The bombastic American right wing presidential candidate Donald Trump and the combative left wing British Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn are polls apart politically and socially, but that do have a few things in common...Both are way ahead of their respective opponents because they address issues that push the right buttons for millions of their fellows travellers. Even so, neither will probably ever lead their countries.
Trump has trumpeted his wish to curb Mexican immigration, deny citizenship to Mexican kids born in America to illegal aliens, create new jobs, curb welfare, attack urban crime, rebuild America's standing abroad and outlaw fat women. How he plans to do these things remains a mystery. He even wants to scrap President Obama's monumental health care legislation with "Something spectacular."
Being vague and arrogant on most issues hasn't seemed to hurt him. Simple solutions attract like people, bored and frustrated by lying, double talking politicians.
If the master of the bad haircut were to secure the Republican nomination, he would have his first real challenge in the Presidential debates...There would be no place for him to hide or no one for him to debase as a way of deflecting attention from his own shallowness and lack of credible ideas. The people would see if he truly had a grasp of the issues. Would his luck continue?
Still win or lose, more than any campaign in recent memory, the billionaire has shown the world how money can and the hype surrounding him can blind voters to his incompetence. One might go as far as to speculate that to Trump the campaign is nothing but a reality show for bored wealthy guy who wants to see just how far he can take his candidacy. This prospect worries Republican grandees who fear he may launch an indy third party bid if he doesn't get the nomination.
Corbyn, on the other hand, has his own agenda of expired sell-by- date socialist ideals centred on rebuilding the welfare state. And he wants to go so far as re nationalizing the train lines. On that item he may find a wellspring of cross party support. Not many people will boast about the great train privatization.
But overall, with Britain now economically one of Europe's strongest nations, unemployment down and inflation at record lows, Corbyn's tax and spend plan would send the UK back to the days when the wealthy would leave for tax havens abroad. And the nation would sink into debt and even currency devaluation.
This probability and the relative well being of most people who actually vote is the reason a Corbyn government is as remote as a Miliband Government was....If something isn't broke, don't fix it.
His only hope as Labour leader would be for the Tory led nation to collapse financially, with the welfare state taking more and more cutbacks. This, he figures would drive the masses back to Labour. In this respect we see the ugliest side of politics where the opposition party wishes the nation ill so it can obtain power. This also is something Corbyn and Trump seem to have in common.