My friends who want to see Donald J. Trump in the White House will probably want to skip this post. As you know, here at newsfromme.com, we believe that following the election is following the Electoral College breakdown. Everything else is just noise.
The map looks pretty darn good these days for Hillary Clinton with even usually-red states like Arizona and Georgia possibly in play. More significant is that she seems to have a double-digit lead in Pennsylvania. The Trump "path" to 270 votes has long involved flipping Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, all of which Obama won twice. Clinton is also up in Ohio and Florida — around six points, last I looked.
If Trump loses any one of those three, victory is very difficult but still mathematically possible. A lot of other states that now look safely blue — say, Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire — would have to go unexpectedly crimson. Clinton has consistently led or tied in every major poll of all three except for one apparent outlier in Pennsylvania.
If he loses two of the three…well, his chances of becoming president aren't a whole lot better than yours. At this rate, you might even beat him.
Can this all change? Sure but I think it's going to take something more than Trump calling her a mentally-unstable liar. That kind of attack loses its effectiveness when increasing numbers of voters think it best describes the guy hurling it. (A good question — one I doubt can be answered with any certainty — is to what extent what we've seen in the last week or so is a matter of voters liking Hillary more or liking Donald less. It's surely both but I get the feeling it's mostly the latter.)
Obviously, Trump's situation will improve but to knock her out, he needs a Game-Changer. A sudden financial crash is looking unlikely, especially after last week's Jobs Report. A major terrorist attack on American soil might shake things up but it's far from certain that one would drive voters to Trump, a man with no history of expertise in foreign affairs and a lot of recent gaffes.
The most likely scenario would be some huge, undeniable scandal proving that "Crooked Hillary" was indeed crooked. If you cruise the right-wingier sites, you'll see a constant certainty that such a scandal has been found and proven beyond any doubt whatsoever, and that an even bigger one will be revealed any day now. Each of these, going back many years, was or is certain to drive her from the race and into prison.
If I were a Hillary-hater, I think I'd be real tired right now and disappointed in all the folks who, dating back to Whitewater, told me that they absolutely, definitely had the goods on her and that there was zero chance of her getting away this time. I might still think she was evil but I'd adopt an "I'll believe you have the proof when she's actually indicted" attitude. Maybe that's just me.