I’ve commented a few times on how the Presidential race seems to be turning; here’s one of the best deconstructions of that trend that I’ve seen. Excerpt:
The Democratic convention’s orgy of self-praise and joyous continuity generated enough jollity for the Trumpophobic media to open up a five- to seven-point lead for Mrs. Clinton. But Donald Trump already has the 40 percent of Americans who share Archie Bunker’s dislike of political correctness, vote-buying with welfare, fiscal incontinence, and a feeble foreign policy, and there has been no further need to serve them up more raw meat. So he has just disappointed, week after week, the frenzied media lynch mob that had implied he was a racist, a misogynist, an inciter of violence, a vulgar buffoon, a member of the Flat Earth Society, an advocate of an automatic firearm for every white seven-year-old American, and probably an enemy of fluoridated drinking water.
Of course, it was almost all nonsense, and as Trump has been uncontroversial, it has been Mrs. Clinton who has made the gaffes (Trump’s followers — now half the voters –are “deplorables”) and has incited concerns about her health as well. Peggy Noonan, who doesn’t much care for either candidate but whose innate fairness and seasoned expertise as a judge of political talent prevent her from joining the chorus of the hysterics, detected (on September 5 in the Wall Street Journal), as the Clinton lead eroded, that anxiety (over Trump) was less negative than depression (at the thought of the return of the Clintons). I think that is only half the story.
She is probably correct that anxiety about a candidate’s performance in office is less destructive to a candidate’s chances than the depression induced by, in this case, thought of another binge of the Clintons at the public trough, pandering to the aggrieved with the money of those who work for a living, flat-lining the economy with new taxes, and entrenching the dictatorship of political correctness. But an acceleration in the tilt of the scales in Trump’s favor is already under way because Trump the nominee, unlike Trump in quest of the nomination, is not saying anything worrisome or even in questionable taste.
I’d question that last statement, but I’d be willing to bet that a plurality of American voters find The Donald’s un repentant, sometimes abrasive candor refreshing, especially when set against Her Imperial Majesty’s serial dissembling and her deep and abiding corruption.
What’s amusing about the Dowager Empress’s campaign is the attempt to cast The Donald as some kind of right-wing extremist, when in fact he is anything but. He is a moderate, a slightly right-of-center populist and pragmatist.
His message of such is resonating with plenty of people, people who are tired of eight years of Obama’s apology tours, his fecklessness, his weakness in the eyes of other world leaders. Trump may be many things but weak is not among them; weak people don’t build billion-dollar business empires. And that’s the other side of his appeal; until last year, he never set foot in the world of politics.
That’s appealing to people in a country where a large majority thinks the nation is headed down the wrong path.
But The Donald’s strengths alone aren’t enough to win him the seat behind the Big Desk in the Imperial Mansion. There are Democrats who could have easily beaten him, but Her Imperial Majesty’s nomination coronation, rigged by a complicit DNC, put in place the weakest candidate the Dems have ever offered. It wasn’t their year; Her Majesty’s bifurcated clarion cry of “I have a vagina!” and “It’s my turn, peasants!” won the day.
And may well have won Trump the election.
