Hillary by Default?

This Monday, The Washington Post ran a headline reading “The GOP Tumbles toward Anarchy.” Strangely, Donald Trump doesn’t mind and he continues to enjoy his role as a bull in a china shop. If this trend goes on, Hillary Clinton will become president by default, while the Republicans tear each other apart.

Paul Ryan, the influential speaker of the House of Representatives, which has a Republican majority, has not gone as far as to publicly acknowledge that he has lost the presidency, but he may as well have. Dropping Trump with four weeks until the presidential election on Nov. 8 is a matter of a large portion of the Republican establishment salvaging what it can – that is, preserving the majority that the Republicans currently hold in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Because as things stand now, opinion polls show that not only are the Democrats justified in thinking that Mrs. Clinton is headed toward a landslide victory in the presidential election, but it is also possible that they could take the majority of seats in both chambers of Congress. Quite a radical change from a few weeks ago, when opinion polls showed that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump were equally popular among voters.

It’s a totally abnormal campaign, complete with unpredictable electoral shakeups, which no doubt explains in part why Mr. Trump is going all in and holding obstinately to the ultra-populist “strategy” that got him where he is today.

An NBC/Washington Square Journal survey puts Trump far behind his rival after the release of the video with his obscene comments about women? No problem. Any normal politician – which Trump isn’t – would be using these final weeks of the race to try and increase their support. But it is mathematically clear that Trump does not have sufficient support, including from within the Republican electorate, to win the presidency. Mr. Trump believes strongly that he can count on the support of the party’s phonies – or even profit from the “civil war” that has broken out within the GOP. He fantasizes that when Nov. 8 comes, he will benefit from a huge upset coming from Democrats who are just as unable to vote for Mrs. Clinton as they are to openly admit they voted for Trump…

Beyond that, Mr. Trump’s candidacy sheds light on the decline and hypocrisy of the political class in his group. As well, a good portion of the Americans who appreciate him know him as just a guy who says what he thinks, with no filter or manipulation. That raises all kinds of other questions on the prejudice and insults that constitute his “sincerity.”

Unfortunately, we can’t say that Mrs. Clinton has properly acknowledged the profound collective exhaustion with self-contradictory politicians; nor that she really wants to remedy the problem. Judging by the excerpts of speeches that she’s given on Wall Street these past few years (revealed by WikiLeaks), it seems clear enough that her progressive tendencies for the less fortunate and the “middle class” are in fact very relative and that she mainly used them in the campaign in order to thwart the candidacy of Bernie Sanders.

So, what will Mrs. Clinton’s presidency be like in that regard if she is elected? One would imagine that the Donald Trumps of the world, profiting off the cynical atmosphere, will continue to draw support.