TIME was you packed your kids off to bed when the scary movie came on. Now you banish them when the presidential debate flickers onto the screen.
There was a photo after last Sunday’s Town Hall Brawl showing Hillary talking to members of the audience.
Donald Trump is looming behind her. That would be LOOMING.
The photo cries out for a cartoon version with Trump’s face covered by, take your pick: Jason’s hockey mask in the Halloween movies; a scary clown mask, a Freddie mask from Nightmare on Elm Street.
But who needs such props?
The look on Trump’s face in that photo is actually scarier than any mask. And he is now representing the party of Down Home Values, the American Dream, Apple Pie.
Trump is also representing himself of course, and what that amounts to is a formula for permanent running, a never ending looming presence.
If the latest polls hold, Hillary Clinton will win the presidency on November 8. But she will win the most powerful political position in a moment that is politically fractured and dysfunctional to a very worrying degree. You do get the impression that Barack Obama, and for sure Michelle, can’t wait to bid adieu to the White House.
That will happen in January.
What will Donald Trump be doing in the first month of 2017? Well, one way or another he will be still looming. No way is the man going to stride into the sunset - assuming a Clinton victory. He might just keep on running, and with his “movement” in tow. And that would not bode well for the state of play in Washington.
Such is the disarray in the Republican Party as Donald Trump sheds his “shackles” that Clinton could end up facing a battle on two fronts. Setting aside the possibility that the Democrats could well secure a slim majority in the Senate, it still seems unlikely that the same outcome will prevail in the House of Representatives, where Republicans currently enjoy a 29 seat majority.
That majority may well be trimmed, but most likely to lose their seats are moderate Republican house members. This would leave a harder core Republican membership, the kind that would give Speaker Paul Ryan a lot of sleepless nights.
And outside the door of this harder House would be the growling figure of Donald Trump and his “movement” followers. This vista could make the Newt Gingrich 90s look positively rosy by comparison.
The great temptation for Trump should he lose – and he is likely to claim a win of sorts no matter what – is to lead his base towards a point where they will comprise a brand new Republican party, as opposed to the current “Grand Old” version.
It’s hard to imagine that he hasn’t considered this route.
Two years into an assumed Clinton administration, voters will again be asked to turnout for the 2018 midterms, contests which would consider the full 435 member House, and one third of the hundred seat Senate. And Donald Trump isn’t going to have something to say about this contest?
Meantime, shackles trailing along the ground, Trump seems determined to pursue a scorched earth policy that will precisely define for him the level of his national support. That level will be rendered starkly clear in the coming days by virtue of Trump’s own words and actions, and likely new revelations of his less than savoury statements in past years.
The next debate - in Las Vegas next Wednesday, October 19 - will present voters with the spectacle of the “unshackled” Trump. It promises to be the political equivalent of an ultimate fight in a city known for big fights.Vegas, which wraps itself in its own version of virtual reality, is a most appropriate setting for this crazy race to reach its climax, denouement, or nadir. Take your pick.
For Hillary, the next few weeks will be a steady as she goes process. The flow of email leaks will require some attention, but the chances of the news cycle being engulfed by Trump is ever present.
Her campaign has to be heavy on focus, light on its feet. The polls are turning up new opportunities in states previously considered to be Republican. Votes seem assured, but where to spend the money?
Many Americans wonder where Donald Trump came from this year, that being in the political sense. When did he first fix his gaze on the presidency?
The New York Times reported Trump talking about the presidency as far back as an interview in 1980. That probably well predates Hillary’s thoughts about the office – at least publicly expressed ones.
Donald Trump isn’t going away. In 2020 he will be the same age as Bernie Sanders is right now.
