"Yup, Donald Trump there is trolling. But this does not mean that it should be ignored": the ironic title of an editorial in the Washington Post perfectly conveys the idea of how the electoral campaign of the Republican primaries is proceeding: a single man in charge, who troll (= makes fun of) the opponents by continuing to gain support against everything and everyone. “Trump insults Mexicans and rises in the polls (in the Republican ones, at least). He wants to drive Muslims out of the United States and rises in the polls. He says the military should torture suspected terrorists and kill their wives and children, and it rises in the polls,” writes the Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper.
The last challenge before Easter (Voters of the Grand Old Party will return to the polls on April 5 in Wisconsin) saw the 70-year-old tycoon further increase, albeit slightly, his lead over the Texas senator Ted Cruz, the man on whom the Republican Party establishment plays all its cards to get out of the embarrassment of the Trump tornado: the real estate entrepreneur won the 58 delegates from Arizona, while the 40 from Utah went to the challenger. The general classification sees Trump ahead with 738 delegates against Cruz's 463: the nomination for the June convention is won, reaching 1.237, and you don't need to be an ace in mathematics to understand that, with only 848 delegates still to be assigned in the next stages, the only one who can realistically reach the quorum is precisely the candidate - unique in the entire US panorama - to have included in his plans the expulsion of clandestine immigrants (a proposition that only 37% like even among Republican voters alone).
Trump, known for his not exactly pacifist intentions (he is also against the restrictions on the carrying of weapons, a staunch supporter of the death penalty and has received the embarrassing endorsement of the former great leader of the Ku Klux Klan) has also taken advantage of Brussels attacks to go back to barbarizing the political debate: after the well-known intentions of erecting a wall on the border with Mexico and the absolute refusal to offer political asylum even to a single Syrian refugee, Berlusconi from overseas (a very popular definition in the international press) said in an interview with Fox News that “these attacks are not carried out by the Swedes, frankly it is with the Arabs that we have a problem”. It matters little if the Economist Intelligence Unit recently also included it (for the first time this "recognition" was due to a single person) among the 10 greatest risks for the global economy in 2016: less than a month from the stage of New York primary (April 19), which alone is worth nearly 100 delegates, a poll by Boston's Emerson College revealed that in the state of the Big Apple, Trump leads with nearly 65% of voting intentions, with a gap of over 50 percentage points from Ted Cruz stopped at 12% (the poll was conducted before another candidate, Marco Rubio, left the scene). “Trump is riding a rage that has actually been fueled by the GOP itself for decades: it is a product of the same Republican ideology. Now the establishment is shocked to see a candidate playing the same game, but without modesty, run like a real front runner“, noted the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman in the columns of the NY Times.
The only hope for the Republican Party to get rid of its unwanted child is the California: according to projections by the New York Times, if Cruz were to win the stage of June 7, he could steal almost all of the 172 delegates up for grabs from his opponent (in the Republican primaries in many states the criteria of the winner-take-all or of winner-take-most), preventing him from reaching the majority at the July convention that will designate the one who will run for the White House. Otherwise, it would be the first time after more than 60 years (since the election of Dwight Eisenhower) that a candidate has been chosen directly by Congress at the end of the primaries, and this would reopen all the games: indeed, it is almost certain that the Grand old party he will do anything to prevent the appointment of the man who has sympathy for Vladimir Putin and who would like to isolate the United States both politically and economically. “The race for the Republican primaries – he summarized The Economist, – initially overcrowded (at first there were 13 candidates, against the three of the Democratic Party which soon became two, ed), is now reduced to a single main duel: the one between Donald Trump and those who try to prevent him from reaching the quota 1.237 delegates”. And this is exactly how Cruz's (flat) electoral campaign is unfolding: anti-Trumpism first of all, and then in search of the typical conservative voter of rich, deeply religious America (in Mormon Utah he garnered 71% of the votes) but more moderate.
Democrats
The challenge on the democratic front is much calmer, at least from a dialectical point of view. Hillary Clinton consolidated its advantage in the penultimate round by winning the most significant stage, that of Arizona (the Democrats also voted in Utah and Idaho), even if the challenger Bernie Sanders has recovered something in terms of delegates and above all has clearly won the Easter round, winning in Alaska and Washington. At the moment there is still too little to undermine the primacy of the former First Lady, who is also thanks to the superdelegates (the party establishment which has already decided to support her, but which can always change its mind) is ahead 1.689 against 944: you win at 2.383. If Hillary were to maintain the consensus shown so far, claims the New York Times, she would ensure the majority of delegates to the Democratic congress already in the stage of the primaries on June 7, in California (a week before the final vote in Washington), where winning would take home a good part of the more than 500 delegates on the plate. To recover, the socialist candidate would instead need to win from now on with an average of 60% of the votes: a rather unlikely circumstance, even if the senator from Vermont has animated the electoral campaign positively, strengthened by a revolutionary program for the States and of the support of part of the press, which has almost unanimously acknowledged that the Democratic Party cannot fail to take into account the success achieved by the 74-year-old of Jewish origin.
While Clinton, strong of the(cautious) endorsement of Barack Obama, is the favorite among the African-American population (which is why it is dominating in the Southern States) but also among Latinos, women and older and higher income groups, Sanders is the favorite of white men, young people and the most disadvantaged sections of the population, from working class to the unemployed. Its program is openly socialist and this definition, noted the Washington Post, "no longer frightens the younger generations, free from the nightmare of the Cold War and who identify socialism not with the totalitarian regimes of the past but with the egalitarian and progressive democracies of Northern Europe, especially Scandinavian". The tendency to rehabilitate economic models other than capitalism with stars and stripes is growing even among the most influential economists: "Few among market economists - writes Joseph Stiglitz in his latest book, “The Great Rift” – noted the success of East Asian-run market economies. They preferred to talk about the failures of the Soviet Union, which completely avoided recourse to the market”. Sanders therefore proposes – and is the only one to do so – the free college for all (a 75 billion annual plan that can be financed with a supertax on financial transactions that have generated at least 300 million dollars in profits); the minimum wage of 15 dollars an hour to boost the incomes of middle class destroyed by the crisis; the equalization of wages between men and women; measures to revitalize the productive sector (in particular a trillion plan to create 13 million jobs, which can be financed through a merciless fight against tax evasion and havens), penalized by free trade agreements (NAFTA above all) and by an too conditioned by the speculations of Wall Street and from Silicon Valley, which have generated huge profits for very few; an even fairer health care system that goes even beyond Obamacare (through a $1,6-a-week mini-labor tax); more restrictive rules for carrying firearms. On the latter proposal, as well as on citizenship for immigrants and higher taxes for the richest (a proposition that is liked by 84% of Democratic voters and only 38% of Republican ones), the two candidates have points of meeting, but remains for example the disagreement on the death penalty, which Sanders would like to abolish and Clinton would not.
Former President Bill's wife, although decidedly less revolutionary, is nevertheless conducting a much better electoral campaign than in 2008, when she was defeated by Barack Obama, who later became president of the United States of America for the first of his two sent. The The Washington Post found that after stops ten days ago in Michigan, Ohio and Florida, Hillary had amassed over 200 delegate leads over Sanders, far more than just 90 delegates Obama had over her 8 years ago at that point in the competition. And even the flaw of the white male electorate (especially the young one) shouldn't worry you too much: "In the last presidential elections - writes The Economist - Obama was 40-60% behind against McCain among white men, yet he won. Not only that: in a hypothetical challenge against Trump in November, Clinton reduced her disadvantage in that band of voters to 43-48%, while in September the gap was 15 points. While her advantage among the female electorate is consolidated above 20 percentage points”. The poll cited is by the Washington Post in collaboration with ABC News and highlights that American voters would also prefer her to the tycoon on issues of the economy, immigration and personal characteristics. Everything therefore seems to lead, in November, to a third term in a row for a Democrat in the White House: this has not happened since the years 1933-1945, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected 4 consecutive times, remaining in office until his death, in April 1945 (one year after his last election). If Hillary Clinton were to succeed, as seems probable at the moment, then she will be a woman to occupy the most important seat of the United States of America: this - as President - has never happened.
