I know Trump won, but the wisdom of his nomination is still in question. Hillary Clinton’s nomination also remains curious, since she couldn’t beat Trump. Then we have Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Leader in the UK, whom no one thinks can win, which is the REAL reason May called the election.
Which of the three was the worst decision made by their respective electorates? (Yes, I know Corbyn wasn’t “nominated” a la an American candidate, but you get the idea).
[1] Corbyn
[2] Clinton
[3] Trump
Clinton didn’t beat Trump. It’s hard to say that she couldn’t. She was one suspiciously timed FBI announcement away from the White House (though in truth she should have won by a big enough margin to make it immaterial).
It’s hard to say Trump was a bad idea. I suspect the aftereffects of his presidency will hang around GOP candidates’ necks for years, but it was very unlikely that anyone else would have overcome the Democrats’ inbuilt Electoral College advantage.
1 Trump. He’s completely incompetent and ignorant of the issues.
Corbyn has opinions on many issues, but he’s an activist, not a leader. He regularly defied the whip as a backbench gadfly. I’d put Bernie Sanders as a similar candidate. All unicorn, no compromise, and completely incompetent as a leader.
Clinton. She’s brilliant, has worked as a Senator and Secretary of State and most certainly could have won the election, as she demonstrated by winning 3 million more votes. The electoral college sucks and so do Bernie or Buster purity ponies who didn’t vote, left the presidential space blank, did a useless write in, or threw their vote away on a 3rd party.
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Worst of all time in any nation in world history is the person whose name I will not type, but was Hillary’s opponent last year. His administration will continue to be such a disaster that the Democrats will control government after the 2020 election for the foreseeable future. That is, should WW III not end life on the planet.
It amazes me how you make such confident predictions.
2016 electoral college prediction:
Hillary was the worst nomination decision. She’s obviously a very smart lady, and I’ve no doubt she would have been, at the very least, an acceptably competent President. However, she was a terrible candidate. Stilted, preternaturally inauthentic, and as charismatic as a bag of sprouts, she was, in my opinion, possibly the only politician in America capable of losing to Donald Trump. Trump ran a train wreck of a campaign. He said three things every week that would have torpedoed anyone else’s campaign, but he still beat Hillary. If you’re running the 100 metre hurdles, and your opponent trips over every hurdle, and then trips over his own feet a few times, and then forgets where the finish line is and takes off in the wrong direction and has to be turned around, and then stops halfway through to drop trou and take a giant dump on the track just for good measure, and you still lose, then I’m sorry, but you did NOT belong in the Olympics.
Second worst nomination decision: Trump. He places after Hillary purely by virtue of the fact that he beat her. If the question was “Which of these three would make the worst President/Prime minister” then, obviously, Trump would be top of the list. However, Trump beat Hillary so, almost by definition, he can’t be the worst nomination. Similarly, if Hitler ran against Gandhi and beat him, Gandhi would be the worst nominee of the two.
Finally, Corbyn. He’s a milquetoast loser who’s going to bury Labour for at least a decade, but there really isn’t anyone else in the party who’s much better.
I confess to having perhaps too much faith in the intelligence of the electorate.
Rookie mistake.
“Wisdom of nomination” is a vague metric. Do we mean “how wise was it for a political party to want the country ran by this person?” In which case, I’d say from worst to least bad: 1. Trump, 2. Corbyn, 3. Clinton. In my mind neither Trump or Corbyn are fit to run a country, Hillary with all her baggage, is/was. Trump is more dangerous/worse than Corbyn.
If we mean “how wise was it in terms of political strategy for a political party to nominate this person as their standard-bearer” I’d say from worst to least bad would be: 1. Corbyn, 2. Clinton, 3. Trump.
Argument being, Corbyn is terrible politically. There’s even been some polls from a few months ago that suggested in an election with Corbyn and May at the helm of their parties held in which only Labour party members could vote Corbyn would barely eke out a win or even lose. Which is pretty amazing, a man leading a party who might actually lose a general election if only his party voters were allowed to vote. That suggests Corbyn is monumentally unelectable by the broad British electorate, in a way that is likely to be an albatross on Labour’s election chances, particularly at a time I think where Britain is ripe for a leftish political surge. Near the end of Cameron’s premiership he wasn’t super popular and the Tories didn’t look all that good, with immediate concerns the party would be torn apart by infighting over leadership and how to handle Brexit. Instead May basically quietly won power and Labour has looked like imbeciles since then.
Trump/Clinton is hard. I think both were bad decisions in terms of political strategy. The only reason I gave Trump the “push” and said he was less of a bad decision than Hillary is because he actually beat Hillary in the election. But most years a candidate like Trump loses in a landslide, so for that reason alone he’s not a great nominee politically. But Clinton has to be seen as even worse since she was running against the least fit Republican to ever have the nomination, and still lost.
Absent some as-yet unforeseeable action by the current President of the US, one would have to question how his nomination was in any way a bad thing. I know that “liberal” people in the US think he’s the worst abomination to inhabit the White House since, well, possible ever. But he won the election, and he did so despite a general pull-back against the Republican majorities in the House and Senate. Pretty much by definition, he’s one of the better nominees either party has managed to put up.
By comparison, Hillary Clinton was a poor choice as nominee. But would Bernie Sanders have been any better? It’s doubtful his fiery socialism would have done any better. America rejected economic/governmental socialism about three decades back, and there’s precious little indication that the mood has changed. So if the nomination of Hillary Clinton is judged on the basis of how she did v. how the Bern would have gone, very probably she was the better choice. And since they were the only two with a realistic chance, that means her nomination wasn’t that bad a nomination.
Can’t say about Corbyn, because I pay no attention to the Labour Party any more. They are on the way to irrelevance in England.