Trump May Just Lose An Election. What About America?

(This was written on 7 October 2016, before the revelations of Donald J Trump’s (DJT) remarks on women, his apology, his press conference with some of the women who have had an association with Bill Clinton, the second presidential debate and the so-called distancing of Republican party member and Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan from DJT. None of these factors have a bearing on the analysis given below and its conclusions.)

The momentum that the Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (HRC) has wrested from DJT after the first presidential debate seems to be staying with her. This is notwithstanding the supposedly better performance of DJT’s vice presidential running mate Mike Pence over hers (Tim Kaine). From here on, it appears that it is her election to lose. Here are eight things that I’d like to bring your attention to.

2) The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) columnist Peggy Noonan writes:

We do seem to have a clownish, loutish candidate with little self-discipline. Never mind that the other candidate is a little too disciplined in her own undisciplined ways.

4) This piece on The Washington Times talks about the treatment HRC had meted out to the 'Clinton ladies' and, more importantly, how the media covered her. In addition to the other issues raised in this article, these statements stand out for me:

6) Dorothy Rabinowitz, a member of the WSJ Editorial Board, writes on 29 September that only HRC stood between the American nation and the reign of the most unstable, proudly uninformed, psychologically unfit President ever to enter the White House.

8) Jack Hellner writes in The American Thinker on 8 October, the day after the Trump tapes were revealed:

Under normal circumstances, there is scope and room for discussion on the good (few) and bad traits (surfeit) of both the candidates and their bearing on the country’s governance. On policy issues, it could be easily divided into two categories, namely domestic – security, social and economic – and foreign – trade, diplomacy and geopolitics, and their positions analysed threadbare. If choices were made consequently, they would be understandable even if not agreeable.

I’m not naïve enough to think that all commentators, all news outlets and all journalists would engage in such an exercise. Some revel in polemics and trivia and some others like personality weaknesses. Some like them all. But never has there been an overwhelming outpouring of commentary on the weakness of the other than on the strengths of the favoured. In that sense, the analyses reflect the decay in America.

9) New York University development expert William Easterly has analysed the coverage in The New York Times between 1960 and 2008 and found that the paper ran some 63,000 stories on autocratic governments, a staggering 40,000 on their successes, and just 6,000 on their failures. The head of Emerging Markets and Global Macro at Morgan Stanley, Ruchir Sharma, has recorded this in his book, The Rise and Fall of Nations.

Now, think of the above from the systemic risk perspective.

On the other hand, if HRC won the election, what would be the check-and-balance on her? After all, they have presented her as the saviour of the world from the menace of DJT.

The extraordinary presidential impunity that HRC would wield because of the immunity that large sections of the intelligentsia and almost all of the media have pre-emptively granted her bode ill for the Republic.

The staff at Daily Bell summarised the situation well:

The world is drifting along somewhat thoughtlessly into deep waters or unchartered territory.

It is in this world that my children will grow up and turn adults. God bless them!