Delaware Liberal

Friday Open Thread [8.12.16]

Delaware Dem

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–Reuters/Ipsos–Clinton 42, Trump 36
FLORIDA–PRESIDENT–FOX 13/Opinion Savvy–Clinton 45, Trump 44
IOWA–PRESIDENT–Suffolk University–Trump 41, Clinton 40
MAINE–PRESIDENT–Breitbart/Gravis–Clinton 42, Trump 36
NEW YORK–PRESIDENT–Breitbart/Gravis–Clinton 53, Trump 36
GEORGIA–PRESIDENT–Breitbart/Gravis–Trump 45, Clinton 44
SOUTH CAROLINA–PRESIDENT–PPP–Trump 41, Clinton 39
TEXAS–PRESIDENT–Reuters/Ipsos-Trump 46–Clinton 35

A new Fox News Latino poll shows Hillary Clinton holds a commanding 46 point lead over Donald Trump among Hispanic voters, 66% to 20%.

Donald Trump’s campaign and top Republican Party officials plan what one person called a “come to Jesus” meeting on Friday to discuss the Republican nominee’s struggling campaign, Politico reports. Though a campaign source dismissed it as a “typical” gathering, others described it as a more serious meeting, with one calling it an “emergency meeting.” “It comes at a time of mounting tension between the campaign and the Republican National Committee, which is facing pressure to pull the plug on Trump’s campaign and redirect party funds down ballot to protect congressional majorities endangered by Trump’s candidacy.”

Donald Trump told the Miami Herald that he would support trying U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism in military tribunals — something that is almost certainly unconstitutional. Said Trump: “Well, I know that they want to try them in our regular court systems, and I don’t like that at all. I don’t like that at all.”

He really hasn’t read the Constitution.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) told the Tennessean that he believed Donald Trump went “far too far” in statements claiming President Obama founded ISIS.

Said Corker: “This has been a very unusual election. And regardless of whether the candidate on my side of the aisle says things that I disagree with or not, if you ask me, I’m going to share my disagreement on certain things and my agreement on certain things. But to say that an elected official in our country founded a terrorist organization like ISIS is taking the facts that took place in 2011 and carrying that far too far.”

Zack Beauchamp at Vox brings up pesky things calls facts as he explains that ISIS was founded well before President Obama took office:

In short: The group that would become ISIS was founded in Jordan in 1999, and became devoted to holding territory in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. You can debate which of these constitutes ISIS’s “founding” in some metaphysical sense. But by any definition, the group was founded well before President Obama came into office. Trump is just flatly wrong on this. […]

Okay, a Trump defender might say, but Trump’s real point isn’t that Obama “created” ISIS. It’s that Obama withdrew US troops from Iraq in 2011, creating a security vacuum that allowed ISIS to regain its strength.

This is a pretty standard conservative narrative, one not at all unique to Trump. It is, however, quite wrong. The real sources of ISIS’s recent growth were the Syrian civil war and political sectarianism in Iraq, neither of which was within the power of United States to prevent.

Hell, if we had stayed in Iraq, the only thing that would have changed is that more American soldiers would be dead today, not less Iraqi and Syrian civilians.

“Donald Trump has the GOP trapped in not one Catch-22, but two. Call it a Catch-44,” Jonah Goldberg writes. “The first Catch-22 has been the subject of widespread conversation over the last few weeks. As GOP pollster Glen Bolger summed it up for the New York Times: ‘Do we run the risk of depressing our base by repudiating the guy? Or do we run the risk of being tarred and feathered by independents for not repudiating him? We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.’”

“That brings us to the second Catch-22. Republican candidates at this stage have no excuses to offer if they decide to repudiate Trump other than naked self-interest.”

Katy Tur writes for Marie Claire about her experiences covering Donald Trump’s presidential campaign:

The complexion of the crowd reflects Trump’s base, which, according to polls, is white and male. They dress in all-camouflage, or all red, white, and blue, or—because they are meeting a billionaire–all suits, gowns, and formalwear. There are moms, cute kids, and roaming packs of young people. The pregame parking lot can feel like a state fair without the Ferris wheel.

Trump is a room-reader. He’ll slow down a line, rephrase a point, work in a pause, and ride the energy of his audience wherever it takes him. For 45, 60, even 90 minutes, he’ll run through classic riffs, like bomb the hell out of ISIS, build a wall, make America great again. But he’ll also experiment, as when he launched an ethnically tinged attack on a Mexican- American judge deciding the civil fraud case against Trump University.

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