Fat Lady Warming Up...

It’s almost over

The final week will be fateful slog for both detested contestants.

By Eli Stokols

Hillary Clinton’s mirthless slog toward the presidency is entering its final full week. Donald Trump, meanwhile, enters the final eight days of the campaign upbeat, having seen his chances of winning double over the weekend after news Friday afternoon that the FBI is reviewing additional emails in its investigation of Clinton’s private email server.

The candidate’s contrasting moods have changed—but those moods belie the reality of a race that still favors the Democratic nominee.

Trump now has a roughly 20 percent chance of winning the White House next Tuesday, almost double what it was days earlier after a month of poor debate performances and increasingly unfocused, angry speeches. Surveys taken over the weekend show that the FBI decision is bringing some disaffected Republican voters home to Trump but that a majority of voters are unlikely to change their minds in light of the latest “October surprise.”

“I’d characterize it more as Trump consolidating some of the available anti-Clinton vote as opposed to Clinton’s support eroding,” said GOP strategist Bruce Haynes. “Now the question is do people interpret this news in a way that raises enough doubts about Clinton's judgment to cut into her number. Because it's not enough for Trump's number to move up. Hers has to go down.”

As the presidential contest between the two least popular nominees in American history enters its final, fittingly dispiriting stretch, the focus is on Clinton. That’s bad news for her: throughout this contest, the candidate dominating the headlines has been the candidate losing ground. But it may be too late to shift the broader dynamic of the race, especially because voters’ perceptions had already hardened—a majority of Americans viewed Clinton as untrustworthy long before Friday’s news and still deem her more fit to serve as president than Trump.

“One thing that really hasn’t changed is their ‘unfavorables’ this entire campaign, hovering within 3-4 points of one another. And their ‘strongly unfavorable’ have continued to grow: He’s over 50 percent and she’s almost at 50 percent,” said Ed Goeas, a GOP pollster in Washington. “Barring something like a true indictment of her or him being caught today fondling some woman, I just don’t think anything is going to change the fundamentals, which favor Clinton.”

“It’s not just the electoral map,” Goeas continued. “The thing about polling is: polling assumes both campaigns are equal. You look at quality of surrogates, money raised, ground game—she has an advantage in all that. So you basically have to look at the polling and say it reflects the worst-case scenario for her.”

After several weeks spent on the offensive and pumping last minute dollars into red states that looked ripe for the taking as Trump flailed, Clinton is suddenly back on defense, desperate to hold the line and secure the 270 electoral votes needed to become the nation’s first female president. Realistically, a downward slide in the campaign’s final week is unlikely to harm Clinton’s overall chances but could dash Democratic hopes of major gains in Congress.

“She was knocking on 400 electoral votes; that's going to slide back,” said Steve Schmidt, the GOP strategist who guided John McCain’s 2008 campaign. “But there is an overwhelming likelihood she'll be the next president.” Schmidt now predicts Clinton winding up with somewhere between 338 and 350 electoral votes. “It's just really unlikely that there is an undecided bloc of voters still weighing Hillary Clinton's emails. I think everyone made up their minds a long time ago on that subject.”

Over the weekend as Trump lambasted her at rallies across the west, Clinton’s team was fighting to control the narrative. While Trump, without any evidence, told supporters that he imagines the new evidence to be “so overwhelming because they wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t overwhelming,” Clinton and her senior campaign aides were blasting FBI Director James Comey for offering such vague and incomplete information so close to an election. “By providing selective information, he has allowed partisans to distort and exaggerate to inflict maximum political damage,” John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, said during a conference call with reporters on Saturday.

More than 20 million Americans have already voted in 37 states, which may help Clinton survive a potential last-minute momentum shift toward Trump. In Florida, where two polls Sunday showed a much closer race, more than three million voters—roughly a third of the state’s electorate—had already cast ballots by the end of last week.

“Florida is pulling a Florida, so it really isn't any surprise it is tight,” said Steve Schale, a Democratic operative and blogger in Tallahassee. Getting your vote in early serves two purposes—if you are ahead, it allows you to lock in a bit of a lead, and it allows your field organization to have an easier task on Election Day. And right now, it looks like we are headed to a Florida where truly every vote is gonna matter.”

Even if Trump were to win Florida, he’d also need to win Pennsylvania or Colorado, two states that still appear in Clinton’s camp although they differ in terms of how they vote. In Colorado, where every registered voter receives a mail ballot and early voting began 10 days ago, Democrats are astonished at their growing advantage so far given that Republicans have traditionally had the early edge in returned ballots through Election Day, when the usually superior Democratic ground game often pushes its candidates across the finish line late. “If the same trend continues, Democrats will be cleaning up on the back end,” said Rob Witwer, a former GOP state lawmaker in Colorado.

Pennsylvania, on the other hand, does not have early voting so it could be more susceptible to a late swing, although it would have to be a major one with Clinton still holding a lead of eight points according to a CBS survey released Sunday.

Trump, who campaigned in Colorado Saturday and Nevada on Sunday, is expected to return to Pennsylvania this week, as well as Michigan. According to a tweet Sunday from campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, Melania Trump, who has not once hit the campaign trail in a speaking role beyond her plagiarism-marred speech at the Republican National Convention, will give a speech Thursday in the Philadelphia suburbs, an area where Trump must improve his standing with women voters.

But should he fall short, the final week of the campaign will only have served to remind Republicans one final time of Clinton’s inherent weaknesses as a candidate and the missed opportunity to have nominated a GOP contender who could have better exploited them.

Friday’s FBI news was the capstone on a week that began with reports of 25 percent spikes next year in Obamacare premiums and also included a potentially damaging Wikileaks revelation in the form of an email from Bill Clinton confidant Doug Band detailing how he used the former president’s celebrity to secure large donations to the Clinton Foundation.

"The news this week once again reinforces the fact that literally every other person who ran for the GOP nomination would have the discipline and self-control to make the final weeks of this race about the Obamacare failures and fallout from a reopened FBI investigation that highlights Hillary Clinton's paranoia and fear of transparency," said Tim Miller, a Republican operative who worked for Jeb Bush and a Never Trump super PAC this cycle.

"Alas, Donald Trump's latest tweet is about a joint Twitter/Facebook/Google conspiracy against him," he continued in reference to Trump's tweet Sunday complaining about social media companies "burying" news of the FBI investigation that has dominated mainstream media campaign coverage all weekend.