Finalist Donald Trump vs Semifinalist Hillary Clinton: There is Something Missing Here

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TIBERIU DIANU


After the Indiana primaries, on May 3, 2016,  the Republican contender,
Donald Trump, has secured his “presumptive” party nomination for No-
vember general elections. However, not the same thing can be said about
Hillary Clinton. She, in spite of her ardent desire to compete with Trump
on the same national arena, could have not secured a similar position in
her Democratic party yet.

In other words, the Donald is already a general election finalist (from an
initial group of seventeen candidates), but Hillary is – still – a primary el-
ection semifinalist (from an initial group of… three). Trump has managed
to defeat 16 other Republicans, some of them with pedigree, and some of
them respected party rank-and-file members, like popular governors and
senators. While Hillary, in spite of her “inevitability” aura created by the
press, has managed to defeat only Martin O’Malley, who constantly sco-
red below 5% in all Democratic primaries. She, in her own words, could
not “close the deal” with Bernie Sanders. And still all we keep hearing is
about Trump vs. Clinton in the general elections. Is it just my reasoning or
am I missing something here?

Let us clarify some points. Hillary is not going to secure her party nomin-
ation anytime soon. First, Sanders keeps winning states (the last ones, West
Virginia on May 10, and Oregon on May 17), or breaks even (like in Ken-
tucky on the same May 17). He has already created a movement and, for su-
re, he wants to stick around for the July 25 Democratic Convention in Phila-
delphia. It will be interesting to see if this trend holds in the following – pre-
California (June 7) -- weeks, at the party elections in Washington (May 24),
Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico (June 4 and 5). Second, the ongoing FBI in-
vestigation of Clinton’s e-mails is still a powerful factor (some call it “a wild
card”). FBI recent interviews include Clinton’s long-time aide Huma Abedin,
and the Romanian notorious hacker Marcel Lazar, aka Guccifer, extradited in
April from Romania to the U.S.

Therefore, until there is a clear Democratic Party challenger, Trump’s disco-
urse should focus on his policies for the country and restrain from personal
attacks against Hillary. She is not even worth of such attention. She is just a
semifinalist. When she earns the honor of being a finalist, then she is entitled
to ‘personal attacks” against her challenger. I just cannot envision, like in any
sports or competition of any kind, why a loud-mouthed semifinalist like Hill-
ary is given the right to skip stages and, at least on the discourse level, offe-
red the free ride of “competing” for a tournament which she has not qualified
herself in yet.


Tiberiu Dianu is a legal scholar, book author, graduate of the American  University Washington 
College of Law in Washington, DC, the University of Manchester Faculty of Law in Manchester, 
UK, and an exchange scholar of the Oxford University in Oxford, UK. He currently lives in Wa-
shington, DC and works for various government and private agencies. The opinions expressed in 
the preceding article do not necessarily reflect those of The Puerto Rico Monitor, its editors or 
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