Posted on 07/28/2017 3:03:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The conventional wisdom has calcified: Donald Trump is going to lose to Hillary Clinton.
Sure, there have been brief moments when the outcome seemed in doubt — when the FBI director called Clinton's handling of her emails while secretary of state "extremely careless"; when it looked for about a half-hour that Trump received a significant bump from the GOP convention. But for the most part, and especially in the month since the conclusion of the Democratic convention, the race has settled into a stable pattern, with Clinton running between 4 and 8 points ahead of Trump nationally and beating him in most, if not all, of the so-called swing states. Hence the conventional wisdom: Trump will lose.
But the conventional wisdom is wrong. Trump isn't merely going to lose. He's going to lose in the biggest popular vote landslide in modern presidential history.
Democrat George McGovern finished with 37.5 percent in his 1972 race against Richard Nixon, the lowest tally for a major party nominee in a two-person race since Republican Alf Landon pulled in 36.5 percent against FDR in 1936. (George H.W. Bush managed to win 37.4 percent in his 1992 contest against Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, with the latter coming in at 18.9 percent of the vote.) Trump is now on track to challenge all of these results. It's not crazy to think he'll finish with less than 35 percent of the popular vote.
The electoral map will be different. Trump will lose there, too — though unlike McGovern, who pulled in only 17 electoral votes, Trump is pretty much guaranteed a triple-digit tally of electoral votes thanks to overwhelming Republican dominance of states in the South, Midwest, and Intermountain West. The GOP could nominate a turnip and still win the South.
But the popular vote will tell the democratic truth: Trump may well end up being the most unpopular candidate from a major party since before the New Deal.
In the national popular vote, the RealClearPolitics average has Trump at 41.4 percent, while FiveThirtyEight estimates 42.5 percent. That's low, but not at all unprecedented, especially in a race with three or more serious competitors. Compared to Republican Barry Goldwater's 38.5 percent in 1964 and Democrat Walter Mondale's 40.6 percent in 1984, a Trump outcome of 42 percent would be far from humiliating.
But he isn't going to finish at 42 percent.
It's not because of Hillary Clinton's appeal as a candidate. Far from it. She's only polling in the mid-to-high 40s now. (RCP has her at 46.7 percent; FiveThirtyEight at 48 percent). That's about where she'll end up.
Trump, by contrast, is going to sink. Voters are just beginning to understand a lesson that will be driven home by the debates and the merciless barrage of ads that the Clinton campaign will unleash against the GOP nominee in the final month of the campaign: that the only consistency about Trump is that he will disappoint and humiliate anyone who comes to believe in him.
Trump invariably transforms supporters into suckers. And that is a recipe for a landslide loss.
The list of prominent Republicans humiliated by Trump is very, very long: from Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio on down to Paul Ryan and John McCain. That has left Trump with a smaller base of supporters than one would expect from a major party nominee in 2016. (Mitt Romney was averaging 2-3 percentage points higher than Trump at this point in the race.)
Now, many of those favoring Trump have been passionately devoted to the candidate. That is unlikely to persist through the trials that began roughly 10 days ago and are bound to continue over the coming weeks.
Trump has reversed himself on a long list of policies over the years. But the one constant since he announced his candidacy for president in June 2015 has been his anti-immigrant stance. He would build a wall along the southern border of the United States and forcibly deport as many as 11 million undocumented immigrants. He's made the point over and over again at countless campaign rallies and events and in dozens of interviews and debates over the past 14 months. He alone will fix the problem of illegal immigration, unlike the losers who support various forms of amnesty, including the path to citizenship contained in the Gang of 8's immigration bill, which Rubio co-wrote.
But now? As Ann Coulter learned on the eve of a book tour to promote her love letter to Trump for his all-around trustworthiness, especially on immigration, the GOP nominee is the most singularly unreliable figure in American politics, even on his signature issue. First Trump indicated that he doesn't think amnesty (in all but name) is really so bad after all. Then his surrogates made clear that his promised border wall and mass deportations might end up being more "virtual" than real. On Wednesday, Trump traveled to Mexico City, met with Mexico's president, apparently chickened out of backing up his long-held and loudly declared boasts of making Mexico pay for the border wall, and pronounced the country full of "great people." Just a few hours later, Trump delivered a furious tirade of a speech in Phoenix about the horrors of illegal immigration and assured the rowdy audience that Mexico would pay for "100 percent" of the border wall.
Who knows what to believe?
Between now and Election Day, Trump will surely offer up even more of a mish-mash of positions on immigration (along with every other issue), with some of them sounding like pivots to less extreme views and others reinforcing harsher stances. But it's already too late. There are now squishy sound bites to quote in debates and replay endlessly in campaign ads. Which is exactly what the Clinton camp will do over and over again. As the weeks go by, the hits are going to take a toll. They won't necessarily drive Trump's supporters into the hands of Gary Johnson or Evan McMullin, and they certainly won't inspire them to consider voting for Clinton. But Clinton doesn't need them to do that. She just needs them to stay home on Nov. 8. That's when Trump's failure to open field offices across the country is going to prove decisive — and fatal.
The most credulous members of the Trump fan club will show up to cast ballots for him no matter what he says and does. But the rest? An awful lot of them are likely to stay home out of simple self-respect. Precisely how many do so is what will make the difference between a loss and a historic wipeout.
Bwahahahaha
Fake News
Polls that overweight Dems over Pubbies by 8-10 points are not a good basis for predicting the outcome of elections.
Calcified is a good word, although they didn't intend it. Also rusted, putrified, failed, broken all would describe typical MSM "conventional wisdom."
bump
“But Clinton doesn’t need them to do that. She just needs them to stay home on Nov. 8. That’s when Trump’s failure to open field offices across the country is going to prove decisive — and fatal. “
FATAL !!!!!
(Think I’ll re watch some of the election night coverage over the weekend.)
.
Mmmmmmmm....landslide.
Hillary’s rarely-used vagina musta been twitching at Mach One speed hearing that news.
Best Of The Young Turks Election Day Meltdown 2016: From smug to utterly devastated. (Language warning)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiWY0iRLV94&t=989s
Thanks,and the language will not bother me——mine wasn’t very ladylike during Obama’s “reign of terror”.
.
I loved reading that.
I read that Trump’s approval was 41% today, I suppose that means he’s closer to 53%.
Hillary Clinton: ‘What Happened? I thought the Fix was In?
That was delicious.
Everytime I get depressed about the seeming blockade and threats from the Deep State, Dems, Media and McCainiac Nevertrumpers, I read an article like this or watch the YouTube tapes of Election Night 2016 when the joyful condescension of the 8pm hour turns to the deepening dread of 10 pm. My favorite is CBS, which doesn’t have a single conservative commentator and pretends to be neutral until the wee hours when it is clear their candidate has lost; Evan Thomas goes on a very honest rant about how wonderful it was in the olden days when one of the networks or newspapers of record would write the “lead” for the day and the rest of the mainstream media would follow, with nary a contrary word to provide a distraction.
I didn’t need to read much of that before I knew it was complete drivel.
I think this was a desperate attempt to rescue Hillary’s losing bid - I think the writer knew she was losing and went all out to try to damage the self-confidence/self-esteem of the voters, which I think is.....odd.
The writer warns that those who vote for or support him will be “humiliated.” When I vote, I’m not worried about my pride, I’m worried about my country - but this hack warns voters to look after themselves. The writer ends his propaganda piece suggesting that voters will have too much “self-respect” to vote for him - again going personal on the voters and telling them to guard their pride first and foremost. All of which makes me think that the writer exemplifies the leftist voter - it’s all about vanity for them and in a failed effort to stop Hill’s loss, this writer used projection to attack vanity because he considered it his/his parties deepest vulnerability and just assumed it was ours too.
election night is still one the most fun ive ever had,,,i was stunned..amazed...and enjoying others misery like never before..i still chuckle...they are still so pissed.
Conventional wisdom is so reliable.
History is not written by the loser.
I've been systematically working my way through all of the coverage that is on line. TYT (The Young Turks with Chink Uygur) degenerates into an obscenity laced tirade. The three most over the top are CBC (Canada) and ITV (UK) and BBC (UK). All begin the night by preparing their audiences for an easy Hillary victory and explaining that Trump has no chance and end up predicting the apocalypse.
RT with Larry King, Ed Shultz and Jessie Ventura also has it's hilarious moments - like when Larry King compares the Trump/Clinton race to the 1832 race between John Quincy Adams and Stonewall (sic) Jackson. For the record, JQA defeated Andrew Jackson in 1824 in the "corrupt bargain" election, lost to Jackson in 1828 and was not on the ballot in 1832. Also, Stonewall Jackson would have been 8 years old in 1832. Old Larry is obviously loosing it.
No way can Trump win now. It’s all over for him. ;)
Thanks for that link———I’ve watched the three networks,PBS, some streaming sites,and the cable news stations but it never occurred to me to check out Canada and the U.K. I’ll be checking them out in the next few days.
For what it’s worth,Ed Shultz is to be commended for really reaming Hillary for her no-show at the Javits Center.As much as he annoys me,that was nice to hear.
.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.