One Nation, Divisible By Demography and Ideology

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on July 28, 2016 Many people have said this before, but it’s worth saying again: If a few years ago, someone wrote a political potboiler with a plot that matched the campaign of the past 18 months, nobody would believe it, and it probably wouldn’t have been published. A 17-way GOP nomination fight produces a vain and profane real-estate mogul who declares war on the establishment and refuses to release his income tax returns, which nominees of both parties have done for four decades. On the Democratic side, a rather eccentric and marginal 74-year-old senator from a small state gives fits to a former secretary of state, becoming a cult figure in the process. For her part, she uses a private, unsecure email server rather than the official State Department system, potentially exposing classified information to foreign powers and reinforcing her reputation for a lack of honesty and trustworthiness. Advise and Consent this is not. The polls fluctuated with every plot twist. Hillary Clinton went from leading Donald Trump by mid-to-high single digits