Since July’s party conventions in the U.S., the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has had a series of wobbles in contrast to the steady, if baffling, surge that it witnessed through the first half of this year. First, Mr. Trump engaged in a verbal battle with Khizr Khan and his wife Ghazala, parents of a fallen U.S. soldier and a Muslim. Their denigration by the property magnate prompted disdain even from senior Republicans such as House Speaker Paul Ryan. Second, observers on both sides of the aisle squirmed in discomfort as Mr. Trump’s apparent affinity for Russia and its President Vladimir Putin increasingly came to the fore. That revelation first came as Mr. Trump called upon Russia to hack the e-mails of his rival and Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. Although he later claimed it was a joke, few in the bipartisan spectrum were laughing, given that days before his comment WikiLeaks released nearly 19,000 e-mails stolen from the servers of the Democratic National Committee by hackers allegedly linked to the Russian state. Pouring vodka on the wound, this week an investigation by The New York Times laid bare the connections between a shadowy network of political fixers and dubious pro-Russian financiers in Ukraine and Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. According to secret ledgers obtained in the investigation, Mr. Manafort had $12.7 million in allegedly illegal, off-the-books, cash payments earmarked in his name by the political party of former Ukraine President and Russian ally, Viktor Yanukovych.
The delirium of the scorching American summer seemed to push ever-growing numbers of voters into the arms of the Trump campaign, notwithstanding his offensive politics. Yet, in the softer hues of this post-convention twilight, a sense of realism may be creeping in at long last. RealClearPolitics, which averages out the major nationwide polls, placed Ms. Clinton ahead of Mr. Trump by an average of 6.7 per cent on August 15. The battleground surveys by NBC News found that Ms. Clinton has surged past the 270 electoral votes required to secure the presidency, suggesting that the gap between the two candidates has widened since the conventions. While Ms. Clinton has yet to ignite her campaign with any earth-shaking flamboyance, in the way Barack Obama did in 2008 and 2012, she appears to be comfortable with the strategy of sitting back and letting Mr. Trump be the architect of his own political setbacks. So far, it’s paying off.
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