Life Between 0 and 1

Here he goes again, blaming everyone other than himself for problems in his own campaign. Some parts of this post are taken directly from the article linked below.

Trump Sees Wide-Ranging “Clinton Machine” Conspiracy to Steal Election

Highlights

In this article, here are the conspiracies he claims are being orchestrated against him:

• intra-party turmoil over Trump’s feud with Gold Star parents
• deteriorating standing in national and swing-state polls
• a positive U.S. job report in July
• his wife’s plagiarism

Trump took it a step further by suggesting without proof that Hillary Clinton and her allies may steal the election.

He also claims that he was running against a “rigged press” and a “dishonest machine” that wouldn’t hold Clinton accountable for her transgressions.

This quote directly from the article is the cherry on the cake.

Trump believing and convincing his supporters that the election was rigged matters a lot,” former Obama senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said on his podcast, Keepin’ It 1600. “Because when you add with the ‘lock her up,’ ‘Hillary Clinton’s a crook,’ [FBI Director] ‘Jim Comey’s in the pocket of the Clinton campaign’—it’s all about de-legitimizing Hillary Clinton’s first term. To create a set of excuses for why Republicans should oppose the most basic governing responsibilities.

Commentary

I found, while reading this article, that I was feeling apprehensive. My concern isn’t due to Trump being a buffoon, or Clinton taking the high road, rather it’s the shear ridiculousness of his accusations in the first place. It took me all of 15 minutes doing some searching online to discover that his accusations only stand if you don’t look for some evidence or proof to substantiate them. Take the claims of conspiracies above for instance.

Intra-party turmoil
Regardless of the reasons why the DNC decided to put the Khan’s onstage to tell their story, Trumps reaction and subsequent comments on Twitter are just wrong. Trump paraded several people on stage at the RNC that made accusations of Clinton and her allies, however there wasn’t a single negative reaction in the press from them. The backlash Trump received for his feud with Gold Star parents is of his own making because 1 – he made the comments in the first place, and 2 – didn’t apologize immediately or directly for the comments.

Deteriorating standing in national and swing-state polls
Random polls asking people who they’d be voting for and providing some demographic information. How exactly does this get rigged when multiple sources are providing similar information? I get that the media doesn’t always do the right thing, but in this case, the data they collect is difficult to rig.

A positive U.S. jobs report in July
Yeah, sure, Clinton made sure that the positive jobs report was, well, positive. Do I really need to comment on this one?

His wife’s plagiarism
The side by side video is pretty clear to me that most of the content in that section of the speech was, in fact, plagiarized. The issue here isn’t that previous speeches from others may or may not have been plagarized, rather, it’s the fact that they initially denied having plagarized the speech. I’m not a stickler for plagiarizing, enough of the words were changed in my opinion and it was delivered quite well, but not admitting it was “borrowed” as soon as the news broke, *that* is why it’s a big deal.

The Machine

I could be wrong in this statement, but I believe this election year is one for the history books (rather, e-readers). Historical not because there is potential for the first female President. Historical not because the Republican Nominee was a former reality-TV star and business man without a political resume. Historical not because both candidates have poor approval ratings. No, it’s historical because at no point in our history have their been two candidates that caused a collective world to be left shaking their heads at the American democratic system. The machine is broken and it’s every single person in politics that thought it was someone else’s job to grease the gears. Our political machine is starting to show that it’s over 200 years old and decades of poor maintenance have left us with a compromised system that I fear is beyond repair. At this point I don’t even believe that Gary Johnson (Libertarian) or Jill Stein (Green) could make much of a difference if somehow elected to the Presidency.

When considering the two third-party candidates though, Jill Stein has started to pull ahead of Gary Johnson in my own personal poll. You know, the one that includes only me. She has some really good ideas and positions on a lot of hot button issues that match up to my own opinions. What I’m trying to understand right now if is a vote on a third party candidate is a wasted vote or not. I’ve read several blog entries on just that subject and am still on the fence. If I were forced to vote tomorrow, I’m 90% certain that I’d select a third party candidate as I’m done with Democrats and Republicans. The time has come for the death of the two-party system that supports and perpetuates the “us vs. them” mentality.

Bernie Sanders, Independent for President!