It's often been said that the UK and US are separated by a common language but, by and large, in my experience we have a lot more in common than pretty much any two geographically distant nations could expect.

Except now, with the US election, I feel like I'm not even living on the same planet any more.

I don't have a dog in the fight and I have no say in the outcome but can somebody explain to my why it's even remotely close? Admittedly if the wife of a previous PM over here ran for office, especially one with great personal ambition but no obvious moral convictions she would have no chance....

Unless.......

Trump

It started off as a joke.

Climate change - It's a Chinese hoax
Taxes - I don't pay them but I will make sure you do.
Nuclear Weapons - Why don't we use them? (Oh and I'm cool with mass proliferation)
Free trade is bad (never mind that its lifted more people out of poverty than anything else every tried)
Free press is a pain and I'm going to put my opponents out of business
The election is rigged but only if I lose
Toddlers shoot their parents more often than terrorists do but I'm against gun control and in favor of banning arbitrary groups (Muslims for example) from entering the country.
Never mind the corruption, mass murder and international mayhem, Putin is macho and I like him.
I'm going to deport 11,000,000 people (7,500/day every day for four years)
Weaker members of NATO can go F**K themselves, I'm not getting involved so go ahead Russia and do whatever you like...
Women - well I don't know where to start
By the way - lets lock up my political opponents

Not quite so funny now is it.......

If this billionaire pretending to be a man of the people with all his obvious character faults (vain, boastful, vindictive, untrustworthy, easily flustered/riled and greedy) ran for village idiot over here he would be lucky to beat the monster raving loony candidate (yes that's a real thing) But the national polls in the US are close. Any single one of the above list would permanently exclude a British politician from office.

The level of ruin and ridicule this joker would bring to the US is hard to fathom from over here. What am I missing????

I think you have to be an American to understand his popularity, He's popular because of whats been before hand, America's right has realised how bad the Bush camp was, they can't stand the left democrats, so they are flocking to this nutcase. Micky mouse would be popular if he was running against Clinton. Trumps made billions and evaded paying any tax's, and he gloats how smart he is by doing this. He says he could shoot someone and still be popular, he says if he wants a woman, he just grabs her by the pussy, and his slogan is "make US great again" he's a joke, and dangerous to Americas well being.

I'm sure puzzled by the fact he is still a chance ?.....what does someone have to do to eliminate themselves from the race ?.... yet somehow he remains ??.
its like a bad hollywoood movie come to life.
He is so unlikeable.

I wouldn't want trump as President but if i was an American voter I vote for him to stop Clinton.

Soap opera with a good lump of reality tv thrown in for good measure - sad state of affairs. To my little mind it looks like average "joe the battler" is fed up coping the costs of the rest of the country! Someone over there is desperate for change, thats for sure!
Did someone mention POLICY....................

For eight years everytime I would run into a foreigner I would apologize profusely for our pick as president. I would tell them it had to do with hanging chads or corporations becoming people too. I would try as I might to convince them that as a whole we have a deep personal concern for peoples all across the planet and that they should not give up on us we will come to our collective senses. Then there was an era of comfort, a president born in Kenya Hawaii who could massage the world with an understanding of what it meant to represent our cares and carress the people across distant shores with compassion and coherent cause. And then, seven and one half years later, all hell broke loose and I realised that all the years that I thought I had a finger on the pulse of the heartbeat of America, I came to the conclusion that I don't know diddlyshit what this landmass is all about. I too hear that the election is going to be close from many prognosticators. It is my silly belief that the left wing liberal press is ploying the electorate into making sure they don't stay home and that they will believe that their vote truly does matter and they will show up in droves to let the rest of the world know that this was some really bad theatre. Back to the apologizing
I am truly sorry

Its not your place to Apoligise DribbleDuke, your not resonsible, you give us hope that your country does have great people, and it does, I've met many Americans, well travelling Americans, and they have all been so polite and respectful people. If Hillary wasn't such a poor choice, Trump wouldn't get a lookin. Some how your country has to get corporates and the Tycoons (Trump) to pay their fair share in tax, and take the burden off middle americans. Trumps popular because middle Americans have had enough and are hurting. Bushes wars, and the debt thats created is his legacy. 2 terms under Obama wasn't enough to turn Bushes disasterous terms around.

America has the same problem as Britain and the EU: it is not run by the people voted into office by the electorate. They are at best irrelevant and at worst a front for an antidemocratic, corporatist and internationalist clique of professional politicians and technocrats who view the general population with utter contempt and believe they and they alone have the moral compass and superior intelligence to run things; that voters are fools who need saving from themselves and that democracy just gets in the way and should be bypassed for the common good. It is a clique riddled with vested interest, self-serving corruption, megalomania and narcissism. It is why little ever seems to change or be achieved and why the policies voters thought they were electing their leaders upon are forever shelved as tomorrow's business while a programme they did not vote for or had even voted specifically against rolls on relentlessly today.
It why the British voted for Brexit and why the European project will collapse. It why far right and far left parties are on the rise across Europe and why Putin's Russia has become emboldened and increasingly bellicose and imperialist. He can smell decay.
Clinton is the apotheosis of this rotten order. She was born and raised to it. She knows no other world. Trump is an oaf and a dolt but he is also an outsider, a vulgar white-trash upstart who will never be welcomed into the closed world of the political elites. In that sense, even though with his billions he is as far away from the common man as the Ivy League Clinton, and despite his manifest unsuitability for high office, he is one of us. His is the proto protest-vote politician. If you asked a computer programme to produce a montage of an anti-politician, it would come up with the bizarre photo-fit image of Donald Trump. The real danger is not that he might win, but that he cannot because he is so preposterous and his doomed nomination will set back for a generation the task of lancing the boil modern politics and things will get far worse. When you need an Eisenhower, the best your system could produce was Trump.

Very good summary there Gimlet. Totally agree. The worring thing about Trump is, he isn't doing the POTUS attempt for the good of Americans, no way, he's doing it for the power trip, there will be a lot of scared GOP members if he gets the reigns. He said he will reveal the real killers of Kennedy, he's said he will release Bushes involvement in 9/11, and the 28 pages that link the Saudi Royalties involvement and backing of the 19 Terrorists, and Bushes family links to the Saudi royal family. Your right about the corrupt sesspool that is American politics, and they hide behind religion, hence the hate for the Muslim religion. If Trump won with a landslide, i think he would be dead within 6 months before he could do too much damage to the 2 party (shared) political system you have.

Looks like the US may have a pussy grabbing, tax evading, orange skinned reality star with a possum on his head as a president....What a fuk up.