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US 2016: Demented Donald, Crooked Hillary, Crazy Bernie – and we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet

US 2016: Demented Donald, Crooked Hillary, Crazy Bernie – and we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet

The US election just gets more and more astonishing, and we are still just entering the moment when both major parties will have picked their candidates. J. BROOKS SPECTOR takes a look.

The American presidential election line-up seems almost fixed at this point. Defying the expectations and analyses of virtually every commentator, strategist, analyst and fortune-teller in the country (and this writer as well), businessman Donald Trump has now gained sufficient pledged delegates to become the Republican Party presidential nominee formally, when they meet in Cleveland at the end of July.

Meanwhile, former Secretary of State and Senator Hillary Clinton continues to close in on her nomination for the Democrats, even though opponent Bernie Sanders has refused to give up the hunt. Delegates from two remaining big states, California and New Jersey, remain to be decided on 7 June (representing about 15% of total delegates to be elected nationally). Because they will be split proportionately in accord with the percentages of votes won in the primaries by the respective candidates, unless Sanders gains an improbable at least three-quarters of the vote totals in both states, his crusade comes to an end in California.

The Clinton campaign continues to burble (or splutter if one likes her less) along. But, it is still unable to deliver a convincing knockout blow to Sanders. Similarly, it is unable to distil her message to one easy to remember trope, slogan, or meme; and it is saddled with the challenge that a major part of the electorate now sees her as “untrustworthy”. Not as “untrustworthy” as Trump, but still….

The recent report from the State Department’s Inspector General’s office that she flouted government regulations regarding the use of a private e-mail system or the full preservation of all the resulting e-mails (turning them over to the government at the end of her service) has dented her reputation further. And some in her campaign are steeling themselves for worse that may come from a parallel FBI investigation of this same behaviour that may be released only in October. Instead, Clinton’s inability, so far, to put this misery away with a forthright, convincing, frank apology has helped keep this problem in the mix for her, and it has limited her in building her own campaign message about trust in her. In that sense, she has failed to follow one of the most important axioms of political campaigns, the need to define yourself before others do it for you, precisely as Trump has been trying to do to her with his constant refrains of Hillary Clinton as “crooked Hillary”.

Meanwhile, in his recent public statements on various television news programmes in the US, Sanders is already making noises about taking his battle to the party’s platform committee to ensure that clauses supportive of his positions gain prominence there, regardless of who is the eventual nominee, implying he understands it will not be himself. To a considerable degree, these fights over party platforms are a kind of political fig leaf. More usually, a candidate rarely feels compelled to hew precisely to the line laid out in all that excruciating detail in those platforms.

In reality, the real political battles in Congress over actual legislation generally pay rather less heed to those lofty words in the platforms either, save for truly major commitments such as the push for government medical insurance extension and reform (such as Obamacare or Medicare), bringing a vastly unpopular war to an end (as with Iraq), or the establishment of an old age pension system back in the 1930s. The platform is where a party’s interest groups and supporters are placated with fine rhetoric, once there is an actual candidate with his or her own individual views.

As a result, the real issue for Bernie Sanders will be his choices going forward, once his rival pips him at the post. Will he, Achilles-like, stay sulking in his tent until the last possible moment? Or, instead, will he grudgingly embrace his party’s nominee, but snipe at her from the sidelines, sotto voce, to friends and confidantes – and even refrain from telling supporters not to turn the convention into a vicious bun fight? Or, alternatively, will he throw in his support more fully, but fail to encourage his followers to do likewise (as with: “follow your individual consciences”); or will he come on board fully, claiming that his platform victories are what have made the difference for him, and vigorously encourage his followers to help Clinton hold back the forces of darkness? That is Sanders’ own internal battle now – picking how to come out of the convention, once the vote is final.

And, of course, the way – and how fast – Sanders makes his decision is the key to affecting how Clinton can finally pivot from a bruising primary campaign to turning her full attention towards the GOP’s very own Darth Vader. Going forward, everyone will be watching that evolution from 8 June until the last week in July when the Democrats meet in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, over in the Trump alternate universe, the arm-twisting of a growing number of Republicans has been generating the painful surrender of most of them, including virtually all of his one-time opponents within the GOP primaries, save for Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, is ongoing. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has not yet fallen into line, but he seems to be wavering, while only a few career politicians have voiced their decisive, resolute opposition to this Trumpean victory. Notably, one such individual has been Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse who has even written open letters to Trump supporters opposing the man’s candidacy.

Beyond current office-bearers, however, any number of usually reliable social conservative opinion columnists such as David Brooks, Michael Gerson, George Will, and Ross Douthat continue to pour scorn on the Trump candidacy as a disaster in the making. The only saving grace for them is that just possibly it will be a disaster that will turn out so badly it may inoculate the party from nominating a rabble-rousing, populist demagogue for an entire generation. (Interestingly, a few columnists – perhaps out of desperation – are labouring hard to portray Trump as a pragmatist without a hard ideological bent, similar to Clinton and, as a result, arguing that he could be a flexible, agile president, if it actually came to that.)

Meanwhile, over at the influential neoconservative, highbrow, public policy journal, National Interest, its editor, William Kristol, has been hinting that a viable third party, traditional GOP-style conservative (albeit still anonymous) candidacy of a serious player may still be in the works. (It may be hard for such a candidate to have his or her candidacy appear on the ballots of a growing number of states at this point in the calendar, even if such a person announces, however.)

And, of course, the Libertarian Party has nominated former New Mexico Governor Mark Johnson as their presidential candidate, with running mate Bill Weld, a former Massachusetts governor. No one seriously expects this pair to make a real dent in the electoral results, come November, however. Moreover, any votes this team gains in the general election would almost certainly be at the detriment of the GOP, just as the Green Party could have a roughly similar effect on the Clinton ticket. What neither of these two minor parties can do is gain sufficient votes to win the electoral vote of an actual state, they can merely swing the result from Democrat to Republican state by state – or vice versa.

Returning to the ever-astonishing Trump campaign, even as this article was being prepared, the author turned on the television to watch the evening news and saw, live, without commercials or editorialising by commentators, a genuine Donald Trump media conference ostensibly called to stamp out all those scurrilous rumours that he had not fulfilled his promise to raise money for military veterans. From his bullying pulpit, even as he delivered a somewhat confusing explanation of how the funds raised for veterans groups were being distributed, Trump took the opportunity to excoriate reporters for asking embarrassing questions – or even simply clarifying ones.

Immediately after the event, the Washington Post reported, “The presumptive GOP nominee hurled insults at reporters Tuesday, whom he accused of liberal bias and of attempting to diminish his efforts. ‘You’re a sleaze because you know the facts, and you know the facts well,’ Trump said in one instance, pointing at a reporter from ABC News. Trump repeatedly claimed Tuesday that he did not want credit for raising the money, but that he was forced to detail the amounts raised and distributed because of negative media reports. ‘I wasn’t looking for the credit, but I had no choice but to do this because the press was saying I didn’t raise any money for them,’ Trump said.” As he was reading the list of groups benefiting from this fundraiser, “He intermittently paused to attack the press for raising questions about when the money was distributed,” per the Post.

And while he was at it, once The Donald got on an oratorical roll he argued, as usual, that the entire country had gone to the dogs. Specifically, in this case, most especially, the entire Veterans Affairs Department and all its hospitals and clinics were unmitigated disaster zones, solely and totally the fault of Barack Obama. The moment he caught a breath, he added that the Transportation Safety Administration (the folks in charge of airport security checks) were just as bad and they were Obama’s personal responsibility as well. While nobody enjoys waiting in line to see a hard-pressed doctor or to be screened at one of those airport security checkpoints, it seems even a greater stretch than usual, even for Trump, to pin the blame on every incident of inefficiency in government on Barack Obama, and to castigate him as the sole reason the country “is falling apart”.

While some veterans groups were obviously supportive of Trump, especially those receiving grants from his fundraiser, the New York-based group, #VetsVsHate, complained Trump “has used veterans as political props. Trump has been evasive and dishonest about this money, and only after being confronted for attempting to defraud vets was he shamed into accounting for the missing funds.”

And all of this has been happening well before the conventions, and even before the majority of the country has firmly come to grips with the upcoming election. Instead, most people are sliding into summer vacation mode, preparing for the end of school for the year, planning a trip to the mountains, the beach, or just lazing around the house. But the candidates are just getting started. DM

Photo: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders (EPA)

Gallery

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