With just over a week to American Election Day, I think it’s time for me to just find a comfortable seat to observe the fireworks. This is possibly the most bitter election campaign ever. Even when in 1964 Barry Goldwater ran against Lyndon B. Johnson, two very different candidates, it was nothing like this. OK, in 1964, nominees were still chosen by politicians and party “machines,” not by primaries. So, Goldwater didn’t have the super long build up of primaries campaigning that Donald Trump has had.
And if you don’t know, Goldwater was totally trashed by LBJ. I was in my teens, and I still remember one of, or the main, campaign slogans you heard from the Goldwater camp:
“In your heart you know he’s right.”
Now over fifty years later, decades after Ronald Reagan did the unthinkable and got elected by the “silent majority,” I see Donald Trump as another step in the rising confidence of the Right.
America has changed a lot in these last fifty-two years.
Hillary Clinton was also a teenager when Goldwater ran against Johnson. I wonder if she had her plans to run for President hatched by then. Or was she more inspired by the aim to correct George McGovern’s highly competent wife, Eleanor, who seemed to make peace with her role as hostess during the 1972 Elections, rather than using her talents for higher office. And just in case you don’t know, Richard Nixon defeated George McGovern.
And about the upcoming American Elections, there’s no unity in the polls. It seems that the various companies or NGOs that poll people about their voting plans each ask different segments of the American public whom they plan to vote for, because there are enormous discrepancies. Also, there has been a rise in Trump’s numbers and a drop in Hillary’s.
I watch BBC TV News, and they are now trying to prepare people for a surprise. There’s no consistency in poll results, so they have just been showing the range of numbers.
Considering that Hillary’s supporters find Trump despicable, and Trump’s supporters consider Hillary a criminal, whoever wins will have an awfully hard time governing and making Americans feel like one country.
And it’s not just a matter of how the two disparate groups of supporter feel. I don’t remember ever hearing such foul and nasty remarks by presidential nominees about opponents ever before. This does not bode well for the United States of America!