Let’s play this election season out, theoretically, to the end.
The Democrats will nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton as their presidential candidate; the Republicans will select Donald J. Trump as their standard bearer.
Clinton is the one with the experience: a policy-wonk first lady; a twice-elected U.S. senator from New York; a secretary of state. She’s well-schooled on the nuance of foreign and domestic policy. She’s articulate and is a cool customer under fire.
Trump is none of that. He’s a hot-headed reality TV celebrity. He made a fortune in real estate development. He’s married to his third wife. He has boasted about his sexual exploits with women who were married to other men. His campaign has featured little substance and virtually zero political philosophy — but a whole lot of insults and outrageous proclamations.
Clinton’s the favorite. The prohibitive favorite. She’ll win in a landslide while making history as the nation’s first female president.
Hold on a second.
Thirty-six years ago, the Democrats nominated a former one-term Georgia governor. He was a U.S. Naval Academy grad. He was a policy wonk. He was a smart guy, although perhaps a tad self-righteous. Republicans nominated a former movie actor who starred in those films with Bonzo the chimp; and oh yes, he made that film in which he portrayed Notre Dame football player George Gipp. Sure, he was a two-term California governor.
The Democrat was supposed to win, right?
It didn’t turn out that way. The Republican, Ronald Wilson Reagan, carried 44 states and blew President Jimmy Carter out of the White House.
It’s that history that should tell Democrats to take this upcoming election very seriously if it plays out the way it’s projected to play out.
By any normal measure, Donald Trump should be an easy mark for Democrats. This campaign, however, hasn’t gone according to the form sheet in almost any measure.
Clinton wasn’t supposed to be challenged so seriously from within her party. As for Trump, no one took him seriously when he announced his intention to seek the GOP nomination; his “fellow Republicans” are taking him seriously enough now — so much so that they’re staying up at night trying to concoct ways to derail his political juggernaut.
Both candidates are going to carry a large amount of baggage into a fall campaign, if they are the nominees. They both are packing a lot of negative feeling from within their respective parties.
Of the two, Trump’s negatives — from my perspective — far outweigh Clinton’s.
That doesn’t give the Democratic opposition any reason to fall asleep at the wheel.
The Gipper was supposed to lose big, too.
You don’t have to go back that far. Just look at the 14 serious Republican candidates who’ve fallen by the wayside and the thousands of armchair pundits across this country who predicted Trump’s demise time and again.
Voters aren’t any more likely to want a high-minded policy debate just because Hillary steps on the stage. Trump has controlled the tone of this campaign and I think it scares the hell out of Democrats. You don’t see them paying protesters to block a Kasich rally.
There’s an old saying that may have been penned just for bumper sticker and T-shirts that seems appropriate, “never argue with a fool, they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” I wouldn’t say Trump is a fool, but the lesson is the same.
p.s. I think you can get rid of the “he says” qualifier on Trump’s fortune. Highly inflated though his claims may be, the man has his own plane and a sizable pile of cash that dwarfs anything you or I will ever make — at least in the billions. I think that qualifies as a fortune in anybody’s books.
The “qualifier” is gone, per your scold. Should have been more precise, I suppose. There’s some question over whether Trump “earned” the fortune or whether it was handed to him via inheritance.