The October 23, 2016 Thread

Filed in National by on October 23, 2016

According to the Virginia Public Access Project, early voting is up 63.3% in Northern Virginia as compared to four years ago, but down slightly in the rest of the state.

Gallup finds President Obama’s approval rate is now 57%, the highest it’s been in nearly four years.

Lawyers for Donald Trump are asking a judge in the upcoming fraud trial over Trump University to keep out any evidence relating to his presidential campaign, the San Diego Union Tribune reports. “They covered much of what Trump has been saying over the past year or more, and what has been said and written about him as he pursues the presidency. The list included any evidence from campaign statements, speeches, advertisements, statements at debates and tweets from Trump’s very active Twitter account.”

Washington Post: “Emboldened by polls predicting an electoral-college landslide in the presidential race, Clinton is shifting her strategy to lift up other Democrats coast to coast. She and her party are rushing to capitalize on a turbulent turn in Trump’s candidacy, which has ruptured the Republican Party, to make down-ballot gains that seemed unlikely just a month ago.”

“For Clinton, the move is opportunistic and has governing implications. If elected, a mandate may not be enough for her to muscle a progressive agenda on immigration and other issues through a Republican-controlled Congress. She would almost certainly govern more efficiently with Democratic majorities.”

Hillary Clinton ripped Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) in a speech here in Pennsylvania, trying to link him to Donald Trump and a long list of Trump’s past incendiary statements, Politico reports.

Said Clinton: “He still refuses to stand up to Donald Trump. Now a lot of Republicans have. They have had the grit and the guts to stand up and say he does not represent me.”

She continued: “But Pat Toomey heard Donald attack a grieving Gold Star family who lost their son in the Iraq war. He heard Donald call Mexican immigrants rapists. He heard him say terrible things about women. He heard him spread the lie that our first black president wasn’t really born in America. Now how much more does Pat Toomey need to hear? If he doesn’t have the courage to stand up to Donald Trump after all this, then can you be sure he’ll stand up for you when it counts?”

Josh Marshall on the state of the race in the Senate:

I’m starting to get the sense that Democrats may significantly over-perform what has been a close fought, essentially tied race for control of the Senate. Here’s why.

A number of states remain quite close. Pat Toomey (R) is just 2.4 percentage points ahead in Pennsylvania. Maggie Hassan (D) is just 3.7 points ahead in New Hampshire. So even outside the window that we consider a “toss-up” – a lead of 2 points or less for either candidate – you have a number of races that are still quite close. Indeed, one of the few bright spots for the GOP this cycle is that most Republicans would have feared much worse for the Senate if they knew six months ago just how badly the Trump campaign was doing.

But we’re starting to see several factors that could shift the balance. Democrats are doing really well in early voting in a number of states. Trump has good states too. But they’re not the right states. As this new AP analysis shows, Trump is doing well in Ohio, Iowa and Georgia. Clinton is significantly over-performing in Florida, North Carolina, Maine, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada. We’re used to thinking of Ohio as one of the two quintessential swing states. But this year Clinton has lots of paths to victory without Ohio. What’s more, Ohio has seemed like a senate lost cause for the Democrats for a while. On the other hand, Nevada and North Carolina and extremely tight races and Arizona and Florida might also come into play if Democrats and Clinton keep picking up steam in the final two weeks.

Dems will win the Senate races in Nevada, Wisconsin, Illinois, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Indiana and Missouri. That is a net pickup of 8 seats, or a majority of 54 Dems and 46 Republicans.

Dana Milbank thinks it’s not enough to beat Donald Trump.

As a matter of math, Arizona is irrelevant: If Clinton is doing well enough to win here, she will already have locked up the election elsewhere. But if Trump is to be denied in his bid to subvert democratic institutions by claiming a rigged election, he needs to be defeated resoundingly, removing all doubt. Clinton needs to run up the score.

The need to deal Trump a humiliating defeat has a sociological basis in the “degradation ceremony,” in which the perpetrator (Trump) is held by denouncers (officeholders and others in positions of influence) to be morally unacceptable, and witnesses (the public) agree that the perpetrator is no longer held in good standing.

Frank Bruni on how the media should handle Trump after the election.

Was he ridiculous? Beyond measure. Relevant? Beyond doubt. As long as the reporting about him was skeptical — and, after a certain point, the bulk of it was — there was more reason to train the spotlight on him than to pull it away.

That’s about to change — bigly. He is bound to lose the election, and we in the media will lose the rationale that his every utterance warrants notice as a glimpse into the character of a person in contention for the most consequential job in the world.

… he will remain the same attention-whoring, head-turning carnival act that he is today. And we will face a moment of truth: Do we care chiefly about promoting constructive discussion and protecting this blessed, beleaguered democracy of ours? Or are we more interested in groveling for eyeballs and clicks?

John Stoehr asks whether a crushing defeat be enough to crush Trumpism?

Would it finally break the historic GOP obstruction we have witnessed since 2010? I don’t see a reason why it should.

The Republicans are going to learn as much from 2016 as they did from 2012, which is to say nothing. The problem in 2012 was not the Republican agenda. It was former nominee Mitt Romney. He was flawed. End of story. Ditto for Trump.
Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans will continue to oppose virtually everything a President Hillary Clinton requests. Sen. McCain has already said the Senate will block future Supreme Court nominees, raising the unprecedented possibility of a divided high court for the entirety of Clinton’s first term.

To do that, they need Donald Trump. Well, not Trump himself, but all that he has come to represent. The Republicans can’t continue to oppose a Democratic president on partisan grounds alone. That hurts them. They need a rationale. And with huge portions of the Republican electorate already believing that Clinton is going to steal the election, one would be hard pressed to find a better rationale for mindless obstruction.

But all that assumes the Republicans hold the House. Hence, the hairsplitting we see from that unnamed House Republican. Lean too much on the side of democratic norms and you risk enraging Trumpites. Lean too much on the side of Trumpism and you risk the ire of moderates who’ve had enough.

This is why it is important not to have the GOP in control of any House of Congress.


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  1. anonymous says:
    October 23, 2016 at 1:53 pm

    Interesting piece that explores the GOP timeline from Nixon to Trump:

    http://www.salon.com/2016/10/23/from-richard-nixon-to-donald-trump-how-right-wing-myths-about-tricky-dick-fueled-todays-nightmare/

  2. anonymous says:
    October 23, 2016 at 1:59 pm

    @DD: Most likely outcome for Senate is 50-50, followed closely by 51-49 either way. Nevada, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Missouri are all expected to stay R at this point, which would put it at 50-50. It’s possible that all that last-minute Koch money pulls out one of the others as well.

    I think the Senate, rather than the presidential race, is where a lot of Democrats are prematurely counting chickens.

  3. El Somnambulo says:
    October 23, 2016 at 9:42 pm

    Looks like Hassan has opened a pretty decent lead over Ayotte. Not sure where that’s likely to remain R. Nevada also looks like it’s trending D. I agree on Missouri, and I think NC’s a toss-up with a possible D lean due to early voting trends and an increase in R’s planning to stay home. Meaning this from that ABC News poll today:

    “The previous ABC/Post poll found a sharp 12-point decline in enthusiasm for Trump among his supporters, almost exclusively among those who’d preferred a different GOP nominee. Intended participation now has followed: The share of registered Republicans who are likely to vote is down 7 points since mid-October.”

    If that happens, the R’s lose almost every close race. I’ve been on the other side of such waves, and it sucks.

  4. liberalgeek says:
    October 23, 2016 at 11:17 pm

    This will be Charlie Copeland in about a week.

  5. Liberal Elite says:
    October 24, 2016 at 12:22 am

    @a “I think the Senate, rather than the presidential race, is where a lot of Democrats are prematurely counting chickens.”

    I’m not so sure. I have NEVER seen early voting lines like we’ve seen in this past week. NEVER. There’s an energy there not reflected in the polling.

    Just google images “Early voting lines”

    https://thinkprogress.org/north-carolina-counties-that-slashed-early-voting-sites-see-hours-long-lines-fcffa0151748

    …and most of these people are voting “D” up and down the ballot.

  6. Liberal Elite says:
    October 24, 2016 at 5:03 am

    How stupid are these Trump people??

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/eric-trump-latina-against-trump_us_580cc05fe4b0a03911ed5838

    Does anyone here not know what the word “contra” means??

    The girls wear this, and no one at the Trump rally seems to mind… In fact, they’re celebrities. Ha Ha Ha!

  7. mouse says:
    October 24, 2016 at 8:51 am

    The level of visceral hatred toward Clinton could be a master’s thesis for someone. It’s scary. I mean from a personality perspective, I’m not a fan and when you add all the bad stuff, it doesn’t add up to such visceral hatred. Wonder why it’s so mean? Most of the people who hate her don’t do so based on any serious policy positions outside sexual issues.

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