Five weeks to go before Election Day. The dearth of certainty about voter sentiment is excruciating. I check for new polling information on the presidential race several times a day, knowing it’s pointless yet hungering for some bit of ‘intelligence’ with conclusive authority.
This, in the face of a media blitz whose narrative is Clinton’s brightening prospects in the wake of her first presidential debate ‘win.’ (If only the election were more like a World Series.) Judging from the New York Times and some other northern urban news outlets, Trump’s negatives are destroying him and his campaign is in a near-fatal decline. Editorial boards and leading figures from the President on down are insisting to the electorate that ‘nobody’ wants Trump. His election would spell disaster: a message that will heighten the nation’s problems should the unthinkable come to pass.
Well, it didn’t seem that Mike Pence particularly wanted Trump…. Which may redound to his credit in the run-up to 2020.
I wonder what the parties will look like then. I wonder if there will be a new party that better represents the views of moderate young people.
Trump’s enormous negatives and the media attention they have garnered seem to bounce right off of him. Since 4-6 weeks before the Iowa primary and the others which followed, it seems nothing sticks to him! He is a horrid human being and does not have a “humanity” gene ( I borrow that phrase from a Tribune writer ) but still keeps going. I read in the Tribune today that no matter what comes down and has come down, support for him is rock-solid among blue-collar men, mostly those that have not gone to college. . . . This post was great; I always enjoy reading them.
Clinton’s poll numbers have gone up, and Donald Trump’s down, in the period since their first match-up. Whether the polls are capturing sentiment accurately is debatable–are there ‘shy Trump’ voters out there, that is, people who have privately decided to vote for Trump but don’t want to say so publicly? I can imagine this being the case when the candidate in question is the object of vituperative controversy–the shame being heaped upon him, after all, is also being heaped on his followers. But, if the polls are reliable, for now his chances of victory are much slighter than Hillary’s.
Thanks for writing in!
(Early voting has already begun in Chicago.)
SB