That may be difficult, as Politico reports in the same piece: An RNC member said discontent with the Trump campaign has hit new heights in recent days, describing “major tumult in the building and staff problems and disagreements and RNC staff on the edge of mutiny.”
Says one R strategist at CNBC in a piece titled You Can't Overstate Panic Inside the GOP : I am deeply concerned that Trump's campaign will be an extinction-level event for the GOP, wiping out hard won electoral gains built over a decade."
Trump has confounded GOPer political professionals in ignoring television advertising, voter research, even get out the vote efforts, and these days, his choices of where to take his campaign. His trip to Utah raised alarms only because an R candidate shouldn't have to go there, but Maine? Connecticut? No R has won there in decades. (It must drive the pros nuts--though it will be even worse for them if he wins.)
New NBC state polls show Hillary ahead in the battleground states of Florida (44-39), North Carolina (48-39), Virginia (46-33) and Colorado (46-32). That's all of the states they surveyed.
Without Colorado, Virginia and Pennsylvania, says the WPost analysis, Trump can't prevail. These polls show Clinton with double digit leads in Virginia and Colorado. The most recent PA polls show Trump down an average of 11 points. The NYTimes suggests that Trump may have reached his ceiling in PA and other swing states.
But according to Trump, the only way he loses PA is if the Dems cheat on election day. No, the only way Trump wins PA is if voters are intimidated by the prospect of Trump's armed vigilantes at polling places, and they don't vote. That's one reason this stuff isn't funny.
Sat. WPost describes the absurdity of Trump's charge, and seconds my point:"What Trump is encouraging is vigilante citizens harassing voters at polling places, asking that they prove they are who they say they are. He's asking for intimidation, explicitly: Challenge suspect voters. This is a recipe for tension, if not violence -- and the lack of voter fraud incidents reveals that there's no purpose to it. "
As Trump becomes even more erratic (he really means that Obama founded ISIL, no he doesn't it was sarcasm, maybe it's not really sarcasm, etc.; he says Hillary isn't mentally sharp while twice getting the day wrong, etc.) he prevents himself from expanding his numbers. His fate is the result of his own hands, or mouth.
With the exception of a massively surprising set of debate performances, and/or a massively successful ad blitz at the last minute, all that can change that fate now is out of his hands: a massive Hillary meltdown, or an external event, though at this point it is hard to imagine what that would be. Even a terrorist attack, and certainly a Russian invasion of Ukraine, probably would not help his chances. People would then be looking for a steadier hand. The channel would get switched from The Apprentice.
And there's 87 more days of this.
Hey, it's Friday and you know what that means! The Guardian's The lies that Trump told this week.
Meanwhile I'm taking the weekend off--make that a long weekend. Gonna get me some baseball.
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