Agreed. How many companies dropped out of the RNC? How about the infamous Koch brothers? Grass Roots Republicans thinking it’s okay to ask “the commies” for help in infiltration of the good ol’ USA? Let’s not forget the women and ethnicities that keep dropping further away from Trumpy Wumpy and the GOP in general…
We can all argue that it may or may not bring Hillary more votes, but regardless, it’s always less votes for him and the GOP and their putrid 18th century platform.
But as I asked in another thread, how often does a major presidential candidate actually lose a significant amount of support in polls that way? It seems to me one side thinks that the polls right now indicate that Trump is bulletproof, while the other thinks that they’re just one scandal away from a HYUUGE collapse, and I don’t think either is the case.
Except the trend from even back before his convention is that Trump’s been gaining on HRC to where it’s now basically tied. You can never prove that a given potential negative for a candidate isn’t one because they’ve been gaining. It might be a significant negative simply outweighed by more significant ones for the opponent*.
But the premise that Trump’s faux pas are gradually weighing him down in some monotonic trend is lacking in evidence IMO. In terms of visible permanent impact on the race I think anti-Trumpers are in fact hoping for more of a camel’s back or dam break or some similar metaphor: that outrageous statements by Trump will reach some critical mass that puts him behind from where he won’t bounce back. That just hasn’t happened so far, despite many stupid, offensive, etc comments by Trump.
*eg. the Comey press conference’s impact on HRC: graphic in today’s WSJ from NBC/WSJ poll is sobering, sizable increase in % in almost every demographic saying they are now more likely to factor the (original) email scandal into their voting decision, and I doubt many people would factor it in more heavily but come out more positively for Clinton.
Good point – that bit about “I’ll check if they’re making their contribution” was appalling and yet nobody really called him on the core issue (one point of NATO’s all-for-one-one-for-all policy is so that nobody gets thrown under the bus just because the big hitters feel it’s not worth the bother), probably thinking not unjustifiably that the American audience would itself say “ehhh, so, f*** Latvia, never heard of it”.
I’m having the increasing sense this is the EXACT dialogue going through the minds of a disturbingly large number of Americans. To the point where they think bombing, attacking or going to war with the rest of the world is actually a good idea. And I’m becoming worried they will make up the majority who vote come election day. 
Right, but, see, the really horrifying part is that he might say whatever damn fool thing comes into his head, play out that conversation, elicit the obvious response, and later mention that it was all just a joke that wasn’t supposed to be taken seriously.
Orange you glad no one on stage tonight ever did anything so stupid as to ally with a foreign power against the United States of America? 
I’m sorry, but I can’t buy into the logic of the “the more unelectable things he does, the more likely it is that he is going to be elected” argument.
He is getting the traditional bumps one would expect to occur because of bad news hitting his opponent three weeks ago and his convention occurring last week, exciting the Republicans who didn’t bother to vote in the primary, and that’s largely it.
But you’re relying on your own judgment, or perhaps people too like minded and not broadly representative enough to decide what are ‘unelectable things’. If you are wrong (although you could be right) that Trump’s upward trend is a transient bounce but instead it’s a permanent change to race, and he goes on to win, I think you might look back and agree on this possible flaw in your logic. It’s not pure logic.
I don’t know what a 270 EV plurality of the people who are actually going to show up at the polls this year find to be ‘unelectable things’. I think it’s possible Trump will capture that plurality among people who don’t think his previous statements outweighed their positive desire to put a bull in the china shop of a broken system (in their view) and relative to the flaws of Clinton. I’m particularly unconvinced that this latest thing, which is being overhyped IMO by now alarmed Democrats and their media allies, is going to amount to anything net.
Neither do I. But I do know that Donald Trump gives more people… more often… more “unelectable things” on a daily basis than Hillary. When the Undecideds go into the polls and consider “unelectable things”, they have to choose from:
Emails/Benghazi/Bunch of 90s Crap … on the Hillary side
Russia/Tax Returns/Muslim Bans/Mexican Rapists/Stupid & Dangerous Things Said #1-3,452/Russia/Stealing From Contractors including Pre-teen Girls/Not Knowing the Constitution/Mexican Judges/Russia/Trump University/3,000 Lawsuits and Counting/Twitter Rage/I Love Brexit/Russia/I Made The Call in Orlando!/My Convention Was a Mess/My Campaign Organization Is A Mess/I have No GOTV/All The People I Voted For Over The Past 28 Years To The Presidency Are Telling Me Not To Vote For This Guy (and my Senator too)/Lets Give Nukes To Saudi Arabia & Japan/Whatever Else JohnT Has Forgotten … on the other side.
So give him the expected bad news and convention bump, I would be shocked if this double-whammy didn’t move the needle in July. But “Possible FBI Indictments” is dead as an ongoing political issue and Benghazi isn’t going to move the needle at all… and Trump cannot help but keep feeding the American electorate a never-ending list of “unelectable things”.
After all, I don’t make him say these things… he does.
But you then post a long list of things that do not seem to be hurting Trump’s position in the polls. Talk all you want about them; they are not preventing him from catching up.
What you consider “unelectable things” do not appear to be anything of the sort. You have to come to the realization, sooner or later, that millions of people just don’t see it the way you do. They view many of these things as positives.
There’s no accounting for looney fucking toons. But there is also no reasonable and halfway-educated follower of politics who can’t see just how little this ignoramus is qualified to run a city let alone the country.
Put yourself in the position of a Democratic strategist (not a talking head giving spin on TV but actually trying to figure out how to win). From such a perspective your’s is a meaningless response to what I wrote.
There are a non-trivial amount of people who want the government to fail. Warning these people about the real dangers that Trump poses to the nation is as likely to succeed as warning a pyromaniac to be careful with matches. These people WANT chaos. It’s a feature, not a bug from their perspective. Since they can’t be reasoned with, they must simply be outvoted.
It is the reality, and where I come from, reality is never meaningless.
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Let’s face it, Trump is much more interesting that ol’ Hillary. How hard can it be to upstage a boring ol’ SSDD politician who been in politics for the last 30 years?
Trump can speak off-the-cuff to the media for an hour and a half. Ol’ Hillary wouldn’t even hold a press conference for the last 250+ days. Probably a fear that so few will tune in.
She’ll probably let the Hillary worshippers tell the voters what she will do. Again. (Still?)
Trump is older than Hillary.
He’s got about sixteen months on her.
I have mentioned this elsewhere, but I am pretty sure this’ll be the oldest Presidential election ever, contested between two candidates with a combined age of 139. Trump would be the oldest person ever elected President, and Clinton would be the second oldest, ten months younger than Reagan. Bernie Sanders would have been the oldest by far. George W. Bush is actually just a bit younger than Donald Trump. Barack Obama, of course, is still only 54, roughly the median age for a President’s first election.
It’s curious that in a country supposedly hungry for change, the choices are coming down to old people.
I think this logic is halfway there. In my (given, anecdotal) experience most people just ignore the “unelectable” things as they will never come to fruition.
Ex: Trump’s views on Muslims and his proposed solution (cutting of immigration based on religion) is unconstitutional at best and bigoted at worst… but who cares? There are still enough sane politicians that if a measure were to be formally proposed (it won’t be) it would not pass… so what does it matter that he acknowledged a fear (a minority of )people hold?
He’s inflammatory and that is part of the appeal. he sticks it to “the man.” As much as some posters might not want to admit it, Hillary Clinton embodies “the man” like no candidate in recent history.