Daily Times

The US presidential election in November will be unique for at least two reasons. One, in Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump it will feature two contenders with the worst favourability ratings in US electoral history. Two, both candidates have been campaigning on planks traditionally associated with their ideological opposites. Democrats, for instance, tend to be successful talking about the economy. Republicans, conversely, fare well when America’s place in the world drives voter interest. This time around, though, Clinton is basing her credentials for president on foreign policy chops acquired as secretary of state, while Trump rails against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) like a lifelong lefty.

Trump is, of course, also a gifted rabble-rouser who the American public should’ve kicked to the curb in the Republican primaries, but did not, much to the shock of his establishment rivals. They were dead sure his inflammatory sound-bites coupled with a braggadocio frowned upon by most conservative voters would sink him midseason. That never happened, and some of them have to be wondering today: is the universe conspiring to crown a president Trump? This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Since in once-friend Clinton, he fortuitously faces an opponent with the perfect set of weaknesses to distract from his inexperience and lack of
policy details.

To boot, a Rasmussen Reports poll from July 5 will surely panic Clinton surrogates who have long forecasted a double-digit trouncing of Trump come November. It shows the presidential race is presently a dead heat among likely US voters, with Trump edging Clinton by 42 percent to 40. This is all the more worrisome considering he is expected to bring in first time voters in November, and national turnout the last few elections has hovered around 55 percent. Days earlier, Clinton’s anemic trustworthiness rating had tanked further after the FBI censured her for being “extremely careless” with top-secret emails while using a private server as secretary of state. The same poll reported that 93 percent Americans want Clinton prosecuted for her faux-pas, popularly known as “Emailgate.”

Clinton has now called out the big guns to help her reclaim lost ground. US President Barack Obama began campaigning for her in early July starting with a public rally in North Carolina, where he described the November matchup as one between the “future and imaginary past.” A fierce critic of Trump’s lowbrow populism, Obama declared the election was “about whether we have an America that works for everybody, or just a few people.” The problem is Trump has plenty of material from the president’s own fractious 2008 primary battles with Clinton to recycle against her.

Furthermore, it is hard to deny that segregation is a blight on US history that did more than just target black people. From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the Immigration Act of 1924 to the forced internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, exclusionary politics are as American as apple pie. What Obama deems the “imaginary past” in response to Trump’s proposed temporary ban on Muslims is all too real and he knows it.

Next we have Senator Bernie Sanders, a fringe Democrat who pried 13 million votes away from Clinton in the 2016 primaries, again handing Trump a rich bounty of well-researched takedowns to use in debates. Sanders has now begrudgingly endorsed Clinton to unite the party, and may even appear on the campaign trail with her, but there is a real possibility that many of his supporters could simply stay home on election day instead of voting for “Crooked Hillary.”

The recent surge in worldwide attacks perpetrated by radical “Islamists” also swells Trump’s appeal among swing voters. In December, following the San Bernardino and Paris attacks, Trump had called for a “total and complete” ban on Muslims entering the US until federal authorities closed immigration loopholes. He was broadly panned by pundits and everyone on Capitol Hill until the Islamic State (IS) affiliates hit Brussels in March. Soon enough, a wide stretch of white America hitherto unable to embrace Trump’s unabashed nativism began creeping towards his corner. The Istanbul airport bombings and the murder of foreigners in an upscale Dhaka bakery over the last few weeks, again claimed by IS, have swayed more fence-straddlers to his message.

Trump’s rise has also coincided with a new wave of nationalism sweeping Europe, although none more potent than the UK’s “Brexit.” Britons want to clamp down on all immigration and not be ripped off by the European Union (EU) any further with more money going out than coming in. Sound familiar? Replace EU with China, and you have Trump’s vision for America. Farhang Jahanpour, a former senior research fellow at Harvard University, blames globalisation for Brexit and by association, Trump. Especially after the 2007 financial meltdown upended many middle-class households by wiping their savings. For those similarly blindsided by the crash in America, the status quo Clinton represents is no longer acceptable.

Moreover, Trump benefits enormously from Clinton’s vanguard role as secretary of state in the Obama administration’s long string of failures abroad. She also voted for the Iraq war in 2003, which the newly released Chilcot Report in the UK proves was an unmitigated disaster built on faulty intelligence and former US president George W Bush’s pigheadedness to settle old scores. Just two weeks ago, Baghdad again turned into an inferno from an IS car bombing that consumed nearly 300 lives. Every day, in fact, thanks to Bush, Iraqis pay for their “liberation” from Saddam Hussein with scores of new dead.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Obama nervously tinkers with troop levels, promising a few hundred more with each revision — now up to 8,400 from 5,500 through 2016 — knowing well he has failed to keep his cardinal promise of ending US combat missions abroad. With the president now barnstorming for her, Trump is betting Clinton will face a voter backlash for her role in the Afghan and Iraq wars, along with the slow-moving disasters in Syria and Libya planned on her watch. Most importantly, seeing how his numbers have surged following each new hit on the homeland, another Orlando or San Bernardino near the election day could easily push Trump across the finish line.

The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance journalist