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… What a Donald Trump concession speech would sound like. Will he even concede? The trend with slightly more than three weeks to go to the election is pointing to a decisive loss for the founder of the MakeAmericaGropeAgain movement. Given his personality and his behavior throughout the campaign, I wonder how Mr. Trump will cope with the failure. The tone of his stump speech has turned dark and paranoid, with unsubtle implications that a loss will be proof the election was rigged against him. More than any candidate for the highest office in the land in the modern era, Trump threatens to delegitimize the electoral process, the foundation of the democracy.   

… What lies ahead for Trump in the minefield that is the last three weeks of the campaign. As many have commented, the Trump campaign has been unorthodox to the point of being downright weird. The candidate has relied on building his cult of personality rather than presenting policy positions or attacking his opponent’s proposals. Given the professionalism of the Clinton campaign- the experience, funding, ground game and, most of all, the opposition research, it is not difficult to believe that there will be more revelations that will further fuel Trump’s undisciplined fury. It is not inconceivable that what we have been witnessing since the release of the Boys on the Bus tape (“grab them by the pussy”), the spectacle of women coming forward to describe incidents of sexual molestation at the (small) hands of the Trump Tower Tweeter, may be surpassed by even greater scandals.

...Along those lines, why has Trump attacked the media? It was this same media that made his campaign viable during the primaries, giving him, by some estimates, between two and three billion dollars of free publicity. It took only a few negative reports for Trump to turn on various outlets. Did he not realize some journalists would only be motivated to dig deeper into his past?

… What the political landscape will look like on November 9. Will the Republican Party split into, as Steve Schmidt, long-time GOP strategist, said in an interview with Vox.com, an alt-right extremist party and conservative-based, center-right party? Will the Republicans retain control of Congress, or lose the Senate and retain the House, albeit with a slimmer majority, or lose both houses to the Democrats? The quandary for a fracturing GOP is that today’s nominal Republicans control a majority of state governments. How would these Republicans align in the event of a schism?

… How the Republic heals the wounds not only inflicted upon it by this campaign, but repairs the damage done by the failures of both progressive and conservative governance beginning in the 1960’s. The liberal agenda, hurt by the political disaster of the Vietnam War and linked to major cultural and social changes (civil rights, feminism, environmental legislation), engendered a conservative backlash. Faith in governing institutions was further shaken by the catastrophe of the Nixon Presidency. The three decades of conservative rule that began with Ronald Reagan were accompanied by a cynical denigration of the political institutions that cemented society together. The concept of the common good and a social contract have been discarded by what Steve Schmidt describes as “warring tribes that subordinate the national interest to their tribal interest.”

… What changes this arc? Or, more precisely, who will step forward to lead us back to a politics that respects individual liberty, that is tolerant of difference, and demands we govern ourselves in toto and not for the benefit of specific interests or groups? In our brief history, the nation has  benefitted from strong leadership during its most existential crises: Lincoln during the Civil War, Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression and World War II.

… Will likely-President Hillary Clinton be that kind of leader? Such predictions are difficult because some people find their moment and rise to the occasion when least expected.  Lincoln, again, is the foremost example, Harry Truman, another. In a technocratic sense, Mrs. Clinton is obviously well-qualified. But she will face a myriad of obstacles- diplomatic, economic, social and political. And there is the anti-Clinton industrial complex, the extreme who have shouted themselves hoarse with cries of “Benghazi” and “email” (before that, it was “Whitewater” and “Monica”) who may already be drafting a bill of impeachment for the House. Will she, the cautious, measured campaigner, be up the task?

I wonder.