Captain Caveman wrote:El Guapo wrote:Between the FBI leaks, Wikileaks, the Republican Congress, voter suppression, and a media overwhemlingly focused on e-mail scandals, I am coming around to the expectation that Trump is a slight favorite to win the election.
Is this some sort of preemptive, self-protective defense mechanism on your part just in case the unimaginable happens? Because right now it kind of flies in the face of the available empirical evidence. She's leading in the polls, and though they do seem to have tightened slightly, she has so many more paths to a victory in the electoral college than Trump, and polling has her ahead in the states that she needs for 270 with room to spare. RIght now, most aggregators have her at 270+ before getting to toss-ups. Plus, other factors favor her: her GOTV effort, historical under-polling of Dem-leaners (particularly Latinos), her cash advantage in the remaining days, etc... these all lead to her still being the strong favorite.
I guess these indicators could be off, and things can still change (though the race really has been pretty stable), so it's not an absolute slam-dunk, but I'm still feeling pretty confident. It is disappointing that the margin will likely be smaller than I would have hoped or expected, and this might have down-ballot consequences, but I'm not gonna lie-- I will breathe a huge sigh of relief a week from today if I finally know definitively that Trump won't be president regardless of the outcome the down-ballot races.
Maybe I'm being too pessimistic in light of the dangers involved, I don't know. If the election were being held today I would be nervous but semi-confident. It's just that when Trump pulled essentially even with Clinton leading up to the first debate, it was under similar circumstances - the media going nuts about trivial BS Clinton "cast shadow" semi-scandals, like even her getting freaking sick. This is worse - you still have the media credulously reporting any quasi-scandal without substance, but now you have Wikileaks doing its drip-drip releases and the FBI (or some significant faction therein) essentially openly siding with Trump and openly smearing Clinton through friendly press.
Given that, unless something changes, I find it hard to believe that Trump won't be essentially at parity with Clinton in the polls (maybe even slightly better) by Tuesday. I am comforted somewhat by the early voting in NV and NC, and Clinton's better GOTV...but this is fucking dangerous. Trump has a very real chance at winning, especially when you factor in voter suppression efforts underway, and the fact that most of the swing-states are GOP-run.
I will say, though, that I did training this evening for poll monitoring for the Clinton campaign this evening, and I was impressed with the organization (and number of volunteers) I saw. If there are significant shenanigans in NH on Tuesday, the Clinton campaign is definitely going to know about it.
Black Lives Matter.