The Political Earth Could Move: Trump's Route To 270

[Urgent Note: The nation’s future hangs in the balance this election. That’s why I’m on a mission to send my new book TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… and How to Bring It Back to every American who responds, absolutely free. Click here for more details.]

The political earth could move today. Even assuming there is no hidden “Brexit” factor under the surface, it would appear that there is now an outside, but not farfetched, route to a Trump electoral college victory.

It does now seem that Trump has shored up the Romney Red base of 206 electoral votes. That includes Arizona and Utah where the neocon spoiler, Evan McMullin, has been fast fading; and also North Carolina, where the Obama White House decamped most of last week to no apparent avail.

Beyond that, Ohio looks to be firmly back in the red camp, and Florida less so, but still very possible. In fact, the very last Real Clear Politics reading came in Monday night with Trump ahead in Florida by a hairline 0.2%, but still trending strongly higher from a 5 point deficit  just two weeks ago.

We can also add to the 47 votes from these two big enchilada battleground states, another 6  votes from Iowa and 6 from Nevada. That sums to 265 electoral votes.

It then gets down to the short strokes, absent a Brexit-style Rust Belt upheaval in Michigan or Wisconsin or western and rural Pennsylvania. In fact, the better and more likely route is one electoral vote from the conservative second district of Maine, which votes separately from the state plurality, and the state of New Hampshire with four electoral votes.

As for the latest polls in the Granite State, it is hard to imagine anything closer. Trump has closed the gap, but the latest polls have been bobbing and weaving along the tie line after Trump came roaring back during the past week.

Were New Hampshire to break for Trump, that would get the scoreboard to 270 electoral votes. And it would also generate a rip-roaring crisis of politics, governance and shake the false edifice of our broken economy and bubble-ridden financial system to its foundations.

Still, it  is evident from the final Real Clear Politics electoral vote map (with all leaners allocated), the outcome of this fraught election could turn on a few thousand of New Hampshire’s doggedly independent and unpredictable voters.

Significantly, New Hampshire does not have “early voting” except for traditional absentee ballots. That potentially means that nothing is baked into the cake at all—–that the political earth could yet move in the next few hours on the very margin of this unprecended campaign.

As a practical matter, the edge still goes to Hillary Clinton because the Trump roadmap to victory has no room for slippage. Either a loss in North Carolina or Nevada, where the races are extremely close or a failure to pass the post first in New Hampshire would likely put the profoundly corrupt and thoroughly statist Clinton Clan back in the White House.

But that’s just the point. If Hillary wins by just six electoral votes, or even by 36 votes (287-251) with North Carolina, there is no way that the such an outcome could be viewed as honest or legitimate by the tens of million of mobilized voters in Trumpland.

After all,North Carolinadoes not even have voter identification checks at the polls, and upwards of 45% of the vote has already been cast by after being ferried to the polls by partisan voter round-up operations.

Let the Tar Heel State’s 15 electoral votes slip into the Clinton column—thereby derailing Trumps only real route to victory—and the cries of fraud will reach a thunderous crescendo within minutes of the announcement. And demands for recounts and investigations of vote stealing will flow hot and heavy from the Trump camp soon thereafter.

By the same token, Donald Trump did not finish off his campaign late last night in the utterly unlikely outpost of Grand Rapids Michigan because he had a final cargo of jet fuel to burn.

To the contrary, Michigan is really Flyover America writ large. That is, it’s the home of former high paid industrial workers who double as duck and deer hunters with cabins and hunting grounds in the middle and north of the state.

They still have their UAW pensions, but their auto factories are gone and they fear their guns are next. That’s why the old working class suburbs around Detroit and the hunting country near and north of Grand Rapids sport a sea of Trump yard signs. And that’s why the Brexit-style shocker—-if it is going to happen—will occur in Michigan.

The Democrats have swept the state in presidential elections since the Gipper’s time based on the UAW machine, the identity politics of  the minority communities in Detroit, Flint and elsewhere and young voters.

But Hillary most obviously does not excite these bedrock Democratic constituencies. At the same time, by running a campaign based on jobs, trade and porous borders through which illegal immigrants, crime and drugs have allegedly poured and posturing as an angry outsider, Trump has an outside chance of bringing a lightening strike to the electoral map in Michigan by pulling the Reagan Democrats back into the GOP column.

In that respect, Michigan has not been heavily polled because until 10 days ago it was considered solidly blue. But the sudden heavy traffic into the state by both candidates and their surrogates, suggests that they may be detecting in their private polls the kind of stealth tidal wave that shocked the Clinton camp the morning after the Michigan Democratic primary.

The final RCP poll average was +21.4% for Clinton, but Bernie Sanders won.

Needless to say,  either route to a Trump victory would amount to a political earthquake. The campaign against Trump by the MSM media and the Wall Street/Washington ruling elites during the election process would end up looking like a Sunday School picnic compared to what would happen if Trump is elected by what at best can be a tiny margin in the electoral college.

As we have been contending all along, Trump is destined to profoundly disrupt the destructive regime of war, debt, Bubble Finance and bipartisan beltway racketeering which threatens both capitalist prosperity and political democracy in America. But they would never let him govern—–even if he had a coherent program, which he doesn’t.

But either way, the long national nightmare ahead starts Wednesday morning. Among other things, the next year will bring a GOP vendetta campaign against the Clintons, whether they are in the Oval Office or not; and also the onset of recession, permanent crisis over the $20 trillion debt ceiling that likely cannot be passed without multiple govenment shutdowns, and a thundering stock market crash that Washington and the Fed will be helpless to bail out this time around.

It is perhaps symptomatic that during the fiscal year that ended 36 days before the election, the Federal deficit started to rising again, climbing to $587 billionfor FY 2016, or by $148 billion and 35% from last year’s level. And as we have previously shown, even that number is drastically understated by accounting gimmicks, such as counting about $100 billion per year in outlays for student loans as “investments”, not spending which adds to the deficit.

Likewise,  a similar amount was subtracted from the FY 2016 deficit by an even more outrageous accounting scam. The Fed sent $100 billion in “profits” to the US Treasury from the interest it earned on $4.5 trillion of government and GSE debt that it paid for with virtually zero-cost fiat credits.  If that is anything other than monetary fraud, we might as well abolish taxes, or even work, and all live happily everafter off the Fed’s magic printing press.

In short, during the last two years, the reported Federal deficit has added-up to about $1.05 trillion, but the actual public debt has increased by $1.7 trillion, owing to these hide-the-ball accounting gimmicks. Moreover, by inauguration day the nation’s public debt will be smack up against $20 trillion.

The chart below, shows what will happen thereafter based on the automatic growth of entitlements and the commitment of both candidates to fund the Warfare State at today’s absurdly wasteful and unnecessary levels.

That is to say, beginning Wednesday morning, Imperial Washington will become officially ungovernable. From there it is only a matter of time before a thundering fiscal crisis turns the basis of American society upside-down.

No commentary is needed with respect to this prospect if Hillary wins; a fiscal crisis is guaranteed.

But the same is true of Donald Trump. In his capstone speeches last night, where he stuck strictly to the teleprompter lines, he struck the most fiscally irresponsible posture imaginable. That is, no change in Social Security or Medicare, major increases in defense spending,  more money for Veterans and building walls—both physical and via enhanced enforcement from one end of our borders to the other—-and a giant tax reduction on top.

To not understand that the nation is heading for a thundering fiscal crisis under these circumstances is an act of willful denial of the plain facts of life.

Regards,

David Stockman
for The Daily Reckoning

P.S. This is my last chance to get my message out before tonight’s election.

I believe that all hell is going to break loose in the financial markets very soon, whoever wins. Donald Trump was right when he said that “we’re in a big, fat, ugly bubble.” A Trump win tomorrow would throw markets into chaos, especially after today’s massive rally.

Regardless, as soon as the Federal Reserve lifts their foot off of the neck of interest rates in this country, we’re going to have another big crash.

That’s why you need a survival guide to get through the turmoil that lies ahead. My latest book, TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back, provides that plan. I wrote it for that purpose.

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