Sunday Open Thread [8.28.16]

Republicans who think their problems will go away once Donald Trump has left the national stage haven’t been paying attention this week. Trump’s shifting position on immigration this week perfectly illustrates why the issue is nearly impossible for Republicans. Greg Sargent explains:

Trump’s rhetoric right now reflects a search for a magic formula. He wants to reassure suburban white swing voters — who essentially favor mass assimilation because they see most undocumented immigrants as largely making a positive contribution — that he isn’t proposing to cruelly ship out millions, which would be costly and disruptive to families and communities. So he says, don’t worry, we’re only starting with the bad ones, and the status of the good ones may be subject to negotiation later. In other words, he compassionately recognizes that many of them are good people — they’re not all merely criminals. But he also wants to reassure the hardliners, so he indicates that they all are still subject to removal, which is code for indicating that he is not making mass assimilation the goal.

In the end, though, Trump’s actual position, for now at least, is defined by the latter. The prospective goal is not mass assimilation. It’s shrinkage and removal — beyond just the “bad ones.” There is no straddle that works. There is no magic formula here.

As Democratic pollster Geoff Garin notes, wherever Trump lands on immigration, he’ll be out of step with Americans. Over 60% favor a path to citizenship and oppose his border wall. But Trump’s success in the GOP primary proves that the GOP base are opposed to that. They want mass deportation of all the brown Latinos, no matter if they are good or bad. That garners 30-40% of the GOP vote, enough for Trump to win in a massively crowded field. But that position, expressed with all the hate and vitriol found on Brietbart and Stormfront, is a guaranteed loser in a general election. Hence, the Catch-22 for the GOP, a problem that existed before Trump and will exist after Trump. The only way the GOP will get out of this trap is for them to tell their base to go fuck their racist selves, no matter the electoral consequences in the short term.

NBA star Dwyane Wade’s cousin was shot and killed in Chicago on Friday night, as she was pushing a stroller with her baby inside. She was just got caught in a random cross fire.

Donald Trump, of course, decided to make that tragedy about himself:

Dwyane Wade's cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago. Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2016

Matt Yglesias says, out of all of Trump’s horrible sociopathic tweets, this one was the worst:

This particular tweet, however, though arguably aimed at softening Trump’s image on race isn’t going to too much of anything to debunk the notion that he simply lacks a certain level of human empathy that we expect from a president. An innocent woman is dead. Children have lost their mother. A family is grieving. And Trump is making a boast about his electoral performance. From any other candidate it would be considered shocking, but as E.J. Dionne has written “staying shocked” is a challenge as we watch the Trump campaign unfold.

A Portland Press Herald editorial:

Dear America: Maine here. Please forgive us – we made a terrible mistake. We managed to elect and re-elect a governor who is unfit for high office. He has a gruff exterior and blunt way of talking that some of us find refreshing, but he has shown again and again that he governs by grudge, and uses his power to beat up on people who cannot fight back.

Washington Post: “Hillary Clinton is methodically preparing for the presidential debates as a veteran lawyer would approach her biggest trial. She pores over briefing books thick with policy arcana and opposition research. She internalizes tips from the most seasoned debate coaches in her party. And she rehearses, over and over again, to perfect the pacing and substance of her presentation.”

“Donald Trump is taking a different approach. He summons his informal band of counselors — including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, talk-radio host Laura Ingraham and ousted Fox News Channel chairman Roger Ailes — to his New Jersey golf course for Sunday chats. Over bacon cheeseburgers, hot dogs and glasses of Coca-Cola, they test out zingers and chew over ways to refine the Republican nominee’s pitch.”

“Trump’s aides have put together briefing books, not that the candidate is devoting much time to reading them. Trump is not holding any mock debates, proudly boasting that a performer with his talents does not need that sort of prepping. Should Trump submit to traditional rehearsals, some associates are talking about casting Ingraham, an adversarial chronicler of Clinton scandals, to play the Democratic nominee.”

An investigation by the New York Times — “drawing on decades-old files from the New York City Commission on Human Rights, internal Justice Department records, court documents and interviews with tenants, civil rights activists and prosecutors — uncovered a long history of racial bias at his family’s properties, in New York and beyond.”

“That history has taken on fresh relevance with Mr. Trump arguing that black voters should support him over Hillary Clinton, whom he has called a bigot.”

“While there is no evidence that Mr. Trump personally set the rental policies at his father’s properties, he was on hand while they were in place, working out of a cubicle in Trump Management’s Brooklyn offices as early as the summer of 1968.”

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) offered some blunt advice in the New York Times to Republicans: “Distance yourself from Donald Trump.” He added: “That’s difficult but I think we’ve got to do it if we’re concerned not just about this election but elections to come.” Otherwise, Flake said, “this will last decades.”

I intend it to last decades. It will be a litmus test not only for officials, but also for ordinary citizens. If you vote for, endorse or support Trump, you are ending your viability as a credible citizen whose opinion is worthy of even or ever being listened to. The first question in any debate on any policy matter going forward for the next 50 years: did you vote for Trump? If the answer is yes, the person must be shown the door.

Michael Gerson on Trump’s repellent inner circle: “Consider this list of Trump’s chosen: Former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had a brutal and demeaning style that resulted in a staff revolt, and his manhandling of a female reporter overshadowed the Trump campaign for weeks. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was paid lucrative consulting fees by foreign interests and resigned after reports that Ukraine anti-corruption investigators were scrutinizing millions in alleged payments there.”

“Longtime adviser Roger Stone is a crackpot conspiracy theorist who asserts that Bill and Hillary Clinton are “plausibly responsible” for the deaths of roughly 40 people and that Hillary Clinton should be “executed for murder.” Confidant Roger Ailes recently stepped down from his job at Fox News under a cloud of sexual harassment claims. And Steve Bannon, Trump’s new campaign chief executive, is known for his bullying tactics and for running a website (Breitbart News) that flirts with white nationalism.”

“There are a few exceptions to this pattern — Kellyanne Conway and Mike Pence come to mind — but Trump has hired and elevated some of the very worst people in American politics, known for their cruelty, radicalism, prejudice and corruption.”

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) fired a spokeswoman after it was revealed that she took part in a video that recites slogans of white supremacists, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reports.

John Sides: “Probably the best estimate comes from a recently published piece by political scientists Ryan Enos and Anthony Fowler. They show that the effect of the 2012 presidential campaign on voter turnout was quite large, about 7-8 points overall.”

“They arrive at this estimate by analyzing a sort of experiment: media markets that span state boundaries, such that part of the market falls in a battleground state and part doesn’t. Voters in one of those markets would be potentially exposed to the same amount of televised political advertising but different amounts of other campaign activity. In particular, you would expect that the battleground state voters would be far more likely to be contacted by campaign fieldworkers, who generally aren’t going to contact voters outside of battleground states. Enos and Fowler found that voter turnout within these markets was much higher in the battleground state portion than the non-battleground state portion.”

Vice President Joe Biden said he expected the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would close before President Obama leaves office in January, Reuters reports. Said Biden: “That is my hope and expectation.” Six months to go.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) called on Donald Trump to release his tax returns, CNN reports. Said Chaffetz: “If you’re going to run and try to become the president of the United States, you’re going to have to open up your kimono and show everything, your tax returns, your medical records.”

This is quality:

The British set fire to the White House #OTD in 1814. pic.twitter.com/eOOgAeMEiW

— White House History (@WhiteHouseHstry) August 24, 2016

The British Embassy’s response:

.@WhiteHouseHstry Well this is a little embarrassing. pic.twitter.com/CKlR2B5AkO

— British Embassy (@UKinUSA) August 24, 2016

Paul Krugman took on Trump’s dystopian views about “midnight in America.”

Back when the Trump campaign was ostensibly about the loss of middle-class jobs, it was at least pretending to be about a real issue: Employment in manufacturing really is way down; real wages of blue-collar workers have fallen. You could say that Trumpism isn’t the answer (it isn’t), but not that the issue was a figment of the candidate’s imagination.

But when Mr. Trump portrays America’s cities as hellholes of runaway crime and social collapse, what on earth is he talking about? Urban life is one of the things that has gone right with America. In fact, it has gone so right that those of us who remember the bad old days still find it hard to believe…

Which brings us back to the notion of America as a nightmarish dystopia. Taken literally, that’s nonsense. But today’s increasingly multiracial, multicultural society is a nightmare for people who want a white, Christian nation in which lesser breeds know their place. And those are the people Mr. Trump has brought out into the open.

Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin told Business Insider Donald Trump’s campaign staffers have told him that the GOP nominee has times where he “hides in his apartment” and they’re growing “frustrated.” McMullin also said that it’s “unclear” whether Trump “will make it through this campaign.”

He continued: “I’m hearing from people inside his campaign that there are times now when he hides in his apartment and doesn’t meet with any people. When he campaigns he goes out to a place he has to fly back home to New York. This is a fragile man and a fragile campaign and I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen in the days and weeks ahead of him. I’m not sure the RNC can continue to support him given his weakness as a man and as a politician and as a candidate for the presidency.”