Over the weekend, the New York Times reported on the Republican National Committee’s efforts to squelch the “Dump Trump” movement among delegates. The article ended with this ominous line:
Feaman should make no mistakes: The odds overwhelmingly favor oblivion at this point.
The average of polls from RealClearPolitics currently has Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump by 6.7 points. She has a corresponding lead in most of the swing states, including Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Virginia. Moreover, Trump has underwhelming leads in Republican strongholds like Texas, Utah, and Arizona.
Sometimes in presidential races, early horse race numbers can be misleading because one or both candidates is not well known. But Trump is well known—and voters hate his guts. His unfavorable rating is a whopping 60 percent, compared to a paltry 37 percent favorable rating. Clinton’s numbers are not so impressive on this count—42 percent favorable to 54 percent unfavorable—but the GOP has managed to select the one person less popular than Clinton.
Can Trump’s general election campaign turn this around? In theory, it could. But the problem is that he hardly has two nickels to rub together. His latest fundraising numbers were truly pathetic—just $3 million raised and a little over $1 million on hand. This should not come as an enormous surprise, as donors have been signaling for a while that they have little appetite to board the Trump Train. The Trump campaign’s spin is that it’s using the RNC to fill in the gaps, but this is disingenuous. The RNC is simply not capable of generating such an effort on its own, and past GOP nominees have always worked with the RNC—in addition to mounting their own vigorous campaigns.
Right now there is no point of data for the Trump campaign to hang its hat on. He is losing nationwide and in most of the swing states. He is unpopular, and opinions of him appear to be locked in. The party remains divided and dispirited, and he has little campaign funds.
None of this is the fault of Hillary Clinton or the Democrats, for the general election battle has barely begun. Trump did all of this to himself. He is a divisive and nasty candidate with little interest in learning the issues or ensuring that the mechanics of his campaign are working properly.
Moreover, he is locked in a vicious cycle. Trump’s absurd approach to the campaign has alienated voters and Republican donors, leaving him without the resources to mount a traditional campaign. This lack of tradition support makes him more dependent upon “earned media,” which means he has to go do interviews, where he says crazy stuff, which further alienates people, etc.
So to return to Peter Feaman’s quote, unless something big happens, the GOP is heading toward oblivion this cycle.
Ironically, the one big thing that could change this dynamic is what Feaman and his allies are so dead-set against: dumping Trump at the convention. The party still has an opportunity to do this, and delegates to the Republican National Convention should understand that nominating Trump in July all but guarantees a Clinton presidency—and with it a new liberal majority on the Supreme Court.
