Other Politics

Everyone is nervous today.

No one, least of all the players most intimately involved, knows what may happen tomorrow in what is one of the closest and certainly the most divisive election in modern American history – an election that pits distrust of Hillary Clinton against fear of Donald Trump.

A campaign that began on high ground with the prospect of electing the first woman president to succeed the first black president ends in the sewer as voters go to the polls tomorrow amid allegations of lying, criminal behaviour and electoral fraud.

On Friday,  just 11 days before election day in the United States, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation went rogue and threw a spanner into the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. 

Recent polls have suggested that Donald Trump was pulling uncomfortably close to Hillary Clinton, prior to the first televised debate between them. His most significant appeal has been to represent a change in the status quo of governmental gridlock, and being opposed by a candidate little more popular than himself, despite his multitude of personal flaws. That momentum toward the Republicans seems to have been arrested by Trump's performance in that opening encounter, and his behaviour in the days that followed.

Every now and again, the question of RCMP protection for the prime minister and his family becomes a minor issue in this country. It’s always a cost issue.

It happened with Stephen Harper in 2014 and it happened again last week with Justin Trudeau. New figures come out that document the cost of overtime, travel, etc., for officers assigned to protect the PM and his dependents. A predictable little ritual ensues. Opposition critics profess to be scandalized. They wring their hands in faux sympathy for the poor taxpayer.

Pundits have suggested for months that the outcome of the U.S. presidential election would likely be determined by which candidate became the focus of the campaign. Given the unprecedented unpopularity of both major party candidates, the astute strategy is to make one's opponent the election story. If the electoral focus is upon Hillary Clinton, it would help Donald Trump, and if it is about Trump, that should assist Clinton.