Spotting an accomplished phony isn\u2019t 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\u2019re 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 \u2014 utterly transparent. Hillary\u2019s most ardent supporters have no illusions about their champion\u2019s shifty, sinister behavior. They know she\u2019s a supervillain; but, c\u2019mon, she\u2019s their very own supervillain. She could stand on any stage and yell,\u201dRead my lips, you idiots, I\u2019m lying and I\u2019m proud of it.\u201d 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 \u2014 she\u2019s 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\u2019s oldest profession, shack up every day in a frolicking pay for play scheme. The Federal Bureaucracy, the Teacher\u2019s Unions, the Attorneys, the National Non-Profits, the Insurance Industry, the Illegal Immigrants, the Puerile Millennials, the Climate Change Brigade and Higher Education Scholars \u2014 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.<\/span> With apologies to Freddy, Trump could be the Democrat\u2019s worst nightmare. He doesn\u2019t greet his audience like Homer Stokes, to ask, \u201cIs you or is you ain\u2019t my constituency?\u201d 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\u00a0 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 \u201cBULLY.\u201d Unflinching, Trump takes the stage to tell the unvarnished truth, as if to\u00a0 say, \u201cLook, folks, I really don\u2019t care if you like me or not.\u201d Unlike his rival, he speaks off the cuff, unmodulated, unbalanced, at times unreasonable, and accused of being uncaring and divisive.<\/span> 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 \u2014 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\u00a0 does indeed have a constituency, unnamed and ignored by media and political pundits \u2014 that constituency is America\u2019s 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 \u2014 the wealthy crony class that sucks voraciously at the teat of Big Government; and from the bottom \u2014 the so-called poor class that spends a lifetime embracing victimization and dependency. The middle class doesn\u2019t know much about either\u00a0 riches or dependency. These are the small business owner, the sole proprietor, the tradesman, the nurse, the farmer, the doctor, the engineer, the caregiver \u2014 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n It did.<\/strong> Ed.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Bugle Blew. As the pundits bicker, rehash and state the obvious, it’s altogether appropriate, and perhaps self serving, to suggest that many ordinary citizens understood the Trump phenomenon. This reprint of an article that published one week after Independence Day, with certain passages highlighted, recognizes the new President’s neglected, forsaken, unappreciated\u00a0 trump card. Ed. … Continue reading The Bugle Blew.<\/span>