The October 30, 2016 Thread

PRESIDENT
NATIONAL–ABC News Tracking–CLINTON 49, Trump 46
NATIONAL–IBD/TIPP–CLINTON 46, Trump 41
FLORIDA–Emerson–CLINTON 46, Trump 45
OHIO–Emerson–CLINTON 45, TRUMP 45
NORTH CAROLINA–Emerson–CLINTON 48, Trump 45
NEVADA–Emerson–CLINTON 44, Trump 42
WISCONSIN–Emerson–CLINTON 48, Trump 42
PENNSYLVANIA–Emerson–CLINTON 45, Trump 39
MINNESOTA–KSTP/SurveyUSA–CLINTON 49, Trump 39
ALASKA–Craciun Research–CLINTON 47, Trump 43

So, Alaska.

Meanwhile, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 15 percentage points among early voters surveyed in the past two weeks. An estimated 19 million Americans have voted so far in the election, accounting for as much as 20 percent of the electorate.

Sam Wang on why Trump’s support remains so stable: “Such high stability in polls is not new. It started several decades ago. One measure of the stasis of modern campaigns is how much each party’s support in polls changes over the course of a campaign. From 1952 to 1992, the average range — the difference between maximum and minimum levels of support — was 17 percentage points. Since 1996, the range has dropped to 8 points. Mr. Trump’s range is 4 points, from 39 to 43 percent.”

“At his lowest point, Mr. Trump still had more support than George McGovern, who got the smallest percentage of the popular vote by a major party candidate in the postwar era in 1972, with 38 percent. Mrs. Clinton’s average margin over Mr. Trump of five points has been enough to make her the first candidate to maintain a durable lead in an open presidential race since Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson in 1952. So the bigger question is not about Mr. Trump, but why the last six presidential campaigns became so stable.”

Man hangs black mannequins in tree next to his Trump yard sign. Claims just "Halloween". This is why I don't give a shit about those emails. pic.twitter.com/4whdomAdNv

— Marcus bullock (@Mbhokie97) October 30, 2016

Ross Douthat:

Since this is the final week for Hillary skeptics to agonize over whether to cast a vote for Donald Trump, it seems appropriate to outline why the risks of Trump are so distinctive as to throw the perils of a Clinton presidency into relative eclipse.

This is a challenging thing to explain because Trump is, among recent American politicians, sui generis. The mistakes and blunders that an establishment liberal like Clinton is likely to make can be envisioned by looking at peers like Angela Merkel, at recent occupants of the White House, at Hillary’s own record. But there are no obvious analogues for a President Trump; all the comparables, from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Silvio Berlusconi, only reflect part of what we would get with the Republican nominee as a superpower’s president. […]

Some of Trump’s supporters imagine that his election would be a blow to left-wing activists, that his administration would swiftly reverse the post-Ferguson crime increase. This is a bit like imagining that a President George Wallace would have been good for late-1960s civil peace. In reality, Trump’s election would be a gift to bad cops and riot-ready radicals in equal measure, and his every intervention would pour gasoline on campuses and cities — not least because as soon as any protest movement had a face or leader, Trump would be on cable bellowing ad hominems at them.

New from @Isikoff: As of tonight the FBI still does not have a warrant to review the Huma Abedin emails. https://t.co/O8SLRVBM3e

— Daniel Klaidman (@dklaidman) October 29, 2016

So the emails have not even been looked at yet. More and more, this is a being revealed as a either an incompetent and irresponsible decision by Comey, or a scandalous partisan interference in an election. Either way, Comey must resign or be fired. After the election, of course.

Leonard Pitts wants to see the Republicans not just defeated, but repudiated.

So yeah, I don’t want the GOP defeated.

I want it immolated.

I want it razed to the foundation, reduced to a moonscape, left unlivable even for cockroaches, much less newts. I want it treated like boot heels treat ants and furnaces treat ice cubes, treated like a middle school basketball team playing the ’71-’72 Lakers.

Defeat is not enough. Let there be humiliation. Let there be pain.

A legal source says:
FBI actually had a duty to determine if emails were not duplicates first, b/c if they are, it's *not* even new evidence

— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) October 29, 2016

Nate Silver: “If the Clinton campaign does have something major on Trump — or even something minor — there’s a lot of art and science involved in when it drops the story. Too soon, and it could get swept beneath the undertow of the FBI story. Too late, and it might look desperate. But one way the campaign could end is with a whole crescendo of major stories dropping. That could make things complicated for pollsters and forecasters.”

Comey acted on his own in Clinton email disclosure, violated Justice Department policy https://t.co/uG8ZfublgH

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) October 29, 2016

“Donald Trump’s path of destruction has pushed the Republican Party to the cusp of a historic reckoning, an existential crisis that has left half of America’s political establishment in desperate need of new leaders, a new message, and even a common orthodoxy,” the Boston Globe reports.

“Party members say it is almost impossible to underestimate the challenges facing the 162-year-old GOP, which for the last three decades has been largely defined by a hagiographic vision of Ronald Reagan but is now riven by a civil war with multiple dimensions.”

“Some Republicans are even studying the collapse of the Whig Party in the mid-19th century, hoping they can avoid a similar fate. Others are girding for proxy wars that will be waged on Capitol Hill, within the Republican National Committee, and live on the set of Fox News.”

A great quote from this piece:

“It’s like Humpty Dumpty fell and broke, then a giant lawn mower ran over it, acid was thrown on the pieces — and a bunch of racist idiots ran off with an arm and a leg. How do you put it back together? I don’t know.” — GOP strategist John Weaver.

Hell of a story by @gabrielsherman about Trump. Amazed his team talks about him on the record like he's dumb child. https://t.co/iMJHTDA3DW

— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) October 30, 2016

Glenn Thrush: “Clinton, who hates everything about campaigning except reading briefing books and debating her opponents, has been happy to coast in Trump’s turbulent wake – tsk-tsk-tsk-ing him and deploying a Hall of Fame roster of surrogates from the Obamas to Bernie Sanders to Elizabeth Warren to Katy Perry. But gradually, inevitably, the focus has turned back on the second-most detested candidate running for president – in part because of the drip-drip of WikiLeaks, in part because voters are now forced to grapple with the reality that she’s likely to be the country’s next leader.”

“She doesn’t fare especially well alone in the spotlight – while she’s held her own in most polls, and retains a commanding advantage in many battleground states (and the Electoral College) – Trump has begun to finally consolidate support among core Republicans, which has brought him as high as 44 percent in one national poll and to par with her in Florida and Nevada.”

“So look for a new oppo dump on Trump — and a new line of attack — or anything, really, that will turn the race back into a referendum on his fitness to serve, not hers.”

Watch James Comey come at Hillary Clinton eleven days before her election. pic.twitter.com/J1tPs5aebL

— Martin Longman (@BooMan23) October 30, 2016

Gabriel Sherman: “Even given the October surprise of the FBI’s reviewing a new batch of emails that may be related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server, Trump still faces difficult odds. But he is ending the race much as he got into it: not worrying too much about the future and not listening to any of the advisers around him.”

“In recent weeks, I spoke with more than two dozen current and former Trump advisers, friends, and senior Republicans officials, many of whom would speak only off the record given that the campaign is not yet over. What they described was an unmanageable candidate who still does not fully understand the power of the movement he has tapped into, who can’t see that it is larger than himself.”

“Trump may not be all that focused on what happens to the masses of white, nativist, working-class voters who have coalesced around him, but there are people in the campaign who recognize how valuable those Trump believers could be long after the election is over.”

Trump crashed a charity event for kids with AIDS, sat on stage, danced the Macarena, left without giving a dime. https://t.co/VsFXTokjdR

— Steven Ginsberg (@stevenjay) October 29, 2016

“Donald Trump’s list of highest-paid campaign vendors is brimming with his own name,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“An airline he owns has drawn the fifth-largest paycheck of any company the campaign paid through Oct. 19. Mr. Trump has also paid at least eight of his golf clubs, seven of his hotels and five of his restaurants.”

“In all, the New York businessman has spent close to $10 million over the course of the election cycle reimbursing his children for travel expenses and family-owned companies for campaign services, the most recent Federal Election Commission reports show.”

An Iowa woman has been charged with a felony after allegedly voting twice for Donald Trump, Iowa Public Radio reports. Terri Rote says she was afraid her first ballot would be changed to a vote for Hillary Clinton: “I wasn’t planning on doing it twice, it was spur of the moment. The polls are rigged.”