Over time, stuff clings to politicians, and no matter how hard they try, the static charge remains with them, and they can't shake it off.
Case in point:
Hilary Clinton is a gifted politician. She proved to be an accomplished Senator and a gifted statesman as Secretary of State. She is a devoted Christian, caring, and empathetic. She has a great sense of humor. Her judgment is pretty sound, the Iraq decision notwithstanding.
But she has been in the public limelight since 1992. They started to come after her from her husband's first campaign for President, making fun of her for a statement that she was more than the Tammy Wynette song, Stand by Her Man. It meant that there was more to her than just the usual house mouse that politician's wives were portrayed as being. The irony, of course, is she has stood by her man closer than Tammy Wynette could conceive, and closer than the storied marriage of Al and Tipper Gore ( who were the basis for the couple in Erich Siegal's Love Story).
When Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House in the 90s, politics became exponentially nastier. Newty had a foul take no prisoner's attitude about politics, and he did not care who he went after and how hard. This man of many affairs had no problem leading an impeachment charge against Bill Clinton for lying about a sexual affair.
Fox News became your father's propaganda channel, radicalizing millions, and as the new century went on, spending more and more time turning Hillary into a monster.
Despite this, Hillary ran for President in 2008 and lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama.
Despite this loss, in 2016, she ran again. She ran against the foulest and most despicable man to ever run for President. Despite constant vilification, and surviving constant lies about Benghazi and e-mails, the Russians supporting Trump and running false smears against her on social media (Pizzagate! She's had a stroke! She has a kill list!), she actually won the 2016 election by 3,000,000 votes. But thanx and a hit's tip to an antiquated electoral college designed originally to preserve the power of slave states, she lost the Electoral College by the narrowest of margins.
At the end, she could not survive the static cling that had built up on her.
And although the most extreme example, she is not the only one with this problem.
Joe Biden has a long and storied career in American politics. With his experience, he is probably the most qualified person to be President of the United States. But he also has developed static cling over the years. Some of his votes and positions have not stood the test of time. They have not aged well. There is nothing there concerning Biden and his son, Hunter. Nothing other than a slight stink of white and elitist privilege. You and I could not get $50,000 for being on the board of a foreign company - we don't have a name to trade in on. Of course, it is hypocritical to the max to have Trump complain about this, with what his own kids get away with. It's sort of like a serial killer complaining about a jaywalker.
Bernie Sanders, although solid as a rock and consistent in his positions. has static cling from his run against Hillary Clinton. Many of the Hillary supporters are still angry as Hell that he dared to run against her. They imagine all sorts of crimes, including something called Bernie Bros, that honestly, I don't even understand. Suffice to say they are still constant attacks by Hillary supporters and the corporate press, and some people in the party are going to swallow awfully hard if he is the nominee.
You can see the attempts to build up static cling on some of the newer candidates. Elizabeth Warren has shaken the idiotic Pochahontas attacks, but Trump will probably persist with them. As she emerges as the frontrunner, corporate Democrats, Wall Streeters, and Trumpeteers will try to figure out ways to sully her.
Tulsi Gabbard is just learning about static cling, and it is sticking to her about as quickly as I 've ever seen. I have seen press smears about her from Day One. She has a unique foreign policy that does not fit neatly into either party, and the knives have come out. Hillary Clinton calling her a Russian asset was slanderous and untrue. And it was not helpful, causing Tulsi to fire back with insults of her own. So y'all are scared that Tulsi will become an outsider and run as a third party? Congratulations, static cling slingers - by isolating and ostracising her, you may have pushed her in that direction. Well done.
Republicans have much less static cling than Democrats accumulate. Why? One, they don't have the media machine aligned against them to the same level of hate and vilification as the Democrats do (sorry, right-wingers - it's a joke of significant proportions to consider CORPORATE OWNED media as having a liberal bias). Two, they just don't care - they're much more interested in power and their policy goals. Democrats ditch Al Franken for misplaced hands in a reception line - Republicans run pedophiles for Senate in Alabama. The Christian Reich, after so much bitching about Bill Clinton's behavior, have decided that policy goals are more important than a politician's personal morality. Supreme Court, baby!
In the past, even the Republicans have had some trouble, at least to the extent that they would often run the next in line (Dole, McCain, Romney), and then be stunned when their regular party favorites lost.
Trump should be like the cat in the photo at the top of this post. We shouldn't even be able to see him through all the crap that clings to him. A slim majority of Americans do see the crap he has accumulated. But again, thanks to the vagaries of the Electoral College, he could still accumulate enough narrow wins in state contests that he could repeat 2016 - lose the popular vote massively and still cling to power.
I don't know what to do about it. Idealistically, as an Independent Progressive, I just want to vote for the candidate most likely to accomplish the policy goals most important to me and do so ethically and with a respect for our Democratic process. Strategically, though, I want to steer away from candidates with too much static cling. This may be unfair, but unless something remarkable changes in the voting populace, I think it's something we have to consider.
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