US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is now increasingly looking like a loser. He may have read the signs or seen what nationwide opinion polls say about his chances. But it’s in cynically questioning the poll process itself, airing doubts over the fairness of US elections, that he undermines the very bedrock of democracy. As classic signs of his predicament in a race he is set to lose after emerging as an unlikely candidate with maverick views, Mr Trump may be forgiven his many anxieties. His allegations on voter fraud and rigging, without a shred of evidence, does little justice to a system that has worked well for over two centuries and withstood most tests of fairness, except possibly in the contentious 2000 contest which George W. Bush won though Democrat Al Gore got a majority of the popular vote!
The US is no banana republic, whose entire poll can be rigged. Today electronic voting machines work efficiently in many countries to ease the counting process, though not all American states use EVMs yet. No one has yet offered any proof of tampering, and mixed results have always been seen to reflect the popular will accurately. In increasingly polarised societies where inequities are showing, divisions are likely to be exaggerated, but even so Mr Trump’s stirring up may have gone too far.
The Republican candidate, who fell out even with his party leadership, came far enough in the race to pose a threat to Hillary Clinton, perhaps right till the day the first videotape emerged with his comments on women. While earlier targeting so many groups like Mexicans, Latinos, Muslims and individual women, he may still have retained his base of essentially white, male voter base until he alienated around 50 per cent of Americans across party lines. This was the definitive tipping point in this election, which appears to be on track in the next three weeks to produce the anticipated result of a Democratic triumph, particularly after what seemed a resounding Hillary win in the last of the three televised debates.
While the Democratic candidate faced some trouble over her cavalier use of a private email server while she was America’s secretary of state for official matters, a second Clinton in the Oval Office will have huge challenges to deal with, specially as there is no reason to doubt the impression in voters’ minds that they face a Hobson’s choice in this election. What happens from January 20, 2017, when the new President takes over from Barack Obama, will impact not just the United States but the entire world. The bitterness of this election is unlikely to go away for some time — for which the US must thank the presence of the most unlikely of candidates, in “The Donald”!
