Monday, October 24, 2016

Landslide Prediction

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

Election Day for the United States is November 8, 2016 which is the final day to choose the next president of the USA along with a new congress and a third of the senate.  Many states have already in the process of pre-polling which is also on a brisk pace this year.  For those who are in the USA this day may not come soon enough.  The acrimony and bitterness will come to an end soon. And one of the two last standing candidates will become our president.  Its Clinton or Trump; one of them will be the leader of the free world for at least four years.

The three presidential debates are done, and little has changed in the direction of the election.  People who watched the debates must wonder 70 years of life and no grace, especially between a man and women.  There is little policy discussion amongst the candidates (they have little time to discuss policy), and nothing to present to the citizens on future direction.  At this time and until the election, only winning the undecided is what is left.  The American electoral process is fairly easy to forecast; blue states will be blue (Democrat) and red states will be red (Republican) and the swing states will drive the winner with the battle ground state’s Electoral College.  Now the final push is on for the swing (battle ground) states, and the exit polls are pointing to a landslide.

Unless something gets really screwed up with the process, we can predict a landslide.

Some of the battleground states have population dynamics change in the last few years, and could play well for democrats.  This is not just pushing the politics of the population groups, but also the antagonized groups of population.  If the daily polling is to be believed, very little can change for the current predictors in the next couple of weeks.

Trump has continued to project himself as the greatest jobs president.  Although the president gets credit for employment, it’s really a whole lot of intermingled dynamics that foster continued employment, although the president has a great degree of influence on the direction of the jobs market.  The trouble with Trump is he constantly and continuously takes swipes at the media (dishonest) and at minorities and just about every group of citizens (probably barring the white men who support his candidacy).  The free publicity Trump was accorded all his life by the media, has now become a dishonest media.  As it is after watching him for a little over a year, it is difficult to imagine why he is only 12 points down in some polls.

Perhaps the American way of bullying still gets you far enough even these days and even for 70 year olds.  He did knock out a bunch of Republicans while winning the nomination.

Trump has left very little to be degraded.  He has antagonized the media (which still covers him), democrats (no one from this group will vote for him), all of Washington (still has some support from here), women (some still support him), minorities (nothing from these folks), immigrants (very little from these folks), and throw in all trade agreements signed by past presidents, and all alliances made by the past presidents.  I might not be able to list everything Trump has antagonized.  This should have been about 90% of the population, but for some reason he is not down by that mush.  It’s really hard to figure out the human thinking.  In 2016, Hillary is the opponent and that’s probably the only reason that Trump is still in the race.

One can’t blame the party affiliation of the Republicans.  You subscribe to the party manifesto and who is representing might not be important, even is Trump is the party’s main man.

If one tales into account that his wife calls his discussion on Women’s anatomy and what he can do with any women as “Boy Talk”, she probably needs to get out of the tower a little more to be with the Americans.  The irony with the episode is that neither Trump nor his wife really cares about the man who lost his job, while Trump and his cohorts dismiss this as locker room talk.  A dozen women have come forward with the instances of Trump’s unwanted advances and abuses against them (its likely there are more), and Trump dismisses them as liars and he has just said he will sue all of them after the elections.

Going back to the title of the column, landslide prediction; if democrats, women, immigrants, politicians, Washington and media; all of which are useless to Trump, they simply have not endorsed him.  But still his poll numbers are down only by 12%.

The reason for Trump to be still standing is Hillary.  Hillary is no saint.  She has her own excess baggage, and her being in politics and public eye for so long adds to the baggage.  One thing she is right about is that there is give and take in politics and diplomacy.  But everyone who opposes her point to as her failure, rather than politics.  You can’t define politics without compromise, except when it applies to Hillary.  For anyone in politics as long as she has been, it is unavoidable to compromise.  Hillary is on the verge of making history and become the first women president of the USA.  There are no more debates, only looking forward to Election Day.  All she has to do is hold her ground and not do or say anything detrimental.  Simply put if all democrats and everyone that was antagonized by Trump show-up and vote it will be the largest electoral victory for Hillary in USA history.  It should be.  2016 looks like a landslide and going forward we will also begin civility in presidential politics.

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