Thursday Open Thread [8.4.16]

Watch: What are some major concerns about Trump's handling of national security? Hayden and #morningjoe weigh in. https://t.co/FyFoSmJlJI

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) August 3, 2016

Rick Klein explains why this might be a tipping point:

Much of political punditry over the past year-plus has been spent debating whether Donald Trump had, finally, picked a foe he couldn’t defeat. John McCain? Megyn Kelly? A disabled reporter? A federal judge whose parents were Mexican? Heidi Cruz? The pope himself? Since Trump is still standing, one can argue he won his feuds with all of them. But taking on Khizr Khan, an American Muslim father of a slain US soldier, Trump is finding a different kind of challenge.

Khan’s personal loss gives him the right to speak out. His convention speech gave him instant celebrity. Unlike the judge or the pope, he can respond publicly as he chooses. He has no overt partisan affiliations or motivations. Might this be the conflict – the first – that gets a full apology from Trump?

“I don’t know where the bottom is,” Hillary Clinton said in responding to this controversy. For now, she’s happy to have Trump look for it.

Greg Sargent adds that it may be the last chance for Republicans:

If Republicans don’t break off their support for Trump’s candidacy now, they run the risk of having no choice but to do so after Trump sinks even further into wretchedness and depravity, to a point of true no return. (Presumably there is such a point.) At that juncture, their move will look unprincipled and desperate, leaving them stained — perhaps irrevocably — with their previous willingness to stick by him during much of his descent, and depriving their break with him of whatever moral force it might have had if done earlier.

Making our economy work for everyone starts by making sure those at the top pay their fair share in taxes.https://t.co/uDdkrzKL9O

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 3, 2016

Noah Rothman at Commentary on the Trumplosion:

In most electoral campaigns that go sour, a kind panic-driven fission doesn’t achieve critical mass until the mid-to-late autumn. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is already there, and it’s only August. […]

Late Monday night, sources within the Trump campaign revealed to reporters that two aides close to the candidate had been fired. Ed Brookover, a long-time GOP strategist, and Jimmy Stracner, Trump’s Western regional political director, got the axe “in what three sources described as a shakeup,” Politico reported. Campaign “shakeups” are usually signs that the vehicle has hit the skids, the driver knows it, and is seeking to get back on track. Chaos, however, is the constant state of the Trump campaign. For that reason alone, presumably, few made much of these high-profile dismissals.

It soon became clear that this erratic behavior wasn’t a sober-minded restructuring effort that the Trump campaign’s dedicated operatives would welcome. “Manafort not challenging (Trump) anymore,” said a close associate of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, according to reporting by CNBC’s John Harwood. “Mailing it in. Staff suicidal.” NBC News reporter Ali Vitali later confirmed this revelation, also citing a Trump campaign source, who told her “it’s all true” and “way worse than people realize.” Manafort’s alleged state of composure should be taken with a large grain of salt. What is compelling in this reporting is that several Trump staffers are revealing to journalists the extent of the downward spiral in which Trump campaign finds itself. […]

The Trumplosion has only just begun. With 96 days remaining until the election, there is every reason to believe the situation for Republicans will get worse before it improves. The GOP cannot say it wasn’t warned.

If Trump is serious about "making America great again," he should start by making his products in America.https://t.co/1VVoUbgAn3

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 3, 2016

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–Reuters/Ipsos–Clinton 43, Trump 35
NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–Fox News–Clinton 49, Trump 39
MICHIGAN–PRESIDENT–Detroit News–Clinton 41, Trump 32
NEW HAMPSHIRE–PRESIDENT–WBUR/MassInc–Clinton 47, Trump 32
PENNSYLVANIA–PRESIDENT–Franklin & Marshall–Clinton 49, Trump 38

A new CNN/ORC poll finds President Obama’s approval rating has risen to 54% to 45% and now stands at its highest level since just before his second inauguration in 2013. More popular than Reagan was at this point.

Josh Marshall:

Let me start by saying I see no chance that Trump withdraws from the race, despite Republican wishful thinking to the contrary. Call it big game unicorn hunting. But unicorn studies is a perfectly respectable discipline. So I wanted to explore one aspect of this scenario. In the quite unlikely case of Trump leaving the race, who would replace him? My understanding is that in this all but unprecedented situation the Republican National Committee would convene and pick a replacement. Even if they wanted to canvas the views of Republicans nationwide there’s simply no practical way and no time to do that.

So who do they pick? Good luck. Trump isn’t an accident. His ascendence is tied to Republican voters who became a sort of frankenstein’s monster of the GOP elites’ own creation. Weened on decades of victim-speak, impossible goals, over-primed lust for revenge against various domestic bad guys and outsiders and perverts and all the rest, they finally rebelled and chose someone who at least said he could follow through on the political snuff films they see on Breitbart, Newsmax, WorldNetDaily and the rest.

Trump quitting and being replaced is quite impossible. If he is “voluntarily” forced from the race at this stage 40% of the GOP doesn’t show up to vote in November. This is a lose-lose situation for the GOP no matter what happens. So what is behind both Trump’s erratic behavior after the DNC and the panic among Republicans? It is not anything Trump has done or said, because the truth about Trump has been known for a year. Marshall:

In truth, I don’t think it’s really the Khans or the endorsements. It’s the polls. Seasoned politicians should know that a convention bounce can subside rather quickly. But this is a sizable bounce. And Trump’s behavior coming out of the DNC doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence that he’ll regain his footing.

When Trump clinched the nomination, his polls surged. It turned out to be a fleeting surge. But it provided critical grease on the skids of numerous Republicans coming around to at least nominal support for his candidacy. The dip in his numbers, fleeting or enduring, are having a similar effect. But whatever. Bad polls numbers, the refusal to endorse the House Speaker in his primary race, these appear to be the drivers. Is there really anything we’ve seen about Donald Trump in the last week that wasn’t entirely obvious two weeks ago? Of course not. This is craven and ridiculous any way you slice it. Sometimes the train is rumbling down the tracks at 120 miles an hour. You have no brakes. You have no conductor. You have no way to change physics. Sometimes that’s just how it is.

Jonathan Chait on that point:

Republicans have calculated that turning against their nominee threatens to turn the election into a rout that would bring down other Republicans down-ballot. The party will probably stagger on to November. But, for the first time, an actual revolt of some kind is on the table.

Nate Silver: “There are some hints that Clinton’s post-convention lead over Trump will eventually settle in at about 7 percentage points, give or take a couple points. The biggest tip-off is that both the national polls and the state polls we’ve seen so far look similar to the ones we were seeing in June, when Clinton maintained a lead over Trump of about 7 points after wrapping up the Democratic nomination. Since Clinton and Trump were roughly tied after the GOP convention, a 7-point lead for Clinton would mean she’d gotten about a 7-point bounce, double the size of Trump’s.”

Booman:

People talk about there being a 40% floor or a 45% floor below which no Republican or Democratic presidential candidate can fall, but that floor is held up by joists and support beams that Trump has eaten through like an army of famished termites. Trump can absolutely fall below 40%, and possibly far below it. His support right now is around 41 percent and it’s eroding. The defections will continue and could easily become a stampede. It couldn’t be more obvious that this is the future that is anticipated by the Republicans who are plotting an intervention with Trump’s children.

For this reason, though, the Democrats don’t want Trump to drop out. So, maybe now is the time to ease up on him while he deals with the insurrection he’s caused?

Nate Cohn:

The polls now put Mrs. Clinton a bit ahead of the level she held before James Comey, the F.B.I. director, excoriated her for her use of a private email server. She held a similar lead in April — before Mr. Trump won the nomination in May and narrowed her lead for the month or so that followed. This has been the race’s natural resting place when there hasn’t been something else suppressing Mrs. Clinton’s support — another reason to think she might be able to retain most of her bounce.

For Mr. Trump, the danger is that he has few opportunities to prevent Mrs. Clinton from further consolidating her support over the coming weeks. There are few reasons to think he has helped himself since the convention by firing back at the parents of Humayun Khan and drawing condemnation from some Republican leaders.