<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">On Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 12:31 PM, Darin Sunley </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><<a href="mailto:dsunley@gmail.com" target="_blank">dsunley@gmail.com</a>></span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> wrote:</span><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:16.08px"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>If the "serious" politicians, on both sides of the aisle, wanted us to be able to take seriously the idea that a presidential candidate like Trump could be an existential threat to the country, they probably shouldn't have spent the last three decades describing, in turn, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama as similar existential threats. </span></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">There is no point in pretending that Trump is just another presidential candidate, he isn't. George W Bush was as dumb as a sack of rocks and the worst president in my lifetime but he was sane, I don't think Trump is. If we have another Cuban Missile Crisis, if President Trump has to decide between being personally embarrassed and causing the extinction of the human race I don't think he will even hesitate, he will reach for his Red Telephone. </font> </div> </div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:16.08px"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>"But this guy's /really, really/ bad!" just isn't terribly convincing, in and of itself. We've heard that story before.</span></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">No, you haven't heard that before. No sitting American president from either political party has ever said that one of the 2 people that will succeed him is simply unfit for office, but Obama did yesterday:</font></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4"><i><br></i></font></div></div><font size="4"><i><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">"Donald Trump </div>is unfit and woefully unprepared to be president<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">. </div>There have been Republican presidents with whom I disagreed but I didn’t have a doubt that they could function as president<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">. </div>I think I was right and Mitt Romney and John McCain were wrong on certain policy issues but I never thought that they couldn’t do the job. And had they won, I would have been disappointed but I would have said to all Americans: this is our president and I know they’re going to abide by certain norms and rules and common sense, will observe basic decency, will have enough knowledge about economic policy and foreign policy and our constitutional traditions and rule of law that our government will work and then we’ll compete four years from now to try and win an election.<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>But that’s not the situation here.<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">"</div> </i></font></div><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">That is unprecedented, that is not politics as usual, that has not been said in 200 years.</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><font size="4"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">And it's hard to keep up with Trump, just today he said if he loses that can only mean the election was rigged and the November 8 vote illegal, and that also is not politics as usual, no presidential candidate has ever said something like that before. </font></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font size="4"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font size="4"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">John K Clark</font></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </div><br><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
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