9 Days Out-WHERE ARE WE?

Hillary Clinton is still polling higher than Obama in 2012. The turnout looks like it will be large by American standards and that it is likely Hillary Clinton will win the presidency with more popular votes than anyone in our history. 

The road to 270 for Donald Trump has vanished. He needs both North Carolina and Pennsylvania. He won't get them.

The demographics in this election make Iowa and Ohio lean more Republican while the southwestern states and even Florida lean Democratic. The GOP is quickly becoming the dinosaur in the Northeast and the West coast.

While Sam Wang dismisses Clinton's chances of winning Texas. The early voting in Texas is impressive in Democratic parts of the state, which shows the Hispanic electorate has come alive. Why is this important? US Today ran a story two days ago how George W. Bush won Arizona, New Mexico,Nevada, and Florida but those days are dwindling for the Republicans. We remember how Wilson in California put an anti-immigration bill to referendum and we haven't seen Republicans except for Issa and Mccarthy in California since. California produced Nixon and Reagan and was thought to produce GOP Presidents while Texas soon took its place. With a purple Texas,the GOP will cease to be a national Party. 

There has been alot of discussion about this. Rachel Maddow had an interview with Doris Kearns about this election in today's New York Times. Kearns cited demagogues like Huey Long and George Wallace as comparable to Trump. But she explicitly noted TR in his fight against Taft as an example of a party disintegrating. She also noted Bryan's campaign fighting against industrialization and capitalism as an example of candidates trying to battle rapid change.

Nate Silver this week had a panel to discuss a comparable situation to having a major party's nominee rejected by the established party. 25% of all elected Republicans reject Trump. Some argued Watergate was an example and some argued back to the disintegration of the Democratic Party in 1856. Silver felt the short term prospects of the party weren't bad but the long term was awful. Bill Bartlett, former Reagan GBO head, said after Trump the GOP was no longer a presidential party.

Silver things the chances of it splintering are slim but his panel thought a solid 34% of the party would be racist,sexist and xenophobic. And that part of the party would dominate the near future.

Why the GOP doesn't appear to think they are in trouble is that they will likely control 28 state house, the House and have a tie in the Senate. They are already planning to make Hillary a one-term President and de-legitimnzing her. Then what? 

I would argue the Rovian three-legged stool for GOP success was vanquished in the South Carolina primary. There the electorate was heavily military and religious. Trump destroyed the neo-conservative arguments on defense and foreign policy, fiscal conservatives with his trade policies and muddled social conservatives. 

The Never Trump has produced splendid op-eds but a lonely former CIA officer and Mormon McMullen does not a movement make. The religious right has disgraced itself in this election with Farwell backing Trump despite Trump's sexual behavior. 

The top of the GOP has collapsed. Compare Hillary's surrogates with Trump's. No GOP leader wants to touch Trump except Newt and Rudy who are in their seventies. Who will lead a recovery? The problem is that the GOP had an autopsy in 2012 precisely because they thought they should have won the election. This time they are under no illusions. Now they are a  bunch of plutocrat donors who can play their ideological games in states. Nothing else.

Where does that leave us with this election? It is not so clear like one blogger said that the GOTV is worse than Obama's in 2012 in Ohio and Florida. That's part of the election we don't see. Univision had accomplished their task of registering millions more Hispanics and the polls of Latino Decisions show Hispanics are more enthused this time around. Ohio we only know that Democrats are doing well in the early voting but are minus "Golden Week" which made black voting easier. We know the Clinton campaign just added 300 new offices for GOTV in Pennsylvania. Nevada's early voting is showing Democrats are outpacing the GOP even in GOP-leaning counties. 

The true toss-ups are GOP states like Georgia, Arizona, Utah and Alaska, which didn't happen at this stage in 2008 or 2012. 

Now Comey's weird letter. Anecdotally GOTV people have found 3 turned off of Clinton to 5 hyper-energized by the letter. GOP just say they are horrified. My sense is that democratic activists are more energized by Comey's letter because they believe it is an affront not only to Hillary Clinton but a distinct break in the rules of the DOJ not to comment on such matters 60 days out from the election. 

Today we saw a slight deflation in Hillary's polls but that should change this week. 

Let's remember Hillary Clinton won the debates by a larger percentage than anyone in modern debating history. 

But virtually nothing Trump has said or done has affected him in anyway. Sam Wang in an oped in the New York Times writes in "Why Trump Stays Afloat" that the same forces that brought him this far are keeping him from falling off the map. His range is 39% to 43%. 

Sam who says don't use his website as therapy at Princeton Election Consortium does point to the American Psychological Association as issuing tips for dealing with election-related stress. When tempers run high,entrenched support for a candidate or candidate is more likely. So Sam says that there is no one left to persuade. "We're too freaked out"

He also said "We are too scared not to vote." because both sides see the other's victory as having horrifying consequences. 

Now I use Wang's website as therapy ,it's cheaper. Sam's point throughout the primaries and the general election campaign has been that this is the most stable polling situation since the end of WWII. The other day he slapped us down by saying Hillary's lead is not 4 or 8, it is six. Even with the Comey letter. Huffpost said that Hillary's lead was really 6 points.

Remember Obama won 2012 with 3.9 points.  And he was black. 

Polls will be bizarre the next few days but we should be able to piece together how GOTV is going in selected states. But remember the question is how big a victory is Hillary Clinton going to enjoy not whether she wins.

About violence,that is a subject for another column.