Could it be even at this late stage that Trump doesn’t become the nominee?
The above video is one of a series of hard attacking ads against Donald Trump that are being produced by an apparently well funded Republican organisation called the Lincoln Project. They are aimed at the Republicans and the aim is to raise doubts about the incumbent’s fitness to continue in office and so preventing a second term.
What is particularly intriguing about them is that they are more powerful than just about anything that is being produced by Joe Biden or the Democrats.
The latest ad goes for what is Trump’s perceived to be Trump’s biggest policy failing – his approach to dealing with the coronavirus pandemic in the US where the death toll just rises and rises with no sign of abating.
All this comes at a particularly difficult time for the incumbent who has seen his poll ratings drop further, the disaster of his campaign rally in Tulsa, setbacks to his key policy agendas in the Supreme Court and and some very public appearances when he clearly looks very frail.
How many more Americans are losing their lives because of Trump’s inaction?What the Lincoln Project seems to be doing almost every day is taking the latest apparent issue relating to the president and then exacerbating it with a powerful short film which is being distributed in key parts of the US electoral battleground.
What what we don’t often appreciate in the UK is that if a presidential nominee at the top of the ticket is failing then that has can have a huge impact on all the other elections taking place on the same day. These include come of course, those for the Senate and House of Representatives as well as state legislatures across the US.
Although Trump has easily won the Republican primary to be the nominee there is still the possibility, if the will is there, for the Republicans to decide that they would be better off without him. I don’t think that’s going to happen but there there is a chance and that is reflected in the betting.
In the meantime we’ll wait to see what today’s offering from the Lincoln project will be and these are all helping Joe Biden. At the very least the ads could depress GOP turnout on November 2nd.