By Britt Nelson

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.

Reading America’s political pulse this year is kinda like trying to find a survivor at the county morgue.

Likely voters repeatedly are saying the overall direction of the United States of America is pretty much dead on arrival with 64.3 percent believing the country is going down the tubes. Only 28.2 percent think the country is headed in the right direction and that leaves 7.5 percent who don’t know what to think, says Real Clear Politics in their latest averaging of six nationwide polls.

Give or take a few points, this sad situation has been going on for years with little change during President Obama’s seven years in office. Currently, only 51 percent of likely voters think the President is doing a good job. That leaves 45 percent in disapproval and 4 percent shaking their heads. A 51-percent approval rating is nothing to write home about.

President Obama, at this point in his presidency, couldn’t care less with five months before retiring and heading out on the speech-making circuit, scooping up millions in easy money just like former President Bill Clinton. These two will probably team up in some sort of Super Bowl Speech tour after the other Clinton occupies the White House. But don’t be so sure Democrat Hillary Clinton will make it to White House, even though the polls now show otherwise.

A whopping 77.8 percent of American voters think the U.S. Congress – all the Senators and all the Representatives – disapprove of the way they handle America’s business. That leaves a mere 13.2 percent giving Congress a ‘thumbs up’ while 9 percent just simply don’t know.

The unexpected political rise of New York billionaire Republican Donald Trump is directly related to America realizing the direction of the country is wrong and Congress is doing nothing to fix the continuing stalemate going on in Washington, DC.

About all President Obama can get accomplished is through issuing Executive Orders that can either be reversed or continued by the incoming President. Even his latest U.S. Supreme Court nominee is being ignored by the Republican-controlled Senate. This President and this Congress have not worked well together, even when Obama first took office and the Democrats held majorities in both houses of Congress.

President Obama has endorsed Clinton 100-percent, and she has openly and repeatedly said she would carry on with Obama’s legacy, including keeping the abysmal Affordable Healthcare Act – better known as ObamaCare – which is not really so affordable and still leaving millions of Americans without healthcare coverage.

Meanwhile, this week has been a tough one for Clinton with the release of about 14,900 more emails that were not turned over to the FBI during their probe of Clinton’s private email server she kept at her home. These emails were recovered by the FBI following the completion of their previous investigation. Clinton said she deleted these emails because they only dealt with private matters like her daughter’s wedding, but they didn’t. Many of them are related to her job as Secretary of State during President Obama’s first term.

The new emails appear to show collusion between Clinton, her State Department staff and the Clinton Foundation; these emails show a clear relationship between foundation donors seeking favors through large donations while she was Secretary of State. Cries from some Democrats, many Republicans and newspaper editorials across the nation are demanding that the Clinton Foundation be shut down, but Clinton keeps repeating the same denials and most of her fellow Democrats follow along like little puppies wagging their tails. Trump named this new scandal a “pay-to-play” criminal enterprise with extreme conflicts of interest.

This week has also gone racial with both Clinton and Trump calling each other racist and Trump calling Clinton “a bigot.”

Trump is hammering on African Americans with “What have you got to lose” by voting for me? He claims that blacks have seen their overall quality of life decline is recent decades all because of continuing Democratic neglect of the inner cities.

Also this week, Trump is softening his hardline stance to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, but he had to. That proposal never held water though many Trump supporters liked the sound of it. Finding a way to make the illegals legal makes much more sense, while strengthening the borders and insisting on “extreme vetting” of people coming to the USA from any country. Trump still wants to deport illegals who are also lawbreakers, and that makes better sense.

Clinton, meanwhile, continues to deny everything connected to the new emails while holding fundraiser after fundraiser in some sort of obsessive money grab. She still has not held a national press conference in more than 265 days. Clinton obviously feels she is above media scrutiny.

So the voters think America is going to hell, the U.S. Congress is doing a terrible job, President Obama is not popular, Hillary is a liar extraordinaire and controversial Trump is not likable. Three debates between Clinton and Trump are coming up starting September 26. It’s a safe bet Clinton won’t really answer questions from the media moderators during these debates; she will go on and on with her denials seeking wiggle room. Trump, meanwhile, needs to be the best he’s ever been and answer every question with logic, knowledge and common sense – free from his former bombastic ways.

About the Author

Britt Nelson relocated to Costa Rica in 2011 from Florida, where he served as news editor for the Palatka Daily News, a newspaper owned by the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group (NYT-RNG) for 20 years.

Nelson served the NYT-RNG for 18 years in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida as a correspondent, reporter, staff writer, senior staff writer training new reporters, copy editor, page designer, editorial writer, editorial page editor and editorial board member.