People keep making the argument that Trump’s large crowd sizes don’t mean anything, because Romney drew huge crowds too, and Obama’s rallies weren’t that big.
The flaw of this argument is that Obama drew huge crowds when he first ran for POTUS in ‘08. In ‘12, he was the incumbent.
I don’t ever remember incumbents crisscrossing the country and holding lots of campaign rallies. They are busy acting Presidential, and hoping that the electorate will reward them with another term, based on satisfaction with their first term.
For incumbents, it’s all about their convention speech, the debates, and first term job performance. Campaign rallies aren’t such a big deal for them.
This is not the case with Hillary. A majority of Americans believed Hillary would be our next POTUS at the beginning of the ‘08 primary season, based on nothing more than the media trying to push her as “inevitable”. Obama stole her thunder, because there was never any enthusiasm for her outside of the media. And there’s even less enthusiasm for her this time around.
She’s not an incumbent. If she can’t draw crowds at this juncture in her political career, then it means there’s just no enthusiasm for her, period.
This is widely acknowledged even on the left. Few on the right ever worried about enthusiasm for Clinton. The worry is entirely about cheating. We should revert to paper ballots and employ strict ID measures. At least try to keep it honest and above board.