Where to begin?
Stranger things have never happened in presidential politics — at least in the modern era.
A candidate for the highest office in the land gleefully describing his penchant for sexual assault on tape. Some 50 senators, governors and members of Congress abandoning their party’s nominee. That nominee behaving like a malevolent creep in a nationally televised debate watched by 67 million Americans.
None of these things have happened before, let alone all together.
It’s little wonder commentators are declaring Donald Trump’s implosion. Some opine he could come in behind Barry Goldwater and George McGovern, neither of whom cracked 40 percent.
If ever there were a game changer, this would have to be it.
But presidential game changers may be the Loch Ness monster or Sasquatch of politics — frequently reported, but upon examination, never actually found.
Some — including me — would say it’s foolish to even speculate about the impact of these events just a few days after the Trump tape hit the news and the debate concluded.
But hey, this column is due, and it seems equally crazy to ignore it. Fortunately, there are some tools available with which to begin the examination.
And, perhaps not surprisingly, at this early point, they lead to strikingly different conclusions.
Those looking for a game changer find clear evidence in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Monday.
Apparently, the poll’s sponsors found the results sufficiently shocking — aka newsworthy — to release them before the survey was even finished.
Hillary Clinton’s lead grew from 7 points in September to 14 points on Monday in a one-on-one matchup and jumped from 6 to 11 points when third-party candidates are added to the mix.
The results reverberated down-ballot too, with preferences for a Democratic rather than Republican Congress ballooning from a 3-point margin to 7 points.
Never before has so much changed so quickly in the midst of an election.
Interestingly though, Trump is no less popular after all these events than he was before.
The NBC/WSJ poll gave him 28 percent positive in September and 29 percent on Monday. Negative evaluations rose just 2 points.
Of course, Trump was uniquely unpopular before his current imbroglio, and negative views of him did harden a bit.
Lending credence to the NBC/WSJ findings are those of an Atlantic PRRI poll that put Clinton 11 points ahead.
Since more than half these interviews were completed before the tape broke, one can only imagine the Clinton margin among those who had been exposed to that news.
Standing against these polls are two others.
On Saturday, pre-debate but after the Trump tape had been widely aired, Politico and Morning Consult conducted an online survey.
Adding to the confusion, it pegged Clinton’s favorability at minus 16 — worse than the minus 10 recorded a week earlier.
Meanwhile, Trump’s favorability was completely unchanged, at minus 19.
And the vote? On Monday, Morning Consult gave Clinton a 4-point lead, slightly less than the 7-point margin recorded a week before.
Our last data point is provided by YouGov’s online post-debate poll, which suggested little change.
After the debate Clinton led by 6, just 1 point higher than the margin she held in the same poll Oct. 3, before the latest brouhaha began.
Add up all the polls and average them, as Huffpollster does, and Clinton’s margin is a hefty 7 points — just 1 point greater than it was on Oct. 1, before any of this happened.
RealClearPolitics’s aggregation puts Clinton’s margin at 6.5 points, compared to 3 points on Oct. 1, while FiveThirtyEight’s model says Clinton now leads by 6 compared to 3 on Oct. 1.
So did the earth move under our feet and the sky tumble down, or was the weekend full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?
Neither would really surprise me.
Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has worked for Democratic candidates and causes since 1982. Current clients include the minority leader of the Senate and the Democratic whip in the House.