According to the New York Times, the email scandal continues to weigh on Hillary Clinton even after James Comey’s bizarre and counterfactual refusal to recommend prosecution. (If you are interested in the horse race polling, my colleague, Dan Spencer, covered those a little earlier today.)
Hillary Clinton has emerged from the F.B.I. investigation into her email practices as secretary of state a wounded candidate with a large and growing majority of voters saying she cannot be trusted, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
As Mrs. Clinton prepares to accept the Democratic Party’s nomination at the convention in Philadelphia this month, she will confront an electorate in which 67 percent of voters say she is not honest and trustworthy. That number is up five percentage points from a CBS News poll conducted last month, before the F.B.I. released its findings.
The poll numbers describe a race in which both candidates are involved in a dog-eat-dog race to the bottom.
Sixty-seven percent of voters now say Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, up from 62 percent last month and the highest percentage this election cycle. Only 28 percent view her as honest. Clinton’s ratings on honesty were more positive soon after she announced her presidential bid in April of last year. Also, fewer now say she is prepared for the job of president than did so last month – although half still say she is.
Although Clinton receives lower marks on these attributes compared to last month, views of Trump have not improved on these measures and remain mostly negative. Sixty-two percent of voters don’t think he’s honest (compared to Clinton’s 67 percent), and two-thirds continue to say Trump is not prepared for the job of president, compared to 48 percent who say that about Clinton.
Clinton in now seen as more dishonest and untrustworthy than Donald Trump and fewer people now think she is prepared to be president than they did when she entered the race. By the time we go into the polling booth in November it is entirely possible that no one will believe either of these cretins to be trustworthy or capable. And they would not be wrong.
This is a race that Donald Trump should win walking away if he were just capable of shutting up about himself and let the media focus on Hillary. But, as Ron White says, “I had the right to remain silent, I just did not have the ability.”
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