It has already started. Betting markets are liking the “Pivot Speech”, which last night’s speech in North Carolina will be known as. This is this speech in which The Donald cleverly “apologized” without actually apologizing for anything, and has moved him up in the minds of punters on sites like Predictit.org from 24% to 28% likilhood of winning the White House.
The rebooted Trump campaign has figured out a “winning formula”, and will at least temporarily make a huuuuuge comeback. National polls, I predict, will be back within the margin of error by the time of the 9/7 NBC Town Hall on foreign policy. This formula is simple. Make Trump more like Reagan. Script him like a movie actor and keep him on TelePrompTer. And make him human, almost a “nice guy”.
Americans are suckers. And dumb. They will fall for this. The mea culpa that Trump put on display last night with his regrets for saying the “wrong things” sometimes is already being heavily praised by the punditry crowd, and will usher in a new more forgiving coverage of Trump, akin to the late 2015 coverage in which every speech was covered live with little criticism
The media is doing it again. They want to engineer a Trump comeback, and make it a tight race for one reason…..ratings! Now they have their excuse. Trump is giving actual speeches at now-scripted rallies, in fact three of them this past week alone. Notice also that he has had his smartphone taken away from him, and we haven't gotten a nasty Tweet from him all week. This is by design. The media will give him unlimited live free airtime as long as he behaves and stays on script.
Roger Ailes is the real genius behind the scenes making the difference. Don't believe that he's not involved. He is. Trump listened to him. And agreed to an extreme makeover of how he will present himself to the public from here on out.
As a result, it will be a very close race, and only the debates and heavy turnout can save Hillary on November 8th. America’s electorate has as short an attention span as Trump himself, and will forget his despicable persona and bigotry if he behaves now and speaks out against bigotry, as he did last night. This plays with the public, even though it shouldn't. We at DKos aren’t suckered by this, but 2% of the voters are (or will be), and this will change the polls and change the media narrative.
As a result, Trump could actually come back all the way and win. I hate to say it, but we've been set up. He behaved like an Ogre for so long recently just to make the “new Trump” stand out and be covered even more positively. This is a winning formula and that, combined with some Dem complacency, could cause an upset.
Let’s hope not. It's a scary thought, but it's happening. Yesterday was the 180 turn that will bring Trump back from the trash heap. Our idiocracy is ripe to be played…..again.