Only Donald Trump could follow up on his unconscionable attacks last week on the parents of a fallen soldier with a new low this week: the unfathomable call for violence against his opponent Hillary Clinton.
One of the two most piercing insights about what motivated Trump's assassination threat came from Sen. Elizabeth Warren: He simply "can’t handle the fact that he’s losing to a girl."
The other noteworthy observation came from a man who spent a lot of time around Trump, his Art of the Deal ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, who has made it his mission in life to save America from the scourge that is Donald Trump. As some Trump supporters claimed that Trump was just joking about “Second Amendment people” stopping Hillary, Schwartz called B.S. on that mythical proposition.
If Trump feels rageful, it is rightfully because the very premise of his candidacy is being ripped to shreds. Trump built his entire primary run off being "the best" in the polls. It was his answer to everything. He structured whole press conferences around it. It formed the substantive heart of his speeches. Every time people questioned his candidacy or his latest unthinkable slur, his go-to answer was, "Check the polls."
We all wondered: What will happen when Donnie plummets in the polls? It just never happened in the primaries. Well, now we know. He's losing "bigly," against a "girl"—crushing his second grade ego—and so he's dispensed with the sexist insults he's hurled at Rosie O'Donnell and Carly Fiorina and Megyn Kelly and Ghazala Khan, and simply called for an execution.
Well, I've got more bad news for Donnie—he's sucking at almost everything. As I started counting up the number of new lows he's reached as a politician, it was striking.
•Trump’s spent the lowest number of ad dollars of any candidate so far—$0
•Trump has the fewest number of endorsements from past presidents ever—0
•Trump has the least amount of governing experience ever—0
•Trump's convention speech was the least well received in Gallup's history
•Trump’s released the fewest number of tax returns—0—of any GOP in the last nine elections
•Trump is setting new lows for the GOP in support among college-educated white women, garnering just 27 percent to Clinton’s 57 percent (Romney won the demographic by 6 points in 2012)
•Trump is setting new lows for the GOP in support among Black voters, in both national polls (1 percent, NBC/WSJ poll) and statewide polls (0 percent, NBC/WSJ/Marist poll)
•Trump is running dead last with black voters, behind Hillary Clinton, Libertarian Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein.
•Trump’s running 46 points behind Hillary with Latino voters with just 20 percent to her 66 percent, worse than Romney’s 27 percent, worse than McCain’s 31 percent, and waaay worse than W’s some 40 percent in 2004.
•Trump’s running at only 12.9 percent among Florida Latinos, a “historical low” for the poll
•Trump objectively had the worst vice presidential rollout in recent memory, if not American history
•The number of people who think Trump is qualified to be president, 38 percent, is abysmal; but the number who feel he’s “strongly” qualified (versus just “somewhat” qualified) is just 20 percent
•Trump is polling worse than any GOP candidate in decades in reliably red states like South Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona
•Trump likely has the fewest number of paths to winning 270 electoral votes of any GOP candidate in recent history
•Trump has the worst campaign infrastructure of any candidate in recent memory
As one Daily Kos reader put it: In reality TV show parlance, he’s the biggest loser. What’s so amazing about Trump is that he simply cannot believe he’s as pathetic a candidate as all the evidence suggests, which makes him fundamentally incapable of doing anything to improve his prospects. In fact, if his dispute with the Khans last week tanked his numbers, his call for violence against Clinton and suggestion that President Obama “founded” ISIS cemented them this week.
Trump’s utter lack of self-awareness has left Clinton room to peel off some Republican voters without having to actually court conservatives on policy. Sanity is the only test necessary.
Whatever Trump’s inabilities to comprehend the truth about his candidacy may be, it hasn’t escaped party loyalists, who are begging Reince Priebus to ditch Trump in favor of saving as many GOP congressional lawmakers as possible.
If that were to happen, Donald Trump would have almost nothing other than his “star power” to run on. He has no campaign infrastructure to speak of and not nearly enough time to make up for the staffing he essentially outsourced to the Republican National Committee in key battleground states.
In other words, Donald Trump—the “greatest” negotiator of all time—is now at the mercy of Reince Priebus and the RNC. Even he must realize, that most certainly is a new low.