Sunday Open Thread [8.21.16]

Ed Kilgore says the number of people who do not like Trump AND Clinton is very small, actually.

One of the sturdier memes of this presidential cycle is that most voters pretty much dislike both major-party candidates. It’s the foundation for the otherwise forlorn hopes of the Libertarian, Green, and Independent Conservative candidacies. And in the longer run, the idea that other candidates would have done much better is the whetstone on which many knives are being sharpened for a postelection bloodbath. […] But polling maven Mark Blumenthal, looking closely at SurveyMonkey tracking data, disputes the premise rather convincingly. Yes, these are two relatively unpopular candidates. But that’s mainly because each candidate’s supporters hate the partisan “enemy” so fiercely.

Turns out, says Blumenthal, that about a fourth of voters give both Clinton and Trump unfavorable ratings. That’s a pretty high number, but it’s not close to a majority. And then if you look at intensity levels, the universe of “plague on both your houses!” voters shrinks even more significantly: Only about 10 percent of voters dislike both candidates with an equal level of disdain.

Looking more closely at that dyspeptic group, Blumenthal finds, unsurprisingly, that they are disproportionately unconnected to either major party and, more important, less likely to vote at all. If they do vote, a majority of them presently will go Libertarian or Green. It’s a good guess that as the voting decision approaches, a goodly number will either tilt in one major-party direction or another or decide to stay home.

Josh Marshall:

In the two segments in this single video we see the same dynamic which has played out all over the Trump campaign over the last few days. Put simply, they’re so wrapped up in racial antagonism that they can’t keep track of whether they’re trying to execute the standard faux outreach act or just angry trolling. It’s all so close to the surface they can’t help blurting out lines that sound more like something you might say shooting the shit with David Duke. Trump’s ‘appeal’ amounts to a diatribe against African-American life which bristles with contempt. Kingston is the same, just in a different form. In the following interview, when Keilar presses Kingston on why Trump is doing ‘outreach’ from all white suburbs, he tries to parry her question but then he blurts out: “Maybe it would have been nicer if he had a backdrop with a burning car!”

Yikes!

Like I said, they’re so off the rails they can barely stay in character.

WIRED's Clinton endorsement is an interesting stew of West Coast polity/ideology of sci-tech https://t.co/156kFpP0ff via @WIRED

— Will Thomas (@GWilliamThomas) August 18, 2016

Robert Costa:

Trump has disavowed some of those incendiary associations when they have emerged at various points in the campaign, and Bannon has rejected accusations that Breitbart News fuels racial and ethnic divisions. But the links have continued to be made, including from within the GOP.

“Movements like this, with toxic and nasty stuff, have existed in one form or another, but they’ve been kept on the outer fringes of American political life. Now it’s command and control at headquarters,” said Peter Wehner, who was director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives under George W. Bush.

“If the GOP fully becomes the home to the Breitbart and alt-right movement, it’ll cease to be the Republican Party as we’ve known it,” Wehner added. “There will be a huge crack-up beyond anything we’ve seen.”

Scathing words from the @nytimes editorial board: https://t.co/hYllrAl0qN

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) August 21, 2016

Jeff Greenfield:

Republicans insist that Democrats bear at least as much responsibility as they do for the ill will that pervades Washington. And, as David Graham has argued in The Atlantic, Democrats have in the past described mainstream GOP nominees in near-apocalyptic terms too. But at least in the view of two of Washington’s most venerable political scholars, there is no real equivalence. Norm Ornstein of the AEI and Thomas Mann of Brookings authored a 2012 book that said flatly: “The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier in American politics — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

The past four years have served to make that an understatement. But Trump and the elevation of Steve Bannon to his campaign chief executive are only the latest symptoms of a transformation that appear to begin with those words Gingrich and Luntz offered more than 20 years ago. Now, as then, Trump’s opponents are corrupt … they steal … they lie … they’re traitors.

Dem odds of Senate takeover increasing by the day: 6 of 8 GOP candidates now polling worse than pre-convention: https://t.co/fYnnlMVUy2

— Susan Davis (@DaviSusan) August 16, 2016

Ryan Cooper/The Week:

Unless something changes between now and November — and it will have to be something big — Hillary Clinton is going to win this election in a complete blowout, perhaps by big enough margins to retake Congress. It’s an extremely unusual chance to actually push through some big policy, which raises the question: Where is Clinton’s big plan?

Franklin D. Roosevelt had his New Deal, and Lyndon B. Johnson had his Great Society, both of which went some ways towards building a society that provided a decent standard of living to everyone, without exception. In the 1930s, “New Dealer” meant something. Hillary Clinton can try to finish the job with her own branded policy package — the New Deal Squared? The Extremely Good Society? — that will provide a unifying vision and rallying symbol. Here are some suggestions.

Four Pinocchios: @GlennKesslerWP rips apart Trump's awful new immigration ad: https://t.co/3AuQIViq5M

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) August 20, 2016

“Hillary Clinton’s increasingly confident campaign has begun crafting a detailed agenda for her possible presidency, with plans to focus on measures aimed at creating jobs, boosting infrastructure spending and enacting immigration reform if current polling holds and she is easily elected to the White House in November,” the Washington Post reports.

“In recent weeks, as her leads over GOP nominee Donald Trump have expanded, Clinton has started ramping up for a presidency defined by marquee legislation she has promised to seek immediately. The pace and scale of the planning reflect growing expectations among Democrats that she will win and take office in January alongside a new Democratic majority in the Senate.”

“While careful not to sound as if she is measuring the draperies quite yet, Clinton now describes what she calls improved odds for passage of an overhaul of immigration laws — the first legislative priority she outlined in detail last year — and what could be a bipartisan effort to rebuild the nation’s roads, bridges, airports, rail system and ports.”

Washington man stabs kissing interracial couple, cites Donald Trump when arrested https://t.co/sZBZHUP4Wr via @Salon

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 20, 2016

Washington Post: “For those envisioning a line of moving vans at the Supreme Court and a new president immediately reordering life at the marble palace, this small splash of cold water: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83, has already hired the four clerks who will assist her through June 2018.”

Yes, but she will eventually retire in the next presidential term. As might Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. And as will Justice Breyer. Yes, it is possible that the next President will appoint 5 justices.

This graph shows how much Trump tweets about polls pic.twitter.com/6znrWW8cR7

— Ari Melber MSNBC (@AriMelber) August 19, 2016

“A sharpening debate has emerged in Republican circles over whether and when to cut ties with Donald Trump, who has shaken up his campaign team as his poll numbers have dropped,” The Hill reports. “While some in the GOP have called for Republicans to cut Trump loose sooner rather than later to avoid lasting damage, strategists concerned about control of Congress in 2017 say that would be disastrous.”

Joe Scarborough: The "screaming, racially insensitive" Trump is "character he's playing" https://t.co/rpVr4MhktU pic.twitter.com/GjnK3p0wFW

— Dayanita Ramesh (@DayanitaRamesh) August 19, 2016

Washington Post: “Until this week, it had been possible for party elders to convince themselves that Trump might prove to be a passing storm in their ranks rather than a portent of climate change. But to their dismay, the party standard-bearer has now signaled that he intends to go for broke in the final stretch of the campaign.”

“Trump’s decision to ditch his establishment-bred campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in favor of Breitbart News executive Stephen Bannon, who shares Trump’s scorched-earth approach to politics and his worldview, is perhaps the most overt example of the mogul’s closing strategy.”

“Theirs is an amorphous alternative to traditional conservatism — often associated with the ‘alt right’ movement — that is leery of liberal immigration, multiculturalism, military involvement overseas and free trade. Its critics also accuse the alt right of flirting with white supremacism, anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance.”