* All these years it seemed Trump was just a flamboyant real estate developer and producer of beauty pageants. But now it’s apparent he’d been paying attention to all sorts of subjects all along. This comes as something of a surprise. He actually has a coherent world view unlike most others who offer disconnected homilies about this or that small issue. What did Romney stand for? Can anybody remember?
* For the Republican side, this election has never been about Trump, but the issues that only he had the guts and patriotism to raise. It is the Democrats who wanted this election to be about Trump the man, and they got what they wanted.
* Heck, things would be looking different if just the GOPe hadn’t actively tried to sabotage him.
Meanwhile, Ari Fleischer pens a column in Jeff Bezos’ blog announcing that he will not vote for Trump.
* It was a great ad – runs directly counter to the bleating narrative of the Left and NeverTrump Right that Trump is an authoritarian. That was just straight up meat and potatoes populism.
It would be very fitting if Michigan or Pennsylvania give Trump the victory. The rust belt will rise again!
* Ironically, the four minute selectively edited video from Michael Moore’s new documentary has gone a long way to help explaining a Trumpian coherent, big picture worldview.
In other words, I’ll be voting for Trump on Tuesday because Michael Moore endorsed him and persuaded me that I should vote for a person who’s not a Romney globalist, pro-Wall Street, pro-Invade and Invite the world, etc.
* I find it pretty astonishing that people are dismissing Trump’s chances in this election.
He’s down by only 2% in the national poll average at this point.
Any number of factors can put him over the top:
Generally, in a change election, voters break toward the challenger.
Turnout for Trump’s base may be distinctly higher than expected because of their far greater enthusiasm — and turnout for Hillary distinctly lower because of far lower enthusiasm than for, say, Obama.
There may well be a Shy Trump effect, as there was in Brexit (which accounted for at minimum a 4%, and perhaps up to 7%, discrepancy between the final poll averages and the electoral outcome.)
Any one of these factors could take Trump over the top, and in a perfect storm in which all played a role, could give him a dominant win.
Of course it may be that none of these things really affect the outcome, and that he loses.
But from my point of view, the factors that are now unknowable will be the decisive ones in this election. I can see no reason to assume his chances are worse — or better — than 50-50, given that we can’t know how they will work out. A 2% difference, given all the unknowables in this highly variable and unprecedented election seems negligible to me.
