WINNER TAKES ALL

The 2016 presidential elections in the USA promise to be one of the most important events in 2016. According to the public opinion polls, at this moment Hillary Clinton is the leading candidate for the Democrats and Donald Trump for the Republicans. So, after the USA's first African American president, there is every chance that a first woman president could be elected, although the probability that an eccentric billionaire could occupy the main seat in the White House is also very high for the moment.

Ultimately, Trump's fate will be determined in Cleveland (the state of Ohio) in July and that of Clinton in Philadelphia (the state of Pennsylvania), when the Democrat and the Republican conventions are to take place, at which the candidates will officially be put forward. For the moment, the USA is only undergoing the process of internal party selection. Customarily, the first elections in the state of Iowa (first caucuses, 1 February) and in New Hampshire (the first primaries, 9 February) are of particular significance for the further course of the campaigns. Then on 1 March there is Super Tuesday when no less than 14 American states join the race. The nationwide presidential elections are to be held on 8 November, following which the name of the 45th head of the White House will be made known.

Quite a bit has already been said about the system of presidential elections in the USA, according to which "the winner takes all". The criticism is mainly that the Americans do not essentially vote directly for the president, but for the "president+vice president" pair of candidates (i.e. electoral votes of which there are only 538). This leads to a possible situation whereby a candidate who has received the most of the electorate's votes and become the president, loses according to the electorate's votes on a nationwide level. For example, this happened during the battle between [former presidential candidates] George Bush and Albert Gore. But most Americans regard their electoral system as stable and fair all the same.

It will be all the more interesting to see how this system will cope from beginning to end with the surprises that 2016 will most likely serve up. Donald Trump has already been one of them, who, according to the December public opinion polls conducted by CNN and Fox News, is more than 20 per cent ahead of his rivals in the Republican Party primaries. Trump was supported by 39 per cent of those questioned, which is 3 per cent more than in November, whereas in June the billionaire did not have any support at all. The Washington Post writes that Trump's unexpected successes may force the Republicans to hold a so called "brokered convention", when there is no obvious favourite and multiple votes and complicated negotiations have to be held in order to determine the name of the candidate.

The last time the Republicans had to hold a "brokered convention" was in 1976, and they lost the elections. For the "party bigwigs" it is important not to allow an internal party schism, which may happen, if Trump decides to stand as an independent candidate in the elections, which he has already threatened to do incidentally. According to the results of the poll conducted by the USA Today newspaper and the University of Suffolk, 68 per cent of Trump's supporters would continue to support him even as an independent candidate.

Another interesting incident has taken place in the Republican camp incidentally. In November billionaire Charles Koch stated that he has no intention of supporting any of the candidates. The brothers Charles and David Koch, who are among the wealthiest entrepreneurs in the world and the co-owners of Koch Industries with a turnover of 100bn dollars per year, have been the main sponsors of the Republican election campaigns for many years now. According to the media, they met with Trump and tried to dissuade him from standing in the campaign.

But for the moment nothing is making any impact on Trump who does not depend on sponsors, and nothing puts him off, because he states that he will see the course through to the end in order "to make America great again". Trump, who is the head of the largest construction company in the USA and the owner of a world-wide chain of hotels and casinos, appears to be the exact opposite of what is perceived, according to all the canons, to be the ideal candidate for the seat of US president. It is sufficient to recall that he has repeatedly been noted for making politically incorrect pronouncements, may simply say things that are offensive and comes out with nationalistic slogans.

For the United States where saying the "wrong" thing may cause serious problems at work, in educational establishments and even in life in general, this is extremely audacious behaviour. In this sense, Trump may be compared with the scandalous Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who also provokes a blatantly hostile attitude in everyone, but has still remained a popular political and media figure for many years now in spite of that. So, Trump called the Mexican migrants "rapists" and "killers" who are damaging America's superior culture and has proposed keeping them out with a high fence "for which Mexico itself should pay".

In December last year the billionaire spoke out in favour of a general and complete ban on Muslims entering the USA, justifying this by the danger that radical Islam and illegal immigrants pose to the USA. Trump is promising to abolish the 14th amendment in the US Constitution which allows all those who are born in the States to obtain citizenship. Those who would vote for Trump are mainly white Americans, often without higher education, former military men who fear that the events of the last few years may destroy the America that they have known since childhood.… 

It turns out that Americans are tired of hearing the same names in the political Olympus (Bush, Clinton) and also fed up with the everlasting political correctness, so this is to the advantage of the scandalous billionaire. For example, according to the results of a poll conducted by Bloomberg News, 65 per cent of respondents supported Trump's idea on introducing a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country. This does incidentally allow yet another unforeseen impediment to the 2016 electoral process to be forecast. For it is possible that many Americans are simply hiding their sympathies for Trump and keeping them to themselves for the moment…

It is indicative that the other Republican candidates are getting far less votes. Thus, the senator from the state of Texas, Ted Cruz, received 18 per cent, the senator for the state of Florida, Marco Rubio, 10 per cent, and the former governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, from 5 to 10 per cent, although his political and financial possibilities would have permitted him to count on more. 

The election year is becoming increasingly interesting because the customary squabbles are not only taking place among the candidates from one party, but a real war is being waged between Trump and the main Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton. Thus, after the first set of Trump's campaign advertisements for the electorate in Iowa and New Hampshire, in which he talks about the need to ban Muslims from entering the USA, Clinton stated that the billionaire is "the best recruiter for the Islamic State".

The fact is that the terrorists in one of the Al-Qaeda-linked groupings previously used an excerpt from Trump's speech in their propaganda video. In his turn, Trump openly accused Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of creating IS [Islamic State], also claiming that Hillary Clinton had caused numerous deaths in the Middle East during her tenure in the post of US Secretary of State. Clinton is calling Trump a woman-hater, in response to which he referred to Clinton's husband, former US president Bill Clinton, as one of the biggest women abusers in the world. In general, Trump has an answer for almost everything. For example, he does not understand why Clinton is indignant at his suggestion that Mexico should be fenced off from the USA, when nothing is being said about the wall between Israel and Palestine.

In actual fact, after [US Vice President] Joe Biden refused to stand for president, the Democrats, who had largely staked on Clinton, discovered very many weak spots, flaws and contradictions in her political career in the different posts she had occupied. But this does not stop her from having enthusiastic supporters. According to a Gallup poll, Clinton became the most admired woman in America in 2015, with 13 per cent of respondents preferring her.

But, compared with the previous year, the number of her supporters, among whom there were many women, society's middle classes and representatives of various minorities, support for her has waned by 3 per cent. The letter (displayed on an official site) from 12-year-old feminist supporter Olivia, is an expression of the electorate's support for Clinton. She is offering the politician her help, says she very much hopes that she will win and is pleased that gay marriages are now permitted throughout America. It is clear which part of the electorate the former first lady's spin-doctors are aiming at. 

But the task facing Clinton and the other Democrats is complicated by the fact that she will need to distract Americans from the negative elements in Obama's presidency (of which there are quite a few) and concentrate on the positive ones. For example, the Democrats mention that, if the Republicans abolish Obama's healthcare reforms (Obamacare), and the House of Representatives has already voted for key clauses in the programme to be abolished, this will affect the health and well-being of millions of Americans. But there are not too many of these clear-cut trump cards, for when it comes to the issue of Obama's illegal migrants for whom he has long tried to push through his own "Dream Act" ["Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors" Act], this issue is still causing his fellow party members bigger problems than achievements, and Trump's toxic, hard-hitting pronouncements on this subject only stress how topical these are.

Yet another contentious element that the Obama Administration has had to contend with since the first days of the New Year are measures to limit gun turn-over in the country. This has immediately split society into two camps, one of which keeps recalling its constitutional right and those laws that "made America", and the other which blames the right to bear arms for the outburst of violence and deaths caused by the carelessness of hundreds of people, including children, each year. The recent armed uprising of farmers in Oregon who have taken over a national park's administration building for several days, although not especially well covered by the media, is highlighting how particularly acute the situation is. The farmers believe that the land and ranches are being incompetently managed by the federal government.

External events are possibly more pressing for the candidates than domestic affairs, and this is also an Obama heritage. Obama is increasingly being blamed for being slow to act, for being overcautious and even simply weak in dealing with affairs in the international arena. In 2011, Obama wound up the military campaign in Iraq, in 2014 the campaign in Afghanistan and tried to make out that Washington is distancing itself from the Middle East.

But the consequences of the "Arab spring", the war in Syria, and what is most important, the emergence of IS, points to the threat that Middle East problems might cross the American threshold. This has been shown by the acts of terrorism in San Bernadino and also the recent bloody events in Paris which frightened the American public. National security will obviously be at the heart of the 2016 election campaign in the USA and, unlike the healthcare and other domestic American affairs, the whole world will be focusing on this issue in the course of the discussion, for the elections in the USA have a tangible impact on the way that world politics take shape, and this means on the security of the entire planet.

So, it may be said that Clinton's leadership is to a certain extent forced upon her, wrenched out of her, owing to the relative dearth of competition within the Democratic Party. But she is moving loyally towards her goal and does not have any intention of giving up. As far as Trump's popularity is concerned, she makes one think not so much about his chances of winning, as about what will happen to American society and how many strata will open up there under the main cover of political correctness itself. It is also necessary to take into consideration the fact that Trump's pronouncements, irrespective of whether they are true or not, are largely of a populistic nature, but Clinton, while she was in the post of Secretary of State, accrued a fairly solid list of errors she made, and she is constantly being reminded of them.

All this is only heating up the battle which is for the moment still among the potential rivals for the post of president. Practically a year before the main event, the election campaign is already distinguished by its aggressiveness, the scathing tone of the pronouncements and the amount of compromising material being cited. It is too early to say what will happen when one of them turns up in the White House. Moreover, before the presidential elections take place in the USA for the 58th time, almost the whole of 2016 will pass under Obama's tenure, which means it is completely predictable.