WITH Trump's election to the presidency, there is a new reality in politics, which takes the slippery business of winning voter support to new dimension. It is no longer simply that virtually all political pronouncements are to be taken with a healthy pinch of salt. The new Trump reality is a succession of statements that contradict each other and therefore leave onlookers bewildered and not knowing what to believe, what is actually real. The issue of the Wisconsin recount is a perfect example. Prompted by the failed Green party candidate who is apparently being backed through crowd-funding, the state is to run a recount to see if foreign hackers messed with the electronic voting system. The argument of the Green candidate Jill Stein is that the outcome in Wisconsin appears to have been decided by just 22,000 out of the three million votes cast in the state. After initial reluctance, the Clinton campaign has come out in support of the recount. It is not hard to see why. Were the exercise to give the victory to Hillary, the attention would then move to Michigan and Pennsylvania the two other states where The Donald apparently had wafer thin majorities. The possibility, however remote, is therefore emerging that the outcome of the whole election could be overthrown. Given that Trump's bid for the Republican nomination, let along the White House was once considered utterly impossible, nothing should be ruled out in these unusual times. And it has to be said that Trump is hardly helping his own cause. With one breath he has damned the Wisconsin recount saying that it will be a waste of money because the result is going to be the same. Yet almost immediately afterward he seriously undermined himself. The final tally of all ballots cast seems to bear out Clinton's claim that she won the popular vote by a margin of two million, but lost the election because of the vagaries of the US Electoral College system. But no sooner had he condemned the Wisconsin recount saying there had been no fraud than Trump was insisting that he, not Clinton, had in fact won the popular vote because millions of votes for Clinton had been cast illegally. By insisting on illegality in one part of the election, he was effectively admitting that it might have occurred in Wisconsin and perhaps also in Michigan and Pennsylvania. It is hard to work out if this is arrant stupidity on the part of the president-elect or just another example of the wave of contradictory announcements and odd behavior that so confuses his political enemies and befuddles analysts. But there is of course an even bigger problem for Trump. In the run up to the election, he was predicting widespread voting fraud directed against his campaign. He made it clear that if he lost, he would immediately challenge the result in the courts. This threat did not sit well, even with some of his strong supporters. The core concern is that until now, even when presidential election wins have been dubious, such as George W. Bush's 2000 victory in Florida, Americans have rallied around the institution of the presidency, whatever they thought of the president himself. But Trump's promise to challenge the result if he lost and has opened the way for challenges because he has won.
