Wednesday Open Thread [8.3.16]

In his strongest denouncement of Donald Trump so far, President Obama said Mr. Trump was “unfit to serve as president” and urged the leaders of the Republican Party to withdraw their backing for his candidacy, the New York Times reports.

Said Obama: “The question they have to ask themselves is: If you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him?”

He added: “This isn’t a situation where you have an episodic gaffe. This is daily. There has to be a point at which you say, this is not somebody I can support for president of the United States, even if he purports to be a member of my party. The fact that that has not yet happened makes some of these denunciations ring hollow.”

Ironically this type of condemnation from Obama may force the GOP to rally around Trump, or prevent those who would denounce Trump from doing so. Since the GOP always does the opposite of anything, and I mean anything, Obama says. And that might have been Obama’s intention.

Josh Marshall:

It may not seem terribly important right now with all the stories roiling the campaign. But I think there’s a good chance it’s the most important. Over the last 48 hours Trump’s allies, surrogates and now Trump himself have forcibly injected the topic of voter fraud or ‘election rigging’ into the election. Longtime TPM Readers know this topic has probably been the publication’s single greatest and most consistent focus over fifteen years. The subject has been investigated countless times. And it is clear that voter fraud and especially voter impersonation fraud is extremely rare – rare almost to the point of non-existence, though there have been a handful of isolated cases.

Vote fraud is clearly the aim in what is coming from Trump allies. But Trump’s own comment – “I’m afraid the election’s gonna be rigged, I have to be honest” – seems to suggest some broader effort to manufacture votes or falsify numbers, to allude to some broader conspiracy. Regardless, Trump is now pressing this issue to lay the groundwork to discredit and quite possibly resist the outcome of the November election.

Noam Bramson asks if any of us can imagine Trump giving a genuine concession speech like McCain or Romney gave: “We take concessions for granted in this country. We simply assume that losing candidates will dutifully congratulate the winners and then depart the stage. And so it has been — thank goodness — throughout the American experience.”

“But like much else in this strange election year, perhaps our confidence in this historic norm is misplaced. After all, around the world, there have been innumerable examples of election losers who simply refused to acknowledge their defeat. Losers who shaped elaborate conspiracy myths, who incited mobs to violence, who perpetrated fraud to conceal their loss, who attempted desperately to cling to power.”

“Even when such actions do not escalate into bloodshed, the damage can be grave, intensifying the divisions of a campaign, until they explode into mutually distrustful hatred. If you think the hyper-partisan atmosphere of present-day American politics is bad, just wait until a loser refuses to concede.”

Before we start arming ourselves for the coming Second Civil War where we will have to lethally put down the violent and rioting Trump supporters who think losing to Hillary in a massive landslide is some kind of rigged election, Greg Sargent says chillax.

Is it possible that Donald Trump has begun to contemplate his own political mortality? Is it possible that Trump, who had previously boasted to GOP primary audiences that he would beat Hillary Clinton “easily” — has begun to contemplate the possibility that he might lose the presidential election?

It is perhaps not a coincidence that Trump has suddenly stopped tweeting about polls (which are now showing Clinton taking a meaningful lead) at precisely the moment that he is escalating his efforts to cast doubt, in advance, on the legitimacy of the general election’s outcome.

“A surge of online donations that rushed in as Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic presidential nomination last week helped her campaign raise $63 million in July, its largest monthly haul yet,” the Washington Post reports.

Brendan Nyhan: “Is vote fraud common in American politics? Not according to United States District Judge Lynn Adelman, who examined the evidence from Wisconsin and ruled in late April that ‘virtually no voter impersonation occurs’ in the state and that ‘no evidence suggests that voter-impersonation fraud will become a problem at any time in the foreseeable future.’”

“Strikingly, however, a Marquette Law School poll conducted in Wisconsin just a few weeks later showed that many voters there believed voter impersonation and other kinds of vote fraud were widespread — the likely result of a yearslong campaign by conservative groups to raise concerns about the practice. Thirty-nine percent of Wisconsin voters believe that vote fraud affects a few thousand votes or more each election. One in five believe that this level of fraud exists for each of the three types of fraud that individuals could commit: in-person voter impersonation, submitting absentee ballots in someone else’s name, and voting by people who are not citizens or Wisconsin residents.”

Just as foreign policy has come to the forefront of the campaign, a new CNN/ORC poll finds Hillary Clinton has widened her edge over Donald Trump as more trusted to handle foreign policy, 59% to 36%, and has pulled even with Trump on handling terrorism, 48% to 48%.

“And on the most prominent foreign policy issue of late, Russia and its relationship with the US, nearly 6-in-10 see the country as unfriendly, and about half say they think the Russian government is attempting to influence the outcome of the US presidential election.”

Trump is now openly taunting Paul Ryan to unendorse him:https://t.co/01K7qqqmlb pic.twitter.com/0WmppRCnN3

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) August 2, 2016

Rick Klein: “To review the bidding since the post-convention weekend… Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton the devil, said the election will be rigged, accused a local fire marshal of limiting his crowd for political reasons, and said his daughter should find another job if she were sexually harassed. He stayed on the attack against the family of a fallen service member, and saw a military mom who asked his vice-presidential candidate about that booed by Trump’s own supporters. He’s clarified his call for the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s email as ‘sarcasm,’ and he’s also clarified that he did know that Russia had taken over Crimea. He acknowledged that he didn’t get a letter from the NFL about debates after all. In the political realm, he offered a measure of public support to House Speaker Paul Ryan’s long-shot primary challenger, a week before that election.”

“Plenty of candidates make gaffes, though these actions amount to more than that. They veer between reckless, careless, and just plain mean. The only through-line is Trump being Trump, with no apparent strategy greater than that. At this post-convention time for party consolidation, with everything magnified in the final 100 days before Nov. 8, this looks like a candidate who senses he is losing and is not happy about it.”

ARIZONA–PRESIDENT–Predictive Insights–Clinton 45, Trump 42

So we update our map thusly:

Stuart Rothenberg: “The last couple of weeks have been nothing short of disastrous for the Republican Party.”

“No, Donald Trump’s position in the race hasn’t worsened dramatically, nor did the Democratic convention wash away Hillary Clinton’s many political warts. When it comes to the presidential race, we will see what the post-convention polls show.”

“Things have deteriorated for the GOP because Donald Trump’s comments about Russia and Vladimir Putin have further shredded the Republican Party’s historically greatest strength: national security and defense themes. Add to that Trump’s — and GOP delegates’ — performance at their convention (‘Lock her up!’) and Trump’s positions on trade, taxes, spending and entitlements, which also contradict the long-standing Republican message, and the party is nothing short of a mess.”

Zack Beaucamp at Vox says Hillary had a paragraph in her acceptance speech last week that was the best explanation for her candidacy that has been mentioned to date:

Here’s what she said:

It is true. I sweat the details of policy, whether we’re talking about the exact level of lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, the number of mental health facilities in Iowa, or the cost of your prescription drugs. Because it’s not just a detail if it’s your kid, if it’s your family. It’s a big deal. And it should be a big deal to your president.

She’s right: Nearly every policy decision a president makes has tremendous consequences for American lives. The president is an awesomely powerful office, possessing — on issues both domestic and foreign — the ability to decide who lives and who dies.

Clinton’s question to America, then, is simple. When it’s your life on the line, who do you want making the decisions: a woman with a reputation for maybe caring too much about the details, or a man who famously can’t be bothered with them?

First Read: “Donald Trump’s confounding war with a Gold Star family — earning condemnation from veterans groups and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle – has started to have a distinct air over the last 36 hours of a situation that’s unraveling. It’s the latest in a long list of fights that have so far failed to sink Trump’s candidacy, but something about this particular controversy feels different. It’s pushing some neutral groups off the sidelines (see the nonpartisan VFW’s strongly-worded response), it’s undermining the GOP’s mantle as the party of reverence to the military and national security, and it’s putting Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan in a particularly torturous bind as they try to defend the Khan family without so much as naming their own nominee.”

“Mike Pence, Trump’s own VP, faced a question about Trump’s treatment of the Khans last night from a military mom who was booed by the crowd as Pence offered words of solace but no apology. But so far, Republicans aren’t going so far as to un-endorse their nominee as a result of the Khan controversy. (Not even John McCain, who offered the most biting statement targeting Trump yet!) This moment could provide a last exit ramp for Republicans to withdraw their support for Trump before the heat of the general election, which now seems sure to draw even more outlandish reactions from a candidate who’s shown little deference to the party. And the pressure isn’t letting up.”

As baby cries during rally, Trump first says "I love babies," then "Kidding, you can get the baby out of here." https://t.co/FhVeiFAelU

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) August 2, 2016

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson told CNN that Mitt Romney was considering endorsing him for president this fall. Romney last month: “If Bill Weld were at the top of the ticket, it would be very easy for me to vote for Bill Weld for president. So I’ll get to know Gary Johnson better and see if he’s someone who I could end up voting for. That’s something which I’ll evaluate over the coming weeks and months.”

We may hear from Bush '41 and '43 soon about Trump. The Khans have made this a matter of conscience for a CinC. Like when '41 left the NRA.

— Tim Naftali (@TimNaftali) August 2, 2016