Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

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(06-21-2016, 01:27 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The Trump campaign is becoming an outright catastrophe



By Paul Waldman June 20 at 9:12 AM 


What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail

Every presidential campaign has its ups and downs, its moments when everything seems to be going right and those when it looks to be hurtling toward defeat. This is one of the latter moments for Donald Trump, with him falling in the polls after a series of controversial statements (and frankly, “A Series of Controversial Statements” could be his campaign motto). Ed O’Keefe reports that panicked Republicans are waging a last-ditch effort to convince convention delegates to switch from Trump to someone or other, and they claim “that they now count several hundred delegates and alternates as part of their campaign.” The effort will almost certainly fail, but the fact that it consists of more than a few desperate people is an indication of how bad things are for Trump.

But wait — doesn’t he have plenty of time to turn this campaign around? So he trails Hillary Clinton by somewhere between 6 and 8 points in all the reputable polling averages — didn’t George H.W. Bush trail Michael Dukakis by 17 points after the Democratic convention in 1988?

Yes, Trump has time to reverse the current situation. But today’s polls aren’t meaningless, even if they don’t tell us exactly what will happen in November. The problem for Trump isn’t the size of his polling deficit (which isn’t all that large); it’s the magnitude of challenges his campaign faces.

While he could manage a stunning turnaround, at the moment Trump seems to have put together one of the worst presidential campaigns in history. Let’s take a look at all the major disadvantages Trump faces as we head toward the conventions:

A skeletal campaign staff. Trump succeeded in the primaries with a small staff whose job was to do little more than stage rallies. But running a national campaign is hugely more complex than barnstorming from one state to the next during primaries. While the Clinton campaign has built an infrastructure of hundreds of operatives performing the variety of tasks a modern presidential campaign requires, the Trump campaign “estimates it currently has about 30 paid staff on the ground across the country,” a comically small number.


Not enough money, and little inclination to raise it. Trump hasn’t raised much money yet, and he doesn’t seem inclined to do so; according to one report, after telling Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus that he’d call 20 large donors to make a pitch, he gave up after three. Fundraising is the least pleasant part of running for office, but unlike most candidates who suck it up and do what they have to, Trump may not be willing to spend the time dialing for dollars. Instead, he’s convinced that he can duplicate what he did in the primaries and run a low-budget campaign based on having rallies and doing TV interviews. As he told NBC’s Hallie Jackson, “I don’t think I need that money, frankly. I mean, look what we’re doing right now. This is like a commercial, right, except it’s tougher than a normal commercial.” It’s not like a commercial, because in interviews Trump gets challenged, and usually says something that makes him look foolish or dangerous. But he seems convinced that his ability to get limitless media coverage, no matter how critical that coverage is, will translate to an increase in support.

Outgunned on the airwaves. As a result, Democrats are pouring money into television ads attacking Trump and promoting Clinton with no answer from the other side. As Mark Murray reported yesterday, “So far in June, Clinton and the outside groups backing her have spent a total of $23.3 million on ads in the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.” And how much have Trump and his allies spent on ads in those states? Zero. Nothing. Nada.

Not enough backup from his allies. There may never have been a presidential nominee with so little support from the people who are supposed to be out there persuading people to vote for him. Every day sees new stories about Trump being criticized by Republican leaders or about Republicans distancing themselves from him. And that includes the people who have endorsed him. Last week the chair of Trump’s leadership committee in the House begged reporters to stop making him defend Trump.

That lack of unity can have a large impact on how Republicans view their vote. While the rote arguments between Democrats and Republicans may seem too predictable to change many minds, when intra-partisan unanimity breaks down, it sends a signal to people that it’s okay to disagree with your party’s nominee — and even to reject him altogether.

A popular president opposing him. Every political science election model says that the view of the current president matters a great deal in determining whether voters decide to change which party controls the White House. Right now President Obama’s approval rating is over 50 percent for the first time in a long while, and he’ll be campaigning vigorously against Trump.

A demographic disadvantage. Trump is running on what is essentially an ethno-nationalist appeal to white voters, at a time when the country grows less white every year. He would have to do significantly better than recent Republican nominees among large minority groups in order to win, yet rather than court them, he has done just the opposite. In the latest Post-ABC News poll, 89 percent of Hispanics said they had an unfavorable view of Trump, an absolutely stunning figure. That’s not to mention the enormous gender gap he’s opening: 77 percent of women also viewed him unfavorably in that poll.
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An electoral college disadvantage. Any Republican candidate faces a challenge in the electoral college, where Democrats start with a built-in advantage. In all of the past four elections, Democrats have won 17 states (plus D.C.) that give them 242 of the 270 electoral votes they need to win. That means that for Trump to win, he has to sweep almost every swing state. But instead of trying to do that, Trump is worried about holding on to red states such as Utah and Arizona.

A candidate with a lethal combination of dreadful strategic instincts and absolute certainty of his own brilliance. 

Trump’s inexperience in politics has shown itself in many ways, such as his utter ignorance about policy and how the U.S. government works. It also means that when confronted with new situations, he often does something politically foolish, as when he responded to the Orlando shooting bycongratulating himself for predicting that there would one day be another terrorist attack. And while for a time we kept hearing that he was going to “pivot” to the general election, instead he seems to be running as though he’s still trying to persuade his own supporters to stay with him. Those supporters comprise a plurality of a minority of the whole electorate.

Perhaps even more importantly, unlike some neophyte candidates, Trump not only doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, but also insists that he doesn’t need to know it. Whatever deep insecurities drive his constant preening bluster, he isn’t going to let anyone tell him that he’s anything less than a genius and things aren’t going great. Which means that as the campaign goes on and his situation gets worse, he’ll be exceedingly unlikely to make the kind of changes he needs to reverse his fortunes.

Trump is no stranger to failure, but in his life as a businessman he could segregate those failures from the rest of his enterprises, at least enough to keep moving forward and find other ways to make money. He could fail at the casino business, or the steak business, or the vodkabusiness, or the magazine business, or the airlinebusiness, or the football business, or the real estate seminar business, or the vitamin pyramid schemebusiness, and maintain the viability of his overall brand. But he has never been on a stage like this one before. He didn’t have hundreds of reporters on the steak beat scrutinizing every twist and turn in the decline of Trump Steaks and putting the results of their reporting on every front page in America.

But now he does, and he can’t just drop one scheme and move on to the next one. In that interview with Hallie Jackson, Trump said, “We really haven’t started. We start pretty much after the convention, during and after.” But his problem isn’t that he hasn’t started; it’s that he started a year ago — digging himself into a hole it’s going to be awfully hard to climb out of.

My assessment:

The analogy to the Bush I campaign of 1988 is relevant. Yes, Dukakis blew a bigger lead than Hillary Clinton now has, but:

1. Hillary Clinton may not be the VP, but like the elder Bush she has the highly-successful campaign apparatus of the current President on her side. The Obama and Reagan campaign apparatuses are similar in overall competence and methods. If anyone has the command of the steamroller, it is Hillary Clinton.

2. Donald Trump has an underfunded campaign. That better resembles Mike Dukakis than it resembles George H W Bush.

3. The intra-partisan split within the Democratic Party is so far less severe than the intra-partisan split within the Republican party. I can imagine some dissatisfied Sanders voters drifting toward Jill Stein or even Gary Johnson -- but definitely not to Donald Trump, and in far lesser numbers than I can imagine supporters of Cruz or Kasich going to Johnson/Weld. The 1988 Presidential election was a true binary election unlike this one, which can make a difference -- but more to the detriment of Donald Trump.

4. President Barack Obama is popular enough to be re-elected, except that the pesky 22nd Amendment would stop him even if he wanted to run for re-election. He does not have any scandals, even sexual scandals, that can make him a political albatross. People seem to be recognizing that he does much right. The presumptive nominee of the Democratic party has done everything possible to latch onto the Obama legacy and has been very successful at that. She 'owns' Obama successes and failures in foreign policy, and there are few failures, having been Secretary of State. Prior Republican legacies don't want Donald Trump latching onto those legacies.

5. Hillary Clinton may not have been a Governor -- but she has been a Senator. She has had a cabinet post. As an active First Lady she is more of a political insider than her record of elective office shows. She knows how to do politics as anyone short of President Obama or her husband. "Insider vs. Gadfly" contests usually go to the Insider unless the Insider can be connected to a gross scandal.

6. Republicans would have been wise to try to cut into the electoral disadvantages that they have with blacks, Asians, and now Hispanics. Donald Trump has consolidated ill will among minority voters even if those voters have some conservative traits. Anti-intellectualism that targets a wayward college professor can aid a conservative candidate, but when the anti-intellectualism offends so large an occupational group as schoolteachers it becomes a political disaster. Republicans need to make inroads into the large middle classes of blacks and Hispanics who are politically savvy and active, lest they wish to stare into the chasm of defeat.

7. No state that the Democrats have won in all Presidential elections after 1988 shows any unambiguous sign of going to Donald Trump. Picking off every state that the Republican nominee must win to swing from a loss to a win (which would be Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado) is far easier than what Dubya did in 2000 (Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and West Virginia) -- if the nominee has a competent campaign. Dubya had a more competent campaign apparatus, and he barely pulled off a win of the Presidency in 2000.

If he must defend states like Arizona, Kansas, or Utah, states that any Republican nominee must assume safe, then he is in about as much trouble as a Democrat who must struggle to hold onto Massachusetts, Minnesota, or Oregon.

8. For good reason, all but one successful candidate for election for President in the last century has been either a State Governor, a US Senator, Vice-President, or a Cabinet secretary. The exception is Dwight Eisenhower, to whom any comparison of Donald Trump would be a travesty. (If anything I see Eisenhower and Obama similar in temperament and quality as President -- cautious figures who choose their political battles wisely, respected precedent and judicial decisions, and put deeds above personality). "Governor" and "Senator" are very different functions, but campaigning for them requires mastery of the statewide campaign that has an analogue in the Presidential sweepstakes. The States elect the President (see 2000); the People don't.

Donald Trump has no idea of how to operate a statewide campaign. It shows.

9. Market share is enough in business, which explains how a company that has 10% of the automobile insurance business is a success. Losing 47-51 in an election is not success.

Donald Trump has done little of what prepares one to be President. He has never been a mayor of a large city; he has never been a US Senator; he has never been a State Governor; he has never had a Cabinet post. His personality (arrogance and narcissism) puts people off. He has been able to restructure his business failures -- but he will be unable to do so with a military debacle or a diplomatic calamity. He knows nothing about the judiciary or the military. He has shown contempt for some of the fundamental decencies of the American political heritage.

...In a Crisis Era we need some kindness, caution, and conscience to keep things from going catastrophically wrong. Trump lacks those. Yes, he would be a disaster. If he can offend the sensibilities of so many Americans, just think of what other sensibilities he can offend.