I don’t know why but the juxtaposition of that user name and that post makes me smile!
Anyway, back to discussing the op some. Back in post#840 I had promised that I’d join the handwringing brigade if Clinton’s numbers stayed as low as they had gotten in polls reflective of the week after she returned to the campaign trail.
So far my hands remain unwrung.
ANY chance of a Trump victory is too large, but the Chicken Littling of the op is clearly falsified. Even though “toss-up” is overly dramatic Clinton can still lose this thing but if she does it won’t because of her pneumonia.
It wasn’t the pneumonia, it was the image that played for several days, of her collapsing and being lifted into the van. Thereafter, her team claimed it was pneumonia. Most likely it was, but the damage was done. Ohio, North Carolina and Florida now slightly favor Trump. That’s critical.
Fortunately, Clinton has increased her lead by about 5 points in the odds of wining at 538 since her numbers dipped. That number means little other than it shows the polls trend. Princeton has Clinton at 273 electoral, Trump at 221, with 44 now in the air. Those 44 are NC and Florida. As I said, Trump is ahead in NC and Florida right now. Seriously, start wringing your hands. This is close, this is VERY close.
I never said anything remotely like “Trump’s the end of the Republic” nor exhibited outward signs of bunched panties. I think he’s a bafoonish conman but I’m not all worked up about it.
And of the 273 that she now has, it’s still possible for a state like CO and NH to slip away. Yes, the odds are still very much in her favor for sure - no disputing that. But considering how we were once talking ‘landslide’ we can’t discount anything anymore. There is no reliable precedent to point to in this race. It has a character and a life of its own.
And that’s the popular narrative that I think is way overplayed.
Not a huge videogamer myself but my kids played lots when they were younger and this reminds me a bit of those games - a new game would be released every so often. Most often had a new and different “skin” but he engine of the game was clearly the same as other ones before it. This race is like that. The same basic engine with a new skin.
It is staying true to the modern era’s relatively low volatility style of races that a polarized electorate will produce with each one having its own individual way that it is special, some closer than others. It has no more and no less reliable precedent than the last few have had.
News cycles can push it from its equilibrium but unless it is something persistent and dominant they won’t keep it very far from its equilibrium.
The map is not being reshuffled. There have been some demographic shifts and exaggerations of previous trends and they’ve been mostly baked in fairly early. As always a black swan can occur unpredictably … sort of the nature of black swans. That possibility is no more or less than any other time.
Final polls calling a popular vote blowout was never very likely but not impossible (and still is not impossible) and a narrow Trump win was never very likely but not impossible. Turnout will be key and it often is.
Odds are that it will be a race that falls somewhere near Obama over Romney maybe a bit more. To my read that’s been the case and remains the case.
Breathless responses to short term polling shifts up or down and differences of thought over how likely that it and how much of a chance Trump has at any one point in time aside, most of us who support Clinton (or oppose Trump) can agree that odds over zero are sufficient cause for some sleepless nights.
Come to think about it, I haven’t heard “landslide” mentioned here in a while now. That was Casey at the Bat overconfidence.
Now it’s looking like the election may come down to 5 or 6 electoral votes, maybe less. Yes, start wringing your hands, it’s going to be a really close one.
I would put less poor odds on a Clinton +8 than on a Trump win (both as longshot outcomes) and would place the EV floor at Clinton +7 EV. That gives Trump all of OH, FL, NC, NV, and the one district in ME. Improbable but conceivable.
IMHO though the odds of a Clinton EV win of over 90 EV are much higher than the odds of 6 EV or less and an EV win of 144 would not shock me. With a popular vote margin of 4 to 5%.
That said please wring … and ring, doorbells, phone lines … as a narrative it is better that this is perceived as going to be a really close one.
If Clinton is perceived as giving a strong debate performance, particularly in the eyes of more centrist voters and millennial voters, then Clinton will probably make the race seem pretty typical. But if Clinton looks bad in the debates, she could conceivably fall by as much as 5-7 percent in the polls in the days following and then perhaps a residual of 2-3 percent until something shifts the news cycle back against Trump. Can she get back up off the mat if she gets knocked down? Maybe but it’ll be harder for her to do it without some help from Trump.
And that brings me to my point: If Clinton were running against a less defective GOP nominee – even Ted Cruz – there would never have been a Judge Curiel moment that pushed Trump’s numbers down to a 10 point deficit. There would never have been any taunting of the Khan family – hell the Khan family never would have been invited to speak. Cruz, a pretty horrendous candidate in his own right, would be beating Hillary Clinton by at least 2-3 points and maybe more. That’s what I’m getting at. When you look at the movement in the campaign it has been the result of a sharp decline in enthusiasm for each candidate. Large numbers of voters have been unable to make up their minds – hence the poll shifts and the sensitivity to the news cycles. There would be less sensitivity if there were less vulnerable candidates. I’m sorry – you can say that this race is like the others but it’s not, or perhaps a more accurate way to state it is that it has not been so far.
However, I do agree that as time elapses, as we get into this home stretch, there are some things that will happen as they always do. Fewer people will be undecideds. Unenthusiastic partisans will gradually begin to shuffle their feet toward the side they identify with more. I wouldn’t rule out Gary Johnson going from 8-9 percent down to about half that as partisans begin to realize there’s no use in supporting a symbolic campaign. I agree that these trends eventually happen in any race, but it’s just happening a LOT more slowly in this one, owing to the perceived flaws and undesirability of the nominees.
The debate is going to be a potential game changer – not just because of the debate itself but also because of how the results will be sold to malleable voters through social media, Google News feeds, and the like. Trump is actually set up better to take advantage of that than Clinton. We know about his skill in using Twitter, but more that, he has a quiet army led by Steve Bannon who is going to aggressive use right wing propagandist online media to ‘sell’ the narrative that Clinton lost the debate – and lost big. Notice how many crap polls there have been lately? That’s not a coincidence; that’s right wing propaganda, and buckle up, because it’s going to get a hell of a lot more intense over the next 30-40 days. This is why I’m genuinely worried about Clinton. Even if she “wins” debates, it’s possible that people might not see it that way.
There is no possibility that Clinton can look “bad” in the debates. She has been in many of them and not once has she looked “bad” … the worst that can happen is a paradoxical effect of the expectations game. But virtually guaranteed that Trump’s supporters will see him winning the debate, connecting emotionally to the concerns of the American people and presenting a different approach, with crooked Clinton as same-same, and that Clinton’s supporters will see Clinton having won the debate appearing confident and strong, having presented a clear optimistic vision, having shown both a command of the facts and detailed plans for how to achieve that optimistic vision, and see Trump as a buffoon who embarrassed himself.
She won’t have a knock out blow because she will be very cautious and thus a bit stiff. And she won’t do “bad” either.
As to Cruz - I do not see him as having done any better than Trump. Different drivers of news cycles but the polarized electorate is still what it is.
Look at it this way: (using HuffPo) as the primaries were finishing up in May Clinton was about 13 points under water on favorability nationally. Not great to be sure. Trump was about 22 points down, and Cruz was about 25 points under. He is a very unlikable guy.
But as fun as alt-histories can be, what we have is what we have. Cruz will go to his grave believing it though!
That’s the kiss of death right there. If Hillary has to stand for 90 minutes, under hot lights, just 2 weeks after collapsing, there may well be a way Hillary can look bad. While wringing your hands please keep your fingers crossed that she doesn’t have any sort of relapse or otherwise demonstrate physical problems during the debate. I’m sure younger healthy people would find 90 minutes under those conditions trying.
Well you’re wrong – it’s absolutely possible. Remember the first Obama - Romney debate? Obama had been a pretty good performer in debates up to that point, but got drubbed in his first tangle with Romney and his poll numbers went down 6 points in the days that followed. And the bad news is, the chance to recover doesn’t come until a good 7-10 days later.
I think cautious and stiff are not the adjectives I would use to describe an ideal Clinton debate performance. You seem to believe that the debates are about Clinton vs. Trump – they are to a degree, but Clinton needs to use the debate performance to shape the narrative about herself. If people see a stiff, cautious, calculated, and occasionally defensive Hillary Clinton at the debates, that’s bad. What they want to see - whether they realize it or not - is evidence that Clinton has a soul and that she’s even willing to risk not getting elected by showing a sense of character and conviction. And she needs to keep the pressure on Donald the way that Marco Rubio did in one of their debates, not by making sexual innuendo obviously, but by communicating directly with voters and asking them to dig into Trump’s fraud and falsehoods. They need to see energy and passion, not cautiousness.
Cruz, like Trump, is an unlikable guy, but he is a better natural politician who would have avoided the nearly fatal mistakes that Trump has made. He would have had his own bad press for sure. He probably would have struggled to win over more of the independents but he probably would have had more partisan support early on, and he wouldn’t have blown himself up in the polls for weeks at a time with relentless attacks on ordinary people. Look at the two things that have been responsible for Trump’s worst moments of the campaign: attacks Judge Curiel and the Khans. That’s all 100 percent unforced error and all 100 uniquely Donald Trump. Nobody else makes those mistakes. Nobody. And nobody survives even the first of these in a normal race. Alas, we’re not in a normal race. We’re in a race to the bottom of the polls.
I’m less worried about a relapse of physical problems. A more realistic danger is that she comes across, as she did in some of her debates with Bernie Sanders, as lacking energy and enthusiasm. I think people want to see a passionate Hillary Clinton - they want to see if there’s anything other than just political ambition there. She’s not going to win this thing by being Miss Factoid. Not saying she should lie either – don’t follow the Donald into the gutter. But play it more like Marco Rubio did, pestering the hell out of him with questions and needling him when he doesn’t respond. If she can do it by being relentless without losing her cool, then I think she could win big. It doesn’t require being inauthentic but it does require a little more oomph than what I’ve seen in some of her past performances.
Clinton has never looked bad in debates, but she’s never looked particularly good either. And she’s never had to answer to her various scandals in a debate setting, since Democrats tend to shy away from that subject. Trump won’t, and her off the cuff explanations of her issues have tended to make her look bad in the past.
Seems like the strategy of both candidates is to fluster the other. That’s smart. Debates don’t move the polls based on a candidate’s command of the issues, they move the polls based on things like temperament or a zinger that really cuts.
Choosing a way to possibly fluster your opponent while pissing off 50+% of the electorate is not a winning strategy, Adaher.
I can tell you that, in doing outreach yesterday, this news is causing actual outrage (a word too commonly used) among women. It is horrible optics for the Trump campaign and there is no advantage, voter wise, to this move. None.
You ever see a group of middle-aged women freeze a friend out because the friend had an affair with another friends husband?
I wonder if Trump actually follow through with it or if it’s just his usual puffery. If he actually does do this, I suspect you might be onto something. Most millennials don’t really remember much about Bill Clinton’s sexcapades and I find myself in agreement: he really risks looking like a disgusting human being by doing this. Sure, he’s done and said disgusting things already but this could be the Super Bowl of debates, and this could be a monumental distraction that backfires and overshadows a golden opportunity to score in the debates themselves.
Seems like Pence is saying (hoping) that it’s just more of Donald’s theatrical twitter bullshit.
My guess is Donald wanted it, and Conway and Bannon probably said “Noooooo, no, no, Donald.” I wonder if this is where Conway grounds him and takes away Twitter privileges for a week.
The first Obama-Romney debate is indeed pertinent. My experience of that was not so much that Obama did poorly but that Romney did well - he was energetic, sharp, and with facts at hand. Likable even. Of course it also illustrates that even a strong debate performance does not do much that lasts. Polls did go down (more like 4 to my read of RCP but no matter) but Obama’s polling before the debate, RCP rolling average of +3.1, was still pretty predictive of the final result election day, Obama +3.9.
That said I agree that her likely being cautious, very aware that any single line can and will be played out of any meaningful context over and over again if it can be spun badly, is what will limit how well she can do, just as it limits how badly she can do.
Ideal for her is:
Being energetic and passionate without only playing the one tone that sounds like yelling (take a lesson from Biden on how to make your decibels matter by moving from soft and intense to louder). Occasionally even a bit funny and relaxed. Show more of the complete human range. Do a better job of empathizing with less educated Whites and others who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and who are just desperate for change (pretty much lifted from her full deplorables quote) making sure that her plans also include ladders of opportunity for them.
Having good responses, possibly even pre-emptively made, to obvious attacks, like the emails, and I am not sure what they would be. She has made mistakes and she has been less than completely forthcoming about them.
As much as possible keeping the focus on her positive vision and specific plans without getting wonkish about them, and on the litany of lies, scams, reversals, and lack of any plans (“Trust me, he says, he’s got plans, he just won’t share them. Well students at Trump University trusted him, business partners trusted him, and he conned them all. We don’t trust you Mr. Trump. You may consider us easy marks but we are not.”) from Trump, asking him to specifically respond to them.
If she can do that then she actually does score the knock-out blow. I doubt she will though. I think that she just won’t look bad. And Trump will keep repeating his catch phrases for his time and try to keep the focus on Clinton’s negatives and how he represents change. If he can keep himself from saying anything overtly racist or misogynistic he will “exceed expectations.” I think it is a bit expected now that he will exceed expectations. Seriously the bar is low. That said, and no insult is really meant, his attention span is not the best and he is pretty easy to bait. He might not even meet that low bar.
This is quite true. However, there is a significant difference: Obama was the incumbent president who had gradually gained the public trust of a majority of voters, and he had very strong backing from both the progressive and centrist wings of the democratic party early on in the race, all of which made it easier to sell the Democratic message to left-leaning (and even a few somewhat right-leaning) independents. Unfortunately, this is an advantage that Hillary Clinton does not enjoy.
Hillary Clinton probably wins if there is perceived to be no winner – that would be true because even if the polls somehow shift a point or two toward Trump, I agree with you that the residual of a debate is probably only half of the initial poll movement, and can easily be corrected in the next debate, or by events completely unrelated to the debate. I just don’t assume automatically that a correction occurs. The situation is more fluid and dynamic than that, I think.
Right now, according to RCP averages, Trump is approaching a threshold he’s only crossed maybe two or three times and only truly exceeded once in the days after the R convention. But Clinton is hovering above her nadir. There’s little room for error, and everyone’s paying attention now. If Trump is perceived as scoring a decisive victory, Clinton will be in very serious trouble. And it will be hard for her to recapture control of the election narrative unless Trump seriously errs.
Now That must have caused a tantrum! …or as tan as an orange angry little man with tiny fingers gets.
“The Media told you that…! The Media told you that…!”, cried the little man, and he stamped his tiny foot on the stage so hard, he broke his candidacy in two…" - ‘Drumpfelstiltskin’, 2017
Seriously the bar is low. That said, and no insult is really meant, his attention span is not the best and he is pretty easy to bait. He might not even meet that low bar.