The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Donald Trump’s potential path to the presidency
Can Donald Trump win the presidency? Absolutely, even if most political commentators give him little chance of winning the election. Those who are predicting his loss are the same people who dismissed his chances of winning the Republican presidential nomination and were surprised and disappointed when he did win.
Conservative and liberal intellectuals despair, for different reasons, of his ascending to the Republican presidential nomination and possibly to the presidency. Yet the 15 million people who voted for him are not surprised, disappointed or despairing.
Trump can win although his route to the White House is challenging. It runs through the rust belt and mid-western states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin and several other battleground states — Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada and Colorado.
These states are Democratic-leaning states. However, recent polling shows Trump closing the gap in each of these states. At stake in these states are a total of 92 electoral votes.
Trump should be able to easily hold onto safe Republican voting states in the South, Southwest, West, Upper Midwest, and farm belt and gain the 191 Electoral College votes they provide.
That would leave Trump with a need for another 79 to win the required 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency.
Some states, such as North Carolina and Michigan, with 15 and 16 electoral votes, respectively, are trending Democratic but Trump could prevail. Once the dust of the conventions settles we will have a better view of the Electoral College landscape.
Trump’s candidacy is helped because Hillary Clinton is a flawed candidate. She is not a natural campaigner and her campaign themes of competence, preparedness, and measured incremental resolution to problems have not caught on.
Further, she has a number of ethical and trust issues. Massive fees for speaking engagements at Wall Street firms and questionable access situations involving the Clinton Foundation are troubling.
Most recently the FBI director’s email report was embarrassing and politically harmful. It contradicted her repeated assurances that none of her private server emails were classified.
In fact, the email issue has provided the Republicans with an easy way to discredit her. Republicans have turned a lack of technology sophistication and a communications misjudgment into a harmful political problem even though the emails have no relevance to her candidacy.
More significantly, Clinton was slow to realize the broad public discontent over millions of jobs lost in the industrial sector due to globalization and unfair trade practices and the anger over job insecurity and income inequality and the low wage, low benefit, gig economy (part-time, contract work — like the piece work of the old sweat shops — for individual projects) that has recently emerged.
On the plus side, the Bernie Sanders primary and caucus challenge was helpful in making Clinton a more progressive and better attuned candidate.
But, Clinton also faces the liability of incumbency. After two terms, the candidate of the party holding the presidency usually loses. It’s the public’s way of getting rid of the old bums and replacing them with new bums.
An offsetting factor can be substantially more economic growth — but we haven’t experienced that much economic growth in the past few years.
Trump accurately assessed the mood of discontentment and resentment of those economically impacted and displaced by globalization and faulty trade agreements and a new low-wage, part-time work economy. A large segment of the unhappy workforce, mainly the less educated and the educated without good employment prospects, often fed bias information by conservative media, displaced their anger at the immigrant population, with Trump validation.
Trump put the deal together, using the economy insecurity and resentment at immigrants supposedly taking jobs at low wages, and has offered to be the voice of the voiceless displaced.
Yet Trump is also a flawed candidate. He is offensive, egocentric, focused on getting even with his foes, has some questionable business situations to account for (Trump University), and has not addressed how he plans to deal with uncooperative members of Congress, especially conservative Republican members, who may not be too excited with Trump being a voice of economically displaced and disregarded people.
Trump and Clinton are both candidates with liabilities. The Electoral College math still favors Clinton. Trump has the steeper climb to victory but it is possible he can prevail. Joshua Sandman is a professor of political science at the University of New Haven. He has studied the American presidency for nearly five decades. Reach him at JSandman@newhaven.edu.
In fact, the email issue has provided the Republicans with an easy way to discredit her. Republicans have turned a lack of technology sophistication and a communications misjudgment into a harmful political problem even though the emails have no relevance to her candidacy.