Politico: Hillary Clinton in Death Spiral Toward Defeat

Political analyst David S. Bernstein writes that Hillary Clinton is already making all the major mistakes that Donald Trump needs to win November’s general election.

From Politico Magazine:

It’s a terrifying moment for Democrats: Hillary Clinton’s double-digit lead in national polls has evaporated and panic is beginning to set in. Polls now show Donald Trump ahead of Clinton, or at worst only a few points behind. During the insanity of the Republican primary, it was easy for them to believe that Trump could never be president—that in a general election, mainstream voters would regard him as an absurdity. But Clinton remains a shaky candidate with historically high negatives, an email scandal that keeps getting worse and a stubborn primary opponent whose supporters may yet become a midsummer nightmare in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, the Republicans, seemingly in all-out civil war just weeks ago, have quickly fallen in line. Democrats are resigning themselves to a tough, ugly, painful and expensive street fight.

The numbers offer some reassurance for Democrats—but also some bad news.

The reassurance is that the recent polls probably don’t mean much. Trump’s current surge is likely driven by Republican voters coalescing around their nominee, and Clinton will almost certainly get a similar bump when Bernie Sanders lets go and Democratic voters return to the fold. Most pundits believe 2016 is still Clinton’s race to lose.

Here’s the bad news: There is now a clear path for her to lose it.

If you drill down enough, it’s clear there are at least four paths to a loss, and any one of them poses a real risk for a candidate likely to follow her usual careful, calculating playbook. The cold math of a potential Clinton defeat is not to be found in national polls, but in the Electoral College—and within each state’s unique demographics and culture. Trump won’t dramatically remake the political map, but he doesn’t need to. He just needs to squeeze a little more out of certain voters in certain states, while Clinton draws a little less.

Read the rest of the article here.