Posted on Nov 7, 2016 in Congress, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Elections-U.S., Hillary Clinton, Public Opinion Polls, Republican Party, Uncategorized |
After more than a year of campaigning, the election tomorrow–not at all to exclude early voters–comes down to this: 1) Will the pause in the damage Hillary suffered at the polls with the undecided voters due to FBI Director Comey’s shenanigans, continue? 2) Will Comey’s exoneration of Hillary from any wrongdoing connected to the newly discovered email on ex-Congressman Weiner’s server produce some recovery of the independents who left Hillary over the insinuations–and Trump’s vicious attacks on her over it? 3) Will anything unexpected from outside of the presidential campaigning pop-up at the last minute to influence the voting. Politicians will be holding their breathes as the hours pass. I won’t get into Director Comey’s decision to interfere with the race, in the first place although I do have strong feelings about it. But it unquestionably did change Hillary’s support. In the period between Comey’s announcements, Clinton’s poll numbers dropped from a comfortable 6.8 percent down to a dangerously low 1.8 percent. Of importance to the undecideds decision-making, Hillary’s trust numbers dropped 3...
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Posted on Nov 3, 2016 in Bernie Sanders, Cruz, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Elections-U.S., Hillary Clinton, immigration, Iraq, ISIS, Jeb Bush, Middle East, Obamacare, President Obama, Public Opinion Polls, Putin, Republican Party, social issues: Racism, Uncategorized |
When Bernie Sanders famously said: “Enough of those damned emails,” many thought they’d heard the death-knell of that wearisome argument. Just this week, President Obama referred to it as “all that noise,” designed to confuse new voters about Hillary’s trustworthiness. The concept of “noise” comes from cybernetics and it refers to anything that interferes with a message sent by one party to another–we laymen also know it as static. Sad to say, we are all familiar with static on our cell phones which keep us from hearing the other person’s words and messages. The static in this case, as we all know by now, are the dark references to some of Hillary’s emails. Of the emails, President Obama also noted that while Clinton, while serving as his Secretary of State, made an “honest mistake” by using a private email server, as it was now “being blown up into just some crazy thing,” which will affect new voters when they hear “all that noise.” Why now, you may ask, all of this focused static. Well,...
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Posted on Aug 26, 2016 in Donald Trump, Eastern Europe, Elections-U.S., Foreign Policy Issues, Hillary Clinton, Middle East, Putin, Social Issues: Free Trade and Labor displacement., Syria, Ukraine and Crimea, Uncategorized |
The growing wealth and income gap between the top 1 percent and the other 99 percent has reached staggering dimensions. And now, more than ever, the “have-nots” are made up largely by the middle class, which now includes many “workers.” Years ago I dismissed Marx’s class conflict theory as yet another, albeit more radical, utopian socialist dream. Then in my first, of a long line of classes, taken and then taught, about communism, in both theory and practice, I continued to be intrigued by Lenin’s 1917 tract: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Now, nearly 100 years after Lenin wrote his theory of imperialism, and the first time since The Great Depression, Lenin’s check-list for revolution appears close to being realized. Ironically that is largely due to the policies of the “haves” themselves. Whether this has come about mostly by greed or by ignorance is unclear. What is clear, however, is that policy differences between Tump and Clinton will go a long way towards deciding how peaceful a revolution...
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Posted on Jul 14, 2016 in Bernie Sanders, Chris Christie, Congress, Donald Trump, Elections-U.S., Hillary Clinton, Republican Party, Social Issues: Free Trade and Labor displacement., Uncategorized |
What you say? The world may hang in the balance and Americans don’t care; they have joined the craze that has mushroomed all over the world, like popcorn popping. What am I talking about? Why Pokemon-Go, of course. Haven’t you seen otherwise normal-seeming people getting their exercise, walking fast, and with their heads focused in on the cell phones while frantically moving their fingers on the keyboard? Watch out, it looks like they will walk right into the intersection. Will they get hit by that car coming? What are they doing? They are looking at images of the area in front of their smart phone’s camera, trying to find, capture, destroy little cartoon characters that pop up on their screens right in front of them. Pokemon. Yes the same as those annoying little critters found on trading cards in an earlier generation. If you had children of the right age during that period you surely saw them obsessed with those cards. Hell, you might even have felt the...
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Posted on Jul 7, 2016 in Bernie Sanders, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Elections-U.S., Hillary Clinton, Public Opinion Polls, Republican Party, Uncategorized |
The first polls following FBI Director Comey’s decision are in. On Tuesday, July 6, FBI Director James Comey announced his long awaited conclusion to the email controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton. He announced that he would recommend to the Justice Department that Clinton should not be indicted, not even even for lesser misdemeanor charges. In explaining his position, Comey acknowledged “extremely careless” behaviors by then Secretary of State Clinton, in her use of a home server for State Department business emails, some of which contained classified information, and a some that were classified at the time she sent or received the emails. My immediate reaction was that Comey’s statement gave some material that would serve as fodder for both sides in this extremely ugly presidential race. Hillary’s supporters would, with a big sigh of relief, focus on the bottom line of Comey’s statement, i.e., no charges will be filed against Clinton. Trump backers would jump on the “careless” part of Comey’s comments, and the finding that, indeed, Hillary did send or receive...
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Posted on Jun 14, 2016 in Bernie Sanders, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Elections-U.S., Hillary Clinton, Public Opinion Polls, Republican Party, Social Issues: Free Trade and Labor displacement., Uncategorized |
Here’s how Hillary Clinton can successfully enlist Bernie Sanders’ enthusiastic endorsement and hope that this will bring over to the Clinton side in the general election, as many of his supporters as possible. If she does so, Hillary will get a bump up in her polls, much as Trump did upon the withdrawal of Cruz and Kasich. Actually, just the fact of Bernie saying he wants to help HC defeat Trump in November gave Clinton about a 6 percent jump in the polls, widening her lead over Trump from 2 to about 8 percentage points. This effect became obfuscated by the shootings in Florida, and the claims of the shooter connecting his action to ISIS. In times of crisis. Trump’s “tough guy” image, sways some voters. Recall that polls had given Trump higher numbers than Clinton in being “best able to deal with terrorism.” There certainly is a gender bias on this issue with some voters. How much it affects voter choice in times of crises isn’t certain. Nonetheless, Trump’s...
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