Remember When Hillary Proudly Was Coasting?

It was only a month ago that Clinton campaign aides were saying that she was "coasting" to a landslide victory. They were talking about winning Georgia and over confidently pulling ad money from Pennsylvania. They even directed campaign efforts at Utah with delusions of flipping the Beehive State. But politics is an entropy environment where "coasting" is inevitably followed by "to a stop."

On Aug. 19, FiveThirtyEight.com's nowcast gave Hillary an 87% chance of winning. That is now down to only six chances in ten. A month ago, projections had Clinton nearing 350 electoral votes. Today, she'd be lucky to top 290 EVs. She's losing Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina now. If Trump flips Pennsylvania, you know, where she is not even bothering to compete any longer, she's toast.

I've had more than my share of upper respiratory infections so I sympathize with those who just want to blame her case of pneumonia but the problem goes much deeper. For the past month her campaign's operating philosophy was "we don't need to do jack shit to beat that Trump buffoon."

The effort to turn out crowds for Clinton's public appearances have been lackluster. If that is an indication of their GOTV organization then Hillary is in deeper shit than the polls suggest.

I've seen this all happen before. In California, Gray Davis merged a bland persona with lazy public relations to get himself recalled for the crime of appearing completely disinterested in being governor. That gave California its joke governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In True Blue Massachusetts, Martha Coakley twice ran for statewide office on the platform "I'm the Democrat, what more do you want?" Twice she managed the impossible, electing her Republican opponent.

There is still time for the American people to stare into the black abyss of a Trump presidency and recoil in horror, but they need reasons to vote for Hillary Clinton beyond "at least she's not him."

She needs to make a positive case for herself, aggressively and soon, or this race will be reduced to a coin flip between the boring unpopular person and the exciting unpopular person. When that was the choice in California we got the Governator.