Team Trump keeps telling everyone there's plenty of time to right the Trump train wreck. Meanwhile, Republican National Committee operatives have cited mid-October as D-day for when the RNC might cut ties with Trump and divert resources to triage down-ballot races. By all means, wait just a little longer GOP! Patrick Healy writes:
Voting actually starts in less than six weeks, on Sept. 23 in Minnesota and South Dakota, the first of some 35 states and the District of Columbia that allow people to cast ballots at polling sites or by email before Nov. 8. Iowa is expected to have ballots ready by the end of September, as are Illinois and two other states.
The electoral battlegrounds of Arizona and Ohio are to begin voting on Oct. 12, nearly four weeks before Election Day. And North Carolina and Florida will be underway before Halloween.
Early voting has become a critical, even decisive factor in presidential elections: President Obama was sufficiently ahead in the early vote in Iowa and Nevada in 2012 that his campaign shifted resources from those states to others, according to former advisers, who also credited enthusiastic early voting in 2008 for his victory in North Carolina and elsewhere.
In 2012, some 32 percent of voters had cast their vote by the time Election Day arrived, up from the 29.7 percent who voted early in 2008 and the 20 percent who did so in 2004. Clinton literally owns the air waves right now and Trump's GOTV effort is nearly nonexistent, though the RNC is trying to fill in the gaps to some extent. So what's the Trump campaign’s silver bullet? The debates—LOL.
[Paul] Manafort said the presidential debates would be critical for Mr. Trump; in the past, strong debate performances have led to a surge in early voting for the perceived winner, a boost that Mr. Romney enjoyed after he was widely seen as beating Mr. Obama in their first debate.
Yeah, cuz Trump's going to deal Clinton a catastrophic blow at the debates.