Never make predictions in politics and none will be made now. But this Blog thinks that not only is there a real possibility of President Trump, it is more likely than President (Mrs) Clinton. If you think that is far fetched consider this. Clinton is ahead in all the polls and as a previous post points out, she has vast experience of the presidency, government and international affairs. But she is dogged by scandal, she is at the core of the political establishment against which there is much anger and people instinctively do not trust her. She also loses. She has just lost to Bernie Sanders again, in spite of the fact that his hopes of getting the nomination are over.
By contrast Trump wins and the longer he fights the bigger the wins become. He did not just beat his rivals in the latest contests, he creamed them and drove them from the field. So all this talk of brokered conventions is gone. He is the Republican candidate for president and a boisterous convention will confirm that. What baffles the pros about Trump is that he is the most reviled candidate since polling began, minorities and women hate him, yet still he wins. That tells you two things. The first is that a lot of the haters are telling the pollsters one thing and voting another. The second is he is pulling out people who usually stay at home. That makes him a very dangerous adversary.
So in the UK note must be taken and political contacts opened. In fact Trump would not be bad news for us. If you sweep aside idiotic rhetoric about building walls and banning Muslims, you would have a President who wants to do a deal with Russia and China to reduce diplomatic tensions, would attack America’s ruinous twin deficits in both world trade and the federal budget, would talk big about the military but refuse pleas from the Generals for more expensive systems for which the cost would have to be borrowed, cut deals with Congress to ensure that his government actually functioned and finally if we are silly enough on this side of the Atlantic to vote for Brexit he would give us a sympathetic nod and unlike Obama, he would not send us to the back of the trade deal queue.