Spotting an accomplished phony isn’t all that easy. But you think most people disagree with that opinion. You think most people believe they can smell a scam and see right through the smoke and mirrors. They walk into car dealerships fully prepared to match wits with the false fronts and sweet talk. They sit with financial planners, attorneys, bankers, insurance agents and all manner of tradesmen, ever watchful for the snow job and the song and dance. They’re accustomed to hearing politicians pile on the bull, then flushing all of it in a matter of seconds. . . at least, until this election. Never have two candidates been more barefaced. The audacious Donald Trump is too cocky and conceited to tell a lie, and Hillary Clinton is too unclean and defective to tell the truth. Both of them — utterly transparent. Hillary’s most ardent supporters have no illusions about their champion’s shifty, sinister behavior. They know she’s a supervillain; but, c’mon, she’s their very own supervillain. She could stand on any stage and yell,”Read my lips, you idiots, I’m lying and I’m proud of it.” Instead, in a carefully modulated tone, like all expert con artists, she lies calmly, sounding so very balanced, so very reasonable, so very caring, so very unifying, so very conscientious. Women love her for the most lofty and intellectual of all reasons — she’s a woman. Duh! African Americans love her because incomprehensible stupidity has become a habit of people who ironically hate being called inferior. Wall Street and the Banking Industry love her because Big Government and Big Money, like the world’s oldest profession, shack up every day in a frolicking pay for play scheme. The Federal Bureaucracy, the Teacher’s Unions, the Attorneys, the National Non-Profits, the Insurance Industry, the Illegal Immigrants, the Puerile Millennials, the Climate Change Brigade and Higher Education Scholars — all love her because they love riding the Gravy Train Express. And you must never forget the true blue Democrats who would vote for Freddy Kruger before they would back any vile Republican. With apologies to Freddy, Trump could be the Democrat’s worst nightmare. He doesn’t greet his audience like Homer Stokes, to ask, “Is you or is you ain’t my constituency?” Trump in fact has no defined constituency. The Republican Establishment continuously wrings its anxious hands in mourning, refusing to embrace this loutish outsider. Evangelicals, faithful to principles of morality, decency, marriage and fidelity, fall on bent knee to rationalize how they could possibly support a flawed candidate. The Tea Party faithful wait impatiently for the Queens billionaire to wear the  Cape of Absolute Conservatism. They wait in vain. In the spirit of domestic abuse, women of every stripe struggle with insults from the big, white, rich dude whose style screams “BULLY.” Unflinching, Trump takes the stage to tell the unvarnished truth, as if to  say, “Look, folks, I really don’t care if you like me or not.” Unlike his rival, he speaks off the cuff, unmodulated, unbalanced, at times unreasonable, and accused of being uncaring and divisive. There you have it. Two candidates. One who has a dozen pledged constituencies carefully secured in her rather generous hip pocket. The other who has not one constituency to offset something else he does have — the overt hostility of Media, Wall Street and the Beltway Establishment. Yet, just today, respected pollsters say the race may be a dead heat. Surely, this announcement must be faulty. If not, there can be only one explanation. You misspoke. Contrary to your assertion, Trump  does indeed have a constituency, unnamed and ignored by media and political pundits — that constituency is America’s Middle Class, that sizable group of people who have been kicked to the side of the road and forgotten by the Obama administration. Clinton draws her primary support from the top — the wealthy crony class that sucks voraciously at the teat of Big Government; and from the bottom — the so-called poor class that spends a lifetime embracing victimization and dependency. The middle class doesn’t know much about either  riches or dependency. These are the small business owner, the sole proprietor, the tradesman, the nurse, the farmer, the doctor, the engineer, the caregiver — millions of unappreciated slugs who, without fanfare or recognition, work every single day, pay taxes, and support their communities and families. These are the independent, unsung heroes that politicians fear most. If Trump has an army, this is it. Blow the bugle.