The ugly, unspoken truth about this election. [View all]

[thejoker123]

While much of Donald Trump's support can be squarely pegged on decades of Republican racist rhetoric and xenophobic fear mongering, as well as our furiously partisan electorate, it doesn't entirely explain why the polls are tightening in a race between Hillary Clinton and a man so utterly deplorable that he would be over the top for a Saturday morning cartoon villain.

In my opinion, the silent driver responsible for this being a 3-5 point race instead of 20 point blowout, which few in the media have dared to touch on, is sexism, plain and simple. Some of it overt, some of it in the collective subconscious of the electorate.

As it was/is with President Obama and is now with Hillary, at the end of the day a significant number of Americans consider a white man, no matter how flawed, as superior to either a black man or a woman.

Not surprisingly, our voting electorate is simply mirroring life, where both people of color and women have to perform at significantly higher levels, if not at near perfection, to get the same respect that white men are handed as a birthright.

So while scores of voters are willing to forgive or justify or look the other way on Trump's most disturbing and egregious behaviors and actions, Hillary is ceremoniously crucified for even the smallest mistake or misstep.

In my opinion, this is also why the polls keep swinging so wildly. Why a decent number of people keep coming back to Trump after temporarily being offended by him, especially after any negative story about Hillary, regardless of how comically frivolous that story may be.

They want to want Trump over Hillary. They have begged him to please just shut up for a few weeks so they don't have to deal with their conscience or their spouse or their friends or their children reminding them of just how vile and unfit for office Trump really is.

At the same time, they desperately look for a reason, any reason, to justify in their minds that Hillary is actually worse, thus allowing them to escape the unavoidable, ugly truth about what is really driving them to such an indefendable, illogical, immoral position.

Here is an excellent piece from Salon today that discusses the infuriating double standard being displayed this election. It begins to touch on the sexism piece, but unfortunately doesn't go nearly far enough.

http://www.salon.com/2016/11/01/its-different-for-the-donald-the-old-rules-only-apply-to-hillary-clinton-the-tbt-time-before-trump-candidate/