Hillary Clinton’s Likability Problem

The word likeable is not synonymous with Hillary Clinton.

During Hillary’s campaign, she has struggled to connect with the middle-class as well as donors. While many have called Hillary Clinton the anointed Democratic presidential candidate by the establishment, Hillary still has a long way to go if she wants to move into 1600 Pennsylvannia Avenue.

In previous months, Hillary Clinton has enjoyed a sizable lead in the polls against democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders, but Clinton’s lead has begun to dwindle and her popularity is slowly fading with Americans. The latest Quinnipiac poll found 60% of Americans find Hillary Clinton to be untrustworthy. With the Benghazi hearings and the email scandal dragging on, none of this is surprising. However, this is a microcosm of the bigger issue with Hillary Clinton, her likability factor.

Hillary Clinton is a tough candidate to like, and that is a problem when it comes to courting donors and winning endorsements. Roughly four-fifths of the people who gave the 2012 maximum $5,000 to the president’s re-election committee hadn’t donated to a presidential candidate by Oct. 1, a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal campaign finance records found.

Drawing on contrasts in campaign style, donors in Iowa explained Hillary didn’t motivate them to donate the way Obama and previous Democratic candidates had. Robert Finnell, a Rome, Ga., lawyer who gave the maximum allowed contribution to Mr. Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns told the Wall Street Journal, “I’m just not ready for Hillary yet. It’s not that I don’t think she’s competent—she is competent, she’s just hard to like.”

Donor reluctance has the potential to spell trouble for Hillary Clinton, especially since the Obama donors should be considered low hanging fruit. Clinton’s scandals and her likability are no doubt playing a part in not only donor relations, but also in the endorsement arena as well.

During a recent interview with PEOPLE magazine, former Vice President, Al Gore, who served under Hillary Clinton’s husband said, “it’s still too early, in my opinion, to endorse a candidate or pick a candidate.”

At the end of the day, Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and Benghazi have not helped her likability among voters, and as long as questions linger over these issues, voters will continue to wrestle with the idea of whether or not Hillary can be trusted with the  presidency.