It is either Hillary Clinton or a Republican as the next POTUS & this is why

[Savannahmann]

43. I disagree.

Hillary has the best name recognition among the people who, unlike us, are not political junkies. Most people can't name their own Senators unless it's right at Election time. Then the name rings a bell. Most people don't pay attention until the last few weeks, or months, of a campaign. So this early, the interesting polling is not on who wins what name recognition poll, that is little more than a high school popularity vote at this point. No, the interesting thing to watch is issues. What issues people find most important according to polling. Especially interesting is the long term trends.

By doing that, you can best position your candidate to take advantage of populist trends. Name recognition may get Hillary into the race, but once Issues and Character come into play, she's going to suffer. If we nominate Hillary, we're going to lose.

We'll start with Unions. Unions want to see their jobs and members protected. Free Trade harms the unions. So any candidate that is going to get massive Union support, must argue in favor of protectionist policies at home regarding economic issues. Hillary is a Pro Free Trade, Pro TPP, Pro Fast Track advocate. So Hillary won't be getting as much support from the Unions as she'll desperately need and will suffer dramatically because of it.

Decriminalization of Marijuana. Hillary has long said a simple no to this. Her fear is that she might appear soft on drugs. However, public opinion has shifted and now pluralities and majorities in most states support legalization. The time is right for a candidate to explain why we would benefit from legalization. Hillary is on the same side of the issue as a vast majority of Republicans, which won't do much to distinguish her as a forward thinking or original mind to take the helm.

NSA spying. Privacy oriented civil rights are important to large numbers of people. Depending on the poll nearly half of the people think that NSA spying on citizens is at best inappropriate, and at worst unconstitutional. Making the argument that such spying is improper, unethical, and should be banned seems to be an obvious choice. Yet, Hillary has long supported the security state. Not because it is a core Democratic Party Principle, but again out of fear. She's afraid of being labeled as soft on terrorists, which is the same reason she voted for the Iraq War, and the PATRIOT ACT as a Senator. Again, her position is not significantly different than almost all the Republicans.

Citizens United. A cause celeb among Liberals. However, Hillary has made statements that seem to support an amendment to overturn CU. However, here again her voting record in the Senate is a problem. Hillary voted for Bankruptcy Reform, that abomination that meant individuals could not write off debt, while business' could continue to write off debt like employee pensions. Again, Hillary made statements to the contrary, but her votes were not in keeping with her statements. At best she looks like a flip flopping political hack that will say anything to get elected. At worst, she is part of the problem of big business cronies in high offices. Worst case she comes off looking like a hypocrite wannabe Republican.

I could go on, and on, and on. How Hillary's statements, and votes, are going to be counter to public opinions on issues. Unless you think that nobody in the Press is going to ask her questions on these issues, then they will be problems in the campaign.

All of those issues that are problematic, the merest tip of the iceberg listed above, will erode support from Hillary in the voting booth. President Obama lost four million votes between 2008 and 2012. Republicans picked up one million, placing them less than five million votes behind. How much can Hillary afford to have eroded away from President Obama's 2012 totals? A small percentage of the total vote and it's a horse race of an election season.

Positions. Hillary has to position herself now in favor of Populist issues, and without doing so now, she loses the credibility factor. Again she ends up looking like a phony desperate to say anything to get elected. Not really a winning combination. So IMO running Hillary is a recipe for defeat. I could be wrong, but everything I read tells me that nobody is considering issues when considering Hillary as the winning candidate.