Hillary

It's about time we had a woman president, and Hillary has earned it by battling in the trenches against the Republicans for decades.  She has proven her toughness.  She has been in the crucible and emerged whole and still willing and able to fight.  There aren't many who could stand up to years of the right wing onslaught and still stand strong and unbowed. She had Bill's back (at least in public, I can't imagine how she punished him in private) and endured both private hell and public humiliation, never once allowing what must have been a volcano of anger and hurt on the inside to show on the outside.  So if now she comes across as lacking spontaneity, as cold and calculating, that's okay.  She's earned the right.  I imagine iron self-control practiced for years can't easily be set aside.  Besides, while it doesn't make for a good political candidate by today's show-business standards, an over-abundance of self-discipline wouldn't be a bad characteristic for a president to possess.

While the November election should be a slam dunk victory for an intelligent, experienced, knowledgeable candidate over an ignorant, incompetent, dishonest bozo, it appears it's going to be close, and could go either way. It looks as if a sizable portion of the electorate has been influenced by the unrelenting attacks on her for more than twenty years by the right-wing propaganda machine doing what they do best: attacking those who would dare promote equality and equal opportunity in this country. I don't understand how any reasonably intelligent person could be influenced by Fox News and right-wing radio, two of the most dishonest entities to ever exist, but, then again, you have to admit, they are very good at what they do.

I'm not claiming that Hillary is a saint.  After all, she's a life-long politician.  Honesty isn't something she has much practice at. But I do claim that she is more honest than any of the Republicans that continually attack her.  But the right wing propaganda is insidious in it's relentlessness.  Even if an individual is aware of it's partisan, self-serving nature, after years of being exposed to it, like a carcinogenic substance it can cause internal changes which can be damaging.  As a result of this long-term exposure, a large segment of the population will respond "dishonest" or "untruthful" when asked to describe her.  Ask for specifics, though and you'll get only some statement like, "she just is, always has been, everyone knows it." Or the answer might be something about Benghazi or emails, although they seldom know exactly what was wrong with whatever she did concerning Benghazi or emails.

Republicans, while not good at governing or anything else useful, are very good at investigating and charging Democrats with a variety of transgressions, as they have with Hillary for two decades  The fact that nothing results from an investigation doesn't matter at all.  Republican spokesmen will call attention to all the investigations (they like to refer to them as scandals) Hillary has been involved in dating back to Whitewater, but don't mention that all of them were initiated by themselves. People need to keep in mind that each investigation, each charge, each claim,  has resulted in nothing, and that 0+0+0+0+0 will always add up to 0 no matter how many zeroes are added, and waving your hands around saying they go, "On, and on, and on..." doesn't change that.

She has admitted using a private email server instead of a government network server during her days as Secretary of State, but Republicans aren't satisfied with calling this an error in judgment; instead, they talk of criminal charges being brought, and hint darkly at classified secrets being discussed with ...someone, and passed to...someone.  But like the Benghazi investigation, nothing substantive will result from the email investigation, but that won't stop the Republicans from adding another 0 to the list of Hillary scandals, hoping that eventually adding enough zeroes will add up to something.  Or just as good for their purposes, that the public will perceive that it does.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.