Monday Open Thread [3.14.16]

Florida—Quinnipiac–Trump 46, Rubio 22, Cruz 14, Kasich 10
Florida—Quinnipiac–Clinton 60, Sanders 34
Florida—PPP–Clinton 57, Sanders 32
Ohio—Quinnipiac–Kasich 38, Trump 38, Cruz 16, Rubio 3
Ohio—Quinnipiac–Clinton 51, Sanders 46
Ohio—PPP–Clinton 46, Sanders 41
North Carolina—PPP–Trump 44, Cruz 33, Kasich 11, Rubio 7
North Carolina—PPP–Clinton 56, Sanders 37
Illinois—PPP–Clinton 48, Sanders 45
Missouri—PPP–Sanders 47, Clinton 46
Missouri—Docking Institute–Trump 36, Cruz 29, Rubio 9, Kasich 8
Missouri—Docking Institute–Clinton 47, Sanders 40

Jonathan Chait:

Last month, I made the case that a Donald Trump nomination would be better for America than the nomination of one of his Republican rivals. I no longer believe that. I began to change my mind when a report circulated highlighting his 1990 interview with Playboy in which he praised the brutality of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. This is not the first time I had seen Trump praise dictators. (He has effused over Vladimir Putin.) But Trump’s admiration for Putin seemed to spring from a more ordinary Republican partisan contempt for President Obama, and closely echoed pro-Putin comments made by fellow Republicans like Rudy Giuliani. Trump’s quarter-century-old endorsement of Chinese Communist Party repression went well beyond the familiar derangement of the modern GOP. This was not hatred of Obama, or some obnoxious drive to stick it to his supporters; it was evidence of an authentic and longstanding ideology. Trump has changed his mind about many things, but a through-line can be drawn from the comments Trump made and 1990 and the message of his campaign now: “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”

My previous view of Trump was as a kind of vaccine. The Republican Party relies on the covert mobilization of racial resentment and nationalism. Trump, as I saw it, was bringing into the open that which had been intentionally submerged. It seemed like a containable dose of disease, too small to take over its host, but large enough to set off a counter-reaction of healthy blood cells. But the outbreak of violence this weekend suggests the disease may be spreading far wider than I believed, and infecting healthy elements of the body politic.

I remain convinced that Trump cannot win the presidency. But what I failed to account for was the possibility that his authoritarian style could degrade American politics even in defeat. There is a whiff in the air of the notion that the election will be settled in the streets — a poisonous idea that is unsafe in even the smallest doses.

Taegan Goddard: [On Meet the Press,] Trump insisted that he did not condone violence, then he proceeded to condone violence, suggesting the man just “got carried away.” On CNN, Trump was asked if would soften his rhetoric before someone got seriously hurt or killed. Trump refused saying, “We are treated so unfairly, and I’m treated very unfairly.” Trump flatly refused to take any responsibility for violence at his rallies. […] But this is also something much more serious and more dangerous. By condoning the violence because he is treated unfairly, Trump is sending a clear message to the Republican establishment that if they try to deny him the Republican nomination at the convention, his supporters will literally fight back — with their fists.

Josh Marshall says Trump has just decided to let it all burn.

In the 36 hours since the Chicago blow up we’ve seen the chilling incident in Dayton where an anti-Trump protestor tried to rush the stage while Trump was speaking, Trump attacking “communist” Bernie Sanders, equating his protestor opponents with ISIS terrorists and threatening to send his supporters to Sanders’ rallies if Sanders doesn’t stand down. (Needless to say there is no evidence whatsoever that Sanders is involved in organizing or encouraging any protests at all.) The most recent up-ratcheting is Trump telling Meet the Press this morning that he wants to pay the legal fees of the man who sucker punched the protestor in Fayetteville (and later said that killing might be necessary next time.)

It may seem like I’m saying that Trump lit the fire but is now unable to put it out. But I’m not. It’s not that simple. What we can see now is that Trump can try to ‘pivot to the general’. But the primaries will follow him there whether he wants them to or not. Trump saw the tactical need to shift gears, as many of his fair weather supporters and opponents expected he would. But the momentum of events proved stronger. At a deeper level still, the cycle of reaction, revanche and provocation seems to be operating within Trump himself. […]

Trump was born very rich and ascended on his own to the level of the fantastically rich. He has achieved much but only known levels of privilege and entitlement few of us can imagine. And yet the early embrace of birtherism, the sting of the humiliation at Barack Obama’s hands, the palpable psyche energy he derives from ramping up a climate of racial confrontation all suggest he is animated, even driven, by the same rage at upended privilege and cultural and yes racial loss as his followers. All of which is to say that it is not that Trump can’t control the beast he’s unleashed. He cannot control himself because the same psychodrama and politics of resentment that is playing out among his followers is playing out within himself. Trump can pivot to the general all he wants. But the primaries will follow him there. Indeed, he will bring them.

It has always been clear to me that Donald Trump, while pretending to be all things to all people, was at his core, a diehard racist. He is evil.

Ezra Klein:

During a rally in St. Louis Friday, Donald Trump lamented that “nobody wants to hurt each other anymore.”

Yes, lamented.

The topic was protesters, and Trump’s frustration was clear. “They’re being politically correct the way they take them out,” he sighed. “Protesters, they realize there are no consequences to protesting anymore. There used to be consequences. There are none anymore.”

“Our country has to toughen up folks. We have to toughen up. These people are bringing us down. They are bringing us down. These people are so bad for our country, you have no idea.”

This is more than an aside; this is the core of Trump’s ideology. The protesters who interrupted his rally, the political correctness that kept the police from cracking their skulls, the press that takes the hippies’ side — this is why America has stopped being great. We were strong, and we were tough, and we didn’t take this kind of shit from anybody. And now we are weak, and we are scared, and we take this kind of shit from everybody.[…]

“We better toughen up, we better smarten up, and we better stop with this political correctness because it’s driving us down the tubes,” Trump said.

Hours after that speech, 32 people were arrested and several were injured as Trump’s supporters clashed with anti-Trump protesters and police. That night, Trump had to cancel a rally in Chicago for safety reasons.

Violence is scary. But violence-as-ideology is terrifying. And that’s where Trump’s campaign has gone.

Matt Yglesias now believes Trump is terrifying too.

Sunday morning, in the context of what he knew to be a growing controversy about violent behavior on the part of his supporters, Trump tweeted what can really only be interpreted as a threat to send goons to beat up Bernie Sanders supporters.

Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disruptors aren't told to go to my events. Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2016

He then followed this up by suggesting that he would use the resources at his disposal to help his supporters obtain immunity from legal consequence for violent acts they undertook on his behalf. […] The implications of this for what President Trump might do in the White House are terrifying and go well beyond any dispute over public policy. […]

There have been clear signs all year that this was the direction the Trump phenomenon was heading, but I assumed that as he got closer to the Republican nomination Trump would tone down his extreme behavior in order to demonstrate his acceptability to mainstream voters. In fact, he has done the opposite. It’s a surprising decision that has truly scary implications for how he might behave were he to actually win the presidency.

Michael Mishak wonders if the GOP has already lost Florida in November?

Even before the votes are tallied in Tuesday’s primary, some of the Sunshine State’s most prominent Republicans fear the GOP has already lost this all-important electoral linchpin for November—and, in a close general election, the party’s hopes for the presidency along with it. Trump may win the Republican primary, as polls suggest—and in the process deal Marco Rubio a deathblow in his home state. But there’s little optimism about the frontrunner’s viability as a general-election candidate in Florida. Or about any other Republican’s chances in November, for that matter.

Few states make a poorer match for the white-hot immigration rhetoric and bloody fisticuffs that have dominated this GOP primary season. Florida is home to the country’s third-largest Hispanic population, and Republicans have dominated state elections for the better part of two decades by making inroads with the increasingly diverse, increasingly independent electorate. Now, party leaders fret that Trump’s incendiary talk of Mexican rapists, deportation forces and border walls—and his rivals’ largely silent acquiescence for much of the cycle—could undo decades of GOP outreach and hamper their fortunes in down-ballot races in the state, including a key U.S. Senate campaign for the seat left vacant by Rubio.

Matt Yglesias thinks liberals should root for Ted Cruz. I have been. For nearly a year.

Politico reports. Kent Gray was pushed aside “early last week after the Trump camp learned he made few inroads with get-out-the-vote efforts and organizing volunteers.”

Clearly, Trump will lose Illinois to Cruz if we are getting this news. If Kasich can win Ohio, and then Cruz can win Missouri, a Florida win alone won’t look that good for Trump.

“Aside from the wonkiest of Washington circles and the most progressive corners of the left, no one’s heard of Tom Perez. He isn’t young or handsome. He has zero foreign policy experience. The highest office he’s ever been elected to is a suburban county council.” Politico reports.

“Yet the Labor secretary has emerged as a vice presidential sleeper pick, with chatter building among top Democrats—including Elizabeth Warren.”

“The idea of Perez making the leap to vice president is, on the face of it, inconceivable: Aside from his limited experience in elected office, it’s not like Clinton would need him to win Maryland… Except Perez has more credibility with committed progressives – who measure politicians in battle scars – than almost anyone else around.”

He does make a better pick than one of the Castro brothers (not Fidel or Raul). He helps you with Latinos and Progressives, and Labor.

A week of Trump’s lies: a brutal takedown from Politico.

“With the GOP front-runner scooping up delegates in a march toward the Republican nomination, Politico subjected a week’s worth of his words to our magazine’s fact-checking process… The result: more than five dozen statements deemed mischaracterizations, exaggerations, or simply false – the kind of stuff that would have been stripped from one of our stories, or made the whole thing worthy of the spike. It equates to roughly one misstatement every five minutes on average.”

“From warning of the death of Christianity in America to claiming that he is taking no money from donors, the Manhattan billionaire and reality-show celebrity said something far from truthful many times over to the thousands of people packed into his raucous rallies. His remarks represent an extraordinary mix of inaccurate claims about domestic and foreign policy and personal and professional boasts that rarely measure up when checked against primary sources.”

When Trump follows up a statement with “It’s true,” and he does that often, it is guaranteed he just lied to you.