It's About Turnout Now

There's now enough evidence in the early voting numbers to suggest that Republican efforts to suppress voters of color in a post Voting Rights Act-era are working exactly as intended.

In the figure below, we present each group’s share of the early vote compared to their size of the overall CVAP. This tells us whether a group is “overperforming” or “underperforming” in early voting relative to their presence in a state’s population. For instance, if Latinos make up 15 percent of eligible voters but only 10 percent of the early voting population, they are underperforming in the early vote by 5 points.

Using this perspective, there is only marginal evidence that the surge in Latino turnout in 2016 is resulting in an outsize Latino electorate. Florida is the only state where Latino early voting is outpacing both population growth and growth in the early vote for non-Latinos.

Even there, the growth in participation is relatively small, and Latinos still make up a smaller proportion of early voters than they do of the eligible electorate. So far in 2016, the Latino share of early vote in Florida is 5.1 percentage points lower than the Latino share of the eligible electorate.

In two other states with large Hispanic populations — Texas and Nevada — Latinos are underperforming relative to population growth and steady or increasing early voting by whites. Although many of these white voters may be Democrats, this suggests a more nuanced story about the likelihood that high Latino early voting alone will reshape the electoral landscape.

At the same time, early voting among African Americans is lagging behind their share of the eligible electorate, often in dramatic ways.

In 2012, African Americans overperformed in states such as North Carolina and Texas. But this year, black voting rates are trailing other groups relative to their size of the electorate, with some swings on the order of 5 to 10 percentage points.

Even in North Carolina, where the black share of the early vote is on par with their share of the eligible electorate (and similar to white voters), the pattern is a departure from 2012, when African Americans made up 5.8 points more of the early vote than their population share.

Meanwhile, white voters constitute a larger share of the early vote than in the past two election cycles. For example, in North Carolina and Florida, whites were underperforming in the early vote a week before the 2012 election. But they are now overperforming — and substantially so in Florida.

Of course, it is not entirely clear what this suggests for Tuesday’s outcome.

It does suggest that overall turnout in early voting states is up.  That's a good sign for Democrats.  But in all six of the above states, it's white voters who are turning out at a higher percentage.  That's better news for the GOP.  If these white voters are college-educated voters that Clinton would be winning for the first time in decades, then it's good news for her.  If these are disaffected white Trump voters driven to the polls by anger, who never really bothered to vote before, then it's big for him.

Either way these are the votes that the polling models and turnout scenarios have missed in the past.

We'll see what happens here in the final week.

A Split Decision That Splits America

I know we've talked about "2016 Election As..." other presidential election years around here, 1968, 1992, 1976, 1980, 2012 and 2008, but Nate Silver is raising the less-than-zero possibility this turns into the dreaded 2000 where the Republican wins the electoral college but loses the popular vote.

We’ve written about this before, but I wanted to call your attention to it again because the possibility of an Electoral College-popular vote split keeps widening in our forecast. While there’s an outside chance that such a split could benefit Clinton if she wins the exact set of states that form her “firewall,” it’s far more likely to benefit Donald Trump, according to our forecast. Thus, as of early Monday evening, our polls-only model gave Hillary Clinton an 85 percent chance of winning the popular vote but just a 75 percent chance of winning the Electoral College. There’s roughly a 10 percent chance of Trump’s winning the White House while losing the popular vote, in other words.

As an illustration of this, we can compare Clinton’s current margins in our polls-only forecast against President Obama’s performance in 2012. Clinton — despite Trump’s recent improvement in the polls — leads by 4.7 percentage points in the national popular vote, a wider margin than Obama’s 3.9-point victory over Mitt Romney in 2012.

But Clinton is performing worse than Obama in 10 of the 12 states that were generally considered swing states in 2012. In some cases, such as Floridaand Pennsylvania, the difference is negligible. She’s underperforming Obama substantially, however, in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Nevada and to a somewhat lesser extent in Wisconsin and Minnesota. She’s considerably outperforming Obama in Virginia and North Carolina, conversely, but that’s not enough to make up for her losses elsewhere.

So how is Clinton doing better in the popular vote overall, despite failing to match Obama’s performance in most of these swing states? A lot of it is her strong performance in red states, or at least red states where a significant number of Romney voters were whites with college degrees. Thus, Clinton is putting states such as Arizona into play and — although she’s unlikely to win them — states such as Texas, Georgia and even Utah are liable to be much closer than we’re used to. Texas, in particular, can cause a potential Electoral College-popular vote skew because of its large and growing population. If the Democrat goes from losing Texas by 15 percentage points to losing it by 5 points instead, that produces a net gain of about 0.6 or 0.7 percentage points of the popular vote — larger than the margin by which Al Gore beat George W. Bush in the popular vote in 2000 — without changing the tally in the Electoral College. 

In other words there's a chance that Clinton will do better in red states like Texas and Georgia this year than Obama did, but still lose those states, and then lose close battles in the Upper Midwest and Rust Belt, on top of losing squeakers in big swing states like NC and Arizona.

That map would basically be the "Trump narrow win" scenario where she loses NC, FL, OH, NV, IA, and CO all by very close margins, and comes tolerably close in TX, GA, MO, AZ and SC, giving Trump an electoral college win, but a popular vote loss.  It's happened at least 4 times before, including 2000. 

The issue then becomes possible automatic recounts if those states are close enough, which is basically the nightmare scenario of this election times ten.

I don't think that's going to happen.  I think Clinton has banked enough early voting lead to prevail and again, Silver's numbers show her with a stronger lead than President Obama had in 2012. I still think she'll win both Florida and North Carolina early on Tuesday night, plus Pennsylvania and Virginia, and this race will essentially be over before 10 PM, Trump will be done.  Without FL and NC, he has no path at all to 270, even if he wins every Midwest and Rocky Mountain state other than Illinois and New Mexico.

Of course I went to bed that night in November 2000 thinking Al Gore had put away the Sunshine State, too.

We'll see.

The Biden Unleashed Again?

Although this definitely seems like measuring the drapes in the Oval Office at this point, the Clinton team is floating VP Joe Biden's name for Secretary of State should Hillary pull off the win.

Joe Biden is at the top of the internal short list Hillary Clinton’s transition team is preparing for her pick to be secretary of state, a source familiar with the planning tells POLITICO.

This would be the first major Cabinet candidate to go public for a campaign that’s insisted its focus remains on winning the election, and perhaps the most central choice for a potential president who was a secretary of state herself.

Neither Clinton, nor her aides have yet told Biden. According to the source, they’re strategizing about how to make the approach to the vice president, who almost ran against her in the Democratic primaries but has since been campaigning for her at a breakneck pace all over the country in these final months.

"He'd be great, and they are spending a lot of time figuring out the best way to try to persuade him to do it if she wins,” said the source familiar with the transition planning.

The vice president, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before joining the administration, is one of the most experienced and respected Democrats on the world stage. He’s also coming to what would be the close of a 44-year career in Washington, first with six terms in the Senate and then two terms as President Barack Obama’s closest adviser — and the keeper of the portfolio on some of the most difficult international issues, including Iraq and Ukraine.

He wouldn't be a bad choice at all.  He definitely has the foreign policy chops, that's why then candidate Barack Obama picked him as VP.  I figured the Clinton administration would at least give Biden the chance to serve again out of courtesy, I feel like restless Joe Biden puttering around the house and not having an excuse to board commuter trains would be miserable.

As Secretary of State, Joe could experience commuter trains all over the world.  He'd be as happy as a clam, and the guy is a charmer.  We'll see what comes of the rumor, and hey, maybe he'll just hang up his spurs and go play with his '67 Corvette.

The guy has kind of earned a break.

And You Can Call Me Al

The annual Al Smith dinner in NYC, a fundraiser for Catholic charities, usually sees both candidates take the stage in a presidential election year to take some shots across each other's respective bows a few weeks before Election Day, all in good fun. Of course this year one of those candidates is Donald Trump, and things went, well, exactly as you would expect them to have gone considering Trump's history.

Donald Trump said Thursday he was in a room full of wonderful people at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York.

“Or as Hillary calls it, her largest crowd of her season,” he said with a chuckle, as Democratic rival Hillary Clinton laughed, too. “This is corny stuff.”

But as his remarks progressed, Trump’s speech turned more biting.

“Here she is tonight, pretending not to hate Catholics,” he said. Several in the crowd booed.

Trump went on: “Everyone knows of course Hillary’s belief that it takes a village, as in Haiti where she’s taken a number of them.” That was met with more jeering from the crowd. Clinton’s smile was still on her face, but she didn’t laugh.

Both candidates were, for the most part, good-natured yet tough on each other, but Trump apparently misread this particular audience gathered in his heavily Democratic hometown. Still, despite the booing spells, Trump got strong laughter from throughout the room at his best jokes. The loudest roar of approval came at the expense of his wife.

“The media is even more biased against me than ever before," Trump said. "You want the proof? Michelle Obama gives a speech and everyone loves it. It’s fantastic. They think she’s absolutely great. My wife Melania gives the exact same speech! And people get on her case! And I don’t get it! I don’t know why!”

At another point, Trump made light of his assertion that Clinton's use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state constitutes a punishable crime.

"We've proven that we can actually be civil to each other," Trump said. "In fact just before taking the dais Hillary accidentally bumped into me and she very civilly said 'Pardon me.'"

Yeah, the guy got the biggest laughs when he went after his wife and the woman he's running against.  I think I'm noticing a pattern here.  Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton may not have Barack Obama's natural comedic delivery gifts, but she does have 25 years of DC fighting experience in arenas such as these. She got some shots in too at the Waldorf Astoria ballroom last night.

Clinton, who spoke second, began with the self-deprecatory remarks and gracious gestures that have been the hallmarks of previous dinners.

She got big laughs when she told the audience: “I just want to put you all in a basket of adorables.”

She told Trump that if he didn’t like what she was saying, “Feel free to stand up and shout ‘wrong!’ while I’m talking.” That was a reference to Trump’s habit of interrupting her comments during the three presidential debates.

Clinton also shifted to more biting tone as her speech progressed, and added that after Trump’s speech that she’ll “enjoy listening to Mike Pence deny that you ever gave it.”

Trump, with his arms folded, laughed.

Still, Joy Reid summed it up best this morning:

Trump was in a room with precisely the kind of people he has spent his life yearning to be accepted and respected by, and they booed him.

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) October 21, 2016

For Trump it was being made to look like a national laughing stock all over again like Obama did to him five years ago at that now infamous 2011 White House correspondents dinner.  If you thought his meltdown was bad before...

...stay tuned.  I think the final two weeks and change of this campaign are going to be amazing.

Something Something Accept What You Cannot Change

If there was somehow any doubt that Hillary Clinton will be the next president (with a commanding six point lead in the RCP average and an 85% chance of winning at Five Thirty Eight) last night's debate all but slammed the door in Trump's orange face.

It’s over. There will be no more presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. (Hopefully.)

The final debate looked, at first, like it could have been pretty normal. At the start, there were some Trumpy moments — but for the most part, it appeared like both candidates, thanks to Trump’s slightly better behavior, were going to mostly stick to the issues.

Then Trump happened. By the end of the debate, Trump had insulted Latino immigrants in Spanish, continued to say that he would not concede the election if he lost, and called Clinton “such a nasty woman.”

In many ways, it was a fitting end to what’s been a very odd election season. But it also offered yet another reminder that we are living in very strange times.

But the real signal as to what Trump will do with all that anger when he loses big in November is as obvious as it comes.

Thirty minutes before the debate, Trump’s Facebook page went live with a video. It ran with the message: “If you’re tired of biased, mainstream media reporting (otherwise known as Crooked Hillary’s super PAC), tune into my Facebook Live broadcast. Starts at 8:30 EST/5:30 PST -- you won't want to miss it. Enjoy!” The ensuing show had its own anchors and guests.

For any other candidate, this may come off as unremarkable. But Trump’s wording, the original anchors and guests, and ongoing rumors suggest this is a tease of “Trump TV” — a business venture Trump might launch after his failed presidential bid.

Matt Yglesias explained for Vox:

While Trump and his team do not appear capable of winning a general election in the United States, they certainly have the right mix of skills and experience to operate a successful media company, folding the existing Breitbart and Hannity franchises together with the Trump brand to form Trump TV or Trump Media.

Trump’s people, for their part, haven’t done much to dispel the rumors. Here’s what Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon said recently, according to CNN anchor Brian Stelter’s newsletter:

Bannon did not deny talk about a potential "Trump TV" network or streaming service. When asked if there is anything to the rumors, Bannon responded with a smile and said, "Trump is an entrepreneur." He repeated the answer again later. "Trump is an entrepreneur." He also pointed out Trump's social media prowess on Facebook and Twitter. "Look at the engagement. It's incredible..."

The Facebook Live video, however, suggests that Trump’s team isn’t even bothering to wait until after the election to pull this off.

Donald Trump: red meat salesman in the New Clinton Age.  It's about the only job he's actually qualified for, frankly.  But he'll ride that tornado through the American psyche doing as much damage as he can and will most likely profit from it.

Then again, this is a man that went bankrupt running casinos, a business model absolutely designed to part suckers from their money.  If he can't even get that right, maybe Trump TV won't be long for this world.

I hope.

Last Call For The Master Debaters

Saturday Night Live. That is all. See you guys Monday.

The First Lady Steps Up

Michelle Obama gave an amazing speech yesterday as she addressed a Hillary Clinton rally in New Hampshire, and made the best case yet as to why all voters, not just women, should be disgusted with Donald Trump's behavior.

The fact is that in this election, we have a candidate for President of the United States who, over the course of his lifetime and the course of this campaign, has said things about women that are so shocking, so demeaning that I simply will not repeat anything here today. And last week, we saw this candidate actually bragging about sexually assaulting women. And I can't believe that I'm saying that a candidate for President of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women. 

And I have to tell you that I can't stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn't have predicted. So while I'd love nothing more than to pretend like this isn't happening, and to come out here and do my normal campaign speech, it would be dishonest and disingenuous to me to just move on to the next thing like this was all just a bad dream. 

This is not something that we can ignore. It's not something we can just sweep under the rug as just another disturbing footnote in a sad election season. Because this was not just a "lewd conversation." This wasn't just locker-room banter. This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior, and actually bragging about kissing and groping women, using language so obscene that many of us were worried about our children hearing it when we turn on the TV. 

And to make matters worse, it now seems very clear that this isn't an isolated incident. It's one of countless examples of how he has treated women his whole life. And I have to tell you that I listen to all of this and I feel it so personally, and I'm sure that many of you do too, particularly the women. The shameful comments about our bodies. The disrespect of our ambitions and intellect. The belief that you can do anything you want to a woman. 

It is cruel. It's frightening. And the truth is, it hurts. It hurts. It's like that sick, sinking feeling you get when you're walking down the street minding your own business and some guy yells out vulgar words about your body. Or when you see that guy at work that stands just a little too close, stares a little too long, and makes you feel uncomfortable in your own skin. 

It's that feeling of terror and violation that too many women have felt when someone has grabbed them, or forced himself on them and they've said no but he didn't listen — something that we know happens on college campuses and countless other places every single day. It reminds us of stories we heard from our mothers and grandmothers about how, back in their day, the boss could say and do whatever he pleased to the women in the office, and even though they worked so hard, jumped over every hurdle to prove themselves, it was never enough. 

We thought all of that was ancient history, didn't we? And so many have worked for so many years to end this kind of violence and abuse and disrespect, but here we are in 2016 and we're hearing these exact same things every day on the campaign trail. We are drowning in it. And all of us are doing what women have always done: We're trying to keep our heads above water, just trying to get through it, trying to pretend like this doesn't really bother us maybe because we think that admitting how much it hurts makes us as women look weak. 

Maybe we're afraid to be that vulnerable. Maybe we've grown accustomed to swallowing these emotions and staying quiet, because we've seen that people often won't take our word over his. Or maybe we don't want to believe that there are still people out there who think so little of us as women. Too many are treating this as just another day's headline, as if our outrage is overblown or unwarranted, as if this is normal, just politics as usual.

But, New Hampshire, be clear: This is not normal. This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful. It is intolerable. And it doesn't matter what party you belong to — Democrat, Republican, independent — no woman deserves to be treated this way. None of us deserves this kind of abuse. 

And I know it's a campaign, but this isn't about politics. It's about basic human decency. It's about right and wrong. And we simply cannot endure this, or expose our children to this any longer — not for another minute, and let alone for four years. Now is the time for all of us to stand up and say enough is enough. This has got to stop right now.

Michelle Obama has always been such an under-appreciated First Lady that it's been criminal.  She's one of the most intelligent, thoughtful, passionate, and gifted women that America has ever been lucky to have as the president's spouse.  There's no doubt in my mind that her influence has affected the policies of Barack Obama over the last eight years, and for the better.

Yesterday's speech will go down as one of the highlights of the Obamas in history, certainly.

And of course she's right, this has got to stop right now.  November 8th, put an end to Trump's campaign and send a message,

Last Call For The Coming Av-Hill-Lanche

Less than four weeks to go and Trump is bailing totally on Virginia, a state he would definitely want to have in his column. Alas, the reality is Trump's collapse is accelerating towards a Clinton landslide, and actions speak louder than bravado.

Donald Trump's campaign is "pulling out of Virginia," a move that stunned staff in the battleground state, three sources with knowledge of the decision told NBC News. 

The decision came from Trump's headquarters in New York and was announced on a conference call late Wednesday that left some Republican Party operatives in the state blindsided. Two staffers directly involved in the GOP's efforts in Virginia confirmed the decision. 

The move to pull out of Virginia shows Trump is "running essentially a four state campaign," with the focus now shifting to battlegrounds critical to his chances in November: Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio, a source with knowledge of the decision told NBC News.

If you're down to four states out of 50 in your ground game, you've lost and you just don't know it yet.   Even if Trump wins all four of those states, if he abandons every other state in play right now to Clinton (a list which now includes Georgia and Arizona and Utah) he still loses on electoral votes.

Trump's former Virginia state chairman, Corey Stewart, who was recently fired by the Trump campaign for organizing a protest outside Republican National Committee headquarters, called the move "totally premature." 

Stewart was not on the conference call, but said he was informed by a staffer who was. 

"I think it's totally premature for the campaign to be pulling out of Virginia after so much work and all the hundreds ... of hours of volunteer time and thousands and thousands of volunteers," Stewart said. "The only thing the campaign had to do was spend money on an ad campaign and it would have been competitive ... I'm just disgusted." 

"It's fair to say money was allocated," one source said of the Virginia operation, declining to confirm what the specific amount allocated was. "But now they're looking to move personnel to a state that some people think is more important."

Clinton now has a 10 point lead in Pennsylvania.  Virginia was Trump's only other real path to the White House, and that was if he kept NC. FL and Ohio.  Without either, he's done.

I'm still betting that Trump's collapse is so total that Clinton approaches 400 EVs, but even if Trump manages to hold on to Georgia and Arizona and other second-tier states like Missouri and South Carolina he still gets crushed with Clinton getting around 350 EVs. Clinton has a lot of paths to 270. Trump has precisely one without Virginia, and it's running the table on all four of those states he's concentrating on and then keeping every other state he has to limp just over the finish line.

He will not win all four.  He's done, he just hasn't admitted it yet.

Last Call For That Poll-Asked Look

If there's been one truly laughable poll this year as far as presidential prognostication goes, it has been the LA Times daily tracking poll, which seems to be favoring Donald Trump compared to everyone else.  And I'm not talking about by a point or two, I'm talking about five or six points in Trump's favor, a poll so awful that as Nate Cohn points out, it only serves the purpose of showing how awful polls can be.

There is a 19-year-old black man in Illinois who has no idea of the role he is playing in this election. 

He is sure he is going to vote for Donald J. Trump. 

And he has been held up as proof by conservatives — including outlets like Breitbart News and The New York Post — that Mr. Trump is excelling among black voters. He has even played a modest role in shifting entire polling aggregates, like the Real Clear Politics average, toward Mr. Trump. 

How? He’s a panelist on the U.S.C. Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Daybreak poll, which has emerged as the biggest polling outlier of the presidential campaign. Despite falling behind by double digits in some national surveys, Mr. Trump has generally led in the U.S.C./LAT poll. He held the lead for a full month until Wednesday, when Mrs. Clinton took a nominal lead. 

Our Trump-supporting friend in Illinois is a surprisingly big part of the reason. In some polls, he’s weighted as much as 30 times more than the average respondent, and as much as 300 times more than the least-weighted respondent. 

Alone, he has been enough to put Mr. Trump in double digits of support among black voters. He can improve Mr. Trump’s margin by 1 point in the survey, even though he is one of around 3,000 panelists. 

He is also the reason Mrs. Clinton took the lead in the U.S.C./LAT poll for the first time in a month on Wednesday. The poll includes only the last seven days of respondents, and he hasn’t taken the poll since Oct. 4. Mrs. Clinton surged once he was out of the sample for the first time in several weeks. 

How has he made such a difference? And why has the poll been such an outlier? It’s because the U.S.C./LAT poll made a number of unusual decisions in designing and weighting its survey. 

It’s worth noting that this analysis is possible only because the poll is extremely and admirably transparent: It has published a data set and the documentation necessary to replicate the survey. 

Not all of the poll’s choices were bound to help Mr. Trump. But some were, and it all combined with some very bad luck to produce one of the most persistent outliers in recent elections.

And taking a look at the poll it's laughably bad how the data is interpreted by the people running it. The poll is literally designed to favor Trump from the beginning, by bad use of statistical math, and even worse use of common sense.

Still, if Clinton is now ahead in a poll that regularly favors Trump, it means Trump is in serious trouble as of last Friday's events, and I'm betting things will only get worse for him.

The Goracle's Lament

Presidents Obama and Clinton aren't the only big-name Democrats on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton here in the final stretch, Bill Clinton's former VP Al Gore was in Miami campaigning with Hillary to make the case to younger voters that yeah, every vote in the Sunshine State matters.

Former Vice President Al Gore introduced himself to Florida millennials on Tuesday, telling them that his near miss in the 2000 presidential election is “exhibit A” for why it’s so important to vote.

Campaigning with Hillary Clinton in Miami, Gore highlighted two messages he wanted to share with the former secretary of state’s supporters.

“No. 1, when it comes to the most urgent issue facing our country and the world, the choice in this election is extremely clear. Hillary Clinton will make solving the climate crisis a top national priority,” Gore said. “Very important.”

Donald Trump, whom Gore referred to as “her opponent,” would take America “toward a climate catastrophe,” he said.

“Here’s my second message: Your vote really, really, really counts — a lot. You can consider me as an exhibit A of that group. Now, for those of you who are younger than 25, you might not remember the election of 2000 and what happened here in Florida and across the country,” Gore said, prompting boos from the crowd.

“For those of you older than 25, I heard you murmuring just now. But take it from me, it was a very close election,” Gore said, as supporters began to chant “You won! You won!” 

“Here’s my point: I don’t want you to be in a position years from now where you welcome Hillary Clinton and say: ‘Actually, you did win. It just wasn’t close enough to make sure that all the votes were counted or whatever," Gore added.

Amen to that, Albert.

One of the reasons I started this blog eight years ago was that having voted in 2000 in Minnesota only to see the White House gifted to Shrub and the Nameless One by the now deceased Antonin Scalia, I realized that if I could get even a few hundred people to read my words and choose to vote across the US, I was doing my civic duty to protect this country from another eight years of Republican presidency.

I remember going to bed on Election Day sixteen years ago confident that Gore had won.  I woke up to an eight-year nightmare that we're still cleaning up after, all over a handful of votes.

Never again.

Please, please, please vote in your local, state, and federal elections.  Please register if you still need to in your state. You still have time in a lot of states.

Let's not turn this into another nightmare, this time with Trump in charge.

The Conserva-Schism Comes

I'm not RNC chair Reince Priebus but I'm thinking this is not the story he wanted to wake up to this morning four weeks before a presidential election, and that he probably should consider going back to bed.

The Republican Party tumbled toward anarchy Monday over its presidential nominee, as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) cut Donald Trump loose in an emergency maneuver to preserve the party’s endangered congressional majorities.

Ryan’s announcement that he would no longer defend or campaign with Trump prompted biting condemnations from within his caucus and from Trump himself, who publicly lashed out at the speaker.

It was an extraordinary display of personal animus just four weeks before the election, destroying any semblance of party unity behind a nominee who many GOP leaders said they could no longer stomach because of his character traits and tawdry campaign tactics.

New national and battleground-state polls showed Trump sliding since Friday’s publication of a 2005 video of him bragging about sexual assault, putting Clinton in position for a possible electoral landslide. Clinton surged to an 11 percentage point lead nationally in an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll conducted over the weekend.

“It’s every person for himself or herself right now,” former senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said. “The nominee for president is so destructive to everyday Republicans.”

The situation that I've long predicted has finally arrived.  The dangerously bigoted, ignorant, and vengeful GOP rump that lurked during the Bush years (and destroyed the party's immigration reform plan) has only grown in malignancy during the Obama years, until it metastasized into the Trump Train.  Now the rest of the GOP is bodily hurling themselves from it as the tracks lead off the cliff.

Paul Ryan giving leave to House Republicans to bail on Trump is the climax of our little tragic play, the point where everything collapses and the only question is whose career survives the disaster.

Hillary Clinton is smartly moving to bring mattresses for a softer landing for those jumping off the bandwagon as the rest of the GOP is now in full panic mode.

With Republicans at war amongst themselves, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton moved swiftly Monday to pry away moderate Republican-leaning voters who are turned off by Trump. Her campaign launched an advertising blitz featuring testimonials from ordinary Republicans explaining why they were voting for Clinton.

“She is reaching out to voters that may well have supported Mitt Romney in 2012 and in a normal year might also be inclined to support the Republican nominee but are so troubled by Donald Trump they are open to supporting Hillary Clinton,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said. He added that nasty personal attacks by Trump at Sunday’s second presidential debate in St. Louis “only helped us close the sale.”

Ryan’s move, announced on a contentious conference call with House GOP members, was seen as a concession that Trump could no longer win the presidency and that the party must devote itself to retaining its majorities in the House and Senate.

Unlike Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was rendered mute on the subject Monday. He told a business group in Kentucky that if they wanted to hear his thoughts on Trump, they “might as well go ahead and leave,” according to the Associated Press.

Still, there was no wave of defections Monday from Trump, who in an aggressive performance in Sunday night’s debate reassured the conservative base that he would be a relentless aggressor against the party’s shared enemies: Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Trump leveled a stream of harsh charges at Hillary Clinton during the event, claiming she attacked women who accused her husband of sexual abuse and promising to send the former secretary of state to jail if he is president.

I'm pretty sure that wave of defections will come pretty soon after we start seeing the polls come in later this week.  Count on every Republican up for re-election in Congress to be looking at their internal polling from after this weekend and at the national numbers, already showing Clinton widening her lead.

As Donald Trump's campaign reels over tapes of the presidential candidate's sexually aggressive comments about women in 2005, the Republican nominee now trails Hillary Clinton by double digits among likely voters, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

The poll, conducted on Saturday and Sunday but before the second presidential debate, shows Clinton with 46 percent support among likely voters in a four-way matchup, compared to 35 percent for Trump.

The dam is broken, the boil has burst, the volcano has erupted, and everyone is scrambling to get out of the path of devastation.  If a double-digit lead holds for Clinton, this really will be the Av-Hill-Lanche I've been saying was possible all along.  It's not going to be a Goldwater, McGovern or Mondale level beatdown, but it could look a lot like 1980, where Reagan won 51-41 over Carter and John Anderson got 7% of the vote.  That turned into 489 electoral votes for St. Ronaldo.  I don't see Clinton getting that many EVs, but 450 is certainly possible if the state polls follow suit in places like Georgia, Arizona, and South Carolina.  Hell, with a lead like that Clinton could challenge Kansas, Alaska, Montana, and the spine-breaker for the GOP, Texas.

Texas, guys.  An 11-point Clinton lead puts Texas in play.

Four weeks to go.

Last Call For A Policy Most Foreign

Foreign Policy magazine (not exactly the Obama administration's biggest fans) nevertheless finds itself in a situation they haven't been in before: making a clear endorsement of a presidential candidate because her opponent is so singularly unfit for the office of President of the United States and commander-in-chief of its military and nuclear forces.

In the nearly half century history of Foreign Policy, the editors of this publication have never endorsed a candidate for political office. We cherish and fiercely protect this publication’s independence and its reputation for objectivity, and we deeply value our relationship with all of our readers, regardless of political orientation. 

It is for all these reasons that FP’s editors are now breaking with tradition to endorse Hillary Clinton for the next president of the United States. 

Our readers depend on FP for insight and analysis into issues of national security and foreign policy. We feel that our obligation to our readers thus extends now to making clear the great magnitude of the threat that a Donald Trump presidency would pose to the United States. The dangers Trump presents as president stretch beyond the United States to the international economy, to global security, to America’s allies, as well as to countless innocents everywhere who would be the victims of hisinexperience, his perverse policy views, and the profound unsuitability of his temperament for the office he seeks. 

The litany of reasons Trump poses such a threat is so long that it is, in fact, shocking that he is a major party’s candidate for the presidency. The recent furor over his vile behavior with women illustrates the extraordinary nature of his unsuitability, as does his repudiation by so many members of his own party — who have so many reasons to reflexively support their nominee. 

And that would be a brutal and fair summary judgment of the man.  FP however brings the receipts.

Beyond this, however, in the areas in which we at FP specialize, he has repeatedly demonstrated his ignorance of the most basic facts of international affairs, let alone the nuances so crucial to the responsibilities of diplomacy inherent in the U.S. president’s daily responsibilities. Trump has not only promoted the leadership of a tyrant and menace like Vladimir Putin, but he has welcomed Russian meddling in the current U.S. election. He has alternatively forgiven then defended Russia’s invasion of Crimea and employed advisors with close ties to the Russian president and his cronies. Trump has spoken so cavalierly about the use of nuclear weapons, including a repeated willingness to use them against terrorists, that it has become clear he understands little if anything about America's nuclear policies — not to mention the moral, legal, and human consequences of such actions. He has embraced the use of torture and the violation of international law against it. He has suggested he would ignore America’s treaty obligations and would only conditionally support allies in need. He has repeatedly insulted Mexico and proposed policies that would inflame and damage one of America’s most vital trading relationships with that country. 

Trump has played into the hands of terrorists with his fearmongering, with his sweeping and unwarranted vilification of Muslims, and by sensationalizing the threat they pose. He has promised to take punitive actions against America’s Pacific trading partners that would be devastating to the world economy and in violation of our legal obligations. He has dismissed the science of climate change and denied its looming and dangerous reality. He has promoted a delusional and narcissistic view of the world, one in which he seems to feel that the power of his personality in negotiations could redirect the course of other nations, remake or supplant treaties, and contain those tyrants he does not actually embrace. 

He has repeatedly denigrated the U.S. military — its leadership, service members, veterans, and the families who stand behind them. He has also derided the intelligence community. Many of the most prominent Republican national security and foreign-policy specialists have repudiated him publicly. Indeed, he is not simply seen as a dangerous candidate by members of the Democratic Party, but virtually no single credible GOP foreign-policy advisor has joined his team. This is because Trump either undercuts or has placed himself in opposition to the best foreign-policy traditions of the Republican Party and to the standards and ideals of every GOP administration in modern history.

And yes, FP is definitely a GOP shop.  But they understand that as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton at least has diplomatic experience and isn't likely to say, nuke Cameroon because she misspelled former UK PM David Cameron's last name in a tweet.

Clinton is the sane choice in an insane election.

The Master Debaters, Con't

The second presidential debate this year was a town hall forum in St. Louis, and given the weekend's previous events, fireworks flew from the get-go.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton got straight to the point after taking the presidential debate stage Sunday night -- the Republican calling her a "devil" and the Democrat saying her opponent owes all Americans an apology for a campaign driven by insulting, degrading comments about women, African-Americans and others. 

The debate, coming little more than 48 hours after the release of a recording in which Trump boasted about sexually assaulting women, caps off a weekend that saw senior Republican elected officials, including Sens. John McCain, Kelly Ayotte and John Thune, rescind their support for Trump. Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Trump’s own running mate, Mike Pence, condemned the remarks. 

But Trump remained defiant. After stating he will never drop out of the race, and slamming Republican defectors, he has sought to focus on accusations of sexual assault levied at Bill Clinton, who is not running for president. 

The town hall style debate is moderated by ABC’s Martha Raddatz and CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

Clinton did get in a couple body blows on Trump's video, but Trump went completely off the rails near the end.

If Trump is elected, he said, he will appoint a special prosecutor with the aim of putting Clinton in prison for her actions related to keeping a private email server during her time as secretary of state. The use of the server was investigated by the FBI, which decided not to press charges. 

“I didn't know I would say this, but I'm going to and I hate to say it,” Trump said. “If I win, I am going to instruct my Attorney General to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. There has never been so many lies, so much exception. There has never been anything like it. We will have a special prosecutor.” 

“You should be ashamed,” Trump repeated. 

Clinton called Trump’s accusations “absolutely false.” 

“It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Clinton said. 

Trump fired back: "Because you would be in jail.”

I mean openly threatening to jail your political opponent at a town hall debate is the stuff of nightmares if you're Trump's handlers.  If he hadn't somehow lost the campaign with the video of him happily describing how good he is at sexual assault, this finished him in the long run.

In the short run, it actually serves the purpose of keeping him in the race by serving as red meat to vacillating supporters.  The calls for him to drop out will almost certainly stop.  And that's what Democrats should be salivating over.

I don't want Trump to drop out on his terms.  I want him to get smashed flat by the enraged giant of the body politic and take GOP control of Congress with him.

29 days to go and the odds of a landslide are better than ever.  And Trump has another debate and four more weeks of reminding people how petty, awful, abusive, bellicose and intemperate he is. Trump, as BuzzFeed's Rosie Gray finds, has gone the Full Breitbart.

On Sunday night, Trump signaled that his objective now is to fight to the end as the champion of the populist nationalist movement he has spearheaded and which propelled him to the Republican nomination. Trump’s revanchist positioning is a sign he’s retreated to pleasing the hard core of his base, despite the fact that they cannot deliver him the White House; a performance like this won’t bring on board the voters Trump must persuade in order to win.

I like Clinton's chances here.  Trump's going to lose, the question is by how much, and how many downticket races he can wreck before it's all said and done. He did a good job of starting that process this weekend and continued in the debate and made it very clear his goal is now to try to punish anyone in America who doesn't support him, and to try to bully the rest of us into doing that.

Not only will that fail, it's going to crack the GOP like an egg fired from a railgun.  When that goes splat all over his face, it will most likely take the GOP with it, because now they are stuck between supporting him and losing swing voters, and not supporting him and losing the base.  It's not going to hold anymore.

And it's going to be amazing when this detonates in four weeks. All Trump did was trade in his support floor for a support ceiling.

Dispatching The Donald

Joining a long line of conservative newspapers across the country, the Columbus Dispatch has for the first time in a century endorsed a Democrat in this year's White House race, entirely because the Republican is one orange piece of garbage.

For us, the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is not pleasant, but it isn’t difficult. Republican candidate Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States. Democrat Hillary Clinton, despite her flaws, is well-equipped for the job.

The Dispatch traditionally has endorsed Republican presidential candidates, but Trump does not espouse or support traditional Republican values, such as fiscal prudence, limited government and free trade, not to mention civility and decency. We are disappointed that so many Republican leaders have accommodated a narcissistic, morally bankrupt candidate who is so clearly out of step with those values.

While third parties offer a tempting way out of the dilemma, votes cast for the Libertarian or Green Party tickets could have the effect of helping Trump win the White House.

Clinton has spent a career spanning decades in politics as First Lady, U.S. senator and U.S. secretary of state, and has a long record of service to families, women and children.

The art of compromise, which once was respected by Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and which allowed for progress rather than gridlock, is one that Clinton understands and practices. She demonstrated that not only in the Senate, but as the nation’s chief diplomat.

She is well-known to foreign leaders and understands that world order depends upon a U.S. foreign policy that is committed to its international obligations. The United States is the most stabilizing force in a world prone to chaos, and she knows that role is not something to be trifled with on a whim, as Trump’s reckless pronouncements would do.

Yes, Clinton has faced controversy: These include allegations of corruption; convenient memory lapses, particularly while being questioned during investigations; lies such as the one about coming under sniper fire in Bosnia; and difficulty in admitting when she is wrong. Her use of a private email server that exposed secret State Department communications to interception was reckless, and her attempts to minimize and cover up the scandal damaged her further.

Preferring Clinton to Trump does not mean the Dispatch embraces all elements of her platform. Her calls for higher taxes, unsustainable spending and the likelihood that she will try to stack the U.S. Supreme Court with a left-leaning majority are unwelcome.

But her negatives pale when measured against the dangers posed by Trump.

This is straight up the nicest thing I can recall the Dispatch saying about a Clinton in the last decade or so. "We're not in love with her but Jesus Jumped-Up Christ on a pogo stick have you seen the other guy?"

That's as good as it's going to get for these guys.  I hope Ohioans listen.

That's Real White Of You, Con't

Five Thirty Eight's Harry Enten breaks the bad news to Trump fans: he just doesn't have the numbers with white voters in order to win in November.

Four years ago, Romney beat President Obama among white voters by 17 percentage points, according to pre-election polls. That was the largest winning margin among white voters for any losing presidential candidate since at least 1948. Of course, even if Trump did just as well as Romney did, it would help him less, given that the 2016 electorate will probably be more diverse that 2012’s. And to win — even if the electorate remained as white as it was four years ago — Trump would need a margin of 22 percentage points or more among white voters.

But Trump isn’t even doing as well as Romney. Trump is winning white voters by just 13 percentage points, according to an average of the last five live-interviewer national surveys.1 He doesn’t reach the magic 22 percentage point margin in a single one of these polls.

So if he's doing worse than Romney, why is Clinton still only predicted to have a modest win?  Third party support from Millennials.

Trump’s less-than-overwhelming margins among white voters in the polls listed above are a big reason why all five surveys showed him trailing Hillary Clinton overall. In fact, Trump would be losing by a larger margin, but third-party candidates are getting support from younger and minority voters, so that Clinton is slightly underperforming Obama among these groups. But the magnitude of Clinton’s struggles with young and nonwhite voters isn’t anywhere big enough to cancel out Trump’s relatively poor showing among white voters.

In other words, Clinton winning by four or five points would be something like eight or nine if Johnson and Stein were out of the picture and those voters made a Clinton v. Trump choice in November instead.  Not saying that will happen, but that's why this race isn't a blowout.

To be more specific, Trump is trading one type of white voter for another. Even as he piles up support among white men without a college degree, he’s on track for a record poor performance for a Republican among white voters with a degree. And right now, that tradeoff is a net negative for Trump, compared with Romney. If a ton of new white voters without a degree flooded into the electorate, that could change the math for Trump. But such a surge doesn’t look like it’s in the offing. 

So yes, at this point you can expect a Clinton win.  It's looking more and more likely every day as Trump continues to lose more voters than he gains with his racist rhetoric.

Clinton And Criminal Justice

The main complaint I hear from other black voters who are hesitant to support Clinton is that she has no real plan for criminal justice reform and to end mass incarceration.  Now, nobody I've talked to plans to vote for Trump, and maybe one or two are thinking about Stein or Johnson, but the choice is much more "I plan not to vote for anyone unless they earn it" on the issue of police.

So what is Hillary Clinton's policy on fixing our broken policing system in America?  She made her case in Charlotte over the weekend.

In a humble church with a familiar name, Little Rock A.M.E. Zion, Hillary Clinton on Sunday made a passionate case for police reform and a direct appeal to the city's black voters, whose support she needs to win this swing state. 

Less than two weeks after the death of Keith Lamont Scott, a black man killed by police, Clinton arrived here Sunday morning with a message of sympathy for a grieving community and political promises, including “end to end reform in our criminal justice system — not half-measures, but full measures.”

She acknowledged that when it comes to understanding the plight of black families in America, she will never be able to replicate the symbolic empathy of President Barack Obama. “I’m a grandmother, but my worries are not the same as black grandmothers who have different and deeper fears about the world that their grandchildren face,” Clinton said. “I wouldn’t be able to stand it if my grandchildren had to be scared and worried, the way too many children across our country feel right now." 

Clinton’s visit to Charlotte was critical — she was so eager to visit that the campaign announced a trip last Sunday, when the city was still grappling with violent protests and looting. The trip was ultimately delayed by a week at the request of local lawmakers.
On Sunday, she was accompanied by her senior policy adviser Maya Harris, longtime aide Capricia Marshall and senior staffer Marlon Marshall, who is overseeing the campaign’s African-American outreach. 

Clinton’s challenge in North Carolina, where current polls put her trailing Donald Trump by about 3 points, is boosting the African-American vote that landed Obama a victory in 2008, when he won a state that had gone to the Republican nominee in the previous seven presidential election cycles. The key was Mecklenburg County, which includes the city of Charlotte, where Obama beat John McCain by more than 100,000 votes.

And that's true: black turnout in Mecklenburg, Orange (Chapel Hill), Durham and Wake (Raleigh) is the key to Clinton winning the state.  But more importantly, she does have a real plan for police reform.

Since the beginning of her campaign, Clinton has called for training police to de-escalate tense situations; common-sense gun reforms; and ending the “school-to-prison pipeline” by investing in education. But the Charlotte trip offered her a critical opportunity to make the case directly to black voters, with 36 days to go in the race. 

And the political message of the day was clear. Robin Bradford, who heads up the National Action Network’s Charlotte chapter, implored the congregation that “if you don’t utilize your right to vote, then you have no right to say anything.” 

“We do more than pray,” Clinton added in her remarks. “Everyone can vote.”

And that's important.  It's easy to dismiss Clinton's stated policies in all the noise over Trump and everything else, but they are there, and they are a universe better than anything I've seen out of Trump or Johnson or even Stein on this.

The Master Debaters

As anticipated, Saturday Night Live's opening presidential debate sketch last night was hysterical with Alec Baldwin as The Donald and Kate McKinnon as Hillary.

“Good evening America,” Baldwin said as Trump. “I’m going to be so good tonight. I’m going to be so calm and so presidential that all of you watching are going to cream your jeans.”

At one point Baldwin refers to moderator Lester Holt as “jazz man” and perfectly pronounced China the way Trump often does. He then quickly takes credit for already winning the debate, “If Hillary knew how, she would have done it already. Period. End of story. I won the debate. I stayed calm. Just like I promised. And it is over.”

Holt then told him he couldn’t leave because it was a 90-minute debate.

“My microphone is broken,” Baldwin as Trump said, looking panicked. “She broke it with Obama. She and Obama stole my microphone and took it to Kenya and they broke it and now it’s broken.”

He then starts sniffling and pretends like it’s someone else before ultimately blaming it on Clinton. “She’s been sniffling all night.”

“Secretary Clinton, what do you think about that,” Holt asks.

“I think I’m going to be president,” McKinnon said.

I think Hillary's going to be president too.

The Other Side: She's A Master Baiter

The post-debate spin cycle that Trump was expected to try to recover from and move on to next week's Veep match-up and town hall debate a week from Sunday instead turned into several days of Hillary Clinton using the same tactic that worked so effectively in the debate itself against Donald Trump, and even the folks on the right like Hot Air's Jazz Shaw are wondering how much of a beating Trump's numbers will take due to his inability to prevent himself from taking Clinton's bait on former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.

The problem here is that this is absolutely working for Hillary Clinton and she’s jumping on the bandwagon as hard as she can. (It also reinforces her “man who can be goaded by a tweet” theme.) And why wouldn’t she? The debate probably didn’t go as well for Trump as it might have, but up until that point Clinton was on the ropes. There was one bad story after another about her with many of them being serious enough that the MSM couldn’t avoid talking about them. Her numbers were tanking nationally and in multiple swing states. Trump fans had reason to be at least cautiously hopeful because it wasn’t as if she was going to unveil yet another policy initiative which was suddenly going to turn the electorate around.

And then this happens. Some dusty old story about about a beauty pageant contestant who is far from a role model but does happen to hit the media narrative bullseye of being both Hispanic and in possession of two X chromosomes. And because Donald Trump apparently can’t stand seeing a moment of the day when everyone isn’t talking out him he decides to hoist this flag up to the yardarms and go charging into battle in the middle of the night. The major problem here is that having the media talk about somebody else (specifically Hillary) was actually working for Trump. We were at a point where all he needed to do was keep looking at least marginally serious about some significant campaign issues, even if they seemed a bit dry and boring, and allow Clinton to collapse into a pile on her own.

Now the worm has turned for the umpteenth time in this election and the cable news networks have a new shiny object to play with. Clinton’s numerous flaws and ethics problems slink off to the back burner again and the remaining undecided voters are handed a new reason to question Trump’s seriousness and credibility. It’s time to get off this Miss Universe train let the news about Clinton’s many problems pull her under. Can Donald do it? I’m starting to have doubts.

Trump's ego has always been his weakness, especially when the person attacking it is a woman.  It's a tactic Clinton saved until the final six weeks of the election and it was a smart move.  Trump can't help himself.  That "a man who can be baited by a tweet" line so perfectly encapsulates The Donald that it's comical to see him fall for it like a dipstick time and again.

The reason why it's so destructive is that as with any bully, once you rob them of the power to harm you, they end up looking like sputtering fools.  That's exactly what Clinton did here, and Donald can't shut up about calling women fat now on national television.  Before, taking Trump seriously was something that the Village media failed to do at their own peril, and it helped lead us directly to the moment we're in now.  But now everyone's laughing at him, and Trump cannot stand it.

He looks like a loser, the worse sin possible in the Book of Trump.  And Clinton's living rent-free inside his nightmares, exactly where she wants to be.

Board Of Disapproval

If you're such an awful presidential candidate that you make USA Today actually pick sides in the race against you (something the studiously bland, noncontroversial and neutral newspaper has never before done) then you might be Donald Trump.

In the 34-year history of USA TODAY, the Editorial Board has never taken sides in the presidential race. Instead, we’ve expressed opinions about the major issues and haven’t presumed to tell our readers, who have a variety of priorities and values, which choice is best for them. Because every presidential race is different, we revisit our no-endorsement policy every four years. We’ve never seen reason to alter our approach. Until now.

This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates — Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency.

From the day he declared his candidacy 15 months ago through this week’s first presidential debate, Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents.

Whether through indifference or ignorance, Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II. These commitments include unwavering support for NATO allies, steadfast opposition to Russian aggression, and the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts. He has expressed troubling admiration for authoritarian leaders and scant regard for constitutional protections.

That's as good as it gets for USA Today trying to save the Republic, for the paper still refuses to endorse any of the presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton.

Some of us look at her command of the issues, resilience and long record of public service — as first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of State — and believe she’d serve the nation ably as its president.

Other board members have serious reservations about Clinton’s sense of entitlement, her lack of candor and her extreme carelessness in handling classified information.

Where does that leave us? Our bottom-line advice for voters is this: Stay true to your convictions. That might mean a vote for Clinton, the most plausible alternative to keep Trump out of the White House. Or it might mean a third-party candidate. Or a write-in. Or a focus on down-ballot candidates who will serve the nation honestly, try to heal its divisions, and work to solve its problems.

Whatever you do, however, resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue. By all means vote, just not for Donald Trump.

I've got news for you.  Voting for either of the third-party candidates or a write-in (Hi Bernie!) isn't going to save the country from Trump: because of our electoral college system, only Clinton can do that.  It wouldn't kill the paper to say so, but I guess it would, sort of.

"Dear God don't vote for the actual fascist racist" is better than standing idly by, I guess.

The Great Debate Debate

Last night's debate was one of the most watched in history, and what ten of millions of American voters saw was Hillary Clinton winning...or more accurately, Donald Trump getting stomped.

PPP's post debate survey, sponsored by VoteVets Action Fund, finds that voters nationally think Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in the debate, 51/40.

Perhaps most important for Clinton is that among young voters, who she has under performed with, 63% think she won the debate to only 24% for Trump. 47% of voters in that age group said the debate tonight made them more likely to vote for her, to only 10% who say it made them less likely to vote for her. For Trump with that group on the other hand, only 23% said the debate made them more likely to vote for him to 39% who said it made them less likely to.

Clinton also won the debate by particularly wide margins with women (54/36) and voters who are either African American or Latino (77/13). Among white voters the debate was basically a draw with Trump coming out ahead 47/45.

Clinton emerges from the debate with clear advantages over Trump on temperament, preparedness to be President, and whether she can be trusted with nuclear weapons:

-By a 17 point margin, 55/38, voters say Clinton has the temperament to be President. On the other hand, by an 11 point margin, 42/53, voters say Trump does not have the temperament to be President. Among independents the gap is even wider- by a 56/36 spread they say Clinton has the temperament for the job, while by a 41/54 spread they say Trump does not.

-By an 11 point margin, 52/41, voters say Clinton is prepared to be President. On the other hand, by a 10 point margin, 42/52, voters say Trump is not prepared to be President.

-By a 21 point margin, 56/35, voters say they think Clinton can be trusted with nuclear weapons. On the other hand, by a 9 point margin, 42/51, voters say they think Trump can not be trusted with nuclear weapons.

It was that bad, folks.  Trump spent the first half-hour interrupting Clinton relentlessly, while Clinton baited Trump time and time again and he could not resist, all but admitting he paid no federal taxes because he was bragging about how "smart" he was to dodge the IRS, advocating for the invasion of North Korea, and completely mangling America's nuclear policy.

In other words, if Trump's plan was to capitalize on the recent polls and take the lead, he ran into cold, hard reality last night.  Clinton pushed his buttons and by the end of the night Trump was screaming at her.

Even Politico's Glenn Thrush thought Trump got smoked.

There were a couple of not-so-very-subtle signals here inside of Hofstra University that Donald Trump lost Monday night’s highly-anticipated debate against Hillary Clinton, and badly.

The first was the audible sound of groaning by some of his supporters (picked up by my attentive colleague Steve Shepard) inside the debate hall as Trump meandered self-defensively through a succession of answers against a very focused, very energized and very well-rehearsed Hillary Clinton.

Another tell: After the 90-minute sparring match finished, Clinton’s team practically bounded into the spin room – more in glassy-eyed disbelief than visible elation that things had gone so much better than expected. The GOP nominee’s people, by contrast, dribbled into the media pen like surly seventh-graders headed for homeroom the day before summer vacation. “F—k, let’s do this,” a prominent Trump surrogate said before diving into a scrum.

Trump and his new-ish messaging team have labored mightily to turn the avatar of populist rage into a reasonable facsimile of someone who you could see sitting in the Oval Office. But this best-laid plan unraveled on Monday – amid Clinton’s steely assault and the dignified interrogation of NBC’s Lester Holt, who struck a deft balance between facilitator, BS detector and lion tamer.

Within minutes of the opening bell, Clinton’s attacks forced domesticated Donald to go feral – he bellowed, interrupted her repeatedly, grunted, and toward the bedraggled end, became muted and pouty.

Another debate like that and the Village might even stop picking on Clinton for a while. 

We'll see.  The next clash is on Oct. 9 at Washington University, with the VP debate a week from today on Oct. 4th at Longwood University in Virginia.