Some cracks in the MSM Hillary narrative

The world's fixated on Trump. But Hillary could drag us ALL into a catastrophic war, writes PETER HITCHENS in America

Daily Mail,

25 September, 2016

Here in my favourite American small town, I detect a strange, ominous feeling of approaching danger. Something has gone wrong with the USA.

I first came to Moscow, Idaho, eight years ago when the great Obama frenzy was at its unhinged peak. This is a divided place, traditional rural conservatives living alongside a Left-wing university campus, but in 2008 they coped with their deep divisions in the usual way.

People disagreed, but they did it politely and openly, and were ready to accept the result even if they did not like it. Almost every front lawn had its partisan placard.

Now politics has gone underground in an almost sinister way. I searched the town’s pleasant suburbs for a Trump or Clinton poster and found none, only a single defiant declaration of support for America’s Jeremy Corbyn, the Left-winger Bernie Sanders, who long ago quit the race.

I lived through the Cold War and never believed we were in real danger. But I genuinely tremble at the thought of Mrs Clinton in the White House

Republican headquarters in Main Street until recently contained posters supporting lots of the party’s candidates for local office, but none at all for Donald Trump. Last week they finally managed to mention his name, but you have to look carefully for it in their window.

Democrat HQ, almost directly opposite, is nearly as coy about Hillary Clinton.

In private conversations (the only sort where people will say what they really think), you find out what this means. Democrats are holding their noses over Hillary because they despise her and wish she wasn’t their candidate.

But many Republicans are stifling their genuine enthusiasm for Trump, because – in small towns like this – they don’t want to annoy or alienate neighbours who may also be customers, clients, patients or employers.

Of course there are conservatives, usually serious Christians, who loathe and mistrust Donald Trump and see him for what he is – a balloon of noise and bluster which will one day burst in a terrible explosion of disappointment and regret.

But they have been swept aside by the great carnival of resentment and revenge which has carried Trump past all the obstacles and restraints that are supposed to prevent such people getting near real power. For Trump is the anti-Obama – emotional, irrational, a spasm.

Those who had to sit, grinding their teeth, through all the long-years of Obama-worship, now hope for their own matching hour of gloating.

And we really ought to recognise that rejoicing over the woes of your enemies is one of the greatest sinful pleasures in life. Few will turn down the chance.

I can see no good outcome of this. Adversarial politics are a good thing, but only if both sides are ultimately willing to concede that their rivals are entitled to win from time to time. But that attitude seems to have gone. Now the rule is that the winner takes all, and hopes to keep it if he (or she) can.

A narrow defeat for Trump will poison the republic. Millions of his supporters will immediately claim fraud at the polls, and nothing will convince them otherwise. The bitterness of the Florida ‘hanging chad’ episode of 2000 will seem like brotherly love compared with that fury.

A victory for Trump – decisive or narrow – will give astonishing powers to a lonely, inexperienced, ill-educated old man who (I suspect) is increasingly terrified of winning a prize he never really intended or expected to obtain.

A clear victory for Hillary Clinton would create even greater problems. Educated, informed people here believe that there are serious doubts about her health. Even if they are wrong, her militant interventionist foreign policies are terrifying.

I lived through the Cold War and never believed we were in real danger. But I genuinely tremble at the thought of Mrs Clinton in the White House. She appears to have learned nothing from the failed interventions of the past 30 years, and scorns Barack Obama’s praiseworthy motto: ‘Don’t do stupid stuff.’

She will do stupid stuff, and drag us into it, you may rely upon it.

How odd it is, to hear on the air the faint but insistent sound of coming war, here in this place of sweet, small hills, rich soil and wistful, mountainous horizons.

Men came here in search of what we all really desire, to be left alone to get on with the really important aims of life, to build a home and raise a family, to see the fruits of their labour, to believe what they wish to believe.

I cannot quite work out how the good, sane impulse that gave birth to the USA could possibly have led us to this nightmare choice between two equally horrible outcomes.

I shall just have to carry on hoping that I am wrong.

Are we be being prepared for something?

Democrats quiet on their support for Clinton

Radio NZ,

26 September, 2016

One would expect voters from the heavily Democratic Brooklyn neighbourhood of Cobble Hill to pick presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the November general election. Just don't expect them to advertise it.

Like lawns and windowsills in liberal pockets across the country, much of the neighbourhood is bereft of pro-Clinton signage in the final weeks before the election. It's a stark contrast to the 2012 and 2008 campaigns, when President Barack Obama whipped up a frenzy of support from Democrats and his signature "Hope" and "Forward" signs were ubiquitous.

The scarcity of lawn and window signs is an indication of the Democratic nominee's struggle to generate enthusiasm among left-leaning voters, a challenge that's borne out in polling data, and could potentially haunt her if voters fail to turn out on election day.

Clinton leads Republican challenger Donald Trump by four percentage points among likely voters, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Friday.

But Americans of all political stripes have been more critical of Clinton than they were of Obama when he was running for his second term four years ago, according to the daily tracking poll.

Among Democrats, 78 percent say they have a favourable view of Clinton, lower than the 89 percent favorability rating Obama had at this point in the race in 2012. Clinton's favorability drops to 28 percent among independents versus Obama's 47 percent.

Nancy Kimmel Viola, a 63-year-old social worker who lives about a mile away from Clinton's campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, keeps a "Bernie 2016" sticker taped to the front door of her Carroll Gardens home, a vestige of her support for the unsuccessful bid of Sen. Bernie Sanders. While she plans to vote for Clinton, she confesses that her "heart's not in it."

"I have to vote for her." Viola said. "Having Trump in there is too scary."

In Denver, residents in the Democratic stronghold of Park Hill posted many yard signs over a local zoning issue, but few for the presidential race.

"Most of us around here will vote Democratic, we always do, but we're not overly enthusiastic for Clinton," said resident Pablo Marron. "But we are united in our opposition to Trump."

'Hold your nose'

In the heavily Democratic Denver suburb of Northglenn, banners for local office-seekers littered a major roadway, but there were no accompanying Clinton signs. In the affluent liberal Washington DC suburb of Chevy Chase, Maryland, signs for the Democratic nominee appeared only roughly once every 10 blocks.

The lack of enthusiasm isn't just hitting the Clinton campaign. Americans from both major parties say they are generally less interested in voting this year than they were in 2012, according to the Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll, which compared results gathered during the first 20 days of September with the same period of 2012.

The Clinton campaign did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

Clinton's online store displayed roughly a dozen different signs and banners for sale, ranging from an 11-inch by 17-inch sign, sold at $10 for a pack of two, to a four-foot by six-foot "Hillary for America" banner, which retailed for $100.

Sales data was not immediately available and a request for comment from the store went unanswered.

For some, there is a "hold your nose quality" to this election, said Matthew Dallek, associate professor at George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management.

The lack of signage in liberal enclaves may indicate, Dallek said, "that there just isn't this sort of enthusiasm that existed for Obama."

But there are some blocks that buck the trend.

On a street in Gowanus, Brooklyn, no fewer than four homes bore pro-Clinton signage, including a life-size cutout of the Democratic nominee, which rests in the windowsill of retired lawyer Chris Morrison's home. The beaming cardboard Clinton prompts many passersby to take pictures, said Morrison, a staunch Clinton supporter.

"You don't see as much signage this time around. In this neighbourhood I don't get so concerned (because everyone is) more or less on the same page," said Morrison, 66.

"I worry when I go to some other places."

- Reuters