Ft. Marcy Park in Washington, DC, of a supposed suicide by gunshot. A suicide note was supposedly found a few days later, torn into several pieces, in his briefcase, after his office had been entered by White House staff and materials removed. The “suicide” note, (leaked despite official efforts to keep it from view) has since been revealed to be a forgery.

The gun which he supposedly used to kill himself was reported to be still in his hand, but the person who first found the body reports that there was no gun at that time. Many irregularities surround the death and the investigation of it. For one thing, neither Foster’s fingerprints or blood were on the gun he supposedly inserted into his mouth and fired. There was no blood on Foster’s hands.

Foster was also from Hope, Ark., like Clinton, and also worked for the Rose Law firm. Foster had intimate knowledge of the Clintons’ personal finances. Foster was involved in an investigation of their finances, and reportedly made a phone call to Hillary Clinton, in Los Angeles, just hours before his death. Foster had been called to testify to Congress about the records Hillary refused to turn over. Another possible motive for the murder relates to the Clinton Presidential Blind Trust, being prepared by Foster, but six months late. Testimony during the Whitewater hearings suggestsd the trust was fraudulent, with the Clintons retaining control over much of their finances, in order to profits from inside information.

Recently, the signed report of M.E. Dr. Donald Haut was uncovered at the National Archives, proving that Foster had a previously unreported gunshot wound to his neck.

Finally, an FBI memo surfaced dated the day after the date of the official autopsy, in which the autopsist informed the FBI that there was NO exit wound.

Seth Conrad Rich

DNC Voter Expansion Data Director

Died: July 10, 2016

Seth Conrad Rich was shot several times in the back a block from his home in D.C.’s neighborhood of Bloomingdale. The police declared it a roberry gone bad, but nothing had been taken; Seth still had his wallet, watch, and cell phone.

One possible motive for his assasination lies with the WikiLeaks dump of 20,000 DNC emails which proved the DNC was rigging the primaries to favor Hillary Clinton. The scandal forced DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz to resign. Although Hillary’s people tried to portray this as a hack by Russia, to cast Hillary as a victim of international intrigue, WikiLeaks, while not identifying the leak, denied it was Russia, and stated it was an “internal” leak. If Seth (who was in a perfect position to acquire the data) were the leak, that would be ample motive to murder him, as a warning to others inside the DNC not to blow any whistles.

Shortly after the killing, Redditors and social media users were pursuing a “lead” saying that Rich was en route to the FBI the morning of his murder, apparently intending to speak to special agents about an “ongoing court case” possibly involving the Clinton family.

A reward has been offered for information on this murder.

Whatever the truth is, it is clearly not healthy to be allowed into the Clinton circle and then try to leave.


 

Are Clinton and Trump really the best the US can come up with?

August 1, 2016

The election process will no doubt be entertaining. Trump’s antics and Clinton’s contortions will provide much fodder for fun. But I don’t envy the choice that US electors are facing. Clinton or Trump is not exactly being spoilt for choice. It is not possible to just cry “a plague on both your houses” and abstain. One of them will be the next President. It boils down to a choice between evils.

The US population is now about 320 million.

US voters 2016 - Pew Research

US voters 2016 – Pew Research

In November this year there will be 226 million registered voters (156 million white, 27 million black, 27 million hispanic and 10 million asian). At most there will be a voter turnout of 60% and so the next US President will be declared elected with a vote of around 68 million – which is around 30% of registered voters and just 21% of the US population.

But what is really no great tribute to US democracy in particular, and party democracies in general, is that the voters will have no better choice than to choose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Is this really the best that 320 million people can come up with? There is increasing interest being shown in a 3rd party candidate, but it is way too little, far too late to have any bearing on the November election.

I am not a US citizen and I don’t have a vote and it shouldn’t really matter to me. But of course the choice of US President affects everybody  – somewhat. US domestic policy affects me primarily through what it means to my friends and relatives living in the US, and through the effect on my own economy (mainly indirectly). US foreign policy will have an undoubted impact on the state of the world and thus – but more tenuously – have some implications for me.

No democracy is perfect. In fact, no democracy anywhere is a “full democracy”. Party democracies really represent party members and are particularly poor at representing the electorate. Even dictators make sure that they are “elected” democratically. All democracies use processes which put in place people who can be “monarchs”, having varying powers, for a time. All ” democratic leaders” are effectively such “monarchs”, elected to exercise their powers, for a time. The closer you get to a “full democracy”, the closer you get to anarchy and the less you have leaders. In many democracies with proportional representation, you no longer have leaders – only followers. You could argue that the current UK government, which is implementing the referendum result for a Brexit, has no need for, and has no, leader. Theresa May is not then a Brexit leader but a Chief Follower.

The democratic nature of political systems, in practice, is established by their process for choosing their “leaders”to stand for election. The long-winded US process for each party choosing a nominee, is more democratic and all-encompassing than most party political processes for choosing representatives. But this process, in the way US democracy works, has thrown up Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. To the dissatisfaction of most.

While I am happy to be entertained by the US election process, I am more than a little disappointed that, no matter what happens, the world is stuck with the fact that one of these unedifying two is going to be the next President.

It is a little bit sad.


 

 

Trump dominates even the Democratic convention

July 28, 2016

The DNC convention should have been all about Hillary. Instead it is becoming all about Trump.

Not unexpectedly, it has been Trump-bashing all week both by Democrat politicians and by the – largely – anti-Trump media. Last night Obama came out strongly in Clinton’s corner and criticised Trump. Michael Bloomberg stated that Hillary was “sane and competent” unlike Trump. Somebody else went down the dubious  “all good girls have abortions” line. and attacked Trump. Harry Reid attacked Trump, Martin O’Malley attacked Trump, Joe Biden attacked Trump. Joe Biden went on to say that “America was already great”. Chris Murphy attacked Donald Trump, Tim Kaine attacked Trump. Michelle Obama attacked Trump and said that “America was the greatest”. Bernie Sanders attacked Trump. Bernie Sanders’ supporters were very unhappy with the DNC and Hillary Clinton, but they too attacked Trump.

Everybody in sight and his pet dog attacked Trump.

Many of the attacks are so contrived or so over-the-top that they can only be counter-productive. The Democrats have effectively handed Trump a full week of attention and publicity on a plate. There’s still another day for the DNC convention to run, but it is quite clear that attacking Donald Trump dominates the proceedings – even more than supporting Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump is dominating the media and all attention even at Clinton’s party.

Donald Trump is holding out being “Great Again” as the hope. To counter that by just saying America is “Already Great” could be the strategic blunder of this election.

It has been my theory for over 6 months now that full-frontal attacks on Trump are counter productive. His support feeds and grows on such attacks from the establishment. It is also my theory that to diminish his support requires occupying some of the ground he stands on – not by denying that the ground exists. “Great Again” is what an increasing number of the electorate aspire to. For Michelle Obama to merely claim that “America is the greatest” gives such aspirations no hope at all. Is she really saying to “black live matters” that all is “sweetness and light”? Barack Obama – after 8 years of “where he could but didn’t” – merely asks them to live in hope rather than in fear. For Joe Biden to also say that “America was already great” was a denial of hope for those who live in a depression and keep going only buoyed by their  aspirations for something better.

“Already Great”  smacks of complacency. It gives no room for aspirations. It is likely to be a bad loser against “Great Again”.  It is not what Democrats would like to hear or to acknowledge but “Great Again” is about hope and “Great Already” is about complacency.

The Democrats are turning Trump into the candidate of hope.


 

Trump can’t do “issues” and Clinton can’t do “mood”

July 24, 2016

It is my observation and experience that logic and rational arguments on the one hand and emotional arguments on the other are like parallel lines which never meet. If logical argument is pitted against emotions, a meeting of minds is not possible, nobody is persuaded and nobody “wins”. It strikes me that the US Presidential election is going to be between one candidate trying to get the electorate to respond to emotions and the other to argument. But it would be wrong to think that an apparently reasoned argument is always more correct or “better” than an emotional one. Intuition, gut-feelings and hunches are often correct and are all essentially examples of “emotional” decision making. Even economic decisions – which one might expect to be very rational – are nearly always trumped by the “mood” in the markets.

Trump may be exaggerating the gloom and doom but nobody in their right minds would argue that all is sweetness and light. And it would seem from the anger and frustration and powerlessness that is abroad among the US electorate, that there is a revolt against the direction that conventional, correct politics has taken the US. I see no other explanation for the “anti-establishment” wave present, not only in the US, but globally. There is electoral capital to be made – globally – by tapping into this “mood” that the wrong path has been followed for far too long.

Now, the US Presidential election is boiling down to be a fight between evoking a “mood” on the one hand against an argued presentation of “issues”. The contrast between the two candidates is stark. Hillary Clinton’s strength does not lie in appealing to emotions to evoke a mood of sweetness and light to counter Trump’s gloom and doom. Donald Trump, however, is not the best person for presenting a rational, argued position on a complex issue.

For the US electorate I think it is going to be a classic stand-off between heart and head, between impulse buying against a purchase based on a cost-benefit analysis. I don’t think that one is necessarily “better” than the other. I have made some impulse buys which were disasters and others which were inspired. In the corporate world I hardly ever made large purchases which were not based on some form of cost-benefit analysis. But I also remember how assumptions were skewed to cover the “intangibles” so that the analysis eventually matched the “gut feeling”. Apparently “reasoned” decisions were actually emotional ones.

Trump can’t do issues – but he can do “mood”. “We should have gone to Mars and not to the Middle East” is all about evoking a mood. “Make America safe again/ proud again / great again” is a naked appeal to return to “the good old days” which only ever exist in the rosy fog of nostalgia. In trying to evoke “mood”, Trump can ignore getting bogged down in policy details at which he is not particularly adept. Clinton on the other hand, may try occasionally to evoke emotions, but that always seems very contrived and could be counter-productive. She will probably be far better off to stick to reasoned argument.

In November it is going to be mood versus issues. Trump can’t do “issues” and Clinton can’t do “mood”. For the US voter it is, I think,  going to be the emotional choice between a high-risk, high-gain Trump or the reasoned choice of a low-risk, low-gain Clinton. Things have crystallised but not changed much since I wrote 3 months ago:

After 8 years of a lack-lustre and indecisive, risk-averse Barack Obama who promised much only to deceive, Hillary Clinton offers “more of the same”. She is as “establishment” as it is possible to be. She represents the safe choice. There is no chance of any kind of greatness, only of a slight improvement or a gentle decline. She removes the possibility of a “high gain” scenario.

But I see two possible outcomes with Donald Trump. The first is that he will be the unmitigated disaster that the media and the politically correct expect. In this scenario, the US will become a harder, more bigoted country, less tolerant of minorities and less compassionate. It will become divisive in domestic affairs and inept and dangerous in its foreign policy. It will become a sin to remain poor. …. The second scenario is that US domestic and foreign policy will become entirely “trade” oriented. International friendships and alliances will have to have a cost-benefit analysis. Public spending and government jobs will be drastically down-sized. Bureaucrats will be subject to performance indicators. It will not be a sin to be rich. The ideological shift will be to “people as they deserve” rather than to “people as they desire”.

Trump versus Clinton

High-risk, high-gain Trump or low-risk, low-gain Clinton


 

If “law and order” becomes the dominating issue, Clinton could easily lose

July 18, 2016

Hillary Clinton appears to have a substantial lead over Donald Trump in many polls (though there are some polls which puts them quite close). His uninspiring choice of running mate does not bode well either (for him). But, paradoxically, it is “black lives matter” and the mood it inculcates of it being “open season” on the police, which might give Trump an unbeatable edge.

It is not just in Dallas, or now in Baton Rouge, that policemen (some of them black) are being killed by murderous black men. The LA Times (which is virulently anti-Trump), reports:

When five police officers were killed and nine wounded in an attack during a protest march in Dallas on July 7, it rattled the nation. Ten days later, three officers were killed and three injured in Baton Rouge, La., as they were responding to a call about a suspicious person with an assault rifle.

Between the two attacks, law enforcement officers from Georgia to Michigan were shot in incidents that drew far less attention but have added to the growing sense that it’s a dangerous time to be a cop. With the Dallas shootings, 31 law enforcement officers have died in the line of duty so far this year, compared with 18 officers who had died at this point in 2015, according the statistics from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund

…… “As we see increases, it becomes very concerning, particularly when you see increases in the cases of the nature of Dallas,” Breul said. “Certainly there is a climate now — and the Dallas case indicates that there is a climate now — that certainly should have police on guard,” he added. 

Supporters of “black lives matter” were not slow in celebration of the deaths and in commending the police killers both after Dallas and after Baton Rouge. (Not unlike the Islamic teenagers celebrating after the terrorist truck attack in Nice). Donald Trump responded immediately and was quick to draw a picture of the break-down of law and order and the lack of leadership. Hillary Clinton, however, took almost 8 hours to respond very cautiously to the Baton Rouge killings. Sarcastic comments suggested she was waiting for her focus group to tell her what to say.

“Immigration” is the issue that has probably helped most – so far – to fuel Trump’s support among those who feel it has gotten out of control. However there is a significant amount of support for the pro-immigration position as well, which accrues – by default – to Hillary Clinton.  “Law and Order” as an issue is different to “immigration”. There is only a “pro” position here. It is not possible to be “against” law and order. If “law and order” becomes a key issue then it becomes the candidates’ credibility to promote “law and order” that count.

And here, I think, Hillary Clinton could lose very heavily. There is no conceivable way she can present herself as being in favour of, or of being able to restore, or even manage “law and order”. It is not so much that Trump will have any more in the way of solutions than blank support of the security forces, but Clinton does not even understand the problem. Her perceived pandering to “black lives matter” means not just zero credibility regarding “law and order”, but actually a huge negative that she must first overcome. Clinton would lose rather than that Trump would win.

Trump’s best chance now to win against Clinton probably depends upon “immigration” and “law and order” becoming the key issues in November. If “law and order” becomes the dominating issue then Clinton will self-destruct.


 

Hillary Clinton being “extremely careless” passes the test for criminal “gross negligence”

July 6, 2016

This is the Director of the FBI about a Secretary of State

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

By any standard of exercise of professional competence this is tantamount to a description of gross negligence.

The Legal Dictionary: Gross negligence is a conscious and voluntary disregard of the need to use reasonable care, which is likely to cause foreseeable grave injury or harm to persons, property, or both. It is conduct that is extreme when compared with ordinary Negligence, which is a mere failure to exercise reasonable care. Ordinary negligence and gross negligence differ in degree of inattention, while both differ from willful and wanton conduct, which is conduct that is reasonably considered to cause injury. 

Clinton Free Pass

That Hillary Clinton gets away with gross negligence can only confirm for those of the anti-establishment persuasion that the system is rigged and plays right into Donald Trump’s narrative. In this case receiving no formal censure can actually be worse for Hillary Clinton than being formally charged with some relatively trivial misdemeanour.

As always with a case amounting to gross negligence – in any field – it is a matter of incompetence.

Andrew Mccarthy writes in the National Review:

There is no way of getting around this:

According to Director James Comey (disclosure: a former colleague and longtime friend of mine), Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was “extremely careless” and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services. Yet, Director Comey recommended against prosecution of the law violations he clearly found on the ground that there was no intent to harm the United States.

In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence.

There are two take-aways here:

  1. Hillary Clinton has been given a “free pass” by the establishment for a clear case of a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18), and
  2. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton displayed incompetence.

 

The election is Hillary’s to lose

June 21, 2016

Does Donald Trump really have a chance to win the Presidential election in November? It is – still – improbable but it is not impossible. Both Hillary Clinton and Trump have such high negatives that I suspect this is becoming an election which will be lost by someone rather than be won by anyone.

It is not difficult to imagine blunders by Trump which can increase his negatives. His support is driven by attacks on him perceived to be from the “establishment”. His negatives could multiply quite easily to make him unelectable.

But what could Hillary Clinton do that would increase her negatives? I can think of the following:

  1. Choosing another woman as her VP pick. An all woman ticket will win some but will probably lose more. More importantly it may lose her more support among traditional Democratic, blue collar, and minority groups. Muslims and some of the other ethnic groups who are now for Clinton, would have second thoughts if it was an all-woman ticket.
  2. Go too soft on immigration. Legal immigrants are not at all keen on the too-easy rationalisation and ratification of the status of illegal immigrants. It devalues the effort and hardships they have had to endure and overcome. The problem for Clinton would be that even a small defection – or even abstention – of her assumed “captive voters” could have a major impact on her vote.
  3. No message for the young. Bernie Sanders has enthused some of the young in a way that is alien to Hillary. With no clear message for the young beyond the usual cliches, she could see a large abstention of the millennials. The young voting surge seen in 2008 has peaked and is already on the way down. A lack of any clear and uplifting message would only exacerbate this trend.
  4. Clinton is indicted for emails or Libya or something. Many of Clinton’s negatives are based on her perceived dishonesty and deviousness. A formal indictment will only cement such perceptions and – if serious enough – could even make her unelectable.
  5. Revelations that Hillary “allowed” or “covered-up” Bill’s sexual transgressions. Hillary is already on shaky ground when it comes to her “feminist” credentials. If it is perceived that she actually helped Bill in his predatory behaviour with young women, then she could lose all her support from Republican women voters and and a good chunk of her Democratic female support.
  6. Revelations that the State Department under Hillary actively supported the groups that have now become ISIS. To some extent this is already “out there”. But memos or the like linking, first, US support for these extreme groups in Syria and second, those groups with what is now ISIS, could be debilitating in its own right. It could also provide Trump with some serious ammunition.

It is difficult to see either Clinton or Trump coming with positive messages which command enthusiasm and which can mobilise the electorate in their support. It is quite possible to see them alienate further groups and increase their own negative perceptions such that they mobilise voters only against themselves (#stoptrump or #stopclinton).

It is still a long way to November but it is an election that will, I think, be lost by someone.