Tuesday, November 08, 2016

Election Day

As of this writing, Hillary Clinton is expected to win the presidency but it's not a sure thing. The polls are consistent in showing her ahead but they also show the two within the margin or error and there's a huge disincentive for Trump voters to refuse to be identified. Assuming that Trump loses, the natural reaction will be to blame Trump himself. Early polling showed that nearly every other potential candidate could have done better. This overlooks how Democrats and the media destroys Republican candidates.

It doesn't matter what a candidate is really like, if he's a Republican he will be painted as a regressive who wants to repeal the last 50 years of civil rights accomplishments and who peppers his speeches with dog whistle code words that most people will miss but deplorable supporters will catch.

The most recent charges against Trump are antisemitism. Several days ago one of his supporters was heard chanting "jew-S-A, jew-S-A" as a rally. More recently, the Washington Posts' Dana Milbank wrote:

On Friday, [Trump] released a closing ad for his campaign repeating offending lines from that speech, this time illustrated with images of prominent Jews: financier George Soros (accompanying the words "those who control the levers of power"), Fed Chair Janet Yellen (with the words "global special interests") and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein (following the "global power structure" quote). The ad shows Hillary Clinton and says she partners "with these people who don't have your good in mind.

To Milbank, this is overt antisemitism.

The reality is quite different. The person crying "Jew-S-A" was hispanic and saying "U-S-A" with an accent.

The campaign ad that Milbank complained about spends 4 seconds in a 2 minute ad showing these three jew and only identifies two of them.

Many, many charges have been leveled against Trump during this election cycle but antisemitism is a hard one to make stick. Trump has a Jewish son-in-law (as does Hillary) and Trump's daughter is a converted Jew.

This happened in 2012 with Mitt Romney. One of Romney's grandchildren is adopted and black but Romney, being a Republican and a Mormon, just has to be a racist. MSNBC actually mocked a picture of the Romney family for including the black grandchild.

So, if Trump hadn't been the candidate, someone else would be tarred as the next Hitler in his place. And if Hillary wins, then in 4 years the Left will be admitting that Trump was the most liberal Republican candidate since Nixon and be wishing they had him on the ballot again instead of whatever monster the Republicans nominate that cycle.

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