US election: \'Lock her up\'versus \'Trump slump\'

Donald Trump had tried to enthuse his supporters against Hillary Clinton, his rival, with the chant "lock her up" at the Republican Convention. The call has faded away. He may accuse Hillary Clinton of lapses and even call for legal investigations against her for actions by her as the former Secretary of State. But the call to "lock her up" merely underlined the vile nature of his campaign the proof of which are now aplenty on his campaign trail and spelling disaster for his efforts to become the President.
Ironically, with his political fortunes now in disarray, the media is calling it the 'Trump slump'. Donald Trump is speaking at political rallies in a manner where his "lock up" call against his rival could be applicable to him instead. In a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, on August 09, he said that Hillary Clinton "wants to abolish the Second Amendment". That is a lie. The Democratic candidate has proposed stricter gun laws but has never said she would abolish the Second Amendment.
Donald Trump's lies on the campaign trail have now become his trademark. He had started his litany of lies with his claim that he had seen hundreds of Muslims celebrating the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Jersey City. Therefore, one more lie with the Second Amendment would not have attracted serious attention. It did not because he did not stop with this lie. He went ahead and said something more that does not only call his temperament and mental state into question but also leads one to wonder whether his call to lock Hillary Clinton should be applicable to him instead.
As he does on issues, Donald Trump stated the lie about the Second Amendment, which meant the right of Americans to own guns. He then added that as President, Hillary would appoint judges who favoured stricter gun controls. Thereafter, he told his cheering audience that once she did that, "there is nothing you can do folks" and the Second Amendment would be gone. Then he rambled on and said: "Although with the Second Amendment people - may be there is, I don't know" hinting that these people may do something.
The Hillary Clinton campaign did not lose any time in accusing Donald Trump of urging the "Second Amendment people" to assassinate Hillary Clinton after she became the President. This is also an accusation with which many in the country seemed to agree given Donald Trump's now well-known and controversial style of campaigning. Nevertheless, many also have argued that by making the statement, Donald Trump did not commit anything where there could be a case of violation of the law against him.
But it is not the law that Donald Trump may or may not have violated. It is his mental state and the perception of it that has become the reason for the Trump slump. His mindless and senseless ramblings that have now become his trademark are solidifying the perception in the minds of the voters that he seriously lacks the temperament required to be the President. House Speaker Paul Ryan has dismissed the Second Amendment remark as a "joke gone bad". What the Speaker did not consider is that his whole campaign is one of "jokes" that the national electorate is now viewing much differently and negatively.
Paul Ryan himself sees serious problems with Donald Trump, notwithstanding his defence for him on the Second Amendment gaffe as a joke that had turned bad. He recently made an urgent fundraising appeal with the warning: "If we fail to protect our majority in Congress, we could be handing President Hillary Clinton a blank check." By the appeal, the Speaker has clearly written off Donald Trump's bid as a lost cause. In fact, there are far worse hints for the Republican Party in the appeal. The "blank check" reference brings back into reckoning the Republican Party's unfortunate predicament in 1996.
That year, President Clinton was set to win re-election against Senator Bob Dole easily. The Republicans were afraid that with a sinking presidential candidate, they would also lose their majority in the House and Senate that would give the Democrats a blank check and control over both the executive and legislative branches. The Republicans had some fear that they could lose their Senate majority in 2016 but before Donald Trump's feud with the Khans, no one believed that the Republicans would have any fear with the House where they now have a 61-seat majority. The Speaker now feels the House too may not be safe as his appeal underlines unmistakably.
Donald Trump had taken the Republican nomination by energizing a base of extreme right-wing supporters of the Republican Party whose numbers in terms of the national electorate is below the 40 per cent of the voters nationally with a mixture of hatred, bigotry and racial messages. Many analysts were in denial with the base nature of his messages and had predicted that he had a good chance of winning because, first, he promised change against Washington's political correctness with which there is a bipartisan support nationwide and second, his racial messages and his economic promises have support among the very large number of blue collar white workers in the country.    
Those who predicted that Donald Trump had a good chance of becoming the President had thought that once he became the Republican nominee, he would blunt the racial, bigoted messages of the primaries and reach out to the national constituencies. That has not happened. In fact, his messages have become weirder and nastier. He has given the feeling clearly that he has no intention to please any groups/constituencies other than those that rallied around him through the primaries. As for the nation, he has conveyed the message to them that they have no alternative but to vote for him!
The groups that cheered him in the primaries are still cheering him. They see nothing wrong in his humiliation of the Khans or the threat to Hillary Clinton or the litany of lies he dishes out in each one of his rallies. After the gaffe with the Second Amendment, Donald Trump has now said that President Obama is the "Founder of ISIS: Crooked Hillary, the Co-founder."  He thus called the two-term incumbent President with a job approval rating of 53 per cent that is better than any of the recent Presidents at a comparable stage of leaving office, including the Republican hero President Ronald Reagan, a terrorist!
The analysts who were in denial about Donald Trump and his bigoted and hateful messages in the primaries are now realising that let alone gain new supporters among the national voters, many that had cheered him in the primaries are now leaving him because he has shown no intentions after winning the primaries to move towards the national electorate. In fact, the extraordinary phenomenon of this year's election thus far has been the large number of well-known Republicans, including Senators and House Members, who have openly stated that they would not vote for their Party's candidate.
Donald Trump is on the slide from the 35 per cent or thereabout support he had in primaries with less than three months for the election. The slide is occurring not just nationally but also in the crucial swing states. It now appears almost impossible that he would be able to stop the slide and claw towards the 51 per cent votes he needs nationally. The way he has conducted himself thus far, Donald Trump is his worst enemy. He has himself established without the assistance of his opponents that he simply does not have the temperament for the job he is seeking.
The writer is a retired Ambassador.
[email protected]