Donald Trump’s poll numbers are continuing to improve, but there are still genuine concerns about what his eventual ceiling is. Trump has closed the gap on Clinton, but has yet to receive more than 45 percent in any major poll and he’ll need to beat that if he wants to win in November. He has one more big chance to climb closer to that mark, the debates, but there are a lot of reasons to doubt that he can pull this off.
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COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF FORUM
Last night, NBC aired a Commander-In-Chief Forum where both Clinton and Trump took questions from military members and things went much better for Trump than they did Clinton. The moderator was Matt Lauer from The Today Show and surprisingly things went very well for Trump.
Lauer didn’t bother to correct Trump on many issues, including his insistence that he was against the Iraq War despite the fact that he was on record at the time saying that he was for the war. He followed that up with a series of vanilla questions that Trump was able to use talking points to get past and only lightly pressed him on a few issues while not mentioning some of other controversial statements at all.
Conversely, he repeatedly attacked Clinton for her private e-mail server and handling of classified information, spending over a third of his time on it. Despite the fact that Clinton has already been raked over the coals for this numerous times, he wouldn’t let this issue go and was later limited by timing constraints when asking other policy questions. Lauer’s one-sidedness was excoriated on Twitter afterwards and it’s unlikely he will ever be in a moderator position again.
CLINTON’S E-MAILS
Clinton’s e-mail use continues to overshadow her campaign to the point that this is all you hear in the media. There is no talk about her policies, proposals, or speeches in the majority of the media and that’s been an awful thing for her campaign.
This is the time to start campaigning with a positive message and Clinton has not been able to do that with the media coverage that has come her way. Unlike past candidates who were able to break out of the corner they were painted in, she has struggled to get airtime for anything besides her handling of e-mails.
That’s in stark contrast with Trump who has been in the media, positively and negatively, for so many things at this point that it’s hard to keep them all straight. Trump has been killing Clinton in the amount of free press that he has been getting and that has helped him to ameliorate the massive fundraising advantage that Clinton has over him. Eventually, Clinton will likely get some better coverage, but if she doesn’t that could spell doom.
IS IT REALLY THIS CLOSE?
The polls have been closing and it certainly appears that the race is closer, but is it really? There has been speculation that the narrowing of the polls has been the result of Clinton’s convention bounce fading and the race settling into its natural position. The key indicator of that will be whether or not Trump continues to make up ground or stagnates a few points behind Clinton in the lead up to the debates.
All told, this probably won’t be that close at the end. The media has wanted to push the narrative of a closer than expected race and thus has started to give Trump free passes on things, while continuing to harangue Clinton. As the race to win the White House shifts and enters the home stretch, coverage should be more even handed and that should benefit Clinton. Anything other than a Clinton victory at the end would be very unexpected.
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