Thursday Open Thread, June 9, 2016

“A handful of people are expected to play key roles in brokering peace between the two warring campaigns, including President Obama, Vice President Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV),” the Washington Post reports.

“Obama and White House political director David Simas, as well as Warren and Reid, have been in communication with both camps to lay the foundation for an eventual coming together, according to several senior Democrats. Obama called both candidates Tuesday night and was scheduled to meet with Sanders at the White House on Thursday. Sanders also plans to meet with Reid that day on Capitol Hill.”

“There is considerable recognition among some party leaders that Sanders deserves deference from Clinton as well as some concessions that would continue to elevate the populist ideas that have been at the heart of his candidacy.”

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) “personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates,” the AP reports.

“The money came from a Trump family foundation in apparent violation of rules surrounding political activities by charities. A political group backing Bondi’s re-election, called And Justice for All, reported receiving the check Sept. 17, 2013 — four days after Bondi’s office publicly announced she was considering joining a New York state probe of Trump University’s activities… After the check came in, Bondi’s office nixed suing Trump, citing insufficient grounds to proceed.”

Chris Cillizza: “For party leaders who’ve lined up with Trump amid polling that suggested he was running surprisingly competitively against Democrat Hillary Clinton, the time is rapidly approaching to either hop off the Trump train or decide you are riding it all the way to Nov. 8.”

“At the moment, it appears as though most party leaders are trying to dangle a leg off the train while still holding on.”

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Florida finds that Sen. Marco Rubio remains quite unpopular in the state in the wake of his failed Presidential bid, and that voters aren’t interested in seeing him run for the Senate this year.

Key finding: “Only 32% of voters in the state approve of the job Rubio is doing as Senator, to 54% who disapprove. Those numbers make him one of the least popular Senators in the country.”

Iowa state Sen. David Johnson (R) told the Des Moines Register that he has suspended his Republican Party membership to protest “the racist remarks and judicial jihad” by presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Said Johnson: “I will not stand silent if the party of Lincoln and the end of slavery buckles under the racial bias of a bigot.”

Jonathan Chait says the GOP needs its racists: “There is nothing inherently racist about Ryan’s policy agenda. The arguments for enormous, regressive tax cuts, deregulation of finance and carbon pollution, and large reductions in spending assistance for the poor may be unpersuasive, but they have no intellectual connection to racism.”

“The trouble for Republicans is that building a real-world constituency for these policies does rely on racism. Conservatives stopped the momentum of the New Deal in the mid-1960s only when they associated it with support for the black underclass. Republican politics has grown increasingly racialized over time, a trend that has dramatically accelerated during the Obama era.”

Rick Klein on what Bernie wants: “There’s a question that’s been puzzling Democratic operatives, both inside and outside the Clinton campaign, for weeks now: What does Bernie want? That is to say, now that it’s overwhelmingly obvious he won’t get what he really wants, what will Bernie Sanders settle for? The time has come for him to sort through the conflicting advice of his advisers and get over any personal affronts to chart a new path forward. He’s earned the right to something, and something more than a party platform can deliver. As dangerous as he was to Hillary Clinton’s campaign before is as powerful as he can be for the Democratic Party now. But first he needs to decide and enunciate what he actually wants.”

First Read: “Fourteen months after Hillary Clinton launched her second presidential bid and almost a year since Donald Trump began his run, the general election officially begins — with Election Day now exactly five months away. And here is the reality: Trump squandered his five-week head start after wrapping up his party’s nomination on May 3 as Clinton and Bernie Sanders battled another month.”

“Maybe most noteworthy of all, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered this warning shot to Trump: ‘I think it’s time for him to look like a serious candidate for president, which means that you need to think before you speak, you need to apologize when you make a mistake, and get on script.’ Ouch. In fairness to Trump, he accomplished that in his speech last night (despite how stilted his Teleprompter-aided performance seemed). Trump has another month to calm his party. If he doesn’t, the GOP is in big trouble this fall.”

Ed Kilgore sees two conditions that would need to be present before the GOP resorts to the nuclear option of dumping Trump:

The first would be a widespread abandonment of Trump by the very party opinion-leaders who have been climbing aboard his bandwagon in the last few weeks — a mass exodus on the “off-ramp” Graham is talking about. The second and more important development would be a radical change in the rank-and-file sentiment — which was strongly evident long before Trump appeared to have nailed down the nomination — opposing any kind of “coup” against the primary results.

Yeah, dumping Trump won’t work because they you will piss off all those voters who elected him the nominee in the first place. You need them to vote this fall to keep Republicans across the land in office. If they stay home: Boom. Democrats sweep everything. The Republicans are in a no win situation of their own making and I am getting the popcorn:

David Corn has a Game of Thrones analogy:

In the HBO series Game of Thrones, one overwhelming theme has dominated the six seasons: humans should not get lost in bickering for power when an existential threat looms. All the various clans—the Lannisters, the Starks, the Targaryens, the Boltons, the Tyrells, the Baratheons, and others—waste blood and treasure vying for control of this throne or that castle, while a zombie army with the capacity to eradicate humanity is slowly advancing from the north. Oh fools, you mortals be. And as the political primary season draws to an end, Democrats are in a position similar to that of the assorted houses of Westeros. An existential threat is on the horizon: Donald Trump. He’s a narcissistic bigot who in power could be a profound danger. He seems to lack a basic understanding of the nuclear arsenal of which he would be in charge. He claims climate change is a hoax. He has vowed to play chicken with the debt ceiling. It is not hard to envision him triggering (or ignoring) crises that would threaten the survival of the United States or other parts of the globe. If he accepted budgets from the Republican-controlled Congress, millions of low- and middle-income Americans would lose assistance. And his Supreme Court appointments could well restrict reproductive rights, bolster corporate interests, and approve further erosions of voting rights. Make America great again? No, with Trump, winter is coming.

Given this harsh reality, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the socialist independent turned Democrat who has run a stupendous campaign that has promoted progressive causes and inspired millions, has a stark choice. To continue his crusade to win the Democratic Party’s crown or to drop his claim and join forces with a rival to form a common front against the Night’s King (that is, Trump). And he ought to reach a decision soon.

Bloomberg: “According to Kantar Media, Clinton and Sanders aired 206,528 spots between them this year—and not one was deemed “negative” by the analysts in Kantar’s Campaign Media Analysis Group.” Said Kantar exec Elizabeth Wilner: “In an open presidential primary, this is probably unprecedented.”

That is rather amazing when you think about it. Yes, there were negative attacks in the primary, from both Bernie and Hillary, but not on TV or radio.

Francis Wilkinson:

The agony of the GOP, unfortunately, will continue to be foisted on the nation at large. Ornstein, who predicted Trump’s success, also has a four-point prediction of the Republicans’ agenda if Trump loses in November.

1. Delegitimize the president.
2. Delegitimize government.
3. Incite their base to anger.
4. Suppress the vote of the other side.

That’s a familiar recipe. But a Republican opposition under President Hillary Clinton would likely be marked by weaker leadership (undermined by Trump’s candidacy), a higher concentration of anti-government radicals (as more moderate Republicans lose seats) and a notable uptick in political desperation (as the White House appears increasingly beyond grasp). Republicans have already stooped to nominate Trump. The bar could go lower.

The next step lower is armed insurrection and then civil war.

The most anti-Clinton Sanders folks sill have very positive views of Obama, Warren, Biden https://t.co/pPZ08G7Ix0 pic.twitter.com/t6o9IZwbaM

— Will Jordan (@williamjordann) June 8, 2016

All figures who will strongly endorse Clinton, helping bring anti-Clinton Ds back into the fold https://t.co/WvjAP3T7hl

— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) June 8, 2016