It’s debate night! Can you feel the excitement?

October 19, 2016

It's debate night! Can you feel the excitement?

Look, this is the last debate between presidential candidates until the 2020 primary debates . . . which could start anytime, from early-to-mid 2018 or perhaps as early as December.

The GOP's Post-Election Assessment Shouldn't Be That Difficult

Charles C. W. Cooke with an important point.

Given the data we have, it seems likely that the GOP will retain the House, which will mean that, by the time of the 2018 mid-terms, it will have run that chamber for 18 of the last 22 years. Similarly, if the forecasts are accurate, the party is looking at a loss in the Senate of between three and six seats, which, even supposing the worst case scenario, is hardly disastrous (split the difference, and you get a four-seat loss, which would put the chamber at 50-50; not a sign of terminal decline). And in the states, where most laws are made? The GOP remains strong. Look at the maps in 2018, and presume a Hillary Clinton presidency. Can you see an imminent collapse? I can't.

After November 9, there's going to be a lot of discussion along the lines of: "How can the GOP come back from this debacle?" and "Will Republicans ever be a unified party again?"

We're also going to hear a lot of people insisting that Trump's messages on policies could have won this presidential election if he just hadn't had his character defects and lack of discipline as a candidate and/or human being.

But Trumpism without Trump didn't even win in GOP primaries, never mind the general election.

The list of candidates who tried to emulate Trump or tied themselves to his main themes is long and entirely unsuccessful. Paul Nehlen got 15.9 percent of the vote in his House primary against Paul Ryan. Carlos Beruff got 18.5 percent in Florida's Senate primary. Kentucky's Mike Pape got 23 percent in his House primary against James Corner. Eugene Yu got 21 percent in his congressional primary in Georgia against Rick Allen.

Matt Erickson, spokesman for Minnesotans for Trump, got 6.8 percent in his House bid. Andrew Hearney, who declared, "Donald Trump and I represent everything that John Faso and his cronies hate," performed best: He won 32 percent of the vote in an open seat congressional primary in New York.

Trump wasn't fueled to the top of the GOP presidential primary by his ideas and agenda. He was fueled by his decades of status as a celebrity and reality-show host, a long history of appearances on Fox News, enthusiastic support from figures like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Matt Drudge, and the decision of the cable-news networks to cover a lot of his campaign events live, something they never did for any of his rivals. (He was also helped by the fact that the GOP primary electorate never faced a binary choice between Trump and one of his rivals, because John Kasich really, really, really needed to demonstrate that he could be elected president of Ohio.)

Nehlen and his gang show what happens when some guy shows up, trying to use the Trump playbook without the wealth, celebrity status, or powerful friends in the media. They turn into just another primary also-ran yelling, "America First!"

Yes, Trump got more than 14 million votes in the primary. It's easily forgotten — or sometimes downplayed — that that amounted to less than 45 percent of the votes cast in the primary. More than 17 million Republican primary voters preferred one of the other candidates. Why on earth would the GOP continue in a direction that pleases 45 percent of their membership but doesn't please the other 55 percent?

Finally, we'll know more after all the votes are counted, but there's an excellent chance that Donald Trump underperforms Mitt Romney in almost every key swing state — both in terms of percentage and overall vote total. Judging by the polling numbers in noncompetitive states like Louisiana, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, it's quite possible that Trump underperforms Romney in 45 out of the 50 states. Maybe he'll go 50 for 50.

If your 2016 approach, style, strategy, and performance performs poorer than your 2012 approach, style, strategy, and performance . . . why would you stick with the one that did worse?

Will Trump Surpass Romney in Ohio?

When I wrote the piece contending there's an excellent chance that Donald Trump will underperform Mitt Romney's performance in almost every key swing state, a couple of Trump fans objected. They pointed to Maine's second congressional district — and, there, they are correct. So that's one corner of the country where Trump is likely to beat Romney's performance by a lot, gaining one electoral vote. Break out the party hats.

The other big argument pointed to Ohio, which is, indeed, one of the most consequential swing states. And we should give credit where it is due: For a long stretch in September, it looked like Trump would not merely win Ohio but win it by a lot — and the argument that the GOP as a whole should adopt some parts of Trumpism looks a lot stronger if Trump can win Rust Belt states that Romney and John McCain could not.

But the last four polls are a tie, Trump ahead by 1, Trump ahead by 4, and Clinton by 2 points — hardly a lock. The final RealClearPolitics average in 2012 had Obama ahead by 2.9 percentage points. Obama won by 3 points.

A huge question is whether Trump's entirely-volunteer get-out-the-vote operation will work:

Rather than the kind of operation that drove President Obama's two victories and President George W. Bush's successes before that, Trump appears to be relying largely on what has propelled his candidacy: supporters who are taking things into their own hands.

Melissa Mayne of Middletown, Ohio, said she registered 16 people before Tuesday's deadline and is already planning to help numerous family members get to the polls.

Asked whether she'd coordinated with the Trump campaign, she shook her head: "I did it by myself."

Let's get the quote from The Godfather: Part II out of the way:

Michael Corleone: I saw a strange thing today. Some rebels were being arrested. One of them pulled the pin on a grenade. He took himself and the captain of the command with him. Now, soldiers are paid to fight; the rebels aren't.

Hyman Roth: What does that tell you?

Michael Corleone: They could win.

And granted, it looks like Ohio senator Rob Portman is running a state-of-the-art get-out-the-vote operation, which should help Trump:

Portman campaign manager Corry Bliss said that by Sunday volunteers will have knocked on the doors of 4.5 million voters targeted by the campaign since their effort began 17 months ago.

The campaign's database includes nearly 1 million supporters and more than 2.6 million swing voters, Bliss said. The campaign has divided those voters into 22 groups depending on their favorite issues, and is courting them with targeted on-line ads, door hangers and telephone contacts.

"It's going to benefit all Republicans in Ohio, if you're running for president or city council," Bliss said.

If Trump does win Ohio, he will achieve something many thought was impossible, winning a hard-fought swing state without any long-standing major campaign get-out-the-vote operation. It will obliterate everything every campaign professional has ever taught or learned about the importance of preparation.

The Ohio branch of Americans for Prosperity, the independent group funded by the Koch brothers and other conservative donors, has made 1.8 million phone calls and knocked on 140,000 doors, according to state director Micah Derry. It is working to reelect Portman, but has taken a pass on the presidential contest.

"Given the size of our operation, we tend to get a little bit of a feel for what's in the field and what's not," Derry said. "We have not run into any Trump folks."

Others concurred.

"Anything that they have had has been minuscule and very, very late in coming," said Chris Schrimpf, a Columbus-based political strategist who worked for Gov. John Kasich.

Keep in mind what it took to win the state last time:

The numbers — Obama opened 131 offices, compared to Romney's 40, and employed a small army of field staff members — speak for themselves. The Obama campaign was much more tight-lipped about its get-out-the-vote operation than the Romney camp until the final week of the race, when it began to share more information about its efforts. On Election Day, for instance, the president's campaign said it had 32,854 volunteers scheduled for three-hour shifts in Ohio.

The campaign also turned out far more early voters than Romney's, meaning the president had already banked a lead by the time Election Day arrived. And Obama's team was augmented by a large-scale effort from organized labor, galvanized by GOP attacks on collective bargaining rights over the last two years.

In one telling indication of how effective Obama's get-out-the-vote push was, African-American voters went from 11 percent of the electorate in 2008 to 15 percent in 2012, according to exit polls.

ADDENDA: The great Kevin Williamson: "The libertarian in me suspects that making regular DMV visits a mandatory part of the voting experience would do more to reform American politics than all the think-tank wonkery combined."