Democrats are starting to realize that they’ve lined up behind a terrible candidate:
Nervous Senate Democrats raised concerns with Hillary Clinton during a private meeting in the Capitol Thursday over a recent poll showing Donald Trump leading or tied in several battleground states.
“Some people were freaked out, they were looking down at the polls on Real Clear Politics and asking why it was so close,” said a Democratic senator who attended the meeting, referring to a website lawmakers were checking out on their personal devices.
Clinton’s response? “She said there are other issues. People are unhappy and they don’t trust institutions,” the senator explained.
A second Democratic source in the meeting confirmed there was “a mention of the Florida poll.”
A Quinnipiac University poll released this week showed the presumptive GOP presidential nominee up 42 percent to 39 percent in swing-state Florida. Clinton had an 8-point lead in Quinnipiac’s poll of the state last month.
The same survey showed Trump ahead 2 points in Pennsylvania, another big swing state, and tied in Ohio. The three states have been pivotal in the last four presidential elections.
The source emphasized that no one suggested that Clinton wasn’t running a strong race or questioned her performance.
Instead, it was an acknowledgement that the presidential race will be very close even though many Washington-based strategists and pundits across the ideological spectrum question Trump’s seriousness as a candidate.
“There was concern raised about the race because we know it’s going to be a close race,” said the source.
I’ve predicted a Trumpslide rather than a close race. The predictions here have varied tremendously, with expert number-cruncher dh seeing an easy Clinton win, and virtually everything else in between.
- SciVo: Trump 352
- dh: Clinton 307, Trump 231
- EscapeVelocity: Trump 270 to 280
What will happen will happen, regardless of what any of us think. But here is my explanation for why the analysis of the usual numbers don’t matter. One, it is too early for them to be relevant. At this stage, Leave was far behind Remain in the #Brexit referendum. At this stage, Dukakis was 17 points ahead of Bush. So, the number crunchers will almost surely change their tune as the numbers change.
Two, the candidates’ actions and world events will affect the numbers. Both these trends favor Trump. What is Hillary going to do to Trump that will reduce his appeal, versus what Trump is going to do to her? And what events are going to take place around the world that will enhance Hillary’s appeal versus Trump’s, especially when Hillary is going around saying things like this as entire families are being wiped out in France by Muslims.
All Trump has to do is relentlessly quote Hillary on about a dozen different subjects and he’ll win. As for those who say my political predictions are uniformly bad or that I am out of the US political prediction business, let me point out four things.
- I make my predictions very early. I don’t wait until it is obvious. Where is the fun in that?
- I called #Brexit correctly
- I called Trump being the Republican nominee correctly
- The US presidential election is not about US politics this year.