NEW YORK — Hillary Clinton and her allies have an animating aim in the final 14 days of the 2016 contest – drive up the score so dramatically that claims by Donald Trump of Democratic vote-rigging will be rendered inconsequential thanks to the margin of victory.
And if their final bombardment of campaign activity drags down-ballot Democrats across the finish line and sweeps proponents of Trump's alt-right ideology off the political table, all the better.
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Already having banked millions of early votes as Trump’s campaign spiraled over the last three weeks, Clinton’s headquarters and battleground states teams now see a high-single-digit margin of victory as realistic – something that looks as decisive as Barack Obama’s 2008 win over John McCain.
To maintain that lead, the Clinton operation, its allies at the Democratic National Committee, and the party’s Senate and House campaign wings are deploying dozens of surrogates to battleground and “reach” states, investing in an advertising and get-out-the-vote blitz and pumping new organizing muscle into a trio of Republican states that are trending Clinton’s way.
It’s now, in this final closing stretch, that Clinton’s closest political allies think her early focus on building an organization gap over Trump will matter most.
“The idea of a fair election — of a peaceful transition of power — is not a Democratic value. It’s not a Republican value. It, literally, is an American value. I volunteered with 7th and 8th graders a couple of months ago and we talked about the peaceful transition of power, and those kids understood it,” said Rebecca DeHart, executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia. “It’s crazy to me that a candidate for President of the United States doesn’t. So the only way we can stamp this out is to have incredible turnout, and let it die in a corner."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/hillary-clinton-big-win-2016-squash-rigged-talk-230247#ixzz4O4veQDBj
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