Delaware Liberal

Monday Open Thread [8.15.16]

Delaware Dem

FLORIDA–PRESIDENT–CBS News/YouGov–Clinton 45, Trump 40
GEORGIA–PRESIDENT–CBS News/YouGov–Trump 45, Clinton 41
NEW HAMPSHIRE–PRESIDENT–CBS News/YouGov–Clinton 45, Trump 36

A new USA Today/Rock the Vote poll finds Hillary Clinton is favored by 56% of voters under the age of 35, while Donald Trump is backed by only 20%.

The Atlantic: “But, particularly over the past two months, Trump’s campaign seems less like a haphazard effort, and more like a deliberate and conscious attempt to resurrect these discarded GOP tactics, recasting them for the current moment.”

“One glaring, underreported clue about the method behind the post-primary Trump madness is his selection of Paul Manafort as chair of his national campaign. Manafort’s appointment, followed by the ousting of Corey Lewandowski in June, was widely seen as a move to professionalize Trump’s disorganized campaign staff just ahead of the convention. But along with credentials earned from working with top GOP politicians… Manafort also brought decades of experience as an overseer of the Southern Strategy. Since the 1980s, Manafort’s business partners have included Charles Black, who helped launch the Senate career of outspoken segregationist Jessie Helms, and Lee Atwater, who was behind the infamously racist Willie Horton ads run by the George H. W. Bush campaign.”

“And it was Manafort who arranged for Ronald Reagan to kick off his post-convention presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair just outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three young civil rights workers were brutally murdered in 1964.”

New York Times: “Mr. Manafort’s involvement with moneyed interests in Russia and Ukraine had previously come to light. But as American relationships there become a rising issue in the presidential campaign — from Mr. Trump’s favorable statements about Mr. Putin and his annexation of Crimea to the suspected Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails — an examination of Mr. Manafort’s activities offers new details of how he mixed politics and business out of public view and benefited from powerful interests now under scrutiny by the new government in Kiev.”

“Publicly, Republican Party officials continue to stand by Donald Trump. Privately, at the highest levels, party leaders have started talking about cutting off support to Trump in October and redirecting cash to saving endangered congressional majorities,” Politico reports.

“Since the Cleveland convention, top party officials have been quietly making the case to political journalists, donors and GOP operatives that the Republican National Committee has done more to help Trump than it did to support its 2012 nominee Mitt Romney and that, therefore, Trump has only himself and his campaign to blame for his precipitous slide in the polls.”

Dan Balz: “The unraveling of Donald Trump’s candidacy continues apace, a long and steady decline since the high point three months ago. If he were deliberately trying to avoid winning the election, he could hardly be doing a better job.”

“The hole he has dug for himself is wide and deep. National polls and battleground state polls all tell a similar story. Hillary Clinton has opened up a small-to-significant lead over Trump almost everywhere it counts. Unless Trump can reverse course, Clinton, despite persistent questions about her honesty, is on track to win a handsome electoral college majority. The lone bright spot for Trump: It’s August not October. But that comes with a caveat.”

“Republicans hope Trump is bottoming out. They are waiting for a pivot that could and should have happened before Memorial Day. They wonder whether it will happen by the end of the month or at all… The general election is already half over, and Trump has lost the first half decisively.”

New York Times: “Advisers who once hoped a Pygmalion-like transformation would refashion a crudely effective political showman into a plausible American president now increasingly concede that Mr. Trump may be beyond coaching. He has ignored their pleas and counsel as his poll numbers have dropped, boasting to friends about the size of his crowds and maintaining that he can read surveys better than the professionals.”

“In private, Mr. Trump’s mood is often sullen and erratic, his associates say. He veers from barking at members of his staff to grumbling about how he was better off following his own instincts during the primaries and suggesting he should not have heeded their calls for change.”

“But in interviews with more than 20 Republicans who are close to Mr. Trump or in communication with his campaign… they described their nominee as exhausted, frustrated and still bewildered by fine points of the political process and why his incendiary approach seems to be sputtering.”

“The Republican Party could be nearing a breaking point with Donald Trump,” the AP reports.

“As he skips from one gaffe to the next, GOP leaders in Washington and in the most competitive states have begun openly contemplating turning their backs on their party’s presidential nominee to prevent what they fear will be wide-scale Republican losses on Election Day.”

“Back in 1996, the party largely gave up on nominee Bob Dole once it became clear he had little chance of winning, so it’s not without precedent. Nevertheless, it’s a jolting prospect now, with roughly three months still left before the Nov. 8 vote and weeks before the three presidential debates.”

Dan Drezner suggests Donald Trump has stumbled into a campaign doom loop:

1. Trump’s polling gets a negative shock
2. Fewer moderates attend his rallies
3. Only hardcore supporters go see Trump
4. Trump tailors speeches to get a rise out of his audience
5. With an audience of crazies, Trump needs to sound even crazier
6. In sounding crazier, Trump’s poll numbers sink, more voters turned off
7. Back to #2

There have been some complaints from some on the left about Clinton reaching out to Republicans along with questions about what she might give in return for their support. According to Alex Seitz-Wald, in her speech about economics this week, Clinton answered that question with, “You get nothing.”

What economic policy concessions might Hillary Clinton offer up to woo Republicans? If her speech Thursday in Warren, Michigan is any indication, the answer is: Nothing. In her first major economic address since her campaign began actively courting the Republicans turned off by Donald Trump, Clinton made no major pivot to the ideological center. Instead, Clinton reiterated several of the policy positions she adopted during her primary fight against Bernie Sanders, even while making a direct appeal to Independent voters and Republicans…

Clinton has paid no price for leftward shift, since Trump is more interested in litigating her character than her policy in any kind of traditionally ideological way… Republicans siding with Clinton are doing so in spite of her policy, not because of it.

A must-read piece in the Washington Post:

“Economic distress and anxiety across working-class white America have become a widely discussed explanation for the success of Donald Trump. It seems to make sense… Yet a major new analysis from Gallup suggests this narrative is not complete. According to this new analysis, those who view Trump favorably have not been disproportionately affected by foreign trade or immigration, compared to people with unfavorable views of the Republican presidential nominee. The results suggest that his supporters, on average, do not have lower incomes than other Americans, nor are they more likely to be unemployed.”

“Yet while Trump’s supporters might be comparatively well off themselves, they come from places where their neighbors endure other forms of hardship. In their communities, white residents are dying younger, and it is harder for young people who grow up poor to get ahead.”

Paul Krugman: “Just to be clear, I’m not saying that top Republicans were or are personally bigoted — but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that they were willing to curry favor with bigots in the service of tax cuts for the rich and financial deregulation. Remember, Mitt Romney eagerly accepted a Trump endorsement in 2012, knowing full well that he was welcoming a racist conspiracy theorist into his camp.”

“All that has happened this year is a move of those white nationalists from part of the supporting cast to a starring role. So when Republicans who went along with the earlier strategy draw the line at Mr. Trump, they’re not really taking a stand on principle; they’re just complaining about the price. And the party’s top leadership isn’t even willing to do that.”

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