Letters for June 16, 2016

We’re so proud

Overheard while biking past a car at the intersection of California and Virginia: “That is so Reno!”—followed by snickering laughter. I turned to see two young women in a car with Oregon plates facing the digital billboard of the Wild Orchid strip club. Pole dancers and stripper selfies were playing at the time. Sigh.

Kyle Isacksen

Reno

Still dueling

Re “Dueling conventions” (Left Foot Forward, May 26):

Why does Sheila Leslie continue to make claims of violence at the Nevada Democratic Convention in Las Vegas? Even Anderson-Cooper at CNN has (belatedly) clarified that, while raucous, the Convention had no violence and no arrests. The canard about flying chairs was effectively refuted by Dennis Myers in his article seven pages after Ms. Leslie’s piece. I did see one chair flee (not fly), and that was Democratic Party Chair Roberta Lange taking flight after gavelling the meeting closed before its business was concluded.

Why would a respected Democratic figure like Sheila Leslie continue to tar the Sanders campaign with the charge of violence? Did she reveal her true agenda when she said, “He [Sanders] should step out of a race he can’t win,” and is she willing to use any smear, no matter how discredited by facts, to accomplish that end? In Philadelphia, the delegates, both elected and unelected (unfortunately), will decide who can and can’t win, especially in light of her own preferred candidate’s problems with erased emails and the Clinton Foundation.

Paul Lenart

Reno

The enthusiasm factor

Re “The Republican baggage” (Left Foot Forward, June 9):

Shelia, you and many others, keep pointing out how bad Trump would be for the country. However, you keep ignoring the passion of the Trump supporters. Trump said he could shoot someone in the middle of the street and he wouldn’t lose any supporters. He was right. His poll numbers didn’t go down after he made that statement.

Marco Rubio said during the debates he wouldn’t trust Trump with the nuclear codes but he is now supporting Trump over Clinton.

Can you say that about Sanders supporters? Will they switch to Clinton once Sanders drops his campaign? One by one the bigs of the Republican Party are declaring their support of Trump while a few have said they would cast their vote for None Of The Above if they have the option, but won’t support Clinton, and the rest (very few) have turned against Trump by saying Clinton is a better choice. On the other side of the fence some Sanders supporters have said it’s the Bern or no one. Even if they do switch to Clinton, it is a tepid support.

Here’s the kicker: Come November, Trump supporters will come out in force no matter what the weather, how long the lines are, how many hoops they have to jump through just to vote for him. Clinton supporters will have read your column and listened to all the late night comedians, seen media stories about the antics of Trump and election day will see two drops of rain on the car windshield and go back to bed saying no one will be voting for Trump. Clinton just doesn’t excite her supporters like Trump.

It’s one thing to point out Trump’s daily offenses, but you need to remind the Clinton leaning voters they can’t take it for granted that Trump’s latest gaff is the one that will lose the election for him.

Dewey Quong

Reno

That liberal browser

Like Facebook, the autocomplete controversy with Google appears to be a trend in internet scrubbing to suppress or enhance the internet queries found on important people like incumbent political figures. Similarly, everyone has a right to hire someone like reputation.com to delete attacks on family, faith, personal life, unsubstantiated innuendo or false information.

Use of reputation management must (in my opinion) be reported through the State, just like a campaign contribution. Then, everything is on record. Is it just good business to use an IT firm to scrub a political candidate as part of a campaign? Yes. Combined with a voluntary background check, the practice of reporting reputation management will become far more tenable and transparent to the public. It will go a long way to repair the general perception that career politicians are evasive and untrustworthy. Social media scrubbing is worth a lot of money.

Niklas Putnam

Norfolk, Virginia