Bill Clinton, that is, whose defenders, upon hearing reports that he had been unfaithful to Hillary, were quite willing to say, \u201cthat\u2019s their private life,\u201d and upon hearing claims of rape, said, \u201cthose women aren\u2019t credible.\u201d<\/p>\n
And who garnered this support both because he was on the right side, ideologically, and because he proved to be competent in his governance.<\/p>\n
Trump already had two strikes against him: \u00a0the shakiness of his professed \u201cRepublican\u201d beliefs (a convenient conversion to the pro-life cause, a commitment to immigration enforcement that may or may not be genuine), and the general nonsense that the man repeatedly sputters, including, most recently, a 3 AM tweet-storm that points to the risk of making any number of foolish decisions due to feeling personally aggrieved.<\/p>\n
So: \u00a0the thought experiment. \u00a0What if Trump had been saying all the right things, and had a good track record of effective governance, or at least a public record that gave everyone reason to believe that he would be likely, in the future, to\u00a0govern effectively, so that the election, up until October, had been a \u201cnormal election\u201d of two candidates with different policy platforms? \u00a0What if the new accusations \u2014 ranging from lewd behavior to sexual assault (has there been a rape claim yet?) \u2014 don\u2019t just compound the degree to which the candidate is unsavory, but are the first such negative blows? \u00a0I said \u201cwhat if Trump were Clinton,\u201d above, but, for the purpose of our thought experiement, what if Trump were Romney, with a Bill Cosby-like past emerging for a man otherwise believed to be squeaky-clean and, more importantly, competent and likely to govern well?<\/p>\n
What degree of misconduct would be severe enough to lose your support, even at a cost of the opponent winning and being able to implement policies with which you strongly disagree?<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s assume that it\u2019s something sort of the candidate standing on the street shooting passers-by. \u00a0But what is it? \u00a0Remember, it\u2019s October, so you can\u2019t make a distinction of whether a claim was or wasn\u2019t proven in a court of law, as the election\u2019s only a month away, so there\u2019s no time to take a claim to court.<\/p>\n
Curious for reader thoughts.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bill Clinton, that is, whose defenders, upon hearing reports that he had been unfaithful to Hillary, were quite willing to say, \u201cthat\u2019s their private life,\u201d and upon hearing claims of rape, said, \u201cthose women aren\u2019t credible.\u201d And who garnered this support both because he was on the right side, ideologically, and because he proved to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[374],"tags":[442],"class_list":["post-5501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-election-2016"],"yoast_head":"\n