A week back some of us dared hope that the Dems might eke out a slim majority in the Senate and even make inroads into the Republican majority in the House. Then came the Molotov cocktail James Comey tossed onto that notion. The bipartisan criticism of his ill-considered move is scant solace.
The numbers run by Nate Silver and his crew at FiveThirtyEight still give HRC a 75 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, the one that counts, and an 85 percent chance of taking the popular vote. This is better than seeing Trump with those odds but far from reassuring.
There’s one big qualification: Our model doesn’t account for any sort of ground game advantage for Clinton in the swing states, other than to the extent that advantage is reflected in the polls. That could make a split a bit less likely than our model infers. Still, Trump’s coalition of white voters without college degrees are overrepresented in swing states, especially in the Midwest, while Clinton’s voters are not. (Silver, The Odds Of An Electoral College-Popular Vote Split Are Increasing)
* * * * * Neera Tanden is president and CEO of Center for American Progress, a leading liberal think tank. She served as policy director for HRC's 2008 presidential campaign and is said to be an unofficial adviser to the current campaign. Tanden's Wikileaked emails to John Podesta are fine reading, insightful, salty, and to the point. HRC would do well to pay more attention to her and less to the likes of David Brock (says Tanden, "I hope people get he's kind of a nut bar") and Sidney Blumenthal.
"Do we actually know who told Hillary she could use a private email? And has that person been drawn and quartered?
"Like whole thing is fucking insane."
That pretty much sums it up. As does Tanden's observation that HRC's "instincts are subopitmal." (Jonathan Chait, Hacked Emails Actually Prove Clinton Adviser Neera Tanden Is a Truth-Telling Hero.)