We understand that Mrs. Clinton will close her campaign in Philadelphia. She will be joined by former President Clinton, Mrs. Obama, and President Obama. We have not seen such a show of force since President Nixon put U.S. armed forces in top alert over the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
Mrs. Clinton’s collapse in the polls may remind some of the locals of another famous crash – i.e., the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies.
They had a six-and-a-half-game lead with 12 games to go in the pre-divisions National League, or when only two teams went to the post-season. The Phillies lost 10 straight, and the St. Louis Cardinals flew into first place on the last day of the season.
Mrs. Clinton may remind some of her supporters of that fateful team.
It was a couple of weeks ago that everyone was projecting the size of her victory – i.e., 360 to even some saying 400 electoral votes.
Today, she is up 1.7% in the famous RCP average. Take away the Washington Post (up by 12%) and CNBC (up by 10%), and she’d be losing in the average.
So how bad is she doing?
Why would a Democrat nominee close her campaign energizing inner-city voters?
The answer may lie in turnout, or lack of it. Based on this from Politico, weak is what describes the turnout so far in Florida:
African-Americans traditionally dominate early in-person voting. But they didn’t show in force this weekend. And Hastings said he wasn’t surprised. After Sunday night’s polls closed, black voters accounted for 16 percent of the in-person early vote ballots cast. And that included five previous days of in-person early voting.
But in 2012, in just two days of in-person early voting, blacks cast 25 percent of those early ballots, according to Dan Smith, a University of Florida political science professor who published some of the early voting data on his must-read Election Smith blog.
Due to such strong African-American turnout after the beginning of in-person early voting in 2012, Democrats began outpacing Republicans in total ballots cast before Election Day, by about 10,000. This year, though, Republicans still cling to their own lead of about 9,000. As of Monday morning about 3.7 million absentee and in-person early ballots had been cast, 40.5 percent of them by Republicans and 40.2 percent by Democrats.
“The black vote is way underperforming compared to 2012,” Smith said.
Maybe everything will look different on election night, as Mrs. Clinton accepts Mr. Trump’s concession phone call. However, don’t be shocked if the concession call goes the other way.
Mr. Trump has come alive these last 10 days. He is on message, and she looks desperate. He is taking it directly to her, whereas she is appearing with Alicia Machado and bringing up the KKK. By the way, am I the only person in the country who did not know that the KKK had a national newspaper?
Don’t be surprised if some of the old-timers in Philadelphia look at Mrs. Clinton and remember the 1964 team that couldn’t close it. She is having problems closing it, too.
The big difference is that the ’64 Phillies had some great guys on that team, from Jim Bunning to Johnny Callison to a rookie named Richie (later Dick) Allen. The Clinton team, on the other hand, does not have anybody you can like, from Podesta on down the list!
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