Before answering, please bear in mind that I’m asking about the candidate you are actually planning to vote for–not an abstract candidate, and certainly not a candidate your already oppose. For instance: I’d only vote for Ben Carson if he were running against the Joker, so even if it were shown to be true that he lied his ass off in hi autobiography, I am disqualified from giving that reason.
And another thing. I prefer that we talk about things your candidate has already been accused off, not some outrageous hypothetical. Again using myself as an example: I’m planning to vote for Secretary Clinton. Now I could say that, if she were proven to be an accomplice in Bill Cosby’s rapes, I’d become a Sanders supporter – but of course, not even Rush Limbaugh has accused her of that. But while I don’t care about her tolerating her husband’s infidelities, if it was proven to me that (a) Bill Clinton had actually committed a rape, and (b) Sec. Clinton had participated in a cover-up of that fact, I’d switch candidates.
There, the housekeeping’s out of the way, so I’ll recapitulate the question.
Americans, please think of the presidential candidate your are currently intending to vote for. What extant accusation against that person, if proved true, would cost him or her your support?
Some candidates have a lot more accusations against them than others. The Clintons have been accused of every crime imaginable, including murder and treason. But what has Sanders been accused of? I guess there are some on the right who would accuse him of being a Communist.
He calls himself a socialist, ehi i gather you’re cool with. (I am.) But what if he were revealed to be an actual Marxist? Do you leap off the Sanders train?
What does “an actual Marxist” mean? If it came out, for example, that he thought Marx was pretty insightful, for a nineteenth-century economist, about labor/capital dynamics, that would not affect my support for Sanders one whit. If it came out that he talked with members of the Sandanista government–well, Jimmy Carter talked with the head of the Indonesian government, and Nixon talked with the head of the Chinese government, so I wouldn’t be too concerned.
If it came out that he was donating money to the Tamil Tigers, I’m off the Sanders wagon.
Sanders is accused of running a vanity campaign. I think that’s a very foolish accusation, given his decades in politics; rather, I think it’s an accusation leveled by people congenitally incapable of imagining a principled disagreement with their positions. However, if somehow it came out that he admitted to doing this for shits and giggles, that he was just puffing himself up for fun, I’d not support him.
If Hilary were convicted or heck indicted for the worst of the things serial false witnesser Jerry Falwell accused her of, then that would cost her my vote. Frankly though, I don’t even want to give such wild and baseless accusations airplay.
I actually have some general principles relevant to this question, but generalities have been ruled out by the OP.
ETA: Oh yeah. Support in the primary or support in the general?
Wow. If he did THAT, I would DEFINITLEY switch from Hillary.
If Bernie kept Lenin and Trotsky at the same table and set them up with pinochle hands and little speakers in their heads so he could make them talk in funny voices, I would solicit door-to-door for him.
Sanders hasn’t been accused of anything I care about, except the abstract “they’re all the same, voting doesn’t matter” accusation.
IF it were to become apparent that Sanders was insincere in all the things that make him different from Clinton, and there was actually no difference between the two, then I would probably switch my vote to Clinton. There is a desire in me to see a woman in the White House before I die, and given identical platforms and backgrounds, I would actually vote for a woman over a man, to give my daughter a role model. But vagina does not trump policy in my book.
Jeb Bush has been accused of being boring. I can live with that.
Hard to say if Bush is really my single preference. Kasich, Christie and Rubio could all get my vote too, unless the party as a whole continues trying so hard to make Democrats look appealing.
If it were proven that Hillary Clinton arranged Vince Foster’s murder, I’m sure I wouldn’t vote for her. But if that happened, she’d be in prison anyway, so it’s not like I’d get the opportunity.
