Campaign 2016- Inevitably, the Year of Irony

Campaign 2016- Inevitably, the Year of Irony

Trump v Clinton

One hears much about Hillary Clinton’s super delegates not being bound to the Democrats’ front-runner­, essentially that they can still choose to change their votes to Bernie Sanders, should they wish to do so. Such a scenario is about as likely as the candidate, herself, owning up to her own responsibility for the lack of security with regards to the raid in Benghazi, and giving truthful testimony as to why she set up a private server while Secretary of State, in the first place. Her opponent, Bernie Sanders, will amount to nothing more than an interesting footnote in some future history book, and will attain nothing more than a prime-time speech at the Democrat National Convention in Philadelphia. For better or much, much worse, Hillary Clinton is the Democrats’ nominee.

One also hears much about the Republicans hosting a contested convention in Cleveland, one which will nominate a candidate whose name is not Donald J. Trump. Now that it is mathematically impossible for either Ted Cruz or John Kasich to gather enough delegates prior to the convention, to win the nomination, any eventual nominee aside from the front-runner stands no chance in unifying the Republican Party to the point where they can defeat Hillary Clinton in the fall. Not even the Republican establishment is stupid enough to deny Trump the nomination, when all is said and done. To do otherwise would result in the functional end of the Republicans 160-year run in the history of the United States. Like it or not, businessman Donald Trump is the Republicans’ nominee.

With regards to the former, Democrats are just smart enough not to go into the fall election with a self-avowed socialist who, until launching his presidential campaign, was an independent senator from Vermont- perhaps the only state who would repeatedly elect a socialist to the U.S. Senate, in the first place.

With regards to the latter, Republicans are just smart enough (but barely so) not to go into the fall campaign with a candidate who could not manage to win a majority of the primaries and caucuses in the Republican nominating contests. The state conventions which awarded delegates, with neither a primary nor a caucus to support such a result, are not enough to counter what “the Donald” won at the ballot box, and Republicans who think otherwise do so at their own party’s peril.

This said, it is Trump vs Clinton come November, and it’s time for Americans to accept this inevitable and inexorable fact. As expected, the mainstream media will keep drumming the droll diatribe, proffering “what if” scenarios, but they only do so as a means to boost ratings and gather viewership. The only thing that can prevent such a contest is a criminal indictment of Clinton, which the Obama administration will not allow, despite evidence to the contrary, or a decision by Trump to allow his delegates to nominate someone else, which is about as likely as his showing up to a campaign event wearing a tee-shirt and blue jeans.

We will hear much about the contested 1976 Republican convention, where incumbent President Gerald Ford had not garnered enough delegates to win the nomination over Governor Ronald Reagan, on the first ballot. In fact, only 117 votes separated the two, and it was Reagan who finally capitulated and called for a united front to face Governor Jimmy Carter in the fall election. Essentially, there is no comparison between 2016 and 1976, because Donald Trump will have a much, much larger margin than did President Ford forty years ago. The idea of a front-runner, especially Trump, capitulating to “also rans” or, for that matter “never rans”, is pure fantasy. Secondly, his followers will surely abandon the GOP if he is denied the nomination, and the resulting chasm would not bode well for “down-ballot” Republican senators and representatives seeking reelection.

One can bet the farm on the Clinton campaign to paint Trump as a misogynist, xenophobic and racist candidate who is outside the mainstream of American voters. One can be just as assured that the Clinton campaign would do precisely the same to Ted Cruz, John Kasich, or any other Republican, because that is what they always do…portray the opposition as “extremist.” The mainstream media can be trusted to play along with this charade because, in essence, they have become part of the campaign, rather than merely covering the campaign. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the mainstream media has favored Democratic presidential campaigns going back to 1932, so why should 2016 be any different?

What remains to be seen is whether or not the voting public will continue to buy into the deception that Trump is misogynist, xenophobic and racist, and thereby entrust the presidency to a Hillary Clinton who has managed to dodge legal repercussions for her criminal actions, going back to the days when she was first lady of Arkansas. Before that, she was the only attorney to be expelled from the House Judiciary Committee’s Watergate investigation, “…because she was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer, who conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the Committee, and the rules of confidentiality,” according to her supervisor, lifelong Democrat Jerry Zeifman.

Trump doesn’t have that kind of baggage, in spite of the fact that the #NeverTrump Republican rattlesnakes, the mainstream media and, of course, the Democrats will go out of their way to have the voters think otherwise. If “the Donald” can pull off a miracle, and somehow manage to unite a fractured Republican party to unite behind his candidacy (a tall order, indeed), it’s his election to lose. This much is certain. The ramifications of November’s election will undoubtedly be felt, for decades to come, as the consequential nature of its results are exceeded only by the contempt with which both of its contestants are disdainfully held.

Call this the year of irony.

 

-Drew Nickell, 20 April 2016

© 2016 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.