Abstract

The presidential election of 2016 might have made a good sequel to the harrowing film Sophie’s Choice, since both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had higher unfavorable ratings than any candidate since the beginning of polling on the subject. For the first half of the year, Secretary Clinton was being investigated by the Justice Department and the FBI for setting up her own email server during her tenure as head of the State Department. Donald Trump combined racist and ethnocentric rhetoric with a habit of not telling the truth and absolutely no governing experience. Yet both of these candidates were able to win their party’s nomination despite all of their flaws and misfortunes.