Delaware Liberal

Thursday Open Thread [9.1.2016]

Delaware Dem

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–FOX News–Clinton 48, Trump 42
NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–Economist/YouGov–Clinton 47, Trump 42
SOUTH CAROLINA–PRESIDENT–Reuters/Ipsos–Clinton 46, Trump 46
PENNSYLVANIA–PRESIDENT–Franklin & Marshall–Clinton 47, Trump 40
INDIANA–PRESIDENT–Reuters/Ipsos–Trump 55, Clinton 34
NEBRASKA–PRESIDENT–Reuters/Ipsos–Clinton 45, Trump 42
WISCONSIN–PRESIDENT–Marquette–Clinton 45, Trump 42
WISCONSIN–PRESIDENT–Monmouth–Clinton 43, Trump 38
NORTH CAROLINA–PRESIDENT–Emerson–Trump 45, Clinton 43
NEW YORK–PRESIDENT–Emerson–Clinton 52, Trump 34
ARIZONA–PRESIDENT–Brietbart/Gravis–Trump 44, Clinton 40

So, the media, and the American people, got played. All this talk of softening, of a pivot, was pure grade A horseshit, from only the best and most beautiful horses.

Trump did three things yesterday. He wilted like a coward in front of an adversary who told him in no uncertain terms that he can stick his demand that Mexico pay for his wall up where the sun don’t shine. And then he lied about being coward to the American people, because, bullies who are revealed as cowards don’t like to admit it. And then he doubled down on mass deportation gestapo force in a crazed racist speech in Phoenix last night.

Donald Trump “made his immigration policies clear: Mexico will fund an impenetrable, beautiful border wall, and the Republican presidential nominee’s administration will begin its construction on the first day of his presidency,” Politico reports.

Said Trump: “On Day One, we will begin working on an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful southern border wall. We will use the best technology, including above and below ground sensors. That’s the tunnels. Remember that. Above and below. Above and below ground sensors. Towers. Aerial surveillance and manpower to supplement the wall. Find and dislocate tunnels and keep out criminal cartels and Mexico will work with us. I really believe it. Mexico will work with us. I absolutely believe it.”

“Trump outlined other planks of his policy position, including a promise to return all detained undocumented people to their home countries and zero tolerance for immigrants who commit crimes. It amounted to a massive deportation program.”

He noted: “You can call it deported if you want. The press doesn’t like that term. You can call it whatever the hell you want. They’re gone.”

Matt Yglesias says the KKK LOVED Trump’s speech.

I think we should try to be clear. What Trump did was tie all of the nation’s problems to immigrants from Latin America in the course of delivering a speech that brought joy to the hearts of white supremacists. Don’t let anyone twist it.

And he is says the media needs to wake up: there will be no pivot. No softening. Which is something our next President, Hillary Clinton, said weeks ago:

This turn of events has sparked a months-long bout of wishful thinking in Republican Party circles. “He’s not a policy guy,” one Republican Senate staffer once told me, as part of a loopy explanation that Trump would actually be a fine president because he’ll be so indifferent to policy matters that other people will just make all the decisions about everything.

The pivot — the softening — whatever you want to call it, is just part and parcel of them same wishful thinking. That’s the moral of Wednesday night’s speech. There are no hidden depths to Trump. There’s just fear and demagoguery and nonsense. David Duke loved it.

[I]t’s long past time to stop expecting someone to pull off the Trump mask and find some kind of earnest, responsible politician lurking underneath. The Trump we saw Wednesday night is the Trump who accepted the Republican nomination six weeks ago is the Trump who descended the Trump Tower escalators in Manhattan a year ago.

Trump is Trump.

Dara Lind says what Latinos heard last night, whether they are citizens or undocumented, is: Be very afraid.

There are, on the other hand, 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the US — and even more people who are children, or siblings, or spouses, or neighbors of those immigrants — for whom Trump’s speech tonight might have been a preview of the next four years of their lives.

Imagine you are one of those people.

[…] Donald Trump is saying that your and your family’s well-being comes at the expense of the well-being of Americans — that the two are a zero-sum battle. He’s calling people like you “thugs.” He’s promising — threatening — that police know exactly who you are, where you live. He’s promising — threatening — they’re just waiting for a green light so they can bust through your door, cuff you, and turn you over to ICE for deportation.

You’ve only begun to accept, possibly, the fact that you probably won’t be deported under President Obama. You’ve begun to recognize a glimmer of hope.

Donald Trump promises that, under his administration, you would be at risk of deportation every day of your life.

He says it’s the point of having a country.

You listen to Donald Trump and feel disgusted for ever having had hope at all.

Josh Marshall:

Let me start with a general comment on tone. This was as wild and as unbridled a speech as I’ve seen from Trump. Even if you couldn’t understand English, it would be stunning to watch the slashing hand gestures, the red face, the yelling. It’s hard to imagine any presidential candidate in living memory giving such a speech. And again, this is if you didn’t know what the words even meant.

As the speech was unfolding, I said something on Twitter that I’m sure many will find extreme or beyond the pale. But watching this speech, compared to the press conference today in Mexico City, what kept coming to my mind was the contrast between Hitler’s uniformed rally speeches from the hustings and the suited, statesman Hitler we see in the old news reels in Munich and at other iconic moments in the late 1930s. Hitler is sui generis, of course. His crimes are incomparable. But the demagogic style, the frenzied invocation familial blood sacrificed to barbaric outsiders – these are not unique to him. When we see this lurid, stab-in-the-back incitement, the wild hyperbole, the febrile railing against outsiders who will make us no longer a country – the similarities are real. More than anything, perhaps the most chilling part of this day is the contrast between the two men – a measured, calm statesman figure we saw this afternoon and this railing, angry demagogue figure who captured the emotional tenor of Klan rally. As I said, the ability to shift from one persona to the other is a sign of danger in itself.

“A divided Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal by North Carolina seeking to revive stricter state voting rules, which reduced the number of days for early voting and required photo identification at the polls,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The high court, in a brief written order, declined to stay an appeals-court ruling from July that struck down North Carolina’s Republican-backed voting rules. The appeals court found state lawmakers enacted the rules with the intent to discriminate against black voters.”

Rick Hasen: “The fact that this petition got four votes should be very depressing to those who have been hoping that perhaps Justice Kennedy and the Chief Justice would have had a change of heart on voter ID laws.”

Amy Walter: “At the very end of the two-plus hour session Hart asked these Wisconsinites who they thought would ultimately win the race. All but one picked Clinton. Why? They think that Trump can’t change and won’t change…”

“The bottom line: voters know that neither candidate is likely to change, but that is a bigger problem for Trump than Clinton. My impression from listening to these voters is that they want to see a more professional and even-tempered Trump – two even specifically pointed to the debates as important markers. Yet, even if Trump were to suddenly become ‘more presidential’ and perform in a professional way during the debates, these voters aren’t convinced that it will stick. They are grudgingly accepting a Clinton candidacy, but not enthusiastically embracing it.”

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