Foxy,

Thanks for your link, to some extent it says what I was saying previously on the issue. The moves by the political elite to mainstream political ideologies that vast differ from those of the evangelicals and the PC culture that punishes those that dissent has created huge resentment, that no one from the mainstream democratic or republican parties were prepared to address. That the Trump campaign picked this up and trashed the PC culture is what endeared these people to him, that he was deeply morally deficient was less of a handicap than the toxic more of the same Hillary campaign.

SR,

In my experience sense is seldom common, and having worked with statistics, the mantra that correlation does not imply causality is a common mistake and leaping to the seemingly most obvious answer and declaring it the only answer lacks not only imagination but reason. This poll does not cover itself in glory showing Clinton / Trump at 51% to 36% with Clinton having 141% of the votes that Trump had only 3 weeks from elections. It would appear that some interviewees for the poll were not telling the truth or they were interviewing the wrong people.

When visiting an actuary friend of mine in California in 2007, the topic of Bush and his likely successor came up. My thoughts were that Hillary Clinton would most likely be the next president. My friend just laughed and said that she carried far too much baggage but in 2008 the inexperienced newcomer Obama came from far behind and beat her convincingly. Similarly, in 2016 I thought that there was little chance that Clinton would lose, and yet here we are, with clearly the obvious failing to happen.

Dear Shadow Minister,

Hilary Clinton did carry a great deal of baggage.
And she took a lot for granted - which was a mistake.
However she did gain more popular votes than Trump.
He won on an electoral system that badly needs fixing.
How can someone be elected to the American Presidency
by states with smaller populations. The electorate
system is about 100 years old. When most of the
population was on the East Coast. Today, population
on the West Coast has hugely increased - and yet
they still have the old electoral vote allocation.

Anyway, I suppose that people will learn to get up of
their backsides next time around and vote or the nation
has to make it compulsory voting as is the case here.

It will be interesting to see how long Trump lasts and
whether he will see out his full time. If he does will
he get another term?

People who voted for him believed what he promised and
said but even today we hear on the news that Trump is
a prolific liar, and he just doesn't seem to care.
He can only fool some of the people some of the time
but as the saying goes he can't fool all of them all
of the time. Although this is America - and anything is
possible. What gives me hope is that his approval
rating is about 23 per cent and disapproval rating is
63 per cent. Of course there are people who simply don't
care.

Foxy,

Donald Trump is a troll and a generally despicable person. I don't admire him, but he did spot a great under-swell of feeling against the sanitized political elite on both sides and exploited it ruthlessly.

Trump, Corbyn and Sanders are all symptoms of the frustration with the sanitized political elite and are all pedalling populist and dangerous policies.

I don't disagree with much of SR's original post, and as an atheist, I don't have any particular skin in the game. However, being the contrarian that I am I find it grating when commentators take a bunch of stats and in a eureka moment discover "the root cause" that confirms their pre-conceived ideas.

Dear Shadow Minister,

Thanks for explaining.

Who knows what on earth is going to happen in the
US politically. With Trump - expect the unexpected.

My son just gave me the book "Rising Star: The Making
of Barack Obama," by David J. Garrow. It covers Obama's
life before he became President. The book is 1078 pages
long (not counting all the acknowledgements and notes
at the end). So it's going to be quite a challenge to
read. Also the print is quite small. But it was a
Birthday present - so I'll have to rise to the
challenge. I've got another book on order from a nearby
book-shop, "Flying Without A Net," by Vital Germaine.
It's about an artist who worked for Cirque du Soleil
and then had an accident. How he survived and turned
his life around should make for a good read.

At the moment, I need a bit of a "pick-me-up."