You know the race to the White House is over when polling in Alaska has Hillary Clinton within striking distance of the Republican nominee just weeks before the election. It seems Donald Trump knows it, too. But the man is such a poor loser that, during Wednesday’s debate, he wasn’t even capable of telling the nation he’ll accept the outcome of the election. It gave everyone one more reason not to vote for him.
If the polls are reasonably reliable, it looks like Trump won’t even reach 40 percent. That would be incredibly dismal showing in a state that hasn’t been close the 1968 election.
His problem isn’t competition from Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson who is polling just under 20 percent. Johnson’s campaign isn’t attracting voters as much as picking up people rejecting Trump’s bizarre policy proposals, narcissistic personality and extremely volatile temperament.
That’s why smart Republican officials have been refusing to endorse Trump since he before secured the nomination. Many of them probably think he’s unfit to be mayor of their own city.
Though not officially, that’s been Sen. Lisa Murkowski position. By claiming she was waiting for more details about his policy proposals she was at best saying she was undecided. But she’s been clear she never supported Trump. All she ever offered was the calculated statement that she’s always voted her party’s presidential nominee.
Publicly all that changed after she saw the leaked Access Hollywood video of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women.
“I think what we saw, what I saw in that video was just his true character coming out,” she told the Alaska Dispatch News. “And there had been statements made throughout this campaign process where you could see glimpses of that.”
In other words, she saw through Trump all along. She just needed the evidence of his serious character flaws to become public so she could officially declare she wasn’t voting for him. And the video gave her that opportunity.
That’s probably true of many of the other Republican leaders who suddenly found it imperative to take a stand against Trump. And it may well have been the case for much of the electorate. If so, then the race was never really close. It’s just that pollsters were being fooled by an inverse of the so-called Bradley Effect.
The term refers to the 1982 California gubernatorial race which in the African-American mayor, Tom Bradley, led in polls up to election day by but lost the race. The theory is some white voters feared exposing themselves as racist if they had told pollsters they weren’t voting for Bradley.
There’s been speculation for months that the Bradley Effect explained why Trump was trailing in most polls. Because he’s been called out by many as a racist, some speculated that people might have been afraid to admit they were supporting him. Instead, they told pollsters they’d be voting for Clinton.
Remember though that the party base has hated Clinton since she was First Lady. It’s not a question of approval versus disapproval. Their contempt for her is much, much deeper. So perhaps the opposite was happening.
There’s been a visible chorus of party leaders and highly respected conservative commentators who refused to support Trump. Except for the most dedicated within his base, people had to wonder why they were breaking ranks and risking letting Clinton win. So perhaps many GOP registered voters had already abandoned Trump but wouldn’t tell anyone because they were afraid of being blamed for four years of a Clinton presidency.
In the end the only votes that count are the actual ballots cast. And I think that in the privacy of the voting booth, people like Murkowski, Sen. John McCain, Speaker Paul Ryan, and many ordinary citizens planned long ago planned to vote for Clinton, Johnson or write in almost anyone as an alternative to Trump.
When it’s over, Trump will accuse the GOP elite of betraying him and millions who support him. He’ll rant about the biases of the mainstream media and call anyone who’s ever criticized him either stupid or a liar. In other words, Trump will be Trump by blaming everyone but himself for losing.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will be glad this bizarre version of reality TV ended with Trump being fired.
• Rich Moniak is a retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.
