October 10, 2015by J Timothy CloydAdd Comment34 Views3 min read
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J Timothy Cloyd
Written by J Timothy Cloyd
The summer presidential election surge is over and some of the GOP candidates have made great headway particularly since the debate on Sept. 16.

In the Sept. 28 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, there was a great deal to reflect upon. That poll predicted that in the general election, Donald Trump would lose to Hillary Clinton by 10 points, lose to Joe Biden by 21 points and lose to Bernie Sanders by 16 points. The Quinnipiac University Poll showed, in a general election, Hillary Clinton beating Trump by 2 points, Biden beating Trump by 11 points and Sanders beating Trump by 5 points.

Now with margins of error considered and this being the very early days in the election still, we need to be somewhat circumspect about these numbers.

But the main question still remains, “Is Donald Trump electable in a general election?” Sure, he has rallied the base particularly the tea party types, but that base will not determine the outcome of the general election.

Let’s look at the same data and see what the NBC/WSJ poll would predict if other Republican candidates faced Hillary Clinton in the general election. The poll shows Clinton over Jeb Bush by 1 point. It, however, shows both Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson over Clinton by 1 point. The same poll shows Trump winning the 2016 Republican presidential nomination by only 1 point.

It shows Trump polling at 21 percent, Carson at 20 percent, and Fiorina, Marco Rubio and Bush coming on strong. This race is far from over. I believe that no one out there should become overly excited about Donald Trump. Except, of course, the Clintons.

With their brilliant political wisdom, sense of timing, media strategy and whatever they may have in their hip pocket about Trump from opposition research, the Clintons surely want a Trump nomination. I have heard a lot of people ask why is Hillary Clinton not addressing Benghazi, the private server email issue or a number of other matters. My answer is why should she even speak about any of these issues until she absolutely has to. She has given, on my count, only one single interview with a major news outlet. Smart for her. She has been working her base and the media outlets that she knows are pro-Clinton.

Sometimes silence is the best approach and she knows that this is true. The Clintons are politically seasoned and bright no matter what you think of their politics.

I predict that they are just biding their time and hoping the Republican process will produce a ticket with Trump at the front. The Clintons have learned lessons about keeping silent the hard way. They know the truth that Abraham Lincoln learned about politics long ago when he said, after someone asked why he did not speak up during a verbal political attack, “I would rather keep my mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Sometimes leadership requires silence. Hillary Clinton has learned this truth, and Donald Trump has not even thought about it.

Image from ABC News
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