I agree 100%, at this point, the hell with the polls. Every “talking head” I’ve ever heard absolutely loves to point out at this stage that polls are a “snapshot in time”. Oddly enough, that is true. You know what else they are? An opinion. Yours and mine, if we’re a participant in the poll. It is what we feel at the exact moment we are asked the question. Like everything else in our lives, it is subject to change.
Our lives and opinions are shaped by “reality”. To you and I, a solar eclipse can be a beautiful thing, a wonder of nature, but to a long haired, bearded guy on a soapbox with a bullhorn in Washington Square Park, it may be a sign of the “end of days”. Reality is what we make of it. And it is influenced by events and information that we absorb from a variety of sources. The sources that we instinctively believe or trust form our opinions, the others are “clutter” or not believable.
Donald J. Trump is that long haired bearded dude on the soapbox with the bullhorn. He has created and lives in his version of reality, and it’s all good, everything is just ducky, because as far as he can see, he’s on top of the world. This is the only reality he knows, and he’s lived in this reality all of his life. All of his failures, personal or professional were conspiracies, by “haters”, and he was still smart enough to be able to get out of it without ever being hurt himself. Let the little people take the blows, he’s Trump! But he’s delusional, and his reality is not the world most of us actually reside in.
Here’s a for instance. Trump won the primaries. Nice work Ace! He beat down and humiliated 16 other mostly better qualified candidates. I wrote all the way back in last August that Trump had a low ceiling, no more than 40% at best, but they were solid. As long as the field was that fractured he could bank early state delegates and build a lead that would be tough to overcome when the field narrowed. He wasn’t the best candidate, but he motivated his base to come out early, when it mattered the most.
But let’s take a look at the numbers. By the time the primaries are over with, Trump will have picked up about 14,000,000 primary votes in the GOP side, a record. Again, have a Scooby Snack pal. Impressive. But at the same time, Hillary Clinton will most likely finish up with 1.5-2M more primary votes than Trump! And more importantly, let’s say we have a higher than normal turnout for the general election, possibly driven by a high “Anti Trump” turnout by minorities, increasing every year by demographics. This could mean somewhere in the neighborhood of 140,000,000 votes cast. So, Der Diktator got less than 50% of the approximately 10% of the population that actually showed up to vote for the primaries. Not exactly a position of strength, especially when your opponent logged more votes right off of the bat. But Trump’s a shoe in.
Another problem. Trumps complete and abysmal ignorance of how a general election campaign actually works, and what makes it go. And this is scaring the GOP establishment shitless. During the primaries Trump was the Grand Master of “free air time” dominating every news cycle. He basically asphyxiated his competition, they were air time oxygen deprived. But it was all his version. Now that he’s the presumptive nominee, and the Roman circus of the primaries are over, more people are paying attention, and the media is no longer hanging on his every word, they’re digging into his history and personality more. His life may be an open book, but unfortunately for him, both professionally and personally it reads like “Diary of a Mad Housewife”. And we all know how Der Donald responds to negative press.
About a month ago the Hillary Clinton campaign announced the names of five different Operations Managers for five battleground states, funding them and turning them loose to get office space, set up ground operations and start signing up volunteers for outreach, phone bank and voter registration drives. And she already has the basic infrastructure there from her 2008 campaign, organizing and mobilizing them should be no problem. This is politics 101. Pick your battlegrounds, hit the ground hard and fast, build your fortresses and start winning “hearts and minds” before the opponent even gets there.
Trumps response? Can’t be bothered. These things take time and money, and he has no intention of writing a check. When asked about this specific issue, a ground game, his response was that this was something that takes months, and November is right around the corner, so he’ll be using the ground offices the RNC has spent years putting together in all 50 states. The squeals of outrage were immediate. Field offices deluged the RNC with dire predictions that they would be swamped and overrun by the Democrats ground game. These offices are set up to support GOP campaigns with their own ground games, not to become a surrogate ground game for a lazy, cheap Presidential candidate. I’m sure that as Trump fund raises, some kind of ground operation will rise from the ashes, but it will by circumstance be haphazard, patchwork and at least 6-8 weeks behind the Democratic effort. Not a recipe for success, and a possible recipe for down ballot disaster if the GOP field offices are preoccupied with Trumps efforts at the cost of their local candidates.
Advertising? What about it? about three weeks ago, Hillary’s Super PAC unleashed two new Trump ads in four battleground states, including my home NV (lucky me!), seeking to begin framing Trump. They are good ads, and they will hit many more states starting on June 8, the day after the primary is essentially over. Her Super PAC is pledging $130M in ads between now and election day in November.
Trump? *cheep-cheep-cheep* He spent less than any other candidate in the primaries and most of what could be considered “advertising” was t-shirts and hats. He didn’t need to advertise, his face was on the t.v. pretty much 24/7, getting his message out pure and unadulterated, and most importantly, unchecked. But those salad days are now over. He has finally begun fundraising, and allowed a Super PAC to be set up for him, but once again, he is incredibly far behind the arc, and the time that the opposition is spending framing him can never be made up in the next 6-8 weeks when they get up and running, unless he wants to cut a check right now to combat the ads, which he seems to show no willingness to do.
Fundraising. At last count, the Clinton campaign had cash on hand to the tune of $30M, and her outside supporting groups had COH of about $46M. She has no immediate cash problems, and this doesn’t even count the general election funding that will become available to her from the DNC once she becomes the official nominee. She should see an increase in fundraising once she becomes the actual nominee, and Democrats coalesce. In other words, she’s in good shape.
Trump? At last count his campaign had just over 3M in the bank, and about 90% of the contributions had been “loans” underwritten by the nominee himself. Due to the late start that Trump got in beginning to fund raise and allowing his Super PAC to raise donations, it probably won’t be until early in October before we can see how he’s doing. And the RNC is already fretting about the number of major donors who are not enthusiastically jumping on the bandwagon with large donations. But he isn’t going to be going up anytime soon with a carpet bombing of advertising, which is a good thing for all of our eyes and ears.
In closing, damn the polls, Trump is in trouble. He got a “bounce” in the polls when the party started to coalesce around him that tightened the polls, Clinton will do the same when the primaries are over, widening the gap again. If Trump has his way, and controls the convention to make it into a 4 day “Miss Universe Pageant”, it will be a nightmare, and his bump will be minimal. Bernie, despite his current strong arm tactics towards the convention will be appeased, he will make at least a pro forma proclamation for party unity to defeat Orange Julius, and Hillary’s “bump” should be much more significant coming out of the conventions. After that, it all comes down to the usual, traditional politicking, funding, advertising and a solid ground game and GOTV efforts. And in all of these areas, Der Trumpf, as well as the RNC and GOP are going to start out with a considerable liability.
Thanks as always for stopping by and reading!