It’s about as clear as these things can be that Donald Trump has lost ground against Hillary Clinton over the last month. The RealClearPolitics average of recent polls shows Trump pulled even with Clinton on the results of a two-way race available on May 22.
This was after voters had time to absorb Trump’s clinching of the Republican nomination and when Hillary Clinton had not yet, quite, assembled a delegate majority. Many observers suggested, plausibly, that Clinton would pull ahead when she did.
That doesn’t seem to have happened, at least not in the way you’d expect. Clinton was at 43 percent then, and is at 44 percent today. The change is that Trump has clearly fallen, from 43 percent to 39 percent — and of course farther in some polls, since we are dealing with an average.
My sense, and that of many others, is that his incessant criticism of Judge Curiel played an important part in this. Not so much because it betrayed unforgiveable bigotry, but because it showed an un-presidential preoccupation with his personal interests.
Trump kept insisting that Trump University was a really great, really great educational institution, in a way that is reminiscent of the array of Trump wines and Trump steaks he had assembled for one of his election night statements in Palm Beach.
The obvious tactic this suggests for the Clinton campaign is to pounce, at some later point when her campaign may seem to be flagging, and attack Trump wine. The candidate clearly cannot abide such attacks and seems compelled to respond repeatedly to them — even though it obviously doesn’t help his campaign.
