Bunch of NBC/WSJ/Marist battleground polls released today. The sole good news for GOP is that Rubio is ahead in FL.
Clinton leads in:
FL +5
NC +9
VA +13
CO +14
Wonder what’s going on in Georgia. The polls are pretty divergent. The last couple has one saying Clinton +7 and the other Trump +4.
At a guess, I’d say that polling firms are still getting their models settled for the state. They have thousands of past polls for Ohio to use but how often is Georgia polled for presidential elections?
The latest Trump +4 was a Breitbart/Gravis poll giving Trump a 1pt lead in a two-way race and expanding to 4pts if Johnson/Stein were added. So which polling method is used may not be reflective across the board.
Spinning that as positively for Trump as I can is that the FL trendline is slightly down from their last FL poll. Was Clinton +7 now only Clinton +5.
But yeah.
The others all trendlines going the other way and many swing states moving solidly out of reach. Put together with other recent ones and CO, VA, NC, PA, NH … all pretty much in a lock with Clinton leading but not locked down in FL, OH, IA, and NV.
Hmm I’m a Republican but on the Presidential side that looks like unanimously great news. :rolleyes:
Not too shockingly as polls settle in and time passes even a bit NowCast and Polls-only are starting to converge. Trump odds of winning 12.5% on Polls-only and 10.9% on NowCast. Polls-plus remains weighted by a priors that believes the election “should” be somewhat close.
Cook Political Report now has Clinton winning with 272 electoral votes without any “Toss-Up” states (FL, IA, OH, NC, NV)
Stick a fork in him. Trump’s done.
Impressing cratering from the Trump Campaign, though.
I’d stick a fork in him, done or not, assuming I can borrow one from somebody else.
And you don’t mind the smell of burnt circus peanuts and composting cow shit.
I’ll have you not demean cow shit this way, sir.
My question is this: if you’re Hillary and the Democrats, at what point do you start more aggressively going after the republican party as a whole? How and where do you start hammering away and making conscious connections between Donald Trump and the intransigence of the republican party as a whole? I would not be satisfied with just beating Trump - the republican party needs to suffer and pay a heavy price for this one. But beyond just payback, the country needs a taste of what California now has, which is one-party rule and a state that produces budget surpluses, responds more efficiently to crises, and just generally gets a lot more accomplished than it did when Grover Norquist was the defacto governor of the state and using Ahnold as his hand puppet.
Right now, Hillary, Kaine, Obama and Bill need to be making joint appearances and fund raisers with any Senate/House candidates willing to have them. And those candidates need to already be forcing their opponents to either denounce or defend Trump. Then, if the polls stay where they’re at (about 90% on 538’s Now-cast) until Labor Day, then the national party needs to start pouring money into Senate and House races. There are a lot of gerrymandered districts with thin Republican margins that are vulnerable when the national tide is at +8% in favor of Clinton.
On side note, I really wish 538 would put out their House projection. I believe it’s very possible for the House to flip. (And I say this as an old-school centrist Republican who’s looking forward to the current party burning down.)
I hope to see the Senate hit 50-50 or so. I’d like to see the House get close, but I cant see it going Dem. But when they only need a handful of Repubs to cross the aisle, hell, I’ll bet Hillary has enough blackmail pictures in a file somewhere to make *that *happen.
If you look at the advantage that the GOP has in terms of members of the House, it’s a real long shot for the democrats. However, part of the reason they were able to gain such an advantage was the way in which they gerrymandered the districts, which resulted in more republican-leaning districts but with majorities that were less decisive. In other words, the republicans were able to make gains but they also diluted districts that were at one time were strongly republican but are now just barely or somewhat so. So it would take a landslide to win, but a landslide might actually be easier to achieve in some ways. The GOP created these districts assuming that even if they lost seats, they would effectively democrat-proof the House. They couldn’t have foreseen someone like Trump.
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” - Napoleon Bonaparte
Trump is the abscess of less educated White resentment being welcomed into the GOP coming to a head and it is in the middle of the GOP’s forehead right before the big dance.
Let them deal with the pus. No popping it won’t help and no make-up can cover it up. It is inflamed and draining.
It seriously is better to let the fracture in progress unfold with less heavy handed poking by Clinton leaving the tieing to Trump to be played out in local markets as appropriate.
Beat on the intransience for its own sake, not as tied to Trump. Simultaneously stoke the division while making it clear that both of the GOP groups are dysfunctional. Do not inadvertently unite them.
Hillary’s first job is to win the election. Trailing far behind that is her 2nd job which is to win the Senate. The 3rd longshot job is to win the House. In last place, she needs to run up the score.
For the rest of us, running up the score takes a somewhat higher priority. Trump has activated the white supremicist wing of the Republican party, revealing it to be the foundation of their electoral support. Most demagogues flame out, and Trump probably will as well. But he will leave behind a mess that the rest of us will have to sweep up. An electoral trouncing would help during the post-election autopsy both outside and especially within conservative circles.
Bottom line: somehow we have to expand the Democratic tent. Somehow we have to expand the fact-based neurotypical tent. Over at Vox Zack Beauchamp makes the following observation about the Sean Hannity/Bret Stephens spat: [INDENT][INDENT][INDENT] There is no bright line between Bret Stephens and Sean Hannity. They can both only exist in a conservative informational environment where independent intellectual authorities are disregarded and a certain set of politically convenient but indefensible ideas are treated as catechisms. The key difference is that Hannity is less pretentious about it. [/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT] Link on epistemic closure in original. Substantiation in Vox article: conservative circles have become increasingly cranky over time.
I admit I don’t know how to expand support for science and professionally grounded policy making. I think a necessary condition is to have a President who will give intellectually defensible though awkward ideas a hearing. Hillary would do that. But Obama had the same stance. I don’t know how to move from necessary to sufficient. I don’t know how to break the grip of obstructionism and hysteria on the Republican imagination and return our governance to the model imagined by the founding fathers.
Oh god. So hilariously, pathetically true.
One more job which goes ahead of running up the score - creating a situation where she can work with Republicans. She and Obama are not attacking anti-Trump Republicans as much as they could. This could help them come over, and also make it easier for them to split with the extreme Trumpist right in the Congress next year. The party is splintering, she should help.
Plus you may not want to encourage the RNC to pull money from a losing cause to Senate races where it might help. Every penny they spend on Trump in New York and Connecticut is a penny not doing them any good.
Actually, I think this is spot on excellent insight. Yes, indeed, the best approach is to marginalize the tea party nutters and confine them.