With about two weeks to go before the Republican convention in Cleveland, Donald Trump’s continuing inability to mount a serious, nationwide presidential campaign effort makes one wonder if he never expected to get this far.
The reasons why nervous GOP leaders wonder if Trump never planned ahead are fairly basic: Lack of funding, lack of staff, lack of organization and a lack of institutional support as the underlying distaste for Trump among elected Republican officials begins to surface.
The question becomes: Why doesn’t Democratic standard-bearer Hillary Clinton have a much larger lead?
One of the most embarrassing realities to surface during Trump’s disastrous month of June was that nearly no one of substance wants to speak at the July 18-21 GOP convention. Politico contacted more than 50 prominent governors, senators and House members to gauge their interest in speaking. “Only a few said they were open to it, and everyone else said they weren’t planning on it, didn’t want to or weren’t going to Cleveland at all — or simply didn’t respond,” Politico reported.
Trump’s response is a rather bizarre plan to fill up a considerable amount of TV time with the candidate’s friends in the sports world. People familiar with the planning of the convention told Bloomberg Politics that campaign aides were lining up several retired athletes, coaches and other sports leaders to appear at the convention. Former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka was asked to speak and declined.
Former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson and NASCAR CEO Brian France, two of those on the list, both announced they would not attend (Trump later tweeted that an invite was never extended to Tyson). The list also includes Bobby Knight, the former Indiana University basketball coach, who is famous for his temper tantrums and tossing chairs onto the court in anger. All the presumptive nominee needs to do is add a few of his pro wrestling buddies from his days of associating with the WWE and we may have a convention that mirrors the Jerry Springer show.
Another way to fill time in Cleveland is a Trump plan to have his children play a key role. Daughter Ivanka and sons Donald Jr. and Eric reportedly will speak, likely on topics such as the Second Amendment, Benghazi and national security. Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr., will also be playing key roles off the convention stage. That’s not exactly must-see TV.
Here is a round-up from various news sources about the Trump campaign’s failures, many of them inexplicable political mistakes, over the past six weeks:
• In June, not a single Trump campaign advertisement appeared in the nation’s top 60 media markets. The bombastic billionaire is being massively outspent on television airwaves: Between June 28 and Election Day, Trump has reserved zero dollars in television advertising time, compared to $117 million from Hillary Clinton and her allies, according to data from the ad tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG. Compared to Team Clinton’s spending, the buys from pro-Trump groups are a drop in the bucket – about $700,000.
• Because of the incompetent email operation within the Trump camp, some digital advertising experts openly scoffed at the campaign’s claim that their solicitation snagged $6.7 million in two days. Those numbers would be astounding even for a highly effective email effort, according to Advertising Age. “It’s just not plausible for Trump to have raised what he claims online from one email,” said Julia Rosen, director of marketing for ActBlue, a progressive firm. “The Trump campaign has failed to do the basic digital organizing work, like collecting email addresses at every available opportunity. That’s meant he has an exponentially smaller list, and because he hasn’t been running a modern engagement program with the few people that are on the list, it’s likely the average list member is not very responsive to the rare asks Trump makes of them.” Return Path’s data found that Ted Cruz, who dropped out of the presidential race two months ago, still maintains an email donor list that is 3.7 times larger than Trump’s donor list is today. Another marketing firm, eDataSource, estimated at the beginning of June that Trump’s list size was 1.1 million, compared to 9.4 million for Clinton and 5.3 million for Bernie Sanders.
• Because of a basic mistake – a switch in Trump’s email address domain – a major campaign solicitation for funds earlier this month turned into a colossal disaster. Due to spam filters snagging the Trump emails, an incredible 60 percent of Trump’s appeals never even made it to individual in-boxes, according to data collected by a digital marketing firm called Return Path. Of those emails that made it through to in-boxes, just 12 percent were opened.
• At the same time, Trump is barely making an effort in large industrial states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, though both are labeled as key to a Republican winning strategy in November. In Pennsylvania counties where Trump posted huge victory margins in the GOP primary, party officials say they have had no direct contact with the presidential campaign. In Michigan, Democratic officials admit privately that they are concerned about private polling by some Michigan unions which shows up to half of their membership preferring Trump. In the spring, members of the state’s congressional delegation reportedly chastised top Clinton campaign officials, telling them they feared Michigan might be slipping into the Trump column. Yet, if other statewide polls show anything close to the 17-point gap in this week’s Ballotpedia poll, it’s probably too late for the Trump campaign – an opportunity lost.
• Trump infamously began June with just $1.3 million in cash on hand, a figure more typical for a campaign for a House congressional seat than the Oval Office. Campaign finance reports showed that he trailed Hillary Clinton by more than $41 million and his failure in the money category led to reports that he has a staff of around 70 people, compared with nearly 700 for Clinton.
• According to Ballotpedia’s battleground poll in key states, Clinton leads Trump: 50% to 33% in Michigan; 51-37 in Florida; 45-41 in Iowa; 48-38 in North Carolina; 46-37 in Ohio; 49-35 in Pennsylvania; and 45-38 in Virginia.
• The newest ABC News/Washington Post poll which put Clinton 12 points ahead of Trump (51-39%) stands in contrast to other polls with the Democratic candidate leading in single digits. Trump’s response was to claim that the ABC/Post poll was poorly conducted and “very dishonest.” But the underlying numbers in the poll show that two-thirds of voters see Trump as biased against women and minorities, and two-thirds think his comments about the judge in the Trump University case were racist. Sixty-four percent see him as unqualified for the presidency, and 70 percent say the idea of Trump as president gives them anxiety. With numbers like that, Clinton surely should be leading by an even bigger margin. Trump has dug himself quite a whole with independent voters and with a significant percentage of fellow Republicans. According to ABC News, nearly one-third of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say Trump is unqualified for office, and 18 percent say he does not represent their beliefs, exposing fissures in the GOP base.
• While Trump tries to fill in the blanks, hiring top aides for the general election campaign, one of those aides resigned Friday, leaving his post less than three weeks after being hired. Kevin Kellems, Trump’s director of surrogates, said in his resignation letter shared with colleagues that it had been an “interesting experience.” Trump surrogates had made numerous eye-popping allegations, usually on national TV, in the weeks leading up to Kellems hiring in mid-June. One person speaking for the campaign compared the liberal group MoveOn.org to the KKK. Another said that the media practice of fact-checking candidates was “elitist (and) outdated.” A third spokesman called President Obama a racist. And Ben Carson, Trump’s former primary rival, has been a one-man gaffe machine as a campaign surrogate, according to Politico. Carson acknowledged that the man he endorsed “has some defects” and he mused, “Are there better people? Probably.”
• While many GOP officials assured the pundits that Trump would pivot to general election mode and tame his hyperbolic nature, that has not happened. The Washington Post’s “The Fix” blog points out the many Trump controversies since he essentially clinched the nomination: 1.)Tweeted a widely panned picture of himself eating a taco bowl on Cinco de Mayo with the words “I love Hispanics!”2.) Kept up his criticism of the Indiana judge overseeing the Trump University lawsuit for his “Mexican heritage,” comments even Trump’s colleagues in the Republican Party called “racist” 3.) Appeared to tie President Obama to the Orlando club massacre 4.) Doubled down on his proposals to ban Muslims from the U.S. and enact racial profiling 5.) Promoted his own golf course in Scotland in the wake of the “Brexit” vote in the UK (though he had recently admitted he didn’t know what Brexit is) and falsely claimed that the Scots favored the move 6.) Repeated his vow to reintroduce torture as one of the nation’s anti-terrorism tactics.
• Despite all of this, the Post poll found that there is a reservoir of support that Trump has barely tapped – Americans who plan to vote for him despite their disapproval of the candidate. For example, 18 percent of people who found Trump’s comments about Judge Cariel racist, 15 percent of those who think his comments generally are biased against women, minorities or Muslims, and 11 percent of those who think he is unqualified say that they support Trump over Clinton. Trump enjoys a big lead with those who want a new direction for the country, 64 percent to Clinton’s 26 percent. And here’s where the polls get a little weird: After eight years of Obama and the president’s approval rating above 50 percent, a majority of Americans (56 percent) say they want to elect a president who can set the nation in a new direction. A whopping 47 percent say they feel so strongly.
Photo: Fox News