Sealed Systems…Trump and his fans refuse to accept bad news, making a course change impossible.

Jim Geraghty:

Sean Hannity believes he has found the decisive factor in the 2016 election: “If in 96 days Trump loses this election, I am pointing the finger directly at people like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and John McCain and John Kasich and Ted Cruz if he won’t endorse — and Jeb Bush and everybody else that made promises they’re not keeping.”

This is a fascinating perspective and one that is common to Trump fans. If their man loses, it cannot possibly reflect any flawed judgment, statement, strategy, or decisions on his part. They have already decided this. They don’t think anything he’s done so far has reduced his chances of victory. He has run as close to a perfect campaign as anyone can possibly ask, and the only thing standing between him and at least 270 locked-up-take-it-to-the-bank electoral votes is insufficient enthusiasm from Ryan, McConnell, Graham, etc.

Still, Hannity at least acknowledges that defeat is possible. At this point, it is not clear that Trump believes he is trailing. A vocal segment of his surrogates and supporters believe he is still on a smooth path to victory.

If one points to bad media coverage of Trump, his fans respond that the media are biased. Indeed they often are, but that doesn’t mean the bad media coverage is false.

If one points to bad polling for Trump, they will insist that the polls are either skewed or declare the polls are “a lie.”

You see extreme Pauline Kaelism: “Everybody I know is voting for Trump.” Perhaps that is the case (has this person really asked every person he knows?) — but their circle of friends of a dozen or several dozen or even a hundred is not likely to reflect the voting demographics of their state. If literally no one you know is voting for the candidate you dislike, you can be certain you’re in a bubble; Obama took 28 percent of the vote in Wyoming in 2012, and Romney took about the same share in Hawaii.

Hillary’s dominating the airwaves in television ads, but Trump’s fans insist that doesn’t matter. Her super PAC has way more money than his does, but Trump’s fans insist that doesn’t matter. She has way more paid staffers and offices open in key swing states than Trump does, but Trump’s fans insist that doesn’t matter.

In each of these cases, there’s a germ of truth to the Trump fans’ argument. The press was brutal to George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and he overcame that. Polls can have samples that include too many Democrats and aren’t likely to represent turnout in the elections. A lot of political television ads become ignored background noise in October, and the candidate with the most money doesn’t always win.

But once all of these measuring sticks of a campaign are dismissed as meaningless, we’re left with key questions Trump’s fans — and arguably the candidate himself — stubbornly refuse to answer: What indicators do you trust? How do you know if what you’re doing isn’t working? Considering how quickly Trump shifted in his interest in polls, the philosophy seems to be that “all measurements with good news are true, and all measurements with bad news are false.” Any indicator of improvement is incontrovertible, every indicator of worsening is a damnable lie. That is a textbook definition of denial.

Read more