A big white guy walks into a bar...

He was a big white guy in a way that only Americans in their late thirties can be; let's say 230 pounds and six feet five. He was swigging beer from a bottle in the prescribed manner of modern young men and he wore a long sleeved sweater with a Tee shirt over it and a cap perched at the back of his dark head. The Tee shirt read ‘I’m a deplorable’ and the cap asked us to ‘Make America great again.’ He wouldn't be voting for Hillary in 10 day’s time. Duh.

The bar was hip; that is to say, as hip as a Hamptons bar can be in October. Yet the place was busy. The nineteen-dollar strip steak special and the carafe of Chianti had lured most of us.

For twenty minutes the big feller stood sipping his beer, looking around the room, maybe hoping he’d find someone he knew. Occasionally, he’d flick his eyes at the three screens showing baseball, before resuming his scan. No one came to talk to him. He finished his beer and left.

Later, I found it odd that he had to stand alone, apparently friendless, because the town has many citizens of his political stripe. In fact, the whole 118 miles length of Long Island is considered a ‘red’ Republican zone. Yet there are countervailing forces.

There’s a shop in East Hampton that, every election season, sells plastic cups printed with the names of the two Presidential nominees. The owner claims that cup sales have predicted the result of the election, without fail, since the 80s. The count that day had been: Hillary 4,755; Trump 3,338.

It’s not hard to figure out why Trump cups are lagging. The store sells monogrammed articles. My beer-drinker and his ilk don't strike me as monogram types, despite their love of lettered Tee shirts. My theory would be that the ‘red’ supporters who do buy plastic cups are the moneyed crowd who sit by their pools and like to sip mojitos from plastic cups. They’d love to see a new Administration cut their tax and make them even richer.

But neither side is complacent. My barber, an immigrant from the Middle East, is convinced Donald Trump will win. ‘I buy you lunch if he loses. Yes, sir!’ he promises me, as a room full of silent locals listen.

Later, I'm listening to a right wing radio jock telling me that ‘the most successful gambling handicapper in Las Vegas’ has placed a substantial bet with the UK’s William Hill organization. His bet? ‘The Donald’ will win. Radio guy says that the betting organization told his Vegas pal that the betting ‘profile’ mirrors that of Brexit: the big money was on ‘Remain’ like the big money is now on Hillary.  And we all know how that turned out.

Are there millions of ‘shy’ Trump fans (as there were ‘shy Leavers’) that simply don't disclose their true intentions to pollsters? That may be so. We’ll soon find out.

What should concern all Americans though, is this: if the Trump people feel ‘defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory’ by some dark force, then how will they react? As reported by the New York Times today: ‘Some Donald Trump voters warn of revolution if Hillary Clinton wins.’ The newspaper, which has been – in my view – shockingly partisan in its support of the Democratic ticket, quotes a Wisconsin man saying that a stolen election could lead to ‘another Revolutionary War.’    

And the scary subtext of that is the fact that many Trump supporters are like the man in the bar: big, white, and more than a teensy bit angry.

If Hillary wins, and most current polls say she will, one of her first tasks may be, metaphorically, to walk up to that guy and try to make him feel at home. 

But, hey, keep the body guards.

© Brian Clewly Johnson

Amagansett NY

October 2016.