Both Hillary Clinton and Donald
Trump have their presidential campaigns based in New York City. If both get
their respective party nominations, we will have an all-New York presidential
campaign. New York loves a big media circus, but America can do better.
Hillary Clinton moved to New York
so she could someday run for president. She wasn’t the first person to do so.
It was fitting that she held the seat Robert F. Kennedy once held, she was
following his example. New York is now her political home. New Yorkers don’t
resent her for this. Ours is the city of opportunity and even our current and
most recent former mayor are originally from Boston. If she hadn’t quit her
seat to run for president, New York voters would have returned her to the
Senate even if she was found in bed with a dead girl or live boy.
Now Hillary Clinton is running for
president again and her campaign headquarters is in
fashionable Brooklyn. Democratic voters are desperate for someone else. She has
unexpectedly fierce opposition from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont,
who originally hails from the Brooklyn that was. There are so many strikes against
Sanders by the dictates of conventional wisdom that his rise as a viable
candidate is somewhat astounding. There are a few other candidates in the
running for the Democratic nomination: former Virginia Senator JimWebb and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.
Donald Trump has been a New York
City fixture since he was born. His father, Fredrick Trump, was actually a
self-made man who started his construction business at age 15 and built things
that weren’t tacky pieces of crap. Some of his earlier buildings have historic
recognition in Queens. Donald Trump gets credit for investing and revitalizing
parts of Manhattan and Atlantic City, but his business acumen is highly suspect
and he’s been a famous bloviating loudmouth for decades. Like Democratic voters
who are drawn to Bernie Sanders, Trump supporters are desperate for anyone who
is not an empty suit corporate mouthpiece. Trump has taken populist positions that run counter
to what corporate donors want to hear. If he’s not willing to spend a lot of
his own money on his campaign, he will likely not win since his campaign will
run out of money without the support of large wealthy donors.
Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump share some important things in common: both coasted to
their notoriety through family connections, both will take whatever position
will earn them the most votes, and both would rather enjoy the trappings of
power without having to talk to real people.
Clinton at least comes across as
knowing what the job actually entails and having the capacity to do it, but she
would be the same kind of vacillating, self-interested establishment politician
the public despises; it’s no mystery that many Democratic voters are sick of
her and rightly so. Donald Trump may not realize that being President would
seriously restrict his accustomed lifestyle, and what works in closing real
estate deals in Atlantic City isn’t going to work when negotiating nuclear arms
deals. The cabinet is not a game show.
Trump has at least pushed the
Republican Party to the right on immigration. His plan
for mass deportations is poorly thought out but at least he’s saying a
resounding “no” to what was considered standard conventional wisdom.
New York City would benefit from the
media circus a Trump-Clinton matchup would bring, but we already are a 24-hour
media circus. And New York and the country can do a lot better than a Clinton
or Trump residency. A Trump nomination, or another Clinton or Bush nomination,
will demonstrate that our republic has slipped past the point of no return down
the slope of oblivion.
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