The 2016 US Presidential election will soon come down to turnout. No stratagem can surmount the indigenous obstacles that remain for each contestant. September’s early polling reveals that Republican Party’s Donald Trump will win by a landslide, because the election is a referendum on incumbent president Barack Obama’s tenure, although dynamics appear to change with the beginning of TV debates.
What Obama Presidency hindered and delayed was a confrontation the American public long awaited; Trump is that reckoning. It remains to be seen if his team can surmount the media gauntlet devised to derail his Presidency.
Beyond the bad economics and the puzzling inclusive language characterizing his stream of consciousness of media-talk, Trump’s political strategy remains extremely risky. Throughout his campaign, he derided any change to broaden his coalition to ethnic groups, women or immigrants. It may be a mere function of his rhetoric, but this political stratagem relies on an ever-dwindling resource base of voters. He may be right.
One thing is for certain; team Trump will launch an all out war on conservatives. His election isn’t about reforming the size and scope of government, it’s an assault on the ramparts of progressive thought, especially the tenants of trade, globalization and immigration. Consequently, all three serve as a function of confiscatory taxation, the sine qua non of the progressive nanny-state.
Neither political party is prepared to say it, but this election cycle is sui generis. Whoever wins in November will serve one term. So, the ramparts of this battle will rage far past November.
The Republican tumult has masked deep personal flaws that would have derailed any other candidate. Even Hillary Clinton’s numerous personal, professional failures suggest that the triumph of the Democratic establishment has yet to face the reckoning the American Republic seeks. Hillary Clinton has permanently abandoned her husband’s agenda, favoring the militancy of identity politics that underwrote the achievements of the Obama’s Presidency. The tactical achievements that manifested itself throughout the presidency of William Clinton have been scorned; it remains to be seen what will replace her political nihilism.
The exception to this affinity will be her foreign policy, where her political instincts become harder to separate from President Obama’s broader strategic retreat. She was present for the failed Russian ‘reset’, she personally embraced the Iranian nuclear deal, and Benghazi will forever remain tethered to her character.
Clinton seems to believe that American leadership is essential to resisting rouge and authoritarian regimes, even if she remains permanently skeptical of US benevolence abroad. We should remember what her political instincts wrought from Obama’s strategic retreat from the Arab Spring, Afghanistan, Iraq and the exploding presence of terror throughout Europe and Africa. A difficult image to reconcile will be her ability to confront any stolid challenge. Even still, her public posture resonates more firmly among the politico chatter-class than Trumps abandonment of alliances and global engagement.
A Clinton Presidency is a third Obama term of cash transfers, taxes, re-distributionist policy and identity politics. Hardly the policy craft needed to match the growing challenges that mire the American regime.
Trump’s Fortress America meets Clinton’s kleptocracy.
