Clinton pressing her advantage
Ahead in polls, Democrat urges early voting to build lead on Trump
Hillary Clinton moved to press her advantage in the presidential race Sunday, urging black voters in North Carolina to vote early as Republicans increasingly conceded that Donald Trump is unlikely to recover in the polls.
With a strong lead in national polls, Clinton has been pleading with core Democratic constituencies to get out and vote in states where balloting has already begun. By running up a lead well in advance of the Nov. 8 election in states like North Carolina and Florida, she could make it extraordinarily difficult for Trump to mount a late comeback.
On Sunday, Clinton appeared at a church in Raleigh, N.C., with mothers who have lost
children to gun violence or clashes with the police. Addressing the congregation, she sounded like a candidate
looking past the election to a presidency in which she would have to address a deeply divided nation.
“There are many people in our country willing to reach across the divide, regardless of what you’ve heard in this campaign,” Clinton said. “There are people — millions and millions of people — who are asking themselves these hard questions, who want to find a way to work together to solve these problems that we face.”
Geneva Reed-Veal, whose daughter, Sandra Bland, died in Waller County Jail after a traffic stop last summer, called on the congregation to make its voice heard at the polls. “If you decide not to vote, shut your mouth,” Reed-Veal said.
Both Clinton and key Republican groups have effectively pushed aside Trump since the final presidential debate Wednesday, treating him as a defeated candidate and turning their attention to voter turnout and battling for control of Congress.
An ABC News tracking poll published Sunday showed Trump trailing Clinton by 12 percentage points nationally and drawing just 38 percent of the vote.
Clinton, who drew support from 50 percent of voters in the poll, was openly dismissive of Trump over the weekend, telling reporters Saturday that she no longer worried about answering his attacks.
Karl Rove, chief strategist of George W. Bush’s successful presidential campaigns, said Sunday on Fox News that he did not expect that Trump could pull off a comeback in the final two weeks of campaigning.
Two outside groups aligned with Republicans, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Senate Leadership Fund, have begun running television commercials in Senate races implying that Trump’s defeat is likely and asking voters to send Republican lawmakers to Washington as a check on Clinton.
And the Congressional Leadership Fund, a powerful “super PAC” that supports Republicans in the House of Representatives, will begin running ads in the coming days that attack Democratic candidates as “rubber stamps” for Clinton.
Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, acknowledged on “Meet the Press” on NBC that Trump was behind in the race. She said the campaign had “a shot” at winning over undecided voters who do not currently support Trump but who dislike Clinton.