With roughly three months until Election Day and still three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate to get through, some prominent voices are already declaring the presidential race over.
In the days since both party conventions in late July, Donald Trump has seen a sharp decline in his support among essentially all demographic groups. Hillary Clinton has reaped the benefit, widening her lead nationally and in some battleground states.
It has several figures in the national media convinced that the outcome is inevitable.
“How many days has it been since Hillary Clinton’s held a press conference?” asked MSNBC host and former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough on his “Morning Joe” show Tuesday. “Does it matter? It doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. … At this point, just like in the fall I was trying to figure out how a Republican could beat Donald Trump, we’re at a point now on Aug. 16 where I’m trying to figure out, what’s Trump’s comeback? … I don’t see a way forward for him. I just don’t at this point.”
Washington Post columnist Roger Cohen wrote in an op-ed printed Tuesday that he attended a recent dinner party where Trump as a subject didn’t come up and that seemed like evidence enough that the candidate is finished.
“But it was not until the next morning that I awoke stunned to realize that we had not talked about Donald Trump,” Cohen wrote. “It’s over. … [W]hole constituencies are gone — African-Americans, Hispanics, et al. — and key states are out of reach, and Trump has gone from an inevitable dinner party topic to not being mentioned at all.”
Over the weekend in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd said, “The Republicans have their candidate: It’s Hillary. They can’t go with Donald Trump. He’s too volatile and unhinged.”
Trump is aware of the building narrative as he has seen scrutiny of his campaign and his rhetoric intensify since officially becoming the GOP nominee.
During a rally Saturday in Fairfield, Connecticut, he said his main opponent in the race was not Clinton.
“Let me tell you,” he said, “honestly, I’m not running against crooked Hillary Clinton. I’m running against the crooked media. That’s what I’m running against. It’s true.”
He followed the next day with a series of messages on Twitter targeting coverage of his campaign.
“I am not only fighting Crooked Hillary, I am fighting the dishonest and corrupt media and her government protection process. People get it!” he said in one tweet.
Most controversies that have dominated recent news cycles have centered on off-hand comments Trump has made during public appearances or even things that he has repeated from the past but are receiving new scrutiny as the election nears.
Last week, a flurry of news reports highlighted that Trump had called President Obama the “founder” of the Islamic State during a campaign rally, though he had made similar remarks as far back as January without much interest.
Even so, the cumulative effect of negative coverage of Trump’s campaign appears to have had a significant impact.
After both political conventions ended in July, the RealClearPolitics average of national polls showed Clinton and Trump effectively tied at 43 percent. As of Tuesday, Clinton had a near 7-point lead.
There are opportunities, however, for Trump to recover.
In 2012, before the first presidential debate between Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney in October, the president had a 5-point lead in Gallup’s national poll of registered voters. Three days after the debate, which Romney was widely perceived to have been the winner, both candidates were tied at 47 percent.
