How weird is it when NY Times columnist Tom Friedman, not known for any progressive tendencies, writes another scathing column highlighting the no-nothing nature of the Republican Party candidate, and the conservative Arizona Republic newspaper endorsed the Democratic Party presidential candidate for the first time since it began publishing in 1890.
Both write simply that Donald Trump is unqualified.
In his Times column, Friedman wrote:
My reaction to the Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton debate can be summarized with one word: “How?”
How in the world do we put a man in the Oval Office who thinks NATO is a shopping mall where the tenants aren’t paying enough rent to the U.S. landlord?
NATO is not a shopping mall; it is a strategic alliance that won the Cold War, keeps Europe a stable trading partner for U.S. companies and prevents every European country — particularly Germany — from getting their own nukes to counterbalance Russia, by sheltering them all under America’s nuclear umbrella.
How do we put in the Oval Office a man who does not know enough “beef” about key policies to finish a two-minute answer on any issue without the hamburger helper of bluster, insults and repetition?
And he proceeded on, point by point, from there.
And here’s just part of the Arizona Republic’s take on the presidential race.
Make no mistake: Hillary Clinton has flaws. She has made serious missteps.
Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of State was a mistake, as she has acknowledged. Donations to the Clinton Foundation while she was secretary of State raise concerns that donors were hoping to buy access. Though there is no evidence of wrongdoing, she should have put up a firewall.
Yet despite her flaws, Clinton is the superior choice.
She does not casually say things that embolden our adversaries and frighten our allies. Her approach to governance is mature, confident and rational.
That cannot be said of her opponent.
Clinton retains her composure under pressure. She’s tough. She doesn’t back down.
Trump responds to criticism with the petulance of verbal spit wads.
That’s beneath our national dignity.
Read the newspaper’s full endorsement here.
But, of course, the danger appears to be that enough voters, including some progressives and former Bernie supporters, could feel alienated enough to see Trump’s lack of qualifications as a virtue.
For those Bernie supporters who are still deciding whether to vote for Clinton in the end, I recommend this recent column by Shaun King in the New York Daily News (“KING: If you don’t vote against Donald Trump, we may all soon regret it“). Thanks to Bart Dame for the link, and for his comment (“What Shaun says. Ditto. To every detail.”).
Polls show that this campaign is more about voting against a candidate than it is voting for one.
I am that dude and I hate it. I’m voting against Donald Trump far more than I am voting for Hillary Clinton. I even hate writing this column because I am just not a fan of Hillary. To this day, I still believe that Bernie Sanders would have absolutely mopped the floor with Trump.
But that’s not where we are.
We are 45 days away from electing either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as the next President of the United States.
I have 99 problems with Hillary Clinton, but I am 100% sure that she is a significantly better option than Donald Trump.
If you don’t see that, you are either lying to yourself, delusional or woefully misinformed.