Name Three Issues Where Both Clinton and Trump Are Consistent

So much has been made of Donald Trump’s inconsistencies on basic policy that it is hardly even worth mentioning anymore. He went from being pro-choice and supporting partial-birth abortion in 1999 to being adamantly pro-life in 2011—before taking roughly three separate positions on the issue in March alone. He went from supporting the Iraq War in 2002 to opposing it today. He supported gun control in 2000 but became a (fair-weather) defender of the Second Amendment in 2011. And before saying in 2015 that many Mexican immigrants were “rapists” and “murderers”, he said in 2012 that harsh rhetoric against immigrants was a major reason for Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama.

That just scratches the surface, and doesn’t even include past effusive praise of Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Less noted is Clinton’s own relentless flip-flopping, with a frequency that makes John Kerry seem principled and rock-solid on the issues. She has gone from adopting her husband’s belief that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” to embracing the call for nearly unrestricted abortion in the current Democratic platform; shifting from supporting to opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Keystone Pipeline; and abandoned positions on school choice and immigration that would not have been entirely out of place on a Republican debate stage.

It would be easier to list the issues on which they haven’t flipped. Trump has remained fairly consistent (for him) on trade and health care; Clinton, on health care and entitlements.

Considering the habitual lies told by both Trump and Clinton throughout their careers, on nearly every conceivable subject, this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. But it does highlight a little of the similarity of the two major party candidates. Moreover, neither of them seem to have any shame regarding their numerous evolutions—again not a surprise considering their self-consciousness in other areas.

Supporters of both would probably argue that this is politics, and the candidates are only following in the footsteps of all the other politicians. But besides the fact that both are unique in this respect even among politicians—and that Trump claims to be different, and so by his own logic should be held to a higher standard—those excuses no longer work. If voters really want to stop “politics as usual” as much as they say, they need to quit voting for candidates who are, like Trump and Clinton, the very embodiment of “politics as usual”.