Wednesday Open Thread [8.10.16]

Filed in National by on August 10, 2016

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–Economist/YouGov–Clinton 48, Trump 41
NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–Bloomberg–Clinton 50, Trump 44
OHIO–PRESIDENT–NBC/WSJ/Marist–Clinton 43, Trump 38
PENNSYLVANIA–PRESIDENT–NBC/WSJ/Marist–Clinton 48, Trump 37
IOWA–PRESIDENT–NBC/WSJ/Marist–Clinton 41, Trump 37
FLORIDA–PRESIDENT–NBC/WSJ/Marist–Clinton 46, Trump 45
OHIO–PRESIDENT–Quinnipiac–Clinton 49, Trump 45
OHIO–PRESIDENT–Quinnipiac–Clinton 52, Trump 42
NORTH CAROLINA–PRESIDENT–PPP–Clinton 43, Trump 41
KANSAS–PRESIDENT–Survey USA–Trump 44, Clinton 39
MISSOURI–PRESIDENT–Reminton–Trump 44, Clinton 42

Kansas might be a battleground state. Kansas.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that 70% of registered Republicans want Donald Trump to stay as the party’s nominee while 19% would like him to quit.

Former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said he’s thinking of supporting Donald Trump for president, Jewish Week reports. He’s still undecided but added there are “a lot of us, I think, who can’t feel quite comfortable either way yet.”

Gore’s biggest mistake, followed up closely by dissing the Big Dog.

Donald Trump said that he will commit to three debates this fall with Hillary Clinton, but may try to re-negotiate the terms that have been agreed upon by a bipartisan commission, Time reports.

Said Trump: “I renegotiated the debates in the primaries, remember? They were making a fortune on them and they had us in for three and a half hours and I said that’s ridiculous. I’m sure they’ll be open to any suggestions I have, because I think they’ll be very fair suggestions. But I haven’t seen the conditions yet. They’re actually presented to me tonight.”

LOL. He won’t debate. He will demand “unbiased moderators.” And walk away when they are not Fox employees not named Megyn Kelly.

Can we win the House? Yes. Sam Wang tracks the generic congressional ballot and shows Democrats are at least theoretically within range to take control.

House_generic_history

Ed Kilgore says Trump’s assassination “joke” was thinly veiled sedition:

Donald Trump managed to descend to new depths today by repeating a tedious gun-lobby argument that Hillary Clinton wants to “essentially abolish the Second Amendment” and then turning it into a “joking” suggestion that “Second-Amendment people” might hold the only way to deal with that threat. Nothing like a little assassination humor to liven things up on the campaign trail, eh?

But even as they condemn the shocking utterance, a lot of observers seem to be missing the fact that Trump is adapting a dangerously common right-wing claim. It’s that the most important purpose of the Second Amendment is not to allow people to defend themselves from robbers and muggers and would-be murderers and rapists if the police cannot get the job done, but rather to create a heavily armed populace prepared to undertake revolutionary violence if the government tries to impose “tyranny.” Let’s be clear about this doctrine: It lets the gun-wielders decide for themselves whether high taxes or government surveillance or Obamacare is a sufficient threat to liberty to justify getting out the shooting irons and killing the police officers and armed-services members assigned the responsibility of enforcing the “tyrannical” laws in question. And conservative politicians have often made it clear they understand and are okay with that incredible risk, as when Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle referred cheerfully to “Second-Amendment remedies” for the liberal policies supported by her opponent, Harry Reid. Angle was hardly alone: During the Republican presidential primaries this cycle, Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz both endorsed the idea of gun rights being a safeguard against too much Big Government liberalism.

Josh Marshall asks whether there will be Trumpism after Trump?

With everything that’s happened this year, with the emergence of a white nationalist incarnation of the GOP, with everything that comes with that, do we think those folks, the big chunk of GOP voters who are hardcore Trump supporters, will come back in 2020 and say, “Okay, that didn’t work out. Let’s go for Marco Rubio.”

That does not strike me as at all plausible.

Of course, if Trump suffers a devastating defeat, as now seems at least plausible, maybe hardcore supporters will simply see the Trumpite cause is hopeless? This does appear to be fairly widespread conventional wisdom. Trump goes down to an epic defeat. Establishment Republicans haul out a big bucket of ‘I told you so’ and retake the reins. Does that sound right? It doesn’t to me.

We’ve now had a version of the GOP that is strongly anti-immigrant, white nationalist in character, hostile to foreign trade as much as its hostile to foreign countries and the people who come from those countries. We’ve seen that a big chunk of the Republican party is hugely supportive of that program. The excitement, the galvanization of a large part of he electorate – I think that’s all too transformative to be dropped in favor of the pre-2016 GOP.

Josh Barro:

It doesn’t really matter what Trump meant. It matters what he said — a reckless comment that might or might not be outrageous, depending on your interpretation. This has happened over and over during the campaign, and it would happen, with much higher stakes, during his presidency.

What the president says matters. Presidents’ comments can move markets, create policy, inflame foreign tensions, even start wars. It is therefore important that presidents be careful.

“Representatives of Hillary Clinton’s campaign phoned state Democratic leaders in Arizona and Georgia this week to alert them of plans to begin transferring funds to hire more field organizers in those states,” the Washington Post reports. “Polls in both states — which Republican nominee Mitt Romney carried in 2012 — show a tightening race between Clinton and Donald Trump. The move by the Clinton campaign suggests a bid to expand the number of battleground states in play in November.” “A Democrat familiar with the campaign’s plans said the outlays in Arizona and Georgia would be “in the six figures” for now, with plans to use the money to hire staff.”

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  1. The expansion of the map is important–especially in Arizona. I’m calling it now: Kirkpatrick defeats McCain. I’ve been on both sides of a landslide. When you’re on the losing end, you lose every close race. In this case, especially if/when there is no ground game to help you out.

  2. Jason330 says:

    The Trump campaign spin is pitiful. Anyone who continues to support Trump at this point is either easily duped or is willing to pretend that they’ve been duped for some other end.

    The easily duped are just sad. These are the people who buy diet pills from late night infomercials. The Republicans willing to continue to pretend that they are duped are the real dregs of society. They are the cynics and misanthropes who put their party affiliation ahead of their identification as Americans.

  3. Jason330 says:

    LOL from Boing Boing:

    Trump campaign reboot week progress report
    Monday: Titties ✔
    Tuesday: Assassinations ✔
    Wednesday: Global Thermonuclear War
    Thursday: Strategic Interplanetary Atmospheric Annihilation
    Friday: Universal Quantum Timescale Collapse

  4. Delaware Dem says:

    LOL, Jason.

    El Som, in 1994, 2010 and 2014, I remember seeing races that I thought were safe for the Dems (MD Gov, MA Gov for example) go to the GOP in the landslide. That is how we will win the House, if we do. We will be winning races that the prognosticators now list as lean R or likely R.

    In the Senate, without a landslide making the House Dem, I still see Kirkpatrick beating McCain, McGinty beating Toomey, Bayh winning in IN, Hassan beating Ayotte in NH, Murphy beating Rubio in FL, Feingold and Duckworth winning in WI and IL. That’s 7 seats right there, more than enough for a Dem majority. In a landslide, we will also take Georgia, NC, MO, OH, KY, AR, and IA, for a grand total of 60 seats.

  5. Brian says:

    Listening to Morning Joe on my way into work, the question of why hasn’t Paul Ryan revoked his endorsement was asked. Anything less than full revocation is an endorsement and full support for Donald Trump.

    I heard an answer that essentially went like this “Paul Ryan hasn’t renounced Trump because [as the highest ranking Republican & 3rd in line for the presidency] doing so would force all the down-ballot Republicans in close races to face and answer the Trump support question, and hurt their chances of winning. They’re asking Ryan to not put them in that position.”

    Party before Country.

  6. Delaware Dem says:

    There will come a point in this race (I personally think we are there) where denouncing Trump will be necessary to win the election for Republicans. The Clinton is right now tying every Republican to Trump, so in a way, Hillary will be forcing that question on them anyway, no matter what Ryan does. Ryan denouncing Trump will give them permission to do the same. BUT, and this is why Ryan is not doing it yet, denouncing Trump means pissing off half the GOP and losing the election. Sooner or later Ryan will realize the Presidency is already lost to the GOP.

  7. Brian says:

    He stands to piss off the other half of the Republican party if he maintains his endorsement too. Each new day brings us more Republicans jumping off the deck of the SS GOP. I have to think that Ryan knows this. At some point they’ll have to decide which half of the sinking ship to stay on. The half that’s sunk before the lifeboats are in the water, or the half that stays afloat long enough for lifeboats to be boarded and launched.

  8. The problem is that so many in his caucus depend on the Trump mouthbreathers for their support. The most likely R’s to lose are the relatively moderate ones. If Ryan unendorses Trump, he will not have the support of those in his caucus who support Trump and who depend on Trump supporters to elect them. Meaning, he likely won’t be speaker assuming the R’s maintain control of the House, which I think they will.

  9. anonymous says:

    @Brian: So the GOP is the Titanic. Is Trump the captain or the iceberg?

  10. anonymous says:

    How incompetent are the police? This incompetent:

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/florida-woman-killed-police-roleplaying-exercise

    The police need to be disarmed as much as the criminals do; otherwise the police all too easily become criminals.

  11. Delaware Dem says:

    Anon…good analogy. Trump is the Iceberg. The Captain have been all the Republicans who have been steering towards the Iceberg for four decades, cultivating white resentment and racial dogwhistles and the desire for authoritarianism.

  12. anonymous says:

    Yeah, that works. The captain had been warned about icebergs but took the northern route anyway. The ship was considered unsinkable — remember the “permanent Republican majority” nonsense? And of course, the part nobody actually talks about, the Titanic was the last big gasp of a dying technology; nobody crosses the ocean by ship anymore.

    Now if we could just put the actual Trump on an actual iceberg…

  13. Delaware Dem says:

    …or an actual sinking ship with no lifeboats in freezing waters.

  14. anonymous says:

    What would the song be, though? “My Mouth Will Go On”?

  15. Brian says:

    I know many songs. Great songs. Probably some of the best ever written. There’s no doubt in my mind the most perfect best song ever will be playing.

  16. puck says:

    Had Trump been alive in 1912 he might have been on the actual Titanic.

  17. Ben says:

    Had Trump been on the Titanic, he would have tossed a mother overboard, taken her baby, and sworn that he was all the child had so he could get on a lifeboat…. then probably would have tossed the baby.