Dave just curious as to what you sympathize with? I think Ryan made the calculation that Trump is going to lose badly and he's doing the best he can in damage control. Trump is Captain of the Titanic upset that his people are going for the life boats. Can't even lead his own party.
I sympathise with the white, 50 year old men who have found themselves on the sharp end of the stick with regards to globalisation. Jobs are leaving to other countries and they don't have the ability or opportunity to skill up. Jobs that remain are taken up by younger people, often from other countries. I think that would be vastly unsettling and cause grief and anxiety, particularly for people with children to support.
People in that category (amongst others) turn to someone who promises them a world of relief from the causes of the pain. He doesn't articulate how (probably because he doesn't have any idea himself), nor how he will pay for it.
I really empathise with those people. My dad could have been one of them (he is what we call a fitter and turner - he worked with piping before he retired). If Trump does not win, then they are going to be even more angry and feel a sense of betrayal.
Anyway, no one has answered my question, just provided reasons why Trump won't lose and how biased my media sources are (and more on that in a moment).
I see a Trump supporter somewhere told Pence that if Hillary gets in, it would be cause for a revolution. Pence told her not to say that.
I see also that The Crusaders, an ultra right paramilitary group, were arrested last week. I suspect that they were pumped up in their beliefs by exposure to an increasingly virulent right wing press. They said that they would not even spare babies.
As The Economist pointed out last week, even if Clinton prevails in an election, then out of a population of 280 million or thereabouts, there are 30 million core Trump supporters who have been repeatedly told and believe that Clinton should be in jail. That makes it very difficult to achieve any sort of domestic agenda.
So let me rephrase the question. When Bush won the election in 2000, many Democrats despised him and his inauguration was best by people throwing fruit and whatever at his presidential limousine on his way to be sworn in.
What happens if Clinton is elected? Pariah, you have already foreshadowed that you think the election could be rigged, and Trump himself has been hinting at it.
Going back to mainstream media as promised... there are two issues here.
a. everyone hears what they want to hear. The fragmentation of news sources means that, as I read somewhere years ago, Jewish people can be three blocks away from Palestinian expats in the same city and read precisely what they want to affirm, and worse, entrench their own beliefs. It is like a sort of information Balkanisation. (I personally don't want to read the same thing over and over again. I like to have my assumptions challenged. I accept that this can be confronting to some people though.) I've personally been disappointed by the Washington Post and the New York Times in this election for being unabashedly anti-Trump. There is not a lot of dispassion in the reporting. The Melbourne Age and the Straits Times (Singapore) are regurgitating Post stories and editorials. China Daily and the Moscow Times (the latter is surprisingly judgmental about Russian politics) have been fairly quiet on the US election - the Moscow Times has been more interested in Syria. But, I have a friend in NY who is a Trump supporter, and when I follow the links she posts on Facebook about Trump/Clinton, there is the same, or even much less measured, views on Clinton.
My point is that it isn't enough to blame "the left wing mainstream media" for misleading people as to the current state of the election. The paradigm for reporting is such that you see what you want to see, you read what you want to read, and it feeds on itself.
The other part of it is that Trump supporters might be absolutely shocked if Trump loses. Trump supporters have been exposed to a never-ending, singular news cycle that Trump is winning, Clinton is losing and so on. The conclusion might be that the election must be rigged, simply because no other option other than success was in front of them for months and months.
b. Setting aside all of that, I am pretty confident with the accuracy of information such as the CNN poll. A small part of my job lies in verifying and arguing the statistic validity of surveys. When I read CNN polls and consider the methodology then those give me confidence that they are accurate.
Otherwise, aspects of the stories make inherent sense. Trump has pulled his campaign office out of Virginia which means that Virginia is almost certainly lost. Utah is wavering and because of the reasons for that this should be absolutely no surprise. Pennsylvania was won by Obama and despite blue collar job losses that will be tough to keep. Michigan might go Trump's way for the same reason as might Ohio (despite Kasich). Early in the piece, Trump thought that he might get wins in NJ and Mass., but that seems to have entirely fallen away. North Carolina seems gone - educated white voters and black voters. Florida may be gone because of the Latino community. Arizona might be gone because of McCain and a big Latino community.
The general sense is that Trump has been unable to broaden the Republican voter base, and much of that is policy driven.
I add, in closing, that if John McCain had been running again, my gut tells me that the GOP would easily have won. Popular with Latinos, outside the GOP powerbase to be popular with disaffected GOP voters, a war hero whose service to his country is beyond dispute... Given Clinton's gaffes, even I would have been in favour of a McCain presidency.
