The more terrorist events that take place, the more cops that are killed on our streets here in the United States, the more this election boils down Protecting Americans (Donald Trump) vs. More of the Same (Hillary Clinton). That's the reality faced by both campaigns.
Throwing out all other considerations around that reality, what this means is that the result on Election Day will depend upon two factors:
- How many American voters really do want real, tangible change from not just the last eight years, but the last sixteen years of American governance; and
- How many American voters can be convinced that Trump is not 'dangerous'.
That's it. Nothing else really matters. Yes, there will be tons of noise and efforts by the Clinton camp to distract you and make you think the election is really about something else, but in the end these two factors will decide the election.
Trump understands that Americans are sick to death of the chronic dysfunction coming out of Washington, DC, and sick to death of both major parties and the excuses they constantly make for failing to get anything positive accomplished for them. Trump further understands that this means that millions of Americans are disenchanted not just with what has gone in in the nation's capital over the last eight years, but for the last sixteen years.
Which is why he has from the beginning run as the only true change agent in either party, and why he has campaigned against not only the policies of Barack Obama, but also against the policies of George W. Bush and the Republican congress. Of course, those policies often bear so little difference that this task hasn't been all that difficult to achieve.
Trump also understands that millions of Americans are afraid: Afraid of terrorism and the Obama presidency's steadfast refusal to address the true cause of the problem; afraid of the growing level of violence on America's streets and the president's blatant support of it; afraid of the last 16 years of economic stagnation and lack of economic growth and job creation; afraid of the breakdown of this country's institutions and the abject failure of both parties to address it.
Thus, every major policy preference Trump has chosen has been about protecting the American people. Protecting them from non-Americans, protecting them from the leftwing radicalism promoted by the Democratic Party and funded by George Soros, protecting them from the growing government intrusion into their daily lives favored by both major parties.
The Clinton campaign has responded to Trump's strategy by attempting to convince the public that things are generally peachy in America, that the policies of Barack Obama are working just fine, that all we really need the next president to do is tweak things a little bit to make them work even better, and that the more radical change represented by Trump and Trump himself are "dangerous". Which is exactly how one would expect a conventional campaign like Clinton's to respond to the unconventional campaign being run by Trump.
If one looks back through history one finds that this is exactly, precisely, 100% the way the conventional campaign of Jimmy Carter responded to the unconventional campaign being run by Ronald Reagan in 1980. It's like deja vu all over again, to put it in Yogi Berra terms.
In 1980, the Carter campaign - helped by many 'establishment' Republicans - portrayed Reagan as a loose cannon, a cowboy, a know-nothing and a racist who was just too dangerous to be handed the reins of power by the American people.
Sounds familiar, huh?
With the exception of a big Reagan bounce coming out of the party conventions, Carter held an otherwise uninterrupted polling lead throughout the 1980 campaign. The final Gallup poll released the Friday before Election Day showed the race essentially a dead heat. Over that final weekend, all three major broadcast networks worked hard to convince the public that the polling data was trending in favor of Carter.
On Election Day, Reagan received 51% of the national vote to Carter's 41%, a landslide by any measure, as the late-deciding public decided that Reagan was in fact not too dangerous to be handed the reins of power to implement the radical change that the public desired.
The objective of the Trump campaign will be to produce a similar result. Trump faces a far less effective and more damaged opponent than Reagan faced, but he also must convince a voting public whose demographics and voting trends are far different than in 1980.
Hillary, on the other hand, really has no choice but to run an almost 100% negative campaign against Trump. Were she a different person, one could propose that she could influence the outcome by trying to prove to the public that she's not a crook and a pathological liar. But those ships have irrevocably sailed. She is who she is.
So this campaign will be about one thing: Is Trump too dangerous to hold power?
That's it. Nothing else matters.
