The Re-Election of Donald Trump

In recent weeks, Donald Trump's prospects for re-election have improved noticeably in betting markets.  For most of the early part of this year, his odds hovered around 30%.  Three weeks ago they jumped up to 35%. They currently stand at 39% on Predictit.org.  This surge does not correspond with an upsurge in Trump's approval ratings. The Real Clear Politics average of his approval ratings have stated between 42% and 44% over the last several weeks.  This upswing in the betting markets reflects two more fundamental realities than one politician's polling numbers.  Donald Trump's prospects are improving for two reasons:

1. As time goes by, Trump is being normalized. The American people are accepting behavior from Donald Trump no other president would ever dream of doing, because the American people are becoming numb to his vulgarity and weirdness. 

2. Donald Trump has utter and complete control of the Republican party.  Every single Republican politician is afraid of him, because he is immensely popular with the bloc of people who vote in Republican primaries.

If I had to bet today, I would bet against Donald Trump being re-elected in 2020. But his chances are better than a lot of thinking people want to admit. He is now embarked on a journey to Singapore for a meeting with the North Korean dictator. I think the results of that summit will have a big impact on the 2020 race and I want to sketch some thoughts about 2020 before the meeting happens.

I.  Donald Trump's 2020 Message.

Donald Trump's 2020 campaign will be predicated on simple assertion: that he has made America great again, just as he promised in 2016.  There are three policy claims that he must make, and he will make them with a straight face no matter what the facts on the ground say.  

1. I made the economy better.  He will point to whatever statistics help this cause. Right now he can accurately say that the job market has got stronger during his presidency. He will credit his tax cuts and deregulation if that's still true in 2020.  If not's still true in 2020 he will find some reason why voters should only think about how strong the job market was during the first half of his presidency. 

2. I made the country safer.  Donald Trump will point to the destruction of ISIS as his greatest accomplishment. ISIS has lost almost all of its territory, a trend that began while Obama was still president, but which did accelerate in 2017.  And it does not seem likely that ISIS will make much of a comeback as a de facto sovereign entity. It will be quite easy for the Republican party to craft compelling 30 second commercials featuring people who were tortured by ISIS and who now have a measure of freedom or been able to return to their home. It's a good starting point for claiming success on the world's stage.

The North Korea gambit is all about wanting a diplomatic victory to show that he is a great deal maker.  Trump's incentive is to get a deal that he can call "denuclearization." Kim Jong Un might have a corresponding incentive to get something done too. 

Kim was educated at a boarding school in Switzerland. He knows what the west has to offer and he has to know, on some level, that his father and grandfather's model is no way to run a state. But he also wants to retain political power and the lifestyle of a dictator.  He probably needs some western capital to make that happen.  If he's ever going to make a deal to get that capital, he might as well make it with the current president, because Trump will not make ANY demands related to human rights or political reform. Trump only cares about being able to claim that he got North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.  So Kim could agree to a very loose, wishy-washy statement about ending their nuclear weapons program.  Such a deal will have no teeth and will not make any demands of verification before 2021, other than some symbolic photo ops of Kim's people dismantling some equipment. They will make some rhetorical concessions and empty gestures, like they did when they staged a demolition of their nuclear testing site. In exchange, they will get the prestige of having been treated as a peer by the president of the United States and they will get some sanctions relief. I think Kim will tempt Trump with the possibility of making money for his family and for his other rich asshole friends. 

Donald Trump would love to tell you that he took nuclear weapons out of a mad man's hands. He would also love to tell you that he made an incredible deal that will somehow make gas cheaper or decrease our trade deficit or create some jobs.  He's not big on details and he's way over his head on this trip.  But I think he will get a deal of some kind done, because his inner circle is committed to making that happen and they don't really care about the consequences of a bad deal. Whatever deal he makes, Donald Trump will brag about it-long, loud and wrong.

3. The Democrats are pussies. The Democrats need to nominate someone, and that nominee will have to emerge from a protracted primary battle where everyone fights to prove that they are th most anti-Trump option available to voters. 

Donald Trump's most outrageous policy changes have been in the sphere of immigration. He is breaking families of asylum seekers up. He is still intent on building that stupid wall and he is willing to shut the government down to do it.  To the extent that the wall is shorthand for his insane 2016 campaign, he has to go all out for it. It is an extension of his political persona, and therefore must be defended at all costs. For the same reason, the Democrats have to resist the wall at all costs. In the short term, the wall is hurting his poll numbers. But by 2020, he's going to be beating the xenophobia drum as often as possible, because either way, he can win on it.

If the wall gets built, he will say "Look, I did this amazing thing and now we are safe."  It it does not get built he will say "Look, I tried to save you but the Democrats blocked me and now we have gangs running around and cops getting shot" and making hay out of whatever unfortunate headlines he can point to.  

The Democratic party is vulnerable on this issue, again.  The Democratic base is rightly incensed by Trump's immigration policies. The 2020 Democratic primary race may just turn on who can get to the furthest left on issues of immigration enforcement.  But they could pay a price for that in the general election. Trump will demonize brown people in whatever way works to make voters question the ability of the Democratic nominee to lead the government-to fight for average Americans. He will definitely run 30 second commercials about some crime committed by an undocumented worker here in the states or maybe about some crime wave or other in European countries that are driven by immigrants from Muslim majority countries. 

There will be a 4th dimension to Trump's 2020 campaign.  Something personally insulting about the Democratic nominee. Lyin' Ted Cruz, Lil' Marco Rubio and, of course Crooked Hillary Clinton will know what I am talking about. Trump has the mind of a bully and he has reason to believe that people like watching him be cruel to other politicians.  No matter how the Democrats nominate, he will find a weakness and he will beat it like a drum.  Commie Bernie Sanders, Crazy Joe Biden, & Pocahantas all have easily identified monikers. But over the course of the Democratic primary, he will figure out what to call whoever the nominee is, and there will even be a chant to replace "Lock Her Up!" It will not be subtle.

II.  The Consequences Phase of the Trump Years.

On Friday, Maggie Haberman tweeted out a very interesting observation.  The White House staffers that only met Trump during the transition period all say that Trump has gotten much worse in recent months. But the people who have known Trump for a long time tend to say that his behavior is the same as ever.  The fact is that Trump was intimidated by the presidency for the first year or so. He knew he was in over his head and he reigned in some of his worst instincts. But as 2018 stretches on, he is reverting to his old self. He is becoming the world class asshole that he always has been.

The reason for this confidence is that he is surrounded by sycophants and spends eight hours a day watching a television network dedicated to talking about how successful he is. I suspect that many people reading this blog will have a hard time believing this sentence, but it's a very important one: Donald Trump genuinely believes that he is a great president. 

Like any other narcissist, Trump is able to create excuses for any failures. But his real passion is taking credit for success.  He think the continued drop in unemployment is only happening because of his brilliant tax cuts. He also believes, with equal fervor, that the federal debt has exploded because of past sins by Democrats. No amount of evidence can convince him otherwise. He thinks the stock market boom of 2017 was due to his presidency. The fact that the market is lower in June than it was in January is the fault of fake news and lying Democrats.  This dexterity of mind is great for one's confidence, but reality can't be shut out for ever.

It's not clear when Trump's ignorance will begin to manifest itself  in negative economic news. The tax cuts have not yet caused any increase in economic growth. Last quarter we grew at just 2.2%, but the forecast is slightly better for the rest of the year. And we haven't yet seen signs of a weakening job market, although wage growth has been less than expected.  So Trump might cruise through 2018 and 2019 without a recession. But he's also beginning to play with fire when it comes to trade.

As his confidence in the Oval Office has grown, Donald Trump has begun focusing on the issues that he always cared about. International trade and trade deficits have been a point of interest with him for decades. He seems to think that a trade deficit means that one country is stealing from the other. This is balderdash, but we live in the age of alternative facts.  The president thinks this is true and he remains dedicated to the proposition that the United States should only be a thief, never a victim of  such "theft".  

Trump is beginning to act brazenly here. He is threatening to impose all kinds of tariffs, on both rival nations and our traditional allies.  Most glaringly, he is promising to impose tariffs on Canada.  He is claiming that this must be done for national security, a notion that is utterly preposterous, but that happens to be the only reason he can impose these tariffs without congressional approval. So facts be damned, we're going to punish Canada.  Canada, of course, intends to respond in kind.  That's how trade wars work.  Yesterday Justin Trudeau said that Canada will not be pushed around.  Our president threw a hissy fit in response and refused to have the United States sign off on the joint comminique of the G7 nations. That's all a little inside baseball now. But if he follows through with these tariffs, there will be tremendous consequences for American consumers and workers.  

It is possible that the economy will continue to putter along with reasonable growth rates and job creation numbers. That will strengthen Trump's chances of winning an election. But it's also possible that his trade wars and continued attempt to undermine Obamacare will have the kinds of consequences that voters remember on election  day.  Trump's prospects have improved because he has good fortune on the economic front. I don't think that can hold for another 29 months of this level of stupidity, but the margin of the election will be determined by how severe those consequences are.

III. Mueller.

Robert Mueller has compiled a year's worth of information about the ties between Donald Trump and the government of Russia. Not a single stitch of information has leaked from his shop. That's an impressive accomplishment that makes it difficult to handicap the outcome of his investigation.

This is what I suspect will happen. Sometime in 2018 or early 2019, Bob Mueller will call a press conference. At that conference he will announce a new round of indictments. Those indictments will include people in Trump's inner circle. It might include his son and/or son-in-law. He will also lay out the case that Donald Trump obstructed justice by firing James Comey in order to impede the investigation of Russia's election interference.  He will explain that he does not intend to indict Donald Trump because he subscribes to the consensus view that sitting presidents can not be prosecuted for crimes.

This announcement will infuriate a lot more people than it pleases. Many Democrats will be frustrated by the decision not to indict Trump. And Republicans will be faced with yet another moral dilemma: accept the findings of a respected law enforcement professional or side with the raving tantrums of an incompetent, compromised and dishonest president. If the past 17 months have taught us anything, this will not be a hard choice for most of them. 

There has been a lot of talk about a looming constitutional crisis. We could get lucky and avoid something really awful, but I am not optimistic. The constitutional crisis began last week when the president publicly declared that he was above the law and not a single prominent Republican office holder bothered to repudiate him.  If we go forward with the battle lines that Trump has drawn, then the ending will be very ugly.

But Mueller is likely to persuade a lot of independent voters that the sitting president is corrupt. That will probably prevent his re-election. But even under those extraordinary circumstances, the outcome will not be certain.  Donald Trump has captured a major political party. It is now his toy. For the moment, the economy is lumbering on with modest growth and a stable job market. The world has not presented Trump with a military or humanitarian crisis of a big enough to be made truly horrible by his ignorance and ineptitude. 

Donald Trump's presidency may coast to a soft landing, which will set up a very close election. In 2016, there were ten states decided by less than 4 percentage points. Donald Trump won six and Hillary Clinton won four. But more importantly Trump won the biggest states in this group, capturing 102 electoral votes to 21 for Hillary. Both parties will have multiple paths to 270 electoral votes.
The motivation of the Democratic base will be extremely high and that should be enough for them to win. But the Republican party will rally to their leader and they will run on the same spiteful promises and ugly nationalism that won the last election. It could be enough to win again. That is the political reality of the United States of America as we enter the next, even uglier phase of the Trump presidency.

President Trump (Volume 1)

The most widely read entry in the modest history of this blog was written a few hours after Donald Trump was elected president.  In that post I made 10 predictions for what Trump's election would mean to America.  My intention is to update the status of my predictions from time to time and to write about the general status of the Trump presidency.  Thirty eight days in, this is where we stand.

I.  New Business; The first 38 Days of President Trump.

1.  The man's brain is addled.  I never thought he was especially smart,but the feeble nature of his mental process and communication style is staggering. I first noticed this while listening to the inaugural address in my car.  He obviously used professional speechwriters for the address but just couldn't help adding personal flourishes like this one:

     "an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful 

      students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that 
      have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized 
      potential."

Well that is pretty dark. But can you spot the Trump flourishes?  I'm pretty sure he added "beautiful" to the description of students.  And the phrase "deprived of all knowledge" is really asinine. I just looked at the official transcript ant the word "all" is not there, which means he ad libbed that perfectly pointless adjective.

Every public utterance by him is made in the goofy syntax of a middle school child or a recovering stroke patient.  Whenever he is asked a substantive question, he wings it and betrays a lack of knowledge on whatever the issue is at hand.  He has demonstrated a complete lack of knowledge with regard to Frederick Douglass, The Two State Solution, and the practicality of repealing and replacing Obamacare.  I can't say that his brain has been deprived of all knowledge, but his capacity to think and speak seems to have diminished much more than in a typical man his age.

2.  His management style is chaos. Every administration struggles to get their arms around the enormity of the American presidency. Team Trump is further handicapped by an unwillingness to let holdovers stay in important positions and an understandable refusal of many competent Repbulicans to be affiliated with the coming train wreck that this presidency is likely to become.  There are hundreds of important jobs now vacant that he has not even nominated a successor. And the horrible execution of his immigration executive order is only the most public display of the disorganized shambles that this administration is.

3. His self-obsession and self-dealing are even greater than imagined.  We're about to start the sixth week of his presidency and he still brags about winning a very narrow election as if it was the greatest accomplishment in human history. Even more troubling, he has no regard for the appearance of personal impropriety. He will never disgorge his financial conflicts and he obviously believes that there is no need to be subtle about this practice. He doubled the fees to join his country club, and now spends almost every weekend promoting the place in person. His hotels are profiting from foreign governments and he even landed a very valuable trademark for himself in China. This scam is the essential fact of Trump's presidency: his aim is to finally become the multi-billionaire that he always lied about being.

4.  Congressional Republicans still think they can squeeze a conventional Republican agenda out of this shit show.  The stock market is performing very well.  Wall Street is still optimistic that the GOP will get major tax cuts and substantial reduction of economic regulations. It's very possible that they will, if Trump does not interfere with the process too much. He won't care about blowing a hole in the deficit, because he will declare any such predictions to be fake news.  So the GOP can load up on tax cuts for the rich as long as the middle class also see some relief.  This sugar rush will probably provide some additional growth this year and the job market might remain strong for the next 18 months or so. If that happens, the midterms will be less disastrous for Republicans than they probably fear now.

5.  He is ruthless.  His comments about the press and his obfuscations related to the Russian interference with his election are chilling.  He obviously intends to obstruct any investigations of his election and to punish anyone who leaks unfavorable information to the media.  He seems to believe that the media make an effective enemy for him and his plan to be re-elected is predicated on discrediting the very people tasked with exposing his corruption.

II.  Old Business: The State of My Predictions About Trump

1.  "The Iran Deal will be torn up."
He has been a bit reticent on this front.  He still bad mouths the deal but he has not acted to unilaterally end the agreement.  Some of this is due to his administration being bogged down in other fights but I think the greater measure of it can be attributed to the fact that the deal is good for America. The alternative is an Iran that is free to pursue nuclear weapons technology without any real threat of UN sanctions being imposed  I will be very happy to be wrong about this prediction, but I will say that he is keeping the option open. If he needs a big, scary enemy for target practice, Iran may be his best option.  Put this in the maybe column for now.

2.  "Antonin Scalia will be replaced by a conservative rather than by the extremely centrist Merrick Garland."

That nominee is in place and will get his hearing soon. The Democrats will face a lot of pressure to oppose him but they probably can't stop him from being sworn in. By the time I write Volume 2 of this series, he will be on the bench.

3.  ISIS has a new propaganda talking point.

Well, this I undersold.  Our national reputation has been severely damaged and we are beginning to pay an economic price for that. Travel to the United States has declined and the decline in searches for airfares to the United States have declined even further.  Most heartbreaking, we recently had a hate crime murder in Olathe, Kansas. Two Indian nationals were killed by an nationalist terrorist, one fatally.  There has also been an uptick in desecration of mosques and synagogues. I really hope that these are isolated incidents, but it does feel like the crazies have been emboldened by having a virulent nationalist in the Oval Office. This will have consequences. We are an embarrassment and the world is keeping its distance.


4. It is now the official policy of the United States government that Climate Change is a hoax perpetrated by China to disrupt American manufacturing. 

Still true. And I wrote that before Trump picked the CEO of Exxon to be the Secretary of State. 

5. At some point next year the Congress will repeal Obamacare.

This one has been the most interesting development.  For six year, vowing to repeal Obamacare was page one of the Republican catechism and Republicans delighted in voting to do so dozens of times. But now that they could actually pass a bill that their president would sign, those same members of congress have lost the appetite.  They clearly fear a backlash for getting rid of Obamacare benefits like the expansion of medicaid and mandatory coverage of people with pre-existing conditions.  But Obamacare is paid for with taxes on some very rich people and Paul Ryan believes that repealing those taxes is the most important thing he can do as speaker. 

I think the Republicans willl move more slowly on this front than I first anticipated. They will probably spend a good chunk of this year gutting the program but they are definitely gun shy about facing voters in a midterm who just lost their benefits.  I expect the final litigation package won't be voted on until 2018 and there will be some substantial delays in the expiration of the most popular benefits. If the Republican dodge catasrophe in the midterms, they will come back to gut more of the law in 2019.

6. At some point next year the Congress will pass massive tax cuts and the overwhelming majority of these cuts will benefit very wealthy people.

This will get done.

7. Immigration policy is about to become a lot less thoughtful. 

QED. 

8. There will be a bunch of dumb protectionist policies put in place. 

Trump is even worse on free trade than I expected him to be. He seems to believe that the United States should only make bilateral trade agreements rather than regional or global deals. TPP is dead and China will soon fill that vacuum. Instead of trade among nations on the Pacific being regulated by the values of neoliberalism, they will be governed by the whims of waterdowned one-party state pseudo-capitalism. That's terrible news.

One insane little nugget beginning to make the rounds is that Trump wants any trade deals to contain a provision that the United States can automatically back out of the deal if we run a trade deficit with the other country. That's the economic equivalent of a prenuptial agreement that triggers an automatic divorce should one spouse have more orgasms than the other.

9. The implements of the federal government will be used to settle the president's political scores.

We're seeing this mostly in the arena of press access, but believe me this will spread to lots of other places.

10. The new school of political science thought will be personality based

A little too early to tell on that one. I do think that someone will run on the Trump model in the democratic primaries. Mark Cuban is the most likely choice.  But if I am encouraged by anything it is the breadth of negative reaction to Trump's style.  Even some Fox news types are turned off by Trump's habit of making everything about himself.  I think the next president is likely to be a profound reaction to Trump's personality. So I would look for someone sober and unassuming, even modest, to be his toughest challenger.


III.  New Business: What to Look For.

Before too long, the government will begin passing substantial legislation on things like taxes and healthcare.  There might be a period of relative normalcy as the shock of having a deranged president wears off. But Trump can not help himself in certain arenas.  He will fight the press and he will insult his critics at every turn.  The leaks will probably continue because people in positions of authority know that their president is not trustworthy. I think the financial conflicts of interest are the area most likely to birth a full blown and sustained political scandal.

I also think Trump's penchant for secrecy is going to do him real damage. He can't keep doing these press conferences where he sounds like a crazy person by denying things that are absolutely true.

IV.  The End.

Liberals have been energized by this administration. Yesterday, this mobilization of political goodwill paid its first dividends in Delaware, where a special election was held for a senate seat that determined which party controlled that chamber.  The Democrat won by 17 points. buoyed in part by volunteers from neighboring states.

This enthusiasm should not be mistaken for a sign that Trump's presidency is doomed. A lot of liberals on Twitter seem to think that impeachment is imminent. It is not. Both house of congress are Republican and vast majorities of the people who voted for him think he's doing a fine job. So far he hasn't done anything that will hurt those supporters too much. But he also hasn't done anything to win over a single person that voted for Hillary or a third party candidate.

Trump probably needs to win the same states he won last time to be re-elected. He probably needs dramatic economic improvements to hold on to states like Michigan and Wisconsin. Maybe his tax cuts will stimulate enough activity to make that happen, but I still think Trump will be an underdog to win re-election.

V.  2020 Foresight.

Well, I guess these periodic updates on Trumpland will need a hook.  So I will conclude with a forecast for how I think this term of the presidency is likely to end.

Resignation:                                                                  1%*
Death or Incapacity                                                       2% (Not to be morbid, but it happens.)
Impeachment                                                                 3%
Completes Term, Gets Re-elected                               21%
Completes Term, loses to Democrat                           58%
Completes Term, loses nomination                            10%
Completes Term but does not run for 2nd term            5%

*Asterisk for the possibility of resigning in order to avoid imminent impeachment. that could happen, but he would never voluntarily give up this kind of power.)
Trump im

4th General Election Forecast: Clinton 49.7, Trump 44.6, Johnson 4.1, McMullin 0.8, Stein 0.7 (Electoral College 322, Trump 216)

In about 48 hours, we will know the identity of the election winner. That winner will be Hillary Clinton. The margin will be similar to the election of 2012 but there are a handful of states that could go either way.  Trump would need to win every single one of them to get to 270 votes.  If you go to Predictit.com and buy shares in the states most likely to vote for Hillary, you can get 274 EV and the cheapest state would be Pennsylvania at 79 cents. Even if Trump pulls one truly significant upset in one of those states, Hillary could save the election by winning one of the other states where she is favored. Florida (69 cents) or North Carolina (61 cents) plus New Hampshire (76 cents).

But the elections could be close. If Nate Silver again correctly predicts every single contest this time, and his model does not change tomorrow, she will win 278 to 260. But consider that this includes Trump winning Nevada, because Nate's models, unlike betting markets, do not factor in the early vote. I think Hillary stands an excellent change of exceeding 300 Electoral Votes, but that's not guaranteed.

Trump's route to 270.

To build Trump's path to 270, one would expect to start him with the 206 Electoral Votes that Romney won in 2012. The day before the 2012 election I wrote a blog post called Romney has 5 Paths to 270 (and one to 269.)  This was based on my reading of the polls, the futures markets and the 2008 vote.  For each of those paths, I assumed that Romney would win flip North Carolina because it was his best chance of a pick up. He did flip NC back to red, but four years later it is the state most likely to flip back to blue.  So let's start Trump with 191 EV.  The only other Romney states he has a significant chance of losing are Arizona, Nebraska's 2nd congressional District and possibly Utah. But a close election would mean he turned out enough of his voters to hang on to the shaky red states. So he starts with 191. From that starting point he needs to add:

Three  Contests where he is favored:
1. Maine's 2nd congressional district, where he is currently the slight favorite. (192)
2. Iowa, where polls have shown him ahead for awhile. (198)
3. Ohio, where his anti-free trade positions and his support for the coal industry have resonated. (216)

These are the only contested states where he is the betting favorite.  I think he is likely to win all three of them, but I expect Ohio to be close.

Nothing Could Be More Floridian.
4. Not unlike Romney in the previous cycle, he almost certainly wins NC if he wins the presidency. But unlike last time, the polls and betting markets are against him, slightly. (231)
5. Florida, Florida, Florida.  I once thought FL would be an easier win for Trump than NC but today's early vote numbers looked great for Democrats. I really do favor Hillary here, but it's easy to go broke betting on the good sense of Floridians. (260)

The Last 10 Are the Hardest.
For weeks I assumed Donald's best path to 270 would involve Nevada and New Hampshire getting him to exactly 270. The NV numbers do not look good for Republicans and Hillary is also a heavy favorite in New Hampshire, which seems to be trending leftward as the Boston suburbs sprawl ever northward. This is still his best path, and you go to election night with the polls you have, not the polls you want. (270)

A Big 10 Upset.

If Trump fails to run the states listed above, he will need to pull a significant upset elsewhere. His best chances are in Big 10 Country:

A. If Trump wins Pennsylania (20 EV)  or Michigan (17 EV), he could win even if he lost North Carolina and New Hampshire. He also could win the election if he kept NC but lost both NV and NH.
Hillary's price on Predictit.com is 83 cents in PA and 79 in MI.

B.  If Trump wins either Wisconsin or Minnesota (each with 10 EV), he could afford to love NV and NH. Hillary's price on Predictit.com is 86 cents in WI and 88 in MN.

When the first Comey letter came out 10 days ago, Predictwise.com gave Hillary a 91% of winning. That got down to 82% before starting to rebound. She is nearly back to where she was, standing at 89%. Trump has a tough road to 270. With a good result in NC and FL, the election may come to a merciful end a couple hours sooner than expected.

Forecast	Popular	Electoral	Changes
First (July 10th)	Clinton 50, Trump 44, Johnson 4, Stein 2.	Clinton 348-190	(From 2012) Clinton wins NC and NE-2
Second (Sep 26th)	Clinton 49, Trump 45, Johnson 4, Stein 2	Clinton 340-198	Trump wins IA, NE-2 & ME-2
Third (October 16th)	Clinton 50, Trump 43, Johnson 4, Stein 2, McMullin 1	Clinton 359-179	Clinton wins IA, NE-2, ME-2 & Arizona
Fourth (November 7th)	Clinton 50, Trump 44, Johnson 4, Stein 1, McMullin 1	Clinton 322-216	Trump wins AZ, IA, OH, NE-2, ME-2

Third General Election Forecast: Clinton 50, Trump 43, Johnson 4, Stein 2, McMullin 1 (Electoral College Clinton 359, Trump 179)

I did my first forecast before the conventions.  I stood pat with that prediction until three weeks ago, when Trump's enduring poll surge forced me to modify a 50-44 Clinton result just slightly to Clinton winning 49-45. Since then, we've had 3 debates and a never ending string of dumpster fires for the Republican ticket have tilted the race back in Hillary's favor. I am therefore adjusting my projection back toward the Democratic nominee. I now project Clinton to win 50 percent of the vote to Trump's 43 percent. One new wrinkle: I think Evan McMullin will get one percent of the vote. With a little bit of luck he could catch Jill Stein for 4th place.

Forecast	Popular	Electoral	Changes
First (July 10th)	Clinton 50, Trump 44, Johnson 4, Stein 2.	Clinton 348-190	(From 2012) Clinton wins NC and NE-2
Second (Sep 26th)	Clinton 49, Trump 45, Johnson 4, Stein 2	Clinton 340-198	Trump wins IA, NE-2 & ME-2
Third (October 16th)	Clinton 50, Trump 43, Johnson 4, Stein 2, McMullin 1	Clinton 359-179	Clinton wins IA, NE-2, ME-2 & Arizona

Specific Changes.

For the second time I'm updating only to move a few electoral college votes in one direction. In fact the four changes in this update cancel out the three changes from the first. Here are my thoughts on each:

Iowa and Maine 2nd District: These are places that Obama won twice and I don't think Trump is going to ouperform Romney anywhere. Maine's 2nd district is mostly white and rural, so that's probalby his best pickup opportunity but I think his oafish behavior has turned off enough people to prevent him doing better than Romney even there. This behavior simply does not fly in Iowa.  He will lose for the same reason that he lost the caucuses there: there is a more palatable alternative.

Nebraska 2nd district:  My hunch is that this will be be the closest jurisdiction on election night. Warren Buffet is fighting hard for Hillary there and I think she will out perform Obama in 2012, when he lost it but probably fare worse then 2008 when he won it.  Nate Silver gives Trump 51% of winning it.  I think Hillary will finish strong, so I'm tipping this over to him.

Arizona: This would be a significant pickup for Hillary. It's only voted for a Democrat once in the last 68 years. But the states Latino population is booming and Hillary is putting resources there, something that Obama never did. (In part because it was McCain's home state.)  I think the state has progressed and will flip blue.  

Four Scenarios for Election Night.

In a close election the battle grounds would be Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida.  This is not shaping up to be a close election. THe battlegrounds are instead Arizona, Iowa and Georgia.  But how big will the margin be?  I think the race will take one of 4 paths. 

1. Clinton wins by more than Obama's 2008 Margin.  Barack Obama won the popular vote in 2008 by nearly 10 million votes. That translated to 7.36% and was good enough for 365 electoral votes.  I think Hillary has a tough rode to get to 365.  She should win all 332 of Obama's 2012 states plust North Carolina. That gets her to 348.  NE-2 and Arizona only get her to 360. (Note: the electoral college has been updated since the 20120 census, which tilted it a few points toward the Red, because Illinois, New York and Pennsylania all lost electors.)  To get past 360, she would need to add a true upset.  Georgia and or Utah would do the trick. So would Missouri.  Montana would only get her to 363. A sweep of all these states would get her to 395.  I think that's very unlikely.  Chances of Hillary winning with 365 or more electoral votes?  About 10%.

2. Clinton wins by less than Obama's 2008 margin but more than 2012.

Obama was re-elected by a margin roughly 1/2 the size of his first win.  He won the popular vote by just over five million votes, which worked out to 3.86% and 332 electoral votes  I think Hillary is very likely to win North Carolina and is only really needs to worry about Iowa and Maine's second district. If she wins NC but loses those 2, she still comes out ahead of Obama in 2012, gaining 15 but losing 7. That would be 340-198.  Chances of Hillary winning 333-364?  About 60%.

3.  Clinton Wins an Election Closer than 2012.

This would take a substantial shift towards Trump.  He presently seems incapable of making that happen, but outside events could intervene.  If Trump defends NC, he will probably add Iowa and ME-2 to Romney's pile.  That gets Hillary down to 325.  Trump might also win Ohio and Florida under these circumstances. That would get Hillary down to 278.  Chances of  Hillary winning with 270-332?  About 20%.

4. Trump Wins, Barely.

In my second forecast I went to some pains to describe Trump's likeliest path to 270.  That involves

1. Defending NC to keep Romney's 206 votes.

2. Add Iowa and ME-2. (213)

3. Add Ohio (231)

4. Add Florida (260)

5. Add Nevada (266)

6. Add New Hampshire (270)

That's still his likeliest path, but Nevada and New Hampshire seem to be trending towards Clinton in a big way. To replace those 10 votes, he would need a substantial upset in a largish blue state.  Michigan, Wisconsin and (of course) Pennsylania would do the trick. Nate Silver gives Trump about a 10 percent chance in PA and WI, slightly less in MI.  Chances of keeping Hillary below 270?  Less than 10%.

Enter McMullin.

Evan McMullin has emerged as a sane alternative for conservatives who are repulsed by Trump.  He is only on the ballot in 11 states but that doesn't really matter because he's only campaigning in Utah. He is running a de facto favorite son campaign, albeit in a state that is no longer his home. (He was born in Utah but raised in Washington State.)  He is a Mormon and a BYU alum.  His appeal is obvious especially to social consservatives that don't want to vote for a brigand like Trump but are reluctant to vote for the Democrat or Libertarian.

Some recent polls have him getting around 20% of the vote in Utah.  With a little luck he could make a 3 way race.  He is selling a fantasy scenario of winning Utah withe around 500,000 votes and somehow depriving Hillary of 270 electoral college votes.  The race would then go the House of Representatives, where he would have to persuade 26 delegations to vote for him.  This will not happen as it would require asking Republicans to ignore about 50 million votes case for its nominee in favor of a guy who probably will get around one million votes.

But Trump has turned off a lot of voters. There are a lot of people do not want to tell their kids and grandkids that they voted for a monster over the first female candidate for president. One optin is to lie, the other is to indulge McMullin's fantasy. At least some public intellectuals on the right are going to do just that.  With some luck, he could lap Jill Stein and the Green Party, especially if Hillary finishes strong and convincnes enough young people not to waste their votes on the profoundly unqualified Jill Stein.

Sometimes the Smallest Crimes Are the Most Revealing

In the 1997 Neil Labute film "In the Company of Men" there is an early scene that takes place in a men's room.  The film's villian, Aaron Eckhart leans on a sink while his co-worker and best friend occupies a stall. When the friend lowers his pants, about a dozen coins fall out of his pockets and spread out over the floor.  Eckhart teases him for a moment, then tells him not to worry about the coins. He stoops down to the floor and begins to pick up the scattered change.  When he's done he looks at the accumulated coins and picks out three or four coins, worth no more than 45 cents.  He puts them in his pocket and leaves the rest in his hand, presumably to return to his friend.

It's a small gesture, but very revealing. He's the kind of man who would steal a couple of dimes from his best friend. Over the course of the film, Eckhart becomes the clear villian and turns the friend into an unwitting henchman in a series of depraved acts against an innocent hearing-impaired woman.  The theft of those coinss is easy to miss on first viewing but it establishes so much about where these characters are headed.

Eight days ago tape surfaced of the Republican nominee for president bragging about being able to get away with extremely lewd behavior towards women because he is a celebrity. Since then at least nine women have come forward to describe outrageous, lascivious agression by Mr. Trump.  As a result, the campaign has descended into an argument about the meaning and boundaries of sexual assault versus behavior that is merely crude and boorish.  I find some of these women very credible and I believe he has committed multiple sexual assaults.  The accounts are horrific but they can't be independently verified.

Trump has responded, predictably, by assailing the veracity of the women's accounts and questioned both their character and (God help us) their physical attractiveness.  Just two weeks ago we learned that Mr. Trump once claimed losses of nearly a billion dollars on one year's tax returns and less than a week since he admitted that he used those losses to not pay taxes for many years afterwards.  This behavior was apparently legal under the convuluted tax code provisions in place at the time. In an oridinary election season, this would have been the defining moment of the campaign. But we have sunk only lower since then and there's little hope of a rebound.

But I write today to discuss a much smaller transgression. It is not a crime as serious as sexual assault or financial chicanery on the scale of Mr. Trump's tax dodge.  You can't even buy a pizza for the amount of money involved.  I write about this not becase I think it will change anyone's vote on October 15th. If you still intend to vote for the Republican nominee, it will take something unfathomable to change your mind.  But petty crimes are sometimes the most revealing.

One of the few bright spots of the 2016 media coverage has been the yeoman work of David Fahrenthold. Writing for the Washington Post, he has doggedly tracked down every charitable contribution that Trump has claimed ot make and every single line item on the tax returns of the Trump Foundation.  This week Mr. Faharenthold found an entry from 1989 for a donation to the Boy Scouts of America.  The donation was in the amount of  seven dollars.  It was annotated with the word "Membership".  Fahrenthold Tweeted this out to his followers and they pointed out that this number could have been for the membership fee for Donald Trump Jr. The younger Mr. Trump was 11 years old at the time of the donation.  The Boy Scouts of America did indeed confirm that the annual membership for their organization was seven dollars in 1989.

That's who Donald Trump is.  Rather than write a seven dollar check for his son's Boy Scout troop he wrote the check from his charitable foundation.  This is a very minor violation of the tax code.  But think of the families who have to scrape together the funds for their children to participate in extra cirricular activities. It is so revelaing of his character. Mr. Trump is a nasty, petty individual who will cut every corner to gain an advantage, however small.

It is a common trait among unsavory types.  The boxing promoter Don King has been sued numerous times for having defrauded boxers out of various sums of money. Hector "Macho" Commacho was once called to testify at one of these trials and he testified to a variety of penny-ante ways that King swindled him out of money over a period of years.  Asked at one point why he thought Mr. King would behave that way, Commacho said "Because Don King would rather steal a nickel than earn a dollar."

That case was settled out of court and Don King kept untold millions, some earned, some stolen a nickel or two at time. Don King is a prominent supporter of Donald Trump's campaign for president. They have been friends for a long time, going back to various boxing events held at Donald Trump's casinos in Atlantic City. They did a lot of business together and somehow never ended up in court against one another.  I guess they got along in bussiness

In 1966 Don King was convicted of non-neligent homicde. He did nearly four years in prison.  His victim, Sam Garrett worked for King at an illegal gambling den.  King stomped him to death because he owed him $600.

The Questions I Would Ask at the Debate

Before the first Republican presidential primary debate I posted on Facebook that I felt like a wedding guest who just realized that the Best Man, who is getting up to give his toast, is visibly drunk.  Before tonight's debate, I feel like a wedding guest again, but this time I'm at the church.  The preacher just asked if anyone knows of a reason why the couple should not be married.  In the pew behind me, I just heard the bride's ex-boyfriend clear his throat, and he is rising to his feet.  I turn around to look, and I see that there are note cards in his hands.  I look closer, and realize that they have pictures.

To put the past week in some broader context context, consider that the last debate was 13 days ago. Since then we learned that one of the nominees lost almost a billion dollars in on tax year.  And no one is talking about that.

I started thinking about questions for this debate a week ago and I realized something: it's difficult to phrase good questions for Donald Trump.  Whatever you ask, he will just pick up a bead and run with it. The debate rules prohibit the audience members from asking follow-up questions, although the moderator can do so.  They will have their work cut out for them.

Donald has a pretty good knack for reading rubes.  He normally might be well suited to this debate. He might, for instance, be able to read the mood of the qestioners well enough to give them the feeling that he is relating to them, even as the words he deliversa re indecipehrable nonsense.  Of course, he will have to deal with an extra heaping of anger and resentment tonight, of the media, of his opponnent and of the party establishment that is abandoning him by the hour. He may think that his best tactic is to attack, attack, attack.  That will be an epic mistake and very awkward television history, sort of like if somone stood up at Westminster Abbey and interrupted the Pincess Diane/Prince Charles weddding by bringing up Chuck's love for Camilla Parker Bowles.

For Donald Trump.
1. You have spoken at campaign rallies about recent incidents between the United States Navy and the Iranian Navy.  You have remarked on the fact that some Iranian sailors make obscene gestures to our destroyers and that if you were the commander-in-chief you would order the commanders of those ships to kill the offending sailors.  When told that this would constitute an act of war, you claimed that it would not.  Let's suppose that after you take office, an American sailor fliped of an Iranian vessel and the Iranian ship responded by shooting that sailor dead.  How would you respond to the death of that American sailor?


2.  You often brag about having graduated from the Wharton School of Business. Whenever discussing trade deals you refer to trade deficits that the United States runs with other countries as those countries "stealing" or "taking" money from "us."  Why do you think trade imbalances are theft?

3. You have said that Climate Change is a hoax created by the Chinese to undermine American manufacturing. What evidence do you have for this and how much time have you spent analyzing the scientific evidence for climate change, which has been accepted by virtually every climate scientist on the planet.

Bonus Retread Question:  In your campaign speeches you oftne say that business experience and knowledge of how to get business deals done as the most important qualifiction you have to serve as president.  You have blamed a lot of President Obama's failures on his lack of business experience.  Why then did you choose Mike Pence, a man with absolutely no business experience to be your running mate?  (Incredibly, the Republican party has twice nominated buisness men for president on the theory that those skills translate well to being president. And yet both men choose as their would-be successor men with literally zero such experience.)

For Secretary Clinton.

1. Throughout your career you have shown a prediliction for secrecy. Recent examples include your refusal to release transcripts of speeches given to private banks and your decision to use a private email server so as to minimize having your communications be subject to disclosures required of official documents. Often the consequences of this sercrecy is more sever than the consequences of prior disclosure would have been  Have you learned this lessoon and will you pledge to err on the side of transparency going forward

2. The United States gives about 3 billion dollars of foreign aid to Israel every year.  Israel is a wealthy country that continues to violate international law by occupying Palestinian territory and building illegal settlements there. What does the United States get for this aid and will you be willing to withhold those funds if Israel continues to refuse to work towards an indpendent Palestinian state?

3.   The current opiod addiction problem relates back to the decision of the FDA to approve Oxycontin for pain-relief in the 1990s.  Many doctors are now reigning in their presciption rates for those drugs, but many users have turned to the black market to get their fix and are now being prosecuted for drug crimes.  What would your policy priorities related to this epidemic be?

Bonus Retread Question:   Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was intentionally killed under your orders issed by President Obama whil you were Secretary of State.  What policies will you put in place to ensure that no one will be denied due process during the process of adding names to this list.  (I barely had to change the wording of that one.)

First Debate, Immediate Reaction

The first presidential debate ended one hour ago.  The consensus on cable news is that Hillary Clinton won big.  I agree.

Donald Trump got off to a reasonably strong start.  The first question was about jobs, and Donald Trump has a pretty good rap about trade deals that he can spit out on demand.  The substance of this argument is pretty weak but there are definitely a lot of voters out there who think that NAFTA and other free trade deals are the reaons that manufacturing jobs have left the rust belt.  So 15 minutes in, it was more or less a drawer.

But slowly, Trump rode into a ditch.  He was sniffling constantly and interrupting Hillary with great frequency  Hillary for her part was very sure of the facts and very well-rehearsed in her delivery. Tonight at least, Hillary's dilligence paid off.

I think the most important reprecussion of tonight will be that Trump cam across as so damn rude to his opponent. I think women in particular recognized him as the loud mouthed jerk who dominates a conversation even when he no facts on his side.

But Trump was bad in a lot of small ways too.  He completely lied his way through the birther question and he somehow managed to brag about having been mean to Rosie O'Donnell.  For me the worst momen was when he cited imaginary phone conversations with Sean Hannity as proof that he opposed the Iraq war in 2002.  Hannity's show is a nightly hour of Sean performing fellatio on Donald Trump.  But Donald can not understand why no one takes Sean at his word about the contenst of these secret conversation that were unspoken about for 14 years.

Hillary won on style and on substance. She won on temperment and on veracity.  The prediction markets tilted her way by about 5 points over the course of 2 hours.  She should get a bounce out of this. But it's still six weeks from the election and Donald will adjust before the other debates.

Report Cards:

Hillary Clinton:  A.  You can always find flaws in 90 minutes of live speaking, but I don't think Hillary missed any of the points she wanted to make and I don't think she gave Trump any terrible sound bites to use in commercials.

Donald Trump:  C-.  This is the gentleman's C-. He didn't call Hillary any misogynist slurs, so that's something.  The most damning criticism of his perofrmance may be that right now all his spinners are on the airwaves complaining that Hillary prepared too mcuh for the debate.

Lest Holt:  A-.   I read a lot of criticism of Holt for not interfering more, especially when Donald Trump kept interrupting Hillary.  It's a reasonable point but I don't think that's the role of a presidential debate moderator.  The debates should be about the candidates and if one candidate is being a jerk, the jerk candidate is the only one who suffers for that.

I was worried about Holt when the topic were announced.  These topics, remember were: "Achieving Prosperity", "Securing America" and "America's Direction."  This sounds like the parameters for an award four outstanding achievement in the field of excellence. But Lester Holt asked good questions tonight and raised all the subjects that have dominated the conversation so far, including Donald Trump's horrific record on birtherism.  I think he did well.

Second General Election Forecast: Hillary 49, Trump 45, Johnson 4, Stein 2 (Electoral College 340-198)

I published my first general election forecast on July 10th. I thought I would be publishing a new forecast every two weeks or so.  But it's been over 2 months and I haven't updated it before now.  Simply put, I didn't think the election had changed much.  Of course the polls went up and down a few points, but I stuck with my fundamental premise that this election is likely to be similar to 2012. Trump has polled better than expected over the past few weeks and the race is definitely closer than I expected it to be.  It's time to update the projection accordingly.

Today seemed the perfect day for an updated forecast.  The first debate is tonight and we will know a lot more about this election 10 hours from now.  Donald Trump has not done a one-on-one debate yet and I'm not sure how the format will suit his temperament.  But he is first and foremost a TV star and I don't expect any really dramatic outbursts or stunts. He will be his usual annoying, stupid, childish self. But he won't call her a vulgar name or set the podium on fire.

Hillary will be extremely well-prepared and she will hit him on a variety of predictable fronts: his horrible record of offensive comments about women, his racist immigration policies and his penchant for ignoring the constitutional limits of federal authority.  I think that Trump's main counter-attacks will focus on Hillary being implicitly corrupt because she is an insider and that she represents a continuation of Obama's foreign policies, which he will call weak.  (We will hear that word out of Trump a lot.  Hillary/Obama = weak, Trump = strong and smart.)

Presidential debates are more about impressions than fine points of policy.  In 2000 Gore dusted W. on substance, but his bracing exasperation with the stupidity of his opponent came off as arrogant.  Al Gore over-corrected in the next two debates and came across as inauthentic.  Enough people put faith in the idea that a governor of Texas and son of a likable president couldn't really be that dumb while it was easy to believe that a politician could be phony.  Sixteen years later, we are still paying for that price.

There will be some temptation for Hillary to bait Trump into a fight. It might happen organically, and that will be good for her.  But I don't think she should focus on provoking that responses.  She needs to make the case for herself and to point out the shallow stupidity of his ideas. Trump will want to lash out at her in personal terms, but he has to be careful with that.  He can drop a "Crooked Hillary" or two, but he could really hurt himself by bringing up Monica Lewinsky or other skeletons of  the right wing nutosphere.   I think he will avoid any of the nightmare scenarios that have probably kept Kelly Anne Conway up at night.

Why I'm confident.

Trump's relatively strong polling has endured for several weeks now.  He definitely walks on to that stage tonight believing that he will win on November 8th.  There's plenty of empirical data to support the idea that he might.  But the choice between two viable candidates will be very clear tonight. And I still believe that she will win this race.

I think the polling has been distorted, for lack of a better word, by Gary Johnson.  After tonight people who don't want to vote Hillary will begin to admit that Trump is simply unacceptable and their own personal grievances against what Clinton represents do not justify taking a chance on four years of Trump. Nate Silver's model says that if the election were held today, Gary Johnson would get 8.1% of the vote. His forecasts of November 8th have that number receding to 6 or 7%.  I think it will recede more than that.  I'm putting his number at 4%.

Jill Stein will benefit from a bunch of people too young to remember 2000 and too stupid to accept the idea that one candidate thinks global warming is a hoax and that if that candidate wins he will appoint the next head of the EPA. I hope that number falls below one percent but I think it will be closer to 2 percent.


Specific Changes.

I am making three Electoral College changes from my first forecast.  I do not think Hillary will pick off Nebraska's second congressional district.  And I think she will lose Iowa.  I also think Trump will pick of Maine's second congressional district, which is overwhelmingly white and rural. That is a gain of eight electoral votes from my first forecast.

But I want to acknowledge that this race could become very, very close.  If the election were held today, Trump would do better than Romney.  He would win Ohio and Nevada and if he also won Florida, it would put the electoral college at Hillary 279, Trump 259.  That's really damn close.

But the election is not today and I still think we will move back towards our 2008 and 2012 political maps. Trump deserves credit for keeping overwhelming percentages of his party in the fold. (Republicans in turn deserve a lot of shame for that very same fact.)  A return toward the prevailing political coalitions favors Hillary, on balance. I think she will do better on November 8th than she is doing on September 26th.

If Things Get Worse.
North Carolina is a a pure toss-up, just as it was 4 years ago.  I think the bathroom bill  has made the state a national joke and that will motivate enough progressives to show up in big numbers but the result will be very close.  Trump also could win Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire and Florida.  The only good  news is that he probably has to win all of them to take the White House.

Trump's best route to 270 looks like this:

1. Defend North Carolina to retain all 206 of Romney's electoral votes.
2. Pick up Maine's 2nd congressional district. (207)
3. Add six for Iowa (213)
4. Add 18 from Ohio (231)
5. Add 4 from New Hampshire (235)
6. Add six from Nevada (241)
7. Add 29 from Florida (270)

The path is there.  Hillary's job tonight is to prove to everyone why the destination is so dangerous. With any luck, Donald will do that for her.

First General Election Forecast: Hillary 50, Trump 44, Johnson 4, Stein 2. (Electoral College 348-190)

The Original Splash Brother, Manute Bol

I have been meaning to write a post about the general election race for weeks. It's not a very exciting topic this far out but I wanted to put my "morning line on the record and now that Nate Silver's forecasts are up, it's time to write.  Nate's forecast is Hillary 49, Trump 45, Johnson 5. That leaves a little more than 1 percent for Jill Stein, the Green Party candi anddate.  (When writing abot 538.com's models, I will, unless otherwise indicated, refer to their Polls-Plus Forecast, because I believe it's most accurate.)

My morning line is HIllary 50, Trump 44, Johnson 4, Stein 2, with the Electoral College at 348-190.

My central thesis for this election is that Hillary Clinton is the favorite for two broad reasons: the fundamentals of the election favor the incumbent party and the Republican nominee is unlikely to persuade many voters to vote for him over Clinton who didn't already vote Republican four years ago. As for fundamentals, I mean the fact that Barack Obama is liked by more voters than he is disliked. The economy is generally solid and the opposition party has nominated a dumpster-fire. That dumpster-fire said things to get the nomination that probably preclude mutliple paths to the White House.

This shold make Hillary Clinton the clear favorite, and she is that.  But she comes with her own baggage and has some highy unfavorables.  As a betting matter she has been right about a 3-1 favorite ever since both parties settled on their respective nominees.  I think that accurately reflect the state of the race, and is consistent with the 538 model.

1. Specific States.

In 2012 Barack Obama won 332 Electoral Votes. Mitt Romney won 206. President Obama won 10 out of 11 close states that year. That's actually good news for the GOP.  The only state they really have to defend is North Carolina, which Romney won by just two points. The next closest margins of victory was Georgia by eight, Arizon and and Missouri by nine. Clinton needs to worry about Florida (less than one point in 2012), Ohio (three), Virginia (4), Colorado and Pennsyvlania (5) and New Hampshire (six).

So Donald trump needs a net gain of 64 Electoral Votes.  The quickest distance to that, using 2012 margins of difference is to win Florida (29 EV), Ohio (18), Virginia (13) and Colorado (9). I think that Trump's racist comments about undocumented immigrants will translate into atrocious numbers among Latino voters. That probably puts Florida and Colorado out of reach. If so, he will need to win some blue states in the Upper Midwest.

Think of Trump as having three paths to 270 Electoral votes. Each is based on the assumption that he doesn't lose any Romney states. The crucial states are Florida and Colorado, because they have high numbers of Latino voters and I think they will be hard for Trump to win.   :

A. Direct Line: Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Colorado.

B.  Without Colorado:  If he wins FL, OH & VA but loses Colorado, he will have 262 Electoral Votes. He could get the remaining eight by carrying one of the below configurations;
        i. Pennsylvania
        ii.Iowa and New Hampshire
        iii Minnesota or Wisconsin. (Or Michigan, which is extremely unlikely.)

C. Without Florida.  If he wins OH & VA but not CO or FL, Trump is in a huge electoral hole. He would have 237 electoral votes and need to win. To dig out of that hole, he probably needs to win either Michigan or Pennsylvania. Winning both PA & MI would be enough to win, but that's unlikley to happen.  If he wins Pennsylvania, he gets within 13 votes and needs two more upsets among New Hampshire, Michigan and Wisconsin. If he wins Michigan but loses Pennsyvlania, then he needs to win both Wisconsin and Minnesota.

If Trump loses both FL and CO,  He would probably need to win Pennsylvania and Michigan. That's very unlikely.

The forecasts on 538.com show some traditionally red states as being competitive. At the moment, Nate gives Hillary a 25% chance of winning Arizona, Missouri and Georgia. But as the election gets closer, I think those states will tend to move in Trump's diretion.  My official prediction is depressingly familiar. I think Clinton will win back North Carolina and I think she will win Nebraska' 2nd congressional district. That will get her 348 Electoral Votes.


2.  Vice Presidential Choices.

Way back in November of last year I wrote that Tim Kaine would be the Democratic nominee for Vice-President.  I'm sticking with that. He's the safe, sensible choice with experience in the senat and the exective. He also helps win one of the most competitive states, Virginia  Hillary has the lead and she's a small-c conservative by nature. This is the safe pick.

The Republican running mate sweepstakes have come down to a handful of choices. Chris Christie would be absurd. Newt Gingrich would be terrible, but I think he's good at telling people like Donald Trump what they want to hear.  That can't hurt when wooing a narcissist. I think General Flynn disqualified himself when he said today that he was tepidly pro-choice.  I think Trump wold face a delegate revolt if he chose Flynn.

That leaves Governor Mike Pence of Indiana.  The biggest question about this pick is whether Pence wants to give up being governor of Indiana.  He's up for re-election and can't be on the ballot there twice.  I don't know if he wants to give up being Governor for a 25% chance of being Vice-President. But he has to know that this will elevate his name recognition and it will allow him to play the grown up for the next 18 weeks.  When 2020 comes around, he will have credibility with the people who loved Trump and perhaps with the establishment if he is thought to have made the race more competitive than it should have. He also has to consider the possiblity that should they win this thing, Trump might resign after a few months to cash in on his new fame. (This is a real prospect.)

So I think Pence is the smart choies of the remaining candidates. And really, how exciting can it be to govern Indiana?  So we are looking at Clinton-Kaine and Trump-Pence.  Neither of these choices affect any of my electoral college predictions, but they probably make Virginia and Indiana slightly more likely to stay with the party that they chose in 2012.


3. Worst Case Scenarios.

So I'm writing that there is a 25% chance that Donald Trump will be the next President-elect of the United States. Let's try to break down that that means.

First let me say that I'm always open to the idea that the Trump campaign is a giant scam and that the candidate will back out at some point rather than face ignoble defeat.  But I don't think he will do this before the convention. He can't pass up that much free air time. But if things look bad in September, he might invent an excuse for him to dropout and say that his electors should just vote for Pence instead of him. I know this is crazy. The stuff of a bad novel by a political beat reporter. But what part of 2016 has not been just that?  So let me clarify that I think the odds of the election winner are something like this: Clinton 75%, Trump 23%, somebody else, 2%.

But that leaves Mr. Trump with a 23% chance of winning. To put that in sports terms that's roughly equivalent to Manute Bol's three point field goal percentage. Sounds crazy but some of those shots went in. A more common sports analogy would be an NFL team with a 7 point defecit halfway through the third quarter. So Trump can win this. It's just not very likely.

My operating assumption for the past several months was that Trump's best chance of winning involved something horrible happening on American soil, most likely a terrorist attack that makes people willing to try out his ridiculous idea of banning Muslims and building a wall along the southern border. The mass shooting at the Orlando night club did nothing to move the prediction markets. So far the the mass shooting of Dallas police officer has also had no effect. But I'm leaving the room open for an October surprise. If we have multiple ISIS-linked or insipred attacks on the homeland in October, Trump's odds will improve.

He also has some issues to make hey with. He is running, contra the mainstream of the Republican party against free trade. He's going to promise people a return to the economy of the 1950 and 60s. He's also going to imply a trunt ot the culture of the 1950s. That does has some appeal. He is currently leading white men by more than 20 points. (Makes you proud, doesn't it?)

I think a Trump victory means four things happened:
1. Major terrorist attack on American soil or extended instances of violence against police officers.
2. A "scandal" of some sort that tarnishes Hillary more than Benghazi or the Email server have.
3. Tepid economic numbers in the fall.
4. Trump rebranding his message for the general electorate in a way that accentuates the economic insecurity of working class people while simultaneously convincing Wall Street that he won't actually impose any of his whackadoo economic poliices.

That last one is quite the typerope to walk. I don't think he has political chops or interpersnal skills to do it.  That's why I'm an optimist.

4. Best Case Scenarios

This election cycle is already a wasted opportunity. When Hillary's only meaningful challenge came from a 74 year old socialist, it meant that the party was not about to change. And when the Republicans nominated Donald Trump they doomed themselves to four years of bleating the No True Scotsman Fallacy.  When Trump loses,people like Ted Cruz will say "It's because we didn't nominate a real conservative."  And in four years, they probably will do just that.

Hillary's vote margin over Trump will probably be bigger than the 3.95% that Obama's beat Romney by. But I don't think he will win by a bigger margin than the 7.3% that Obama beat McCain by in 2008. Even if she does, I think the only red states that become competitive are Georgia, Arizona and Missouri.  A sweep of all the battlegrounds plus those three would get her up to 384 Electoral Votes. That's close to a route, but not quite the stuff of history. A truly historic meltdown by Trump might make Kansas, South Carolina and Montana competitive. But even adding them to the Blue pile would leave Trump far short of Goldwater-McGovern-Mondale territory.

A Clinton blowout probably involves for things happening;
1. A relative lack of serious terrorist activity.
2. Trump being unwilling or incapable of toning down his campaign rhetoric.
3. A massive fund raising dsparity because rich people determine that they are better off with Hillary for four years than the dumpster-fire.
4. Television ads that rehabilitate Clinton's image and cement Trump's imge among indpendents.

The hardest part is rehabilitating Clinton's image.  I think there's 40% of the population that will vote for her opponent no matter how dangerous that opponsent is.  That's why I'm not too excited about Kansas or Mississippi turning blue or even purple.  Hillary won't play aggressively enough to make them copetitive.

5.  Third &; Fourth Party Effects.

Gary Johnson is approaching double-digits in polls that include him. A lot of this is the result of Trump and Clinton both being so unpopular. But as people begin to take their vote seriously, they will not turn to Libertarians in huge numbers. I think his ceiling is eight percent and will have to fight like hell to get five percent.  His best chance of making a dent is that Trump becomes so odious that many Republicans just can not vote for him and look their neighors in the eye.  But I don't see the groundswell happening this year.  Mid single digits it is.

Jill Stein of the Green Party recently offered to ste aside so that Berne Sanders coud instead run as the Green Party candidate. Okay, that was difficult to type with a straight face. What she actually did was she pretended that she would step aside for a candidate who she knew full well intends to endorse Clinton because she things it will curry her favor with disaffected lefties.  It might, but they are small in number. Bernie supporters are already telling pollsters they will vote for Mrs. Clinton in higher numbers than Clinton supporters were saying the same of Barack Obama in 2008.  But to be fair, these Sanders voters are from the left-wing of the party whereas the Clinton supporters of 2008 were from the rightwing of the party. Voting Green was never an option for them. But it will be for about 5% of the population, especially if the polls indicate that Clinton is certain to win the election and prevent a Trump presidency.  Her ceiling is three percent. People still remember the Nader effect. It will kee her number down.  (As will her pseudoscientific opinions about GMO and vaccines, among other things.)

6.  What to Look Forward To:
A quick run down of the major events of the next 17 and a half weeks.

i. Trump's VP announcment: Probably No Later than July 15th. (That's when Pence has to decide between running for Governor or running for Veep.  I think he's say Veep.)

ii.  GOP convetion in Cleveland (and the ensuing riots). This is really Trump's best chance to put a new spin on his shtick. His one big asset as a candidate is that he knows how to use the medium of television to his advantage.  I think the convention will be more variety show than politcal theater.  People will talk about it. And there will be lots of confrontation in the streets. Here's a big prediction: on July 22nd pundits will be calling this a toss-up election. (Bettors will not.)

iii. Hillary's VP announcement. Probably Kaine but maybe some other boring white guy.

iv. DEM convention in Philadelphia (and the ensuing floor debates). I think Bernie's delegation will vote for HIllary. I also thin it will include enough young Occupy types to make the convetion less boring and sanitized than the Democratic conventions have been ever since Bill and Hillary took the reigns of the party 25 years ago.  But Hillary and Kaine will both give great speeches that no one will be offended by or remember 2 months later and she will get her bounce and the pundits will say she's the favorie again.

v.  First Presidential Debate, September 26th in Dayton, OH.

Circle your calendars for this one.  The Quantum unknown in this election will be how Hillary reacts to debating a sociopath. If Bobby the Brain Heenan were not in ill health, I would want the Dems to hire him for debate preparation.  She has to be ready for the worst of it. But Trump's big advantage is that he can also probably benefit from being (relatively) sane at this forum.  He will be on stage, one one one with someobe that's been in the national political scene since before I could vote. He can probably do 50% crazy and 50% relatively calm and come away scoring points. Or he might call her something horrific and storm off the stage  30 minutes in.  Like I said, circle your calendars.

vi. Vice Presidential Debate October 4th in Farmville, VA
I lived in Virginia for like 4 years. No idea where Farmville is.  And I can't be bothered to Google it. Becuase that's how important the Vice Presidential debate is.

vii. 2nd Presidential Debate in St. Louis, MO.
Probably less compelling TV than the first, but Trump might act from the other end of the crazy scale just to keep her guessing this time.

viii. 3rd Presidential Debate in Las Vegas, NV
Perfect location but I shudder at the lame analogies about who needs to win the big jackpot and roll box cars on top of split aces in order to parlay a oh,, fuck it. We'll all be so sick of these two people by then.  Trump might sneak in one last attempt to look normal in order to hold onto a state or two, The big questioin will be which stattes are in play by then.

ix.  Election Day, November 8th.
Don't forget to vote. And then the polls will close and we'll find out that we have elected our first president.  The only concession will probably come in the form of a deranged Tweet storm of obscenities  And won't hat be worth watching?