{Originally posted to the author’s website, The Daily Wire}
The most corrupt candidate in the history of the presidency, Hillary Clinton, is cruising toward victory. If the election were held today, she’d win in excess of 360 electoral votes. She’s currently leading in Pennsylvania (+9.2 percent), Michigan (+6.6 percent), Ohio (+2.6 percent), Virginia (+8 percent), New Hampshire (+8.2 percent), Georgia (+0.3 percent), Florida (+3.6 percent), Iowa (+0.4 percent), Wisconsin (+9.4 percent), Colorado (+11 percent), North Carolina (+2 percent), Nevada (+2.3 percent). Trump’s barely ahead in Arizona (+0.3 percent) and Missouri (+5.3 percent).
How in the world is she winning?
In the last three months, the head of the FBI has said she was “extremely careless” with classified material and came whisker-close to indicting her. Every day, new headlines break about the cozy and likely illegal relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. She’s unlikable, she’s nasty, and she’s boring.
How can she be blowing out anyone, even Donald Trump?
The answer lies in what economist George Gilder might call the “information theory” of politics. Gilder says that the economy runs on new information changing the equilibrium. In essence, there is a steady drone of old information in the economy – and that’s what creates an economic status quo. Both entrepreneurial successes and devastating depressions add new information to the economy, which is why you see movement in the markets.
But old information doesn’t change anything.
This is the problem with Hillary: she doesn’t add any new information to the system. We already knew Hillary was deeply corrupt from her time in the White House. From Whitewater to Chinagate, from Travelgate to leading up the coverup for Bill’s sexual harrassments, Hillary’s corruption has been top of mind for well over two decades.
And her threats to national security have been well known for years, too. In 1996, the Clinton campaign allegedly took Chinese donations in return for declassifying sensitive missile technology, which the Chinese then used for their weaponry. So it’s no surprise to find out that she’d willingly sell access to foreign nations in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation slush fund.
In other words, she’s been so dirty for so long that it’s almost impossible to add new information to the system. All she has to do is continue to be the same old kind of dirty we already knew she was, and she’ll waltz her way to the White House.
Trump promised to expose Hillary to criticism she’d never felt before, but he hasn’t done it. Instead, Trump has provided new information to the system every day. While we’ve known Trump for as long (longer!) than Hillary, we didn’t know him on a political level in any serious way. We knew him as an entertaining business magnate and personal branding specialist. But nobody had any real perspective on his view of disabled reporters and Mexican judges. While Hillary refuses to add any new information to the system, Trump’s adding new information every day. That’s why Hillary’s campaign continues to maintain stability while Trump’s seems to bump up and down, nearly at random.
This means that if Trump wants to win, he’ll have to somehow reverse that polarity. He’ll have to force Hillary off her game – he’ll have to give us new information, a new angle about her. We already knew Hillary was Crooked Hillary; labeling her that doesn’t change the background noise. And we didn’t know that Trump was as volatile as he’s proven to be.
Trump needs to stabilize, of course. And then he needs to punch at Hillary, expose information about her most people don’t know. That’s tougher than it looks. We now live in an era where politicians benefit from surviving years of corruption – it makes them seem stable by comparison with newbies who make lots of mistakes and commit lots of sins. That’s Hillary’s major advantage, even more than the media that licks her boots. And that’s the advantage Trump will have to overcome.