A sophisticated senior Republican friend wrote me this morning, "I think you'll get a landslide. But it won't reflect a mandate for Hillary….just a complete rejection of Trump."

These two sentences encapsulate the latest attempt by the Republican leadership to a) narrow the margin between the candidates by encouraging complacency among Hillary supporters and b) lay the groundwork for her to serve, in the event they lose, as a weak, one-term president.

The "no mandate" meme, which normally respectable Republicans are now pushing as their last ditch effort at damage control, associates them with what may be the most long-lasting damage that Trump's very candidacy has already inflicted on our democracy.

Along with Trump himself, their pre-interpretation of the two-and- a-half- months-from now vote puts them in the same zip code as the candidate himself when he tries to pre-delegitimize the whole electoral process. His position is that the outcome is rigged, theirs, that it won't mean anything.

My friend concluded: "The more people listen to Hillary, the less they like her."

On the contrary, the more folks listen to Hillary's positive message, undistracted by the negativity even non-Trump-supporting Republicans attempt to incite, the more her own positives rise. And because her message is getting traction, de-energizing Hillary supporters while pre-poopoo-ing the result is the Plan B they have been reduced to.

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August 23, 2016