State Of The Election As We Head Into Tonight's Debate

The second Presidential debate will be held tonight in St. Louis tonight at 9pm and I will attempt to live blog it.  Usually, the first Presidential debate has the largest audience but I’m not sure that will be the case this year. I’m guessing more people will be tuning in tonight for the same reason that people who are not auto racing fans tune into the last 25 laps of the NASCAR race at Talladega – to see the big wreck. Trump will have to defend his outrageous comments about essentially sexually assaulting women that came to light last Friday. But he will also be on the attack not only against Hillary Clinton by bringing up Bill Clinton’s philandering past but also against the Republican establishment, especially those who have deserted him over the last two days.

It has been the wildest couple of days that I can remember in Presidential politics. After Trump’s comments became public, a flood of Republicans began to abandon him and the list continues to grow. There were some incredible rumors going around yesterday with lots of speculation that the GOP establishment was desperately trying to find a way to drive Trump off the ticket because he was clearly not going to go willingly. At one point, Mike Pence’s schedule dropped off the Trump website and the rumor was that Pence was withdrawing as VP in an effort to put pressure on Trump to do the same. But later in the afternoon, a new schedule for Pence showed up on the Trump campaign site, showing that he would be in North Carolina on Monday. And Pence apparently spoke to a group of donors last night and focused on the GOP economic policies while trying to ignore Trump’s comments. My guess is that Pence will simply begin his futile run for the 2020 nomination by traveling the country to support GOP candidates in tough races. That would provide at least one reason for his trip to North Carolina tomorrow, although that is still a swing state. But if he goes to New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and, especially, Missouri, that will be a signal that he is not answering to Trump but doing his best to help Republicans keep the Senate.

The question for everyone in the Republican party is what position they should take with regard to Trump. Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, has already decided to stop monetary support for Trump as the party goes into full panic mode simply to protect their majorities in the Senate and the House.  Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who has been especially silent, put out statements condemning Trump’s comments but are still nominally supporting him. The question about how to react to Trump is especially difficult for Republicans in tough re-election races. Kelly Ayotte announced she would not be voting for Trump, but she has been hurt badly by calling Trump a role model for children in a debate earlier this week. Joe Heck in Nevada followed Ayotte by also announcing he would not be voting for Trump. Richard Burr in North Carolina desperately tried to hedge his bets by saying that he wanted to wait and see what Trump’s “level of contrition” would be over the next few days. And Roy Blunt in Missouri accepted Trump’s apology and will still continue to support him. The problem for these Senators and for the GOP establishment is they really don’t know how the base of the party will react when they abandon Trump. But the indications are that the core Trump supporters are not taking it well. Paul Ryan and Joe Heck were both heckled and booed at rallies by Trump supporters. It was interesting that Burr and Blunt’s comments came later in the afternoon after those reports of heckling had come out.

The fear for the GOP is that Trump will turn his supporters against any of those candidates that repudiate him. And that fear appears to be well-founded as Trump is already sending tweets accusing Republicans of caring more about their jobs than supporting him in making America great again:

There is a core of support for Trump that consists of somewhere around 30% of the voters who will never give up on Trump, no matter what he does or says. These represent what in my younger days were known as George Wallace wing of the electorate. It comprises white nationalism and anti-immigration along with a strain of economic populism. Ross Perot, although he was more economically oriented, tapped into that. But for the most part, this group has been loyal Republican voters since Reagan. But GOP policies have failed them and they see that their own situations have gotten worse while the 1% have only gotten richer. On the other hand, they can’t bear to vote for a Democrat which is why they really don’t care if Trump goes to Washington and blows everything up.

Initial polling on Saturday shows the three quarters of Trump supporters are still going to stick with him and actually are less likely to vote for a Republican candidate who repudiates him. This is the conundrum that faces all the Republican candidates in tight re-election races. For them, it is pick your poison – repudiate Trump and endure the wrath of some of your base or still support him and lose those moderate GOP voters, especially women, that you also need to win. Already, some recent polls are showing leads for Democrats Hassan in New Hampshire, Kander in Missouri, McGinty in Pennsylvania, and Ross in North Carolina.

For Democrats, they should be thanking their lucky stars that the Trump disclosures came out just now (unless, of course, the campaign had a hand in their release). Wikileaks just released a batch of emails and the transcripts of Hillary’s private speeches and there is plenty of fodder in them for some potent attacks on Hillary. When talking to Wall Street, she says, “There’s nothing magic about regulations, too much is bad, too little is bad. How do you get to the golden key, how do we figure out what works? And the people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry.” I’m pretty sure that voters do NOT think we need more industry insiders in the regulatory apparatus. At a talk at the University of Connecticut, she states, “At the State Department we were attacked every hour, more than once an hour by incoming efforts to penetrate everything we had. And that was true across the U.S. government. And we knew it was going on when I would go to China, or I would go to Russia, we would leave all of our electronic equipment on the plane, with the batteries out, because this is a new frontier.” Which kind of begs the question about why she maintained a private email server. But by far the most damaging was her vision for the future that she laid out in a speech to Banco Itau. She says, “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere”. You can believe that his statement will come up tonight, either from a questioner or from Trump himself.  And you can be sure that if Trump’s Access Hollywood comments about his sexual exploits and assaults had not come to light, the press would be all over these statements, especially the comment on “open trade and open borders”. And rather than Trump’s campaign, we would be talking about how Hillary’s is melting down.

I expect Trump to come out and attack everyone tonight. He will attack Hillary on her “open trade and open borders” and the economy and trade. He will attack her as complicit in Bill Clinton’s affairs. He will attack the media. And he will even attack the Republican establishment, claiming that they don’t really want to make America great again, they just want to keep their jobs. But regardless of what happens tonight, I really do think the Trump campaign is doomed. He was already significantly down in the polls and is likely to be even further behind after this weekend. He has just lost too much support among women and independents and there is just not enough time to turn that around. And for much of the electorate that is not nearly as addicted to politics as I am, the character of the candidates is essentially already baked in and they are not going to change their minds simply because of a policy issue. The real question is how much of the Republican party Trump will drag down with him. And that question will be asked long after this election as Republicans will have to explain why they stood where they did with regard to Trump. History will also be asking that question.