With two months left before the presidential election on November 8, a major poll released Tuesday morning by the Cable News Network and Opinion Research Corporation “revealed that the 'prohibitive favorite' -- Hillary Clinton -- is down by two points nationally to one of the worst presidential candidates since the advent of the indoor flush toilet: Donald J. Trump,” according to an article posted on the Politico website.
“Which just goes to show: No one -- not the bullpen of the New York Mets, not the French army, not Wile E. Coyote, not even Al Gore -- is better at squandering a commanding lead than the Queen of Coasting,” Chief Political Correspondent Glenn Thrush noted.
“And nobody is better at handing her adversaries talking points to undermine trust on emails, on the Clinton Foundation, on her own refusal to do something as simple as talking to the reporters who cover her every day,” Thrush asserted.
“The underlying reasons behind her pre-fall fade have always been lurking in the shadows,” he stated. “Clinton is still queasy about electoral politics as a profession, grinds it out because it’s the only path to power, is allergic to most media and, in general, does the bare minimum required to get by.”
Thrush then listed five reasons “Clinton let Trump back into the race.”
“1. Trump’s listening. The guy who mocked President Obama and Clinton for reading off a teleprompter is getting better at being scripted -- and his willingness, at long last, to follow the most rudimentary rules of political campaigning urged by staff (i.e., shutting up) has made him seem somewhat less terrifying.”
Thrush added:
Remember those days of yore (a few weeks ago) when Trump’s campaign was in utter disarray, Clinton was leading by double digits in state and national polls and every investigative reporter with health insurance and a laptop was chasing nefarious tales of campaign Chairman Paul Manafort’s shady dealings in the Ukraine?
Those days are gone, at least for now. Trump … has finally gotten himself a competent, reality-based communications and messaging team.
“2. Clinton made her campaign exclusively about Trump. Bad idea. One of the underlying realities of 2016 -- a quotidian truth swept away by the tangerine tornado -- is that Clinton is running for Barack Obama’s third term, and no Democrat since Harry S. Truman has succeeded when following” a multi-term president, Thrush asserted.
“The electorate is restless and wants change, and no candidate is less equipped by virtue of history, temperament or the tenor of the times to take advantage of that sentiment than Clinton,” he indicated.
“Many voters simply don’t have a clear idea of what her personality is,” he stated. “People don’t like her because they don’t know her “
“3. Donald Trump flip-flopped on immigration -- and his voters don’t seem to care. Trump has chutzpah -- no doubt about it -- and he attempted his most audacious move yet, one of the greatest switcheroos in the annals of modern campaigning,” the correspondent asserted.
“In the doldrums of late August, in ways opaque and fuzzy-wuzzy,” Thrush stated, “he rolled back his campaign-defining commitment to be the immigration badass who was going to sweep the Southern border clean of all those illegal rapists, criminals, job stealers pouring across from Mexico.”
“This isn’t a tweak on a web page,” he noted, “it’s 'Read my lips, no new taxes' on steroids. Immigration wasn’t just an issue in the primary, it was cited, in exit poll after exit poll, as the central reason many Republican voters were willing to abandon the mealy-mouthed establishment in favor of the tougher Trump.”
“4. Shaky foundation. There haven’t been any real smoking guns regarding influence-peddling, profiteering or even preferential treatment regarding the Clinton family foundation and its relationship to decisions made by Clinton as secretary of state,” Thrush added.
“But there have been plenty of drip-drip revelations, including reports that Clinton aides sought to grant Foggy Bottom access to a Nigerian businessman who had contributed to the foundation,” the correspondent charged.
“All of this may turn out to be smoke,” he continued, “but the Trump campaign has been relentless in promoting every negative story written about the charity.”
“5. It might just be a blip. The CNN poll -- which put a jolt into Democrats because it was based on a more predictive likely voter model -- was taken during the last, sleepy week of summer, at a time when Clinton’s profile was intentionally low and Trump had the stage all to himself,” Thrush noted.
Whether it's a drip or a blip, this turnabout in national and state polls has given Trump's campaign a new influx of energy less than two months before the election. As a result, will Clinton actually lose the White House after leading the race for so long?
