"Democrats, stop freaking out!" advises Eugene Robinson. Might as well tell me not to vomit. The prospect of a Trump presidency--blech!
But, trying to obey, let's tell ourselves, again, something that I think remains true: Trump's path to the White House is a long tightrope walk. I said before that, without Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, or Colorado, he has no path to victory. Here's the rationale for that claim.
In the six most recent presidential elections, eighteen states* (and the D. of C.) have given their electoral votes--242 since the 2010 census--to the Democratic candidate for president. Of the member states of this so-called blue wall, Pennsylvania appears to be the most susceptible to Trumpism: Obama carried it by a smaller margin (in terms of percentage of the popular vote) than any of the other seventeen, and, compared to them, it also has more of the older, whiter, maler voters who are apparently too downtrodden to detect an ass and a fraud. While the race has narrowed in Pennsylvania, Clinton remains ahead. If she finishes ahead, it's quite likely that she will win the other seventeen as well. In that event, Trump would have to keep her from winning 28 electoral votes outside the states of the blue wall. New Hampshire, Virginia, and Colorado would give her 26 more. Clinton remains ahead in all three. Then there is New Mexico, a battleground into this century that is now bluer than much of the blue wall. Trump hasn't campaigned there. Checkmate.
There is so much attention lavished on Florida and Ohio that people tend not to realize that Clinton, if she wins either one, will be president, whereas she could very plausibly lose them both and win anyway. North Carolina is another state that Trump can't do without. By most accounts, the race there is now tied. In presidential elections, the R's pay a heavy price for not even being competitive in many of the country's largest states--California, New York, Illinois, several others on the next shelf down as well (New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Maryland). Of course, there are a lot of states the Democrats can't win, too--mostly small ones. If I were a Republican--there's a hypothetical!--I'd worry, now and for future consideration, that even as Trump has gained on Clinton he has failed to pull away in Georgia, Arizona, or North Carolina. According to the poll average currently displayed at Real Clear Politics, Clinton trails Trump by 7 points in Texas. She leads him by 19 in New York, a state Trump "guaranteed" he would "put in play."
I see that John Cassidy has a contribution to the let's-not-freak-out genre, too. Meanwhile, the campaign grinds on: another day, another load of bullshit from Trump. Not too long ago, he darkly indicated that he had people in Hawaii investigating the circumstances surrounding Obama's birth, and "it's unbelievable the things they are finding!" So who were they, what were they finding, and when will his $5 million charitable contribution be forthcoming?
*The states of the blue wall are Maine, Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, the D. of C., Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, California, and Hawaii. Nate Silver has a critique here.
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