Wednesday Open Thread [6.1.16]

New York Times: “Republicans enter the general election at a hefty disadvantage: Since the 1992 campaign, 18 states have voted consistently for Democrats in presidential elections, giving their party a firm foundation of 242 electoral votes to build upon.”

“And in the four regions likely to decide the presidency — Florida, the upper Southeast, the Rust Belt and the interior West — Mr. Trump faces daunting obstacles, according to interviews last week with elected officials, political strategists and voters.”

“Of course, months remain before voting begins, and this political year has defied many predictions. But if Mrs. Clinton clinches the Democratic nomination as expected, she may find an electoral bulwark in these coveted swing-state voters.”

“In blunt testimony revealed on Tuesday, former managers of Trump University, the for-profit school started by Donald Trump, portray it as an unscrupulous business that relied on high-pressure sales tactics, employed unqualified instructors, made deceptive claims and exploited vulnerable students willing to pay tens of thousands for Mr. Trump’s insights,” the New York Times reports.

Washington Post: “Trump was personally involved in devising the marketing strategy for Trump University, even vetting potential ads, according to newly disclosed sworn testimony from the company’s top executive taken as part of an ongoing lawsuit.”

People have asked about New Jersey. Here is the current NJ Projection – Clinton 64% – Sanders 36%. pic.twitter.com/wcWelp58tC

— Benchmark Politics (@benchmarkpol) May 31, 2016

“The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Hillary Clinton with a narrow three-point lead over Donald Trump, 46 percent to 43 percent. But if Bernie Sanders were out of the race the NBC News political unit estimates her lead would likely be much larger, perhaps up around eight points, 51 percent to 43 percent.”

“Much of this is theoretical. No one knows for certain how many Sanders-only voters will support Clinton. And with time it’s possible Trump’s support could grow as well as undecided voters make choices. He could also win some of the Sanders vote.”

“But the larger point is, the current batch of polls is coming at an odd point in the race, one where Republicans voters have begun coalescing around Trump, while Democrats still remain divided.”

Obama's approval ratings are trending sky high. Higher than Reagan's were this at this point in his last year. https://t.co/qutYA9RX2R

— Benchmark Politics (@benchmarkpol) May 31, 2016

Michael Gerson: “For those of us with a certain political bent and background, this is the most depressing moment of all. The best of the GOP — Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan, the intellectually serious reformicons who have called attention to issues of poverty and the need for Republican outreach — are bending their knee to the worst nominee in their party’s history. Ryan drags himself slowly. Rubio eventually went with a quick Band-Aid pull. But the largest political choice each man has made this year will be one of the worst mistakes of their careers.”

This, from the book "Trumped!", seems like a bad quality for a man who wants to be president. pic.twitter.com/5HxyQoqA7H

— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) May 31, 2016

David Frum on the seven broken guardrails: “Whatever happens in November, conservatives and Republicans will have brought a catastrophe upon themselves, in violation of their own stated principles and best judgment. It’s often said that a good con is based upon the victim’s weaknesses. Why were conservatives and Republicans so vulnerable? Are these vulnerabilities not specific to one side of the political spectrum—are they more broadly present in American culture? Could it happen to liberals and Democrats next time? Where were the guardrails?”

More from "Trumped." Again, not great qualities for a guy who could be president. pic.twitter.com/m910UZZBMn

— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) May 31, 2016

Yesterday was yet another example of the fascism that awaits us and the press/media should Trump be elected President. So when Trump decided to be a coward and avoid Megyn Kelly’s questions in a January debate on Fox News, he held an alleged fundraiser on the same night for veterans. He said at the time that they raised around $6 million. Several months later, some reporters began looking into whether Trump actually had raised that amount, whether he donated any himself during the fundraiser as he boasted he had, and whether any money had actually been donated to any veteran group at all. The Washington Post published a story questioning the donations last week. The Associated Press reported that about half of the 41 organizations to which Trump’s campaign donated received checks in the past week, typically dated May 24, the day the Post’s story was published. So Donald Trump got caught defrauding Veterans and lying about it, and he lashed out at the press for daring to question him.

He is a fascist dictator in the making. Frack that, he’s already been made.

Josh Marshall on Trump and his campaign attacking federal Judge Curiel for unfavorable rulings against Trump because he is a Mexican or is Spanish:

It is unprecedented for a presidential candidate to personally attack and even threaten a federal judge. (To be fair, I’m not sure there’s been a nominee being sued for fraud during the presidential campaign.) But here we have Trump making an openly racist argument against a federal judge, arguing that Curiel is pursuing a vendetta against him because Trump is, he says, “I’m very, very strong on the border.”

Today while taking questions after announcing belated donations to veterans groups, CNN’s Jim Acosta pressed Trump on his criticisms of Judge Curiel. Toward the end of the exchange, in which Trump repeated his claims about bias and unfairness, Acosta asked Trump: “Why mention that the judge is Mexican?” Trump answered: “Because I’m a man of principle. Most of the people who took those courses have letters saying they thought it was great, essentially.”

In other words, Trump didn’t answer the question and Acosta seemed not to have a chance to follow up or chose not to.

As we’ve noted, quite apart from the policies he’s embraced, Trump has shown himself over the course of the campaign to be an emotionally needy, pathological liar. Here we see that he also not only happily launches defamatory racist attacks on a federal judge but impugns the patriotism of an entire ethnic community in the United States.

As I write, the issue is being discussed on the cable nets in terms of why Trump thinks it’s a good idea to attack a judge hearing his case, whether there’s any evidence that Curiel is “biased” or “unfair.” (It’s worth noting that Curiel did Trump the inestimably valuable favor of acceding to his lawyers’ request to push the trial back until after the November election – this despite the fact that ‘elder abuse’ infractions put a premium on conducting an expeditious trial.) But handicapping the wisdom of Trump’s attack or analyzing them in substantive terms is an immense dereliction of journalistic duty.

The press routinely goes into paroxysms – often rightly so – about innuendos or phrasings that might in some way be racist or suggest racial animus. Here we have it in the open, repeated and showing itself as basically Trump’s first line of attack when he is in anyway threatened. That’s infinitely more dangerous than most things that routinely focus all the media’s attention. Any reporter who gets a chance to ask Trump to justify his actions and doesn’t is not doing his or her job. Few cases show more vividly how dangerous a person Trump is.

“Two Republicans intimately familiar with Bill Kristol’s efforts to recruit an independent presidential candidate to challenge Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have told Bloomberg Politics that the person Kristol has in mind is David French — whose name the editor of the Weekly Standard floated in the current issue of the magazine,” Bloomberg reports.

“French is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to the website of National Review, where French is a staff writer, he is a constitutional lawyer, a recipient of the Bronze Star, and an author of several books who lives in Columbia, Tenn., with his wife Nancy and three children.”

Who?