Trump Gets Tangled in the Rigging as Cannonballs Bounce Off Old Ironsides

On the Monday morning of ‎September ‎26, ‎2016 before the first debate, Donald Trump seemed to have drawn even with Hillary Clinton, a position he had held briefly in July. FiveThirtyEight.com put his odds of winning if the election were held that day at 54.9%:



Then she turned on him and her whole fleet began firing broadsides. First, she baited him with a Miss Universe from Venezuela while the press poked him about his $916 million tax loss. He fired back that her husband is a rapist. Then he was exposed in some locker room boy talk with Billy Bush. The Great Donald foundered on the reef of Low Energy Jeb's first cousin Billy? Say it isn't so!

Donald Trump tried to right himself by bringing 4 Clinton accusers to the second debate. Since then, the press has pounded the Donald with 9 women and counting. It began to occur to Donald that the U.S.S Clinton Campaign has spent the last 18 months setting its rigging for this run at the Presidency. Why didn't he do the same? By October 11, FiveThirtyEight.com had dropped Trump's odds of winning to 11.8%. That's drawn and quartered.

Meanwhile, Julian Assange of Wikileaks has been firing salvo after salvo at Hillary Clinton from his internet turret at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Those cannonballs are just bouncing off Old Ironsides. She seems impervious to either the direct hits or the indirect fire falling on her husband.

The rats have already deserted the sinking Trump ship. "Women and children first," shouted the boy wonder U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan. Just how far has Trump fallen? President Obama called Trump out for "whining before the game's even over".

I wouldn't give up on Trump just yet. He may have been thrown a lifeline in the last debate. His odds of winning have edged up to 13.1% if the election were held today. In terms of states he would have to win, here's where he was at his high water mark on September 26:



In the ebb that has followed, Hillary Clinton has reclaimed Colorado, Nevada, Florida, and North Carolina and possibly Ohio, Arizona, and Iowa. The big unknown question is whether the tide can shift again in the final 3 weeks of the campaign as much as it has in the past 3 weeks.

As Trump edges back up in the polls, which seems likely to continue, it's going to be excruciating for many of my friends and neighbors on the left. They are beginning to imagine him shouting "I have not yet begun to fight!" as he rejects the results on the night of the election. The real John Paul Jones did go into service with the Russians after he fought in our revolution for us.

But I've learned to stop worrying and love the Donald. All Trump's talk of a rigged election may just be setting himself up to run again in 2020. And what what if I told you that the most important piece of rigging was a phone call from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump back in May 2015 encouraging him to run? If he's flying a false flag, I expect he'll be back to ensure Hillary gets a second term.