50 days to go
There are fifty days until election day, and Politico marks the occasion with an article looking at where the campaign stands right now and noting that despite Hillary Clinton's significant advantages on the air and on the ground, it doesn't seem to have (yet) made a large difference:
With just 50 days until the election, Donald Trump is facing a staggering — and perhaps historic — organizational disadvantage.
According to a POLITICO review of campaign spending, Hillary Clinton has invested seven times the amount of money on TV commercials as her Republican rival and has established twice as many field offices in many of the states that will decide who wins the presidency. In many battlegrounds, she has dozens more organizers than Trump.
While Trump, a first-time politician who has surrounded himself with advisers who are new to the rigors of presidential campaigns, has made serious headway in a number of battlegrounds in recent days, his on-the-ground and in-the-air deficits could be what stands between him and 270 electoral votes....
Some are coming to the conclusion that the New York businessman’s lack of swing-state infrastructure might not be fatal. Throughout his campaign, Trump has invested relatively little on TV ads and field deployment – instead surviving off his ability to pack rallies and generate overwhelming media attention for speeches and statements large and small. On Thursday morning, during a meeting convened by Trump’s congressional supporters on Capitol Hill, Conway said the Republican nominee would give multiple addresses each week focusing on specific policies he’d implement as president.
Expect more articles along these lines as additional artificial dates are hit (forty days until election, five weeks until the election, etc.). But contrived as they will be, they will be helpful in understanding what are likely to be a turbulent final phase of the campaign.