HILLARY CLINTON Wait–Trump Is Only Ahead By Six Against Clinton…In Texas?
written by Matt Vespa Associate Editor of Downhill
Texas…is a battleground state? The nightmare scenario that Republicans have been trying to fend off could be coming to fruition—which could spell electoral disaster for years to come. On the other hand, it could be that Donald Trump is an outlier, given that a) he’s not really a Republican and b) he’s become incredibly unappealing since the Republican National Convention. Trump seemed to have a path to victory. If the election were held in mid-July, he would have secured 285 electoral votes. That’s not the case anymore. Right now, if Trump were to win the remaining swing states, including Florida and Ohio, Clinton would still beat him. He’s losing—and losing big. Hence, why he decided to shake up his campaign this morning. How bad is it? He’s only leading Clinton by six points in the Lone Star State. It’s possible that deep-red Texas could be an area where Trump has to spend more money than usual, which diverts funds from his strategy to expand the electoral map, which has also failed miserably. He’s losing in New York by 30 points and decided to campaign in Connecticut, which was a colossal waste of time.
Public Policy Polling, a left-leaning outfit, conducted the poll, but the sample size didn’t skew to the Democrats, as with most of their work—this is a R+6 poll. Fifty-one percent of those polled voted for Mitt Romney in the last election, and 66 percent of those polled were over 46 years old; 28 percent were over 65, which is a demographic that skews to the right. Forty-eight percent described themselves as conservative.
Trump should be worrying about two things especially – the first being his tax returns.
Sixty-four percent felt that he should release his tax returns, while only 10 percent considered themselves undecided. That leaves little room for Trump to ensure a comfortable victory in the Lone Star State, possibly encouraging more Democrats to pour money into local races there to build on gains made by Clinton in the hopes of turning the state blue. No Democrat has been elected to a statewide office since 1994. That’s a long draught, but if Clinton has a strong showing in Texas—it could lead to a massive onslaught in a state that is the largest guaranteed bloc of electoral votes in national elections. At the same time, maybe Trump does well here, beats Clinton by 10+ points and kills off this dream of turning Texas blue. Wendy Davis’ 2015 drumming by Now-Gov. Greg Abbott shoved a knife through the heart of that project. In comparison, Romney beat Obama here 57/41 in 2012.
Another factor hamstringing Trump is that he isn’t popular in Texas. The silver lining with all of this is that Clinton is in all likelihood going to lose Texas. Texas Monthly said that the state isn’t turning blue anytime soon. I hope so, though this election could change that for the next cycle.
A Democratic victory in Texas this year remains a stretch but within the numbers there are signs of Democrats being positioned to become seriously competitive there in the years ahead. Trump’s lead is based entirely on his holding a 63-33 advantage among seniors. With voters under 65, Clinton leads him 49-45. And when you look just specifically at voters under 45, Clinton leads Trump 60-35. Older voters are overwhelmingly responsible for the Republican advantage in Texas, and generational change is likely to help Democrats become more competitive.
A big piece of that generational change is the increasing racial diversity of the electorate in Texas. Trump has a 69/25 lead with white voters but the reason the state’s so competitive overall is that among non-white voters Clinton has a 73-21 lead, including a 68-27 edge with the state’s booming Hispanic population.
Clinton’s unpopular in Texas, as you would expect, with a 36/59 favorability rating. But Trump’s not a whole lot better off with only 40% of voters seeing him favorably to 53% with a negative opinion. The tax return issue continues to plague Trump with 64% of voters thinking he needs to release his returns to only 25% who don’t think it’s necessary for him to. Even Trump’s supporters, by a 43/41 spread, think he should release them.
WASHINGTON (AP) — August 7, 2017
Donald Trump’s campaign chairman helped a pro-Russian governing party in Ukraine secretly route at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012, and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party’s efforts to influence U.S. policy.
The revelation, provided to The Associated Press by people directly knowledgeable about the effort, comes at a time when Trump has faced criticism for his friendly overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It also casts new light on the business practices of campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Under federal law, U.S. lobbyists must declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders or their political parties and provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice Department. A violation is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
WASHINGTON (AP) — August 17, 2016
Donald Trump’s campaign chairman helped a pro-Russian governing party in Ukraine secretly route at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012, and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party’s efforts to influence U.S. policy.
The revelation, provided to The Associated Press by people directly knowledgeable about the effort, comes at a time when Trump has faced criticism for his friendly overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It also casts new light on the business practices of campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Under federal law, U.S. lobbyists must declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders or their political parties and provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice Department. A violation is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Manafort’s various denials concerning his representations of a foreign government were followed by the Trump Family relegating him to a minor, if any, role in the campaign. Unable to feel shame, Paul referred to that special bottle of Stoly his buddy Putin put in his Christmas stocking with his manila envelope and ordered a rental flown in from Volgograd. He soldiers on. His mail order bride took a quick look, balked and hopped an international Greyhound back to ‘grad.
The Trump Family has seen their latest project fall apart. In a scrambling attempt to paste Humpty Drumfty back together again they have wisely turned to a minor Republican pollster & ‘strategist’, they’re all Republican strategists (or senior advisers) these days, Kellyanne Conway. She has the added feature of being a regular habitué of talk shows. Stephen Bannon will head the campaign until the next shake-up. He is a screamer, just like the Tangerine himself. Neither Conway, another possible screamer, or Bannon have ever run a campaign.
I believe Drumpf’s teleprompter, a device he never learned to properly use, has been tossed out the window. His speeches/rallies will now be more entertaining. He will be an asterisked footnote in American political history. A fool.
So the real dummy will be brought back out, and the preprogrammed robotic mannequin
of the last several days will be mothballed? I’ll better go out and get a industrial rated
popcorn machine. These new upcoming “BLOOPERS” will be riveting!
Trump’s family isn’t being seen much on the campaign trail. He is tarnishing the family brand, and I expect they don’t like that at all. At least it isn’t going to cost much to change their branding. All the need to do is change the “u” to an “a”. Tramp ties and hotels may not command as much revenue, but the “Trump” brand is over.
The Tramps very likely wish Donald would go ahead and expire. Poor little Baron, he’ll grow up in a bubble, never really knowing what all the fuss was about. Never knowing much at all.
Tramp Sr. is preparing another graph, complete with lines and arrows. This one is meant for use in divorce court. It tracks his campaign’s decline from Melania’s plagiarized speech.
Dawnald could lose his voice soon. It happens during campaigns to the ones who like to yell. He’s probably already spraying his odd little mouth and deep throat with a potion sent up from New Orleans. Henceforth I wish to hear helium styled vocalizations from that clown.
I think the new staff is going to furnish us with a lot of laughs while they are letting “Trump be Trump.”
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