Hillary Surges Amid Latest Trump Turmoil
Stop me if you’ve heard this before – Donald Trump’s campaign is in turmoil, and Hillary is surging in the polls. In only a way that a political novice like Trump could do, he has effectively made the 2016 presidential election a referendum on himself and his character, which has all but sealed his fate. The latest round of self-inflicted drama that Trump has brought to his own campaign has thrust Hillary into the strongest position she has enjoyed yet in the 2016 race.
The last week – or even the last couple weeks – of the presidential race have been outright disastrous for Trump. His first debate performance was widely panned, and instead of attempting to get back on message, he instead opted to engage in an extended fight with an irrelevant Miss Universe contestant. Then, on October 7 the ‘October surprise’ heard around the political world rocked the race as we were all subjected to a lewd 2005 candid video of Trump bragging about courting women through sexually violent means.
Trump’s troubles continued into the most recent presidential debate in which he was verbally aggressive to Hillary throughout and awkwardly stalked her around the town-hall debate stage. Like with the first debate, an assortment of credible polls of debate viewers declared Hillary the clear winner of the second debate.
The latest challenge that the Trump campaign has been forced to deal with involves what appears to be a steady drip of more and more women coming forward to allege sexual misconduct against Trump over the years. As summarized in a recent POLITICO article, several accusers have stepped forward in just the past few days to offer their independent allegations about how Trump groped them or otherwise forced himself on them. These new allegations are sending Trump’s already floundering campaign into a tailspin. On Thursday, Trump even abruptly canceled a planned interview with Sean Hannity where the GOP nominee was expected to take President Bill Clinton to task over his sexual indiscretions. Now you know things are bad for a GOP presidential nominee when they have to cancel appearances on the Sean Hannity Show.
As you might expect, Hillary’s electoral fortunes are booming amid Trump’s latest chapter of drama. Several post-Trump tapes and post-second debate national polls show Hillary expanding her national lead over Trump by double digits. A recent Bloomberg Politics poll in the pivotal swing state of Pennsylvania shows just how damaging the fallout has been for Trump as the American public learns more and more about his misogynistic tendencies. The poll found that Hillary leads Trump by an overwhelming 56-28 margin in four key suburban counties around Philadelphia, which are dominated by college-educated women. The FiveThirtyEight election forecast now has Hillary at close to her highest win probability of the entire general election.
The likelihood that Trump wins the 2016 presidential race continues to drop by the day. However, that doesn’t mean that Hillary’s supporters should become complacent and rest on their laurels. Instead, we need to make sure that we send a forceful message on election day to Donald Trump and the rest of the Republican Party that their efforts to divide our country have failed. We are indeed ‘Stronger Together’ and we need to give Hillary the mandate she deserves.
