100 Days to Defeat the Status Quo

If you’re already dizzy from all the political spin, take a Dramamine and hang in there. There are only 100 days left of the most bizarre presidential race in recent memory, and — even with a huge majority of voters in agreement that the country’s on the wrong track — change and the status quo seem to be in a dead heat.

There’s tons riding on this election for Americans who are wondering, “Will we ever again see 4 percent growth? Or is non-recovery recovery the best we can hope for? Will we create jobs for some of the 95 million adults sitting on the labor sidelines and the many more who are trapped in part-time hell? How long will wages remain stagnant? Will we let the national debt continue to tsunami out of control?”

We already know what Hillary Clinton’s side of the debate will look like: prepackaged spin to defend her email server and her myriad lies.

The average middle-class American is anxious about these questions — because shouldering the disappointments of Obama’s economy is a job better suited to Atlas.

It’s so bad Joe Sixpack can’t even afford beer anymore; he’s just Beerless Joe these days, and he’s ready for something to change.

What happens on Nov. 8 will play a pivotal role in answering these questions, and here’s four factors that will decide which side prevails.

1.) Will Wikileaks Sink Hillary?
Ever hit “reply all” by accident? Your stomach pretzels up as you frantically check to see if you mistakenly included your boss on that office gossip email that was meant for your friend. Take that feeling, multiply by 100 million, and that’s how the Democratic National Committee feels after having a couple months’ worth of ill-advised emails leaked. They may as well have typed, “Let’s rig this thing against Bernie” and then accidentally cc’ed the whole world. Since they can’t reach through cyberspace and take it back, they’ve decided to sell us on the idea that what we should really worry about is not DNC corruption but the (maybe) Russian hackers who (might’ve) been to blame.

Pay no attention to the party apparatus behind the curtain!

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Will there be more hacks and more leaks? Are the missing emails from clintonserver.com poised to be the October surprise? Nobody knows, but if I were Hillary Clinton (and the emails weren’t about yoga), I’d be losing sleep over it.

2.) Will Sanders Supporters #FeeltheHill?
This is a tough one because, ironically enough, all Sanders supporters are not created equal. Many of them will vote for Hillary, but there are Berniecrats who are tired of Washington selling their jobs to the lowest bidder. They aren’t in it for the cultural phenomenon or because some radical professor inspired them. They hate the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the general direction of the Democratic Party. These are the Bernie supporters Trump could actually win over.

It’s hard to imagine the gauged-ear millennials in the Che Guevara T-shirts voting for Trump — but it’s kind of hard to imagine them voting for Clinton, too. On Twitter, they regularly use #HillaryforPrison. Maybe they write in Bernie on their ballot, maybe they go for Jill Stein, or maybe they just stay home.

One thing’s for sure: Hillary Clinton reaching to the right neocons and voters who actually believed Jeb could fix it isn’t going to inspire the Democrats’s brand-new socialist coalition.

3.) Will Clinton Ever Answer a Tough Question?
She hasn’t held a press conference in 2016 and she probably never will. There are too many difficult questions lurking out there. James Comey annihilated the fictitious email server narrative she’s been peddling from town to town for a year. We now know for sure that her story and reality have irreconcilable differences that she doesn’t want to stand in front of a camera and try to reconcile. We’re halfway through the first quarter, and she’s already trying to run out the clock.

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Lucky for her, the mainstream media seems more interested in helping her hide the answers than in exposing them.

4. What Will the Debates Look Like?
The DNC doesn’t schedule these debates, do they? Because what we already know is that two of them are scheduled against nationally televised NFL games. It won’t matter, though. There will be lots of NFL games, but seeing Trump and Clinton go head-to-head will be a trice-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Remember when political debates were all, “Policy, policy, policy, campaign slogan, zinger”? For Trump — if he shows up — the formula is more like, “Criticism of the moderators, attack, attack, expletive, attack, campaign slogan, catchphrase.” Nobody debates like Donald Trump. Marco Rubio tried it once, and the whole country cringed in unison.

We already know what Hillary Clinton’s side of the debate will look like: prepackaged spin to defend her email server, her myriad lies, and trying to make her policy positions palatable. She’ll pretend immigration and illegal immigration are the same thing and she’ll pretend new government freebies somehow pay for themselves.

Trump will be the deciding factor in the debates. Will he adopt a debate style more tailored to a general electorate, or will we see the guy from the GOP primary debates? Will the moderators treat him fairly, or will they “Candy Crowley” his every answer? Most importantly — will he stay on message, or will he allow himself to be baited into rhetorical traps?

The next 100 days will be a political minefield for both candidates, and — with the race as close as it is — whoever follows the right path will be the one who winds up forwarding their mail to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.