Have the media finally overplayed their hand?

Well now . . . Reuters/Ipsos shows Trump gaining once again, within 4 nationally

This time we’re not talking about a Rasmussen poll, nor are we talking about that L.A. Times tracking poll that also seems to skew much more Republican than other polls. We’re talking about Reuters/Ipsos, which isn’t going so far as to show Trump in the lead, but is showing some movement you might find surprising after a week of Trump getting pounded by the media. Then again, when do we have a week when that doesn’t happen? If all their attacks on him were supposed to put the final nails in his campaign’s coffin, it doesn’t appear to have worked: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gained on his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton among American voters this week, cutting her lead nearly in half, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling released on Friday.

The polling data showed Trump’s argument that the Nov. 8 election is “rigged” against him has resonated with members of his party. “Remember folks, it’s a rigged system,” Trump told a Pennsylvania rally on Friday. “That’s why you’ve got to get out and vote, you’ve got to watch. Because this system is totally rigged.” Clinton led Trump 44 percent to 40 percent, according to the Oct. 14-20 Reuters/Ipsos poll, a 4-point lead. That compared with 44 percent for Clinton and 37 percent for Trump in the Oct. 7-13 poll released last week. An average of national opinion polls by RealClearPolitics shows Clinton 6.2 percentage points ahead at 48.1 percent support to Trump’s 41.9 percent. One thing you should know about the RCP average is that it usually includes polls over the past 10 to 14 days. So a poll taken two weeks ago will count just as much in the RCP average as one taken today, and that obviously means the older polls will skew the picture because they don’t take into account what’s developed in the campaign in more recent days. That can actually be a useful factor in some cases, because a blip of the moment might not accurately reflect the real state of the race.

But in this case, Trump’s rise in new polling has to be seen as a surprise given that nothing really positive has happened for him in recent days. A few possibilities: Maybe the public is having a snapback reaction against the media’s obvious piling on following the Wednesday night debate. People who watched the whole thing seemed to feel that Trump had his best debate so far, and yet almost all the coverage was of the whole “won’t accept the results of the election” thing, as if none of the rest of the debate even happened. Maybe the media’s dishonesty is getting so blatant and absurd that some people are drifting into Trump’s camp out of disgust over it.

Maybe the WikiLeaks revelations about Hillary are having more impact than seems apparent from the headlines. If you’re an independent voter and you truly haven’t made up your mind yet, you might be more inclined to seek this information out, even if the media don’t make it easy for you to find it. While the Today Show is wringing its hands about Trump saying “bad hombres,” WikiLeaks is pretty much proving that every accusation made against Hillary was legitimate. However much Trump may bother you, do you really want the person who’s done all these things as your president? This is the time in the race when you sort of have to face that question.

Maybe conservative voters who had vowed not to back Trump because he’s not conservative or he’s vulgar or he’s whatever are thinking seriously for the first time about what it means to put this woman in the White House. And as much as they’ve told themselves they can’t vote for Trump or won’t vote for Trump, or they’ll vote third-party or whatever, they realize now what those courses of action are likely to mean. And even if they’re not going to admit it to friends and family and they’re not going to say it on social media, they realize what they have to do. Now, does this mean Trump backers should feel a wave of optimism? I want to believe. But we saw him close the gap in September only to get tripped up by the infamous tape, the female accusers and some of his own ill-advised statements. Supposedly the media has even more damaging stuff on him that they’re waiting to release at just the moment when Hillary needs it most. Why should we think the cycle isn’t going to repeat itself? Why should we think they’re not going to find some new pretext, however flimsy, to spend days on end attacking him until his numbers go down again? All I know is this: Americans don’t like Hillary and don’t want her to be president. As long as that’s true, and it will always be true, then I guess Trump has a chance up until the voting is done. I really do want to believe.



Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain Follow all of Dan’s work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.

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