title:  5 Reasons The Republicans Just Nominated The Worst Possible Candidate: Trump
text: Donald Trump has cleared the Republican presidential field of all the credible (and not so credible) challengers, and is now the presumptive nominee for the same party that produced Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan. It is amazing.But in picking Trump as their nominee, the Republican Party has chosen a candidate with a binder full of negatives, so many negatives in fact that it is highly unlikely he can overcome enough of them to win the presidency.Here are 5 of the reasons.70 percent of women in a recent Gallup poll have a negative view of Donald Trump. That s because Trump has a long record   including in this campaign   of attacking women. He s called them pigs, talked about their bathroom habits, complained about their periods, and on and on.Women are the majority of American voters, and Republicans have lost that demographic for years. Even when they have won the presidency, they ve lost with women.And while it isn t all she is, Hillary Clinton will obviously be the first major party nominee to be a woman. So far, Trump has not reacted well to this, accusing her of playing  the woman card,  with her candidacy, a sexist comment that echoed with millions of working women voters. The Clinton campaign was able to raise over $2 million just by highlighting Trump s comment and giving donors a  woman card  to mark the moment.Mitt Romney was pilloried over his comment that he had  binders full  of women, and he never was half as sexist as Trump has been on an average day.Donald Trump is most unpopular candidate for a major political party basically since polling was invented. Trump has an average of 60.6 percent disapproval!That is unheard of going into the party conventions, where candidates are usually a blank canvas before attack ads start to fly in the fall. But Trump is one of the most well-known people in America, and what America has seen   it doesn t like.President Obama nearly coasted to national electoral victories in back to back elections with a diverse, young, electorate. And while Hillary Clinton has had trouble connecting with younger voters in the Democratic primary, Donald Trump is the best positioned candidate to motivate the Obama coalition against him.He polls poorly with women, minorities, and in a recent poll younger voters indicated that despite their reservations about Clinton, they have near to no interest in Trump.At this point in the 2012 election, President Obama was 3.4 percent ahead of Mitt Romney in head-to-head national matchups. By comparison, Clinton leads Trump by an average of 6.2 percent, and that includes a poll from conservative pollster Rasmussen who got the 2012 election completely wrong.Most other recent polls show Clinton with leads of +11%, +7% and +11%.The New York Times  Nate Cohn explains why this is unlikely to change much:There have been 10-point shifts over the general election season before, even if it s uncommon. But there isn t much of a precedent for huge swings in races with candidates as well known as Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton. A majority of Americans may not like her, but they say they re scared of him. To have a chance, he ll need to change that.Unlike President George W. Bush in 2008, President Obama is unlikely to be a drag on the ticket. In addition to the unusual image of a sitting president campaigning for his party s nominee (Reagan was too ill to do it in 1988, the Gore campaign pushed Clinton away in 2000, and McCain did his best to hide from Bush in 2008), President Obama s approval ratings have inched back up over the last year, often above or near 50 percent.Additionally, the unemployment rate is at 5 percent, after hitting almost 10 percent in the Bush economy, and gas prices have come way down. Polls now show Americans feel good about the economy, after Obama s policies have gotten the country out of the Great Recession (without Republican help).That s good for the party in power, which means it s good for Hillary Clinton, and bad for Donald Trump.Featured image via Flickr