The downtrend in Trump’s presidential candidacy is now so prolonged that not even the most ardent Trump supporter can deny it.
The decline is all based on silliness. Worse yet, it is self-imposed silliness.
Some of the things Trump has stated are so ridiculous that Brent Budowsky, a columnist at The Hill asks Is Trump deliberately throwing the election to Clinton?
Why might Trump, in theory, want to lose the election?
Think about it. If a candidate genuinely wants to become president, would he repeatedly insult the giant wave of Hispanic voters? Would he insult veterans who were heroic prisoners of war by saying that he “like[s] people who weren’t captured”? Would he repeatedly insult the 2008 GOP nominee and great war hero, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.)?
If a candidate actually wants to become president, would he and his advisers plan a strategy that includes praising the mass-murdering communist dictator of North Korea? Which voters did Trump believe he would win with that one? If a candidate truly wants to become president, would he and his foreign policy advisors plan a strategy that repeatedly praises Vladimir Putin, the strongman dictator of Russia, and say he is not sure he would defend Europe nations from a Russian invasion? Does Trump believe there is a pro-Putin vote in America?
I have been to many rodeos in national politics, and literally every single major player in politics that I know expected Trump to “pivot” after the conventions to appear to take more responsible positions and say fewer irresponsible and self-destructive things. Republicans believed Trump would pivot with hope; Democrats believed he would pivot with dread.
Nobody I know believed that Trump would pivot in the opposite direction, becoming even more irresponsible and self-destructive after the conventions.
Did Trump and his campaign managers develop a strategy to attack a Gold Star mother and father? Could any presidential candidate who wants to be elected seem to publicly support Russian espionage against America, and take positions so extreme that a former acting CIA director calls him “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation”? Would any candidate who actually wants to win make comments about the Second Amendment and a political opponent so that the Secret Service is not happy, the same kind of comments that helped Harry Reid pulverize his Republican opponent into dust in his last reelection campaign?
There has been some speculation in GOP circles about whether Trump might drop out of the campaign. This is possible, but I doubt it. The more likely scenario, if Trump does not want to be elected president, is that he will keep saying and doing things that any freshman political science student in college would know will doom his candidacy, and that after he loses a potential landslide to Hillary Clinton, will shout from the rooftops: “I was robbed!”
I am not saying that I believe Donald Trump is trying to throw the election to Hillary Clinton, but I am saying this is a prospect that is now worth seriously considering if the endless series of Trump blunders and gaffes continues.
Occam’s Razor Again
I am a huge fan of Occam’s Razor, sometimes called Ockham’s razor.
William of Ockham (1287–1347), was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, and theologian. His principle can be interpreted as stating that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.
In short, the simplest explanation is the one most likely to be correct.
Competing Assumptions
August 15, 2016
I did not think this self-imposed destruction would happen, but it was a possibility all along. It is conceivable Trump still wins, but his ego has done enormous damage to his campaign.
Trump could have won easily. Now, it’s a mammoth uphill battle.
