The Only Thing Standing Between Trump and the Presidency is Reality

Despite being anointed as the winner, Trump’s chances are slim, and none

Sooner or later, Trump will have to face all of the American voters and they’re not going to take kindly to his buddying up to the likes of Putin. (Shutterstock Photo by Willrow Hood)

I read the Sunday New York Times religiously, and after Trump’s latest Republican primary win in South Carolina, they’re pretty much measuring the curtains in the Oval Office for him.

And, so is NPR, the Washington Post, and just about everyone else in the mainstream media. But what everyone has forgotten is that Donald Trump has never actually won the popular vote in an election that includes all of the voters. Yes, he gamed the system of the Electoral College and won his time on Pennsylvania Avenue, but though it’s happened a few times in U.S. History that a winner is decided who didn't get a majority of votes, I doubt it will happen this time.

Let’s start with the fact that Republicans haven't won the hearts and minds of the majority of the American people in over 20 years. And they’ve slipped to third place among registered voters across the United States. Most people register as Democrats. Second are voters who are unaffiliated and don't choose to declare a party affiliation, and third are people who register with the G.O.P.

Now, with abortion, women’s reproductive rights, lunatic judges in Alabama, and white racists in Texas that number is slipping even more. Add to it Republicans in the House abandoning our allies in Ukraine and throughout Europe on Trump’s orders, and I’m betting the American people aren’t going to rush to put him in office or keep recalcitrant Congress members sitting at their mahogany desks.

I have faith in the American people.

I’ve also come to realize that Nikki Haley knows something we don’t, which is why she’s vowed to stay in the race. She believes that Donald Trump isn’t gonna make it through to the Republican convention. She’s making a calculated risk that, though the wheels of justice turn slowly, they’re going to roll over him with the 94 Federal felony counts he’s facing.

She’s betting on the chance that Trump will never make it to the podium at the convention unless he’s wearing an orange jumpsuit to match his fake tan.

Trump may be winning on the front pages of national news media, but I’m not sure it’s working in the neighborhoods in cities and rural America. I live in a part of New York State that is so red, it sometimes seems that the sky won’t even turn blue. And while there are Trump flags dotting parts of the backwoods landscape, they’re becoming tattered and torn. The fact that Trump and his decadent children are banned from doing business in New York State hasn’t helped him. And the reality that Trump is a crook, has even many of the rightist of right-wingers quieting in their enthusiasm.

Haley also knows that Republicans are the new “Third party” in American politics. Democrats are number one, and unaffiliated voters come in a strong second. Republicans trail miserably. And the tried and true Trumpers who go to the polls to vote in Republican Primaries represent just a small cross-section of the real world.

Conservatives in this country are vastly underestimating the intelligence of the American woman and their stance on women’s reproductive rights. Outside of Clarence Thomass’s wife, most women I know quietly abhor the prospect of a Federal ban on abortion under a Trump administration. They may not be shouting it from the rooftops, but they aren’t going to vote for a guy who wants to make them second-class citizens … again.

And then, there’s Trump’s cozy relationship with his buddy Putin. Trump seems to be ignoring the fact that half the people in the U.S. have at least one grandparent who immigrated from another country … many from Europe. I’m not sure these voters are going to be too pleased about Putin’s armies marching through Italy or up to the doors of Buckingham Palace. It makes great headlines to say that Europe is going to have to carry the cost of the defense of the continent. Trump can stand up in front of a crowd and shout that NATO partners have to pay to play and get his lackeys in Congress to follow his lead. and mainstream media broadcasts that it’s the new policy of the country. He’s announced that If elected we won’t protect European countries who “don’t pay their bills” to NATO. “You gotta pay your bills,” he shouted. Meanwhile, estimates run into the thousands of lawsuits against him for doing just that. Trump himself doesn't pay his bills.

Just ask Rudy Giuliani.

Donald, if you think standing by our allies is expensive, wait until you see the cost of abandoning them.

It’s nine months until the election. These days, the world changes in a nano-second. Yeah, Trump's donations skyrocketed after he was fined almost half a billion bucks for gaming the banking system. But it hurts. And, not everyone is stupid enough to give him a slice of their hard-earned cash to save him from himself.

I’ve long tried to figure out what a fat orange-tinged white guy has that makes people all a-flutter when they get a chance to vote for him. And here’s what I finally figured out.

Back in the heyday of organized crime in Chicago, America’s favorite gangster, Al Capone enjoyed legendary status as a celebrity both because he was giving people something they wanted (booze) and flaunting his ability to live outside the law. People loved it. Because everyone secretly admires the bad guy who lives on the edge and isn’t bogged down by the day-to-day lives most of us lead.

There’s a certain romance with people who live just outside the law … until the true carnage of their actions hits the front pages.

Trump is the modern-day version of Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, Billy the Kid, and the James gang all rolled into one.

But I believe that when it comes right down to destroying our country, the American people will wake up. Al Capone ended up literally rotting away in prison (he died of syphilis). And, somehow, I can picture Trump coming to a similar fate. His future will be in that la-la land of Mar-a-Lago, ostracized and living out his exile, branded as the traitor to our democracy that he is.