Saturday Open Thread [8.20.16]

Filed in National by on August 20, 2016

FiveThirtyEight: “Since the conventions, however, Trump’s polling has worsened — overall and in states with key Senate races. In the eight states with competitive Senate races and both pre- and post-conventions polling, Trump had previously been down an average of about 6 percentage points; he’s now down an average of 9 points. And while Republican Senate candidates had been up by an average of a little more than 1 percentage point before the conventions in these eight states, they are now down by a little more than 1 point. That is, Republican Senate candidates in key states are still running ahead of Trump, but that cushion may no longer be enough to win now that Trump’s fortunes have worsened.”

First Read: “The reaction to the news of the latest Trump campaign shake-up has ranged from shock and disbelief to laughter… But there is one strategic way it makes sense: Team Trump views the 2016 presidential contest as a race to 40%. Under that scenario, you somehow assume that Libertarian Gary Johnson will get more than 15% of the popular vote, and that the Green Party’s Jill Stein will get more than 5%.”

“And then you make a play for the base to carry you across the finish line. It’s essentially the game plan that helped elect — and then re-elect — controversial Maine Gov. Paul LePage in 2010 and 2014. Of course, there’s a problem with this base play: If the 2016 presidential race is a contest to 40%, well, Hillary Clinton probably gets there first, especially with Trump’s percentage currently sitting in the 30s in many key states. And it’s doubtful that Johnson and Stein will get a combined 20%-plus of the vote; it will likely be half of that — if not less.”

“Down in the polls and outflanked for now in the battleground map, Trump had two ways to go: One, try to broaden his appeal by changing his message and approach. Or two, double down on everything that’s gotten him this far. Trump has chosen Door No. 2, which is something 95%-99% of political professionals wouldn’t advise.”

In other words, Trump is counting on you, Mouse. LOL.

Some telling analysis of Trump’s electoral strategy via the NYT:

William H. Frey, a demographics expert with the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank, conducted several simulations that tried to determine how much the turnout among white men without college educations would have to increase for Mr. Trump to win. He used the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll of registered voters that had Mrs. Clinton beating Mr. Trump in a nationwide two-way race, 50 percent to 42 percent. It was among the better polls for Mr. Trump lately.
Mr. Frey tested different turnout assumptions, including improbably optimistic ones, like if 99 percent of white, non-college-educated men turned out to vote. None of the chain of events produced a Trump victory.

In fact, even if virtually all of the white, non-college-educated men eligible to vote did so, Mr. Frey found, Mrs. Clinton would still win the popular vote by 1.1 million.

And Mr. Frey said he did not account for the expected growth in Hispanic turnout. “Once you build that in,” he said, “it’s even worse for Trump.”

“Republicans are increasingly nervous about the Senate race in North Carolina, where Senator Richard Burr finds himself at sea in a year when some party insiders say a perfect storm may be gathering for Tar Heel State Democrats,” National Review reports.

“Burr faces Deborah Ross, a former state senator, in a race that few Republicans even considered competitive several months ago. Ross was not a top recruit, entering the race only after other Democratic hopefuls passed, and Burr — the well-liked chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee — seemed to have little to worry about. But with less than three months to go until election day, Burr has barely begun campaigning, and it’s increasingly clear that his reelection is threatened by two forces beyond his control: Donald Trump and Pat McCrory, the unpopular Republican Governor who’s also up for reelection this year.”

Ed Kilgore says conservatives are freaking the F out about Trump’s new campaign manager:

Here’s conservative activist and TV commentator Erick Erickson: “Bannon coming onto the Trump campaign is just a doubling down on crazy. It means the Trump campaign has not really learned any lessons, does not really recognize its message is not a winning message, and it’s just going to go out in a blaze of conspiracy theory and bitterness. We are now moving beyond a dumpster fire. We’re more at Chernobyl. The only thing that’ll be coming out of the Trump campaign by November are three headed rats, which is kind of fitting.

Here’s Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard: “The campaign overhaul means that Trump is choosing to end his campaign living in the alternate reality that Breitbart creates for him on a daily basis — where everything he does is the best, where everyone who questions him is an idiot or a traitor, where big rallies portend electoral victories, where House speaker Paul Ryan is the problem with modern conservatism, where polls that find him down are fixed, where elections he loses are rigged, where immigration and trade are the nation’s most pressing issues, and where, truly, Trump alone can fix it all. Breitbart is the only place that is more Trumpian than Trump.”

And more succinctly, here’s conservative talk-radio host Charlie Sykes: “Trump’s campaign has now entered the hospice phase. He knows it’s dying and he wants to surround himself with his loved ones.”

Last but not least, there is the bitter jeremiad from Ben Shapiro, a former colleague of Bannon who left Breitbart because it was becoming a “Trump Pravda”: “Many former employees of Breitbart News are afraid of Steve Bannon. He is a vindictive, nasty figure, infamous for verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies. Bannon is a smarter version of Trump: he’s an aggressive self-promoter who name-drops to heighten his profile and woo bigger names, and then uses those bigger names as stepping stools to his next destination. Trump may be his final destination. Or it may not. He will attempt to ruin anyone who impedes his unending ambition, and he will use anyone bigger than he is — for example, Donald Trump — to get where he wants to go. Bannon knows that in the game of thrones, you win or die. And he certainly doesn’t intend to die. He’ll kill everyone else before he goes.”

Booman says the Breitbart Bannon hire offers two possibilities for the Trump campaign: 1) they are going to run a Breitbart campaign of white supremacy and win 30% of the vote; or 2) they are going to run against ALL of Washington. The second is Trump’s only hope.

Expect Trump to stop caring what Paul Ryan thinks and go after him as indistinct from Clinton on trade, immigration and military adventurism. He may or may not avoid making this critique personal by calling out Ryan by name, but he will certainly make the point clear that he’s running to destroy Ryan’s power within the Republican Party. In other words, Trump has pivoted, but he is about to pivot again. And this time he is going to give up on patching together as much of the Republican Establishment as he can and just go after them without restraint.

This has one advantage. The other strategy was a sure loser. This new strategy is at least different, and it’s an acknowledgment of something I’ve been arguing for years now, that no Republican can win with the Bush/McCain/Romney coalition, and that the only hope for a Republican nominee is to reshape the electorate. For Trump to succeed, he needs to stop worrying about winning traditional Republicans and try to eat deeply into the Democratic coalition, and he can at least attempt to do this by getting to Clinton’s left on trade and foreign policy while carving out some of the George Wallace Democrats who are angry about job competition and immigration. By blasting the Republicans as just as bad as Clinton on these issues, he gets a little more credibility when he makes his pitch.

I don’t think it will work, but it’s saner than continuing down a path that is guaranteed to result in humiliation. However, it also has a much higher risk of resulting in a landslide defeat that consumes the Republicans’ congressional majorities, because the GOP now stands to get attacked by all five presidential candidates (including Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and Evan Mcmullin).

Indeed. The second strategy is both one that is Trump’s only chance to win, but is also the one that will forever destroy the Republican Party. With the first strategy, sure, Trump will lose, but at least there was hope that the GOP could survive intact by pretending that Trump was an aberration.

Roll Call columnist Jonathan Allen explains why “We’re Underestimating the Donald Trump Debacle,” noting that “Trump’s failure to put together even a bush league campaign organization has Republican insiders rightly worried about the long-term implications of the impending November debacle. He’s refused to do the presidential-year work that parties rely on to build their donor, volunteer and voter lists for future elections at the local, state and national levels…“Presidential races are where you can invest in data infrastructure, organizing talent, technology, etc. He is not doing that. She is,” Jeremy Bird, the national field director for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign said on Sidewire…Democratic and Republican strategists say he could do truly lasting damage to the size and strength of the party and its ability to find and mobilize like-minded voters.”

A GOP memo to Republican members of all the county election boards in North Carolina, obtained by the Raleigh News and Observer via a public records request, reveals everything you suspected about GOP motivations in pushing for voting restrictions, including voter ID laws. It’s not surprising, but it should still shock the conscience.

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