This month. Joining me now in washington is dan bolz, the chief correspondent at the Washington Post and we once again pleased to have him here again. Dan thank you. Charlie 60 days and counting. Dan 60 days and counting down. Charlie the first week after labor day. Dan its an interesting week. The polls look tighter than in august. We had the first semiencounter with the two candidates. Charlie not together. Dan a preview, but not really, they werent on the stage at the same time. Its a different dynamic. The race after labor day, as much as become before, things become engaged in a different way. We have seen Hillary Clinton out much more talking to the press that she hasnt been done. Charlie on the plane and elsewhere taking questions. Dan so she is more accessible than she has been. She was getting criticized for that. Donald trump is trying to stay scripted and with teleprompters. Charlie is he better on the campaign trail with what he has to do . Dan i think he is. Its a function of the new team that he brought on last month. Charlie anne conway and steve bannon. Dan and david. What they have done, they have one way in another calmed him down when he is out on the stump. He is less extemporaneous and less given to saying things that have gotten him in trouble in the past. But i dont know if he can keep that up for 60 more days. Charlie the effort is to get him on message and stay on message in terms of elements of change and how he would be different from her and make the issue her. Dan they want to make this campaign about change. If it becomes a campaign about change, he is in a much better position than if the campaign is about him. Almost everything we have seen up to now suggested this was a referendum on donald trump. Thats the worst possible situation for him because the more that focus is on him, the more people are reminded of the things he has said and done over the last year and a few months. So if he can keep going after her and if the focus becomes her, he is in a better position. But we should step back from all of that. The Electoral College is still different for him. He has fewer pass to 270 votes than she does. There are these kind of underlying realities that go along with what the candidates do as they perform. Charlie and the demographics favor her. Dan the demographics favor her. The biggest single factor that is different in this campaign and a real problem for donald trump if he cant solve it is white, College Educated voters. They have been a republican constituency. Mitt romney won them with 56 of the vote against barack obama four years ago. Donald trump is losing that group at this point. We did a 50state poll with survey monkey, the online polling operation based in silicon valley. We found that in most of the states, she is ahead among White College voters and particularly among white, collegeeducated women. Charlie and theyre in the suburbs in part. Dan theyre in part in the suburbs and theyre everywhere, not just in blue states. Chris if he cannot make movement into that, he is unable to put together a winning combination. Dan what is interesting, charlie, throughout the primaries, much of our focus was on white, blue collar voters and the degree to which he had tapped into kind of the resentment, the grievances that they had, the fact that they have done far less well with this recovery than People Better educated and certainly more affluent and yet its like its flipped now. He needs either a huge turnout, a bigger turnout from that seenituency than we have in the past or solve the problem with the College Educated. Charlie one or the other is big. We dont know how to measure the discontent, do we . Dan no, we dont. We know its out there. One measure is that the right track, wrong track, which is a standard measurement in survey research has consistently been, says people say were on the wrong track. But thats been the case for years, for many years. And barack obama was reelected with that. So, i think you have to take that measurement with some grain of salt, but one of the things we did in our 50state poll is we asked people, do you think that this election will do anything to solve the political divisions that exist in this country. And in every state, it doesnt matter whether it is a red state or blue state, people said very little. It will do very little to nothing at all to solve that. There is a sense already that this election is not going to resolve that fundamental problem that we have been talking about for months, the gridlock and the causes of the gridlock, the redblue divisions that have brought about that gridlock. Charlie this election will not perhaps or likely to be able to make a difference so that somebody can come in as obama came in promising that he could heal that problem. Dan people will promise it. Hillary clinton has talked about wanting to Reach Across Party Lines if she is elected. Charlie she will schmoose than obama did. Dan that might well be the case but she will start with a difficult environment to do that. Charlie if you look how they did in the candidates forum. It turns out by polling that trump does reasonably well with the military. I think he beats her with the military in some polls. Dan yes. Charlie are they voting for what . Are they voting for strength or leadership . What makes them in the majority favor him . Dan its a traditionally republican vote. Republicans have traditionally done better with veterans and military people than democrats. I think that trump does have everything he suggests as a candidate, whether its on Foreign Policy or other policy is position of strength, make america great, america first. All of that message goes to a kind of a muscularity of leadership. Now there are Great Questions as we saw last night in that commander in chief forum, there are Great Questions about exactly what those policies are. Does the policy match the muscularity of the rhetoric. Im not sure that it does. Charlie there are questions as to whether what he says he believes is in fact true, whether he has always been against the iraq war. He did interviews at the time. Dan we know he wasnt. And our fact checker gave him four pinocchios for that answer last night saying he was always against the iraq war. Charlie interviews in which he said he didnt. Dan if he wants to say i change my mind, fair enough. But to say i was always against it contradicts the Public Record. Charlie does that matter at this stage . Does that matter . Dan its a great question, charlie. These are two candidates who have been out in public, Hillary Clinton for a quarter of a century and donald trump has lived on television for the last 15 months. Everything he has said has been parsed and examined and fact checked. We know all of the things that he has said that have offended people. We know all of the things that he has said that damaged his opponents in the primary. He is an open book. He is not unexposed. So when things are said at this point, i dont know how much difference they make. You have to think that most voters at this point have a reasonable idea of where theyre going to end up on november 8, but still because, you know, we know that these are two unpopular candidates. One factoid from our 50state survey is interesting. 95 of the people across the country think either Hillary Clinton or donald trump or both would be a threat to the wellbeing of the country. , when you have with wet charlie a threat to the wellbeing of the country. Dan either they say of donald trump or Hillary Clinton or 20 say that of both. These are two candidates that people are going to vote for with some reservations. We know that. We have tried to measure it in a different way and we came out with this fascinating, although depressing kind of answer that thats the view that people have. So people are conflicted, people cases, voting for the least unattractive choice. Charlie does that say our politics are broken . Dan oh, yes, i think there is no question that our politics are broken. I dont know that theyre easily put back together. I think its kind of pie in the sky to think that an election will solve that. My pal ron has talked about this phenomenon more articulately than i do, but were in the middle of a big transformation in the country. We know that demographically, culturally, were seeing things change at a fairly rapid rate. There are some people who are fairly comfortable with that and some are not comfortable with that. The people less comfortable are in the trump camp. The people more comfortable are part of the Obama Coalition and with Hillary Clinton. Charlie part of it is the diversity of the country. Dan and how that is affecting the way we live. Charlie and how we work or dont work. Dan every corporation is dealing with this. Every Education System is dealing with this. The media is dealing with this. Our politics is a reflection of that. Its not simply that the politics is absent or separate from that. The politics gets caught up into that. I think that is part of why its difficult to solve this. So people are its an unsettling time for a lot of people in this country and it makes the politics more intense and also we know that the way politics is conducted today is much more adversarial and so it creates suspicions and it creates fears about the other side in particular, people who are supporting Hillary Clinton have great concerns about donald trump becoming president and vice versa. Whoever becomes the president , there is a reservoir of antisentiment on the other side they got to deal with. Charlie some people are saying, look, notwithstanding the fact that i dont like donald trump as i should like a president ial candidate, i would rather vote for him because im simply tired of the way the country has been run and i dont believe its going to change unless something dramatically different. While he may not be my perfect vessel, he is a better choice than the opposition. Dan frankly, thats one reason why you see the clinton focusing the Clinton Campaign focusing so much on the effort to disqualify trump in the minds of as many voters as they can. They know that the environment is not as favorable for the continuity or the continuation of the democrats in the white house, so they want to make donald trump unacceptable charlie and history not in favor of the continuation. Dan exactly right. To win three consecutive terms for the same party in the white house is challenging and we know that. And we know that while the stock market has done very, very well, we know that Gross Domestic Product has been tepid at best. The Second QuarterGross Domestic Product numbers were weak and we know that there are a lot of people who, as i said earlier, have been left behind by the arrive. So all of that argues in favor of a change. Allen abram witnesses, a smart political scientist has a political forecasting model that is called time for change. Its not based on any polling. Its based on fundamentals. His model predicts that donald trump will win the election. He is not favorable to donald trump. Charlie his model says he will win . Dan his model says he will win a narrow victory. He hopes its wrong. Charlie whats in his model . Dan Gross Domestic Product and president ial approval and other things. Its not based on current polling. Charlie not based on current polling and not reflective of current polling necessarily. Dan there are a number of political scientists who do the modeling. Some of them have polling in them, some dont. Most of the forecasting thats been done shows that Hillary Clinton will win with 51 or 52 or 53 . Charlie not a landslide. Dan two models say donald trump will win and allens is one of them. Charlie there is something called National Polls, thats tight, within two or three points and then there are statewide polls. Where, certainly in certain states, there is a margin of five to six for her. Its a wider margin for her in selective states that determine the presidency. Dan right, right. Well, in a sense, National Polls are irrelevant, but we watch them because if the National Polls move, we know that state polls will move along with them. Campaigns, a big president ial campaign, they dont take National Polls. They do not take a poll of the nation as a whole. Charlie they look at electoral votes. Dan they take a combined poll of battleground states and do individual battleground state polls. Now, some of the battleground states have moved. The state of wisconsin, the most recent polling in wisconsin is much tighter than it was a month or six weeks or two months ago. Charlie what was it two months ago . Dan the Marquette Law School poll had it, as i recall, 15 points up for clinton and now a handful of points. Trump gained there. The polling that we just did this week or that we released this week showed trump in striking distance in a number of the midwestern states including michigan and wisconsin and actually ahead narrowly in iowa and ohio. Charlie those rust belt states are states that trump believes he has a chance because of the constituents, the bluecollar workers. Dan theyre older, whiter and more blue collar. Charlie the democratic in some cases. Dan michigan, wisconsin have voted for democrats in six straight elections. Ohio and iowa have been swing states and battle grounds. Thats a region where he wants to, where he has to do well. He has to win ohio, i think he has to win pennsylvania. Charlie she can win the election without winning ohio and florida . Dan she can, yes. Charlie but he has to. Dan it looks as though he has to, he needs it. His preferred route is ohio, pennsylvania, and florida. If he does those three and holds north carolina, which is a clear battleground and Everything Else stays equal from 2012. Charlie you can tell how the Campaign Sees these individual battleground states as to how they spend their money. Dan yes, although with donald trump, he spent so little money, this is one of the great anomalies of this election. Up to now, Hillary Clinton has had a huge advantage in terms of advertising spending. Charlie how much money she has spent. Dan and also a huge advantage in laying the groundwork for get out the vote operation in those key states. I mean, she has spent much more money on advertising, up to now, trump had spent almost nothing in most of these states. He is beginning to spend now. She has opened many more offices and put more staff and put more volunteers on the ground in those states. But the advertising as we have seen almost throughout this election, seems to have a smaller impact on voters than it sometimes has in the past. Charlie there is also a thing called ground organization. Traditionally, thats been very important to a candidacy. Donald trump doesnt have one. Dan well, he is counting on an organic surge of voters. Charlie the rallies in part, the sheer use of the coverage of him at rallies and interviews. Dan donald trump believes that the model he used to win the nomination is a model that can work in the general election. Now, they are beginning with the help of the Republican National committee, but also within their own organization to staff up in these states, but his view has been we do big rallies and we attract a lot of people and we attract a lot of attention and that will generate enthusiasm and we have, in the age of social media, charlie, generating an operation is different than it was in the past. You can reach people in different ways and you can communicate in different ways and you can perhaps get them out to vote. Charlie you can change coverage and headlines by tweets. Dan thats been very important to him. Sometimes those tweets have gotten him in trouble. Charlie indeed. Emails. Every time there is a disclosure, it seems to affect her relationship and her polling, is that a fair statement . Dan i think thats an exactly fair statement. Charlie whats to come . What is the talk in washington as to what might be there, might be damaging . The latest intonation, the latest revelation has to do with colin powell and what he may or may not have said to her. Dan right. And colin powell had suggested that what he had said was sent to her much after she had set this up. There is further evidence that he emailed with her early in 2009 and that she has always said she did what others have done in the past. I think that is an argument that can be waged from here until two years from now and the general public will check out of that. Charlie you would think they would have already tuned out, except there are new revelations that come out. Dan part of the reason is that we know that people do not trust her. For her, the question of how honest and trustworthy she is has been a consistent problem. And i think that every time there is something that comes out that suggests its different or contradictory to the Public Record that, as we understood it, she takes a hit from that. So whats to come, we dont know. The f. B. I. Seems to have put out most everything, but, you know, i draw an analogy to the Clinton Foundation. A few weeks ago, the Clinton Foundation announced that if she becomes president , the foundation will no longer take contributions from foreign governments. I think they did that thinking that that would help to alleviate concerns. I think it had the opposite effect. It generated a conversation about, well, if its wrong to do it after she is president , why was it ok when she was secretary of state . Why dont they make the change now . Why dont they just simply disband the foundation, in other words, it raised a whole series of questions. They are difficult questions and i think if she becomes president will have to be addressed beyond what they already said theyll do. C