Hillary’s email troubles pump up Trump ratings

The Democratic candidate faces more scrutiny if she makes it to the Oval Office

miami — Polls showed the US election tightening on Sunday as Hillary Clinton campaigned in the crucial state of Florida, grappling with the fallout from the FBI director disclosing more of her emails were under review.

With the US elections now just nine days away, an ABC News/Washington Post poll put the former secretary of state just one point ahead of her bombastic Republican challenger, Donald Trump, at 46-45 per cent of likely voters in a four-way race.

In Florida, which is a must-win if Trump is to have any hope of victory, the tycoon overcame a onepoint deficit to lead, according to a

New York Times Upshot/Siena College Research Institute poll. The poll gave Trump 46 per cent of likely voters compared to Clinton’s 42 per cent, with former governor Gary Johnson dropping to four per cent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein on two per cent. While the former first lady looking to make history as America’s first female commander-in-chief is still overwhelmingly expected to win the November 8 ballot, Trump was quick to crow Sunday. —

It is Trump who has capitalised the most on this suspicion, running less on implementable policies than emotions

In some ways, the ease with which the right throws around the word “corrupt” is a throwback to the Founding Fathers, notes Professor Mercieca. They had inherited a more expansive meaning of the word from Greek and Roman political tradition. To George Washington partisanship by itself was a corrupt practice.

That changed with the rise of political parties. Now in our own time the Republican Party has returned to this broader definition to discredit Democratic administrations. This has been greatly amplified by the rise of a conservative media establishment more interested in its principles than actually gaining power.

“So much of center-right political discourse over the last 10 years or more has really been rooted in this notion of conspiracy,” Mercieca says. “The apparent is not the real.”

A Trump loss wouldn’t do much to change this dynamic. If Hillary Clinton does win the Oval Office, a GOPcontrolled House is almost certain to mount yet more inquiries into the details of her emails, her Benghazi testimony, and the Clinton Foundation.

And at least one Clinton adversary has gone so far as to raise the I-word in advance.

“I know this generation of Republican leaders is loath to exercise these tools, but impeachment is something that’s relevant,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a group that has pushed legal efforts against the Clintons for decades, told NBC News this week.

Christian Science Monitor

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