Quote (thesnipa @ 22 Sep 2016 09:37)
Those stand alone comparisons are not possible when one candidate has a lack of policy and the other has a documented history of flip flopping on policy. Trump has changed his views to get in line with his voters, see maternity leave or anti-gun control. Hillary has been in office so long that the meta has changed which makes her formerly popular stances look bad, see tough on crime. And neither is putting forward policy that counters the other. Hillary lays out a plan on Syria, and Trump claims he has a secret plan then deflects to Obama's administration leaking non-critical info that one time. Trump puts forward a plan for border security and immigrant vetting (somewhat, at least end goals) and Hillary eludes to the status quo. There aren't that many areas where we can compare the ideas of one to the ideas of another, its all lack of policy versus policy or policy versus status quo. That said, it is the system that has allowed two candidates such as these to rise to power. Unless there's a credible third option with a chance ot win and not just spoil neither candidate needs to win an election in a global sense, they just need to win a foot race. When 2 people outrun 1 bear you don't necessarily need to be fast, but when a bunch of people encounter a school of sharks you need to be fast no matter what.
I understand the merits of comparison. I just think that we get wrapped up in our lesser-evil box a little too often.
When I describe criticisms of a candidate, I shouldn't have to attach a disclaimer that the other one could be worse. I think we need to do a better job of standing back and assessing a candidate as a whole sometimes rather than always defaulting to a comparison.
This post was edited by ThatAlex on Sep 22 2016 11:20am