Kasich Refuses to Help Trump in Ohio

Elections in Ohio are often very close. Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by 3% in 2012, and he beat Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) by less than 5% in 2008. George W. Bush carried the state twice, by 2% in 2004 and by 3% in 2000. With such close elections, each candidate's ground operation can be critical to getting out the vote. Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) has a powerful network throughout the state that could help Donald Trump enormously, if only the governor fired it up for Trump. But he hasn't, and has no plans to do so. Trump is thus being forced to spend time and money building an operation in the Buckeye State from scratch, and hopes to have 70 paid staffers there shortly. In contrast, Hillary Clinton already has 180 paid staffers working in Ohio and is likely to hire more over time. As Trump may or may not know—but his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, knows very well—no Republican has ever been elected president while losing Ohio. For Hillary Clinton, Ohio would be wonderful, but it is not essential if she can win Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, and a couple of other swing states.

Kasich's refusal to help Trump (and his pointed refusal to attend the Republican National Convention in his own state) has two underlying components. If Trump loses badly in November nationwide and the post mortem is that Trump lost because he was a racist bigot, then Kasich will come away with clean hands for boycotting him. Also, Kasich clearly wants to be president, and his path to the White House in 2020 is much easier against a President Clinton than against a President Trump. So Kasich has both a moral reason and a practical reason for not helping Trump at all this year. (V)

Has Trump Hit His Ceiling?

Politico's Steven Shepard has written an interesting macro-analysis of post-convention polling data. He notes that the race sometimes gets tighter, and sometimes gets looser, but that it seems clear that there is a ceiling above which Donald Trump cannot rise. Specifically:

• In the last 20 Clinton vs. Trump national polls, dating back to July, Trump has rarely broken 40%, and has never risen above 44%. Clinton's high, by contrast, is 52% and she regularly pulls numbers in the high 40s.
  
  
• In national polls where third-party candidates are included, Trump has not done better than 40%, whereas Clinton topped out at 50%. Trump is also at 37% or worse in half of these surveys.
  
  
• He's currently trailing in all 11 of Politico's battleground states, and has not done better than 45% in any of those states since securing the Republican nomination.
  
  
• It is difficult to see where future Trump growth could come from. He's already got 82% of self-identified Republicans, and everyone else (independents, Democrats, etc.) hates him. Much the same is true of Hillary Clinton, incidentally, but she's got 85% of Democrats, and the Democrats are the larger party.

Of course, there's still the possibility of the debates being a game-changer, or of an "October surprise"—terrorist attack, stock market crash, Wikileaks dump, etc. Absent those, however, Trump seems to be locked in at around 40%-42% of the popular vote. That's rarely enough to win; low-40s only gets the job done in elections where there's a third party candidate who hurts the runner-up even more substantially than the winner. And there's been no indication that droves of Clinton voters are getting ready to jump ship to the S.S. Stein. (Z)

Clinton Is Now Holding Press Conferences

For most of August, Hillary Clinton was invisible. She was spending all her time raising money—$143 million, it turns out. Now she has a new leased plane that is big enough to handle a sizable press contingent and she is actually talking to the reporters. She has now done it two days in a row. Each day she starts out with a different topic. On Monday it was Russia and how Vladimir Putin may be trying to hack the U.S. election to favor Trump. Yesterday, her topic was Trump's tax returns. It is very likely that both topics will be brought up regularly until the election.

What is so ironic about the new arrangement—and how long it took to emerge—is that Clinton is extremely stilted during formal speeches and rallies, but much more relaxed in small gatherings. Also, if she continues in this mode, she will be able to dominate the headlines and set the main topic for the day's news, much as Trump has been doing for months. (V)

The Trump Campaign Is a "Black Box"

MSNBC's Steve Benen, with assists from the Associated Press and CNN's Brian Stelter, offers an interesting metaphor for the Trump campaign (and hypothetical Trump presidency): It's a Black Box. By that, he means that we know virtually nothing about how Trump would govern, what specific policies he would pursue, or whom he would appoint to key positions. In fact, the candidate himself likely doesn't know the answers to most of these questions.

There's no question that Trump is uninterested in the details of policy, as he's said so openly. Specifically, his campaign went on the record as explaining that The Donald does not, "waste time on policy," believing that doing so "would make him less effective on the stump." Trump's embrace of this philosophy is also apparent in comparisons to the Clinton campaign. For example, Clinton's tech policy team sat for an interview with Politico this weekend. Trump, by contrast, does not appear to have any advisers on this subject, nor on a host of others. Even more strikingly, Clinton's website has 38 different policy proposals totaling 112,735 words. Trump's has just seven, checking in at a mere 9,000 words.

There is at least one semi-analogue to this approach in American history, but it is nearly 200 years old. The strategy of William Henry Harrison's presidential campaign in 1840 was laid out by Whig mover and shaker Nicholas Biddle:

Let him [Harrison] rely entirely on the past. Let him say not a single word about his principles or his creed, let him say nothing, promise nothing. Let no committee, no convention, no town meeting extract from him a single word about what he thinks now or what he will do hereafter.

Hard to say how well the Trump team knows their history, but they may be pleased to know of the success Harrison had by revealing nothing. On the other hand, the 70-year-old Trump might be less than thrilled to learn what happened to the 69-year-old Harrison once he actually assumed the Presidency (Hint: He didn't make it to 70). (Z)

The Road to the White House Runs Past Disney World

Interstate Highway I-4 runs from Tampa to Orlando to Daytona Beach (which technically makes it Intrastate Highway I-4) and about 40% of Florida's voters live fairly close to it. It is a microcosm of Florida and America, including left-wingers, right-wingers, and everything in between. Whichever candidate wins the I-4 race will probably win Florida, and whichever candidate wins Florida will probably win the election. Both candidates know that. In August, the number one market for political ad spending in the entire country was Orlando-Daytona Beach, with $8.1 million. Second place nationwide was also along the I-4 corridor: Tampa-St. Petersburg-Sarasota, with $7.1 million.

The I-4 changed Florida forever. On Nov. 22, 1963, another day that will live in infamy, Walt Disney flew to Central Florida to inspect sites for a possible theme park. He picked Orlando and built Disney World there. A large number of other businesses showed up shortly thereafter either to try to attract some of the tourists who came to Disney World or to service them. It also brought many new residents to the area to work in the new businesses. In particular, it drew many people from Puerto Rico, all of whom are American citizens and who can vote if they live in one of the 50 states (or D.C.). By 2000, 14% of the state's population was Puerto Rican. Most Puerto Ricans are Democrats, moving the once Republican state leftward to its current position as the ultimate swing state. (V)

Dallas Morning News Rejects Trump

The Dallas Morning News is a very Republican newspaper in a very Republican state. For 50 years, it has been endorsing Republicans for president. Not this year. Yesterday the paper published a scathing editorial lambasting Donald Trump and urging readers not to vote for him. Their complaints about him include his lack of enthusiasm for free markets and free trade, his isolationism, his authoritarianism, and his open admiration of Vladimir Putin. It ends with: "Donald Trump is not qualified to serve as president and does not deserve your vote."

As far as we know, no major newspaper that has endorsed Democrats for 50 years has come out and said that Hillary Clinton is unfit to be president. (V)

Koch Brothers Are Preparing for the Long Haul

The billionaire Koch brothers have no use for Donald Trump and his opposition to free trade, so they aren't spending any money on the presidential race this year. But that doesn't mean they are withdrawing from politics. Far from it. They have created the Grassroots Leadership Academy to train the next generation of conservative activists in their ideas and politics. The real goal is to rebuild the entire conservative movement in the event of a Trump loss.

The brothers feel a sense of urgency because Trump has shown that Republican candidates who vigorously denounce free trade can win the Republican nomination. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) showed that Democrats who vigorously denounce free trade can get 43% of the primary vote on the Democratic side. These observations make the libertarian brothers, who strongly support free trade and trade agreements, extremely nervous about the future, hence the new training school.

The academy offers two six-week courses and a final three-day training seminar at the Koch brothers' political headquarters. The first course teaches people how to lobby members of Congress about a specific issue. The second course turns the attendees into community activists. The seminar is the final touch for people who have passed the first two levels. If there is a civil war within the Republican Party after November, the Koch brothers want to play a big role in it and shape the party for years to come. (V)

McCarthy Wants to Impeach Clinton

Andrew McCarthy (no, not the one who starred in Weekend at Bernie's and Pretty in Pink) is a well known figure in alt-right circles, as one of the National Review's top columnists. He believes that Medicare should be abolished immediately, that waterboarding is not torture, and and that impeachment is the preferred solution to any and all political ills. In fact, he's even written a book explaining why Barack Obama should be impeached, 2014's Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment. Undoubtedly, it is a thoughtful and reasoned examination of Obama's record.

To nobody's surprise, McCarthy also supports the impeachment of Hillary Clinton. She may not be president yet, but he feels that is a mere technicality. He is so very eager that he doesn't want to wait until January 20, and instead proposes to impeach Clinton right now, based on "high crimes and misdemeanors" committed while Secretary of State. McCarthy observes that, "the Constitution does not limit impeachment to incumbent officials," and believes that a successful prosecution, "would have the constitutional effect of disqualifying her for the presidency."

Now, McCarthy is a lawyer, so he knows how to write a plausible-sounding argument. However, this one stretches things to extremes, even by his standards. To start with, the penalty for being convicted in an impeachment proceeding is removal from office. This may explain why the Constitution does not explicitly forbid impeachment of non-officeholders, because the framers saw no need. They also did not, for example, specify that the army should carry guns and not rubber chickens—they took that as a given. Meanwhile, the notion that an impeachment conviction would disqualify Clinton from the presidency is an even bigger legal leap. As a practical matter it might, if the charges were legitimate. But as a matter of law, the Constitution places no such restriction on the Chief Executive. Bernie Madoff or Charles Manson could be elected president, and the Constitution would not stand in the way.

Needless to say, McCarthy is likely to have as much success with getting Clinton impeached as he had with getting Obama impeached. Still, it is remarkable that someone as clever as he is does not understand (or, perhaps, does not care) that using impeachment as a backdoor means of challenging a legally-elected candidate serves only to undermine the integrity of future election results and future officeholders. That includes future Republican officeholders. (Z)

Chaffetz To Hold More E-mail Hearings

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has been leading Congress' investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. And though the FBI considers the matter closed, he's no quitter. So, he announced on Tuesday that he planned to hold at least two more hearings into the subject. He has to hurry, however, because the current term of Congress is almost over (they will be in recess after October 1). Election Day is also coming up, which is something that just may factor into his thinking as well.

It is hard to see how publicizing the emails, yet again, will have an impact on anything. Surely, if there is one thing that voters know about Hillary Clinton, it's her email server. Those who are going to hold it against her, and those who are not, have all made their decisions. The hearings will get Chaffetz some more ink (and pixels), which is good for him. However, they could also feed into the "witch hunt" narrative, which is bad for the party. This would hardly be the first time that a politician put personal needs over those of the party, however. See, for example, the entire career of James Traficant. (Z)

Today in Irony: Gingrich Has Coughing Spell While Blasting Clinton's Coughing Spell

First of all, try not to yawn while reading this item. Did you blow it? Understandable, as the power of suggestion is often quite formidable. Newt Gingrich learned this the hard way on Tuesday. He was appearing on Sean Hannity's show, and was busily explaining how Hillary Clinton's recent coughing fit speaks to deep and abiding health problems, and thus means she is not capable of being president. Unfortunately for the former Speaker, the harangue put coughing on his mind, and he had to turn away from his microphone while he got a coughing spell under control. As a seasoned politico, Gingrich was quickly able to explain the source of his discomfort: He flies a lot, and his throat gets dry. One wonders if Clinton also flies a lot, and if that might explain her coughing spell. Someone should look into that. (Z)

Today's Presidential Polls

Labor Day has come and gone, so now we are in the homestretch of the campaign. Those low-interest voters who haven't been sitting on the edges of their seats watching the races yet are expected to pay attention now. Lots of joy and woe in polling land today. The good news is that we have 91 presidential polls, including every state in the union. The bad news is that we are not sure anyone can trust them. SurveyMonkey polled every state for the Washington Post. In addition, Ipsos released polls of 40 states. Both SurveyMonkey and Ipsos do Internet polling, which in principle we don't really trust so much. However, when major media outlets sponsor the polls, we are hoping that they are paying enough attention to the details to make the polls sort of reliable.

The reason we are even considering using Internet polls now is that traditional polling is becoming so difficult. Back in the 1960s, most people had one telephone at home. If the pollster picked 2,000 phone numbers at random and called those phones, it was probably a tolerably good sample. Even better was to get a list of people who actually voted in the previous election and pick a random sample of them to call. Some pollsters did this.

Nowadays, probably a third of the households have no landline, and having a computer call a cell phone is a violation of federal law. Thus pollsters have to either have people manually dial cell phones (which some do) or omit them. The former is expensive and the latter leads to bias. But even manually dialing cell phones doesn't solve the problem of getting a random sample. A poor household might have three or four voters and only one telephone among them. A wealthy household might have a VoIP (Voice over IP) telephone with four different numbers as part of its Internet package. In addition, each person might have one or more cell phones for work and/or personal use. Thus one five-person family might share a single telephone number while another five-person family might have 10 telephone numbers, making the probability of one of them being called an order of magnitude more. Hence pollsters' interest in exploring Internet polling. So the bottom line is that no method of getting a random sample really works any more, and the statistical corrections all pollsters apply to make sure they have enough men, women, rich people, poor people, white people, black people, old people, young people, and every other demographic are crucial. This is not a great situation, but it is where we are now.

One thing to note (and possibly take with a grain of salt), is that SurveyMonkey asked about Gary Johnson and Jill Stein in every state. Johnson averaged 12.9%, not that far from the 15% he will need to make the debates. He is in double digits in 42 states. Stein averaged 4.8% and is in double digits only in Vermont, with 10%. However, before assuming Johnson will make the cut, remember that the Internet has a strong libertarian bias, and the sample may have included many people who want to see Johnson on stage, even if they don't plan to vote for him. Johnson polled 25% in New Mexico, a state he once governed, and 23% in Utah. It is very unlikely he will get anywhere near these numbers on Nov. 8.

So what is the bottom line from all these polls? The map we get is the 2012 final map with the addition of North Carolina turning blue. Even without any polling, many experts said this is what they expect. (V)

State	Clinton	Trump	Johnson	Start	End	Pollster
Alaska	31%	38%	19%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Alabama	31%	53%	8%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Alabama	39%	52%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Arkansas	37%	46%	11%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Arkansas	42%	48%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Arizona	37%	39%	13%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Arizona	41%	45%		Aug 19	Sep 01	IPSOS
California	49%	28%	12%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
California	63%	24%		Aug 26	Sep 01	IPSOS
Colorado	37%	37%	16%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Colorado	45%	39%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Connecticut	44%	33%	12%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Connecticut	47%	39%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Delaware	43%	33%	12%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Florida	42%	40%	10%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Florida	48%	45%		Aug 26	Sep 01	IPSOS
Georgia	39%	40%	12%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Georgia	41%	47%		Aug 19	Sep 01	IPSOS
Hawaii	51%	25%	7%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Iowa	36%	40%	16%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Iowa	41%	44%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Idaho	25%	44%	19%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Idaho	28%	58%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Illinois	45%	31%	12%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Illinois	50%	37%		Aug 26	Sep 01	IPSOS
Indiana	30%	46%	13%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Indiana	32%	56%		Aug 19	Sep 01	IPSOS
Kansas	30%	43%	17%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Kansas	37%	52%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Kentucky	29%	52%	7%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Kentucky	42%	46%		Aug 11	Sep 01	IPSOS
Louisiana	33%	49%	9%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Louisiana	37%	57%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Massachusetts	48%	29%	11%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Massachusetts	48%	32%		Aug 19	Sep 01	IPSOS
Maryland	52%	32%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Maryland	54%	25%	6%	Aug 18	Aug 30	OpinionWorks
Maryland	54%	27%	9%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Maine	37%	34%	15%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Maine	42%	42%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Michigan	39%	38%	13%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Michigan	42%	42%		Aug 19	Sep 01	IPSOS
Minnesota	41%	34%	15%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Minnesota	42%	33%		Aug 19	Sep 01	IPSOS
Missouri	34%	43%	14%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Missouri	35%	51%		Aug 19	Sep 01	IPSOS
Mississippi	30%	59%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Mississippi	43%	46%	4%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Montana	31%	44%	14%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
North Carolina	40%	41%	10%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
North Carolina	49%	44%		Aug 19	Sep 01	IPSOS
North Dakota	26%	51%	16%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Nebraska	32%	42%	15%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Nebraska	38%	45%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
New Hampshire	40%	34%	14%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
New Hampshire	44%	45%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
New Jersey	47%	36%		Aug 19	Sep 01	IPSOS
New Jersey	49%	34%	8%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
New Mexico	37%	29%	25%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Nevada	40%	37%	12%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Nevada	43%	35%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
New York	50%	28%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
New York	51%	31%	8%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Ohio	37%	40%	13%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Ohio	43%	46%		Aug 26	Sep 01	IPSOS
Oklahoma	26%	49%	13%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Oklahoma	37%	48%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Oregon	44%	39%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Oregon	47%	32%	11%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Pennsylvania	41%	38%	12%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Pennsylvania	48%	42%		Aug 26	Sep 01	IPSOS
Rhode Island	41%	33%	15%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
South Carolina	38%	45%	10%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
South Carolina	48%	45%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
South Dakota	29%	43%	19%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Tennessee	31%	49%		Aug 19	Sep 01	IPSOS
Tennessee	31%	51%	10%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Texas	32%	49%		Aug 26	Sep 01	IPSOS
Texas	40%	40%	11%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Utah	27%	34%	23%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Utah	34%	35%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Virginia	43%	36%	13%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Virginia	50%	37%		Aug 19	Sep 01	IPSOS
Vermont	45%	24%	11%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Washington	41%	31%	16%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
Washington	45%	35%		Aug 19	Sep 01	IPSOS
Wisconsin	38%	38%		Aug 19	Sep 01	IPSOS
Wisconsin	39%	37%	13%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
West Virginia	27%	52%	12%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey
West Virginia	38%	55%		Aug 12	Sep 01	IPSOS
Wyoming	21%	57%	15%	Aug 09	Sep 01	SurveyMonkey

Today's Senate Polls

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Start	End	Pollster
Maryland	Chris Van Hollen	55%	Kathy Szeliga	26%	Aug 18	Aug 30	OpinionWorks

* Denotes incumbent

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---The Votemaster and Zenger