Bill Ralston
As our columnist puts one election behind him, another race continues to hold us spellbound.
‘ Ah ha!” I hear you say, “no sooner does he lose that Auckland Council election than he flees the country!” Which is kind of true. I am on my way to London, not because of the vagaries of the local body election process, but because it’s been more than a decade since I’ve been anywhere seriously offshore. In fact, I’m worried I might be out of practice and that bewildered and confused wandering through the Customs hall will result in my Brentry attempt failing.
Hopefully not. We’d talked about going to New York for a fortnight, but London won because Donald Trump is still on the loose in the US and Theresa May seems much nicer than he is. Americans call it the “October surprise”, a scandalous, debilitating revelation about a candidate in the vital last few weeks of an election campaign. Trump’s surprise was a few tapes exposing him as a sexist, misogynistic, groping abuser of women. Who knew?
“I never said I was perfect,” said the Don as pressure grew on him to somehow drop out of the presidential race. As I’m about to step into 26 hours of zero mainstream media, it is entirely possible that he will not be a contender by the time I touch down at Heathrow. But somehow, I doubt it.
Okay, so he was caught on tape boasting about grabbing women’s genitals, making obscene comments about their bodies and portraying himself in a Jimmy Savile way as being able to take advantage of women because of his fame.
It was “locker-room talk”, he explained. “Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am,” he said, before threatening to bring up Bill Clinton’s sex scandals the next time he confronted Democratic presidential candidate Hillary.
A friend of mine, just back from the US, popped in over the weekend wearing – ironically, I hope – a Trump campaign T-shirt that said, “I won’t vote for Monica Lewinsky’s exboyfriend’s wife”, so I guess he’s been planning that strategy for a while.
When Trump fronted up for the second debate with Clinton, I really don’t think it mattered what he said in it. He may believe he can win the presidency without the support of women, Hispanics, African Americans and anyone with the slightest shred of dignity or selfrespect, but victory looks unlikely to me.
Commentators point to Florida and the Midwest and say he still has a chance in the Electoral College if he takes them. However, it’s hard to see how even conservative voters in those parts could swallow Trump’s statements in a series of interviews with radio host Howard Stern about sleeping with 24-year-olds, dumping girlfriends when they hit 35 and having had threesomes.
Still, it is the US, so who can tell? There seems to be a stampede of Republican politicians running for the door in an attempt to distance themselves from Trump’s kryptonite effect, but there is no hope of him being dumped from the presidential ticket. To do so, he has to either die or become debilitated. He looks fit enough, and although many may think his raving proves he is debilitated, the consensus seems to be that he will still be running for the White House come November 8.
We are lucky in New Zealand that our politicians, for all their many faults, are light years ahead of this turkey. Next week I’ll let you know how things are going in pre-Brexit Britain.
Many may think his raving proves he is debilitated, but the consensus seems to be that he will still run.