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From The Reporter’s Notebook
Bob Inglis, a former South Carolina congressman who lost his primary to Trey Gowdy in 2010, said that he will not vote for Donald Trump under any circumstances, TPM’s Lauren Fox reported. He said that the campaign to stop him should be more than just conservatives staying home on election day. He even presented the opportunity of a write in campaign to stop Trump. “It is not that Hillary is so polarizing. It really is just ‘is the best America has to offer really? This is the best?’ That is what is so sad about this whole race. It is just so terribly sad. We have this schister who has businesses that are questionable, who lives in a world of casinos and raunch and gaudiness and he is the frontrunner on one side and on the other side we have this ‘she’s been around awhile and so we are used to her.'”
Agree or Disagree?
Josh Marshall: “We’ve discussed before that Trump has crystallized and made himself the leader of the revanchist core of the contemporary GOP, a group of people who are overwhelmingly white, largely older and believe that their country and a range of social realities they cherished have been taken away from them. They want both back. Jamelle Bouie writes that ‘white voters hope Trump will restore the racial hierarchy upended by Barack Obama.’ I am not sure I would phrase it quite so starkly. But I’m also not sure why I wouldn’t. Race is at the core of what we are seeing unfold. Indeed, I’ve made similar arguments myself. What has only fully come into focus for me over the last week is that Trump is not only leading this but embodies it as well.”
BUZZING: Today in the Hive
From a TPM Prime member: “I have read several good articles this weekend that all make really good points about what has given us the age of Trump. Many have to do with the man himself. Some have to do with the seeds sown by republicans past, and some look like the death of the party itself. I’m going to start with the number 3…are republicans going the way of the whigs. Its a complicated answer. The Whigs ceased to be a party because they lost a cohesive message in the time when slavery was the main issue of the day. Northern Whigs were supportive of the status quo . Southern Whigs were in favor slavery. There was also the abolitionist northern faction virulently against. This alone divided them in and of itself, but did not destroy them. What destroyed them was the creation of parties OUTSIDE of the Whigs. In those days, a 3rd party could actually print ballots which included their candidate and hand them out at polling places if their candidate wasnt listed (and often party bosses refused to list other parties candidates). This was totally legal. So if you were well organized and had supporters willing to get ballots printed and go to polling places to hand them out, you could be successful. In essence, the only avenue to create change in the party system was from the outside. This is not possible in our system. Ballot access is different from state to state but to get on the ballot in all 50 states in prohibitively expensive and there are roadblocks everywhere. The 2 party system has made a challenge to the status quo very difficult. So in essence, what happened to the Whigs would not be possible now. If a party is to be destroyed…it has to come from within. That is a much longer process. So, dont look for the destruction of the republican party…look to what it becomes.”
Related: How Trump happened.
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What We’re Reading
Rolling through the West in search of the American Dream. (New Republic)
Inside the immigration abuses of America’s little-known guest worker program. (ProPublica)
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