By Staff Writer Chris Antonello
After last week brought us the most-discussed topic of the 2016 General Election, Donald J. Trump’s chances of becoming the 45th president all but vanished. It’s hard to come back from leaked audio with crude language — just ask Richard Nixon.
I will say that Trump’s dedicated supporters will not likely move away from him after his comments about sexually abusing a married woman were leaked last week. But it doesn’t matter.
The audio has, however, sealed his fate. And the fate of the federal government.
For over a year, you have probably heard political pundits up and down the aisle say Trump has a ceiling. Trump has a ceiling.
Look at the state of Ohio. Polls show that he has the support of 84 percent of Republican voters. In contrast, Mitt Romney had the support of 94 percent of Republican voters in 2012, and he still lost the state.
And Republican voters are hardly enough to win the Electoral College, especially when there are so many more Democratic voters who turn out in droves in general-election years than Republicans. It is a well-known fact that, at least since 2006, Democrats have been better at getting out the vote (GOTV) than Republicans. It puts the GOP at a major disadvantage.
As for the down-ballot candidates, this race has gotten stickier. Republican candidates have reached an impossible situation. They have pretty much all denounced the lewd comments Trump made in 2005, but the issue of endorsements remains. If a candidate revokes his endorsement of the Republican nominee, he could appear to be abandoning the party and ceding the White House to Hillary Clinton. If he maintains his endorsement, he appears to condone the lack of morality in the political sphere.
We were all pretty sure that Trump would lose, but the leaked audio could have just cost down-ballot Republicans control of the Senate and a sizable chunk of the House.
Strap in. November 8 is less than four weeks away, and even more could be leaked.