trump and clinton.jpg

Candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

(AP Photos)

According to the liberal elite, you're just not getting it. You're literally too stupid to see that Clinton, a career politician, is the right choice for President. Donald Trump is the devil--with apologies to the dark lord.

They're also unwittingly making a compelling case for Trump to many Americans.

Jonathan Chait of the Daily Intelligencer captured the liberal meltdown with startling clarity:

The average undecided voter is getting snippets of news from television personalities like [Matt] Lauer, who are failing to convey the fact that the election pits a normal politician with normal political failings against an ignorant, bigoted, pathologically dishonest authoritarian.

Chait and countless other Clinton acolytes are arguing that the media is to blame for the fact that so many average voters aren't ready to crown Clinton.

Excuse me.

The same media that routinely lights Donald Trump up like a Christmas tree is somehow being unfair to Clinton? Chait and his ilk are literally arguing the media has some sort of obligation to support Clinton.

Give me a break. The left is grasping at anything and everything that might explain why voters aren't where they'd like them to be.

To be fair, Trump has earned most of the criticism he's received. He's not particularly conservative, and he's been all over the map on issues that matter to most Republicans. Often, he's not constrained by truth or facts. He's clearly reactionary and too frequently mean spirited. There's not enough space in this column to list every group or person he's offended during his campaign.

As a result, the liberal intelligentsia sees Trump as a rich bridge troll who is so unfit for office that he's basically a joke.

He's no joke. Just ask the rest of the failed Republican presidential field.

As warranted as the scathing critiques of Trump might be; the majority of voters in November may actually think Clinton is worse. This is the point where liberal heads explode.

Ignore for a minute the Republican focal points of Benghazi, classified emails, and the Clinton Foundation. Let's start with Chait's description of Clinton. She's a "normal politician with normal political failings."

Americans passionately hate politicians right now, especially the normal ones.

Those normal--read "establishment"--politicians haven't delivered for most Americans on the right or the left. Just take poverty as one metric. In 2009, when Obama took office, the federal poverty rate was 14.3 percent; it was 14.8 percent in 2014. Poverty also remains particularly devastating in black communities. Over the same period, the black poverty rate was 25.9 percent. As of 2014, it was 26 percent.

That's not a partisan attack on President Obama; poverty rates increased under the previous Bush Administration as well. The governing political class has done a great job of talking about America's problems while doing precious little to remedy them. Voters feel that and are fed up.

If you're getting a subsidy to produce green energy or taxpayer-funded insurance for your large corporate farm, then the status quo embodied by Clinton is ideal. If you're choosing between groceries or your utility bill, it probably isn't.

Trump connects powerfully with many voters by railing against a "rigged" American government. He's a strange messenger because of his willingness to game the system to his advantage in the past, but it gives him an air of authenticity.

But, but, but Trump (fill in the blank here with the bad thing Trump said or did). Whatever that is, it isn't a secret, and it's clearly not enough to give Clinton breathing room in the polls.

Clinton is as "establishment" as they come. She's not particularly interested in opening up to the media. And she's also plagued by constant questions about her honesty. A candidate who feels like the embodiment of every plastic political stereotype they've ever seen doesn't excite most Americans and likely repulses many.

The liberal ruling class is missing the exact same phenomenon that defeated the likes of Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich. Forget making America great again. Plenty of Americans simply want the political elites like Clinton to go to hell. In their mind, Donald Trump just might be the right devil to make that happen.

Cameron Smith is a regular columnist for AL.com.