This election should be a cakewalk, but Hillary Clinton is in serious danger of losing to Donald Trump.
Although she still has about a
5 point edge in some national polls, the monster lead she had over Trump late in the summer has all but vanished.
The race is even tighter if you look at the state level, where Trump is now ahead of Clinton in key swing states like North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio.
He's also pulling away in Nevada, which voted for President Obama in both 2008 and 2012.
These are astounding developments.
Just a few months ago, after the Democratic Convention and Trump's attacks on the Khan family, it looked like Hillary Clinton was on the verge of the biggest electoral landslide since 1984, when Ronald Reagan obliterated Walter Mondale.
But now the race is tighter than it's ever been, and even though 538.com still gives Clinton a 58.8 percent chance of winning, there's a growing sense among many progressives -- myself included -- that Clinton's fortunes are sinking fast.
So... what the heck happened?
Well, first and foremost the media happened.
By focusing nonstop on pseudo-scandals involving the Clinton Foundation and almost completely ignoring real scandals involving the Donald J. Trump Foundation, Trump University, and other Trump business scandals, mainstream corporate media has created a false equivalency between the candidates, one that has led many voters to trust Hillary less and Donald Trump more than they should.
If you ask me, this was intentional: it helped create some drama in an election that was starting to look like a blowout, and drama produces better ratings and profits for the networks.
But intentional or not, Clinton's plummeting electoral chances aren't just the fault of the mainstream media.
They're also the fault of the Clinton campaign itself.
Instead of mobilizing the Democratic base, it's spent the past few months rehabilitating Bush-era neocons to try to talk other Republicans out of voting for Trump.
These people were completely discredited over a decade ago, but the Clinton campaign is now giving them new life with
ads like this.
If the Clinton campaign thinks ads like that are going to put their candidate in the White House, then they deserve to lose.
Thom Hartmann Program
Comments