Electoral Challenges facing Clinton and Trump

With the nomination of Hillary Clinton complete, it’s official: the two most unpopular Presidential candidates in American history will face off against each other on November 8th. Though there’s enough baggage to bring down a plane between these two candidates, one of them will wind up being victorious (cue in Hollaback Girl “both of us wanna be the winner but there can only be one”). Even if their problems stem from the same lack of trust and lack of judgment issues, their solutions and the kind of groups that take issue with each of them, couldn’t be more different.

Since I believe Hillary Clinton’s issues are likely more damaging and ultimately more inflexible than Donald Trump’s, we’ll start out with Trump’s.

Donald Trump: Although Trump’s rise, unshakable poll numbers, and eventual capture of the Republican nomination stunned virtually everyone in the political elite, he has the very real problem of facing a general electorate that isn’t 92% white, and doesn’t give President Obama an 80% unfavorable rating. I could write a bible-length book about the numerous groups that Donald Trump has offended, but the bare fact is that minorities are likely to make up roughly 30% of the electorate this November.

In 2012, Mitt Romney won the largest share of the white vote by any losing candidate in history. Losing is the operative word there. Although doing exceedingly well among whites (winning them by 19 points), he received a paltry 16% of non-white voters to Barack Obama’s 83%, and there’s little evidence to suggest that Donald Trump is poised to do much if any better than that.

Then of course, there’s organization and fundraising. Although raising significantly more than in previous months, Trump’s campaign still has less than half of the amount of “cash on hand” as Clinton’s campaign does, and thus far has been outraised by Clinton and her allied Super PAC’s roughly 4–1. As for campaign infrastructure, Clinton’s paid staff thus far has been nearly 10 times larger than Trump’s, and the number of campaign offices and behind the scenes strategists are in significantly greater quantity for her as well.

Possibly the best organizational advantage for Hillary is the exemplary set of high profile surrogates stumping for her. Ranging from firebrands like Elizabeth Warren and President Obama to Former President (and husband) Bill Clinton and a slew of Hollywood celebrities hellbent on making sure Trump never wins. The depth of her endorsements is magnified by the fact that almost all of Trump’s “high-profile” supporters aren’t high profile at all. Almost all of the young and rising GOP stars skipped the convention, and publicly dodge whether or not they’ll support Trump. Not to mention of course that elites, lobbyists, and mainstream broadcasters from both parties are opposed to him and will voluntarily be working in unison to undermine and chastise his campaign at every turn.

Essentially though, his most basic problem is with the voters themselves. He has to convince voters that he’s capable of commanding the largest economy and military on earth. They have to trust that he’ll make “good deals” both domestically and internationally that actually benefit the general public, that he’ll keep his word on basic campaign pledges and positions (something he largely seems incapable of doing), and that he’ll be able to be a level headed leader on an increasingly perilous world stage. So far, he has yet to convince a majority of the American public he can do any of the three. Luckily for him, his opponent is Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton: While Trump’s mishaps are put on daily display, Clinton’s have largely been underplayed. Although the media can thoroughly understand the issues the public continues to have with Trump, they still have yet to understand exactly what is causing the two party anti-establishment rebellion. Largely because they themselves have become the cornerstone of the economic and political establishment.

From an objective standpoint, the Democratic convention has been lackluster. Although it featured the most high-profile line-up of lawmakers, celebrities, and impassioned stories of arguably any convention, it’s done little to coalesce a party that would likely support Barack Obama for a third term if it were an option.

Being just days after Wikileaks affirmed through e-mail leaks, that the DNC chaired by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz had been working since early 2015 to make sure there would be insurmountable roadblocks to Bernie capturing the nomination, division and anxiety ran visibly wild throughout the Democratic ranks. Although Wasserman-Schultz was ultimately replaced, she was replaced by Marcia Fudge, a woman who openly called on Sanders to dropout if he “were a true Democrat” back in March.

The first night was marred with Sanders supporters booing many of the speakers who came on stage in support of Clinton, and revealed to the world the depth of Democratic dis-unity. With much bloated talk of Republican chaos at their own convention spawned by Ted Cruz’s refusal to endorse Trump, Ted Cruz was apparently the only guy in that convention hall not supporting Trump… On the Democratic floor, there was clearly more than just one lonely soul not ready to support Clinton.

Things came to a head on Tuesday when after the rollcall of delegates elected Clinton, over 1,000 Sanders supporters and delegates left the convention in exodus. At the GOP convention, only 50 delegates (mainly the unelected ones from Colorado) walked out in protest. While we’ve seen Republican elites hesitant or downright opposed to Trump, Republican voters across the spectrum are very much in support, even if Trump wasn’t their first choice. With Democrats, the opposite is true. While elected officials insist they’ve never been more united, the Democratic voting base acts as though they’ve never been more divided. What the party fails to realize is that Sanders wasn’t the Bill Bradley of 2016, he was the Barack Obama of 2016, and his supporters didn’t join a political ideology, they joined a movement that simply can’t be transferred from one candidate to another out of political convenience. After one year of doing everything they could to bury, de-legitimize, and insult Sanders supporters, I don’t think there’s much Democratic officials much less Hillary Clinton can do to win over the millions of Berniecrats who still refuse to support Clinton, other than hope Trump’s continued bombastic statements will be enough to make these voters break late and break decisively in favor of Clinton, instead of a third party candidate like Jill Stein.

The most daunting challenge Clinton facing Clinton however, is the overall theme of this election cycle, a new direction. Voters aren’t necessarily enraged with President Obama, but they are enraged with the American political system’s culture of greed, corruption, favoritism, and outright lies. Unfortunately for Clinton, she’s ran a less than honest campaign based on big money Super PAC’s and consistent favoritism by all the top power players. In other words, she ran the worst campaign at the most inopportune time for a 25 year long political figure. What’s worse, over the past month and a half, Clinton and her allies have unleashed $57 Million from her massive warchest on attack ads against Donald Trump, compared to just $4 Million being spent by Trump against Clinton. What have the results been for this massive spending advantage? Hillary’s RCP National polling average has dropped 7 points over the past month. If Clinton can’t move the needle in her direction, or at a bare minimum, prevent it from moving in Trump’s direction when she’s outspending him 14–1, it’s nearly inconceivable as to exactly how Clinton will ever be able to take down Donald Trump.

As for Clinton’s demographic advantage, Clinton was on solid ground with African-Americans during the primary, and will do so again with them easily in the general election. Among Hispanics, Clinton clearly has some weakness, but for rather obvious reasons, Donald Trump will not be the one who is able to exploit them. Among white voters however, is where the bottom falls for Clinton. Her favorable ratings among white voters are the lowest ever seen for a major party Presidential candidate. Her entire run for President has been based on the usage of “identity politics”, meaning political persuasion aimed at treating minorities like focus groups and targeting them as a group one at a time, instead of focusing on a broader campaign message that’s based on issues not personal characteristics. Her campaign has run the same recurring themes involving race, religion, and of course, gender throughout the past 18 months. One group her identity politics left out was one of her strongest 2008 supporters, white men. While her campaign did relatively well at micro-targeting and messaging to minorities (especially blacks and older women), they rather ignorantly chose not to make persuasive pitches to working class whites and swing voters. The result has become Hillary Clinton doing worse among working class whites than any Democrat since Walter Mondale. Hillary Clinton trails Donald Trump by a margin of greater than 2–1 among white men and despite constantly talking up the “historic nature” of this election, loses white women by double digits in most polls. Simply put, while Hillary is excellent at targeting every micro-minority group available, she’s lost touch from reality among voters whom don’t relate to identity politics.

On a final note, one can’t disregard the outsized effect that third/fourth party candidates will have this cycle. In 2012, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein made up a combined 1.4% of the total vote cast, significantly less than the roughly 4% margin Obama defeated Romney by. This cycle, polls indicate these two receiving anywhere between 10% and 20% of respondents. Much of this may just be due to unpopularity of the two major candidates, and their support may collapse on election night, but if one of the major party candidates ends up losing significantly more voters to third party candidates than the other, that may ultimately turn out to be the final deciding factor of the entire election.

Make no mistake about it, while the rhetoric between the two candidates will border on and cross into loathsome territory, the two couldn’t be more happy that the other is their opponent. There’s not a day that goes by that Hillary Clinton isn’t thankful she’s running against Donald Trump instead of John Kasich, and likewise by Donald Trump that his opponent is Hillary Clinton instead of Bernie Sanders.