Why Donald Trump is a game changer but won't win US elections
Donald Trump, the brash, blunt speaking and extremely opinionated billionaire and a candidate for the 2016 presidential election, surged ahead in all the opinion polls and stayed as a top contender.
Today, however, one poll has another candidate Ben Carson, from the same Republican Party sharing the top spot with Trump.
This does not surprise me. Every few years, in presidential elections, angry, frustrated voters typically gravitate towards these tough talking, anti-establishment candidates.
These candidates, who are well known in their fields, have name recognition and usually promise to transform the government, improve the economy and restore the country to its former glory and greatness.
The rabble-rousers turn American politics upside downside and grab headlines and attention but ultimately and historically, they just disappear.
Trump, the New York real estate magnate had skyrocketed to the top of the Republican presidential primary polls by testing the boundaries of political correctness by offering outrageous comments on illegal immigrants.
He attacked these undocumented immigrants by insisting that are "bringing drugs, they're bringing crime" and "they are rapists."
He also believes that cracking down on foreign trade will make "America great again," which is the centrepiece of his campaign.
With his comb over, his flamboyant take-no-prisoners style, Trump has won over admirers, who delight in his spirited, aggressive exchanges with reporters and calls his opponents "morons" and "idiots."
His rise has a historical precedent in American politics, literature and culture, as Americans love to entertain by these anti-establishment candidates but ultimately, they choose not to vote for them.
Trump will not succeed. I predict his fall and I stick my neck out by declaring that he will be a footnote in the history of this election.
But I will admit that he is a game changer and his being in the arena will play a huge impact in the final outcome of the election.
Trump has won over a certain section of the public by telling CNN that "We have people that are incompetent in public office" and that "Our country is going to hell. We have a problem and I want to make America great again."
But his kind-of-niche politicians rarely win. In one past election, the role that is being played by Trump was played by Texas billionaire Ross Perot. At another previous point in time, an Alabama governor George Wallace was that candidate too. Both lost, ultimately. So will Trump.
It seems hard to believe now. But to illustrate my point: In 1992, Perot was leading then President George HW Bush and then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton in the polls. Clinton had 25 per cent, Bush and 31 and Perot was at 39 in the Gallup Poll.
Clinton won and Perot got 19 per cent of the vote, taking away from Bush, who lost, historians say.
In the famous political movie Citizen Kane, the tough talking, egotistical, anti-establishment candidate Charles Foster Kane, a newspaper publisher runs for governor of New York.
In his speech, Kane proclaims that the "decent, ordinary citizens know that I'll do everything in my power to protect the underprivileged, the underpaid and the underfed."
It's interesting that in film and in politics, Americans are enamoured by the "dark horse candidate" who comes seemingly out of nowhere and saves the country.
But in the end, voters realise that these candidates are outsiders and cannot really fix what is broken. And they pick the safer alternative. Always.