The TRUMP Campaign's only chance is if Hillary is mauled by a bear! Rick Wilson

http://heatst.com/politics/rick-wilson-the-trump-scampaigns-only-chance-now-is-if-hillary-is-mauled-by-a-bear/

The revelations in the May FEC report that Donald Trump’s campaign is broke put the lie to the assertion that he can afford to self-fund and that he doesn’t require the trappings of a modern campaign. Trump proclaimed dozens of times in the primaries that he was funding his own campaign, and boasted of his absurd wealth. We called it on these pages at the end of May. As we confirmed this week, Trump can’t even afford the cheap seats in the billion-dollar ballgame of this election.

Hillary Clinton has been on the air for several weeks in swing states, with a devastating ad series aimed straight at the soft underbelly of Trump’s support; Republicans who don’t subsist on a fad diet of lead paint chips, cheap plastic-bottle vodka and talk-radio rage. She’s raising money at a furious pace, and the Democratic Party is swiftly leaving their flirtation with Red Bernie behind.

As Clinton continues to open up leads in key swing states like Florida and Virginia and show surprising strength in Republican strongholds like Utah, the stink coming off his newly manager-less campaign is increasingly pungent. For months, Trump’s mojo in the primaries defied logic, sense and the rules of politics, but as we’ve turned toward the general election, the inexorable physics of political reality are in effect. The true-believers may be ready for their track suits, Kool Aid and the arrival of Comet Trump, but the rest of the GOP is growing restive.

The persistence of Never Trump (“Damn those meddling kids and their talking dog!”) seems to shock the Trump fan base, but it shouldn’t. We know something the Trump fans vehemently deny; roughly 50% of the Republican Party doesn’t want Trump as the nominee, and that number will grow as three constants of the campaign become clear:

First, Trump will never get better at being a candidate. He’ll never change. He’ll never be Presidential. His lurid, random drunk-uncle crazytalk won’t stop. He still trusts his own political instincts, which were perfectly tuned to rev up a nativist, low-information 30-ish percent of the GOP base, but are ludicrously off-target in the general election. He’ll never pivot, because he can’t.

He’s a clown with a specific act, a Borscht Belt comic giggling at his own take-my-wife-please jokes. Among his followers, dreams of the Wall and mass deportations (of Mexicans, Muslims and enemies of the Trump State like your author) and the rest of the febrile nationalist fantasies Trump’s media enablers stoke in his horde may still play, but they are poison to practically everyone else.

Second, Trump is now and will remain broke, particularly relative to Clinton. For all his bluster, campaign finance expert and superlawyer Charlie Spies notes that Trump has to cut a check of between $100 and $200 million to become even vaguely credible with deeply skeptical donors. Absent that, Hillary Clinton will continue raising and spending money in swing states, opening up wider and wider leads, making it harder and harder for Trump to convince even the most credulous GOP money people to take the bait.