The Unsinkable Trump

Sunday 23rd October

The polls are still in Hilary’s favour and almost every commentator is predicting that the Trump Campaign is over, fatally wounded, holed beneath the waterline and bound for failure.  But somehow like the shiny blond bouy he resembles as he rolls around the stage he may be unsinkable.  One never knows.  Opinion polls have been wrong of late.  The General Election severely underestimated those who would go on to vote Tory; even days before almost all the commentators were predicting Ed Milliband leading either a coalition with the SNP or a Minority Government with Nicola Sturgeon pulling the strings, and maybe that was the argument, that Project Fear (of the jocks) which won the day.  Only many who would or had been persuaded by that argument didn’t want to admit it to the pollsters.  And likewise in the Brexit Referendum many who had serious concerns about Immigration maybe didn’t want to branded Racist and so withheld their true intentions.  I am not a great believer in last-minute swings, I think that most people make up their minds quite early on and the high number of ‘Don’t Knows’ are often ‘Don’t Want To Tell Yous’.  But in America the polls are almost all showing swings towards Hilary.  Of course they could be right, and maybe at the moment they are registering what people’s intentions are – but that doesn’t mean that that is what people will do on polling day, or even that they will go out and vote at all.  A degree of Complacency may set in, and many Hilary leaning voters may think she has won already without their votes.  Also Obama managed, not unsurprisingly to get the Black and Hispanic vote out, something Hilary may struggle to do.

And Donald Trump appears bullet-proof, he simply shrugs off his accusers as liars, predatory sexual behavior which would shame others are simply notches on his alpha-male belt; he points his finger in the air and says Hilary is crooked, and many people fall for it.  They see him as their spokesman, a different sort of Candidate, not a Politician at all but a successful businessman who will know how to make the country rich again.  And also there are those who always vote Republican in the end; they may dislike Trump as much as the Democrats but will not be able to stop themselves voting the Red (republican) ticket.  And even if he loses we know already that he will be a bad loser, already claiming a rigged election, he will still be an unsinkable presence, a constant thorn in both the President’s and his own party’s side.  He may even bob up in three years time with “I told you so…”  and make another bid, and he may be believed too.