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A couple of worried Democrats are coming over for dinner tomorrow. Since I’m the voice of calm, my job is to explain why they probably shouldn’t be panicking over polls showing that Hillary Clinton’s lead is shrinking. This is pretty easy to do, but first this year’s standard disclaimer:

This is the weirdest presidential campaign in my lifetime. Everything I know might be worthless. Caveat emptor.

OK, so why am I still feeling pretty calm? I could show you the pretty picture from Pollster, which really doesn’t show much change over the past year, but I’ve already done that—and anyway, haven’t I said that Sam Wang is my preferred pollster? Indeed I have. So here is Sam Wang:

Roughly speaking, Hillary Clinton has had a steady 3.5 percent lead over Trump all year. Then she got a boost from the Democratic convention, followed by a few bad weeks for Trump. That wore off and she dropped back to a little below where she’s been all along. In the last few days, Clinton has started rising again, and my guess is that over the next few weeks she’ll meander back to her longtime lead of 3.5 percent. Pollwise, the single most remarkable thing about the Clinton vs. Trump race is how stable it’s been ever since the day Trump took his famous escalator ride down to the ground floor of Trump Tower to announce his candidacy.

To the extent that Democrats are panicking, I think it’s because a few weeks ago Clinton was ahead by 7 percent or so, and everyone was licking their chops and wondering if a landslide was possible. It was deflating when that turned out to be a mirage. I got caught up in that a bit too, and it was probably foolish. In reality, it was just a temporary bump and was never likely to last.

Still, even if Clinton has a fairly reliable 3.5 percent lead, isn’t that pretty disappointing? I mean, she’s running against a clown like Trump. This isn’t some normal Republican like John McCain or Mitt Romney. She should be ahead by 6 or 7 points. What the hell is wrong with America?

I’m not sure about that. But keep in mind that election fundamentals—Democrats have held the White House for eight years; the economy is in adequate but not great shape; Obama’s approval level has been only fair until very recently—suggest that this should be a Republican year. Alan Abromowitz, whose forecasting model has had reasonable success, figures that Trump should win the popular vote by 3 percent. If, instead, Clinton wins by 3-4 percent, it means she’s outperformed the fundamentals by 6-7 percent. That’s not bad.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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