Today, I received an e-mail from MoveOn.org asking me to donate five dollars in order to fund a new commercial attacking Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The commercial would focus on the prospect of Trump getting his hands on America's nuclear weapons. As the e-mail stated:

Donald Trump's climbing in the polls.1 It's time to go nuclear. (In a way.) MoveOn made an important discovery in the course of our intensive research this summer: A key bloc of swing voters appears to be most strongly persuaded to vote against Trump when confronted with the threat of his finger on the nuclear button.2 As part of this research effort, our Video Lab made an ad, ran the video online to show it to voters in swing states, and teamed up with researchers at the Analyst Institute to study its effectiveness—and the results blew us away. In our controlled study, men over the age of 30 who watched our video about Trump's finger on the nuclear button were seven percentage points more likely to support Clinton over Trump, compared to those who didn't watch the ad.

Given his at times erratic behavior, concerns over Trump getting the bomb are understandable. However, the people at Move On failed to consider the issue of their own candidate getting the bomb, which is arguably concerning in its own right.

My Gut Reaction: Somehow, I don't think someone who threatens to annihilate Iran is a safe option for the presidency, either.

More below the fold...

Hillary Clinton's own history of militaristic policy positions, along with jingoistic statements such as the one references above, make her an at best dubious candidate for control of our nation's nuclear weapons. She has shown poor judgment by voting in favor of the 2003 invasion of Iraq as well as her advocacy of intervention in Libya while Secretary of State. Even more disturbingly, she has proposed further involvement in the Middle East, including intervention in the Syrian Civil War. Her calls for establishing a no-fly zone over Syria are particularly dangerous, given the presence of Russian military forces in the region. As Adam Johnson described in an opinion piece for Al Jazeera, conflict of some sort with the world's other major nuclear power would be inevitable:

There’s little reason to believe Russia would sell out their only ally in the Middle East, and they’re certainly not going to assist the U.S. in bombing this ally’s air defense and warplanes. The reason Clinton described a fantasy no-fly zone where Russia joins the U.S. is because a real one could potentially require the U.S. to shoot down Russian jets, and starting World War III doesn’t square with the wishes of most Democrats, let alone most Americans.

In a scenario like the one Hillary Clinton calls for, the potential for the situation to escalate into a disaster would be very real. All it would take would be one American, or Russian, or Syrian pilot exceeding his or her rules of engagement to trigger a confrontation and World War III. As despicable as Trump is, nothing he has called for, to my knowledge, is anywhere near as dangerous as Clinton's proposed policy.

This, in my view, is the ultimate deal breaker that prevents me from voting for Clinton. All the other issues Clinton supporters cite as reason to hold one's nose: immigration, the Supreme Court, etc., become moot in the face of a nuclear war. No one would care anymore, because we'd all be dead.