Weâre 68 days before the general election and Trump canât even fill a stadium in Everett, WA. Though he mentioned more than once his desire and ability to win Washingtonâs 12 electoral votes, Clinton is 19 points ahead of him in the Elway poll. Why he came here I donât know. No one else does, either. But maybe he just really likes the mountains? Or the lack of income tax? Or maybe itâs familialâhis dad did spend a little time here.
The only thing that struck the fear of God in me, besides watching a gang of Trump supporters point at a suspected protestor and shout âTRUMP TRUMP TRUMPâ until authorities remove them from the audience, was the number of first-time voters I met. Of the 10 or so people I talked to, half hadnât voted in the last election. One said she hadnât EVER voted, and she was over 50. âFwenty-six," as she said with a smile.
Are there enough first-time voters and/or people who donât often vote to blaze a path for Trump to win 270? The Los Angeles Times conveniently published the results of the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Daybreak poll this morning, which is designed to track âpeople who sat out the 2012 election but say they plan to vote this year.â This is the silent majority peoplesâ bumperstickers keep talking about.
According to that poll, the silent majority isnât so major:
âEven that best case is a problematic one for the Republican nominee since he seldom does better than a tie in the pollâs resultsâŚAs of Tuesday morning, the poll showed Trump ahead 45%-42%, well within the margin of errorâŚTrumpâs situation is even more challenging because of the difficulty of turning nonvoters into voters, a task for which Trumpâs campaign may be especially ill-suited.â
He can't even get a solid lead on her in the world of "disaffected voters." Heâs got no ground game. And his supporters donât appear to be self-starters in the world of political action. At a Bernie rally youâll see little clumps of people all wearing the same thing, lots of acronym-heavy t-shirts representing various state coalitions, evidence of micro-organization based around shared political interests and ideas. But when I look into the overeager faces of Trump supporters and when I talk to them at Trump rallies, I only see people taking the day off work to watch the Trump show.
âDo you want me to do the poem?â Trump asked. âAlright Iâll do the poem.â And he does the poem. And they look happy. The people I talked to didn't seem particularly driven by any policy, no sense of a shared reality to fight for, no sense of shared fight. As Jamelle Bouie puts it in Slate: "There is no horse race here. Clinton is far enough ahead, at a late enough stage in the election, that what we have is a horse running by itself, unperturbed but for the faint possibility of a comet hitting the track."
Unless Hillary, as the saying goes, wakes up next to a dead boy or a live girl, Iâm going with team Cautiously Optimistic.
Counterpoint: Sean Nelson thinks we should be afraid. Very afraid.