Race for the White House Volume 79

This weekend, the country celebrates America's 240th birthday, but as much as I love the USA, it is tough to get into the usual Independence Day spirit. There just does not feel much to celebrate this year, in a country that might have to choose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Whatever happens in the political arena the rest of this year, and whatever the result, I just hope that things might look up next year and the country will be on the way to being improved.

I am sort of at a loss what to write about. The conventions are coming up shortly, and so are the Vice Presidential picks. The front-runners are believed to be Tim Kaine for Democrats and Newt Gingrich for Republicans. However, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, currently running for reelection, is said to have met with the Trump campaign this week. Another name that sometimes gets mentioned is freshman Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, a respectable young figure in the GOP, that I hope is not tarnished by running with Trump. If he gets selected though, there would be plenty of opportunities to say that Trump is "out of his Cotton-picking mind."

Every day more and more stories come out and more and more information comes to light that shows what a disaster the Trump campaign is and how it would be nearly impossible for them to win, despite some polls showing a relatively tight race at this portion of time. Of course, I do not believe he deserves to win and I do not want him to win. I do not want his Democrat opponent to win either, so that might explain why I do not feel about writing much, even though ideas of what to discuss come to my head during the work week. More and more on weekends though, I just want to forget about politics. If I had to predict, if Trump is indeed the Republican candidate on Election Day, I think he would lose by a wider margin than even many Democrats are now predicting. I would say the margin could be 52-38, with as much as 10 percent going to Libertarian and Green Party candidates.

Hillary Clinton remains the presumptive Democrat nominee and some days there are good headlines for her and some days bad ones. She has yet to really establish herself as a strong political presence on her own, but opposition to Trump is wide and deep. This week, the Congressional Benghazi Committee released its report. There was nothing new that looked bad for Clinton, which is what Democrats focused on, but what has already been known, is not good for her. The issue is that a lot of Americans just do not care. The Democrats released their own report, which somehow contained dozens of mentions of Donald Trump. That is beyond ludicrous, but shows what the Republican Party will be up against this year and in the future, if party leaders and delegates do not try to stop this thing in Cleveland.

The most intriguing political story of the week was not a good one for Democrats. In Arizona, there was an incident where former President Bill Clinton, the husband of the soon to be nominee, who happens to be under FBI investigation over her use of private email as Secretary of State, boarded the plane of Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The spoke for over a half hour and aides kept photographers at bay. Lynch insisted that she and Clinton only discussed things like grandchildren and golf, but just about all involved agreed the optics looked bad. There is no way that Lynch and Bill Clinton should have had such a lengthy meeting, considering the fact the Justice Department is investigating Hillary Clinton (in which Bill Clinton may be a material witness) and will ultimately have to sign off on any indictment recommendation. Late this week, Lynch gave some mixed messages, when she said she would agree to go along with whatever investigators recommended, and then gave some wiggle room. 

This morning, news came down that Secretary Clinton met today, for over three hours, with investigators at FBI headquarters, after months of anticipation. To say the least, this is a pretty unprecedented circumstance for a would be Presidential nominee and not one that is welcomed. Hillary Clinton should have every legitimate reason to be worried, as the investigation winds down, but still, very few actually believe she will be indicted, whether the belief is that there is no reason to, or that the political fix is in. If those people are wrong though, and it happens, just about everything that has happened in the 2016 Presidential race up to this point, will be overshadowed.