Today it is August 1, the political primary season is over, and
the race to the finish has finally begun.
Where do we stand and what are the prospects?
First of all we need to step back and assess all the strange
twists and turns we have already seen but before we do that we need to
decompress from what is a primary season like no other.
When this began a little over a year ago who would have
guessed the outcome?
The GOP, with a wealth of seemingly qualified candidates,
winds up with a sole survivor who has never served in any elective office from
dogcatcher on up. Apparently, Barack
Obama has broken the glass ceiling of running for office without experience.
In the Democratic corner, the entire Democratic Party
apparatus, built to insure Hillary Clinton would be heir apparent to Obama in
order to protect his legacy, pre-selected her as the candidate. Yet it took millions of dollars for her just
to beat an upstart socialist called Bernie Sanders who refused to be a Democrat
until he ran for office, then immediately gave up his registration when he lost.
During the campaign, Trump rode the wave of discontent
plaguing the nation for decades and forgot he was just the messenger for the
disgruntled masses, and not the Messiah.
Consistently he was his own worst enemy letting his rather enormous ego
dominate good judgment.
Hillary tried to make it a case of Trump being evil when the
public believed the entire political establishment was evil, both Democrats and
Republicans.
Meanwhile, the rest of the establishment had no clue they
were the target along with the politicians.
Big business, big government, the news media, Wall Street, the special
interest industry, health care manipulators, and unions opposed to teacher
accountability, all were part of the same smorgasbord of card-carrying
defenders of the status quo, or the dreaded establishment.
Look at what they missed.
While the favorable rating of politicians and congress was reaching new
lows, the news media was far worse. None
of the traditional establishment has favorable ratings today because none has
earned the respect of the public.
Polarization was certainly encouraged, if not advocated, by
the Obama Administration and it led to a president handcuffed for eight long
years. As a result, most of his major
campaign promises failed and once again, the politicians had lied to the
public.
Voter mistrust and discontent have dominated and will
continue to dominate the election. At
the same time, the strategies of the campaigns and the actions of the news
media have exasperated the polarization.
The highest unfavorable ratings ever recorded plague both
major party candidates. Where does that
leave America
with just 98 days left before we choose a new leader.
At the same time a wary world audience watches in
astonishment, wonder, puzzlement, and amazement as the Republic of America
plods through a painful and soul searching campaign to pick the next leader of
the free world.
Here are the facts as near as they can be determined at this
point.
Well over 50% of the public do not trust either Hillary
Clinton or Donald Trump. Both have done
nothing to dispel this feeling of mistrust, but actually have helped fuel
it. At the same time the news media bias
has been so pronounced that virtually no one can be trusted to tell the truth.
The result is each candidate has about 40% of the vote, more
or less a dead heat at this time.
Approximately half of each candidate's support comes from traditional
Democrats or Republicans who toe the party line. The other half come from people who hate or
are terrified of the other candidate.
That is the tragedy of polarization.
The deciding vote for our next president will most likely be
cast based on a "lesser of two evils," or "who is hated
less" philosophy having nothing to do with party platforms, leadership
ability, or who wants to serve all the people.
My predictions
Though it is far too early to prognosticate, I want to
project what might happen if we can see through the fog bank to the conclusion
of this most disturbing election campaign.
First, I do not believe the winner will come close to 50% of
the vote. Since almost half of the
eligible voters are so disgusted with the system they will not even register to
vote, that is not a good sign.
Voter turnout, however, is only measured by those who are
registered to vote, thus ignoring the protest of half the voters. This demonstrates that we live by a limited
democracy at best, and indicates majority rule is not part of the American
political process.
Of the registered voters, I believe the winner will win with
43-45% of the popular vote. This is not
as bad as you may think because Bill Clinton won election in 1992 with just 43%
of the vote, while third party candidate Ross Perot received nearly 19%.
I expect a similar outcome for president.
As for the winner, so far Trump has not earned the respect
of the public nor demonstrated characteristics of a calm and stabilizing force
we need in a president. Nor has he shown
he has the ideas to fix the problems he has identified.
It seems as if he cannot accept the fact he is the messenger
for the discontent of the people and not the messiah leading them. The discontent has been growing for decades
while Trump is new to the world of politics.
With his ego driven desire to comment on every reference to the name
Trump in the media, he has shown no ability to govern with humility nor desire
to help all the people with their problems/
Hillary shares a tendency to believe her own press at times
projecting a feeling of entitlement to the position of president because of
that is what the people owe her for a lifetime of public service. However, her lifetime of service contains a
lot of missteps, mistakes, and bad decisions.
I often wonder if she might be far ahead if she got off the
woman's platform, abortion advocacy, and progressive sellout and just said I
made mistakes but you know me, and we know nothing about what Donald would do
as president.
For those of you too young or with a reality block on
history, her husband Bill received 43% of the vote in 1992. Then realized his only chance of being
re-elected in 1996 was to run on the Republican principles and move to the
center, which he did, winning with 49% of the vote in spite of many morality
issues.
As of today, just one to three percent of the undecided
voters will most likely select the winner.
They are about the only segment of the electorate more concerned with
the good of the nation than punishing someone they have grown to hate.
It is a sad state of affairs when objective voters represent
so few Americans. Just ask yourself why
you are really supporting the candidate of your choice.
If Hillary can just ignore her campaign advisors who keep
trying to program her and lie low Trump will most likely defeat himself. It will be far too close for comfort, but in
the end, those who want change will not place it in the hands of someone they
do not trust, and Trump has done little to earn the trust of the
disenfranchised majority.
So I expect Hillary to win a nail biter Do not be surprised, if the people do elect
Hillary, that out of caution and prudence they also elect a Republican congress
to make certain she has the same success with her progressive agenda as Barack
Obama. It is a check and balance the
public has used often to keep the politicians in check.
.
