Momentum!
Once you add the “embarrassment discount” to the polls that may already be a an election winning lead for our Donald. The FT fuels a building panic:
It is safe to say that Mrs Clinton is not about to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Voters will have to make do with her campaign themes of building bridges rather than walls, and being stronger together. Laudable though such sentiments are, they are dangerously anodyne. They tell voters what Mrs Clinton is not — Donald Trump. They tell us next to nothing about what she would do.
Her success is thus predicated on Mr Trump’s indiscipline, which cannot always be relied upon (recent gaffes about disarming his opponent’s secret service detail notwithstanding). If he sticks to advice by “reaching out” to African-Americans, Hispanics and women he can take the edge off Mrs Clinton’s warnings. What then, would her campaign be left with?
The answer is worryingly vague. Next week Mrs Clinton and Mr Trump will face off in what will almost certainly be the most watched television debate in history. Mr Trump will start on low expectations. Mrs Clinton is an accomplished and well-prepared debater. That means Mr Trump’s bar for winning will be far lower.
For many viewers — possibly a majority if the audience clears 100m — it will be their biggest exposure so far to the 2016 campaign. Newspaper readers may be shocked that anyone could have failed to make their minds up by now. But most Americans are turned off from politics, which is why Mr Trump has come this far. If he can refrain from bullying Mrs Clinton, and steers clear of insulting large groups of Americans, the media will declare him victor. History tells us that challengers tend to win the first of the three debates.
At which point panic would set in. During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama’s aides talked of the liberal “bed wetters” who kept worrying he would lose to John McCain. If Mr Trump holds his own next week, dodgy bladder control will go global.
Trump looks odds-on to win at this juncture.
