This is without doubt the strangest and most bizarre presidential election in recent US history. It is certainly not a normal election, in the sense that one of the candidates, Republican nominee Donald Trump, is unquestionably unfit for office, yet he has managed to remain in the race despite having passed a number of outrageous, insulting and divisive comments aimed not only at individuals (including members of his own party) but also at large chunks of the US electorate.

Trump clearly has no economic, foreign policy or security vision for his country, and he has mainly run his campaign on a policy of fear, pessimism and antagonism towards minorities and women. It is also quite obvious, however, that he has struck a chord with a section of voters, namely people who feel they have been hard done by what they believe to be globalisation. Most of these people are white, working class and concentrated in a number of states, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. Whether there are enough of these voters to ensure a Trump victory remains to be seen.

Trump’s opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, is by far the better and more qualified candidate, and is leading in the polls by an eight-point margin, but her victory is no way guaranteed. Three months is a very long time in politics, and Trump, a businessman with no political experience, has shown a remarkable ability for survival and to defy the odds. Who would have thought that he would win his party’s nomi­nation, defeating 16 professional politicians in the process?

Considering that Trump is such a reckless (and dangerous) candidate, Clinton should, in fact, be leading in the polls by a much wider margin, but she is not particularly popular among voters, some of whom do not trust her. On balance, however, I do believe that the majority of Americans regard her as a better alternative to Trump – who if elected would present a real danger to American democracy and society as well as to international peace and stability.

Trump also has major problems with his own party. Many senior Republicans have refused to endorse him, and some have already made it clear that they will be voting for Clinton. For many Republicans, the last straw came when Trump criticised an American Muslim family whose son, a US Army captain, was killed in Iraq. Khizr Khan, the father of the slain officer, had addressed the recent Democratic Convention, calling Trump unpatriotic and selfish.

Trump has also come under fire from his own party for initially refusing to endorse the re-election of Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Republicans’ most senior leader in Congress, as well as that of Senator John McCain, the moderate Republican from Arizona. To confuse matters further, Trump’s running mate, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana, decided to endorse Ryan’s re-election bid, a day after the Republican presidential candidate refused to do so.

Trump clearly has no economic, foreign policy or security vision for his country

The Republican Convention also did nothing to boost Trump’s electoral hopes and cannot be described as having been particularly successful. Hardly any senior Republicans attended (the two Bush Presi­dents and previous Republican presidential candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney were not there), Melania Trump was caught plagiarising paragraphs from Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic Convention speech, and Trump didn’t make the slightest effort to sound moderate or conciliatory – neither did he spell out a clear vision of his economic or foreign policies.

Trump, who did not receive any clear endorsements from senior party figures – with the exception of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie – was as divisive and populist as ever in his acceptance speech. Significantly, Senator Ted Cruz, Trump’s main rival for the party nomination, addressed the Convention but refused to endorse him.

The Democratic Convention, on the other hand, was on the whole successful. It did get off to a shaky start, however, when the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned after leaked e-mails showed that party officials were not impartial in the primary process and favoured Clinton over Senator Bernie Sanders. However, the Convention went smoothly, and Clinton was endorsed by President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, former President Bill Clinton, and crucially, her former rival Bernie Sanders, all of whom gave excellent speeches.

Hillary Clinton’s speech at the Convention was quite good – she is not an outstanding speaker – and she appealed to the middle ground of American politics. She emphasised her credentials to be President – in contrast to her opponent – and advocated common sense economic policies and an open, diverse, internationalist and engaged America. She also stressed, rightly so, the historic nature of this election – she is the first female candidate of any major political party – and the fact that this is no normal election: a vote for Trump is simply too risky.

Her running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine – an excellent choice – also spoke very well. Kaine, a practising Catholic, is a centrist and stressed the importance of the fami­ly during his speech, which was targeted to a certain extent at moderate Republicans. The Democratic Convention was also addressed by many national security experts and former senior military officers, many of them Republicans, who endorsed Clinton and stressed that Trump was simply not fit to be President.

Significantly, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was a Democrat until 2001, then became a Republican until 2007, and then registered as an independent, endorsed Clinton at the Democratic Convention. Bloomberg attacked Trump in his speech, criticising the Republican candidate’s business skills, saying: “Trump says he wants to run the nation like he’s running his business? God help us.”

The outcome of this absolutely crucial election will be determined over the next three months by a number of factors, namely: whether the Republican establishment will finally give up on Trump and concentrate instead on campaigning for Republican congressional seats in November’s election; how well the Clinton campaign manages to reach out to those members of the white working class who feel their quality of life has deteriorated over the past few years; how many more Republicans will have the courage to stand up and be counted and endorse Clinton; whether any new ‘scandals’ will emerge regarding Clinton’s e-mails at the State Department; whether a major jihadist terrorist attack will hit America; and whether President Obama, whose approval ratings are very high, manages to convince enough voters to back Clinton.

It is, in fact, very sad that Trump is now the standard bearer of the Republican Party, which in the past was the party of Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush, Robert Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Trump does not have Conservative principles but preaches a dangerous brand of right-wing populism, and for the first time in America’s post-war history a major political party has a presidential candidate who sows division at home and whose foreign policy would undermine Nato and put in doubt America’s commitment to its allies across the globe. Trump has also criticised the nuclear accord with Iran and the climate deal reached in Paris last year and appears to admire Russian President Vladimir Putin.

I very much hope that Clinton wins by a comfortable majority; besides being good for America and for the world, it might also knock some sense into the Republican Party, which, it should be stressed, has only once won the popular vote in the last six presidential elections (in 2004). It is important, however, for Clinton to recognise that in spite of President Obama’s very successful economic record, some people do feel left behind and have not seen a pay rise in many years. Clinton needs to directly address these concerns.

Nothing can be taken for granted, and although I believe that if the election were held today Clinton would win, anything can happen in three months’ time. As I have already stressed, if Trump has come this far in spite of his divisive and incoherent campaign, it is not impossible for him to win the election.

This election will be decided by a number of so-called ‘battleground states’ which can go either way, such as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada. And we can expect plenty of campaigning by both candidates in these states from now until November.

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