October 23, 2016

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Karl Rove seemed to surprise Host Chris Wallace with his pessimistic outlook for the Presidential election. Rove compared Trump's odds to hitting an inside straight in Hold'em, which is quite accurate from Rove, for a change. Such a play works around 9% of the time, and is considerd a sucker's move. But I guess it could be symbolic of the entire Trump campaign too: a longshot bet for suckers.

A completely different story from 2012 when Rove was convinced that Romney would win, despite the polling that said otherwise.

CHRIS WALLACE (HOST): Karl, that poll, everything else, what is Trump's path to victory now, or doesn't he have one?

KARL ROVE: Well, if he plays an inside straight, he could get it, but I doubt that he's going to be able to play it. He has 186 electoral votes in states that he either leads outside of the margin of error or is thought comfortably put away. That compares to Romney's 206. That's Romney's states minus Arizona and North Carolina, where he’s behind, plus Iowa, where he's ahead. There's only one other -- he's ahead in Ohio by less than one point. That gets him to 214. There's only one other state where he's within four, Florida. That would get him to 243. And everything else ranges from 4.3 to 10 points the rest of the battleground states. He would have to not only win two states where he is either only slightly ahead or behind by four, but he would have to pick up states where he is behind, at, or above the national average. I don't see it happening.

WALLACE: I'm sorry, you don't?

ROVE: I don't see it happening. Maybe it could, but I doubt that in the just over two weeks that we've got left, conducting the kind of campaign he is conducting, that he's going to be able to swing one out of every, you know, 10 voters, one out of every 12 voters, one out of every 15 voters and one out of every six voters in a state, and convert them.

Later, Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal talked a bit about Hillary Clinton's expanding map, going into places like Arizona and Missouri, in an effort to win back the Senate.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon