Sunday, September 18, 2016

It's Not Surprising that Millennials Don't Trust Hillary Clinton

Recently, I've been reading quite a few articles about the impact Millennials could have on the upcoming Presidential election.  One would think the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would be a no-brainer but that's not necessarily the case.  

Mrs. Clinton made history when she became the first female presidential nominee of a major political party. While I did not personally vote for her in the primary, I was happy to see her win the nomination as a major accomplishment for women everywhere. 

I am a Baby Boomer just like the Democratic candidate but I am siding with Millennials when it comes to what I think about her. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released earlier this year indicated that 53 percent of all voters rated her poorly when it comes to her honesty and being straightforward.

Iowa native and former Bernie Sanders supporter Taylor Gipple actually confronted Mrs. Clinton while she was on the campaign trail and said, "I've heard from quite a few people my age that think you're dishonest..." 

As an African-American baby boomer, I have yet to hear her address issues I am most concerned about. It's like she's straddling the fence.  I get the impression that she is taking the black vote for granted because many of us feel a vote for Trump sets the clock back 75 years.  Mrs. Clinton wants and NEEDS our votes but she also doesn't want to alienate her white middle-of-the-road constituents by saying anything that would sound appeasing to us.  I still haven't forgotten how she courted white blue collars in South Carolina while seeming to alienate US.

And let's go back to her campaign against President Obama in 2008:  (courtesy of the Huffington Post) 

By May, after most observers had already concluded that Barack Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton was still trying to undermine his candidacy by arguing that he wasn’t getting enough support from white voters. She put that argument in the most explicit terms yet: “There was just an AP article posted that found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening again, and how the, you know, whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me … I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.” Clinton’s comments not only made the case that a Black candidate could not appeal to white voters; they also played on nasty stereotypes about Black people and other people of color by equating “white Americans” with “hard-working Americans.”

Perhaps she needs to take a chapter out of President Obama's book for winning elections and realize you can draw more flies with honey than with BULL--.  Transparency is important.  Inclusiveness is critical to America's continued greatness as a nation.

Bernie could still be a write-in.


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