It’s October 17 and the PollTracker Average stands at Clinton 44.7 percent, Trump 42 percent, an 2.7 percentage-point spread
The TPM Electoral Scoreboard stands at Clinton 352, Trump 183. Only Alaska is in the Toss Up category.
This attack on a GOP campaign office in North Carolina is a very serious situation. Any kind of election related violence is always serious. But it is especially so in a campaign which has already seen more incitement and incendiary than in almost half a century and arguably much longer. Predictably, Donald Trump has publicly blamed Hillary Clinton and cited the attack as a reason that “now we have to win.” In other words, Trump is now arguing that victory is either necessary as payback for the fire or that victory is necessary to defend supporters against future attacks.
The ATF is involved in the investigation. I think it is wise not to make too many assumptions about the intentions or identity of the arsonist. On its face, the attack looks like it is anti-Republican in nature. But recent elections have also witnessed a number of incidents, either attempted or otherwise in which supporters of one party carried out attacks either on themselves or their own partisans in an effort to tarnish the other party. In other words, false flag attacks, usually of an extremely clumsy and quickly discovered nature. Lots of places have surveillance cameras these days. I don’t say this is likely, only that it is a real possibility based on recent history. With federal law enforcement involved there’s a good chance we’ll know more soon.
In warning about voter fraud, Donald Trump is following in the footsteps of more respectable Republicans like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. For decades, Republicans have used charges of fraud to enact legislation that would make it more difficult for predictable Democratic constituencies (minorities, the young) to vote. A key battle this November will be the Secretary of State’s race in New Mexico. It’s a doozy, with a truly scary Republican candidate.
Check out the latest episode of my new podcast where I talk to The New Republic’s Jeet Heer about Trump and the historical roots of Trumpism.
Here’s one topic I’ve been thinking about and which we’re going to be talking about next week. Where do state laws on voter suppression and open-carry intersect with federal laws on voter intimidation and voting rights?
You saw this incident last week where two Trumpers stood outside a Democratic campaign office in Virginia for twelve hours holding firearms. This was obviously menacing behavior. And this takes on a new dimension, both substantively and in terms of federal law, when it’s tied to elections. But it was also completely legal under state firearms laws.
I noticed that hours before Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke was calling for ‘pitchforks and torches’ he was complaining on twitter about how long the background check took for the new AR-15 he just bought.
I was just reading through my email and TPM Reader MMD sent me a couple Dylan videos that I don’t think I’d ever seen before, along with touching on some topics we’d both remember as kids growing up in Southern California in the 1980s.
I’m sort of surprised that I’d never seen these videos before because not only am I a big Dylan fan (which you know) but I’m also a big, big Letterman fan. Or at least I was in his early years. I was really into Letterman from the very beginning. In fact, before he got the late night show he had some kind of morning or daytime show that I vaguely remember watching too.
As I write this Trump book I’ve been discussing, I’ve been going back over notes, posts and thinking a bit more deeply about various topics I write about here on an on-going basis. One of those topics is the shrinking electoral base of the Republican party.