September 20, 2015

Fiorina, Rubio Are Big Winners of Second Debate

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As usual, I’m more interested in which candidates are moving up and down than in which candidates are ahead—with one exception that I’ll get to. After all, it’s still more than four months before the first primary ballot is cast.

A new CNN/ORC poll shows that there were two clear winners from Wednesday’s debate: Fiorina and Rubio. Trump was the biggest loser. And Scott Walker? I’ll make an exception for him. Not only was he down five points, but he was down five points from his previous level of five percent. In other words, his absolute level of support is now officially zero. This has to be one of the fastest, most dramatic flameouts of a top-tier candidate ever.

Trump, Fiorina, and Carson are now the top three candidates, but I simply don’t give any of them much chance of winning. So the next three are more interesting: Rubio, Bush, and Cruz. Of those, Rubio is not only in the lead, he’s the only one who gained any ground this week. This makes him officially one of the front runners, and should mean that he starts getting a lot more attention. We’ll see whether that’s good or bad for him.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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