At the beginning of May when Trump sewed up the Republican nomination, I thought he could go in three different directions: first, he could continue as the dark prince of political incorrectness, skewering Muslims and Mexican-Americans; second, he could become a conventional Republican, dropping his complaints about bad trade deals, runaway shops, foreign interventions, and K Street lobbyists; third, he could take his original message, which I heard in New Hampshire in August 2015, of Ross-Perot style economic nationalism, foreign policy realism, and opposition to illegal immigration, but pare away the incendiary racist, nativist, psycho-sexual and self-promotional provocations.
We just got this email from TPM Reader DL. And as far as I can tell, she’s right. There does not seem to be any mention of Donald Trump on the official Republican Party website, gop.com. Hillary is there. Bernie is there. George H.W.Bush is there. Reagan is there. Reagan/Bush. Lincoln is there. No Trump anywhere. Not on the blog, signups. Not anywhere that I could find.
If you go to the Republican National Committee website, there is a crowded homepage with no mention of Donald Trump. I’ve been watching it for a few days. They recently had a petition asking people to sign if they want to “Take Back The White House.” Even in the body of that petition, there was no mention of Trump. Judging from their website, the RNC is acting as if Clinton is running unopposed.
This isn’t as bracing and shocking as Donald Trump’s flirtation’s with fascistic politics, explicit racism and sundry nonsense. But it could end up being a very, very big deal. It is conventional wisdom – and in that rare case probably accurate – that both national campaigns need to raise on the order of $1 billion for the fall campaign. But now Donald Trump is saying he doesn’t think he will need anywhere near that much.
This part of the write up from the latest PPP poll out of Pennsylvania tells you basically where the entire race currently is …
Pennsylvania is a great microcosm of the issue Clinton faces in winning over Sanders fans. Among people who support Sanders in a head to head match up with Trump, only 72% support Clinton in the general. 10% would go to Trump, 6% to Stein, 4% to Johnson, and 9% are undecided. If Clinton could win over even just half of those Sanders supporting hold outs her lead over Trump would go from a tenuous 41-40 to a comfortable 47-40. Whether it’s possible for her to do that time will tell.
This is not immediately relevant to the election. But I wanted to flag something Donald Trump said yesterday in his teleprompter speech. Here’s the passage.
Some people say I’m too much of a fighter. My preference is always peace, however. And I’ve shown that. I’ve shown that for a long time. I’ve built an extraordinary business on relationships and deals that benefit all parties involved, always. My goal is always, again, to bring people together. But if I’m forced to fight for something I really care about, I will never, ever back down and our country will never ever back down.
TPM is hiring a reporter to cover the inner workings of the Democratic party and Democratic political coalition in Washington, DC. The world of congressional staff, the major liberal and labor groups, campaign committees, Democrats working on K Street and in public relations firms. Everything that professional Democrats do and are involved with in the nation’s capital: the business of the Democratic party, the strategies Democrats are discussing and pursuing, the nuts and bolts of elections, the policy questions that bear directly on campaign and legislative work and more.
In light of that Politico piece everyone is discussing today about the end of the Sanders’ campaign I thought I’d reup this piece from a month ago.
Statement from President Obama just released by the White House Press Secretary. Pay particular attention to the last paragraph.
People on TV right now are asking how it is that Donald Trump is now so much wobblier than he was in past blowups. Or why is the press being harder on him now? All these different questions. All of them, I think, miss the point. The issue is that Trump is now operating in front of a different electorate. It wants different things. It is willing to accept different things. That is the entirety of the matter. The general electorate is not the GOP primary electorate. He has to react to that. The press inevitably reacts to that. But the real issue is that press scrutiny didn’t matter in the GOP primaries because Trump’s supporters generally liked or were indifferent to what reporters found. This is all about a different electorate.
New Jersey polls closed at 8:00PM
8:07 PM: Don’t read too much into the networks saying both New Jersey races are “too early to call.” There are no exit polls tonight in New Jersey. So nothing to base predictions on until there are some actual results.
8:13 PM: And oh my … Hillary hit Trump so hard he’s using a teleprompter tonight!