Finally, the presidential campaign
is nearing its conclusion. We now can
glide to November 8 with only a few questions remaining. By what margin will
Hillary Clinton triumph? Can she turn a red state or two blue? Will the obstructionist Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell become an obstructionist Minority Leader? Will we ever see Paul Ryan grow a spine? Will his House flip from Clinton’s
coattails? Will Donald Trump ever
concede? #hocopolitics
Trump has vowed to “make America
great again” countless times but he is ready to eschew a centuries-old tradition of
conceding a loss in a presidential election and leaving a big question mark on
a fundamental tenet of our democracy. He
is also undermining our democracy when he claims without any evidence that the
election is rigged.
A concession would be a sign of
grace and sportsmanship that had been exemplified by Al Gore. The Democratic hopeful in 2000 had a reason
to be bitter but did the right thing anyway.
Trump cannot likely bring
himself to concede because to do so would be an admission that, um, he
lost. Only he (in his own mind) knows
how to win; losing is an anathema to him.
“Donald Trump, loser.” It contradicts
the image he tries so hard to project.
Many have said this race was
Hillary’s to lose. She has the
experience, the money, the historic nature of being the first woman president,
and the apparatus to win a national election.
I say it was Trump’s to lose,
and he will have fulfilled that beautifully.
There has been considerable
desire for change in this country. Trump
was the vessel to effect that change. Those
who were down on their luck economically, maintain racial distrust, held a concern
that illegal immigrants were stealing jobs, and other grievances, did not favor
a third term of the Obama Administration that would be perceived with a Clinton
presidency.
Trump romped over his primary
opponents partly as a result of all the free media he received, hoping to catch
a moment that records his penchant for outlandish rhetoric.
He also squashed them because
they were all afraid of his insults and they didn’t take him seriously until it
was too late. They wasted their time on
the debate stage trashing Obama and Clinton but the one obstacle in their path
to nomination, Trump, was hardly attacked with gusto.
Voters saw a man with a message
of populist nationalism, a chest-thumping visage who condemned political
correctness. He would say things that
other politicians wouldn’t dare to utter but were of the same mindset as
Trump. He had the courage to do so; they
didn’t. And then there’s that unyielding
rabid hatred of Hillary.
Trump would shake up Washington
and restore pride to our country. He would
close our borders and defeat terrorism.
It was an effective message and one that had a chance to catch on more
broadly than with just the disgruntled core of his supporters who were mostly
white, rural and non-college educated.
Trump claimed, amusingly, he was one of them—gritty, pro-gun, working
class—except a million times richer.
On the other hand, Hillary
Clinton possesses a resume like no other: a former First Lady whose husband
actually produced a budget surplus and kept us out of wars, a two-term U.S.
Senator who worked effectively across the aisle, and Secretary of State. Not insignificantly, she endured a tough
primary from Bernie Sanders whose socialist stances forced Clinton to the left
in order to keep the peace.
But she had a reputation—an
unwelcome one—whereby Clinton had been cast as untrustworthy at best and a
criminal at worst from her own actions as well as decades-old propaganda spewed
by the extreme right who would never let facts get in the way of their conspiracy
theories.  |
| Courtesy: Jum Urquhartt/Reuters |
Hillary has her liabilities, and
she has been able to slither out of trouble when the rocks were falling from
the cliffs. There was her use of a personal server while Secretary of State and
its missing emails, an FBI investigation that did not lead to a criminal
indictment but castigated her for being “extremely careless” with her emails,
awkward WikiLeaks email disclosures, and a barrage of baseless charges promulgated
by Trump Nation and in particular the right-wing Alt-Right, whose leader
Stephen Bannon of Breitbart.com fame, eventually oversaw the Trump campaign and
its messaging.
The race between Trump and
Clinton—two of the most disliked presidential candidates in history—was
underway in full force to the consternation of the country’s voters. Trump was
the hero of this disgruntled segment of the GOP regardless of his crass,
egotistical personality and his scant knowledge of policy. Clinton was laden by
her baggage and was indeed vulnerable despite her strengths. But as it has turned out, the contest was
really between Trump and Trump.
Any non-lunatic Republican—Kasich,
Bush or Rubio, for instance, would have defeated Clinton fairly easily given
her controversial past and the historical desire on the part of the voters to
change the controlling party following two terms in the White House. But Hillary was carrying a horseshoe in her
pocket; she drew Donald J. Trump as her opponent.
Barring some form of miracle, it
is clear that Trump will lose, and he will not be vanquished by Clinton; he
will have defeated himself. While
Hillary was under water in the positives-negatives ratio, Trump was even
worse. Never before had two presidential
candidates vied for the office with such high negative perceptions from the
populace.
There is no need to rehash the
myriad well-documented miscues—unforced errors and self-inflicted wounds by
Trump—that had undermined his effort to win the election. Any of these individually could have been
detrimental but as an accumulation, they were fatal.
The key turning point in the
campaign that broke open a tight race was undoubtedly his 11 year-old tape
recording from Access Hollywood
whereby he lewdly bragged about his exploits with women based on his
stardom. His incredulous denial during
the second debate that he actually engaged in such activity spawned over 10
women to step forward and chronicle a disturbing pattern of unwanted advances
and sexual assault. This amounts to
criminal behavior, but it was Trump who threatened to send Clinton to jail if
he was to be elected even though there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on
her part.
Likeability is crucial to win
any political campaign; both candidates are far from likeable. But Trump had failed to come close.
For starters he attacked the
family of a Muslim casualty of the war in Iraq. He mocked a disabled journalist. He calls inner cities “hell.” He wants to ban Muslims from entering the
country. He refers to Mexicans as rapists and criminals and condemned a federal
judge for being unfair to him based on his Mexican heritage. He used anti-Semitic imagery on a tweet. He stiffed contractors. He employed undocumented immigrants for his
construction projects though he assailed such people for entering the country.
He degraded women even before
the tape surfaced. He won’t reveal his
tax returns though now we have learned he hasn’t paid Federal income taxes for
some 18 years. He boasts of his business acumen but lost nearly a billion
dollars—on casinos no less. He treats
nuclear weapons as toys and is ignorant of the purpose of the Purple Heart.
Trump’s personality doesn’t help
matters. He is a pathologically narcissistic buffoon with a wafer-thin grasp of
policy and what it takes to govern. A
con artist who lies about everything though his campaign paints Clinton as the
liar in the race. Everything is about
him, and this self-centered ego was getting old.
He could have won this race had
he been somewhat conventional. Instead,
he has scared voters including many Republicans because of his temperament and the
harshness and misplacement of his attacks.
The Clinton campaign has exploited this effectively.
In the final analysis, Clinton
will have not sent Trump to defeat.
Trump did.
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