States to Watch on Election Day2:24
Trump and Clinton will put their election strategies to the test on Tuesday. WSJ's Gerald F. Seib discusses which states to watch as the polls close and which states both candidates need to win in order to claim victory. Photo: AP
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton...This year’s presidential campaign has been the most disruptive.
AMERICA is bracing for a day of conflict and convulsions with no clear explanation of why the Clinton vs Trump showdown has been so disruptive.
Former Foreign Minister Bob Carr describes it as the USA having a political nervous breakdown; veteran Republican campaign consultant Mike Murphy puts it down to “the year of the howling moron”.
The blame can’t be simply explained by the social concussion from an immovable Hillary Clinton colliding with a determined Donald Trump.
Here are some of the people and entities that were important preconditions for this turbulence.
The private lives of politicians, such as former US President John F Kennedy and wife Jackie Kennedy, were rarely discussed in the media.Source:Supplied
GARY HART
It used to be that American politicians — from FDR to JFK to LBJ — could have affairs and mistresses with no fear they would be made public.
This was considered a private matter of no public interest, and while newspaper editors swapped gossip among themselves they never put the salacious stuff in their news columns.
Then in 1987, Colorado senator Gary Hart — thought by some to be a future Democrat presidential candidate — dared reporters to write about his extramarital affair with Donna Rice.
“Follow me around. I don’t care,” he told the New York Times. And that’s what reporters did.
It’s from that point that the sex lives of politicians became a staple of US political coverage, whether it was Newt Gingrich’s infidelities or Bill Clinton’s Oval Office seductions. Or Donald Trump’s “locker room talk” and the boasts of grabbing women by their privates, without their permission. This produced more than 10 women who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Mr Trump, who of course had his own high-profile affair with Marla Maples.
Former USA Senator Gary Hart.Source:News Corp Australia
Suddenly news was what happened in the bedroom, particularly if the marital couch was not involved. And women have never before been so prominent an election force.
Remember when President Jimmy Carter admitted in embarrassment he had “lust in his heart” when he looked at Playboy centrefolds?
We’ve moved from there until American political coverage now includes Anthony Weiner — estranged husband of Hillary adviser Huma Abedin — and his numerous wang photos, and Donald Trump speaking highly of his daughter’s breasts.
It’s Gary Hart’s fault we know all this.
ROGER STONE
This is the man who designed the Trump campaign template, and he did it 17 years ago when The Donald quit the Republicans and weighed his chances of a presidential nomination by the ill-fated Reform Party.
Mr Stone is an aggressive political consultant and promoter of what might be called the Trump political philosophy, based on distrust of social and intellectual elites.
It’s a code in which wealth can be a sign of moral superiority. And people whose views don’t confirm with yours — academics, journalists, “experts” — are liars.
See if Mr Stone’s daily campaign strategy seems familiar: “Attack, attack, attack — never defend,” he told one interviewer. “Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counter-attack.”
Political consultant Roger Stone.Source:Getty Images
Roger Stone...Advised Donald Trump to “attack”.Source:Getty Images
Mr Trump was a quick learner and swiftly took to Mr Stone’s approach, outlined by writer Michael D’Antonio as “aspects of pop culture, patriotism, and pro-business ideology (melded) into a belief system that blamed most of the country’s problems on government and intellectuals … ”
Meanwhile, Roger Stone is as defiant as ever, making, possibly with pride, this forecast.
“I fully expect to be harassed if Hillary Clinton should manage to win the election,” he said recently.
“All the public issues about the Clintons that are being raised for the first time will not go away, and I have no intention of ending the fight to expose their epic corruption, ruthlessness and lies.”
It’s Trump-ian hyperbole, but Roger Stone taught him.
CLINTON FOUNDATION
The William J Clinton Foundation has paid for items as varied as, according to WikiLeaks, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to an HIV/AIDS initiative.
It has primarily done good works since its creation by former President Clinton in 2001, but the huge sums of money passing through it have roused significant and undeterred scepticism.
By 2016 it had raised $2 billion, and there are questions about Hillary Clinton’s role while Secretary of State in getting huge donations from governments.
There is widespread conjecture the foundation is part of Clinton empire-building, that the money is not for noble causes but for family power and influence — and self-indulgence.
These suspicions reinforced the perception the Clintons’ careers in public service have been about their own betterment, not the improvement of life for ordinary Americans.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks during a rally at the Grand Valley State University Fieldhouse. Picture: AFPSource:AFP
President Bill Clinton’s term in office was marred by news of his extra-marital affairs.Source:AP
And the suspicions were heated this week by a WikiLeaks release of a 2012 email said to be from Doug Band, a long-time assistant to Bill Clinton, about an FBI investigation involving Chelsea Clinton.
“The investigation into her getting paid for campaigning, using foundation resources for her wedding and life for a decade, taxes on money from her parents …,” Mr Band wrote.
“I hope that you will speak to her and end this,” he urged Mrs Clinton’s chief adviser John Podestra.
It was seen as the Clintons being in it for the Clintons, a major problem for the Democrat contender’s campaign.
MIDDLE CLASS
More Americans say they are middle class than before, but never has the demographic been so packed with complaint and anger.
It is as if the American bargain of hard work securing a comfortable life has been discontinued without them being told.
TV executive Rosalyn Weinman has written: “All the stuff our parents told us didn’t come true. No one cares if you’re good. People only care if you are good-looking and rich.”
It’s got to be someone’s fault, and not that of the middle-class workers struggling from payday to payday. Those with jobs and stagnant wages are as angry as the unemployed.
Donald Trump and first wife Marla Maples pose for photographers following their wedding ceremony in New York. Picture: APSource:AP
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump acknowledges his supporters between vice presidential nominee, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and his daughter Ivanka. Picture: APSource:AP
So for some the blame goes to the Chinese, the Mexicans, the small-l liberals, journalists, career politicians, corrupt public servants — usually all of them and more.
And when a purported billionaire roles up to agree with every conspiracy theory and indictment of political incompetence he gets a good hearing.
Hillary Clinton’s policy objectives cover reliable health care, cheaper child care, and greater access to higher education.
These are important to the lower income earners and the middle class, but she is having trouble convincing people she can deliver. Donald Trump promises an unrealistic wall with Mexico and an equally improbable tariff wall with China and gets cheered.
That’s a measure of the mood of the voters who, along with black Americans and Latinos, will decide this election.