WaPo report: razor-thin Clinton “edge” even in 50-state hand-picked poll

WaPo headline reverses the story

My morning paper on September 7 had an unusual feature. The 9-16ths-inch headline on The Washington Post’s front page trumpeted, “Clinton has edge in 50-state poll.” Inside, a special pull-out section on “CAMPAIGN 2016” seemed to expand the story.

Actually, it contradicted the headline.

Let’s start with the easy part–pictures.

WaPo front page September 7, 2016

WaPo front page September 7, 2016

This parti-colored map ran above the fold, spanning eight inches. Take a look at the colors. As shown, the paper designated ten states as “tossups,” purple on the map–Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin. —Georgia? Mississippi? Texas? “Tossups”?

WaPo also designated Alaska and South Carolina reddishly as “Leans GOP.”

The special pull-out had another graphic divided by colors–blue and blueish, red and reddish, purple–with poll numbers. (Page 21) Blue/-ish states totaled 244 electoral votes, red/-ish states totaled 126 electoral votes, of 270 needed to win.

Setting blue and red aside for the moment, that leaves 168 electoral votes in the purple ‘tossup’ column. Here’s where arithmetic, a closer look, and some effort at exactitude might come in handy.

Accuracy, accuracy, and accuracy

According to the Post’s own poll, among the ‘tossup’ states, Trump led in Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Ohio–a total 55 electoral votes. Clinton led in the other six. (Those perennial tossups Arizona and Texas add up to another 49 electoral votes, yielding a total 230 for Trump without going into battleground states, but let’s not get ahead of the story.)

If something about this seems off-kilter, turn to page 24. That’s where readers finally get the breakdown on WaPo’s Survey Monkey numbers. (Yes, they used Survey Monkey–polling only people they had selected. See page 22.)

These were the stats for (selected) “four-way races,” i.e. twelve states with Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Jill Stein included in the poll. In Ohio, rated a ‘tossup’ on WaPo’s front page, Clinton polled at 37 percent to Trump’s 40 percent. In North Carolina, also rated ‘tossup’ as mentioned, Clinton polled 40 percent to Trump’s 41 percent. In Texas, both candidates polled at 40 percent; in Colorado, both candidates polled at 37 percent (unlike Clinton’s ‘narrow leads’ viz the front pager). In tossup Arizona, Clinton polled at 37 percent, Trump at 39 percent. In Georgia, Clinton 39 percent, Trump 40 percent.

These numbers did not appear on the front page of the paper or the front page of the Campaign 2016 pull-out.

Further, Secretary Clinton polled at 40 percent or less not only in states where that might be expected–Texas, Georgia–but in states touted as winnable for her–Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin. She ran barely better than 40 percent in Florida and Pennsylvania. She polled barely at 50 percent, if that, in Rhode Island. She polled at under 50 percent in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Maine. In fact, about the only place in the union seemingly favorable for Clinton, outside of bedrock-blue states like Hawaii and Maryland, is Virginia.

This falls short of an Electoral College landslide. It must have been a crushing disappointment to the WaPo personnel who created that hand-picked sample. The entire thrust of the story is how narrow a needle Mr. Trump has to thread, to get to 270. But by the same token–i.e. WaPo numbers–Clinton’s reported “edge” teeters on the brink–a loss of two or three states.

There are other problems with this kind of reporting. Under the sub-heading “Utah is most uncertain state,” the reader finds–that Utah is still solidly GOP, even with a locally popular Libertarian on the ballot siphoning away red votes. Maybe the problem is with the headings.

But the bigger problem is with the nominee. The short story is that Democratic Party insiders and their GOP/Wall Street/insider-media allies selected the worst possible candidate for Democrats, in an anti-democratic process that was worse yet. She’s not a nominee in the sense of having been elected as such by voters. She is a pre-selected candidate who succeeded in being designated as official nominee.

The whole thing was a betrayal. In Barack Obama, the Democrats selected a president who was elected by both the popular and the electoral vote, in the most genuine election in years, probably the first relatively open election since Jimmy Carter won in 1976. Eight years later, the party and the nation should be moving forward, to build on the foundation created by President Obama. Instead, it took a giant slide backward–about 90 percent from jealous/envious passive-aggressive inertia, so far as I can tell.

In a bleak prospect, Clinton might be elected to the White House, with a GOP Congress elected to rein her in–thus giving us a lousy president and a lousy congress. If past patterns hold, that would pave the way for Clinton to make deals–benefiting the GOP, undercutting Dems and the public, with a big cut off the top for herself. And that in turn would set up a worse, and winning, GOP nominee next time.

By the way, remember Senator Mitch McConnell’s open vow, at the beginning of the Obama administration, to oppose President Obama at every opportunity? It will be interesting to find out whether the Clinton team green-lighted McConnell, and who else did.

Update 9/29/16

As of today, Real Clear Politics has Trump up nationally by 4 points in one poll, Clinton up by 1 point in another. A miserable showing for Democrats.

*Full disclosure–as Maryland public records would show, I am a registered Democrat.

 

Double threat tonight: The presidential debate, and the media coverage afterward

Live-blogging the September 26 presidential debate

Warm-up thoughts, jotted down to start with

–Resisted temptation to use quotation marks around debate and coverage, in title above

–Bruising still not healed from media handling of that first Democratic primary debate on September 13, 2015. Lemmingword of the day: “commanding.”

–Guess we all got our marching orders. Anyone who wanted to curry favor have credibility with DC insiders (Chris Matthews’ term, not mine; again stoutly resisting temptation to use quotation marks) had to kiss the collective ink-stained ring and claim that Secretary Clinton won. And more; that she was commanding.

–Watching the debate in the privacy of home, I thought that Bernie Sanders won the discussion. Clinton and O’Malley seemed to be locked in a tight head-to-head race for the bottom, unless super-saturated self-promotion is your cup of tea. Sanders, Lincoln Chafee, and Jim Webb all turned in stronger performances. Perhaps most media personnel do not have the luxury of private reflection. (Analogous to fundamental protection for election integrity: vote in private, count in public.) (Not the other way around.)

–For the record, I wrote about Mr. Trump back in August 2015. Compared him metaphorically to the breaker ball, in 8-ball (playing pool). (Television commentators using same line of thought called him a wrecking ball.) Then wrote about him further; also back in 2012 when he was pushing the birther line.

–Also for the record, I don’t actually think that all commentators dominating U.S. political press coverage are stupid. It’s just that their discourse is consistently hard to differentiate from stupidity. (That’s what hysteria will do for you. More on which later.) In the interest of full disclosure–my own big mistake was to prognosticate, in February, that the GOP candidate with the best chance to win was Jeb Bush. Shortly afterward, he dropped out. Rightly so: he had spent all his money.

–On that. Not to sound stubborn, but how dumb do you have to be, to spend $100M+ UP FRONT, in a campaign where your only hope of winning is by attrition? What delirium told Bush that his best shot was to try to dominate early, in a primary where all the attention was going to Donald Trump, exc when Ted Cruz or some other GOPer said something morally repugnant enough to attract media attention? (Thought for the day: Ted Cruz is the new Strom Thurmond.) Many, many political headlines gave Jeb Bush full credit for raising $110 million before the campaign ever started, amplifying the threat to the max. What possessed him not to save that formidable trove for later, after most other candidates had dropped out, when it might have enabled him to harvest the other candidates’ supporters and donors? For all the attention the money got him in the early months, he could have gone with social media blurbed by a couple of relatives.

Senator Cruz

Senator Cruz

–As the historical reference to Thurmond might suggest, it’s too bad a sense of shame, or conscience, didn’t curb the appetite for fatuous predictions. Media-insider amnesia has now become epidemic. Do any of the more self-satisfied types even remember that the co-founders of the Project for the New American Century were Dick Cheney and Jeb Bush? That the Vulcans in the GWBush administration were self-evidently determined from the beginning to invade Iraq? That they steered the U.S.A. into invading another country, on bogus claims of WMDs, costing blood and treasure? And that they did so with the aid of media inattention and sometimes media collusion? (Anyone remember Judith Miller, formerly of the NYTimes?)

More later. Probably tonight. Sad to say.

Pneumonia and Dishonesty

As has now been disclosed, Secretary Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, September 9, according to the statement by her physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack. Her campaign revealed the diagnosis on Sunday, September 11–five hours after a videotape aired her condition.

Clinton is helped into van

Setting aside duplicity, spin and careerism, from the perspective of the body politic there are several genuine concerns.

First, for the record–I am still a human being with a heart, and I wish her a speedy and full recovery, as I would anyone. Notwithstanding the poisonous rhetoric around both Clinton and Trump, I wish them good health. To do otherwise would be fascistic.

Also for the record, ‘anyone’ includes prison inmates. Do you wonder how the for-profit private prisons now infesting the United States are treating their prisoners who come down with pneumonia? Linked here is one answer. Here is another.

1. One central concern is Clinton’s untruthfulness. The health of a U.S. chief executive is a legitimate topic for public discourse. Clinton had a coughing fit on camera on September 5 (Labor Day), and made a junior-high joke about being allergic to Trump. According to her physician’s statement, she had a “follow up evaluation of her prolonged cough” on September 9 and was then diagnosed with pneumonia. Pneumonia is a serious illness (see below), regrettably too common in the U.S.
Following the coughing spell in Cleveland, Ohio, Clinton dismissed health questions as “conspiracy theories.” Coincidentally, the trip to Cleveland was the first aboard her new campaign plane, on which–as numerous news outlets have reported–Clinton has also recently begun having in-flight conversations with reporters. During the chats, she made light of her cough, attributing it to “seasonal allergies” and telling reporters that she was taking antihistamines.
Following the September 9 diagnosis, instead of just disclosing through staff that she had pneumonia and would be scaling back campaign activities ‘for a few days’, or some such statement, Clinton appeared in several public events without mentioning the diagnosis. She left the September 11 memorial so abruptly that the press was not aware of her departure. The campaign kept the development from the press for some ninety minutes. Her spokesman then exaggerated the time she had spent at the ceremony. The campaign attributed her leaving early to her being “overheated” as well as “dehydrated,” while temperatures in New York City on that partly cloudy morning hovered in the 80s. Only after the video surfaced did the Clinton campaign disclose the September 9 diagnosis, without specifics as to whether she had had a chest X-ray or how long she had had the pneumonia. Only after the disclosure of the diagnosis have further reports surfaced that several people in Clinton’s New York office had pneumonia last month, some of whom ended up in the emergency room.
Last night (9/12), CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed Secretary Clinton, who phoned in. To polite but probing questions as to why she continued campaigning with pneumonia, Clinton answered that she was determined to be at the 9-11 ceremony. She said again how hot and “muggy” it was in New York. She also said, twice, that her publicly released medical records are equivalent to those released by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Asked why she didn’t just reveal the pneumonia, she said with a warm chuckle that “I just didn’t think it was going to be that big a deal.” This cringe-worthy claim is already much quoted–and is typical of the way Clinton herself keeps giving rise to speculations of must-be-the-blood-thinner. Not only did cable commentators dismiss the assertion (immediately), it is contradicted by reports that Clinton hid the pneumonia from most of her own team.
Following the news uproar, both Clinton and Trump have said that they will release fuller medical records. When Cooper asked Clinton last night whether “details about your medical history” would be released, however, Clinton did not answer the question directly. She also ducked mention of her health problems in 2012. Adding to the other irritants, Clinton brought up her 2012 health problems in responding to FBI inquiries, to explain some lack of recollection and her use of the private email server while she was working from home.
Side note: the best article on Secretary Clinton’s health problems that I have seen so far is this by Todd Frankel.

Condensing three further items, saving two more

–Looking at the length of concern #1, above, I’m realizing that other concerns have to be edited for length. So, shortening the following–

2. That Clinton has media figures openly shilling for her is an ongoing concern. When a legitimate issue flares up on the campaign trail, it gets worse. This item is painful, and I’m going to keep it short. Google “Clinton” “health” “conspiracy,” and millions of results include articles that–at best–dismiss any mention of Secretary Clinton’s health as ‘conspiracy theory’. NBC and MSNBC in particular are ludicrous. NBC has tried gamely to smooth things over for Clinton. Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews have ‘conspiracy theory’ on the brain. Maddow has not hesitated to ‘debunk’ every mention of Clinton’s health as a tinfoil-hat production.
Some of the spin continues even now that the pneumonia has been disclosed. The newest line is that pneumonia is ‘not serious’. I myself am startled by that one (see #4, below). Naturally, Clinton surrogates would try this one, but it is also being pushed by some commentators and a few reporters.
Another line is that Clinton has “walking pneumonia”–which is not actually pneumonia, nor is it a medical diagnosis or a medical term. No, she doesn’t. She has real pneumonia.
Then there’s the Clinton “stumble.” The video clip shows Secretary Clinton unable to stand or walk on her own. She leans on a post and on the arm of an aide. Then she is lifted into the van as she sinks, her feet dragging. This is not a “stumble.”
“Penchant for privacy”? More accurately, Secretary Clinton seems to feel that she must always have things other people never have. The president of the United States gave up his Blackberry. But Secretary Clinton had her own private communications technology installed in-home. (I do not recall whether State was billed for it, or if so, how much.) Other candidates have taken time off during campaigns, for health reasons, and have said so openly. But she seems to feel uniquely entitled to keep her health issues off the grid, even if it means dissembling. This is not a “penchant for privacy.” It is a penchant for tasteless entitlement. (Sorry, but no, I don’t understand it. Neither does anyone else who grew up on Jane Eyre and Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain, Shakespeare and Dickens.)

3. Her aides, or her team, do not serve her to handle issues appropriately. Yes, I know; it is unlikely that she allows them to speak frankly. But it is still a concern that Clinton aides won’t, or can’t, tell her the right thing to do. They wouldn’t, or couldn’t, persuade her that openness about the pneumonia diagnosis would be best. Maybe they didn’t realize it themselves; maybe they knew better but couldn’t speak; either way, they are presumably her own personnel choices. This concern is not just a matter of campaign gamesmanship (although if you compare Clinton’s campaign to Barack Obama’s in either 2008 or 2012, you have to cringe a little). The graver issue is that if she has an entourage of this sort when she’s just a candidate, if her people are this way when she is a mere candidate, what chance is there that as president she would appoint people who would counsel her or guide her adequately?

4. Health is a genuine concern. Regardless of political attacks and political defenses, the real concern is the candidate’s actual health. Setting aside the pneumonia for the moment, Secretary Clinton has had a serious concussion that by her own admission gave her double vision and (talking to the FBI) caused some loss of memory. According to her husband in the past couple of days, she has a history of dizzy spells and dehydration. Then there is the blood thinner–a drastically strong medication, and I have seen its effects on people near me.
This is not to imply that everyone on blood thinners is mentally impaired. An old friend of mine takes a blood thinner, with no loss of mental acuity whatever. But then she works out strenuously with a trainer; she watches her food intake–not ‘dieting’, but sidestepping alcohol and sweets in favor of vegetables and proteins; and she paces herself at work, in a high-powered and cerebral job with much responsibility. Does any of this sound like Secretary Clinton? Clinton’s campaign lifestyle is like a World War II-era pamphlet on what not to do–fast pace, grueling schedule, too little exercise and too much food, and rich on-the-road food at that. Anyone who has to travel a lot, or anyone who has to take several trips back-to-back, knows the pull of out-of-town food and scheduling.
Without saying that Secretary Clinton’s ill health is dire, pneumonia is still ill health. Arguing otherwise is ludicrous, and a disservice to the public. I had pneumonia myself, last winter, combined with bronchitis, as I have written elsewhere. I knew about the bronchitis (four severe bouts), did not know about the pneumonia, finally got a chest X-ray on the fourth trip to the clinic–got the diagnosis of “lung infection”–and landed in the hospital. Meanwhile, of course, I had been going to work. Full recovery took me a few months.
So far as I know, I did not infect anyone. However, I caught my bronchitis and pneumonia from a nice guy I ride a shuttle bus with–finding this out when he casually mentioned that he had come down with both, too, a few weeks before I did.
Apparently other people are as unacquainted with pneumonia as I was. A UK periodical just ran a piece posing the questions ‘What is pneumonia?’ and ‘What are the symptoms?’ Answer: pneumonia is a lung infection. Symptoms include coughing, physical weakness, tiredness, and death (as one of my doctors pointed out). The risk of pneumonia is one reason why elderly patients are in danger if they stay in the hospital too long. (In medical argot, these are “Complications after surgery” — cf. “contractions in childbirth,” or don’t-get-me-started.)

A few commentators have already proposed that presidential candidates should be compelled by rule to disclose their medical records. I concur. And the rule should be that declared candidates have to provide their medical records before nomination.