The Patriot Post® · Trump-Pence Up!

Ten days ago, the ABC News poll had Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by 12 points. [Tuesday], the latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll finds Trump leading Clinton by one point. Hillary has lost five points, while Trump has gained seven.

When Hillary was leading by 12, I felt the ABC poll was an outlier. I am also skeptical that the race has swung 12 points in ten days. But this much is clear: The Trump-Pence team has the momentum.

Republicans are coming home — 86% now back Trump. Mike Pence’s “time to come home” message is resonating. Independent voters are breaking heavily his way. This poll is also evidence that Friday’s announcement by the FBI is having an impact. Democrat enthusiasm for Clinton is down seven points, while enthusiasm among Republicans for Trump is up six points.

Perhaps most significantly, one individual has become convinced that Donald Trump and Mike Pence really can win. Sheldon Adelson has reportedly written a $25 million check to a pro-Trump Super PAC and his support is described as “a floor, not a ceiling.”

And there’s more bad news for Hillary. Many political experts have questioned whether she could recreate the “magic” of the Obama coalition. They had good reason to be skeptical — throughout Obama’s tenure, his popularity proved to be non-transferable to other Democrats running for office.

It seems little of the Obama political magic has rubbed off on Hillary. According to various reports, millennial and minority turnout in early voting is down compared to 2012, in some cases down significantly.

Bombshells Coming!

Brace yourselves, my friends. No, I don’t know anything specific. But I do know this: If Hillary’s internal polls are showing anything close to what the ABC/Washington Post poll is showing, there is no way the left’s smear machine won’t hit back with whatever it has, true or not. They have done this before.

Remember the 2000 election eve release of George W. Bush’s drunk driving arrest? Experts believe it cost him at least one million votes.

There is little the left won’t do if it feels Hillary’s grip on power is slipping away. And they will attempt to break it/leak it when there is virtually no time to respond, knowing full well that the media will repeat the smear as gospel truth. (More on that below.)

Media Bias

We know the left-wing media are biased, but the extent of the bias is galling. Worse, I fear conservatives underestimate how much it affects our friends, neighbors and family members who may not be reading reports like this or getting additional information from other sources. For example:

News broke on Friday that new Hillary emails were discovered on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. The media turned this into a James Comey scandal instead of a Hillary Clinton scandal. According to the Media Research Center, the big media networks were three times more critical of Comey than they were of Clinton.

Just to clarify, the rules that the media are claiming Comey has violated are not laws, but guidelines. These guidelines say that the FBI should not time actions to influence elections. But Comey did not time his actions. He acted on new information.

Several months ago, he infamously refused to recommend charges against Hillary, which saved her candidacy. Given the evidence, Comey’s decision then was inexplicable. Anyone else would have gone to jail and 56% of Americans disagreed with his decision.

Once additional classified material unexpectedly showed up on Weiner’s laptop, Comey had no choice but to act. He had to inform Congress that his previous testimony — that the Clinton investigation was closed — was no longer accurate.

Anything he did would impact the election. If he had not acted and hid the fact that new emails were discovered, that would have impacted the race too.

Here’s the bottom line: James Comey did not jeopardize national security with a private server. Hillary Clinton did. This whole mess is her fault. She has no one to blame but herself.

By the way, the State Department just found another 300 Clinton emails. How is that possible?! And virtually her entire inner circle is currently under investigation!

Hillary and her left-wing allies should stop smearing the FBI, just as they have been routinely smearing law enforcement for years now.

Some in the media are playing up statements by former GOP officials who are critical of Comey. Yet the media are largely silent about the fact that the Obama White House is standing by him, which left a lot of people scratching their heads.

Here’s another example of media bias. The front page of any newspaper is always reserved for the biggest stories. Often times, people only read the headlines, so those on the top of the front page, “above the fold,” as they say, drive the news.

[Tuesday’s] New York Times ha[d] two big stories on Donald Trump. One story notes that he was thoroughly investigated by the FBI for possible connections to Russia that might influence the election and the FBI found nothing. The second story is about how he used a legal accounting method to minimize his tax liability.

I bet you didn’t hear that the FBI cleared Trump of the absurd allegations that Russia is helping him in the campaign. And that’s because the New York Times buried that story on page A21. But a rehash of how he used legal deductions made A1, the front page.

What If…

What if the FBI announces on Thursday or Friday that it has completed a preliminary review of the relevant emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop and exonerates Hillary Clinton? Hillary would do a victory lap and some conservatives would be demoralized — again.

Possible? Anything is possible when the entire political/business/government/media complex feels threatened by a populist revolt!

A Tale Of Two Critics

Two GOP leaders with uneasy relationships with Donald Trump chose very different paths this week. In the most consequential election in modern history, Ohio Governor John Kasich announced [yesterday] that he wrote in John McCain for president, quite literally wasting his vote. It won’t even be counted.

Speaker Paul Ryan chose a different path. He announced on Fox News [yesterday] morning that he voted for the Trump-Pence ticket a few days ago, and Ryan made it clear why conservatives should vote for the entire Republican ticket if they want to change the direction of the country.

My personal opinion is that Paul Ryan just ensured that come what may on November 8th, he has a political future in the GOP. I believe John Kasich just ensured that he does not.