Over the weekend I wrote a post which I said would be part of a series on Russia. That’s coming. But the first post led to a brief interchange with TPM Reader BS, which I wanted to share here in full, his notes and my replies.
You know we have PollTracker and our Electoral Scoreboards here at TPM to keep you up to date on the latest numbers for all the races around the country. But I wanted to point out that we now have the “toplines” for both just below the navigation bar up at the top of the TPM front page. See “Election Scoreboards” just below the TPM logo. And then all the data is to the right. There you’ll find the current PollTracker Avg for the presidential national horse race polls and the Electoral Scoreboard tally of electoral votes. Click through on either to go to the full data.
Just a reminder. Want to be absolutely sure you’re totally up to date with all the polls in the races that matter to you? Download the free Polltracker smartphone app. It’s available for iPhone and Android devices. And it notifies you every time a poll is released in races you choose to follow.
The AP says the GOP may be reaching its 34 or 55 “breaking point” with Donald Trump.
Over the last week or so, I’ve had a number readers ask me, why does Trump seem to be closing the margin on Clinton when his campaign seems to be in freefall. The short answer is: he’s not. Here’s the slightly longer answer.
With the furor over the Trump campaign and the on-going DNC et al. hacking story, I’ve become increasingly interested in what was already a pet interest of mine: the growing list of Russian propaganda networks operating in the West and Russia’s growing embrace of asymmetric warfare, particularly information warfare, whether in the form of hacking, surreal state-sponsored trolling operations or news and propaganda networks operating more or less openly with state sponsorship. But before getting into a series of posts on the subject, I wanted to start with one key and often overlooked point.
Trump just now in Erie, PA: “We don’t win anymore. You people [pointing to the crowd] don’t win, that’s for sure.”
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Based on a group of new state polls this morning, Hillary Clinton is back at 335 electoral votes in her column versus Trump at 164. Needless to say, that is a healthy lead. But the bigger number is that Clinton is now up by at least 10 points in states accounting for 263 electoral votes. I’ve noted that number a few times over the last week or so. Really though, the number is 273, which is just 10 votes more but a world of difference since you need 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. In other words, Clinton is ahead by at least 10 points in states which are alone enough to win her the presidency.
If you were deep into politics in the mid-90s you probably remember the name Betsy McCaughey. She is, in a novelistic way, a fascinating figure: on the one hand a thoroughly ridiculous figure, inventing clownish, error-filled distortions or downright fabrications about public policy for years. And yet, in purely historical terms she’s had a big impact on the direction of health-care policy over the last generation. She played a very real role in killing Clinton’s effort at health-care reform in 1994 (just how much is debated but it was real); and she gave it her best shot with Obamacare. Now, perhaps obviously, she’s been named to Trump’s economic policy team. Here’s the story.