2016 Oct 18^th

No quiver in the polls is too minor to escape the mathematically trained eye of Nate Silver, the head honcho of 538, a blog devoted to predicting election results. The polls now show a 87.4 percent chance of Clinton winning the election whereas a few days ago it was just over 88 Percent. Well, not to worry.

Trump is worrying considerably and like the prudent man he is, he is taking out insurance. His insurance is to claim that the election is rigged. He wants poll watchers but he doesn’t understand that poll watchers are not just armed Trump supporters who look over the shoulders of voters. Poll watchers must apply for the job in advance and then they are trained to do what watchers need to do.

Other Republicans do not buy into this rigged election complaint. Senator Marco Rubio, speaking of Florida, maintains that rigging the election in the 67 independent Florida counties would be impossible. Even Governor Christie claims that the rigging isn’t about the voting (although Trump disagrees with him) but about the disproportionate media coverage.

Of course there is disproportionate media coverage. Trump believes the media is against him. He might be right but the media has only one real concern, and that is making money. You would think that Donald Trump could understand that.

It is a matter of which TV coverage gets the most “eyeballs.” If you are a TV producer and your choice is between covering Donald Trump claiming he can enter the dressing room of half-naked teenagers on an inspection tour; or covering another batch of WikiLeaked Clinton emails, which coverage would you pick? If you are a producer who wants to keep her job you’ll cover Trump’s shenanigans. Let’s face it, sex trumps emails every time. (Yeah, I know about the pun.)

Trump is losing and he knows he is losing.  The result is that Trump will get farther and farther into the gutter and talk less and less about the national issues. The last debate he had four women seated in the audience who had affairs with Bill Clinton. All of them must have known he was married. Trump’s ploy didn’t rattle Hillary Clinton. Now he is bringing the mother of a man killed in the Benghazi raid who blames Hillary Clinton personally for her son’s death. She will also be seated up front but probably with no more effect than the four he produced last time.