Let me start by saying I see no chance that Trump withdraws from the race, despite Republican wishful thinking to the contrary. Call it big game unicorn hunting. But unicorn studies is a perfectly respectable discipline. So I wanted to explore one aspect of this scenario. In the quite unlikely case of Trump leaving the race, who would replace him? My understanding is that in this all but unprecedented situation the Republican National Committee would convene and pick a replacement. Even if they wanted to canvas the views of Republicans nationwide there’s simply no practical way and no time to do that.
I had expected that when Donald Trump sewed up the Republican nomination, he would jettison some of his more non-Republican economic positions on trade, runaway shops, and government spending. I also expected that he would forego his incendiary anti-PC rhetoric on Mexicans, Muslims, and women. I was wrong on both counts. His economic stands might have made the election competitive, especially in the industrial Midwest, but his casual bigotry – typified by his remarks on the “Mexican” judge and by his recent attempt to defame the Khan family – have cut him off the from the 10-15 percent of the Republican and independent electorate who don’t share his economic positions, but would have been willing to vote for him out of distaste for Hillary Clinton and/or loyalty to the Republican party.
Zachary Roth was our go-to reporter on voting rights and voter suppression issues for years. He left TPM a while back and now he’s out with a whole book on the topic, The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy. This is an incredibly important issue at any time. But it’s very relevant today with the raft of recent court decisions knocking down state voter suppression laws and Donald Trump’s new push to put bogus claims of ‘voter fraud’ at the center of the election and perhaps use them to lay the groundwork to contest a loss in November. Zack is going to join us for a Live Chat in The Hive (sub.req) tomorrow at 1 pm eastern.
Come by and get your question in now or join us tomorrow at 1 pm.
Let me reiterate a point I made this morning. For all the talk about “interventions”, ‘en masse’ defections from the Trump campaign, major GOP leaders renouncing their support, let’s not kid ourselves about what’s driving this. It’s the polls.
Polls, polls, polls.
Days before the Cleveland convention, Donald Trump’s top advisor on Europe and Russia, went to Moscow to deliver a speech blasting US policy in the region.
Yes, this is the guy I mentioned in my post from a couple weeks ago.
I cringed this morning when I read this story in Politico which pretty clearly demonstrated that Melania Trump was an undocumented worker for years when she began her modeling career in the US in the mid-90s. I say I cringed not because there’s anything wrong with the piece but because we too were working on it back in February and March and had it pretty well nailed. The hold up was that there was at least one theoretically possible way she could have been legal that we couldn’t definitively rule out since the Trumps’ of course were not going to answer any questions or provide any of her immigrants papers. The irony in all of this is that the evidence against Trump comes almost entirely from her own mouth, specifically a January interview she gave to Harper’s Bazaar and a subsequent TV interview with Mika Brzezinski in which she explained that she was nothing like those awful ‘illegals’ her husband wants to expel en masse.
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When I saw Fox News come out with its poll yesterday with Hillary Clinton opening up a 10 point lead over Donald Trump nationwide, I couldn’t help wonder whether some top Republicans might have gotten a heads up the day before, thus contributing to what we might call the ‘Reince Apoplectic’ freakout. Would they do that? Who knows. But c’mon, it’s Fox. Today we have three new state polls each showing big leads for Clinton. Michigan (Clinton +9), Pennsylvania (Clinton +11), New Hampshire (Clinton +15).
Trump tells crowd how Mike Pence had to ask his permission to endorse Paul Ryan.
This is more thank than brag. But with all the florid tribulation of this election cycle which literally amazes me every day, I wanted to just thank our incredible team. I generally prefer talking about the news rather than us because that’s what you come here for. But this is just an amazing team of people. And what I’m not sure people always realize is that it’s a really small team of people. To use the old boxing metaphor, as an organization, we’ve always prided ourselves with punching above our weight.