So today to the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the Gross Domestic Product increased by a healthy 2.9 percent in the 3rd quarter.  Real disposable income grew by 2.2 percent (think of this as inflation adjusted spendable income after taxes).  These are good numbers and reflect the general upward trend in the economy.  President Obama’s approval rating is at 55 percent.  I could add that unemployment and inflation are close to 21st century lows and the S&P 500 is within 2.5 percent of its all-time high.  These numbers all point toward a stay the course, don’t shake things up election.   Not knowing anything about the challenger’s qualifications, numbers like these would indicate a strong likelihood that the incumbent party’s nominee would win the general election.  In many ways the situation is similar to 1988 when GHW Bush, then vice President, succeeded Ronald Reagan.

Depending which polling aggregator you look at, Clinton leads by 4 to 8 percent.  I’ve always expected this election to be somewhere in the range of Obama’s two victories, in the range of 4 to 7.6 percent.  I think a 6 to 8 percent victory margin is my expectation. The third party candidates add some uncertainty, making 4 to 10 reasonable possibilities.  Bottom line, the GDP number was the final confirmation for me.

 

I think Trump knows he is going to lose. He had a quip in the last debate regarding refugees that ended with something like “good luck with that.”  It sort of implied that Clinton will win and future problems belong to her.

All this talk of the “rigged” election is just making excuses for why losing was not Trump’s fault.

Trump can’t stop himself from attacking those who attack him, even when it’s not to his advantage.

So given all that, might he consider the ultimate attack on the Republican establishment?  Might he not take some pleasure in watching Paul Ryan lose his speakership?  (Of course the thought of Speaker Pelosi may counter that.)  But let’s say he does want the ultimate revenge on tthe elected Republicans who have distanced themselves, or in fact withdrawn their endorsement.  Here are two ways he could do that.

Method 1.  He tells his voters not to participate in this rigged election.  “Stay home and don’t reward the turncoat Republicans with your vote.  Force turncoats to take your vote seriously the next time.”  This gives Trump further cover on his loss margin.  He can say on November 9 that he lost because his voters stayed home as he advised.  Not every voter would follow this advice.  But some would, and it would almost certainly lead to  Dem controlled House.  Nice parting gift for his enemy Paul Ryan.

Two days ago I thought the chance he does something like this was approaching 50 percent.  Now I am at more like 25 percent. What might stop him?  Damage to his brand and finances?  Hating the congressional Democrats?  Not wanting to give Hillary a favorable congress?  Does he care more about revenge or the future of the country?  Dunno.

If that wasn’t crazy enough for you, there is always method 2: A Televised Show Trial of Specific Republican Turncoats.  As a prelude to the new Trump network, he hosts a 2 hour televised show trial with him as judge and his supporters as the jury.  He has a surrogate lay out the specific  cases and then the turncoats are invited to call in or appear and beg for their political life. Of course no one would call.  So he probably he wouldn’t do this. But his “jury” could have some fun ripping the turncoats.

A wise friend thinks there is no chance for either. College-aged younger Mr. CL thinks Method 1 is about 50/50 and method 2 has a 1 in 8 possibility.  We’ll probably never know, but if it happens, you read it here first.

 

 

Readers don’t need me to know that Clinton won the third debate, making her 3-0 in debates. Trump’s performance improved from complete joke (in previous debates) to passable control of his face and mouth for the first half hour, to typical ranting, run on, and dumb insults for the last hour. Clinton really hit him on Putin. “No you’re the puppet” says Trump showing that he has mastered the debate skills of a six-year old. Clinton also hit him on not accepting the election results which also dominated the post debate coverage, casting a further unfavorable light on Trump.

Clinton really is a good debater. She gives answers that show her policy knowledge but also controls her emotions while maintaining her focus under pressure.  It’s not easy to just keep talking while someone interrupts and also know when to yield and make your opponent look overly aggressive.  She’s better at debates then Gore or Dukakis.   It is not fair to say she is only winning this election because of Trump. (Trump is a weak opponent, but Clinton would have been competitive with several other Republican nominees.) The “nasty woman” quip some how makes Trump look even worse than before with respect to women.

My personal hunch is that Clinton will win by Obama’s 2008 margin of  about 7.5 percent. It could easily be more. I don’t see any way she could lose short of incapacitating illness.  (Even then voters would essentually be picking Kaine over Trump and would probably choose the Dem ticket.)

If Clinton wins by 7-8 percent, I expect the Dems to retake the Senate and could easily take 5 or 6 of the closest races giving them up to 53 seats. They would make gains in the house but probably fall short of taking control.  For control, Clinton probably has to win by double digits which is possible.

In my next post I will speculate on whether Trump might deliberately sabotage the down ballot Republicans.

A few thoughts about a very strange debate.

1. For the first 20 minutes Trump almost melted down with a combination of attacks on Bill Clinton and then saying he would call for a special prosecutor and ultimately jail Hillary Clinton.  I think deliberately, Hillary let him have the stage here keeping the focus on him.  (As noted below, she may have played it a little too carefully here.)
2. If the debate had stayed there, Trump might have indeed melted down. Instead it moved onto other topics like Obamacare and energy policy.
3. During this next hour, Trump was about as effective as a Fox news personality.  By this I mean he did fine with his base of Republican partisans, but did nothing to broaden his coalition or try to recover among married suburban women who lean Republican.
4. According to Kevin Drum, the “jail” thing did not play well on CNN.  Banana Republic and all that.  (Mrs. Center Left and I needed to get away from the debate so we watched the rerun SNL from Saturday and John Oliver.)
5. In the first debate Hillary had the perfect balance of let Trump be Trump, but then calling him on his obvious mistakes.  She really deserves a lot of credit for that earlier performance.
6. In this debate, she missed some opportunities to hit Trump, like when he said Captain Khan would be alive if Trump had been President.
7. The CNN poll had Clinton winning the debate, which is not surprising given the state of the race and the slightly more liberal tilt of debate watchers.
8. I think the post debate spin and coverage will be largely anti-Trump. He’s now claiming that the “pussy grabbing” was theoretical rather than something he had done. This won’t play well. Also, there are lots good sound bites of him denying his past statements which make for great before after Youtube videos.
9. The majority of Americans are disgusted with Trump, and that will be the tenor of most coverage the rest of the way.  His style of interrupting and literally lurking behind Hillary add to that sense of disgust and rudeness.
10. Ultimately, we will find out just how big the “deplorables plus Republican partisans” portion of the electorate actually is.  I think its maximum is about 42 or 43 percent.  Mr. Center Left Sr. has been saying all along it has to be less than 40.  We’ll see.
11. I still think the Obama 2008 victory margin of 7.6 percent is a good estimate for the this November, plus or minus about 2 percent.

A few random thoughts at this critical moment before the debate.

1. Tim Kaine was actually quite effective in setting up the post debate spin.  While Pence had good Republican hair and was quite smooth, Kaine succeeded in forcing Pence to either not defend Trump at all, or look ridiculous in stating that Trump had never said what in fact Trump had said, on video no less.
2. Trump is undisciplined.  It was inevitable in this modern world where every cell phone can become a hot mike or in fact a video camera, that a video like Friday’s “grab them by the pussy” would come out.  This is also the pitfall of nominating a first time politician. If Trump had run for elective office before (even if he lost) this would have surfaced back then.  Republican lack of vetting of their own nominee by his primary challengers is coming home to roost.
3. There will likely be more video and audio revelations.  My only question is whether these  revelations are already known to the Clinton campaign or whether they will be spontaneous under the control only of those who hold the tapes.
4. Trump’s only hope for damage mitigation here was a complete apology.  Instead he is attacking Bill Clinton for his prior indiscretions.  This is a poor response; it will not play well with what’s left of the persuadable center.
5. The abandonment of Trump by elected Republicans could lead to a complete collapse at both the Presidential and Congressional (House and Senate) levels.  Yesterday Rep. Heck, running for Senate in Nevada, abandoned Trump and then he (Rep. Heck) was booed at a his own rally.
6. If Clinton defeats Trump by 8 or more percentage points, the House would be in play.
7. Throughout the general election, my prediction has been a Clinton win somewhere between  Obama’s two margins of victory– a 4 to 8 percentage point win.  I’m figuring more like 8 right now.
8. I expect Democrats to take the Senate.  They will probably win nearly all of the close races on election day.
9. While a double digit HRC victory margin is possible, there is also the possibility that voters wanting to make a protest will go to Stein or Johnson, now without fear that Trump could win.  In the latter scenario, I have not thought through the implications for congressional races, but it’s likely not as good for the Democrats as the former scenario.
10.  I don’t think Trump will drop out.  There is no way for Republicans to dump him unless he leaves voluntarily.  Even if does withdraw, there would be no Republican unity behind the “replacement” ticket, most likely with Pence on top.
11. I think we are only talking about the margin of the Clinton victory.  I just can’t see a way for Clinton to lose this election.  She’s’ been in the public eye for so long, I just can’t imagine there is some devastating skeleton that would make her vulnerable to a candidate as weak and flawed as Trump.
12. I expect Clinton to be very prepared for Trump’s attacks at tonight’s debate.
13. I don’t know what to expect from Trump, but it will probably be either bad or terrible for his electoral prospects.  A miracle apology that helps him?  Maybe, but I just don’t see it.

A few random thoughts on the state of the election.

Obviously Clinton did very well in the debate.  Mrs. Center Left and I both thought she was getting under his skin after just 15 minutes.  I want to credit Clinton for doing a great job.  She didn’t just let Trump be himself.  She provoked him. And we he got hot and showed his poor temperament, she brilliantly let him interrupt without stopping her speech most of the time.  Obviously she was pleased to see him over reacting.  But if every time he interrupted, she just stopped talking, she would have looked weak.  I think she handled it perfectly.

The trap her team set with Alicia Machado worked perfectly. Trump took the bait and couldn’t let go all week.  He was still tweeting insults about Machado at 3:00 a.m. four days later.  He wasted several days of campaign time. As with the Khans, everyone who is not an extreme Republican partisan (or a racist, or nationalist) can see that Trump is easily baited, undisciplined, and unfit to be President.

At a minimum, the partial release of his taxes from 1995 noting his loss of $900 million and that he probably paid no taxes for 18 years, takes him off message, reinforces his lack of transparency, raises questions for the media, and wastes his campaign days. I don’t actually think the not paying taxes angle hurts him all that much.  Lots of conservatives and some centrist voters believe taxes are too high, and government is wasteful.  But to the extent the narrative can be spun toward the rigged system where the rich who lose money get some type of bailout (in this case likely from investors in a new public company) and tax relief, while the middle class just loses, could hurt him a lot.  Plus it begs the question of how did you lose $900 million anyway?  Not such brilliant business man after all.  So far, his defense is that he’s smart to avoid paying taxes, and he’s the only one who knows how to fix the tax system. This is a weak defense.  I expect the tax issue to be a negative for at least another week.

Looking forward to the VP debate.