Would Americans be happier if both Clinton and Trump withdrew due to health issues?

by philg

My Facebook friends aren’t too worried about Hillary’s health. Here’s a typical posting:

I would vote for Hillary Clinton for president if she was in a permanent coma that she could never wake up from. #ImWithHer

Aside from showing the death of the subjunctive, this posting presumably shows that the voter is presumably comfortable with the Democrat’s VP candidate actually doing the Presidential job. That led me to wonder if Americans in general wouldn’t be happier with both headline candidates withdrawing from the race. Would that automatically lead to the VP candidates facing off?

At that point both parties would have fairly generic and inoffensive candidates, no? The Democrats wouldn’t have the spouse of the former leader (go Argentina!) and a person who’d banked (some of it in a family-run foundation) $1 billion as a result of serving in politics . The Republicans wouldn’t have, well, Trump.

What do readers think? Could everyone relax a bit if the current Presidential candidates stepped down in favor of the VP candidates?

13 thoughts on “Would Americans be happier if both Clinton and Trump withdrew due to health issues?”

  1. The DNC wouldn’t run her running mate…they’d run Bernie. The RNC would run Ted Cruz or someone. I’d still vote for Gary Johnson, but predict that Bernie would win…which I would be much happier with than either Clinton or Trump.

  2. I don’t think anybody would relax, because if both candidates stepped down their replacements would immediately become the _new_ epitome of all that’s evil in the world. The factions of the Boot On Your Neck party don’t really have a choice but to portray everyone from the other faction as the Great Satan lest people start noticing that there’s really just one ruling party in the US and the elections are meaningless.

  4. The VP candidates would not automatically move up the ticket. It would be up to the parties to put new nominees on the ballot, who could be anybody.

  5. Probably, but I don’t think that either Sanders or Cruz would be any better: all 4 of them are unparalleled demagogues, although of a slightly different persuasion. I doubt that any of them would stand a chance as a major political candidate in any honest, hard-drinking nation, such as Finland or S..Korea

    We as a nation are united in that we do believe in magic, although we disagree on a color of our magic wand. Surely, my choice *must* be fine, while all the others are certainly most dangerous lunatics. Disagree with me? you must be a dumb, uneducated, treacherous individual, since all smart, reasonable, and honest people agree with me by definition. This has been an overarching theme of our political life in this century.

    With apologies to Reagan, I think our problem is not as much with a government, but rather with governance: ridiculous costs of our public projects, the ingrained skepticism of fiscal conservatives, borderline corruption, as well as examples from other nations, all both point to that.

  6. I think it is a media fiction that Hillary and Trump are neck and neck in unpopularity.

    Hillary has functions where they have to close off part of the hotel banquet hall via those folding partitions so that the place doesn’t look empty; while Trump is filling up nearly every venue he goes to. Does it seem reasonable to say that they are equal in unpopularity? I think it is more likely that those in the media hate Trump – but am not sure this distaste is found outside the coastal SWPL enclaves.

    Maybe you want to do a search on Twitter for how 4 years ago, people were saying that Romney was Hitler. Now Romney is moderate and acceptable and Trump is Hitler. Seems less like honest, measured debate and more like political cant.

  9. I have avoided this campaign and will not vote for either one, but the closer we get to the “debates”, the more it looks like prime entertainment. Trump probably won’t be allowed to break a chair over her head, but maybe he can throw her a medicine ball or flash a strobe that will make her gaga. Then her handler can stab him with an auto-injector pen that will make him break into song. They can join arms as the pyros fire and dance off stage right as the confetti drops. They’ll do anything to avoid answering pointed questions.

    Newspapers will report the debate was zany and forthright, but the candidates were not transparent enough.

  10. Hillary will be elected and then either impeached or incapacitated. She will last long enough to appoint 3 new supreme court justices, and that will be considered her legacy. I hope Tim Kaine is a capable person.

  12. I would only vote for Hillary Clinton for president if she was in a permanent coma that she could never wake up from. #ImWithHer

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