Open Thread for Saturday, September 24, 2016

Filed in National by on September 24, 2016

PRESIDENT
NEVADA–Democracy Corps & Greenberg Quinlan Rosner–Clinton 49, Trump 46
OHIO–Democracy Corps & Greenberg Quinlan Rosner–Clinton 46, Trump 46
NORTH CAROLINA–Democracy Corps & Greenberg Quinlan Rosner–Clinton 48, Trump 45
PENNSYLVANIA–Democracy Corps & Greenberg Quinlan Rosner–Clinton 51, Trump 42

“U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials — including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president,” Yahoo News reports.

“The activities of Trump adviser Carter Page, who has extensive business interests in Russia, have been discussed with senior members of Congress during recent briefings about suspected efforts by Moscow to influence the presidential election.”

Meanwhile, “Russian intelligence agencies are trying to interfere with the U.S. presidential election, the top Democrats on the intelligence committee said,” according to NBC News.

“The lawmakers, part of the so-called ‘Gang of 8,’ members of Congress who are briefed on nearly all the nation’s intelligence secrets, went much further than President Barack Obama has been willing in engaging the question of Russian hacking into American political organizations.”

A new SurveyMonkey poll finds that nearly half of all voters — 46 percent — think Donald Trump would use a nuclear weapon to attack ISIS or another foreign enemy.

Also interesting: “Sixty-five percent said that there would be race riots in major cities during a Trump administration, and 44 percent believe Trump would authorize internment camps for illegal immigrants.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “unveiled legislation to prevent a government shutdown next weekend and provide more than $1 billion to battle the Zika virus. It also would provide $500 million to help Louisiana rebuild from last month’s devastating floods,” the AP reports.

“But Democrats immediately blasted the proposal for failing to fund one of their top priorities: money to help Flint, Michigan, repair its lead-tainted water system.”

“McConnell’s move could set up a showdown vote next week. Democrats said they would likely filibuster the measure since it omits a bipartisan plan to provide $220 million to help Flint and other cities with lead emergencies replace pipes and take other steps to clean their water.”

Playbook: “It’s not really in anyone’s interest to shut down the government less than two months before Election Day. Nobody is predicting that this is going to lead to a shutdown. They have a week — the government doesn’t shut down until next Friday — and Congress rarely does anything until it absolutely has to.”

Apparently Ted Cruz thinks that being an amoral pathological liar isn’t as important in a presidential candidate and his commitment to appoint a Supreme Court Justice who thinks that child labor laws, Medicare and Social Security are all unconstitutional.

After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump…

Six key policy differences inform my decision. First, and most important, the Supreme Court…

For some time, I have been seeking greater specificity on this issue, and today the Trump campaign provided that, releasing a very strong list of potential Supreme Court nominees — including Sen. Mike Lee, who would make an extraordinary justice — and making an explicit commitment to nominate only from that list.

The real reason Cruz did this is because he numbers in Texas tanked. He is facing reelection in 2018, and as it stands now, is likely to be defeated by former Governor Rick Perry.

Hillary Clinton has proposed a tax plan that is not likely to be well-received by the Trump kids.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would levy a 65% tax on the largest estates and make it harder for wealthy people to pass appreciated assets to their heirs without paying taxes, expanding the list of tax increases she would impose on the top sliver of America’s affluent.

The estate-tax increase and other new proposals that Mrs. Clinton detailed on Thursday would generate $260 billion over the next decade, enough to pay for her plans to simplify small business taxes and expand the child tax credit, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates fiscal restraint.

In all, Mrs. Clinton would increase taxes by about $1.5 trillion over the next decade, increasing federal revenue by about 4%, though that new burden would be concentrated on relatively few households.

Good.

Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post even does a pre-debate cheat sheet:

Presidential candidates rarely come to the debates with fresh facts. Instead, they rely on claims that have been scattered in their stump speeches for many months — claims that The Fact Checker has already put to the Pinocchio Test. So here’s a quick guide to old favorites viewers will likely hear during the presidential debates that start on Sept. 26.

The list is longer for Trump because, frankly, he has been exceptionally fact-challenged in this campaign. His average Pinocchio rating is 3.4, which is extraordinary; the highest average rating in the 2012 campaign was Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who earned 3.08. Clinton has an average Pinocchio rating of 2.2, which is slightly higher than President Obama and slightly lower than Mitt Romney in 2012.

Debate moderators, please clip and save.

Here’s Aaron Kall’s analysis at USA Today:

[The] tactics that worked so well for him in the primaries will be difficult to replicate in his trio of upcoming debates against Clinton. The race is neck-and-neck, so Trump won’t be able to brag about his major polling advantage. Nor is Trump self-funding. Although he has given more than $60 million to his campaign, he established a joint fundraising pact with the Republican National Committee in May. They collected a combined $90 million in August, and the campaign has about $100 million remaining in the bank. And despite his longstanding disdain for super PACs, Trump officially endorsed one in July.

Trump will also find it difficult to repeat his attacks on moderators. TheCommission on Presidential Debates chose NBC’s Lester Holt, ABC’s Martha Raddatz, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Fox News’ Chris Wallace, bypassing media personalities with a perceived bias against Trump or a history of tangling with him. Given the intense criticism of NBC’s Matt Lauer after the Commander-in-Chief Forum, the moderators will likely over-correct and be even tougher on the candidates. The gravitas of the moderators combined with Trump’s implicit endorsement of their selection will make it difficult for Trump to attack them during the debates. He can’t credibly make fun of the NBC Nightly News ratings if Holt asks him about his tax returns.

Amy Walter: “This, of course, is the billion-dollar question. And, it is one that pollsters and campaigns spend all their time and energy trying to get right. We are seeing an unprecedented level of transparency this year by pollsters and other media outlets about how they arrived at their results. Survey Monkey’sMark Blumenthal explained how they arrived at their ‘likely voter’ model. The New York Time’s Upshot farmed their raw polling data from a Florida poll to four different pollsters to show how each of them came up with a different margin for Clinton/Trump.”

“Perhaps the best new tool on the market was designed by friend of the Cook Political Report and political scientist Ken Goldstein which goes beyond just “averaging” the various polls to looking at the assumptions the pollsters made to get to the final result.”

“At the end of the day, no one knows exactly what turn-out will be until people actually turn-out. However, we know a couple things: first, only one campaign has a data-driven turn-out program (Clinton) to help identify and get their voters to the polls; and second, Democrats have a demographic advantage, but only if those voters – namely non-white and younger, turn out. The Obama coalition has helped to elect only one Democrat – Barack Obama. In the other two mid-term elections they have stayed home. Trump, meanwhile, needs to hit an unprecedented level of support from white voters and/or hope for a lower turnout among nonwhites.”

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