Yes, Donald Trump was tied with Hillary the national CBS/New York Times poll yesterday, but this morning NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist showed a slew of bad numbers in swing states:
In Colorado, Clinton gets support from 39 percent of registered voters, Trump gets 33 percent, Johnson gets 13 percent and Stein gets 4 percent.
In Florida, it’s Clinton 41 percent, Trump 36 percent, Johnson 7 percent and Stein 4 percent.
In North Carolina, it’s Clinton 42 percent, Trump 36 percent, Johnson 7 percent and Stein 2 percent.
And in Virginia, it’s Clinton 41 percent, Trump 34 percent, Johnson 10 percent and Stein 2 percent.
Grasp that: in a four-way race, Trump isn’t cracking 37 percent in these places.
If Trump loses “bigly” in November, we know who to blame: the Republican primary electorate, who picked a candidate who struggles against the deeply flawed Clinton, and the Republican National Convention Rules Committee, who torpedoed any discussion of replacing Trump. Our Tim Alberta – who’s an absolute must-read, must-follow-on-Twitter reporter – laid it out in depressing detail.
An earlier NBC poll from early July showed Clinton losing head-to-head to John Kasich and Paul Ryan. She’s weak – barely hitting 40 percent in those polls – but just enough to beat Trump.
Maybe between now and November, the state of the country and the state of the world will get so indisputably awful that the American electorate will overlook Trump’s flaws and take a chance on him rather than continue the status quo with Hillary Clinton. But if not, this will rank as the most obviously preventable Republican defeat in memory.