It was conventional wisdom among the political cognoscenti during most of the primary season that Donald Trump could not win the general election. The evidence seemed strong.
Over 12 months of polling from May 2015 to April 2016, Hillary Clinton ran ahead of Trump in 63 national polls, while Trump led her in only six and tied her in three. Polls in the dozen or so 2012 target states showed similar results.
"Something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans. Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group ... death rates in this group have been rising, not falling."
The big new killers of middle-aged white folks? Alcoholic liver disease, overdoses of heroin and opioids, and suicides. So wrote Gina Kolata in The New York Times of a stunning study by the husband-wife team of Nobel laureate Angus Deaton and Anne Case.
With only a few weeks left in the 2016 primary campaign, a lot of liberal pundits and Democratic Party leaders are getting very nervous about the outlook for the general election. To almost everyone’s surprise, Donald Trump has secured the Republican presidential nomination while Hillary Clinton is still locked in a contentious battle with Bernie Sanders. Although Clinton holds a nearly insurmountable lead over Sanders in pledged delegates, Sanders continues to attack Clinton and win primaries.
Clutching her pearls, Hillary Clinton is stricken. Horrified! Disgusted that Donald Trump would dare to remind voters about all the depraved debauchery she and her lecherous husband inflicted on the innocent American citizen for all of those years.
From runways to red carpets to Instagram and Snapchat, celebrity overexposure is inescapable. We're drowning in underboob. Bombarded with sideboob. Nip slips. Crotch slips. Bare-bottom flashes. All of the above, all at once.
Our next president will almost certainly be Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
But I take heart knowing that America's founders imposed checks and balances, so there will be limits on what bad things the next president can do.
This is the season of college Commencement speeches -- an art form that has seldom been memorable, but has increasingly become toxic in recent times.
Women, lamented Hillary Clinton in an April 2014 tweet, make just 77 cents on the dollar to men. As a presidential candidate she has repeated that lament again and again, updating the numbers, in line with government statistics, to 78 cents in July 2015 and 79 cents this year.
If China begins to reclaim and militarize Scarborough Shoal, says Philippines President Benigno S. Aquino III, America must fight.
University of Missouri at St. Louis criminologist Richard Rosenfeld has had "second thoughts." Like many academic criminologists, he had pooh-poohed charges that skyrocketing murder rates in many cities in 2015 and 2016 result from a "Ferguson effect" -- a skittering back from proactive policing for fear of accusations of racism like those that followed the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.
In his coquettish refusal to accept the Donald, Paul Ryan says he cannot betray the conservative "principles" of the party of Abraham Lincoln, high among which is a devotion to free trade.
But when did free trade become dogma in the Party of Lincoln?
Heading into the 2014 National Football League draft, rumors were swirling that Jerry Jones, the eccentric Dallas Cowboys owner, was considering using his team’s first-round pick on the biggest star available: Johnny Manziel, the controversial star quarterback from Texas A&M. Indeed, when Dallas’ pick came around, and Manziel was still available, Jones reportedly wanted to pick Manziel. But Jones’ son and other team leaders advised Jones against it, and the team instead selected Notre Dame offensive lineman Zack Martin. For months after the May draft, Jones fumed over being talked out of taking Manziel, who he saw as a future star and the kind of flashy selection that defined “America’s Team,” the Cowboys.
When it comes to public employee unions, there's no such thing as a coincidence.
This presidential election is like no other.
Most election years around this time, I do a TV show on nasty political commercials. Pundits explain which ads worked, which didn't, and who won because he raised more money and spent more on negative ads.
"It's a suicide mission," said the Republican Party Chairman.
No matter what one thinks of this often surreal presidential primary campaign, it has been a hit at the ballot box.
Republicans have already smashed their record of 20.8 million ballots, set in 2008. Through the May 10 contests, the 2016 GOP primary turnout stands at 26.1 million and counting.
A rare point of universal agreement in all this trenchant political acrimony: No matter what you think of Donald Trump, the political environment in which the flashy real estate mogul has so brilliantly thrived was created entirely by President Obama.
We must frankly face the fact that the front runners in both political parties represent a new low, at a time of domestic polarization and unprecedented nuclear dangers internationally. This year's general election will offer a choice between a thoroughly corrupt liar and an utterly irresponsible egomaniac.
What's your benchmark? What is the historical era with which you compare life in contemporary America?
After an election season in which nothing they predicted came true -- their confidence that Donald Trump would never be the Republican nominee comes to mind -- you'd think our losing-streak corporate pundits would be reluctant to underestimate Trump's chance of winning the presidency in November.
