The Trump Apocalypse Watch is a subjective daily estimate, using a scale of one to four horsemen, of how likely it is that Donald Trump will be elected president, thus triggering an apocalypse in which we all die.
Here are a few news items.
1. A pro–Hillary Clinton super PAC is beginning to air ads about Trump’s sexism on TV in four swing states.
2. Donald Trump’s unconventional and disorganized campaign has apparently left potential Republican super PAC donors wondering where they’re supposed to send their money.
3. Another head-to-head poll showed a very close race nationally between Trump and Clinton.
Slate’s Jamelle Bouie alluded to the different ways these events can be interpreted in a column today. If you are trying to be a calm, enlightened person who understands that a number of factors aside from the candidates’ personalities make Clinton a heavy November favorite regardless of what current polls say, you’re looking at items 1 and 2 as evidence that the Democratic Party is going to use its resources to leverage its presidential-election-year demographic advantages among women and nonwhite voters while Trump’s personal flaws and feuds will prevent Republicans from effectively getting out their message and getting all their potential supporters to the polls.
But if you’re like a lot of people, you’ve glazed over items 1 and 2 and are staring at item 3 with a cold, dreadful suspicion that Trump’s macho lunacy is a Chewbacca strategy that can overturn the rules of political science and maybe even of mathematics itself.
Until mathematics and logic reassert themselves more publicly as major players in this election, we’re staying at at least two horsemen.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons
