"Trump is done,” said Republican operative Jim Dornan, who advised Trump in the preparatory stages of his campaign last year. 2016 Trump’s window is closing With 15 days to go, polls show Clinton is on track for an easy win.

With two weeks to go, Donald Trump’s path to an election night win is almost entirely closed.

Hillary Clinton enters the final 15 days of the race safely ahead in states worth more than 270 electoral votes. Indeed, the suspense of this final stretch is less about whether Trump can turn it around than how many down-ballot Republicans he will drag down with him.


“Trump is done,” said Republican operative Jim Dornan, who advised the New York businessman in the preparatory stages of his campaign last year. “Barring something completely out of the blue, like Hillary being involved in a murder, I don’t see how he wins.”

Short of that, or some sort of Putin ex machina, there is little Trump can do to put himself back into contention after 5 ½ months of missteps and missed opportunities.

“The race is over,” said conservative Iowa radio host Steve Deace, who backed Ted Cruz in the primary. “There is nothing Trump can do. He helped the Democrats convince people he’s crazy, and they’ll always choose corrupt over crazy.”

“Trump cucked himself,” Deace added, throwing an alt-right term of derision for soft conservatives back onto the Republican who has so enthused that white nationalist crowd.

No presidential candidate since the advent of modern polling has overcome the sort of deficits Trump faces nationally — where he trails Clinton by an average of 5.9 points — and in swing states with two weeks to go in an election. In Utah, among the most reliably Republican states in any other cycle, Trump is locked in a tight race with independent Evan McMullin, a conservative Mormon.

With debate season over and the clock running out for significant swings in public opinion to materialize, the baton now goes to the get-out-the-vote operations, where Clinton enjoys an overwhelming advantage.

On Sunday, with early voting numbers in Arizona showing encouraging signs for Clinton, The Associated Press moved the state, which has voted for a Democrat only once since 1948, into its “toss-up” column. The AP currently counts 272 electoral votes, enough to win the presidency, as solidly in Clinton’s column or leaning that way.

In Florida, Republicans’ narrow advantage in mail-in early voting has shrunk slightly from 2012, and in North Carolina, that advantage has shrunk dramatically from 2012, according to the latest analysis from NBC News. In Ohio, Trump has been unable to win the support of popular Republican Gov. John Kasich and his campaign has feuded with state party Chairman Matt Borges, portending a weak mobilization effort. In general, Trump has failed to invest seriously in a competitive ground game and instead relied on the Republican National Committee.

The biggest risk the Clinton campaign now faces is prematurely resting on its laurels. But South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison said his conversations with party leaders across the country have assured him that they are not taking the outcome for granted.

“Everybody’s busting their butts right now,” said Harrison, a leading contender to succeed Donna Brazile at the helm of the Democratic National Committee. “Nobody’s thinking, ‘Oh, we’ve got this in the bag.’”

In this regard, Trump has proven to be the gift that keeps on giving to Democrats. The New York businessman’s base has led the field in enthusiasm since he entered the race in the summer of 2015, but his refusal to pledge to accept the voting results and his remark at Wednesday night’s debate that Clinton is a “nasty woman” have delivered Clinton’s supporters a burst of enthusiasm as they enter the home stretch.

“I see a lot more people saying, ‘I was going to vote for Hillary, but now I’m upset and now I’m going to go knock doors,’ so I think it’s really served to galvanize the get-out-the-vote operation for the last few weeks,” said Tyler Olson, former chairman of the Democratic Party of Iowa, the swing state Trump is most likely to win.

On the trail, Trump appears to have largely given up on persuading voters in favor of settling scores. On Friday in North Carolina, he swiped at first lady Michelle Obama, who has criticized him in harsh terms and is roughly twice as popular as he is.

He has also begun blaming the failures of his campaign on a globalist conspiracy of bankers and journalists in cahoots with the Clintons, claiming that the presidential election is “rigged” against him. Asked by moderator Chris Wallace at Wednesday’s debate whether he would accept the results, Trump said he would keep the country “in suspense.”

Such talk has leaders of both parties worried about the long-term damage he could to the public’s faith in the integrity of the election system if he fails to graciously accept the outcome.

Harrison said Trump was playing a “very dangerous game” and pointed to the statements of Republican leaders like his South Carolina counterpart Matt Moore. “The vast majority of battleground states have Republicans overseeing their election systems,” Moore told POLITICO last week. “It’s safe to assume they’re not rigging the process either against Donald Trump or for anyone else.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s downward spiral has forced House Republicans to scramble to secure their once-safe majority and the difficult balancing act between Trump’s die-hard supporters and moderate independents has begun to take its toll on vulnerable Senate candidates like New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte. She trailed by 8 points in a poll released on Thursday, after polls earlier this month showed a dead heat.

For the party that put Trump forward, the race has become less of a suspenseful thriller and more, to use a favorite Trump term, of a “horror show.”

“Republicans,” said Harrison, “are really scared.”