There's plenty of hand wringing and stomach churning in Democratic households this week as polls show the presidential race tightening in its final days — and the Hillary Clinton campaign is making a series of moves that some see as panicked desperation.
A week out from the election, the campaign has started running ads in Colorado and Virginia, states it long ago felt comfortable leaving, and went on air for the first time in other, bluer states like New Mexico.
Meanwhile, campaign officials have seemed unusually agitated in a series of press calls and statements responding to FBI Director James Comey's bombshell on Clinton's email server. And after pledging to close the race on a positive note, the campaign rolled out a tough new ad highlighting women who claim Trump sexually assaulted them, while reintroduced former beauty queen Alicia Machado.
"Make no mistake, they are in panic," Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show Monday.
But the reality is that Clinton's chances of winning 270 electoral votes have hardly changed from last week. While Democrats' agitation is palpable, it's driven more by anger than panic at what they see as unprecedented and appalling meddling by outside forces in the election.
FiveThirtyEight's election forecast still gives Clinton a 71 percent chance of winning, while the New York Times' Upshot model gives her an 88 percent chance, and Princeton University's model pegs her likelihood at 97 percent.[...]
Team Clinton feels it's been stolen from them through unpredictable interventions they views as undemocratic and one-sided, both from Comey and the Russian hackers who allegedly stole thousands of sensitive emails from campaign chair John Podesta and released them online.
Meanwhile, Democrats are practically tearing their hair out over the fact that while they, again, take on water from an email scandal that has dogged them for more than a year and half, they're running against someone many Americans say is unqualified and who seems to have a new scandal every day.
One Democratic nervous operative said he's been trying to head the wise words of Luke Skywalker — or at least Mark Hamill the actor who played, him — who told followers: "Don't panic — VOTE!"[...]
RDE, are you voting for Hillary?
ReplyDelete