Let's hope the Ukraine smear on the Bidens finally puts to rest the bogus claim that Hillary

[StarfishSaver]

Clinton was a "flawed" candidate because she had too much "baggage" and if only another Democrat had been nominated, they wouldn't have been vulnerable to the same kind of attacks she was subjected to.

This should make clear that Trump and his henchmen play filthy and their willingness to slime an opponent - whoever that opponent may be -doesn't depend upon that opponent actually being "flawed" in any way.

[Gothmog]

1. The press has investigated this story and found that trumps claims are bogus

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[StarfishSaver]

2. That's my point. It doesn't matter if the claim is false

They'll use it anyway. No opponent is immune from their tactics, so it's wrong to claim that Hillary was subjected to it because she had more "flaws" than anyone else.

[Gothmog]

6. Again, Hillary was not a weak candidate

Link to tweet

[StarfishSaver]

7. She was an amazing candidate

[Gothmog]

3. As for Hillary being a weak candidate, it took Russia, Comey, and Wikileaks to not beat her

Link to tweet

[JI7]

4. i find those who say that tend to downplay the Russian attacks

on the elections.

[StarfishSaver]

5. Yes, if only Hillary had gone to Wisconsin once more or had turned around and told Trump to back off

when he stalked her during the debate or had let Sanders have the nomination, Trump would have been defeated.

[blm]

8. And the voter suppression tactics used in swing states.

[Mr.Bill]

9. Yeah, beacuse the 2016 Trump

campaign would have been so respectful and fair with Bernie Sanders.

[StarfishSaver]

10. Someone actually told me a few days ago that Bernie should have been the nominee

because the Trump people didn't have anything on him.

All I could do was SMH.

[empedocles]

13. Amazing. There are a number of those types around - and they do damage.

[mcar]

11. This +1000!

No Democrat should ever make that claim again. Republicans make shit up. Look at John Kerry and the Swiftboaters.

[aikoaiko]

12. I don't think it will work that way.

[betsuni]

14. K&R

[Hekate]

15. Thank you

People who don't see this by now are too blind to be driving a car.

[StarfishSaver]

16. Kicking

[Tom Rinaldo]

17. Clinton was called a "flawed" candidate because her favorability numbers dropped so low

One can assert that she had nothing to do with that and that Republicans had everything to do with that. One can assert that there is an anti -female bias in American politics. Those are defensible positions. But it is also true that the Clinton literally was the subject an FBI investigation, during a Democratic administration, for much of the preliminary 2016 campaign and that did not help public perceptions of her, which impacted her favorability numbers. Again one cam assert that the FBI investigation was always overblown, again a defensible position.

These are reasons why her candidacy was called "flawed". It doesn't mean that she was flawed or that her presidency would have been flawed. And clearly Trump was light years more "flawed" as a candidate than Hillary ever was, no matter what standard one applies.

It will be informative to see whether Joe Biden's favorabilty numbers are significantly reduced as a result of Trump's smears. I haven't seen that yet.

[StarfishSaver]

18. You're missing my point

She was no more "flawed" than any other human candidate who had lived a life, had family and associates, and didn't emerge fully-formed from a hermetically-sealed capsule the day before announcing a run for office,

[Tom Rinaldo]

19. I don't think I missed your point

She certainly was/is no more flawed a person in the ways you describe. "Flawed candidate" to me is purely a political reading, not a character or moral evaluation. For a number of reasons, having virtually nothing to do with fairness or justice, I think Hillary was more "flawed" than some other Democrats (some of whom, like Biden and Warren, chose not to run in 2016) would have been. All would have been attacked by Trump and the Republican machine. All would have lost some popularity as a result. But (again I grant it is unfair) for example not all possible Democratic candidates for President start out with a history of having been attacked at the highest levels by Republicans almost constantly for twenty years, nor of being actively investigated by the FBI during most of their presidential campaign.


Biden, like Clinton, has been a high level national Democrat for a long time. He has much of that in common with her, but he hasn't been an active target of the right for nearly as long as Hillary was. That may make it harder for Republicans to pull his popularity down as far as they could to Hillary with their hit jobs. And he isn't formally under investigation by the FBI during an administration of his own political party. which is what made it hard for Clinton to call the formal FBI probe a partisan witch hunt. And it is possible that a fresher face in politics who hasn't been an insider for decades might be more resistant to being tarred as a corrupt "insider", and as a result less "flawed" in purely a political sense..

Again, I will be taking note of how effective a relatively short concentrated attack cycle by Republicans against Biden can be this time.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

20. No matter who the candidate turns out to be, Trump will make shit up about them.

It's not "oppo research," which is the usual delving into a candidate's past to find weak points or things they might have done that would be unappealing to voters. Everybody does that. But Trump makes up lies about something completely innocent and legal, twisting it to make it look like something it isn't, and more often than not it's something he is actually guilty of himself. If Warren becomes the clear front-runner he'll find a way to slime her, too. The right-wingers had already been sliming Hillary for years, so maybe Trump found it a bit easier to weaponize the slime on her, but that's what he does and he'll keep doing it.