National horse race numbers are easy to over-interpret this early in the cycle. A few polls shouldn’t affect our sense of the race too much. But there’s no question that there’s been a small but significant tightening of the Clinton v Trump polls over the last week or so. So why is that?
Tierney Sneed does a nice job here piecing together what the Supreme Court tried to do yesterday on the Obamacare contraceptive mandate and why it’s really hard to see how it’s going to work out like the court wants it to.
Donald Trump went to Twitter to complain that he was ‘misquoted’ in the new pro-Hillary Super Pac ad “Speak”. The ad is mainly about degrading comments about women. But it also includes him using the F-word. And he’s upset that it suggests he said that word about women. It may vaguely suggest that since it’s in the same ad. But it doesn’t remotely say that. What really strikes me here is that for all the storm of the last ten months, Trump is still really not used to getting any serious criticism. I suspect the Dems, if they’ve got a good strategy here, can really get under his skin.
Democrats are clearly a bit spooked by the narrowing margin between Trump and Clinton. I’m also seeing a lot of chatter about Trump’s owning the campaign narrative and a bunch of similar stuff. I see things a bit different.
After being pressed for a response through the day on the events over the weekend in Nevada, Sanders or the Sanders campaign has responded with a blistering reply which blames national party leaders, the rigged process and issues what I think amounts to an ultimatum. “If the Democratic Party is to be successful in November, it is imperative that all state parties treat our campaign supporters with fairness and the respect that they have earned.” The statement puts in about as bold a relief as I’ve seen so far the idea that it’s the Sanders campaign versus everyone else in the thrall of the 1%.
It is worth noting the big picture here. Every day the Sanders and Clinton camps spend going apeshit at each other rather than beginning the work of unifying Democrats and progressives of all stripes into a coalition to keep Donald Trump out of the White House is a lost day. The primary campaign is demonstrably over. Hillary Clinton won, with pledged delegates. Whether you like that fact or don’t like it doesn’t change the fact itself. Whoever you think is right or wrong about this blow up in Nevada, building more acrimony and resentment after the fight is already over is a bad day for the Democrats and their prospects in November.
With this new blow-up over whatever happened over the weekend in Nevada we see the pretty real and even dire consequences of lying to your supporters. The Sanders campaign, especially campaign manager Jeff Weaver, has been saying for weeks that Sanders can still win and that the system is ‘rigged’ against Sanders. But the situation in Nevada is really a microcosm of the dynamic I described last month: to the extent the system is ‘rigged’, it’s mainly rigged in Sanders’ favor.
For months I’d thought and written that Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver was the key driver of toxicity in the the Democratic primary race. Weaver has been highly visible on television, far more than campaign managers tend to be. He’s also been the one constantly upping the tension, pressing the acrimony and unrealism of the campaign as Sanders actual chances of winning dwindled.
But now I realize I had that wrong.
The most apt historic parallel for what Hillary Clinton faces in running against Donald Trump may be the 1990 Texas governor’s race, when Ann Richards beat Clayton Williams, a good ol’ boy whom one newspaper at the time described as “the Donald Trump of Texas.”