part of the reason we got trump after a republican circus is because hillary will win.

when it comes to the general election, i step back and take the long view.

i don't obsess over polls because they aren't meant to be predictive, though they're usually passed off as predictive. polls tell you how things would turn out "if the election were held today". well, of course, unless "today" is the actual election day, that doesn't mean much. campaigns plan out a strategy around getting to a winning number of electoral votes on the actual election day, not on any given day. polls don't take into account how much cash a campaign has on hand, or can raise, for a late october media blitz, for instance.

what is predictive are the factors that affect how people feel about the incumbent administration. generally, if things are going well, the incumbent party keeps the white house; otherwise, the challenging party wins.

notwithstanding a lot of frustration, generally speaking, things have gotten better under obama. we're not in a recession, growth is slow but certainly better than under shrub, obama has been remarkably scandal-free, etc.

while it's not a lock, i think it's been clear for quite a while that hillary was going to be our next president. at least a heavy favorite.


for this reason, i think republicans failed to come together behind a single candidate *because they knew they were likely to lose*. if the economy were in the crapper, someone like paul ryan might have run and republicans could all get behind him. or maybe they would have converged behind kasich or even bush or who knows, *because then, it would have mattered*.

i think they ended up with trump because it didn't matter, they're going to lose anyway.


the problem, of course, is that it's not a guarantee, and a major terrorist attack or economic disaster or huge obama scandal could tilt things in the republicans' favor. trump is willing to take the long odds because he's just fooling around and creating a business opportunity for himself. other candidates and backers, perhaps, not so much. the smart republican money is backing congressional and state-level races.

in short, the fact that their candidate is so scary should be taken as a good sign that we were always very likely to win.