RUTHFULLY YOURS

Every corner of the media is pouring cold water on what they view as the wreckage of the Trump campaign.  It is so pervasive that one friend, an ardent Trump supporter, said he listens to nothing but his own thoughts.

The message is to move beyond Trump to building a mandate and a Democrat Congress for Hillary.

Oh, and you people who were crazy enough to listen to Trump and your own values and beliefs might as well forget about it and stay home.  And those silly “Trump: Make America Great Again” signs?  If they have not already been vandalized, you can put them with your Goldwater buttons and your Bibles.

There will be time after November for denial and disbelief, and then the final grief and eventual hardening to the reality of another unbearable president, should Trump not emerge victorious.  But this is not that time.

One can quickly get lost in the weeds of poll samples, weightings, and methodologies, but that is best left to the professionals.  The way things are is made obvious even to irredeemable clingers by a statistic contained in one recent poll that found Hillary up by twelve points but also contained the finding on page 24 that Obama voters outnumbered Romney voters in the sample by 46 to 32.

Fortunately, there is competition even among pollsters, and there remain three reputable national polls that consistently indicate a tight race nationally.

While the wizards of talk in their cloistered network studios harp endlessly about the coarse and vulgar Mr. Trump, who just can’t seem to act like a normal politician, there is much more still in play in this election.

The Las Vegas Review Journal, owned by major Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, came out this weekend in support of Trump for president, noting that voters “clamor for an alternative” to the corruption “dominating the capital” and that voter “discontent isn’t confined by ideology or political philosophy.”

History tells us that agents for reform often generate fear and alarm among those intent on preserving their cushy sinecures. It’s hardly a shock, then, that the 2016 campaign has produced a barrage of unceasing vitriol directed toward Mr. Trump. But let us not be distracted by the social media sideshows and carnival clatter. Substantive issues are in play this November.

The Review Journal goes through the litany of campaign issues, with particular focus on the Supreme Court, and observes that “Mrs. Clinton would be a disaster in this regard.”

Make no mistake, a Hillary Clinton administration would indulge the worst instincts of the authoritarian left and continue to swell the bloated regulatory state while running the nation deeper into the red in pursuit of “free” college and health care.

Would that Mr. Trump could make the case so cogently.

Yes, Mr. Trump’s impulsiveness and overheated rhetoric alienate many voters[.] …

… But neither candidate will ever be called to the dais to accept an award for moral probity and character.

The body of evidence indicates that Mr. Trump is “somewhat behind in the polls,” as the candidate acknowledged on Monday.  But polls and projections are just that.  David P. Goldman, aka Spengler, says of the media’s Clinton cover-up: “The roof blows off the echo chamber.”

We have had so many iterations of lies, cover-up, cover-up malfunction, new lies, new cover-up and new cover-up malfunction that the experts are in information overload.

… There is no way of knowing what Americans believe. Only one in nine Americans believes that Hillary Clinton is “honest and trustworthy.”

Mr. Goldman goes through the catalog of Clinton corruption, from the sordid to the crooked, the scheming to the lying, and rhetorically asks which misdeeds voters believe:

It’s impossible for most Americans to form a judgment with which they feel comfortable, because they do not have sources of information they can trust.

… That’s why Americans don’t simply watch the nightly news and go to bed. They read the rumors on the Internet and circulate them to their friends. They create networks of people they trust in the hope of obtaining an accurate account of what is happening around them.

That’s why I’m still calling this election for Donald J. Trump. The polls are meaningless.

… The election will be won and lost a dozen times between now and Election Day. And when Americans finally go into the voting booth, they will not be able to think of any reasons to vote for Hillary Clinton – only reasons to vote against Donald Trump.  There are far more compelling reasons to vote against Clinton. And that’s how the election will go.

Voting is confession: examine your conscience, vote accordingly, and live with the results.  NeverTrump Republicans, wavering Democrats, third-party protesters, and late deciders will encounter the long and sordid record of Clinton corruption as they cast their ballots.

We will know the result in due time.