Trump Versus Hillary

Real Clear Politics has just moved Maine from "leans Clinton" to a "tossup" state, which might explain Trump's several trips to Maine during the election period. I don't think Hillary has been here once. I don't know if anyone has been here from the Clinton campaign. I can see that Maine is often discussed as one of the battleground states now, so they are looking at it as being close enough that our 4 electoral votes might make a difference. The way that Maine's electoral votes are divided is that two of them go the the candidate who gets the most votes statewide, one goes to the candidate who wins the 1st District and the other goes to the candidate who wins the 2nd District. Since all of the cities and most of the population are in the 1st District, and the 1st District usually votes Democrat, usually only the one 2nd District electoral vote is open to Republicans, but there is a chance this year that Trump will take both districts or win such an overwhelming percentage of the 2nd District to gain a majority of the statewide votes, giving him either four electoral votes or three.

In 2012, Obama won both the 1st and 2nd District, largely because the RNC replaced half of Maine's delegation to the Republican Convention with unelected Romney delegates, thus angering the majority of Maine Republicans, who had voted for Ron Paul in the primary, and ended up writing him in or voting third party rather than for Romney.

 

It hasn't come up for discussion here, that I know of, so I don't know if any of you have been following the Libertarian Party, but they had been polling as high as 10-15% in some states, including some like Maine, where the vote might be close between Hillary and Trump.

The Libertarian Party presidential candidate is Gary Johnson, the marijuana smoking former governor of New Mexico. Politically, his views are close to that of a neoconservative Republican, which he used to be, than that of a true libertarian, and the LP vice presidential candidate is Bill Weld, a liberal Democrat and former governor of Massachusetts, who literally became a Libertarian only days before he was chosen to be Johnson's running mate. Bill Weld has steadfastly refused to criticize Hillary Clinton on anything, while he has been quite free in his criticism of Donald Trump, Gary Johnson, on the other hand, has been criticizing both the Republican and Democrat candidates, as you'd expect a third-party candidate to do.

For the most part, Libertarians are conservative Republicans who hold liberal views on social issues such as the legalization of marijuana, abortion, and legalized prostitution, as well as non-involvement in unnecessary foreign wars. That's very simplified, I know, but I don't want to spend a lot of time on this.

Anyhow, the other day, Bill Weld, the LP vice-presidential candidate was being interviewed by Rachel Maddow. Knowing he had been closely allied with Hillary Clinton as a Democrat, she asked him if he really wanted people to waste their vote in order to give the Libertarian Party 5% of the vote in North Carolina even if it meant giving the election to Donald Trump. He replied that he was there "to vouch for Hillary Clinton." He later repeated that in an interview with another media.

The Libertarians are furious with Weld, and most of them weren't pleased when Gary Johnson had chosen him as his running mate to begin with. The Libertarian Party in two states cancelled events that had been scheduled with Bill Weld, and some Libertarian Party leaders are declaring their endorsement of Trump. It's hard to tell where this is going to go because most Libertarians were quite aware that they weren't going to win the election anyhow, and will probably still vote for Johnson-Weld, but those who won't are going to be more likely to vote for Donald Trump than for Hillary Clinton, given that their positions are closer and due to the fact that it was for Hillary Clinton that their VP candidate betrayed them.

This just occurred a couple of days ago, so there haven't been any polls measuring what effect, if any, this might have. But since Gary Johnson was polling at 13%, I think it was, in Maine in the last polls that I saw, this could give him votes to make the difference. I don't really have a feel for Libertarians in other states, but I do know they are angry. The Libertarian Party candidate who came close to beating out Gary Johnson in the LP primary is on my Facebook friend's list and it sounds like he'll be voting for Trump. He's not endorsing him because I'm sure he wants to run in the Libertarian Party again next time around.

 

The Constitution Party is the best fit for me, with the Libertarian Party coming in a close second. I was the state contact for the Constitution Party at one time, but this is too important of an election to waste on a third-party vote, I think. Now, if I knew that Trump was going to bad, and I knew that Hillary was going to be bad, then I wouldn't consider a third-party vote to be wasted, but I don't know that Trump is going to be bad. He might badly disappoint me, but he could become a great president. I don't know. I know Hillary will be bad.

 

I won't post it here because you guys aren't millennials, but there's an email from John Podesta, Hillary's campaign manager, who recommends a media consultant to the campaign. Among the recommendations that are made for reaching the millennial generation is an acknowledgement that millennials are "f___ing dumb." They talk about how the Hillary campaign needs to take a "more trivial approach" in reaching out to the millennial generation. One quote from the email says:

"I hate to generalize a generation but by social media nature, they 'follow'. So if someone they identify as cool endorses - they will likely fall in line with that candidate."

There we have the answer to the constant string of celebrities endorsing Hillary Clinton.