Candidate Profile: Hillary Clinton

| Senior Forum Editor

With Doomsday fast approaching, choosing between these two candidates may seem like a daunting task. On one hand, you have Donald Trump, who has spouted a load of racist and sexist things, essentially condoned sexual assault (and has been accused by multiple women of perpetrating it) and touts a resume filled with shady business practices and zero political experience. On the other hand, you have Hillary Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state who had…a private Gmail account. Nasty woman. Tough choice, I know.

Let’s take a final look at this allegedly “shrill” (seriously? She has a notably deep voice for a woman) criminal.

Who is this guy?

We’re going to assume the term “guy” here is gender-neutral, because this is the Midwest, you guys.

Hillary Clinton is a woman with an impressive resume. She has a law degree from Yale University. She was named one of the 100 most powerful lawyers in America in 1988 and 1991. She served two terms as a U.S. senator and four years as secretary of state. Why does this woman have to entertain someone like Trump as a serious candidate? Because the American people would rather have a demagogue with the vocabulary of a third-grader than an experienced political leader.

Clinton has been attacked for everything from Benghazi (possibly bad) to using an unsecure private email server for government correspondence (maybe a dumb idea, but also way too inflated by the media). People have come at her for being too mean in debates (have they seen or heard Trump?) and even for having a husband who cheated on her because apparently the unsavory sexual choices of men are really the fault of women, even though it’s 2016.

On the other end, people attack her for staying with her husband after he cheated on her multiple times. It’s almost like Hillary Clinton is aware that American voters place an unhealthy amount of weight on vague things like “family values,” or that the chances of a divorced woman winning political office are next-to-none. Did I mention that it’s 2016?

What does she care about?

Clinton’s track record shows that she is a planner. Politifact notes that her website outlines 40 pages of her policies, plus factsheets. Trump, in comparison, has seven pages. For a woman so often accused of being dishonest (how many times has Trump lied in this election?), she seems to care a lot about information dissemination.

She is deeply invested in health care, as evidenced through her repeated campaign promises to expand on the Affordable Care Act and her history of expanding children’s health insurance through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. She has positioned herself, understandably, as the candidate fighting for women’s rights, advocating to close the wage gap(s) (women of color have an even larger wage gap, which is worth noting in conversations that often focus on the white woman’s 77 cents to a man’s dollar) and defending women’s reproductive rights.

And, of course, as we said in our last profile earlier this year, she is pro-gun control, pro-marriage equality, etc. What you would expect from a Democratic candidate, essentially.

I’m bored; tell me something funny about her.

She’s so freaking qualified, having been in the political sphere for 31 years, and she still has to deal with the fact that MANY Americans find it “difficult” to choose between her and a sexually deviant two-year-old. That’s hilarious. Well, it would be hilarious if election day weren’t…tomorrow.

Will she win the election?

The Cubs recently won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. Throughout the entire season, I was telling myself—and anybody who asked me—that they wouldn’t make it, and that we just had to wait until next year for a potential victory. Why? Because being a Cubs fan is synonymous with being grossly superstitious. And for that reason, I refuse to answer this question. And I can’t, really. The polls are close right now, guys. Scarily close. Watching the results come in is going to be like watching a really bad horror movie—screaming at America to not walk toward the creepy noise, and pissing yourself when a puppet-version of Donald Trump jump-scares you in Florida.

Best late-night moment

Definitely the SNL sketch in which Hillary Clinton herself appeared to play a bartender named “Val.” If anything, this sketch wins for its awkward but conciliatory exchange about Clinton’s delayed support for marriage equality—hammered home by Kate McKinnon, an openly gay comedian.

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