350 Words or Less: President-Elect Trump

Five and a half weeks ago, I wrote this in a blog post:

When Trump declared his candidacy for the Republican primaries last year, I hardly paid attention. I was certainly one of many who thought he didn’t stand a chance and was in it for the publicity. Yet here it is, a few weeks before the US election and not only is he the Republican candidate but there is a possibility that he could win.

I have no vote, but I follow the election, not only out of a general interest but also because I have relatives who live in the US and because what happens in the US impacts the rest of the world.

Last night, Donald Trump was elected President of the USA. Surreal, but real. As well as gaining the Presidency, the Republicans held onto the House and the Senate.

At about 2:30 this morning, Hillary Clinton called Trump to concede and at 9:30am she will make her public concession speech in New York.

I chose a 350 Words or Less format for this blog post because, like so many people in America and around the world, I am still processing the Trump win and what it means for the world. One of the areas of most concern is what it means for the efforts to deal with the crucial issue of climate change.

As always, there’s work to be done….

 

350 Words or Less: So I Watched The Debate on Monday…

So, I watched the first US Presidential debate on Monday night and I think there is little doubt that Hillary Clinton won. She was well-prepared, knowledgeable and was calm and steady throughout. Donald Trump, whose campaign seemed to be making his lack of preparation into a virtue, was unprepared, didn’t have enough of a foundation of knowledge about many of the issues to wing it and rambled and misstepped a number of times.

The split screen of the two candidates, which was shown for most of the debate, offered a good opportunity for viewers to make an ongoing comparison for an extended period of time, both when the candidates were speaking and listening.

The link below takes you to the full debate, with the candidates coming on stage at 4:22.

Lester Holt of NBC was the moderator and the three areas scheduled for focus were “achieving prosperity, America’s direction and securing America”. A couple of notable moments were:

Clinton & Trump on aspects of race in America ( video 43:18 – 58:43)

Clinton & Trump on nuclear capabilities & defense (video 1:25:25 – 1:31:30)

NPR’s annotated transcript from Monday night is another useful resource for reviewing the debate.

I agree with Clyde Williams that Clinton outscored Trump in all aspects of debate performance.Yet I obviously can’t say that this performance guarantees that Clinton will win the election. Nobody realistically can. Not in what is an extremely strange election on so many counts. Many commentators after the debate said that they had never seen anything like it in their 20, 30, 40 years of watching US presidential debates. The most I would do is to agree with one commentator I heard, who said that Clinton’s debate performance may stop or at least slow the previous momentum towards Trump that was being seen in the polls. By next week, the polls should be showing whether or not this is so.

 

There are two more debates and 6 weeks to go till the election, which is a lot of time in politics.

 

350 Words or Less: You Following the US Election Too?

Most days now, I check Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight site. I could say I’m there to read the articles. There are often very good articles and sometimes I read them. But the truth is I’m there for the pictures. Specifically the three forecasting model pictures which answer the question:

Here are the three pictures today:

 

The first gives the Polls-plus forecast, the second the Polls-only forecast & the third the Now-cast, which are explained below:

I can also have a look at the trend graph, which gives an indication of whether the gap between Clinton and Trump is widening or narrowing according to an overall assessment of polls.

When Trump declared his candidacy for the Republican primaries last year, I hardly paid attention. I was certainly one of many who thought he didn’t stand a chance and was in it for the publicity. Yet here it is, a few weeks before the US election and not only is he the Republican candidate but there is a possibility that he could win.

I have no vote, but I follow the election, not only out of a general interest but also because I have relatives who live in the US and because what happens in the US impacts the rest of the world.

On Monday coming, there will be the first of the three debates between Clinton and Trump. I will be watching. It will also be a lively topic for discussion with family in many countries via our dedicated e-mail thread and Whats App group. You can see the Trump campaign spin emerging in this recent interview with Jimmy Fallon, beginning at minute 1:05.

 

Fallon: …You say you don’t traditionally prepare for the debate…

Trump: …I was in eleven debates in the primary system…I never debated professionally or from a political stand point before…they’re trying to game the system…they’re trying to make it so that Lester’s going to come out and be really tough on me…

Nate Silver also had some thoughts on this:Clinton, based on knowledge and experience, should win this debate. But hey…