It’s hard to believe that the election is now only six days away. And actually, in many ways, it’s already upon us, because in many states, early voting has been going on for weeks now. It’s estimated that about 1 out of every 3 voters will cast his or her vote prior to Election Day.
So how’s it going? Now I know there are races for the Senate, and the House (like mine), and for the state legislatures, and for county commission, and for judge, and a whole slew of other offices, but let’s face it, the one that we care the most about, is the race for the White House – is it gonna be Hillary, or is it gonna be Donald Trump?
Well at this time last week, the mainstream press was pretty much united in pedaling the story that the race was all but over, and Hillary was going to win. They were cherry-picking polls, and emphasizing for example the Washington Post/ABC News poll showing Hillary up by 12 points over Donald Trump, and giving short shrift to polls like the CBS News poll, which showed Trump up by 3. According to the Washington Post/ABC News poll this week, Hillary’s lead has dwindled to nothing – rather than being up by 12 points, the race is now tied at 46% for Hillary, 46% for Trump. What happened?
I think it was three things. First, Obamacare. It was just announced recently that there’s going to be an average price hike of 25%. And this is on top of the already significant price increases we’ve seen since Obamacare was enacted. Hillary and the Obama Administration (and many of their allies in the mainstream press) are trying to downplay this unwelcome news, but their ability to do so was undermined in advance by none other than Hillary’s own husband, when Bill Clinton famously called Obamacare the “craziest thing in the world,” and that under it “premiums doubled” and “coverage is cut in half.” Think of it, under Obamacare, we get half the coverage we used to have, and pay twice as much for it.
Second, the WikiLeaks revelations have made it crystal clear that the Clinton Foundation, was, for all intents and purposes, a criminal enterprise, used principally to enrich Bill and Hillary Clinton. You want to do business with the State Department? You’ve got to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clintons first, and one of them will sell you a speech. You wanna play? First you gotta pay. These two are corrupt to the core. And now virtually everyone knows. Although about half of the American people will vote for them anyway.
And third, FBI Director James Comey dropped a bombshell on the campaign, when he announced that the FBI had discovered thousands and thousands of new emails (maybe up to 650,000), related to Hillary’s mishandling of classified information. Now Hillary and her minions, who had heaped praise on FBI Director Comey when he declined to prosecute her back in July, have turned their fire on Comey, calling him everything in the book. How quickly they forget.
The impact of these three things on the race has been significant. We’ve gone from Clinton being up by 12 points to a tie.
The focus of the race has once again shifted from Donald Trump’s alleged shortcomings, to Hillary’s. And I think there may be some truth to the notion that whichever candidate has the focus of attention in the final days – loses. Right now it’s on Hillary.
Donald, here’s some free advice. Continue with the more disciplined campaign we’ve been seeing lately. Keep appearing at rallies. Don’t let Hillary and her allies’ barbs throw you off message. Stay away from cameras. And you might just be our next president.
See you next week. The day after the election. And we’ll know one way or the other.