The Presidential Primaries ended this summer with the Democrats nominating Hillary Clinton and the Republicans nominating Donald Trump, both of whom have troubled pasts.
Trump has blundered the first few months of the general election with various gaffes running from taking a veteran soldier’s Purple Heart and commenting that he “always wanted one,” to stating that President Barack Obama and Clinton were the founders of ISIL.
Furthermore, Trump can’t seem to find a balance between peace and war, stating Trump was always against the invasion of Iraq despite a recording from the Howard Stern show in 2002 showing otherwise when asked he answered “I don’t know… I guess so, I just hope we do it right this time.”
He wants to leave ISIS (or ISIL) to the Russians, but wants to reintroduce torture such as water boarding and ‘take out’ members of ISIS families.
All of this has led to a particularly bad few weeks for Trump and a new shake up in his campaign; Kellyanne Conway is his third campaign manager after Paul Manafort’s connection to various pro-Russian Ukrainian elites were revealed, fueling rumors about Russian and Trump connections.
His constant blunders led to a worrying 12 – point average deficit in the polls between him and Hillary in various key battleground states during the run-up to Manaforts firing, according to RealClearPolitics.
Hillary now leads the polls by an average of 5.3 points; this damage, however, seemed to mend itself, with the unwitting help of Clinton herself.
Furthermore, WikiLeaks continues to be a thorn in her campaigns side, threatening to release a steady stream of emails from her, as well as the previous democratic national convention leaked emails, and offering rewards to anyone who can give them information on both her and Trump.
To further her untrustworthiness issue and corruption issues, the Associated Press released an article accusing Hillary Clinton of using the Clinton Foundation as a “pay-to-play” apparatus, wherein wealthy private citizens can make donations for favors from her in the Secretary of State office.
Furthering her problems, the age old political strategy of the “General Election Pivot,” where a politician abandons initial primary promises to seem more “centrist” doesn’t seem to working for her favorability ratings.
Having attempted to appeal to “Bernie’s left” during the primaries, she made several promises she doesn’t seem interested in anymore, as her rally speeches are often devoid of points on the $12 minimum wage, or fighting to improve Obamacare.
Instead Clinton seems content with attacking Trump, and waxing poetic about the United States’ “exceptionalism” this has, according to the Business Insider, hurt her where she was strongest: with minorities, liberals and women.
Here in Stockton’s local elections, Democratic Mayoral candidate Michael Tubbs, received 33.6 percent of the vote in the june California primaries to advance onto the head to head race against Incumbent Republican Mayor Anthony Silvas, who received 26 percent during the primary.
Also, with Silva’s mounting controversies, such as his stolen pistol which was used in the slaying of a child a month after it’s theft and not reporting the gun stolen until a one month later.
The gun was traced back to the murder in june
This summer Silva was arrested and charged with 3 misdemeanors: Contributing to the delinquency of a minor, furnishing alcoholic beverage to a person under the age of 21, cruelty to a child by endangering health.
A fourth charge, recording confidential communications, is a felony charge.
The incident in question was Silva was allegedly playing strip poker with 16 and 18 year olds all the while secretly recording the event, back in Aug. 2015.
Tubbs numbers should improve drastically under these revelations, especially as Silva’s trial goes on throughout the final stretch of the campaigns.
