film / tv / substack / social media / lists / web / celeb / pajiba love / misc / about / cbr
film / tv / substack / web / celeb

hillarysad2.jpg

With 77 Days to Go, Here's the Current, Anxious-Making State of the Clinton/Trump Race

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | August 22, 2016 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | August 22, 2016 |


Not to start the week off with news to make our readers anxious, but the race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is tightening somewhat nationally, according to the latest polls. In fact, one national poll — from USC/LA Times — has Trump back up by two points nationally, although that particular poll has skewed Trump all season long.

It’s anxious making, but in a country as divided politically as ours and with a media that wants a horse race, some tightening was inevitable. Expect more in the weeks to come.

Fortunately, the state polls still give Clinton a wide advantage, and Clinton has an 85 percent chance to win according to Nate Silver (down from around 94 percent last week). She holds commanding leading in Colorado, Virginia, Florida, and Michigan, a sizable one in Ohio, and she’s tied in Georgia, of all places, so the electoral college is still firmly in her hands.

In the last few days, a slight shift toward Trump can be attributed to the fact that Donald Trump has been relatively quiet, while the Clinton headlines haven’t been particularly good: The Clinton Foundation business is hurting her; the email scandal continues to drag on; and now the Post is reporting that Clinton’s closest advisor Huma Abedin used to edit a radical Muslim journal (the Clinton campaign says that Abedin had no active role in the journal, but that’s not likely to erase the original headline in the minds of voters leaning Trump).

Meanwhile, the Times is reporting that the Clinton campaign is preparing for an onslaught of conspiracy theories, led by Trump’s new team of Stephen Bannon, Roger Ailes, Roger Stone and, apparently, Sean Hannity, who is now consulting on the Trump campaign. Among the theories the Trump campaign is expected to float are continuing questions about Hillary’s health (Giuliani beat that drum yesterday), suggestions that she had Vince Foster murdered, tying Hillary to her husband’s infidelities, and even suggestions that Hillary is a lesbian (I’ve already started to see tweets linking Clinton romantically to Huma Abedin, to which I unofficially say totally off the record, get it, Hillary).

There are 77 days remaining until election day. There are many twists and turns remaining, and there’s nothing more terrifying now than a muted teleprompter Trump calmly delivering the Clinton conspiracy theories of Breitbart and Co., especially where there’s enough truth to some of the conspiracies where it concerns the Clinton Foundation to keep them alive with a media predisposed manufacturing a competitive race.

Fortunately, crazy Trump is still in the building.