The reality that Trump could actually take the White House is dawning on many

Think back a year and the US presidential race was very much still in it’s speculative, pre-primary phase. Many disregarded Donald Trump as a novelty candidate that wouldn’t go the distance and, much like many of the dozen other Republican candidates, would eventually drop out. The reality that played out of course was that every Republican Trump faced floundered in the wake of his crass attacks and he quickly became the frontrunner. All through this, those opposed to the idea of a Trump presidency reassured themselves that he’d never win a general election due to there simply being too many Americans that are female, of colour, Muslim, Hispanic or any other group he has offended on multiple occasions. This summer, and the past few weeks in particular, has shown the possibility this might not stop him.

Let’s run in reverse chronology. Two weeks ago, we saw what could be a tipping-point, the establishment media may have finally realised that Hillary Clinton isn’t the safe bet for president that they were so sure she was. Wednesday September 7th NBC morning host Matt Lauer hosted a presidential forum featuring both candidates. He subsequently came under enormous fire from other members of the media for his failure to call out Donald Trump’s outright lies, alongside spending a majority of the Clinton segment only focused on her use of a private email server. It was a journalistically lack-lustre performance reminiscent of Anderson Cooper’s shockingly gentle Republican town hall, but should fellow reporters really be so up in arms? The corporate media have mostly been letting Trump distort the truth unchallenged for this entire election-cycle, Lauer was just more obvious than other reporters and those on the side-lines have rightly pointed out that this represents a larger deficit of enquiry with TV journalists on US news networks.

However, in the context of polling data released days before it immediately becomes clear why they may suddenly care. The CNN poll was the first national poll to have Trump on top and demonstrated just how appealing he is to independent voters (the largest partisan voting bloc) in stark contrast to Clinton. If the comparisons weren’t already apparent, almost every demographic is directly comparable to the UK voters that stumped for Brexit and won – on education, race, gender, age and class. But the most important of all of those is this: how considerably more enthusiastic his supporters are. Just as the Brexiteers were the ones shouting the loudest, Trump supporters will be the ones dragging others to the voting booths. In contrast, Clinton will be receiving many a ‘depressed vote’, those reluctantly putting an X next to her name and nothing more.

As Clinton was nominated as the democratic nomination, many of those within the progressive movement that coalesced around Bernie Sanders (aside from #NeverHillary) were fearful of how easily President Trump would be able to take HRC down. As the sole similarity with the alt-right Trump base, they too are equally sick of establishment politics and the mainstream being dominated by the neoliberal centre. They too see Clinton’s vast weaknesses, how much she represents the old politics, and how terrible a strategy the democrats have chosen to attempt to retain the White House in a year that is hungry for populist change. It was figures like these that had been shouting warnings of complacency weeks ago on what could happen if Trump’s feet aren’t held to the fire. As the establishment media finally begin to catch up and realise this, it could be the moment they wake up to the reality that Trump could actually win, to the crucial need for follow up questions, to state that facts are facts, not opinions, even at the risk of being branded the liberal media or fear of losing access to political figures. When the first debate comes around any vital change will be very clear, but don’t expect Fox news to challenge him any time soon– Chris Wallace, who will be moderating their debate, has admitted he will not call out lies.

Hillary could still annihilate Trump if she plays it smart, but decisions like picking Tim Kaine as VP are just the opposite. Many Sanders supporters had hoped for a more exciting all female line-up with Elizabeth Warren as running mate, but of course, Wall Street wouldn’t have approved of her. Stories like the Clinton foundation ‘access-for-donations‘ and the never-ending private server scandal only make her even less trusted than she already is, and Trump is testing this with his latest crazy headline, exclaiming she could essentially shoot someone and get away with it. Clinton’s recent ‘worst weekend’ hit her hard in the polls too. Calling half of Trump supporters a basket of deplorables reeks of the same tactics that led the Remain campaign to fail in the UK, and questions that Republicans have yelled for weeks on whether she is physically fit enough for the presidential role are encouraged further with Clinton diagnosed with pneumonia.

Let’s be clear – Trump’s path to the White House has widened but is still narrow although not narrow enough to disregard. He’ll need to win over multiple swing states, a possibility in the rust-belt mid-west by focusing hard on jobs and anti-trade rhetoric. He’ll need to cast a more disciplined presidential image and avoid any more major gaffes whilst still keeping the spotlight that said gaffe’s supply. And most of all, he’ll need most of the establishment media to continue not calling out his lies, which we could finally see begin to happen soon. But don’t think he can’t come out on top on November 8th just because of things like being unpopular with women; Clinton is as equally unpopular with men. Don’t think that America won’t vote for a right-wing buffoon that the rest of the world sees as a joke–it already happened. If George W Bush can happen Trump can. And if Brexit can happen for many of the same reasons against so many people’s expectations, so can Trump.

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Contributed by James Fox