Donald Trump’s recent attempts to navigate the political landscape have looked a lot like that scene in The Simpsons where Sideshow Bob is surrounded by rakes.
Trump makes a misstep, gets whacked on the nose, shakes himself off and repeats the process indefinitely. Any time he seems as though he’s finally lifted himself from whatever mess he’s talked his way into, he slams his foot down hard on yet another rake.
Political commentators range from bewildered to incensed, his own party is deeply divided over whether or not they want him to drop out and the people of America, well, they’ve seen enough. They are going to vote for Hillary Clinton.
The polls
With 89 days to go until November 8, some polls show that Hillary Clinton has already opened up a wider lead on Trump than Obama ever opened on his 2012 challenger Mitt Romney, whom he defeated by 126 electoral votes.
The maths are pretty simple. For the Republicans to win back the White House, Trump has to pick up at least 64 electoral votes, which means that Trump will need to steal at least some of the 27 states that Obama won in 2012.
Instead, the polls suggest that Hillary is about to nick some of the states that the Republicans usually take for granted. Poll after poll shows Clinton with a strong lead in Georgia, a state that’s been red since Bill Clinton won it 24 years ago.
In Pennsylvania, often thought of as a battleground state, Clinton leads by 11 percentage points – a wider margin than she has in a state like Maine, which the Democrats have carried since the 1980s.
The race will certainly be close in some of the battleground states – but the margins would be better described as tight, rather than toss-up. According to the most recent polling by Wall Street Journal/NBC/Marist, Clinton is up by five in Ohio and four in Iowa.
Of the 12 states that polling aggregator 270 To Win has designated as ‘battleground’ (neither predictably Democrat nor Republican), Trump would need to win the six most important to claim the country. Clinton could take the election by simply winning Florida, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
But even if Clinton were to lose Florida’s 29 electoral votes (polls from Florida show her locked with Trump at 43% each), her route to the White House remains clear. Ohio, where she leads, would give her 18 electoral votes. Virginia, home of her Vice President Tim Kaine, where she leads by eight points, would give her 13. Game, set and match to Clinton again.
If she loses Ohio she could fall back on North Carolina, where she leads narrowly. Or Georgia, where her lead is stronger. RealClearPolitics’ aggregate of all polls has Clinton up nationally by eight points.
As the polls currently stand, the electoral math is undeniably in Clinton’s favour. Trump would need to confound the evidence in the six most important battleground states – Clinton leads in five, and is tied in Florida. If the election were held tomorrow, Clinton would win in an electoral landslide.
Donald Trump is in decline
What makes the polls especially damaging to Donald Trump is that his primary campaign was built almost entirely upon bluster. Whenever Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz would nail him on policy, Trump simply would retort that they were trailing him in the polls, sometimes drastically.
Trump can no longer point to a poll to prove his popularity. Right now the country doesn’t want him as its president, and he has neither the policies nor the charisma to win people over.
Being behind in the polls is far from fatal if you’ve got momentum on your side, but Trump does not. Since the RNC ended three weeks ago, Trump has been walking on a limp. The longer he soldiers on, the more damage he does to himself.
The primaries taught Trump that his popularity was rooted in picking fights with everyone around him – Cruz, Rubio, Bush, et al. – but the presidential campaign is deeply different.
Trump’s detractors are no longer smarmy, sleazy career politicians like Cruz nor under-performing weaklings like Bush.
When the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, a young Muslim American war hero killed in Iraq, took the stage at last month’s Democratic Convention, Trump’s camp was blindsided. Khan’s father Khizr lambasted Trump in a heart-rending speech, demanding to know whether Donald Trump had read the US Constitution, and asserting that the businessman had sacrificed nothing and no-one for America.
This pocket-sized copy of the Constitution is a best seller after Khizr Khan's DNC speech https://t.co/ycCc1tXrOT pic.twitter.com/NY9kuFmTul
— Mic (@mic) August 1, 2016
Donald Trump’s appalling lack of political nous rose to the fore as he went on the attack, treating Khizr and Ghazala Khan as though they were detested politicians rather than the Gold Star parents of a veteran who died saving lives. Trump denigrated Ghazala Khan, implying that she did not speak in stage because she was forbidden to as a Muslim woman – a claim which was refuted instantly. Trump did not apologise.
A poll conducted by conservative news outlet Fox showed that seven out of ten Americans thought that Trump’s comments were out of bounds. He drew criticism from virtually every politician on both sides of the aisle and many veteran’s groups. He took his biggest hit yet in the polls…
And instead of quietening down or relaxing his incendiary rhetoric, Trump yesterday suggested that somebody shoot his opponent Hillary Clinton. It may have been a joke, but it was not just a joke.
America’s relationship with rampant gun violence is well-reported. There are many unhinged people in America who need very little invitation to cause violence. Donald Trump either does not understand the potential consequences of his actions or he does not care. Either way, the GOP is increasingly identifying him as a man who is entirely unfit to represent their party in a presidential election.
Even before Trump called on the “2nd Amendment guys” to intervene and prevent a Clinton presidency, 50 GOP national security experts wrote a letter disavowing Trump’s bid for the presidency and Evan McMullin, a policy advisor and former CIA agent from Utah (a small, red state where he could split the conservative vote to the benefit of Hillary Clinton), announced his intention to run for president as an anti-Trump candidate.
Video—Trump: "If she gets to pick her judges —nothing you can do…Although the 2nd Amendment people maybe there is" https://t.co/eeofxE9qL4
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) August 9, 2016
Trump is not having any good news days, and unlike Hillary Clinton, he has virtually no popular political figures to pull him out of the holes he digs and when left to his own devices, he only digs deeper.
Endorsements
Donald Trump has entirely failed to pick up any meaningful, full-throated endorsements from the elite members of the Republican Party. Both of the party’s living presidents, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, declined to attend the Republican National Convention and have declined to endorse the candidate.
Clinton, conversely, was lavished with praise at the Democratic National Convention – the beneficiary of rousing speeches from Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and a video-endorsement from Jimmy Carter.
Trump spent the earlier half of this year routinely humiliating Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, two hugely influential politicians from, you guessed it, Florida. He has Rubio’s weak endorsement, but it’s highly unlikely that the junior Senator will help him out much in the Sunshine State as November draws near.
Venerated former Presidential candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney have both been hugely critical of Trump’s behaviour. While he has a half-hearted endorsement from McCain, Romney has been publicly scathing of Trump.
Trump’s most-recognisable advocates are Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, two men in their seventies who spend most of their time having to explain why Donald Trump didn’t mean exactly what he said.
Celebrity endorsements have been few and far between for Trump. Dana White, chairman of the UFC, has spoken in his favour but it does not compare to the soft power Hillary amassed. Like it or not, people listen to celebrities, and Hillary has received donations from Ben Affleck to Kanye West. Donald Trump has won endorsements from the likes of Mike Tyson and Dan Bilzerian, a veritable “Please no” of political ideologues.
What does this mean?
Taken together, the facts of the case are damning for The Donald. During the primaries, Donald Trump told a rally in Albany, New York: “We’re gonna start winning again. We’re gonna win so much. We’re gonna win at every level. We’re gonna win economically. We’re gonna win with the economy. We’re gonna win with military. We’re gonna win with healthcare and for our veterans. We’re gonna win with every single facet. We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’re gonna say “Please, please, it’s too much winning, we can’t take it anymore, Mr. President. It’s too much.”
But Trump isn’t winning. Trump is flailing. Trump is badly trailing in states he can’t afford to lose, and his own actions mean that his own party spend more time condemning or qualifying him than campaign for him.
Donald Trump has lived his life and founded his political philosophy on the maxim that the worst thing you can be is a loser. Right now, that’s exactly what he is.
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