As November 8th, the date of the next United States presidential election draws closer, the polls appear to be clarifying the voters’ perceptions of the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties. And integral to this has been the conventions of the parties that have confirmed Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the two candidates for the contest.
Hillary Clinton’s performance at the Democratic Convention seems to have consolidated her position as her party’s choice as the most appropriate candidate for her party, and placed her as continuing to be the favoured candidate of the American people as a whole. And no doubt, President Obama’s firm commitment to her candidacy at that convention has helped to stabilise more than just the Democrats’ support for her, giving her an initial decisive 52 to 43 percent lead over Republican candidate Donald Trump after the convention.
In the meantime, as his continuing diverse statements suggest, it still does not appear that Donald Trump has been able to convince his own party, much less the wider voter membership, that he has been able to take advantage of the Republican convention to stabilise his own party’s support for him, or to draw many Democrats, and in particular undecided voters, to his side.
Trump seems to have taken, in the last fortnight or so, an erratic stance as to how he hopes to draw any substantial support away from Clinton. Particularly in respect of his observations on foreign affairs, he seems not to have yet consolidated a stable line of policy towards the world outside the United States.
In that regard, it might have been expected that particularly after his visit to the United Kingdom in June his perspectives on Europe, and more particularly Russia and President Putin, might have become more systematic, and more consistent with general NATO policies. But he has, baffling even supporters in the Republican Party, sought to espouse a relatively favourable view of Putin, without much elaboration of the bases on which his perceptions of Russian foreign policy have evolved.
Naturally this has been of some concern to leaders of countries particularly in Eastern Europe (many now members of the European Union) who, since the evolution of Putin’s policies towards Ukraine and Crimea, have taken a more rigid stance to the Russian leader’s foreign policies.
In respect of a future American stance towards neighbouring Latin America, Trump opted, at least when he first announced his policies, to adopt a stance of belligerence towards Mexico in particular, seeking to gain domestic support for antagonistic views towards migration from that part of the hemisphere. It would appear that the stratagem of using an external issue to advance domestic support has not been favourably viewed even in the United States itself, as the Mexican leadership has not been hesitant to take a strong stance towards his apparently prime political objective of building a wall, allegedly at Mexican expense, to inhibit further migration.
Some observers are therefore taking the view that this ploy, directed at building voter antagonism to migrants within the US, is in fact unlikely to enhance support from voters, given what appears to be a lack of realism in attaining his objectives.
In the meantime, Hillary Clinton has been seeking to consolidate the wider immigrant vote, in addition, as seen at her Convention, to extending her hand to black voters as essentially traditional supporters of the Democratic Party. For while there is some truth to the view that in the nature of a certain diversification of the class character of the black population, some elements of it are drawn to support the Republicans, it is generally accepted that that vote remains open for sustaining support for the Democrats, including that section of it from the Caribbean. In that connection, readers will recall recent correspondence by Dr Wesley Kirton in this newspaper (August 1st), indicating the basis for continued Caribbean peoples’ support for Hillary Clinton.
It will have been observed that President Obama has been direct in his support for Clinton, a position which he has obviously partly taken as indicating his own satisfaction with the support given by former president Clinton to this own endeavours as both candidate and president; but also in terms of his appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. For her own conduct of the country’s foreign policy during the first term of Obama is inextricably mixed with current and future assessments of his own record as President.
Indications of current defections by leading personalities of the Republican Party from support for Trump appear to be temporary, in the sense of being a form of pressure on their candidate to observe the normal protocols of a Republican candidacy; as well as suggesting that further declines in popular support for Trump can have serious consequences for the state of the party as a whole, not only in terms of the presidency, but also in respect of support for Republican candidates to the House of Representatives and the Senate.
For senior Republicans seem to be beginning to accept that a negative performance by Trump can drag down other Republican candidates, and seriously damage the party’s standing in the Senate and the House of Representatives. From their perspective, in the days left before the general elections, the ball is now in Trump’s corner.
