Jesus Christ. It's times like these that I wish I could be a Republican; they are far more resolute and don't have spines made of noodle.
RESOLVE!
I think the fact that the Republican Party can nominate someone like Trump and continue to function at a level of competitiveness among the voting public that's beginning to look comparable to 2012 remains a shock to many of us. Maybe it shouldn't be, but it is. I know that I was unprepared for it.
2) Look at the polls. Subtract the difference due to convention bounces and the different times of the convention and the trajectory of this race in terms of trends have largely followed 2012 all the way up until the July conventions day-for-day; the only divergence is that August 2016 proceeded to look like September 2012 rather than August 2012 because of the earlier conventions.
This is the only point from your post that I might have found especially compelling, but at a glance
those graphs looking nothing like each other. There is also very little value in comparing head-to-heads for the 2016 contest prior to May or June, when the nominations were settled.
And to the point that several others have raised, the scary thing isn't that Trump is more likely than not to win, it's that a Trump victory is looking a lot more plausible compared to what most of us believed three weeks ago. Just being as likely to win as Mitt Romney was at the same point in the race is a much more horrifying thing when it's a candidate with Trump's personal history and bizarre behavior.
I'll also be frank and admit that I have little confidence in Clinton as a candidate. The past two weeks have only further eroded that confidence. I don't know what to expect from her over the next month. This worries me more than any changes that we have seen in the polls so far.
