Political guru Charlie Cook says that the general election began Tuesday evening. Although there is some mopping up left, it is going to be Trump vs. Clinton, and most people already realize that. He makes a number of interesting points about this. First, #NeverTrump is #NeverMore and never had a chance because you can't beat somebody with nobody and all they were offering was nobody. Second, most people now see there is no realistic way to stop Trump, even if he comes to the convention with slightly under 1,237 delegates. Third, Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) lost to Trump in Montgomery County, MD and Greenwich, CT. If a moderate can't win those bastions of establishment Republican voters, he can't win anywhere and Cruz can win outside the South only by freak accident.
Even the GOP elites are now resigned to the fact that Trump will be their nominee. Former Colorado Republican state party chairman Dick Wadhams said: "Fatigue is probably the perfect description of what people are feeling." Nevertheless, there are still pockets of Republicans where the fight goes on. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is certainly not giving up on winning on the second or later ballot now that he has been mathematically eliminated from winning on the first ballot. Cruz claimed that Trump's success was due to the fact that media network executives are all liberal Democrats.
The big question now is whether Trump and Clinton can unify their fractured parties. Both have favorability ratings deeply under water and many supporters of their respective parties really despise them. Clinton has the easier job, especially if she makes some concessions to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), such as a picking a progressive running mate and adding some planks to the platform that he cares about, such as a $15 minimum wage and restoring Glass-Steagall to its former glory. If he gets what he wants, Sanders will consider his quixotic run a success and campaign for her. He doesn't personally hate her or think she is crazy or a threat to the country or world. He just thinks she is too cozy with Wall Street and he doesn't agree with some of her positions, although he does agree with the majority of them.
On the other side of the aisle, it is much, much harder. Most of the GOP establishment thinks that Donald Trump is a dangerous nutcake who is going to rebrand the Republican Party for a generation as a bunch of racist, sexist bigots and not only lose the White House and Senate, but put the House in jeopardy as well. Putting Humpty Dumpty together again is going to be well-nigh impossible. The party will be deeply fractured all the way to November. It can't be papered over. (V)
Donald Trump has accused Hillary Clinton of playing the "woman's card." This is without question the first shot in what is going to be a big war about gender in politics. He said: "Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she'd get 5 percent of the vote." That is manifestly untrue. Given how partisan politics is nowadays, if Hillary Clinton were a yellow dog, she'd still get 40% of the vote.
What was once a latent issue—sexism in America—is suddenly going to be the defining issue of the campaign. Trump may or may not be aware that 53% of the voters in 2012 were women and 55% of them cast votes for Barack Obama. To a considerable extent, the more Trump rants about women, the larger the gender gap is going to be. A recent Suffolk University poll shows that 66% of women have an unfavorable view of Trump. Clinton is going to exploit this issue for all it is worth. In particular, she is going to make a major push to get married suburban women, most of whom normally vote Republican, to cast their ballots for her. If she can win 50% of this group, Trump is toast. Historically, male candidates running against female ones have to be very careful to keep their attacks focused on the issues rather than on gender or they could backfire. It looks like 2016 is going to be a very large-scale experiment on that question. (V)
In politics, you have to strike while the iron is hot. And Hillary Clinton's campaign staff certainly has; they are now offering donors an official Clinton campaign "woman card," designed to mimic a New York subway card. The advent of television, and then the Internet, has largely killed off the once-thriving trade in political ephemera that characterized election years: buttons, ribbons, signs, hats, and other sorts of presidentially-themed goodies. This gimmick, in addition to raising a few bucks for the campaign, is a nice throwback to that bygone era. (Z)
Days from the Indiana primaries, the state's largest newspaper declined to endorse a candidate on either side of the race, instead turning the traditional editorial into a strongly-worded anti-Trump screed:
Trump has demonstrated repeatedly during the months-long campaign that he is wholly unsuited to serve as president. He's offered simplistic proposals on national security, job creation, immigration, international trade and foreign affairs. He has sounded off with appalling comments about women and others. He's appealed to voters' worst instincts by trying to pit racial and ethnic groups against one another. He's responded when challenged with reasonable questions from political opponents and from journalists with insults and diatribes that fall far outside the bounds of decent political discourse. Those are not the qualities that made America great—or that will make it even greater. A President Trump would be a danger to the United States and to the world.
At the same time, the paper tacitly acknowledged the dilemma that the GOP is in, noting that Ted Cruz "also is ill-suited to serve in the Oval Office." This led to their conclusion—essentially a backdoor endorsement—that John Kasich on the GOP side and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side are the best from a list of bad choices. Undoubtedly, the Governor and the Secretary are delighted to have the Star's "support." (Z)
Former Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight is a curious kind of celebrity endorser. He lost his job coaching because he couldn't keep himself from abusing players, and he lost his television job because he was ill-prepared and boring. So, his popularity in the other 49 states is not great. But in Indiana, he's a god. He's like a living version of Washington Irving's Headless Horseman, whose powers end at the bridge leading into Sleepy Hollow.
In a development that will make up for the Indianapolis Star's non-endorsement (and then some), Knight has been campaigning hard for the Donald throughout the Hoosier State. And, given his penchant for shooting from the hip, he's an eerily apropos surrogate for the candidate. On Wednesday, Knight said of Trump: "I was very, very selective with players [but] that son of a b--- could play for me!" And on Thursday, Knight compared Trump with "Harry Truman, with what he did in dropping and having the guts to drop the bomb in 1944, saved, saved millions of American lives." Now, many voters might feel that "he's willing to drop nuclear bombs" is not exactly a selling point. Others might note that Truman ordered the bombs to be dropped in 1945, and was not even president in 1944. But those are the kinds of trivial details that do not matter to Donald Trump, or to his new BFF Bobby Knight. (Z)
The primary season has caused a major problem for the Republican Party: Most Americans don't like it. A new Pew poll shows that 33% of Americans have a favorable view of the Republican Party while 62% do not. For the Democrats, the numbers are 45% favorable and 50% unfavorable. Just 28% of independents view the Republican Party favorably while 37% have a favorable view of the Democrats. The dislike of the Republicans includes every demographic group, including men, women, whites, blacks, Latinos, young people, middle-aged people, old people, high school graduates, and college graduates. Just about everyone. For the Democrats, blacks, Latinos, young people, and people with postgraduate degrees have a favorable view. Other groups have a negative view. (V)
Donald Trump takes to Twitter like a duck takes to water. Only ducks don't do it to insult coots, geese, swans, and other fellow waterfowl. The New York Times has compiled a list of 210 people, places and things Donald Trump has insulted. These include:
And many, many others. The article gives the tweet or tweets for each of them. (V)
On Wednesday, GQ's Julia Ioffe published a profile of Melania Trump that, while certainly not fawning, was not particularly negative either. Still, it did not please the prospective First Lady, who took to Facebook to register her unhappiness. By the end of the day Thursday, Ioffe had been heaped with scorn and abuse, including death threats, comparisons to Hitler and Goebbels, harassing phone calls, and anti-Semitic slurs.
The Donald certainly seems to be encouraging these kinds of responses, and—given that he pays the legal bills of supporters who are accused of committing assault on his behalf—apparently approves of them. This is one place where his amateur political instincts are way, way off. Physical attacks on protesters (there was another nasty incident in California on Thursday), verbal assaults on female reporters, etc., may impress the people who already support Trump, but they are a huge turnoff to most of the rest of the electorate. And there's simply no question that incidents like these will drive fence-sitters into the Hillary camp (or, at very least, will keep them at home on Election Day). (Z)
Control of the Senate could be determined by energy. Not the energy of candidates' supporters, but regular old energy, as in coal, oil, natural gas, and maybe even solar power. The Hill has a rundown of the states where energy is a factor in the Senate races, summarized as follows.
Colorado. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), the only vulnerable Democratic senator on the ballot, is an ally of the oil and gas industries and a supporter of the Keystone XL pipeline. He could be hurt by a variety of ballot initiatives on energy. One of them, #78, requires energy facilities to be 2,500 feet from occupied structures, including homes, schools, and hospitals. Drilling advocates say that would close 40% of the 53,000 wells in the state. Bennet will have to be careful because Colorado has many environmental activists as well as outdoor recreation enthusiasts. The one thing that might save him is the fratricide within the Republican Party, with a dozen candidates running for the GOP nomination to oppose him.Energy is far from the only issue on the table in these races, but it could play a decisive factor in close races. (V)