We Are Talking About Politicians...

I posted a link to a Star Tribune story today about honesty and the Presidential candidates, an article which featured an image which sizes up this election perfectly.  The two Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, were ranked by PolitiFact mostly in the truthful range.  The one Republican who won't win, John Kasich, also scored more on the truthful side than not, but the other two Republicans, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, one of which will be their presidential nominee, both scored very high on the bull crap side of factuality.

Something interesting then happened.  I started to get messages from Bernie Sanders supporters who were outraged at the suggestion Hillary and Bernie had similar scores for truthfulness.  They felt as if Sanders should've never gotten anything but 100% true and Hillary was a pathological liar.  PolitiFact does their due diligence, and we are talking politicians here, but even still, you'd think the Democrats having both of their candidates scoring high for truthfulness would be something to celebrate.

When I saw Bernie Sanders speak at the Humphrey Mondale dinner a few weeks back, I thought he had a rousing speech.  It was similar to the ones he'd been giving for the previous few months, and he did have one or two things which made me raise an eyebrow.  He was stretching the truth.  I have no real problem with it.  Clinton said she was a progressive, giving her the biggest reach of the evening.

Politicians want to win.  It can drive them to exaggerate, making them pull hard on a fact which doesn't necessarily agree with their narrative.  I'm cool with it, as long as it's not an outright lie.

Both the Democrat's campaign supporters are passionate, but passion can become belligerence fairly quickly.  When Clinton fans started to question the mental health of Vice President Joe Biden, I was outraged.  The fear of him running made them embrace a disgusting theme, one which they all insist never happened today.

Sander's supporters have made Clinton every horrible human who has wandered the planet for the last 1000 years.  She was responsible for the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, slavery and the plague.  They insist she would be the worst President, far more EVIL than Trump.

To both sides:  STOP IT!!!  Calm the F- DOWN!

These are politicians.  They both want to win.  They are both relatively honest.  AND they both would be a million times better than a President Trump or President Cruz (I just threw up in my mouth a little).

The GOP has to, HAS TO, create a rift between the Sanders and Clinton supporters to have any chance at all in November.  Wake up.  Realize the GOP money people are manipulating you.  Many of those social media profiles vilifying either Clinton or Sanders are fake; Koch brother and ALEC fiction designed to keep a lot of Democrats home on election day.

Fight the good fight.  Be passionate and support the candidate of your choice, but don't get played. Vow to vote Democrat.  I have!