At the outset of the campaign there was a consensus among American political pundits that this election would be a close contest between the Clinton and Bush families – represented by Hillary Clinton, wife of former US President Bill Clinton, and Jeb Bush, the younger brother of former US President George W. Bush, and son of former US President George Herbert Walker Bush.
This notion, however, was quickly dispelled. We are now witnessing a unique event in US history where the candidates for the presidency of both major political parties are unpopular with, and not trusted by, a majority of American voters.
Early in the campaign, the leaderships of both the Democratic and Republican parties were rudely awakened by the unexpected and meteoric rise of the candidacies of Senator Bernie Sanders and the businessman and US entertainment figure Donald Trump.
At a time of widespread public disenchantment with the conduct of American politics, the lengthy system of primaries used by the two major American political parties to select their presidential nominees gave a highly visible public platform to these two candidates, who in any previous US presidential election process might well have been relegated to the political fringe.
In the case of the Republican Party, Donald Trump secured the nomination by playing on fears of immigration, globalisation, and terrorism and by exploiting racial tensions.
In the case of the Democratic Party, the party leadership’s favoured candidate, Hillary Clinton, secured the nomination, but at the cost of alienating a substantial number of supporters of Senator Sanders, including among that the important demographic of younger voters.
The 2016 presidential campaign has highlighted the fact that the mainstream US media has lost touch with the “common person” and earlier on failed to recognise the country’s shifting political dynamics.
Donald Trump’s candidacy was initially disparaged by political commentators as a publicity stunt by someone seeking the media spotlight. The Huffington Post electronic news service, popular with those on the left of the American political spectrum, initially covered his campaign only in its entertainment section.
Contrary to media and think tank expectations, Donald Trump’s candidacy only grew in strength. His crude manner, including the belittling of his Republican opponents, appealed to a core of supporters who were feeling disenfranchised by traditional party politics.
But in equal measure his tactics have alienated others. As an example of his crude style, Donald Trump may go down in history as the first candidate for the US Presidency to use crude sexual innuendo in a publicly televised primary debate when he alluded to the size of a certain part of his anatomy.
Since securing his party’s nomination for the presidency, Donald Trump has done little to appeal to a broader political base beyond that of his alienated, white, middle-class, male voters. Recent allegations of past sexual misconduct seem to have inflicted significant damage on his campaign, with leading Republican Party officials withdrawing their support.
Trump’s campaign antics have left foreign observers confused, bemused and concerned, but perhaps no less so than many Americans themselves. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton has done little to shed her image among a large swathe of voters as an agent of the American financial establishment.
At this late point in the campaign, she seems to be relying mainly on the series of scandals that have begun to plague the Trump campaign and that have finally had a significant negative impact on his polling numbers.
The current US Presidential campaign has seized world attention like no other before it. Donald Trump announced his candidacy by denouncing Mexicans as criminals and rapists and then moving on to suggest a ban on Muslims entering the US.
Each month seems to bring even stranger policy pronouncements from Trump himself and allegations of misconduct from his detractors. While Donald Trump’s outlandish comments earned considerable press coverage and effectively provided his campaign with valuable free publicity, his embracing of many tenets of the extreme right in US politics has done little to expand his support beyond his political base and have worried those who view him as a threat to American democracy.
Clearly, this year’s presidential campaign has shown the unwritten rules of civility and fact-based policy-making have changed – American politics have entered a new phase – one that can be described as “post-factual”.
Core Trump supporters so distrust the political and business “establishment” that they reject facts and statistics which discredit their views on issues ranging from climate change to domestic crime.
Statistics which clearly contradict misguided perceptions are rejected as establishment propaganda. Former Republican Senate Speaker and Trump supporter Newt Gringrich has stressed in a televised interview that what people believe is more important than mere facts. A core base of Trump supporters believe that America has lost its way and only Donald Trump can restore US power and “make America great again”.
American comedian Stephen Colbert has coined the term “truthiness” to describe this phenomenon. He defines truthiness as anything that people believe should be true.
It seems that in the current US election cycle truthiness has trumped truth as Donald Trump continues to voice a multitude of unsubstantiated allegations, including that Hillary Clinton is guilty of crimes associated with her use of a private email server while US Secretary of State. He shocked many Americans when for the first time in US history, as a presidential candidate, he called for the imprisonment of his opponent.
Recent polling numbers suggest that Donald Trump’s prospects for becoming the next US president have practically vanished. But as the Brexit and Peace Accord referendums in the United Kingdom and Colombia suggest, political polling is not an exact science.
So the world must await the choice of American voters in November to learn whether the US will have its first woman president or a man who represents a rejection of the values that the rest of the world associates with America’s greatness.
Author: Stephen Millar
