This Twilight Zone episode of an election can only end in January with Trump taking the oath of office as Kim, Caitlyn, Kris, Kourtney, Khloe, Kendall, Kylie, and of course Kanye look on from the dais behind him. Maybe, as thanks for their support, Mrs. Trump will even graciously let one of them hold the copy of “The Art of the Deal” that Trump places his hand on.
I read a piece at The Week this morning titled “Legalize Heroin” and it didn’t seem so smart at the time, but between the Cruz endorsement and this, you know what? Let’s do it. Let’s do it.
In June, Kardashian told GQ that she planned on casting her vote for Clinton, but conversations with her stepparent Caitlyn Jenner have apparently caused her to doubt her initial choice.
“At first I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m so Hillary [Clinton]’, but I had a long political call with Caitlyn last night about why she’s voting Trump. I’m on the fence,” Kardashian said in a cover story for Wonderland magazine. (Editor’s note: The quotes appear via The Evening Standard and are not in the online version of the story, however, The Huffington Post has confirmed their validity.)
Jenner has continued her lifetime affiliation with the Republican party, despite being one of the most visible faces in the transgender community. The former Olympian has repeatedly made her opposition to Clinton clear, stating she believes the Democratic nominee “couldn’t care less about women.” She further raised eyebrows in June when she praised GOP nominee Donald Trump for his attitudes toward women and the LGBT community.
Trump could scrape up just enough millennial votes to tip the election thanks to the support of America’s most famous trans celebrity and his/her even better-known famous-for-being-famous stepdaughter. Exactly the way the RNC drew it up. Kardashian had better think carefully about this, though: If in fact we end up with Kanye West as the Democratic nominee challenging President Trump in 2020, Mrs. West’s endorsement this year will surely be used in Republican ads against him. Kim could be farting away her chances at being First Lady by endorsing Le Grande Orange now.
Is he really likely to win in November, though? If you believe Allan Lichtman, the professor who devised a historical model that’s correctly called every last presidential election since 1984, yes:
Based on the 13 keys, it would predict a Donald Trump victory. Remember, six keys and you’re out, and right now the Democrats are out — for sure — five keys.
Key 1 is the party mandate — how well they did in the midterms. They got crushed.
Key number 3 is, the sitting president is not running.
Key number 7, no major policy change in Obama’s second term like the Affordable Care Act.
Key number 11, no major smashing foreign policy success.
And Key number 12, Hillary Clinton is not a Franklin Roosevelt.
His model focuses on generic factors like the ones you see above on the theory that the individual candidates don’t matter as much as recurring electoral fundamentals do. Democrats have been in power for eight years, they haven’t had any big wins in the last four, they took a beating in the last national election held, etc etc. (Follow the link above for the complete list of 13 factors.) It turns out that, in every election over the past 32 years, if six of the 13 cut against the party in power, that party lost in November. One other factor not mentioned here is having a third-party candidate in the race who’s likely to draw more than five percent, as Gary Johnson certainly is. That would make six keys against the Democrats, which should mean a Trump win. However, Lichtman strains to say that Trump is no ordinary candidate and that his unique weaknesses may end up confounding the model this time: Hillary might win, despite having so many keys against her, because the public simply doesn’t believe Trump’s qualified for the office. Alan Abramowitz, another professor who devised a simple yet highly accurate predictive model geared to fundamentals, came to the same conclusion last month when his model also showed a likely Republican win this fall. A generic Republican candidate would likely win, Abramowitz insisted, but Trump is very, very far from generic. Case in point, here’s how he scored in a new AP poll that asked voters if Trump getting elected would make them feel “afraid”:
Clinton scored poorly too, with 44 percent of likely voters claiming they’d feel afraid if she won, but there’s obviously an important electoral difference between her number and Trump’s. Relatedly, a SurveyMonkey poll conducted for an anti-Trump group found that a near-majority of 46 percent fears that Trump would actually use a nuclear weapon as president. Those are some very special worries for a major-party nominee, which is why Lichtman and Abramowitz think Trump could lose despite their models pointing to a Republican win based on historical precedents. But then, I’ll bet Lichtman and Abramowitz weren’t counting on a Jenner/Kardashian endorsement either, were they?
Joking aside, if you want to know why Trump might win in spite of everything, this sums it up pretty well.
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