I’m going to put two things side by side here so you can contemplate them in tandem. First, there’s the memo that Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook sent out “to donors, supporters and top volunteers” yesterday.
“Here’s the story that no poll can tell: Hillary Clinton has many paths to 270 electoral votes, while Donald Trump has very few. Hillary is nearly certain to win 16 ‘blue’ states, including Washington D.C., which will garner her 191 electoral votes. If we add the five states that FiveThirtyEight.com gives Hillary a 70% or greater chance of winning (Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin), Hillary only needs 10 more electoral votes.”
“Mook then runs down the possibilities for Clinton to win the remaining 10 electoral votes: taking Florida’s 29 electoral votes, North Carolina’s 15, Ohio’s 18, or any two of Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa, or Nevada.”
I’ll get into those scenarios in a moment, but the math is correct.
Next up is an excerpt from a Sean Trende piece for RealClearPolitics.
“To be sure, Clinton did not want the polls to tighten. At the same time, this was a particularly awful series of news cycles for her, while Trump had managed to go over a month without reprising some of his more polarizing statements, such as his flap with the Khan family, who lost a son in Iraq. We would expect a big swing in the polls, and there was one.”
“But it did not put Trump over the top. A week in, she still leads by 0.7 points in the four-way RCP average, and 0.9 points in the two-way average. She maintains a lead in the Electoral College, and while North Carolina and Nevada appear to be close, her lead in the next-most-Republican state, Virginia (which would put Trump over the 270 mark), is 3.5 points.”
“In other words, a truly terrible news cycle was still not enough to put Trump ahead. In a strange way, that’s good news for Clinton.”
As Mook pointed out, Virginia would be nice for Trump but he can theoretically win without it. It looks like the most likely path is to win in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, and Nevada. That’ll do it if he can also win either Colorado or New Hampshire.
The bad news for Clinton is that Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight currently has Trump ahead in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, and Nevada. The bad news for Trump is that Silver is giving Clinton a 63% chance of winning New Hampshire and a 64% chance of winning Colorado.
But, that’s not much of a margin.
Clinton did get modestly encouraging news out of the NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll that was released this morning. After shifting to a likely voter screen (since some absentee ballots have already been cast), the survey finds her winning both the two-way race (50%-45%) and the four-way race (45%-40%) by five points. They also find that 56% of voters think she will win compared to only 39% who think Trump will win. As the Los Angeles Times reports, when the election is still a way off, looking at who people expect to win is a comparatively good predictor of who will actually win. Of course, the Los Angeles Times poll is a very-bullish-for-Trump outlier and has been through this whole cycle. They have an unusual methodology that tracks the same 3,000 voters over time and pays a lot of attention to their relative motivation to vote.
Trump’s lead in the Daybreak poll rests in part on support from disaffected, conservative white voters who did not vote in 2012, but say they plan to vote this time. A belief that Trump can win might help motivate those voters to the polls, and his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, repeatedly has trumpeted the “momentum” on her side.
Overall, however, the Daybreak poll indicates that Clinton probably has the most to gain from expanded turnout. Trump has led among poll respondents who say they are most sure of their decision and most certain to vote. Clinton led until the last week among the larger universe that includes potential voters who are somewhat uncertain about their choice or their likelihood of casting a ballot.
In other words, the L.A. Times poll simply doesn’t believe that Clinton’s voters will turn out, but the perception that she might lose will help her more than it will help Trump.
Intuitively, I think that Clinton does have a little buffer that could save her in the end as people who are considering sitting it out or voting for a protest candidate or voting for Trump as a big middle finger to the Establishment find that they ultimately aren’t prepared to risk an actual Trump presidency.
But this election is now close enough that Trump winning is not a longshot anymore. I wouldn’t bet any money on him, but I wouldn’t have bet any money on the Rams beating the Seahawks on Sunday, either.
The nation is well and truly fucked at this point. And it’s been fucked by the plurality of white morans who have been mostly voting Republican since 1980.f
In the most likely scenario, Clinton wins but Senate control is iffy and House remains red. So 4-8 more years of gridlock. Making America both peachy and keen.
Gridlock is one thing, it’s the normalization of toxicity that will kill us.
Even a Clinton win won’t remove it. Trump is a blue print now.
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I’m not as pessimistic as all that. I see our population slowly shifting and it seems to me this narrow space we’re going through is a reaction, a kind of blowback, to the demographic changes. At some point we’ll hit peak crazy and the tide will obviously flow the other way. I just hope it doesn’t put Trump in the White House because I don’t know we could survive it. Sometimes a narrow passage becomes too narrow. That’s how great powers fall and societies crack up.
Republican control of Congress is insured by the gerrymandered districts they were in a position to dictate after the 2010 census. Policy has little to do with it.
Unless the Democrats can put themselves in power there by 2020, it will be another decade of the same.
Your post reminds me of this little clip I grabbed from a Chris Rock interview. It is now many years old, but it still reads true to me:
———–
Scott Raab:
Like many nice Caucasians, I cried the night Barack Obama was elected. It was one of the high points in American history. And all that’s happened since the election is just a shitstorm of hatred. You want to weigh in on that?
Chris Rock:
I actually like it, in the sense that — you got kids? Kids always act up the most before they go to sleep. And when I see the Tea Party and all this stuff, it actually feels like racism’s almost over. Because this is the last — this is the act up before the sleep. They’re going crazy. They’re insane. You want to get rid of them — and the next thing you know, they’re fucking knocked out. And that’s what’s going on in the country right now —
————–
Chris Rock kills it, as always.
to Lucas’ 1971 directing debut “THX 1138”?
Why yes indeed.
I saw that movie with my mom when I was 11 – Unforgettable!
Yes, I agree.
But while I was talking about the election, it’s not really the election I’m talking about, but the way Trump has empowered the alt right. The Chris Rock quote below resonates, and is most likely true. But that ‘removal’ takes years, decades even. They can do a lot of damage in that time frame. For gods sake, the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Trump! They agree with his racist rhetoric! What that means is black men die.
A complete repudiation was what was needed. At this time that looks unlikely.
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Decades even? Many in the south are still filled with anger a century and a half later. And think the second world war is over? I saw a show last night suggesting it just morphed into the ME shit. First stop was Nasser’s Egypt filled with German officers but it went to Gaddafi and Hussein as well. And now we have ISIS and al Queda. I think Trump is instilling more hate that will not dissipate anytime soon. I begin to think we humans are too easily infected with hate. But hell, that’s just me being pessimistic I suppose. I get really angry lately when I hear people saying they will vote for Jill Stein. Nice lady, I suppose, but utterly unqualified and maybe throw the election to the Orange Man.
Anyone who votes for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson is essentially a nihilist.
Hopefully the fact that polls have tightened WILL indeed convince people that the do need to vote for Hillary. Or else.
I’d call them children, leaving it for the rest of us to do the heavy lifting. I’ve given money and will be knocking on doors for Hillary despite the reservations I’ve had re: the Clintons since they first came on the scene.
Decades yes.
Because these kinds of beliefs, rooted in racial or religious feelings seem to be really embedded into the core of someone’s personality. It’s rare for people to change these sorts of feelings.
For these large cultural shifts take to take place the people who hold them literally need to die out before the culture can move on. When you look at the charts for acceptance of racial minorities for example, when you sort by age group it is crystal clear that for each age groups acceptance decreases with older age. The charts for gay marriage exhibit the exact same patterns.
Then they have those same charts by state, over time, and the south is always lagging, but year by year, even the south is on the same trend – just lagging by 40 years.
So when you are talking about older southerners, in particular it’s going to be a long process.
In the relatively near future, the non-crazies will be a solid majority between the passing of the Silents, increased percentages of non-whites, and the weakening of religion. But, you can maintain power against a majority by electoral manipulation and the Republicans are totally shameless about that. If necessary, they’ll just refuse to register voters they don’t like. You think a President Trump will act to stop counties that do that?
Be careful not to confuse religion with fundamentalism. Religion was at the heart of the Civil Rights movement. The fundamentalists in this country and around the world hide behind religious teachings to camouflage their true agenda, which is power/dominance pure and simple. Trump totally outs that among the supposed Christians who call themselves evangelical.
Did Dems manage to get any ballot initiatives up in these battleground states to help drive the GOTV? They missed with the anti-fracking one in Colo.
Colorado and Virginia are and always have been ground zero since PA looks like it is out of reach for Trump.
The last two polls out of CO have Trump ahead, the last VA poll has Clinton up 3.
IF CO is a tossup, and Trump wins Florida and Ohio, but you still give Clinton VA, you have the following out
NC
NH
NV
IA
CO
with the EV count 259 Clinton Trump 239. Of those states Trump has a lead in IA.
In that scenario Clinton has 3 ways to win and Trump has 3 ways to win.
IF you give Clinton CO, then Clinton has 4 ways to win and Trump has only 1.
Which is why EVER removing resources from Colorado is just plain dumb.
Still, in my own numbers Clinton is up 3.43. This is not tied. Clinton’s lead is about the same as Obama’s final margin
But it wouldn’t take much to make for this to flip.
Taking resources out of Virginia and Colorado always seemed a bit crazy to me. I know the campaign has its number crunchers, but things always tighten during this period. Colorado just lost a Democratic Senator in 2014, after all.
Martin, was it really necessary to site the Rams’ win over the Seahawks? Bad taste, my friend. Eww.
I suspect that the majority of people who will vote for Jill Stein are not “protesting”. They are voting for the candidate whose policy proposals they favor.
I hope not. It’s tough to lodge a pure protest vote in US elections. I could no more vote FOR Stein than I could FOR Nader in 2000. If I did choose to vote GRN, it therefore would be an endorsement of their positions on public policies and a rejection of all the other parties and their candidates. OTOH, casting such a vote never matters unless the Dem Party views those voters as traitors that cost them an election.
Republicans that loathe Trump and want legal marijuana and TPP/TISA (and more 19th century capitalism) should definitely vote Johnson/Weld. Go slow back to 19th century capitalism with lots of military actions, best choice is HRC/Kaine. Trump is the cafeteria candidate, and all the dishes on offer are mystery stuff except there will be more police, more weapons, etc. and more focus on targeting POC (sort of like George Wallace without the decent bits).
In honesty, I can say that I never articulated my voting choices (or support in ’68) over the decades as “lesser evil.” The Democratic nominee was always the better, or appeared to be the better, choice. It was also usually an exercise in meaningless because the better candidates lost. Hindsight, accept that I got it wrong once and possibly twice.
The way our elections are set up, with the winner takes all once you reach a simple majority, voting for Jill Stein instead of Hillary is equivalent to voting for Donald Trump.
Just as those Nader voters could just as well have voted for W – the net effect is the same.
There is no other way of looking at this.
Like I said above. Nice lady but what does she know of governing? She is simply not qualified and this is one election the decent people have to win. Call it the very much lesser of two evils. And that is Hillary. Stein needs to butt out.
What confirmed that for me is when Stein mused that Trump would have trouble getting things done and, therefore, is the lesser evil.
It’s remarkably ignorant. Republicans are likely to retain control of the House and if they hold the Senate will only need a majority vote to pass legislation rolling back many of the Obama-era accomplishments. All Paul Ryan needs is a willing dope able to wield a pen to get his agenda passed.
Not to mention the importance of the Supreme Court.
When it comes to actually governing both Trump and Stein are ignorant. But that doesn’t stop either of them or their supporters from pulling the lever. Funny how so many fools figure they know it all. And they are dangerous.
They wouldn’t just roll back Obama-era accomplishments. They would roll back the New Deal and Great Society. That’s been the conservative goal for decades.
Yes, that’s true. That’s why the left-leaning third party voters who think Clinton and Trump are equally bad choices are terribly misguided. They appear to have no idea how bad it can get very quickly, erasing what’s left of the progressive era.
They’re Neoprogressives, the Libertarians of the left.
Never mind how US elections actually work. Never mind what may happen when Strongman Trump and his tens of millions of authoritarian followers come into power.
They want their god damn rainbows and unicorns. And if they can’t get ’em, then let it all burn.
Besides, Pokemon Go will probably still work, and Trump won’t outlaw alcohol, so they’ll be white, and just fine regardless.
#MickeyMouse/ZombieWashington 2016
Not a nice lady. I’ve listened to her speak and she is as arrogantly contemptuous of anyone not completely on board her crazy train as Nader was. The dismissive condescension dripping from her when she spoke of Obama was so massive I expected to hear “boy” any minute.
I agree. I said she was a nice lady to avoid ,blowback. Her arrogance and hubris are too much for me.
I truly wonder if most of the people who say they are going to vote for Stein have really done their homework. I did and I too did not like what I found.
Voting for Stein is just a euphemism for being above it all and having the best morals and ethics.
It’s a thrown-away vote. Full stop.
She doesn’t need to know anything. You don’t want her to know anything. That would screw everything up.
To fix American politics, first get rid of all the political parties. Then get the politicians out of politics. Then finally, get the politics out of politics.
Then everything will work, and be wonderful!
Sometimes fascination combined with obsession clouds one’s perceptions and cognition.
We can all still cling to the projection that HRC has the EC votes to win. Still cling because that is what the polls told us months ago and Trump has a campaign operation stuck somewhere in the 1920s and he’s a narcissistic nincumpoop with zero qualifications for the job he’s seeking. So, team HRC took all that in and along with their booster clubs began trumpeting that they were preparing for a landslide win (with hints that it would include yuuge coattails).
For now I’m not changing my HRC EC win projection. But my projection always had it much closer than team HRC had it; so, I’m not all that exercised about the race tightening. Nor should her booster club considering that you all knew she was a bad candidate in ’08 and is worse in ’16.
What happened to all the boasting that HRC was gaining GOP support, particularly among “national security state” folks? Was that supposed to be like the “Reagan Democrats?” Who could have predicted that the 2014 election wasn’t an anomaly? That going for the third Democratic WH term and third Clinton term wouldn’t be a piece of cake?
I’ve never felt she was a shoe in. She has a lot of baggage. She is simply the least objectionable. Trump frightens me since I fear his hate machine and what it will do,to us. He likely has some October surprise in store.
Actually, a lot of us weren’t boasting or engaged in mutual masterbation at the thought of Clinton as President, as much as we were telling our fellow liberals to, perhaps, stop attempting to shit on Hillary Clinton in public any time you got the chance.
Undecideds and the uninformed were, have been, and still are watching. If they see that even the left thinks that Clinton is worse than Trump, well, they might as well stay home and work on their Pokemon Go accounts, while drowning themselves in alcohol and opioids. Because fuck it, neoliberal neoconservative blah blah blah.
So, perhaps Clinton can still pull this out, or perhaps the Neoprogressives will get their way, and Clinton, the greater of evils, will lose, thereby helping Trump walk into the White House.
And Trump, rather than Clinton in the White House, is almost guaranteed to save tens of thousands of lives in the middle east, while preventing a “shooting war” with Russia, that Clinton would have otherwise masterminded. I know, because true Neoprogressives have told me so, over and over and over the past year.
If you knew nothing about the candidates, the GOP should be slight favorites given the economy and the difficulty of a third term.
My own prediction was based on a read of the youth vote, and the probably collapse of the third parties.
I stand by it – I think think she is headed for something like a 10 point win.
But I underestimates the problems people had with Clinton, and overestimated the skill of her campaign staff.
The campaign staffs decision to pull ads from two critical state reeks of hubris. Their decision to spend two weeks chasing money was mistaken as well.
I still think at this moment she is up 5.
But this is absolutely a race that can be lost.
The Mook memo reflects a kind of analysis that drives me a bit crazy. It’s a mistake to say that Clinton will definitely win because of the “blue wall”. The reason that 24 (not sure of the number) states have gone blue in 6 out of 6 recent elections is that that in all those elections, the Democrat either won the popular vote, or came extremely close to doing so–stating one result is equivalent to stating the other. If somehow Trump got 5% ahead in the popular vote, then some combination of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virgina, Colorado, etc. will turn red.
I read the Sean Trende post yesterday, and it gave me some perspective. Trende is a conservative, but (almost uniquely on that side), he is willing to pay attention to data. Although I don’t like living in the world where Trump has any possibility of winning at all, it is worth remembering that despite having a great few weeks, he still is behind. It is perilous to predict, especially about the future, but my guess is that the race will return to the 3-4% Clinton advantage that it’s mostly been, and the final map will look something like 2012.
Of course, there’s no guarantee of this. Arthur Gilroy is on record here as saying that Trump will wipe the floor with Clinton in the debate, and perhaps that will happen (though I tend to doubt it–shall we say don’t bet on it?) But my guess is that the numbers we have seen are indicative of pretty well-set opinions about the two parties and the two candidates.
I don’t recall AG’s forecast about Trump wiping the floor with Clinton at the debates; I tend to think the converse is likelier, but also that it won’t matter. We already know that Trump is going to stand up and lie fluently, because that’s what sociopaths do, and that his lies won’t affect voters’ opinions. His supporters know that he’s a liar. They support him because he channels their desire to tell Washington DC to fuck off, consequences be damned.
What could actually hurt Trump at the debates? I struggle to come up with anything other than him throwing personal insults at Hillary Clinton that are so crazy and offensive that the tiny fraction of persuadable voters decide they can’t possibly vote for him. Or perhaps if Trump starts blathering about using nuclear weapons (again). Or if he delivers a death threat to Hillary Clinton.
You don’t take into account that the media provides coverage and sets the tone.
They’ve clearly decided to make this thing a horserace, and have no qualms about doing to Clinton what they did to Gore in 2000.
All Trump has to do is not retweet white supremacists, and he’s looking Presidential as fuck.
I can see HRC winning on substance but Trump declared the winner if he is able to dominate the setting as he did during the primaries. The debate agenda that was released favors Trump’s themes. Hillary will be on the defensive, to a point.
. . . as fuck”
Well, by Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media standards anyway!
Which are the standards almost every American sees as standards, which is its own problem.
Two myths about American elections: Bigoted voters and red vs blue states
A+ rated Monmouth just put Clinton up 5 in Florida – a hair outside its margin of error. That’s enough to make it dead even in RCP’s 2-way and 4-way averages with Trump +0.3 in the 538 weighted average.
I think those who still believe that there’s even a chance for Clinton haven’t taken a close look at California lately. Or the other western states. But especially CA, the most critical battleground state, and the one that will decide the outcome. From out here it’s look like Trump can count on almost a complete sweep of all of the states west of the Mississippi. Hillary’s always been unpopular, but her recent actions have increased the hatred significantly. Her extremist policies are way out of touch with what the American people want; at least the honest ones. But there’s a chance that she might be able to squeeze by in a few of the states in the original 13 colonies, and that the Democratic party can still survive for a few more years as a regional party of the east coast plutocracy. But that’s the best case scenario at this point. Americans aren’t stupid and aren’t going to elect a corrupt warmonger president. Trump may not be that great, but he’s clearly the lesser evil and the better choice for president. Hard to believe that there’s anyone in this country who won’t be cheering the final end of the Clinton and Bush dynasties. They and those who have supported them have done a lot of damage to the world, and it’s time to put them down.
Mikep – are you Mike Pence? If so, thank you for your unique perspective on the election. I look forward to Trump’s winning California.
I believe this webpage is relevant to your argument:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
I wouldn’t presume to troll rate his comment. Apparently, “from out there” in California, he claims it looks different. So, I would simply ask for evidence to substantiate his claim that California will be going for Trump.
It depends on where you live in California — I live in a rural area, and Trump is going to win my CD in a landslide (+10, at least). But my CD (the 4th) is 78% white, and republicans outnumber democrats 3 to 2.
But the rural areas are the outliers (pun only slightly intended), and California as a whole remains solidly blue.
If he wasn’t trolling, he sure wasn’t paying attention.
Oh, there is no doubt there are some CD in California which are reliably Republican, and will definitely go for Trump. There always are. That’s not in dispute. But his inference was that the state would be going to Trump.
That’s a different thing, altogether.
FWIW, a quick peek at RCP’S polling aggregate, as of 9/13, has Clinton at +19 in California, with a range from +10 to +34 across all their sample polling.
But hey, I guess it’s theoretically possible they could all be wrong.
Yeah, but you have to unskew those numbers. (snort)
I usually don’t say something is not possible. So before I pronosticate on California, tell me what you’re on?
I think it’s amusing that Mook put out a “private” memo that doesn’t reflect any internal data they might be looking at and instead cites to 538. This was clearly intended for public consumption. I hope they have better, more accurate stuff.
The election is getting close.
Best thing to do is get the ol’ circular firing squad up and running, which should be pretty easy. Let’s just recite the same exact talking points the Freedom Caucus circulates in their email chains, and we’re sure to get the lesser evil, Strongman Trump, into the White House and nominating 2-3 Supreme Court Justices.
We’re close, y’all!
Keep on working, NeoProgressives. We can pull off another 2000 so that sometime in the immediate future… something something mass social uprising, something something Social Democratic Utopia!