Delaware Liberal

Wednesday Open Thread [6.29.2016]

Delaware Dem

These polls are utterly disastrous for Trump and his Republican Party. The Wave is here.

FLORIDA–PRESIDENT–CNN/ORC—Clinton 51, Trump 37
IOWA–PRESIDENT–CNN/ORC—Clinton 45, Trump 41
MICHIGAN–PRESIDENT–CNN/ORC—Clinton 50, Trump 33
NORTH CAROLINA–PRESIDENT–CNN/ORC—Clinton 48, Trump 38
OHIO–PRESIDENT–CNN/ORC—Clinton 46, Trump 37
PENNSYLVANIA–PRESIDENT–CNN/ORC—Clinton 49, Trump 35
VIRGINIA–PRESIDENT–CNN/ORC—Clinton 45, Trump 38

NORTH CAROLINA–U.S. SENATE–PPP—Burr 40, Ross 37
FLORIDA–U.S. SENATE–Bay News 9/SurveyUSA–Rubio 43, Murphy 43
WISCONSIN–U.S. SENATE–PPP— Feingold 50, Johnson 37
PENNSYLVANIA–U.S. SENATE–PPP—Toomey 40, McGinty 39
OHIO–U.S. SENATE–PPP—Portman 40, Strickland 39
NEW HAMPSHIRE–U.S. SENATE–PPP—Hassan 44, Ayotte 42
IOWA–U.S. SENATE–PPP—Grassley 46, Judge 39
ARIZONA–U.S. SENATE–PPP— McCain 42, Kirkpatrick 40
NORTH CAROLINA–GOVERNOR–PPP—McCrory 41, Cooper 41

Hillary Clinton and her allies “continue to dominate the presidential battleground-state airwaves, outspending Donald Trump and pro-Trump groups this month, $26 million to $0,” NBC News reports.

“For the week, it’s $7.5 million to $0 in the eight battlegrounds of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia. And when you add future ad reservations, it’s $140 million to $0.”

Markos at Daily Kos says we should trust Elizabeth Warren to know where she will be most effective:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is a smart person who has accomplished amazing things. She didn’t just create the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau—she did so despite stiff opposition from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner himself. That showed that she could play the inside game better than most, despite lacking much of a portfolio at the time (in essence, she chaired a Congressional oversight panel keeping tabs on Wall Street bailout money).

And yeah, she then followed that up by ousting a popular Republican senator when no other credible Democrat in a state overflowing with them was willing to challenge him.

Now there’s a debate over whether Warren would be most effective as a senator or vice president. I’ve been on both sides of that fence (senate vs VP), so I understand the validity of both positions. […]

Warren isn’t in this thing for personal aggrandizement. If she’s earned anything these last years, it’s trust of her sincerity and convictions. She’s held true to them, always fighting for what’s best even if at times she ends up being the reluctant warrior. Remember, we had to drag her kicking and screaming into the Senate race. Regardless, we know she can play the inside game and win, and she knows that as well. We know she can play the electoral Senate game and win, and she knows that as well.

It’s rare to have someone with that skill set. It gives her multiple hands, and she gets to decide which play gets her closest to her goals.

In short, she can 1) stay in the Senate as one of 100, and try to influence enough of her colleagues to make shit happen, then worry whether the House will follow suit, or 2) be the nation’s No. 2 elected official, be in the room when myriad decisions get made, and only have to worry about convincing one person.

Sean Trende: “While polling can give us a good take on where things stand today, I feel somewhat like a pilot flying without gauges when trying to figure out how things are likely to play out. Because just about all of the major analysts aren’t just against Trump – they loathe him – we’re basically situated like the British analysts were when looking at the Brexit election. Good arguments are quickly dismissed, while bad arguments slip through all too easily.”

“This increases the chances that we will miss things we might have otherwise seen, and will latch on to things that we shouldn’t. It just adds an awful lot of uncertainty to this election. That should make us all nervous.”

Harry Enten pointed this out during the Republican Primary, that all the analysts said Trump couldn’t win, but they were ignoring the polls that showed Trump leading throughout. So just pay attention to the polls and the cross tabs.

Harold Meyerson:

Unlike the UKIPs and the Trumpians, however, the left champions a range of policies – fiscal stimulus, worker rights, progressive taxation – that could actually address their nation’s plights. (Though Syzira, once it came to power in Greece, was blocked from implementing its program by creditor nations and banks.)

Moreover, these parties and tendencies – disproportionately of the young – are not merely racially and ethnically tolerant but racially and ethnically diverse. That’s why the appeals to nativism never stood a chance among Britain’s younger voters. That’s also why the most effective Democratic message to (largely white) young Sanders stalwarts, who can’t yet see themselves voting for Clinton, would be to have young immigrants, Latinos, blacks and Asians tell them just how a Trump presidency would impact — and in many cases ruin — their lives.

The far-right populism and talk of bigoted xenophobia from many non-big-city whites, who have been left behind by globalized capitalism, by the economic policies of Western governments and by the growing cosmopolitanism of urbanites and the young, has become a force in almost every Western democracy. It fuels Trump’s candidacy. Yet it probably lacks sufficient adherents to put him in the White House.

Nonetheless, the crash of 2008 and its rocky aftermath, like that of 1929 and its aftermath, has shaken the politics of the West. Brexit almost surely won’t be the last such shock.



Nate Cohn:

For decades, Republicans argued for lower taxes, fewer regulations and a smaller welfare state. Democrats took up the opposite view, and voters split along familiar lines.

Whatever you think of Donald Trump, it is clear that this election has the potential to reshape the allegiances of many white working-class voters who have traditionally sided with the Democrats, and many well-educated voters who have sided with the Republicans.

Mr. Trump on Tuesday laid out a radically different economic message than Republicans have advanced, and it holds considerable appeal to white working-class Democrats. He supported renegotiating or withdrawing fromNafta, cracking down on Chinese currency manipulation, and using United States steel for domestic infrastructure — which he promises to rebuild.

Along with his departures on immigration and the welfare state, Mr. Trump is moving away from the labor fights and culture wars that defined 20th-century politics, and toward the new divide over globalization and multiculturalism that might define 21st-century politics.

Yeah, but to support you also have to be a racist bigot.

Stuart Rothenberg:

Long-time Republican strategists and campaign consultants privately acknowledge they are so certain of Hillary Clinton’s victory – and so worried about its impact on Senate races and GOP control of the Senate – that they are already considering a controversial tactic that explicitly acknowledges Donald Trump’s defeat.

The tactic, used by congressional Republicans two decades ago, late in the 1996 campaign, involves running television ads that urge voters to elect a Republican Congress so that Clinton won’t have “a blank check” as president.

Chris Hayes has a great read on elites:

But I don’t want to downplay the sheer terrifying, barbaric power of atavistic ethnonationalist sentiment. That is the political equivalent of enriching uranium when you cultivate that. It is ungodly dangerous and morally odious for people to cultivate, despicable and contemptible.

My feeling about all this is you reserve your contempt for the people with power and not for the relatively powerless. The contempt is not for the voters here. The contempt is for the people who went about cultivating that sentiment.

I have enough contempt to go around. I despise racist voters and the cynical elites who play to them. Both must be destroyed.

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