The Slatest

Could Missouri Be in Play Now, Too? Jay Nixon Thinks So.

Jay Nixon.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

ST. LOUIS—Missouri has a competitive Senate race. It has a competitive governor’s race. According to polls of the presidential race, though, there’s not much of a contest here in the state that Sen. Barack Obama lost by only a few thousand votes in 2008. Trump enjoys a 10.6 percentage point lead here, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. It’s one of the few states in the country where Trump is running ahead of the Republican candidates in prestige, statewide downballot races.

But Jay Nixon, Missouri’s outgoing Democratic governor, isn’t so sure Trump can bank on the state’s 10 electoral votes just yet.

“Well, he hasn’t had a good week. Haven’t seen any numbers recently,” he told Slate at Washington University ahead of Sunday’s second debate. “I think Missouri’s a state where you still have enough undecideds to get this race close. I think it will tighten. I think that his conduct over the last—both in the last debate as well as over the last 10 days—is something that jars people. This is not the way presidents are supposed to act or talk.”

Nixon was walking on Wash U’s main lawn shaking hands with students, surrounded by a few bodyguards. It wasn’t the most … natural of settings. Nixon is a middle-aged conservative Democrat, and here he was mixing with students trying to garner attention for themselves in their own, trollish baccalaureate ways. More than one student was holding a “Lizard People for Hillary” sign, while another American-flag-garbed student held a banner reading, “Outback Steakhouse for Trump.” (He had a second, handwritten poster: “Bloomin’ Onion now only $7.00.”) Two other students standing next to each other held up color-coordinated signs that read, respectively, “Proud Muslim” and “Harambe 2016.” Music was playing, students were eating ice cream and pizza, or grabbing free Fox News T-shirts by the network’s adjacent set. And then there was the governor, wandering through it all.

Nixon added that it would be unwise for Trump to go after Bill Clinton’s affairs and Hillary Clinton’s role in aiding her husband in the cover-ups. “I think that if he does what I think a lot of people think he might do tonight—come out and try to attack somebody who used to be president, when he’s talking to somebody who’s going to be president—I think that’s a serious mistake,” he said.

So how should Hillary Clinton respond when Trump definitely does that?

“Like any woman, if they’re pushed in that direction, they need to be very clear, they need to be unambiguous, and they need to call out his behavior to the American people.”

He said it’s up to the Clinton campaign to decide whether it’s worth it for them to make an appearance in Missouri. It’s not—unless she just wants to psych out Trump. If Hillary Clinton wins Missouri, she’s already won somewhere north of 350 electoral votes. It will be a state caught up in a landslide, the possibility of which seems much more likely than it did 72 hours ago.

Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.