Maybe Trump I should just give it to Pence. This is it Wall Street Journal thinks should happen if the Republican candidate can’t get his act together by Labor Day. The publication’s scathing editorial noted that Trump would rather watch cable news than read security briefings, refused to focus on current issues and raged against a corrupt media that has always rooted for Republicans to lose in national elections, no matter the year. In miniature, he needed to stop complaining, start learning or turn it over to his vice presidential candidate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, to avert a total disaster:
The latest reports are consistent with what we’re hearing from sources close to the Trump campaign. Mr. Trump’s advisers and his family want the candidate to have a consistent message, making the case for change. They want him to be disciplined. They want him to focus on growing the economy, raising revenues and fighting terrorism.
They think he should make the election a referendum on Hillary Clinton, not himself. And they want him to spend some time each day—even a half hour—studying the issues he will need to understand if he becomes president.
Is it that tough? Apparently so. Mr. Trump would rather watch cable than read news reports. He believes the same “shot-by-the-mouth” style that won over most voters in the GOP primaries could win over other Republicans and independents who worry about whether he has the temperament to be commander in chief.
He also sees the crowds at campaign rallies as a substitute for the lack of field organization and a digital turnout strategy. And he thinks Twitter and social media can make up for the $100 million-to-nothing loss in key states.
It should be clear by now that none of this works.
[…]
Those who sold Mr. Trump to GOP voters as the man who could beat Hillary Clinton are now facing their moment of truth. Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Paul Manafort and right-wing talk radio hosts have told Republicans their man can rise to the occasion.
If they can’t get Mr. Trump to change his ways by Labor Day, the GOP will have no choice but to write off the candidate as hopeless and focus on saving the Senate, House and other lower-level races. As for Mr. Trump, he needs to stop blaming everyone else and decide whether he wants to act like someone who wants to be president — or hand the nomination to Mike Pence.
After the Republican National Convention, Trump seemed to be paving his way to victory. FiveThirtyEight noted in mid-July that if the election had been held then, Trump would have won. That completely collapsed within two weeks. Today, Chris Cillizza recorded that even if Clinton lost in all the states she listed as uncertain – Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Georgia, Nevada and Florida – Clinton would still win.
Look at electoral map shows clearly how narrow Trump’s path is — and how much it has eroded over the past month. This is what our map looked like at the beginning of July:This map gave Clinton 201 electoral votes to Trump’s 158. Another 105 electoral votes were “toss-ups,” with 33 votes rated “Republican-leaning” and 41 “Democratic-leaning.”
Here’s what our map looks like today:
The up-to-date map gives Clinton 273 electoral votes to Trump 175, meaning she would win the US presidential election even if she lost in all six states we currently rate as “uncertain” and which are shaded gray.
For now, it doesn’t look like there will be any reversal, as Trump campaigned in gloomy blue will never win the state of connecticutIn neighboring New York, where the billionaire said he could win and expand the map — he’s trailing Clinton by 30 points.
So what happens when Labor Day rolls around? Trump certainly won’t just give up something he’s spent time and energy on over the past year. Allahpundit noted that Trump is in no way taking on the role Bob Dole played in 1996 to ensure that the lower house election doesn’t suffer a likely devastating defeat. Citing Lowry, the AP noted that the RNC really couldn’t pull the plug and let this bull in the china closet complain about a rigged election and a possible boycott, which could depress turnout and wipe out the Republicans. To quote Rich Lowry of the National Review, if Trump loses by 12 points on Labor Day, the entire GOP ticket nationwide at most levels should be bracing for disaster, so why make things worse? cutting off funding to Trump:
Behind PoliticalRNC officials have been whispering to reporters since the convention that the party has done more for Trump, financially and organizationally, than it has for Mitt Romney, an apparent attempt to preempt a decision to unleash Trump if and when necessary.
[…]
The main problem with freeing Trump isn’t money. The main problem, Lowry notes, is morale.
[…]
It’s worse than Lowry suggests. Not only would Trump refuse to be a good soldier for the RNC by continuing to fundraise for them after they dropped out of the race, but there’s a nonzero chance that he would turn away from the party and its Senate candidates before the election and actively harm them. A faint form of action for him would be to declare that the election is hopelessly rigged and that therefore the only way to properly protest it is to boycott voting in it. That would be Trump’s way of saving face if the result looked like a landslide; he and his fans would later claim, after the landslide, that it would have been close had it not been for their boycott — all the while Republicans in down-ballot areas would be wiped out, including probably in the House, depending on how many Trump fans stayed home. A powerful form of party destruction would be to publicly blame the RNC and disloyal Republicans like Ted Cruz for his pathetic poll numbers and encourage voters to punish them, either by refusing to vote in the down election or by actively voting Democratic. I doubt Trump’s irritation with his predicament is that great, but there’s no doubt the guy will spend most of his energy trying to shift blame for his defeat if/when he finally comes to the conclusion that the race is lost. As such, given how much potential damage he could do to congressional races, the RNC really has no choice but to stick with him and continue pouring money into his campaign to please him.
You can’t always get what you want. And Trump could have been stopped if the rest of the field had taken him seriously from the start—and they didn’t. The time for a Monday quarterback in these 2016 primaries has passed. Trump is the nominee and he’s losing. Let’s hope Trump’s hatred of losing forces him to make this change, because there are less than 90 days until the ground zero.
