I’m no fan of the indestructible Donald Trump. But honestly, how utterly terrible is Hillary Clinton?
I say this because virtually everywhere I look, I’m repeatedly informed what a wicked, despicable, loathsome, misogynistic, untruthful, predatory, distasteful, repugnant, narcissistic, dreadful human being Trump is.
And yet, with little more than 24 hours to go to the 2016 Presidential Election, in this Bloomberg poll, Hillary leads Donald by 3%:
Note that small print: “Margin of error +/- 3.5 percentage points.”
And note that bottom bar “Don’t want to tell 4%”, too.
That against a 3% lead. Astounding.
It’s been an eye-opening campaign for me to observe as an outsider, with no axe to grind and no significant interest in the outcome. I’ve never seen such a huge outpouring of insults and incessant dragging down of one candidate in the majority of the media.
It’s become cool to insult Trump. And talking of insults, the NYT took a two page spread to publish a list of all the people Trump has insulted over the last year or so. And yes, as we’ve been told, the fact that he’s insulted so many individuals is a demonstration of what an appalling person he is, but what an unprecedented step for a newspaper to take.
Equally, there seems to be something of a general unspoken agreement to overlook any shortcomings from anything or anyone to do with the Democratic campaign. The recent vandalism of Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was near celebrated in the international media. And then there’s the media concentrating on the n lies Trump told in a TV debate while ignoring the n-10 (or whatever) untruths Clinton came out with. Yes, he’s awful, but how low do your standards have to be that you’re willing to completely overlook the deceit of someone who wants to be the President of your country simply because someone else was allegedly more deceitful on the same evening?
And yes, of course, there are news outlets working on completely the opposite agenda too, but they are hopelessly outnumbered. Still, this isn’t “rigging” the election, as Trump has contended. This is merely editors and media bosses exercising their right to freedom of opinion.
But it is overwhelming.
And so, let’s go back to the title of this post and ask again – with all that media support and with all those hugely-influential, loud-mouthed celebrities on her side – just how utterly terrible must Hillary Clinton be to only be “3% ahead” against “the most dangerous” and “the most orange” (sigh) man in the world?
I don’t know who’ll win – the corrupt autocrat or the corrupt socialist – but the fact that the latter might only just scrape past the former, despite the former being… well… being Donald Trump, should be ringing alarm bells – and not just in America.
