When I look at the candidates for POTUS from both parties, I see problems on both sides. It seems to me, however, that the problems the Republicans have are of a different type than the Democrats have. With the Democrats and Clinton, the problems all seem to be related to Clinton herself. Their is the email stuff going on, and the perception about her trustworthiness. With the Republicans, other than maybe Bush’s last name, it seems like the problems aren’t personal, but have to do with the Republican platform. Things like wanting to repeal birthright citizenship, discrimination against the LGBT community, even repealing Obamacare, seem like they are now loosing issues. In the past they might have been winning issues, but now it seems these are no longer winning issues. So basically we have the Democrats running on winning issues with a seemingly untrustworthy candidate, and Republicans running on loosing issues with a presumably trustworthy candidate, whoever it might turn out to be. Do I have this about right, or have I made some flawed assumptions?
About right.
The central question is do you want somebody you’re not sure you trust to do the “right” thing or somebody you are sure you can trust not to do the right thing.
This question bothers Democratic leaners only.
Persons who actually believe Republican dogma need only look to matters of electability as the candidates pretty much (Paul excepted) fall in together pretty neatly.
Here’s about this phenomenon. With the Democrats I hope they’re telling the truth. With the Republicans I hope they’re lying.
I don’t know what you mean about Hillary being untrustworthy, other than from the unproven accusations by the right. I admit I am not enthusiastic about Hillary but her trustworthiness has nothing to do with my disdain for her.
With regard to the Republicans, yeah, they’ve taken a number of reprehensible stances on various issues which, I agree, will hurt them in the election, but again, who in that bunch do you consider trustworthy, and why is trust a litmus test for you?
Finally, and I apologize for being pedantic, but I want to make this clear enough for you to see this time: The word is spelled “losing” not “loosing”.
But, that is what the OP is about. Campaigning on some bullshit like a border-wall will turn out the Pub base but will alienate everybody else, impairing the candidate’s electability, and that is a problem the Pubs have.
May I ask where you live? Not like your street address, but perhaps the state (presuming you’re in the US) or the region?
I’m just asking because your question reminds me of the classic “Nixon couldn’t have won, I don’t know a single person who voted for him!” In liberal areas, yes, adopting stances such as repealing birthright citizenship or repealing Obamacare are losing issues. On this message board, which leans heavily to the left, those are losing issues. In mixed areas, those issues are still contested, and in conservative areas, those are the standard positions to adopt.
I will tell you in my experience of living in a state that doesn’t always swing Democrat or Republican (VA) that the only one of those issues you listed which is pretty widely accepted as a losing issue is discrimination against the LGBT community. And even there, it would be more accurate to say that discrimination against LGB is a losing issue, discriminating against transsexuals hasn’t come to that point.
You’re just seeing that now? Have you been asleep for the last few years? 
I kind of love that.
At The wind of my soul, I live in deep South Texas, the Corpus Christi area, which is blue compared to the rest of the state. At Onomatopoeia, I consider someone like Mike Huckabee trustworthy in a certain sense. When he says he is against gay marriage, I tend to believe he is telling the truth. When Ben Carson says he would use drones to bomb tunnels on the border, I hope he’s lying about that. When Scott Walker or Ted Cruz talk about repealing Obamacare as soon as they get into office, I hope they are lying. Those are the kind of things I’m referring to when I say that I actually hope the Republican candidates are lying, because if they are telling the truth about those positions, that’s even worse.
With regard to Hillary Clinton, it’s not a matter of whether or not I personally trust her. It’s a matter of what the electorate as a whole believes. And it seems to me that among the voting public, her biggest problems are not her positions on the issues, but rather her personal baggage with all the scandals she’s had over the years.
Its really hard to judge Clinton’s electability problems without there being an actual opponent against which to compare her While Clinton may look worse than a “generic Republican”, I’m not sure that she looks much worse than any specific Republican candidate she is likely to meet in the general election. Particularly once they start undergoing the same media scrutiny and oppostion party smear tactics that Clinton as the obvious candidate has endured.
No doubt, but I’m fairly certain they are losing issues nationally.
I personally don’t consider Hillary Clinton to be untrustworthy. She hid some emails, so what? A president’s expected to have secrets. The much bigger issue for me is: can she do the job? I believe she’s tough enough and battle-tested to be able to weather whatever BS the GOP throws at her. I don’t have to like her personally, I don’t have think her laugh feels like a nymph’s tickle in my ears to trust her with upholding Democratic values and defending those that need defending. This email “scandal” just makes me want to vote for her more, if only to prove such tactics meaningless
Nearly all of which are bullshit nontroversies, as you must know.
I think most voters (among those who would ever consider voting for a Democrat anyway) understand the manufactured nature and lack of substance of all of them, and are willing to punish the creators for their lies.
Somebody here said it, “Where there’s smoke, there’s often a smoke generator.”
The following comment may be better suited for another thread but, despite following current events with some interest, I won’t watch the president speak. It makes things too personal and I don’t want to be that way.
You mean you won’t watch any president speak, or just Obama? What about other elected officials?
Flik,I think you are overgeneralizing to create a notion of a platform that won’t be published till next summer…before everyone promptly ignores it to hear what the nominee actually says.
The field is pretty split on birthright citizenship. MSNBC, that noted bastion of conservative media bias /tongueincheek , has this recent article about 12 candidate positions on birthright citizenship. 7 of those were opposed to birthright citizenship. Walker’s position is relatively incoherent but I think they classified his probably position right. Holy verbal contortions batman. 
There’s some nuance on what you term LBGT discrimination. Kasich sort of proofed the ground with his SSM comments focusing on respect and rule of law at the debates to cheers. Comments on the Kim Davis affair show some that have previously stated they were opposed to SSM are echoing rule of law type themes. Anecdotally, Kasich’s position resonated with a socially liberal, gay Republican I know (yes they still exist) According to him Kasich got a lot of positive attention with his peers in the local LBGT community that skew towards the Democratic side of the aisle. There’s possibly room to make it less than a binary issue.
There’s also the very real issue of applying weights when you pick individual issues that are out of touch with the majority opinion. Abortion is a great example of reading too much in to a position with respect to the overall trend. 50% of Americans fall into a limited legal abortion position as of 2014. That’s out of step with both parties platforms in 2012. Over 1/4 of both parties take positions diametrically opposed to their party platform positions on abortion - Pro-choice Republicans and Pro-life Democrats, oh my!. Obviously plenty of people can vote for a party that is out of step with their opinions on some issues. Many of us do it all the time.
The case that the voters who aren’t strongly partisan will both heavily weight those issues and not respond to nuance of the actual nominees position needs more work. Sure it’s possible. It really needs to be looked at in terms of the possible swing voters and effects on voter turnout. That’s a trickier case than just looking at nationwide polls.
Not only that, but these Republican positions are growing more losing over time.
When you look at polling data on these issues by age, you see that the Republican position is strongest in the elderly group, with decreasing support as you go to younger ages. And when you look at race – white people vs. minority. Or gender – male vs. female. the more you are old, white, and male, the more likely you are to support these Republican positions.
But older people are dying off, minorities are raising more children than whites, and women live longer. So as time goes on, the voting population will lean more toward the Democratic positions than the Republican ones, and these will become even more losing positions.
[As a solid (but now older) Democrat, I approve of this message!]
It’s true that the Republicans have bigger problems than the Democrats in the way the OP described, but having a large field makes it more likely that the eventual nominee will be broadly acceptable to the electorate. The Democrats wouldn’t have to worry about Clinton’s problems if all of the Democratic Presidential material was actually in the race. Then Democratic voters would just not vote for Clinton and likely win the election with Biden, Warner, Booker, etc.