Hillary Clinton – the former first lady, New York senator and secretary of state – has become the first female presidential candidate of a major US political party. She was crowned as the Democratic presidential nominee at last month’s Democratic national convention in Philadelphia, eight years after she was beaten by a relatively inexperienced senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.
Mrs Clinton is an experienced and competent presidential candidate, who represents much more optimistic future of America than Donald Trump, a self-declared saviour who thinks that he can alone fix America’s problems. The property mogul is the Republican presidential candidate, but his platform is far away from Ronald Reagan’s optimistic “Morning in America” advertising campaign and his “America First” language espouses a world view sharply at odds with the Republican Party’s orthodoxy. He shows his disdain for the rules-based liberal international order, which America helped to create after the Second World War. Mr Trump calls Mrs Clinton “Crooked Hillary”, portraying her as a person who cares more about big money and corporate interests than ordinary Americans and lives by her own set of rules, but he offers nothing of substance to address America’s problems.
Mrs Clinton’s chilly professionalism doesn’t inspire the public, but it makes her better qualified to serve as commander-in-chief than the unstable demagogue, who believes in his own greatness and espouses policies, which would put the US on an isolationist path and damage alliances. She proposes a vision of American leadership, which is the mainstream in Washington. This vision is the post-Second World War liberal democratic order guaranteed by American hegemony. Mr Trump is sympathetic to Russia’s worldview, which prompted President Barack Obama to call him unsuitable to hold the office.
The email case, in which Mrs Clinton used a private system to receive and send emails that contained classified information, made her look arrogant and showed that she bent rules for her convenience. As a result of that, the public’s trust in her has tumbled. Two-thirds of voters do not trust Mrs Clinton, but most Americans also have a negative view of Mr Trump. Both candidates have favourability ratings below 40 per cent.
Unlike Mr Trump, Mrs Clinton has the Democratic establishment united behind her. Her problem, though, is that she is associated with the establishment at a time of strong anti-establishment sentiment. She polls better than Mr Trump among African-Americans, who played a decisive role in determining the outcome of the presidential elections in 2008 and 2012, and Hispanics, the fastest growing segment of the electorate. She has made gains among college-educated white women, but polls show that she has worse numbers among women than Bill Clinton did in his presidential race against George Bush senior in 1992.
Mrs Clinton has low support among white, working-class voters, who are struggling with stagnant wages, or who have lost their manufacturing jobs, because factories went overseas, and, thereby, are frustrated by the lack of economic opportunities. More appealing for this segment of the electorate is Mr Trump’s message of rewriting trade deals, including the North American Free Trade Agreement signed into law by Bill Clinton. She is also struggling with young voters, who strongly backed Bernie Sanders, a Vermont senator who describes himself as a Democratic socialist, in the close-fought Democratic primary. Many younger Democrats sided with Mr Sanders’s “revolution” to lower the cost of college tuition, reduce poverty and inequality and eradicate corruption from politics. Mrs Clinton won less than 30 per cent of the under-30 vote during the Democratic primary contest. She has sharpened her message on issues such as wages and trade, but she faces struggle to win over Mr Sanders’s anti-establishment supporters as she doesn’t know how to spark excitement among young people. Mr Sanders has urged his supporters to rally behind Mrs Clinton, but about 15 per cent of them will probably not back her, choosing to vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, or not bothering to vote at all.
Russian state actors were most likely behind the hack on the Democratic National Committee. Leaked emails revealed that senior Democratic Party officials, supposedly impartial, sided with Mrs Clinton in her battle with Mr Sanders. Another batch of potentially damaging hacked internal emails could become public before the presidential election in November. Despite the fact that a foreign power was trying to manipulate the US presidential race, Mr Trump stunned Democrats and Republicans when he encouraged Russia last month to hack Mrs Clinton’s email account and publish whatever Russian intelligence services may have stolen. He later said that he was being sarcastic.
If Russia’s goal was to benefit Mr Trump, leaked emails backfired, as Mr Trump’s links to Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, are now under scrutiny. Post-Democratic convention polls show that Mrs Clinton is 8 points ahead of Mr Trump nationally among likely voters. She is leading in polls mostly thanks to Mr Trump’s missteps like his comments about the parents of a Muslim-American soldier killed in the Iraq war, his remark that Russia should track down and hand over Mrs Clinton’s private emails, his harsh rhetoric about women, war heroes, disabled people and Hispanics as well as his inflammatory taunts about second amendment advocates, who could use their weapons to act against Mrs Clinton.
Mrs Clinton is courting Latinos in swing states such as Florida, Nevada and Colorado, hoping to capitalise on Mr Trump’s hostile language towards the Hispanic population. She has a comfortable 10 percentage points lead over Mr Trump in Colorado, but in Florida she enjoys an advantage of about 4 percentage points and in Nevada she is ahead by only 2 percentage points. In Pennsylvania, which has large numbers of white voters without a college degree, Mrs Clinton enjoys a 9 point poll lead over Mr Trump. In Michigan, another state with a large number of working-class areas, she is ahead of Mr Trump by 9 percentage points. 61 per cent of the state’s voters say that Mr Trump is ill-prepared to be president, according to a Detroit News poll.
Tim Kaine, a Virginia senator, has been chosen by Mrs Clinton as her vice-presidential running mate. He is from a working-class background and has a strong connection to Hispanic voters. But as a long-standing supporter of free trade, he may not be able bolster Mrs Clinton’s support among blue-collar workers from the rust belt post-industrial states.
Mr Trump’s strength mostly comes from giving a voice to people, who detest the Washington establishment and think that globalisation has benefited a small privileged group of elites, but not them. He needs a high turnout from white, blue-collar workers as he is unlikely to improve on Mitt Romney’s share of the Hispanic vote, which was below 30 per cent in 2012. Thanks to white men, who prefer Mr Trump over Mrs Clinton by almost two to one, the Republican presidential candidate has a good chance to dislodge Democrats in parts of the Midwest. Mrs Clinton is unlikely to capture votes from cultural conservatives and the whites without a college degree. A majority of African-Americans and Latinos will support her. The turnout among white and black voters is high, at about 65 per cent, but the Hispanic turnout is very low, below 50 per cent. Mrs Clinton, therefore, has to bolster her appeal to the Latino community and those who voted for Mr Sanders during the Democratic primary contest, if she wants to take the White House.
photo: Disney | ABC Television Group / CC BY-ND 2.0
