You've seen Donald Trump make the claim that the election is somehow "rigged," that it isn't a fair match between him and Clinton. Is it merely Trumpian hyperbole? Not entirely.
Most of the major media oppose his candidacy in much less covert fashion than in prior years. Hollywood hates him, NYT and WaPo ditto, and several papers which haven't endorsed a Democrat for decades have endorsed Clinton. Almost all journalists today are what Instapundit Glenn Reynolds calls "Democratic operatives with bylines."
Speaking his name in any positive sense is enough to get you thrown off most campuses, condemned as a micro-aggressor at the very least. Even the brahmins of his own party avoid or condemn him, and most didn't attend the convention at which he was nominated.
These are significant obstacles to overcome in a presidential race, obstacles around which a Democrat doesn't have to navigate. In that sense, Trump is correct - he isn't getting a fair shake in this election.
That any Republican has to cope with some level of this opposition is beside the point. His predecessors took for granted we understood the structural barriers to their candidacies.
As a non-career politician Trump experiences this unfairness as new and disturbing. New it isn't, except that it is much less muted in 2016 than in prior cycles.
If Trump loses and then makes it his business to pursue his "rigged" accusation, the sequelae can get ugly. This country was founded by people who, believing they had no voice in decisions concerning them, rebelled. Are we talking a Hunger Games scenario? Washington as Panem? It is not impossible.
