Kevin, how has any of that affected you personally? Obama took over when our economy was in free fall from the worst recession since the Great Depression. We were hemorrhaging jobs and the financial markets were crumbling. This affected everyone! Despite unprecedented obstruction by Congress, we have slowly recovered from the Bush recession. And that recession is just a blip on the radar compared to what could happen if Trump carried through with some of his proposals. You don't think us refusing to pay our debts, engaging in trade wars with China and Mexico, deporting all U.S. Muslims, and other idiotic propositions put forth by Trump would result in the destruction of this country? I certainly do. But Hillary using a private email server is so much worse for our Country than Trump's ideas of how it should be run? You think the best candidate to vote for is the one who was endorsed by the KKK, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un? Yes, that makes perfect sense.
Edit: I can't think of a presidential administration in my lifetime that hasn't had numerous scandals. To me, the important metric is whether the Country as a whole was better off at the end of their term vs. the beginning. At the end of Bill Clinton's term, the Country was much better off, despite his sex scandals. At the end of Bush's term, the Country was much, much worse off than at the beginning. The Country is certainly better off today than when Obama assumed office (no thanks to republicans in Congress). And I have no doubt we will be better off at the end of Hillary's presidency than we would be at the end of Trump's. I'll take a few minor political scandals over complete destruction of the economy or trillions wasted on unnecessary wars any day. Sometimes a little perspective is a good thing.
Who knows how it has affected anyone? That is part of the problem, there is so much secrecy, lack of cooperation and scandal, it's hard to say. Want to know why perhaps Hillary set up her email system the way she did, why not go to the computer tech who set it up? But wait, the State Department says his emails have vanished! But how could this perhaps affect me? You had the Secretary of State approving business deals for businesses and countries, that at the same time were contributing millions to her "foundation" and paying Bill quite handsomely for speeches. One of those deals gave Russia 20% of our uranium production. Could this affect us at some point? Are details of those deals located in some of the "wiped clean" emails? Does she now feel she owes any of those countries favors as a result, should she become president? You can believe those countries feel she does. As someone who voted for Romney, could the IRS scandal have hurt republican chances in the election, given that they were preventing conservative groups from getting approval prior to the election? What might those IRS emails that are missing show? Did those emails have something in them that could have changed the election? What might missing emails concerning Benghazi, right before an election, might have shown? I don't know, because they are gone. It does concern me when our government is purposely hiding and destroying information that belongs to the public. It's corruption, plain and simple.
Perspective? How is this for perspective? I am not sure how one brags about the slowest economic recovery of the post war era. One in which family incomes are down, but food stamps and people on social security disability have both increased greatly. Have that many more people honestly slipped on ice and hurt themselves during Obama's tenure? We still can't really raise the interest rates, and my bet is they won't be raised until after the elections, you can't chance a slow down of a slow economic recovery prior to an election. The economy has been great for the rich, heavily invested in the stock market, but not so much so for many of us. And have you seen the predictions for health insurance premiums for the next coming year?
The State Department just released a report stating that Iran is once again the leading sponsor of terrorism. We just made a deal with them giving them access to billions! And they will still be chanting death to Americans. Under Hillary as Secretary of State, and many state that she is the one who pushed for it, we took out the leader of Libya without any plan on what to do afterwards. You want to attack Bush for Iraq? Fine, so do I. But what does it say when you do essentially the same thing in Libya, despite having already seen the result with Iraq? From what I saw during Hillary's tenure at the State Department, it doesn't give me a warm feeling about her foreign policy experience, which is probably the reason why she isn't really running on it.
Bill Clinton did see good economic times, but he was also named by Time as one of the causes for the financial crisis under Bush. Despite what democrats say, the financial crisis had many hands in it, including the American public that purchased homes on very little credit. We did have a good economy at that time, but Bill worked with the republicans who controlled congress through much of it. He signed a bill and said "today, we are ending welfare as we know it". Hillary isn't running on ending or reducing welfare, she is running on expanding it. Also, we had the .com economy as well that propped things up before it collapsed.
I find Trump despicable. He's the last candidate in a crowded republican field that I wanted to be the nominee. He may call for building a wall and kicking illegals out, but I don't think he will or could. But could he end sanctuary cities and perhaps give the border more needed security? We have even arrested people with terrorist ties crossing the border, although our so called "press" gave it scant coverage. He may not temporarily be able to prevent Muslims from coming into the country, but could he tighten up our vetting on those coming from countries with terrorism? Neither candidate is good, in fact, they are downright terrible in my mind. Like others, I won't be voting for someone in as much as I'll hold my nose and vote against someone else. But if the Democrats had Jim Webb as their candidate, he would be my man. But face it, both parties have gone more towards the extreme, and people like Webb or Kasich didn't stand much of a chance as a result.
