According to most polls taken since last month’s party conventions, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton enjoys an insurmountable lead over Republican nominee Donald Trump. Consequently, a number of commentators on both sides of the partisan divide have declared the race over. Clinton, they say, has won.
There are several problems with this conclusion.
First of all, the “official campaign,” won’t begin until September 26, when Clinton and Trump face off in their first presidential debate. Clinton is not a stellar debater and Trump, a seasoned entertainer, excels in these formats.
Second, recent polls indicate that Trump is closing the gap. Whereas until this past week Clinton enjoyed a 6-8 point lead in the polls, in two polls taken this week, her lead had contracted to a mere 1-3 points.
Third, it is quite possible that Clinton’s problems have only begun. Her peak popularity may be behind her. Since her nomination, barely a day has passed without another stunning exposé of apparently corrupt behavior on the part of Clinton and her closest advisers. This week’s AP report that half of Clinton’s non-official visitors during her tenure as secretary of state were donors to the Clinton Foundation was merely the latest blow.
The continuous drip of corruption stories will have a corrosive effect on Clinton’s support levels. If the revelations to come are as damaging as many have claimed, their impact on Clinton’s candidacy may be fatal.
In light of Clinton’s weaknesses, Trump’s main hurdle to winning the election may very well lie with the NeverTrump movement. That movement encompasses much of the Republican establishment – that is, the political class of centrist elected officials, opinion-shapers, former officials and ideologues. Its members have vowed not to vote for Trump even if it means that Clinton wins the White House. The fact that so many prominent Republican voices continue to oppose Trump even after he has been nominated hurts his ability to build support among swing voters.
As far as the NeverTrumpsters are concerned, Trump carried out a hostile takeover of their party.
The man who discussed his private parts on national television and brutally and personally attacked his opponents may have won more primary votes than any Republican candidate in the past. But he also won the enmity of more members of the party establishment than any other Republican presidential hopeful.
In an interview with CNN in late May, Wall Street Journal columnist (and former Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief) Bret Stephens spoke for many in the NeverTrump camp when he said that he wants Trump to be “the biggest loser in presidential history.”
Stephens explained, “It’s important that Donald Trump and what he represents, this kind of ethnic quote ‘conservatism’ or populism, be so decisively rebuked that the Republican Party and Republican voters will forever learn their lesson that they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any way, shape or form.”
In June Stephens told radio host Hugh Hewitt that a Trump presidency would be more devastating for the US than a Clinton presidency. Stephens argued that whereas a Clinton presidency would be “a survivable event” he was unsure that the US could survive a Trump presidency.
He explained, “The United States survives so long as at least one of its major parties is politically and intellectually healthy. I don’t think the Republican Party… as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump.”
This week, The Washington Times published a list of 50 senior Republicans who not only will not support Trump, but have switched sides and are publicly supporting Clinton.
The problem with Stephens’s view, which again, is widely shared by the intellectual and political establishment of the party, is that it ignores the cause of Trump’s primaries victory.
On the eve of his 2008 electoral victory, Barack Obama pledged to “fundamentally transform,” America.
He kept his word.
And it is this fundamental transformation and the Republican leadership’s failure to stop it that transformed a loud-mouthed, brash billionaire into the Republican nominee. It was this transformation, and the Republican establishment’s failure to block it, that made it impossible for moderates like Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush to win the Republican primaries in 2016.
Not only has the country been transformed, the Republican electorate has been transformed.
Today America is steeped in crisis. Foreign audiences concentrate on the crisis of American power overseas. Today, due to Obama’s decision to prefer his failed attempt at rapprochement with Iran over longtime US allies in the region, the Americans have lost their strategic superiority in the Middle East and are on the way to losing whatever residual influence they still maintain over regional affairs.
Turkey’s ground invasion of Syria on Wednesday is a clear sign of the disintegration of America’s regional position. While the invasion was ostensibly launched against ISIS, the plain fact is that its main target is the Kurds. That is, NATO member Turkey invaded Syria to take out the US’s primary ally in its campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
And the US is providing air cover to the Turkish invaders while abandoning the Kurds.
Every advance the US has made in its campaign against ISIS has been achieved on the backs of the Kurds. And yet, Vice President Joe Biden, who was visiting in Ankara the day of the Turkish invasion, openly threatened the Kurds. Biden said the US will abandon them if they refuse to conform with Turkey’s demand that they withdraw to the eastern side of the Euphrates River.
Biden’s move merely reinforced the growing impression that the US is only dangerous to its allies. The Iranians, for instance responded to the Turkish move by harassing the US Navy destroyer USS Nitze as it traversed the Strait of Hormuz. Rather than sink the Iranian vessels that threatened it, the Nitze responded by shooting off a couple of flares. The State Department then whined about the assault, calling Iran’s act of war “unprofessional.”
And the worst part about the US’s strategic crackup is that it is but one of the crises endangering America today.
Economically, the US has been steeped in stagnation for eight years. Largely as a result of overregulation, entrepreneurship is producing almost no new jobs. The housing crisis has not ended. People who purchased homes before 2008 remain stuck with underwater mortgages, doomed to remain in towns with no jobs because they can’t afford to sell their homes.
Obamacare has made healthcare unaffordable for people who have insurance. Co-payments have risen so steeply that for many insured Americans, medical care is now viewed as a luxury item.
In Rust Belt states, tens of millions of blue collar workers find themselves living in ruined towns. In the past two decades company after company closed its factories, shipped its operations out of the US or went bankrupt in the face of foreign competitors. And their former workers, people who believed in the American Dream, and actually achieved it, now have no dreams and no hope of ever getting back what they lost, much less of seeing their children do better than they did.
The economic crisis has caused deeper crises.First and foremost the US is now in the midst of a crisis of faith. A Pew poll released this week showed that between 2007 and 2014, church attendance declined from 39 to 36 percent over the seven-year period. A significant number of nonobservant Americans no longer believe in God.
Those numbers themselves are highly inflated. A multiyear study of church attendance data gathered from the majority of churches in the US by sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler and published in 2005 showed that fewer than half of those who claim to go to church regularly actually do so. Hadaway and Marler assessed that a mere 17.7 percent of Americans go to church on a regular basis. The rest just tell pollsters that they attend because they are embarrassed that they don’t attend.
In other words, what the Pew survey shows is not a reduction in religious worship but a shift in values. Today fewer Americans view church attendance as normatively superior to nonattendance.
Loss of faith may well be directly correlated with a diminished view of the value of life. In Appalachia and the Midwest, the economic crisis and the spiritual crisis have also engendered a drug epidemic unprecedented in rural America. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 125 Americans die every day from drug overdoses. That is more than the number of Americans who die in car accidents. The most significant rise in drug addiction rates has occurred in rural America. New Hampshire is the heroin capital of the US.
Just last weekend, 10 people died of heroin overdoses in one rural county in Ohio. The heroin in question was laced with a tranquilizer generally used on elephants.
This is the American transformation that Obama has brought about. And the suffering and misery it has engendered are the reason that Trump is now the Republican presidential nominee.
Trump is no Billy Sunday. He is not a champion of free trade or social conservativism. He isn’t a neoconservative interventionist. Trump is the bar brawler who says things no one else will say. And the people who lack faith in the country’s ability to help them, who have lost hope that things that used to work can work again, adore him for it.
This brings us to the issue of the lessons that will be learned by Republican voters if Trump loses as the NeverTrumpsters hope and expect.
If Trump loses, his voters will not realize that they were mistaken to believe in him and support him in defiance of their party’s intellectual class. They will blame the NeverTrumpsters for the election results and boot them out of the party altogether. If the Republican Party even exists in 2020 and 2024, its candidates will make Trump look like a moderate.
If Trump wins, on the other hand, while it is true that the NeverTrumpsters will not maintain their unquestioned control over Republican policies, they will likely get a seat at the table and retain some influence.
More important, if Trump wins, the US will have a chance of changing back to the country it was before Obama fundamentally transformed it.
Clinton, who like Obama and the NeverTrumpsters scoffs at Trump’s dark descriptions of American life today, has pledged to double down on Obama’s foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, she even pledged to destroy what’s left of the coal industry.
So if Clinton is elected, what Republicans think about illegal immigration and free trade and foreign policy will be irrelevant. America’s fundamental transformation will become irreversible.
In that event, America as a whole – not Trump, and not even the NeverTrumpsters – will be the greatest loser of November’s election.
From your point of view Trump may be “flawed” What exactly does that mean, He has had 3 marriages; presumably you don’t approve …He throws off-the-cuff comments when he makes speeches which all his press enemies jump on, although they patently twist them, and the original intent is lost… He loses his temper…I really doubt that he actually loses his temper to any serious degree, and CERTAINLY, when he has a momentous decision to make-of which a man in his position likely has had hundreds- he makes them coolly and calculatingly for the best outcomes-temper or no temper.
He knows little about Foreign affairs, other than his many years of dealing with foreign governments over business matters, giving his a working knowledge of the routines…nut…he has many choices who are experts and he knows how to pick them.
He has a universally admitted talent for picking the right people for the job, and has never shown indecision of cowardice, rather he can temporise and regroup until he is ready to advance again. He can change his ground when neccessary. THAT’s how he built a $90 mill legacy into a $10 billion empire, all the while paying hefty alimonies and raising 4 loyal children who are involved in his business affairs. Nowadays, this is a rarity.
So let’s hear a bit less of the “flawed” and a bit more of the “smart”..”sharp”, “makes the right decisions”, “picks the right people for the jobs” and etc.etc.
Because, from what I have been reading- and I’ve read everything pro and con- That’s what I have concluded.
In the polls have they really asked any of the millions who have overcrowded all his speech venues….?? . I doubt it. @ efirub:
From your point of view Trump may be “flawed” What exactly does that mean, He has had 3 marriages; presumably you don’t approve …He throws off-the-cuff comments when he makes speeches which all his press enemies jump on, although they patently twist them, and the original intent is lost… He loses his temper…I really doubt that he loses his actually temper to a serious degree, and CERTAINLY, when he has a momentous decision to make-of which a man in his position likely has had hundreds- he makes them coolly and calculatingly for the best outcomes.
He knows little about Foreign affairs, other than his many years of dealing with foreign governments over business matters, giving his a working knowledge of the routines…nut…he has many choices who are experts and he knows how to pick them.
He has a universally admitted talent for picking the right people for the job, and has never shown indecision of cowardice, rather he can temporise and regroup until he is ready to advance again. He can change his ground when neccessary. THAT’s how he built a $90 mill legacy into a $10 billion empire, all the while paying hefty alimonies and raising 4 loyal children who are involved in his business affairs. Nowadays, this is a rarity.
So let’s hear a bit less of the “flawed” and a bit more of the “smart”..”sharp”, “makes the right decisions”, “picks the right people for the jobs” and etc.etc.
Because, from what I have been reading- and I’ve read everything pro and con- That’s what I have concluded.
In the polls have they really asked any of the millions who have overcrowded all his speech venues….?? . I doubt it.
Opinion from internet.
Some people have brought up the fact that they won’t vote if the eventual nominee is not the person they wanted. I just want to put something in perspective. Justice Scalia’s seat is vacant. Ginsberg is 82 years old Kennedy is 79 Breyer is 77 Thomas is 67. Nowadays, the data shows that the average age of a Supreme Court retirement or death occurs after 75. These are 5 vacancies that will likely come up over the next 4-8 years. The next President will have the power to potentially create a 7-2 Supreme Court skewed in their ideology. Think about that 7-2. If the next President appoints 5 young justices, it will****guarantee control of the Supreme Court for an entire generation. And 7-2 decisions will hold up much more over time than 5-4 decisions which are viewed as lacking in mandate. Hillary has made it clear she will use the Supreme Court to go after the 2nd Amendment. She has literally said that the Supreme Court was wrong in its Heller decision stating that the Court should overturn and remove the individual right to keep and bear arms. Period. Anyone and Everyone who is saying that they won’t vote for one candidate or the other if they are the GOP nominee, please realize this. Hear this! If Hillary Clinton wins and gets to make these appointments, you likely will never see another conservative victory at the Supreme Court level for the rest of your life. Ever. Whoever is the GOP nominee, go VOTE for the GOP Nominee! Remember Romney? Three million conservatives who had voted for McCain did not cast a vote for Romney (for whatever reason and the result was four additional years of B.H.O.) AND ONE FINAL THOUGHT, Hillary’s already on the record as saying that her buddy, B.H.O. “would make a great Supreme Court Justice.” DID YOU JUST READ THAT LAST SENTENCE? NOW ARE YOU SCARED? I am not crazy about either candidate, but I look at it this way, our freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to bear arms, which candidate will protect those freedoms or which one will put those freedoms in jeopardy? Who is pro life? Who has been successful financially? Who hasn’t lied to the American people about Benghazi? Who hasn’t lied to the American people about 30,000 emails? The list of questions goes on and on, and at the end of the day, it is like Rick and Bubba put it, vote for flawed or evil? I simply cannot vote for evil. If I choose to stay home or write in someone, it is a vote for Hillary. Crazy messed up system, but that is what we get as an American voter. So for this gal I will take flawed Trump! From that standpoint, on the vote your conscience, I understand, totally. An American with a clear conscience simply cannot vote for Hillary, that is an oxymoron! Copy and paste and SHARE with everyone you know that America is in JEOPARDY!
The amazing mystery to me is, that with ever more damaging revelations of Clinton’s corruption and criminality emerging daily, she is still able to get a huge Democratic vote.
That the Republican Never Trump-ers will ever be able to show their faces at Republican functions in the future, whether Trump wins or not, is very doubtful. I think that their political careers are over, unless they band together and start another party. But the stench of their betrayal out of sheer pique and jealousy will never fade completely.
Glick has been making me nervous for a long time, as if she were “uberbotteldt”, with her offering the YESHA Arabs full Israeli citizenship and etc. In this article she has slightly redeemed herself with me…not that she cares, but I’m a reader with definite opinions, and there are many others I’ve seen, who feel as I do.
I fully expect Clinton to end up being indicted and imprisoned, with the Clinton Foundation either closed or totally re-vamped . If she isn’t then the vaunted American Justice System might just as well “fold up it’s tents and silently steal away”….