By Ronald Baygents
WASHINGTON, April 30 (KUNA) -- Political analysts see both US political parties having difficulty unifying at their conventions this summer -- especially the Republicans -- then heading into what will likely be a very negative general election campaign in the fall.
The odds that the Democrats, who are likely to nominate Hillary Clinton, will be able to successfully gain the supporters of her opponent, Bernie Sanders, are "quite high," William Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution, told KUNA. Those odds are "significantly lower on the Republican side," he said.
Galston, a former adviser to former President Bill Clinton and other presidential candidates, said the Republicans will face difficulties uniting at their convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in July because their likely nominee, New York billionaire Donald Trump, is "not a conservative and is a ticking time bomb." "I suspect a lot of Republicans will sit on their hands (and not vote) in November," Galston said. "Some might vote for Hillary, some might vote for an independent candidate." Galston noted that many leading Republicans are talking up the possibility of someone running as an independent candidate this fall if Trump is the Republican presidential nominee.
Asked how he sees the fall campaign playing out leading up to the general election on Nov. 8, Galston said, "Both candidates (former secretary of State Clinton and Trump) have very high negatives, and I expect a negative, nasty campaign. And I believe Mr. Trump's presence guarantees that." Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, said both political parties will have trouble unifying this summer.
Bandow, who worked as a special assistant to former President Ronald Reagan, said Clinton, who is viewed as a "corporate, establishment" Democrat, will have difficulty capturing Vermont Senator Sanders' supporters, who are "progressive, ideological" and from the more left-wing side of the Democratic Party.
"Clinton will have to secure them" if she is to defeat Trump, Bandow said, referring to Sanders' supporters, because some Sanders backers, many of whom are young people, may view Trump as anti-establishment -- the way they perceive Sanders.
However, Bandow agreed that it will be even more difficult for the Republicans to unify this summer because Trump is so far from the position of Republican Party activists with his criticisms of former President George W. Bush as well as free trade.
"Trump is just in his own world," Bandow said. "How does he get traditional Republicans to vote for him?" The fall general election campaign will be "different" from most previous US presidential campaigns, Bandow said, because Trump is "so unpredictable -- the insults, the boasting, the focus on personal stuff. Will he do that in the fall or pivot and become presidential-like?" Asked if voters in the fall would decide to trust and support "a new Trump," if he changed his rhetoric and behavior from what he has said said during the caucuses and primaries, Bandow said that was possible, "especially if they (voters) really do not like Hillary Clinton." While it appears virtually impossible at this stage for Sanders to stop Clinton from getting the nomination at the Democratic Party convention in Philadelphia in July, Trump's Republican opponents -- Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich -- continue to hold out the possibility that they can stop Trump from getting the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination and force a brokered convention.
That effort resumes on Tuesday with the Republican primary in Indiana, and continues out West, ultimately to the largest delegate prize of all -- California on June 7, noted Larry Ceisler, a former journalist and campaign manager for the mayor of Philadelphia who now works in public relations for Ceisler Media Agency.
Indiana will be the "firewall" for Trump's opponents, Ceisler said. Indiana is very conservative, and if Cruz and Kasich cannot stop Trump there, "I just do not see them stopping him." On the Democratic side, Ceisler said he believes that Sanders "knows he is not going to be the nominee." Sanders will go to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia "to try to get his positions as part of the party platform," Ceisler said.(end) rm