Stephen Lendman

At times he’s gaffe-prone. His economic plan leaves much to be desired, yet his address on the topic offered specific ideas, unfortunately for the most part omitting what should have been included instead of what was.

In contrast, Hillary presented meaningless platitudes, feel-good stuff without substance, hard specifics left out, along with a litany of lies like claiming she opposes TPP after earlier calling it “the gold standard” of trade deals and being a rabid supporter of NAFTA - besides her longstanding fealty to Wall Street, war-profiteers, and other corporate interests harming the general welfare.

A Trump press release statement highlighted her “week of scandals, from corruption to allegations of pay-to-play to flip-flops, reminded everyone just how flawed she is as a candidate and why the American people cannot afford four more years of Obama-Clinton rule.”

“Whether it’s using government entities to personally and politically enrich herself, prioritizing donors over what's best for the American people, using her influence to shutter suspicious financial transactions with the Clinton Foundation and foreign entities, or the ability of Clinton to completely surrender and sell out American workers after promising a stop to the TPP, it’s clear that Crooked Hillary will do and say anything to get elected.”

On Friday, Trump delivered two on-message speeches in Erie and Altoona, PA. I listened to some of his Erie address, delivered to a packed, cheering crowd, admittedly stacked with supporters, yet I heard nothing especially offensive in his remarks.

Since television replaced radio as the leading medium for campaigning, his addresses are unlike any others - anti-establishment sounding at a time protracted Main Street Depression conditions harm most Americans, things getting worse, not better, attracting support by promising relief when it’s badly needed.

Media scoundrels bash him relentlessly no matter what he says or does - The New York Times his leading antagonist. Despite his on-message speech in Erie, likely repeated in similar form to an Altoona audience, The Times headlined “Inside the Failing Mission to Tame Trump’s Tongue,” saying:

Unnamed “(a)dvisors (say he’s) beyond coaching. He has ignored their pleas and counsel…(H)is incendiary approach seems to be sputtering.”

Admire or revile him, the Trump I watched on Friday was exuberantly on message - no “sputtering” in sight.

The neocon/pro-Clinton Washington Post followed the same theme as The Times, asking “Has Donald Trump hit bottom?”

“The unraveling of Donald Trump’s candidacy continues apace…If he were deliberately trying to avoid winning the election, he could hardly be doing a better job,” WaPo claimed.

The address I heard showed he wants to win, not lose, despite relentless media bashing he takes daily.

In contrast to The Times and WaPo, the latest Wall Street Journal edition avoided ad hominem attacks.

Instead it featured stories about running mate Pence “trying to persuade GOP stalwarts to rally behind the party’s presidential ticket,” and Democrats trying to assess damage from newly leaked personal information on current and former House members.

Americans face the same dilemma in all so-called elections, especially presidential ones. Duopoly governance offers no legitimate choices - with rare exceptions too few to matter.

Independent progressives like Jill Stein are shunned, largely ignored by the major media, shut out of so-called presidential debates, featuring pre-scripted demagoguery and theater, not legitimate give-and-take substance.

This year is unlike all previous ones in my memory, much more one-sided than LBJ v. Barry Goldwater in 1964.

It featured a deplorable a one-time aired, one-minute “Daisy” political ad on NBC TV alone, portraying the GOP nominee as a threat to use nuclear weapons - the ad ending with the sound of an atomic blast.

Trump is relentlessly, one-sidedly attacked unlike any previous US presidential candidate in memory, while Hillary’s scandalous record is largely ignored.

The late Gore Vidal once called America “a nation of ongoing hustlers from the prisons and disaster areas of old Europe…(a) decaden(t) (system) not worth preserving.”

If alive, imagine what he’d say about this year’s presidential campaign.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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