Year: 2016

John Avlon on whether terror attacks can help Trump: “Though he’s a uniquely unqualified candidate, I’ve been concerned about an outside X-Factor event suddenly changing the emotional calculus of the electorate in ways that we would later regret. This could be a sudden economic collapse or a cyber October-surprise. But terrorism has always seemed the prime known-unknown.” “After all, terrorism is now a depressingly regular feature of American life. While no attacks have rivaled 9/11, we saw at least 45 thwarted terror plots in the first ten years after the destruction of the World Trade Center and in the last year alone suffered horrific losses in the San Bernardino and Orlando slaughters. But we have no template for the impact of an attack just before an American election.” If all he has to offer is fear and overreaction, then no, it will not help him. I actually have been pleasantly surprised at how nonplussed the public has been over the weekend's bombings. Not that they are minimizing the bombing and the knifing attacks, but that the public maybe putting it into perspective while at the same time wanting competent government investigation. Perspective and competence are not things you associate with Trump.

Josh Marshall on the Fever Inside:

We've now seen one of those days which has become darkly familiar in the year of Trump. Trump is dominated, put on the receiving end of various perceived insults and assaults. In this case, it was being coerced by campaign aides into finally giving up the birther lie - which had to be addressed after the Washington Post interview and which I suspect they feared might blow up one of the debates. That was followed by a series of attacks from Hillary Clinton, a for once emboldened press corps roundly attacking Trump for the content and manner of his "major announcement", a furious attack from members of the Congressional Black Caucus and a mix of outrage and mockery from everyone from Barack to Michelle. The response was predictable and rapid. Trump lives in a psychic economy of aggression and domination. There are dominators and the dominated. No in between. Every attack he receives, every ego injury must be answered, rebalanced with some new aggression to reassert dominance. These efforts are often wildly self-destructive. We've seen the pattern again and again. The Khans, Judge Curiel, Ted Cruz, virtually every Republican presidential candidate at one point or another, half the reporters who've covered Trump. We can't know a man's inner thoughts. But we've seen action and reaction more than enough times to infer, or rather deduce, his instincts and needs with some precision.

Josh Marshall gives us all a chill pill:

News Events Can Dramatically Affect Enthusiasm. Clinton has come off an awful few weeks. She took a bunch of days off the campaign trail for fundraisers. Then she had a media storm with "deplorables", then she collapses on camera, was diagnosed with pneumonia and then spent three or four days totally off camera and off the campaign trail. These events may hurt Clinton. They may damage her campaign fatally. But a more likely explanation of the rapid shift in the polls is that they sharply demoralized her supporters and shook free her least committed supporters. That shows up in likely voter models; it leads to differential poll response. This does not mean the polls are wrong. It means they are accurately measuring the effect of those events. But there is good reason to think that it may be ephemeral because it is more as much a shift in enthusiasm and engagement than opinion. (We've even noticed a significant drop in TPM traffic since Clinton's fainting spell. We've seen this happen before when our readers think the news sucks and some just tune out. No, I'm not basing this theory on TPM's traffic. I just think it's part of a common phenomenon.)