For Donald Trump’s campaign, good news has become a rare commodity.
Hillary Clinton continues to dominate in national polling while Trump’s standing has collapsed. The Republican nominee fares no better in state-level surveys; Trump’s lack of support among African-Americans in concert with a reduced pull among white voters has put virtually the entire Eastern seaboard in her crosshairs. Team Clinton is making a play for Georgia and Arizona. Republican officeholders and prominent federal appointees are seeping out of the woodwork to denounce Trump as a danger to the stability of the American government and the preservation of its national security. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign appears to be doing little to reverse his fortunes. Despite a surge in fundraising, the GOP nominee’s campaign has run no ads in its favor. Trump has ceded the airwaves during the Olympics to Hillary Clinton, who is running nearly $14 million worth of messaging virtually unchallenged by her opponent.
These and other fundamental factors have led two usually bloodless, dispassionate political prognosticators—Stuart Rothenberg and Charlie Cook—to declare the 2016 presidential race all but over. Rothenberg observed that Clinton’s advantage over Trump has matured from “decisive to overwhelming” since the conventions ended. “Most elections are won or lost in the late summer, not in October,” he noted, adding that Trump has done next to nothing to repair his reputation and disseminate a positive narrative about his campaign.
“[I]t would appear that Donald Trump has fashioned a noose and seems hell-bent on leaping off a platform,” Cook observed. The chief columnist at the eponymous Cook Political Report noted that the GOP took a favorable political environment characterized by an electorate hungry for change and forced them at the point of a spear to support a Democrat they neither like nor trust. 2016, Cook wrote, “should be a very winnable race for Republicans instead has become one dependent upon a cataclysmic event, perhaps an act of God, in order to win.”
Could all this be true? After all, it’s only August. There are three full months left in the campaign. Is there no way that Trump could turn this thing around?
There are, of course, the debates. He remains tepid about responding to a challenge from the Clinton campaign to participate in all three presidential debates. Trump’s weak position in the polls and surveys which suggest a growing lack of confidence among voters in his ability to serve competently as commander-in-chief may, however, compel his participation. Can Trump have a moment in those debates? If he can, he’ll have to make it happen. A debate “moment” occurs only as a result of intense preparation and skillful execution on the part of a candidate. Even if he is deft enough to create a moment for himself or exploit a misstep on Clinton’s part in one or more debates, the effect of those moments in public opinion surveys is short-lived. Just ask Mitt Romney.
What about advertising? At the end of last month, the Trump campaign announced that it had reversed a dismal series of fundraising periods and had nearly matched the war chest on which Hillary Clinton’s campaign was sitting. But the Clinton campaign is spending on advertising whereas the Trump team is not. That is not to say that they are not, however, spending at all. As National Review’s Eliana Johnson reported, the Trump campaign spent $1.6 million in June alone in consulting fees to a British “psychographic” behavioral analytics firm. The firm had provided its services to Ted Cruz early in the primary season, but the Cruz campaign abandoned the process of psychological profiling in February. Thus far, it’s hard to see how this kind of profiling of the electorate is generating information that justify the expense.
In short, things do appear bleak for the Trump campaign, which leaves Republican officials with one final question: where and when do they get off the train? Already, the GOP’s Senate majority is beginning to appear shaky. According to the Rothenberg & Gonzalez Political Report, three seats out of the GOP’s four-seat Senate majority are already classified as “lean” or “tilt” toward Democratic candidates. As of August 7, wrote the Republican strategist and consultant Adrian Gray, “our modeling has Hillary favored in 54 districts currently held by GOP (Trump favored in 3 Dem seats).” If that’s so, the Republican Party’s 61-seat House majority is by no means safe in November (Democrats would have to net 32 of those seats to take control).
Those are the very earliest indications of a pro-Democratic wave election. If such a thing is in the offing—a condition entirely due to Donald Trump’s presence at the top of the ticket—it will be incumbent on individual Republican officeholders to save themselves. Some will run for reelection as an “independent voice” for their districts or states, while others might run as a check on the inevitable Clinton presidency. Either way, the instinct toward self-preservation cannot be long suppressed.
