Why Obama’s two terms won’t hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances

To the editor: Doyle McManus contributes to the mythology that two terms of incumbency handicaps a party’s presidential candidate. He notes that third terms for a party have happened only once in the last half century. (“Election forecasting in the age of Trump,” Opinion, May 15)

This is a bit like noting, when flipping coins, that getting three heads in a row doesn’t happen too often. McManus seems to think that, after throwing two heads, the third toss is likelier to come up tails.

In addition, looking at the last half century is misleading. First, Al Gore’s popular vote win over George W. Bush in 2000 really says more about the public’s acceptance of third terms than Bush’s contested electoral victory. Finally, looking back over a century, instead of 50 years, five of 12 such third-term elections were won by the party in power.

Democrat Hillary Clinton faces obstacles in winning the presidency, but it would be mistaken to count Barack Obama’s two terms among them.

Daniel J. Stone, Los Angeles

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To the editor: The forecasting models for predicting the outcome of the presidential election in 2016 should give more weight than usual to the persona (the personality) and menschkeit (a person’s integrity and honor projected in public) of the candidates, who will probably be Donald Trump and Clinton.

Trump’s repeated taunt of “Crooked Hillary” is at best a half-truth. On the other hand, Marco Rubio’s occasional reference to Trump as a con man has much merit as a derisive description. No one would dispute the thought that Trump could excellently perform the role that Robert Preston played as a con man in the acclaimed 1962 film “The Music Man.”

Quite likely, the use of “Con Man Donald” and “Crooked Hillary” can play an important role in the outcome of the presidential election.

Marc Jacobson, Los Angeles

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