general election

Last July I wrote that Donald Trump was merely a “blip,” a novelty candidate who couldn’t do much better than 17 percent in the polls. He would swiftly go the way of Herman Cain.

In August, I still didn’t believe the Trump hype. The 2016 race, I predicted, would see an early surge for a religious right candidate, followed by the inevitable nomination of the establishment favorite, probably Jeb Bush. After the Iowa caucuses, I was sure my scenario was playing out, only with Rubio in place Bush.

Whenever Trump’s bad general election polling comes up, there is inevitably someone that says, “Yeah, but Reagan came from behind to win!” The two most relevant differences between Trump in 2016 and Reagan in 1980 are the economic conditions in the country and the candidates’ favorability numbers. Harry Enten commented on the latter earlier today:

Closest poll I found to today's point in 80 campaign had Reagan's net fav at -5 w/ general public. Trump averages -33 right now. #sameohwait

The Republican Party appears to be headed for its third consecutive loss in a presidential election and the sixth time in the last seven presidential elections that it will lose the popular vote. If Trump ends up as the nominee (still the most likely outcome at this point), the GOP seems doomed to lose by a wide margin thanks to defections, depressed turnout, and the nominee’s unprecedented unfavorability rating.

The rise of Donald Trump has led to predictions that the neoconservative dominance of Republican foreign policy is about to end, whether or not Trump wins. The Donald has challenged the perpetual military interventionism aspect of neocon-think without doing any damage to his campaign and, in the process, he has certainly noticed who the most strident voices being raised against him are.

There is nothing wrong with attack ads: Trump's first attack ad against Hillary Clinton was creative, original, imaginative - it included Jihadi John, a barking Hillary Clinton and a cackling Putin. It promptly went viral. Hillary's retort was basically a duller version of the original Trump ad; it was ok although Hillary's SuperPAC will have to do much better to keep the entertainment level on par.

However, when a conservative, anti-Trump group decided to run Facebook ads which showcased naked photos of Melania Trump, we wonder: what were they thinking?