PARIS -- Here in France, members of the deeply entrenched establishment elite are confident that the result of next week's American presidential election is a foregone conclusion. They're convinced that the American people will reject "vulgarity."
Former French Minister of Foreign Affairs Hubert Vedrine, a permanent establishment fixture, declared to BFM TV: "There is little chance that (Trump) will be elected -- it's evident. With his behavior, his aggressiveness, his insane vulgarity -- let's say the word -- (Hillary Clinton) should be 30 points ahead and not 10."
Hear that, America? It's "evident." Nothing left to do now except to go through the charade of voting, and then the establishment candidate will assume her rightful place among her peers.
Global elites such as Vedrine, who even authored a report on globalization for then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, fail to understand what true vulgarity is to the average taxpaying citizen in a legitimately democratic nation.
The French electorate is only ever presented with a choice between longtime public-trough dwellers from sanctioned clans. They figure that America will vote in similar fashion. Normally, they're correct, but American voters have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to put the elites in their place and remind them that they are servants of the people and not the other way around.
The arrogance of the elites blinds them to voter frustration with a system that can afford to ignore average citizens as long as the members of the ruling class take care of each other. I've seen union leaders in Paris dining at the finest restaurants with the so-called political opposition. It's all a big charade. The real battle isn't right vs. left; it's the political class vs. the rest of us.
Hillary Clinton is one of them; Donald Trump is one of us.
Emails recently published by WikiLeaks suggest that there were no significant barriers separating Clinton's presidential ambitions, her family's foundation and her role as secretary of state.
Secretaries of state deal with high-level foreign interests. When you have a foundation collecting millions of dollars in donations from the same interests with whom you're engaging as the head of the U.S. State Department, it's bound to raise eyebrows.
Some are waiting for a smoking gun to materialize before Election Day. Isn't it enough that we've already found so many bullet casings?
DCLeaks.com has published internal Open Society Foundations documents connecting George Soros, the King Kong of globalism, to the international funding campaigns intended to manipulate the agendas in electoral democracies. Julian Assange's WikiLeaks has published emails from the account of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, who's also the founder of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress, showing that Soros has enormous influence on Clinton and her team. The Center for American Progress has already served as a recruiting ground for officials in the Obama administration, including some of the U.S. Treasury officials in charge of deciding which entities were designated as "too big to fail" in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
It's unsettling, to say the least, that during her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton maintained a private email server in her home that was being used to channel classified government information. You don't need a deep knowledge of political protocol to instinctively understand that classified information doesn't belong on your home computer next to your FarmVille icon.
Last week, FBI Director James Comey dropped a new bombshell.
"In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation," Comey wrote in a letter to the heads of congressional oversight committees.
That "unrelated case" is reportedly a criminal investigation of former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner, who faces scrutiny for allegedly sexting with a minor. Weiner, the estranged husband of key Clinton aide Huma Abedin, had thousands of emails belonging to Abedin on his computer. The FBI is investigating whether any of those emails contained classified information.
Clinton is dealing with an awful lot of dirty laundry for someone possibly about to take on the multitude of new challenges that an election victory would bring. The French elite pride themselves on multitasking -- simultaneously managing their scandals and executing their professional duties. Authenticity and honesty, on the other hand, is considered "vulgar" by elites such as Hubert Vedrine.
If American voters have but one motivation to vote, let it be to shock those who think that their self-serving system is permanent. The only way to do that is by electing the outsider whom the elites despise: Donald Trump.