Big question: Has Donald Trump blown it?

Only one month ago Donald Trump was enjoying a post-Convention bounce and appeared to be in a deadlocked race with Hillary Clinton. But he is now sliding in the polls: he is eight points behind Clinton nationally, and his rival holds double-digit leads in Colorado and Virginia along with a narrow lead in Iowa in a trio of battleground-state Quinnipiac University polls released this week.

On Wednesday, Trump revamped his top team. He has appointed Stephen Bannon, Executive Chairman of Breitbart News, and veteran pollster Kellyanne Conway. This has been interpreted by critics as a desperate attempt by Trump to stay in the fight. His “apology” yesterday has been viewed in the same way by some. In it, he said that he regrets the times when he has “said the wrong thing” and caused “personal pain.”

Will either move do any good? Does Trump’s slide in the polls mark the beginning of the end for him, or could he make a comeback? A panel of contributors including Bonnie Greer and Christopher Caldwell share their opinions.

A shambles 

Andrew Stuttaford, Contributing Editor of "National Review"

Donald Trump was not expected to win in the way that he did, and he was not expected to lose in quite the way that he currently seems set to do. It was widely thought that, once nominated, he would try to boost the ranks of his angry brigade by reaching out to those who are disaffected, but rarely (or, indeed, ever) vote Republican. Trump would also, it was assumed, attempt to give a vaguely plausible impression that he is up to the job. Neither is happening. His campaign has up to now (we’ll have to see what difference his latest new team will make) been a shambles, as incapable of taking advantage of Hillary Clinton’s many weaknesses as it is of concealing his own. As for broadening his appeal, a series of blunders, feuds, and dog whistles gone awry has, remarkably, narrowed it. To suggest that Trump doesn’t actually want to be president would, of course, be monstrous.

Wait for the debates

Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at the "Weekly Standard"

Has Donald Trump Blown it? Hardly. His recent “implosion” has less to do with his own behaviour than with the slow news season. His supporters (bitterly) say news coverage is biased. But so (proudly) do such Trump opponents as Ezra Klein and Jim Rutenberg. History will marvel at their courage in having defended democracy at a time when a mere 100 per cent of the ruling class dared to.

Trump is in the shape Brexit was a few weeks from election day. His backers are underpolled. Most imaginable news events—layoffs, terrorism, attacks on police—will favour him. And he is the better debater. It was debates that made an unwinnable nomination winnable for Trump, and an unlosable nomination a close call for Hillary.

I think the question you are really asking is whether Trump can win. He can. In fact, he should. He speaks for globalisation’s losers. They outnumber its winners.

An epic loser

Robert Singh, Professor of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London

The fat lady is clearing her throat and Bill is measuring the White House curtains. Barring an act of God or an especially vigorous "Second Amendment type," Donald J Trump will soon experience what it feels like to be an epic loser. To win, Trump needed a perfect storm: unprecedented white turnout; Clinton’s failure to reassemble the Obama coalition of minorities, women and millennials; and “events.” It hasn’t arrived. The tension between becoming “presidential” and maintaining “authenticity”—between reaching beyond his disgruntled white working class base to a broader cross-section of America and constantly fanning the populist, nativist, nationalist flames that won him the Republican nomination—is now being resolved. The new post-Paul Manafort management (Manafort was Campaign Chairman. He has kept his job title but after the shake-up of Trump's top team his clout with the boss is now unclear) pledges to “let Trump be Trump.” Nothing could suit “Landslide Hillary” more. The GOP is circling the money wagons to defend vulnerable Senate incumbents and minimise the coming losses. Trump’s only hope to reach Washington now lies in his luxury hotel, opening in the city next month.

The bear is out of the circus

Bonnie Greer, playwright and critic 

The short answer is “No”. On a practical level the Conventions were early this cycle, so Trump has time to “find” his campaign—but not much. This is a “Change” election—it is at the end of a two-term Presidency. And America, perhaps more than any other nation, likes change. The difference in this cycle is that we have a candidate that’s a kind of Frankenstein's monster: a construction of the rightwing talk radio/Fox News industrial complex, and Trump’s own three decades celebrity, built on his power to make “deals.” He beat his 16 opponents in the vacuum of a Party in crisis and now the “bear is out of the circus.”

He can win by omission—if the majority of Obama's electoral coalition don’t turn up to vote and the Conservatives who are #NeverTrump stay home. And if he can make this election a referendum on the Clintons. Then he will depress the reluctant Bernie Sanders people and drive them to the Greens.

Trump is his own worst enemy. I doubt that he can maintain equilibrium long enough. But he hates to lose, too.  He’s also big a narcissist. Unfortunately for him, he’s also a famous germaphobe. He’ll have to press a lot flesh for this one. We’ll see what it looks like in a month.