Delaware Liberal

Wednesday Open Thread [6.22.16]

Delaware Dem

Steve Benen says Hillary Clinton is pursuing a 50 state strategy:

In his lengthy address to supporters last week, Bernie Sanders didn’t make specific demands of Democrats, but he condemned the party for having “turned its back on dozens of states in this country.” The senator insisted, “The Democratic Party needs a 50-state strategy. We may not win in every state tomorrow but we will never win unless we recruit good candidates and develop organizations that can compete effectively in the future.”

Given Sanders’ comments about the South a few months ago, he may not be the ideal messenger for this message, but if the senator is counting on Hillary Clinton’s campaign agreeing with his vision, he should be pleased with the latest Democratic developments. The Huffington Post reported over the weekend:

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign will maintain staff in all 50 states during the general election with an eye toward overwhelming Republicans in the fall and rebuilding the Democratic Party’s infrastructure thereafter.

[…] Clinton’s plan is already receiving praise from the Democrat most closely associated with the 50-state strategy: Howard Dean, the former DNC chair and former Vermont governor.

Josh Marshall:

What Trump needs, though it’s uncertain how he’d manage it, is to rebrand, build a cocoon and reemerge, as a sane, emotionally balanced Republican who could leverage public uncertainty about Hillary Clinton and harness the inherent strengths of the party which hasn’t held the presidency in eight years. He desperately needs a public perception reset on the temperament front. But his impulse, which always rules him, is to channel every white guy over 50 who’s spent twenty years gnashing his teeth for the opportunity to call Hillary a c#%t and developed hypertension for lack of an opportunity to say it to her face.

I can only imagine what this bodes for his big Hillary speech [today].

Rick Klein: “Where does Donald Trump go to get his base confident about his campaign? Not in internal management, with his campaign manager now out, the victim of an internal turf war that involved Trump’s three oldest children. Not in his fundraising report, a measly document that would have set a new low this century for a major-party candidate at this stage in the cycle if not for another personal contribution he made. And not in campaign messaging that hasn’t evolved since the distant primary phase, when insults and racially tinged remarks drew bold headlines.”

“All three elements will prove difficult to fix. But none might be as devastating as anemic fundraising, so long as big donors either sit on the sidelines or mull their options in congressional races. Those desperate to block Trump’s nomination before the convention have the fodder they need, just not a winning strategy or mechanism – at least not yet.”

“If Donald Trump’s claims that certain of his commercial ventures benefit charity are untrue, he could be held liable under Section 349 of New York’s General Business Law, which forbids deceptive business acts and practices, as well as under charitable solicitation laws, according to legal experts,” Politico reports.

“In promoting products as varied as Trump University, Trump Vodka, a Trump board game and his latest book, Crippled America, the businessman has declared that the proceeds would go to charity. None of Trump’s proceeds from Trump University have gone to charity, and only a few hundred dollars of charitable giving related to Trump Vodka has been accounted for.”

A new CNN/ORC poll finds that 51% of Republican voters want Donald Trump nominated at the GOP convention next month while 48% want someone else.

Stuart Rothenberg: “Trump and his allies argue that his appeal among populist voters will help carry Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and possibly even Michigan (16) and New Jersey (14), radically changing the political map and giving him a number of potential routes to victory.”

“That seems unlikely. President Obama’s margin in each of the four states was significantly greater than his overall national margin in 2012. He won nationally by 3.9 points but his margin was 5.4 points in Pennsylvania and 6.9 points in Wisconsin. Republican strategists begin almost every presidential election talking about snatching Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from the Democratic column, and each time they have failed.”

“The idea that New Jersey – or New York and California, which Trump has said he’ll put into play – will be a battlefield in the fall is nothing short of delusional. The mere fact that Trump and his strategists are talking about winning any of those three states undermines the credibility of their overall argument.”

Markos says Hillary is not pivoting to the center. She is doubling down on the left:

Our top, most high-profile Democrat is not afraid to stick with the same populist tone that was perfectly at home in a Democratic primary. And it isn’t because Clinton or Democrats are out of touch the way, say, Donald Trump and his GOP are. It’s because we are in sync with the American people.

[Her] speech [yesterday] isn’t the first sign that there is no “pivot” in Clinton’s rhetoric. How about Clinton’s Planned Parenthood speech a couple of weeks ago, in which she mentioned the word “abortion” 18 times?

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said that delegates to next month’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland should “vote the way they see fit,” which could mean not necessarily supporting presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, Politico reports.

Said Walker: “I think historically, not just this year, delegates are and should be able to vote the way they see fit. We’ll see how things go between now and the convention as to what the next steps are. I’m not going to speculate now only because you all know the situation may change by this afternoon, let alone between now and the convention.”

Mark Cuban personally attacked Donald Trump, telling Extra that Trump has been running for president for a year “but you don’t look at him and say, ‘Wow, he’s gotten so much smarter on this topic or that topic.’ In fact, you look at him and say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’”

He added: “It’s rare that you see someone get stupider before your eyes, but he’s really working at it… You have to give him credit. It’s a difficult thing to do but he’s accomplished it.”

Don’t miss David Bier’s piece at Newsweek which highlights “a year of Trump’s campaign in 59 crazy policies:”

Perhaps worst of all, Trump’s proposals expose how broad he thinks the powers of the presidency are: virtually infinite. There is never a glimmer of understanding that the government is bound by the Constitution, that the federal government has limited scope and authority, or that the presidency is just one of three equal branches of the federal government.

Instead, it is Trump, and Trump alone, who will transform American laws, government and society from the top down.

Trump will bomb and invade countries. Trump will steal their oil. Trump will kill deserters, torture suspects, bypass courts, ban Muslims, break treaties and have the military do things like mass executions with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood—all while getting Americans to say “merry Christmas” again.

Regarding the American Chapter of ISIS’s (otherwise known as Senate Republicans) refusal to pass common sense gun safety laws yesterday, USA Today pens a scathing editorial on the Senate’s inaction:

[I]n an extraordinary act of cowardice on Monday evening, 56 senators — 53 Republicans joined by three Democrats — threw away yet another opportunity to keep guns out of the hands of more felons, fugitives, the mentally ill or people prone to domestic violence.

These spineless lawmakers voted against advancing a commonsense measure to expand background checks to virtually all sales of guns, not just those sold by federally licensed dealers. The existing gap allows buyers who purchase from private sellers at gun shows, online or from newspaper ads to simply avoid the federal background check system. […]

Those who want to prevent future mass killings apparently will need to look outside Congress for help. Monday’s votes showed, once again, that too many members are too cowed by the gun lobby to take the actions necessary to save lives.

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