The Discovery That Trump Is Basically A Rapist Raises Clinton's Lead To...Four Points
Goddamn, America.
She had a two-point lead in the earlier WaPo-ABC poll, then we had a debate in which Trump acted basically crazy. Then we found out that he's somewhere in the vicinity of being a rapist. So what? The debate garnered her one point, and the sexual assault thing one more?
Maybe the latter just hasn't had time to sink in? I suppose you could think that Clinton's policies would be so bad that even Trump would be less disastrous...but I just don't think she's liberal enough for that to be a plausible belief.
She had a two-point lead in the earlier WaPo-ABC poll, then we had a debate in which Trump acted basically crazy. Then we found out that he's somewhere in the vicinity of being a rapist. So what? The debate garnered her one point, and the sexual assault thing one more?
Maybe the latter just hasn't had time to sink in? I suppose you could think that Clinton's policies would be so bad that even Trump would be less disastrous...but I just don't think she's liberal enough for that to be a plausible belief.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:03 AM
12 Comments:
Perhaps many voters are concerned about the fact that there is hard evidence that Clinton committed perjury with respect to illegally harboring and sending highly sensitive information across a private email server. You know, something that was investigated and confirmed by the FBI.
Possibly, but, given that it hasn't been proven, I'm skeptical. We'll see what happens now that she has submitted her written answers.
8 congressional (or was it 9?) investigation turned up nothing, and the FBI was critical of her for doing the same thing her predecessors had done. Good grief already.
There is simply a lot of CDS (Clinton derangement syndrome) out there, and way too many people who are willing to toss "morals" (cough, cough, Falwell Jr, cough) out the window to keep a D (especially Clinton) out of office.
So if the proper thing to do is to wait until Clinton has been afforded due process, then why do we not afford the same to Trump? Am I missing something?
And if there's one thing we know for sure, it's that Trump would handle classified information judiciously.
A--
Yeah, actually you *are* missing something:
We've got a LOT of evidence in already on HRC's emails: smart money says we're not going to turn up any perjury. So we can make a provisional judgment, while recognizing that something new *might*, of course, turn up. The legal judgment could overturn our lay judgments, of course.
We also have a LOT of evidence in now on Trump. In fact, we have all the evidence we need.
Furthermore, HRC says that she didn't do it. Trump has said both that he didn't AND that he did. And he said that he did *under conditions more likely to evoke true assertions.* As I've noted, the bus conditions weren't ideal, since that kind of conversation tends to promote bullshitting. However, those conditions are less likely to evoke falsehoods than the conditions under which Trump has asserted that he didn't assault the women. THOSE conditions are virtually guaranteed to evoke falsehoods from a a guilty party.
Furthermore, the Clinton question is best settled legally. If she's found guilty, then that's probably that. The Trump question is probably not best settled that way. He's admitted it, an avalanche of credible witnesses have confirmed his admission, and it's the kind of crime that people often don't report, and that tends to leave no evidence other than victim reports...and a crime that victims tend not to report...
There *are* many non-credible reports, especially now, and on campuses, due to rape crisis hysteria. These women speaking against Trump are not of that world.
I don't think the case you make is silly, but I also don't think it's very strong.
Oh, and, also, we've got other confirmation of other things he said--e.g. that he walks back stage at beauty pageants to leer at half-dressed contestants, pretending to "inspect" something or other.
And women have confirmed that, indeed, he does, and that this is not something normal for pageants. (In the past, I also noted that him saying that wan't very good evidence against him, since, for all most of us know, backstage at pageants is like backstage at the theater, and clothing conventions are largely ignored. But, as it turns out, that apparently ain't so...)
So, again, while I think that there's an asymmetry in the two cases, I think I'm justified in thinking that.
I'm preaching as if *ex cathedra*...but didn't mean to be.
But anyway, I think what I said is true, FWIW
Okay, this is a reasonable response. I'll have to think about this some more. I'm totally in agreement that we ought to reserve judgment about the HRC emails until due process has been afforded, and no amount of right-wing propaganda should cause us to assent to the belief that she almost certainly engaged in illegal behavior.
I guess that I was having trouble seeing the disanalogy between the two cases. I just never know how to approach claims/allegations about sexual assault w/o hard evidence.
Yeah, well, it's a fair question and I could totally be wrong.
I'm definitely not perfectly objective in either case. I'm rather scared that HRC *did* do something wrong, and I'm terrified of a Trump Presidency, so I'm sure I'm tilting things at least somewhat.
These kinds of allegations also enrage me so I'm probably not objective about those, either...but I just find some of these women and their accounts extremely credible...even independently of Trump's self-incrimination when didn't realize he was being recorded.
I agree that it's often hard to know what to make of such allegations...but it seems to me that these allegations are far over on the credible end of the spectrum...unlike, say, "mattress girl" who has been sold a bill of theoretical goods by the campus left, continued to pursue and have sex with the accused after the alleged incident, and has benefited greatly from her celebrity victim status...
Now, this is not an attempt to deflect from Trump, but in order to make it clear what conclusion we should draw from cases such as these, are we to apply the same strategy to Bill Clinton and his accusers? I know that Bill doesn't have nearly as many accusers, and that many of his sexcapades were affairs, but three women coming forward to make such accusations should catch our eyes to some extent. Unless, of course, we can just chalk up the accusations to further attempts by the GOP to sully the Clinton name.
Furthermore (and I'm arguing conditionally here), what do we make of HRC's quote:
"To every survivor of sexual assault...You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed. We're with you."?
I'll make it abundantly clear that, rather obviously, the act of committing sexual assault and the act of continuing to associate oneself with one who is accused of committing sexual assault should elicit different responses, but what does this say about HRC, if it is the case that Bill committed these acts? Or if it is the case that we're justified from the basis of the accusers that Bill committed these acts? I'm inclined to say that it doesn't tell us *that* much about her, but I don't think that it says nothing about her. Maybe she, herself, doesn't know what to make of such accusations.
Of course, in any case, Trump is still on the far end and should be the object of harsher rebuke. The case against Trump is stronger, I admit. Perhaps the case against HRC with respect to Bill's accusations is not really much of one at all. I'm mostly speculating here. No strong conclusions.
FWIW, I agree with everything you say.
I just don't know what to think about BC, whereas I think the Trump case is very clear.
HRC is, I think, in the vicinity of the truth when she says that every *survivor* of sexual assault has something akin to a right to be believed... But I think the controversial view that that's mistaken with is: every *accuser* has a right to be believed. If that's what HRC thinks, then she believes something that's probably false, and she's caught in an inconsistency.
I think she shouldn't have said that, because I don't think that every accuser of ANY kind has a right to be believed.
But anyway: I've fretted so much about this over the years...I finally gave up.
Currently I fall back a lot on the fact that we face a comparative choice between two options, and one is simply not a serious possibility.
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