One thing Clinton supporters remain in complete denial about (other than the fact most Americans who don’t identify as Democrats find her to be somewhere in between untrustworthy and criminal), is that a significant number of Sanders supporters will never vote for Hillary. Forget the fact that I know a few personally, I’ve noticed several interviews with voters who proclaim Sanders to be their first choice but Trump their second. Are they just saying this or do they mean it? I think a lot of them mean it.

– From the post: Why Hillary Clinton Cannot Beat Donald Trump

I continue to see Hillary Clinton as one of the most overrated political figures in American history, and Donald Trump as one of the most underrated. This is why I think “the experts” are wrong about the outcome of a potential Clinton vs. Trump showdown in the general election.

Hillary’s weaknesses are obvious. I’ve highlighted new shameless transgressions or scandals on these pages virtually every day for several months now. Furthermore, the fact that the grassroots campaign juggernaut known as the Sanders movement seemingly came out of nowhere, proves there’s a huge ideological vacuum on left just asking to be filled in light of Clinton’s neoconservative candidacy.

As far as Trump’s concerned, I’m of the view that his real genius is marketing and his tremendous force of personality. He’s not so much a brilliant businessman, as he is virtually peerless when it comes to selling himself to whomever he targets. While I don’t condone or respect such behavior, I do think a lot of what he said during the primary was carefully crafted rhetoric designed to appeal to a certain demographic in order to win the nomination. It worked. The fact that he knew exactly what to say, while most pundits kept expecting his frequent outbursts to bury him proves that he knew what he was doing, and exposed the pundits’ cluelessness.

If he ends up as the Republican nominee in the general election, he’ll analyze the American public as a whole, as opposed to merely registered Republicans, and he’ll campaign accordingly. Can he pull this off? If anyone can, he can. He’s a billionaire primarily because he is a genius at knowing exactly what people want and then selling himself to them.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the crux of this article. The question posed is; can Trump beat Clinton in New York? For this, I want to highlight a couple of paragraphs from The Week article, The Clinton Doomsday Scenario:

On first glance, everything seemed to go swimmingly for Hillary Clinton in New York last week, and foreshadowed a big Empire State victory for her in the general election. In the primary, she earned more than 1 million votes — nearly double the 525,000 of Donald Trump. Plus, she’s a Democrat. She’s a New Yorker. She’ll crush him there in the fall, right? And then sweep to victory in a massive electoral landslide unlike anything we’ve seen since 1984? Well, possibly. Maybe even probably. But don’t bank on it. Lots of pundits have posited that Trump could actually beat Clinton in New York. Most of them make a variant of two arguments: One, his appeal to white working class voters is strong; two: he’s more of a rough-and-tumble, born-and-bred New Yorker than she is, and has a stronger claim to the state. Both of these arguments are trivially true. Furthermore, the New York primary was closed — no independents allowed — and because Democrats outnumber Republicans in New York state by a two-to-one margin, Hillary’s big vote total was exactly what one would expect her to get if she had the same level of organic support among Democrats as Trump did among Republicans. There’s another caveat: Trump ran against two other candidates; Clinton ran against only one. That further dilutes the strength of her victory. And another: Polls show that the independent voters who couldn’t vote because of New York’s primary rules would have supported either Trump or Bernie Sanders; very few would have chosen Clinton. A final nugget from the exit polls: 20 percent of Sanders supporters say they’d support Trump in the fall over Clinton.

I believe the key to 2016 will be independents, which we learned earlier this year make up a massive 43% if the American public. Yes, it’s true that many of these “independents” lean toward one party or the other, but I’d argue Democratic-leaning independents are probably not big Hillary Rodham Clinton fans.

Never forget this chart when thinking about the general:

Most pundits will say the 2016 election is Hillary’s to lose. I see it the other way. Given the justified angst amongst the populace, and Donald Trump’s uncanny ability to read an audience and sell himself to it, I actually think this election is the Donald’s to lose.

Stay tuned.

For related articles, see:

Hillary Clinton’s Full Speech to Goldman Sachs (Satire)

Camille Paglia – “Enough with the Hillary Cult”

Why Hillary Clinton Cannot Beat Donald Trump

Who’s the Real Progressive? A Side by Side Comparison of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s Lifetime Donors

The Real Reason Hillary Clinton Refuses to Release Her Wall Street Transcripts

“We’re Going to War” – Oliver Stone Opines on the Dangerous Extremism of Neocon Hillary Clinton

In Liberty,

Michael Krieger



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