Speaking analytically, in terms of what might happen, not what I want to happen—I’m becoming a bit contrarian. I think Trump has a chance to win. While the odds certainly favor Clinton, I don’t think the race is over, and I do think the conventional wisdom is much too confident of a Clinton victory. The fact is she’s ahead by about six points nationally after Trump’s awful post-convention month—a nice lead, but not what it might be…. [C]ould [Trump] get himself one more hearing from some of those voters? I don’t think it’s out of the question. Could he actually make the sale? Unlikely, but not impossible. What galvanized my sense that it’s premature to say the election is over was Sunday’s Washington Post. This was the lead story on page 1: “With comfortable lead, Clinton starts refining an agenda.” The article was all about how—with the election virtually in the bag—Clinton was already planning her governing and legislative priorities. I regard such a piece as a reliable contrarian indicator; demonstrations of that kind of confidence, not to say complacency, tend to correlate with a trend in the opposite direction. So I rather expect to see Trump gain some in the polls in the next week or two.
I’ve been wrong so often this election cycle, I feel I should note this instance of being, at least in short-term, right. The Post piece was in fact a contrarian indicator. Clinton’s six-point lead has been cut to less than four points in the couple of weeks since, and there is at least mild momentum in Trump’ s direction. That momentum may well not be sustainable—not by Trump. But I always come back to the dynamics of a “change” election: Swing voters are looking for an excuse to support the challenger, not the representative of the status quo. And Hillary Clinton hasn’t even made a token effort to say what changes she’d bring about as president. Which means she’s betting everything on disqualifying Trump, or on Trump disqualifying himself. It’s a good bet, but not a certain one.
