How Much Worse Will Trump Do Than Romney And McCain?

It's hard to imagine anyone ever took Mr. Trumpanzee's claims that he will win in deep blue states like California, New York and New Jersey seriously, not even people who are part of his campaign. Maybe Barron Trump took it seriously and the plagiarizer. Maybe someone thought some of the long-dead Christie magic would rub off on him. After all, they probably thought it was significant when the Trumpster said "I am New Jersey. Like a second home. I have property there. I have a lot of employees there." So he opened a campaign office in Edison in Middlesex County on May 3. It's a pretty blue area; Frank Pallone is the congressman and Middlesex went for Obama over Romney 63-36%. Menendez also took 63% in his reelection bid that year and Pallone did even better-- 68%. It's just not a very Republican-friendly area... but no one can tell Trump anything. He has nothing but contempt for professionals and he belittles them loudly when he isn't ignoring them. I guess they had the last laugh though when his Edison headquarters closed down in a month. [I don't know when it actually closed down, just that it's completely vacated now and that no rent was paid in June, July or August.]

Statewide, New Jersey went for Obama in 2012 by a pretty wide margin, 2,125,101 (58%) to 1,477,568 (41%), very similar totals to Booker's and Melendez's winning statewide margins. With suburban Republican women voters (and independents) fleeing from Trump in droves, it's not likely he'll even get the 41% that Romney got in New Jersey, regardless of how many caddies and groundskeepers he employs there or much much property he owns. One New Jersey pundit told me that Trump is best known in Atlantic City and he's overwhelmingly hated there across the board. "Mitt pulled 41% of the votes in the county; I'll bet you $100 and a Make America Great Again baseball cap that Trump doesn't get beyond a third... Everyone in Atlantic City knows from a lot of cruel experience he's a cheat and a fraud; if he winds up with 25% of the vote I won't be surprised. If he wants votes in New Jersey, he better stick to Sussex County by the Delaware Water Gap. His kind of people live up there."

This evening Trumpy-the-Clown held a rally in Fairfield, Connecticut. Like New Jersey, Connecticut also went for Obama with 58%, although Fairfield, a very rich little part of the "hedge fund ghetto" in the southwest corner of the state, was closer-- Obama beat Romney 51-48%. Chris Murphy beat GOP billionaire Linda McMahon there in the Senate race anyway, albeit narrowly. It's part of Jim Himes' 4th congressional district, one of the Wall Street banksters' favorite congressmen, and Fairfield's votes go happily to Himes regardless of who the GOP runs against him. (The surrounding county, also Fairfield, is even bluer and Obama won there with a double digit margin.) It's not the kind of town or county or state that Trump is going to find many votes in. And national Republicans don't like that he was wasting his time there today. Even the popular former Republican congressman, Chris Shays, has not just denounced Trump as an unhinged bigot, but has announced that he's voting for Hillary. Republican operatives and strategists say Mr. T. would be making better use of his time in Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, even Kansas, where Hillary is picking up support in the Kansas City suburbs that usually vote Republican.

That "come to Jesus" meeting in Orlando between the RNC and some Trump staffers was meant, among other things, to force Trump to stop wasting resources in states where he has no chance-- like New Jersey and Connecticut-- and to concentrate on swing states like Florida, Nevada and Iowa and on holding red states that are drifting away from him, like Georgia, the Carolinas, Arizona and Utah. But will he listen? He doesn't seem capable of listening to people he considers the "hired help."

You know what it means when he says "Believe me," right? According to the NY Times' Patrick Healy, that's what Trump said when asked about winning any of the swing states. On July 6, referring to Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania, he predicted polls would soon start showing him over 50%. "It’ll happen after the conventions. Believe me." Healy's a smart enough guy not to have wagered on it and he pointed out that since then "instead of attracting a surge of new admirers, Mr. Trump[anzee] has been hemorrhaging support among loyal Republicans, anti-establishment independents, Clinton-loathing Democrats and others."

Even right-wing strategist Frank Luntz, famous for his Fox News focus groups says, with regret, that "undecided voters voters still have a long way to go before they vote for Trump. He has high unfavorable ratings with so many voters that he would need to win most of the rest of the electorate, and his post-convention problems aren’t helping him grow."

Trump’s troubles are perhaps most pronounced in Pennsylvania, which he has targeted for victory in November even though the state has gone Democratic in the last six presidential elections. He is running strong in the traditionally conservative western part of the state, and his advisers argue that his populist views on trade, immigration and foreign policy could resonate with independents and blue-collar Democrats.

But to win, pollsters say, Mr. Trump would need to beat Mrs. Clinton here in the Philadelphia suburbs, where President Obama defeated Mitt Romney in 2012 by about nine percentage points. (Mr. Obama carried the state by about five points.) Yet Mrs. Clinton holds a wide lead in those suburbs, 52 percent to 26 percent, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College poll published on Wednesday.

“There is absolutely no way Trump wins Pennsylvania unless he can broaden his appeal significantly and overcome his huge deficit in the suburbs,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin & Marshall College poll and a longtime analyst of Pennsylvania politics. “He does well with white working-class voters, but there simply aren’t enough of them in Pennsylvania to win. And he can’t stick with his political message for more than five minutes.”

And Pennsylvania is one one of the swing states where Trump is sinking-- down by double digits, as Republican suburban women in the Philly area flee, sometime reluctantly, to Hillary. Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida are all crucial swing states and the latest Marist polls show Señor Trumpanzee losing all of them, some with astounding margins. In Colorado, Hillary is beating him 46-32%; that's 14 points. It's a similar story in Virginia-- 46-33%. He's down 48-39% in North Carolina and thanks to the Panhandle (Little Alabama), he's only losing in Florida 44-39%.

Now look why Republicans are freaking out over this. Let's use North Carolina as an example, a state Obama lost to Romney 50-48%. Deborah Ross, the Democratic candidate in the Senate race, wasn't one of the top DSCC picks. They didn't really expect to beat Richard Burr in North Carolina. But Burr glued himself to Trump and his comfortable enough 48-41% lead in July is now a 46-44% lead for Ross! And it was even worse news for Governor Pat McCrory whose reelection numbers have also collapsed as Trump's did. Roy Cooper now leads him 51-44%. If only Pelosi had appointed a competent DCCC chair instead of a confused sock puppet for Steve Israel, a cleaned up, fit committee would be prepared to take advantage of the GOP collapse in states like North Carolina. Instead, they do not have even one candidate challenging any of the 9 Republican incumbents. And even in the new swingy open seat... crickets from the committee charged with electing Democrats to Congress. Same utter dereliction of duty in the case where there is an excellent Democratic grassroots candidate-- Andy Millard in the western 10th district, who's running against a corrupt and vulnerable Patrick McHenry-- the DCCC is on their favorite mode: ignore, ignore, ignore. Won't they look like idiots when Hillary, Deborah Ross and Roy Cooper roll up wins in Buncombe, Polk, Cleveland, Rutherford and Gaston counties if McHenry manages to squeak through again! If you can, please help make up for DCCC incompetence here and help turn Congress blue. Here's Karl Rove giving Mr. Trumpanzee some advice on Fox News: