Delaware Liberal

Rick Klein: “If the first debate was all about Donald Trump, the second debate figures to be about the anti-Trump. The Republican race has not so much changed as it has solidified over the past six weeks, erasing any doubt about Trump’s front-running status. But now, Trump will have a different on-stage neighbor – Dr. Ben Carson – and a whole stage full of rivals who need to move to Plan B when it comes to handling the man in the middle. Trump is about to see more incoming fire than even he (maybe) is capable of effectively returning. The Club for Growth is announcing its anti-Trump media campaign on Tuesday, and Wednesday night is primed to become a Trump pile-on. It brings a new set of dynamics to the race – or, at least, the hope of that when it comes to the 15 candidates not named Trump.”

Michelle Goldberg at The Nation looks at the gender double standard regarding Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton:

In a Washington Post piece titled “The Amazing Honesty of Joe Biden,” Chris Cillizza writes, “Where Clinton is struggling with the perception that she is neither honest nor trustworthy, Biden is all honesty. Where Clinton is cautious and closed off, Biden is spontaneous and an open book.” Russell Berman writes at The Atlantic, “Clinton’s poll numbers are sinking, at least in part, because she is seen, once again, as the epitome of caution and parsing. Biden may be the consummate politician, but he is seen as the opposite.” Cillizza and Berman are right about the perceptions. It seems worth pointing out, however, that no woman has the option of this kind of candor. Try to answer this question: Is there a single woman in America about whom anyone could say, “Everybody likes her, right?” (I mean besides Beyoncé, who is worshiped for her aloof perfection.) A female candidate who was prone, as Biden is, to veering off script and saying things she should not wouldn’t seem frank and lovable. She would seem sloppy and unstable. No woman could say on national television that she might be too emotionally fragile to run for president, and still be seen as someone who could actually run for president.

“It’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone – Commerce, Education and the um, what’s the third one there? Let’s see. Oh five – Commerce, Education and the um, um,” - Rick Perry

Inside is the documentary Donald Trump does not want you to see.

If you live in the 18th Representative District and are registered to vote, get out and vote for David Bentz. If you think you live in the 18th RD and are not sure, go here and find out. If you want to know more about today's special election, go here. Polls are open now and until 8 pm. You can find your polling place here. You can read up on David Bentz in the News Journal voter guide and in our own El Som's piece on him last week.

...that the attacks on 9/11 were a successful Al-Qaeda operation, that George Bush turned into a HUGE Al-Qaeda victory through his bungled, nonsensical, and ultimately tragic response.

Republican consultant Steve Schmidt, who presumably sympathizes with National Review and Club for Growth, described their frustrations as the result of a fatal disjunction between mass conservatism and the ideology that’s supposed to underlie it. “We’re at this moment in time,” Schmidt told NPR recently, “when there’s a severability between conservatism and issues. Conservatism is now expressed as an emotional sentiment. That sentiment is contempt and anger.” This explains Trump’s rise and persistence, but fails to account for how “contempt and anger” became such valuable currency in Republican politics today. That omission is predictable, because such an accounting would implicate nearly everyone who now claims to be astonished and dismayed by the Trump phenomenon. It’s difficult to pinpoint when resentment became a controlling force in Republican politics, but Club for Growth, National Review, and Schmidt all contributed to it.

Republicans in 2008 were contemptuous and angry that their ideology of preemptive war and supply side economics were revealed to be bankrupt and responsible for the horrible mess the country found itself in. Not that the horrible events of two failed wars and an economic depression that they were directly responsible for made them angry. No, they were angry that they were found out. They were angry that the were shoved out of power because of it. Power belongs to conservatives. Always. And they were very very very angry that the person doing the shoving was black. Republicans, all of them, everywhere, began an opposition of total obstruction. And they maintained it through anger and contempt. Every action taken by the black usurper was an action of a genocidal tyrant bent on conservative white people's immediate, imminent destruction. Everything was an outrage.