The journalists at NBC on Monday searched for a “silver lining” for Hillary Clinton’s sagging poll numbers and suggested it was just “hand-wringing” to worry about a potential November loss now. Today’s Willie Geist hoped, “How much of this is hand-wringing in May, five and a half months ahead of the election?”
He added, “Won't Democrats eventually sometime after the convention, even Sanders supporters, given the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, go for Hillary Clinton?” Steve Kornacki suggested that “if there's one silver lining in this for Hillary Clinton,” it’s that a majority of Sanders voters say they’ll come around.
Geist wondered how much of the front-runner’s troubles amount to “Clinton fighting a two-front war with Bernie Sanders still in the race?” Over on ABC’s Good Morning America, Tom Llamas parroted:
TOM LLAMAS: She says she's not going to let Donald Trump normalize himself to appeal to more voters. And she's getting some help from former President Bill Clinton, who calls Trump's slogan of "Make America Great Again" a dumb idea.
On CBS This Morning, Nancy Cordes made sure to remind viewers that Bernie Sanders “recently became a Democrat.”
NANCY CORDES: Sanders, who only recently became a Democrat, has repeatedly clashed with the party's chair, congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz. This weekend he began raising money for her Florida primary opponent.
A transcript of the May 23 segment is below:
Today
5/23/16
7:11am ETSAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Let's go to Steve Kornacki, he’s gonna dive a little deeper into our new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Steve, good morning, take it away.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Candidate Poll Position; Inside New Matchup, Favorability Numbers]
STEVE KORNACKI: Good morning. Well, I mean, take a look. We look at these bottom-line numbers. A month ago, this is what the race looked like. Hillary Clinton, a double-digit lead. Remember back then, we were hearing from Democrats, “Trump is Hillary's dream opponent.” You had those NeverTrump Republicans saying, “Hey, don't even bother having the election if Trump’s the nominee. He can't win.” And now, a month later, check this out, we basically have a dead heat here.So what is the difference when you look inside the numbers over the last month? Right here, this is the biggest single difference. That is not it at all, I had to go back one. This is the biggest single difference. This is Republican voters. A month ago, Donald Trump was still trying to lock up the Republican nomination. 72% of Republican voters said they're with him against Hillary Clinton. There was still a lot of Republicans were saying, “I don't know if I can get on board.” He locks up the nomination, the race becomes clear to them, and look at that, the number of Republicans supporting Trump has jumped by 14 points in the last month. He’s brought Republicans home. Republicans are on board with him right now.
If there's one silver lining in this for Hillary Clinton, it's this – that could still happen on the Democratic side. These are Bernie Sanders supporters right now, 66% of them say, “Look, if it's not Bernie, if it's Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee, I can support her.” That number in a healthy party in the fall, should be higher. So that's the challenge for Hillary Clinton. Can she get that Bernie Sanders number up into the 80s, up into the 90s? If she does, that could move her overall number up. That's her challenge right now.
And then take a look at this, we’ve mentioned this, the overwhelming – both over 50% negative scores. These really are the two least popular nominees you're ever gonna see pitted against each other. If you break this down by group, strong support for Hillary Clinton with black voters, with Latino voters, with women a double-digit lead, with younger voters a double-digit lead. On the flip side, Donald Trump 16 points up among whites, double-digit senior citizens, men, leading among independents.
The most interesting thing, though, when you add all these groups together, you know what this looks like? This looks like Mitt Romney versus Barack Obama in 2012, almost identical. All the talk that Donald Trump was somehow uniquely the worst Republican you could ever put up, he'd lose in ways you'd never seen before, he's getting pretty much exactly what Mitt Romney got.
GEIST: Alright, Steve Kornacki, come have a seat. We'll round out our four top here while we bring in Nicolle Wallace. Nicolle, let's talk about some of those numbers there. How much of the tightening of this race is Donald Trump bringing Republicans around him? Also leading among independents. And how much of it is Hillary Clinton fighting a two-front war with Bernie Sanders still in the race?
NICOLLE WALLACE: Well, Steve just summed it up nicely. Her mission is to bring along the Bernie Sanders voters, while Trump's mission is to crush Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton has had this mathematically locked up since mid-March, but Uncle Bernie refuses to go home to Vermont. He refuses to message to his supporters that it is over. He can no longer become the Democratic nominee. That, that's news to them. That they express dismay and disappointment and rage that he should get out of the race is Hillary Clinton's largest problem.
GUTHRIE: And I know you feel strongly that this – if Hillary Clinton loses in November, this will be the moment people should look back at as incredibly consequential.
WALLACE: Should we convene in this exact group the morning after election day, and should Hillary Clinton have lost narrowly, it will have been because of the events of this month. It will be because long past the point when it was possible for Bernie Sanders to win, he stayed in, he called her corrupt, he called her unqualified. And independent voters, the people still up for grabs, we’re hearing the same message from Donald Trump as they were hearing from Bernie Sanders.
GEIST: Steve, how much of this is hand wringing in May, five and a half months ahead of the election? Won't Democrats eventually sometime after the convention, even Sanders supporters, given the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, go for Hillary Clinton?
KORNACKI: I think there’s still a good chance of that. And the one thing worth keeping in mind is what happened eight years ago. The end of the Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama fight. Hillary was saying right through June in that race, “I'm still going to be the nominee, super-delegates are going to out me over the top. I'm more electable.” She had even talked at one point about Bobby Kennedy’s assassination happening late in 1968. It was very ugly eight years ago at the end. As soon as that primary process ended, though, she didn't have the numbers, she dropped out, she endorsed Obama. We don't remember it being that tumultuous now because it worked out for Democrats. The question is, will it work out the same way again eight years later?GEIST: You don't remember anything about that race, do you, Nicolle? 2008?
[LAUGHTER]
GEIST: No, no, you blacked it out.
WALLACE: Exactly.
GEIST: Alright, Nicolle, Steve, thank you guys so much. Appreciate it.
