Over at Huffington Post, their number crunchers now estimate that Donald Trump has a 23% chance of being an even bigger loser than George McGovern, i.e, getting less than 37.4% of the popular vote. Those aren’t great odds, but they’re better than the 16% odds Nate Silver currently gives Trump of winning the election. It also tracks with at least some of the latest polls. For example, the CNBC poll has Trump getting 34% of the vote in a four-way race with nine percent undecided. That makes it less startling to see that Trump is getting just 28% in a the latest Public Policy Institute of California poll.
Is this good news or bad news for Paul Ryan? You probably heard it from me first over a week ago, but Scott Wong at The Hill has noticed that a smaller majority for Ryan will make it harder for him to win the leadership contest within the House Republican caucus. And Wong noticed another thing.
Trump may add to Ryan’s problems.
The businessman has repeatedly criticized Ryan’s leadership and was stung after the Speaker said he would not longer defend Trump after a 2005 tape emerged in which the GOP nominee speaks lewdly about groping and kissing women.
Win or lose on Nov. 8, Trump could put pressure on House Republicans to oppose Ryan in a speakership contest.
The presence of Trump campaign chairman Steve Bannon is another factor.
As an executive with Breitbart news, Bannon has made it his mission to depose Ryan. He is unlikely to stop causing trouble for the Speaker after the election.
Yes, and I don’t think folks like Sean Hannity are going to give Paul Ryan a pass on the whole “stabbed in the back” conspiracy theory.
Truth be told, though, if Trump’s doing as poorly as some are predicting, the House probably will fall to the Democrats. So far, though, this is still not supported by the evidence. It would require Trump to be doing somewhat worse than the polling average, in my opinion.
One piece of good news for Trump is that he’s guaranteed to win more states and Electoral Votes than McGovern even if he gets less of the popular vote. So, he’ll probably spin it that way.
My concern now is the Senate. This country cannot afford another 4 years of gridlock.
If R’s keep control of the House, then gridlock for significant legislation will continue. A narrow D control of the Senate will at least allow for court appointments – after the filibuster for the judiciary is killed. So lots of heartburn is on the horizon, complicated by a 2018 election with D’s at a big disadvantage. Pollsters seem to be having a difficult time determining who will vote in two weeks. National numbers show either a small +3 Clinton edge to a +10 point romp. If the latter proves more accurate, maybe we get the House. Then we have to kill the filibuster altogether to pass legislation. Might as well, R’s were gonna do it anyway.
Both 538 and Sam Wang suggest that Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are inching back toward Trump while Clinton’s support is holding steady. At this point, Trump isn’t gaining ground fast enough to close the gap unless the polling is off in a big way. But a big event could still shake things up.
I’m still hoping for a video of Trump bragging about raping an underage child or using the “N” word or something similarly explosive. That sort of October surprise could bury the whole GOP field. Without it, I think it more likely we’ll get the presidency and the Senate with a very narrow majority, but just pick up 5 to 10 seats in the House.
In a way that could be a Republican nightmare scenario. The filibuster is suffocated with a pillow, Hillary puts in place the first liberal Supreme Court in almost 50 years, and Republicans are forced to try to govern in the House while carrying long knives and slitting each other’s throats in dark corridors.
Of course it’s hard to make predictions. Some new dynamic has a way of emerging and surprising us.
Now he’s approaching Crazification Factor status:
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/10/lunch-discussions-145-crazification.html
I can’t remember where I read this but I thought a 7% difference in the popular vote between Clinton and Cheetoh Donnie brought the Senate into play and 11% brings the House into play. By into play I mean “realistic shot at flipping”. If he really drops to the Crazification Factor (more or less), then we easily get em both.
I doubt he’ll go that low, hell I doubt he’ll drop below McGovern’s numbers. Anything under 40% would be gravy.
Your link took me to a blog entry dated 2005. Is that what was intended?
The crazification factor was put forward by John Rogers (a television writer) to describe how Alan Keyes won 27% of the vote against Barack Obama in the Illinois Senate Race.
The idea was that race and gender weren’t at issue in that race, so it came down simply to party identification. Alan Keyes was so obviously unqualified that only someone who would vote for republicans at all costs would cast their vote for him: that number was 27%, which turns up from now and then in electoral politics.
Yes. The Crazification Factor is a classic post by John Rogers that explains much of GOP behavior.
It’s pretty good! Thanks for the link.
Yes, the head injury caucus rises and falls, but its core of support remains, always, twenty-seven percent (+/- 3%).
Add it to your dictionary, thesaurus and Wikipedia.
I want an absolute Mondale blowout because I don’t want to hear about “tampering” (which, where the hell were those guys when Bush took Ohio by that mysterious, late razor-thin margin in 2004?) — but I really want all three branches because I’m so tired of these assholes shamelessly sabotaging the entire federal government while bitching that it doesn’t work.
I just think it’s an extreme situation — the shutdowns and filibusters were a novelty in Gingrich’s time, but now they’re commonplace, and refusing to even look at a SCOTUS nominee is rapidly being normalized. The fact that Tea Party voters don’t seem to even understand on a rudimentary level how the government works (and Trump is right there with them, wondering why Hillary didn’t “fix” the tax laws when she was in the Senate) exacerbates the problem.
So, I’m not “power mad” or vindictive; I just think America needs to see a fucking working government for a change; they don’t seem to remember what it looks like and they have naïve, fatalistic ideas of what’s preventing it.
Why are people cheer-leading for an outcome that will simply cement the status quo, continue to immiserate the masses, and delay the otherwise ineluctable day of revolution?
Because the alternatives are vastly worse, and because purging away the perceptive toxicity of Democratic and Progressive agendae is an important task no matter how entrenched the opposition or how cynically one regards the current iterations of those ideals.
I think he’s making fun of the leftier-than-thou purity pony brigade.
woosh
Now I feel stupid
The dialectic is not pessimistic. It is not optimistic. It simply is — and its effects are ineluctable.
Davis’s victims are a pretty distinguished crowd. He’s certainly got me more than once.
This is a little off-topic, but somebody should point out that Trump isn’t fit to wipe George McGovern’s shoes.
Yeh, he’s too out of shape to bend over and put the necessary effort into it, plus he’d probably botch the job, then blame the crappy results on the materials his flunkies gave him to work with.
Plus all the other reasons.