Although the Republican National Convention begins next Monday, the Trump campaign still has almost no infrastructure. In many states there is no office or Website or even a working telephone. Only six states have an office with a working phone that someone answers and of those, not all have a functioning campaign headquarters. Now, it is probably not necessary for any Republican to have a full-blown ground operation in, say, Wyoming or Oklahoma, but having a fully staffed headquarters would be a good thing to have in at least a dozen swing states and maybe in states like Georgia, Arizona, and Utah, which might swing for the first time in decades this year. Of course, there is still time after the convention to set up offices, but setting up an operation takes time and money and time is running out and although Trump pulled in $51 million in June, running a national campaign takes a lot of money. In contrast, Hillary Clinton has more than 100 offices already open in 14 states and has paid staff in 45 states. (V)
Like Sarah Palin before him, Donald Trump's calling card is fanning the flames of white resistance to social change. Many working-class whites and older whites do not like the idea of Spanish-speaking people taking over substantial areas near where they live, areas that used to be entirely non-Hispanic white. They also see Muslims as the enemy of the United States and strongly object to treating them just like all other Americans. In addition, there are many college students who are tired of all the rules many campuses have about microagressions and what may and may not be said to avoid hurting anyone's feelings, not to mention trigger warnings professors are supposed to give when discussing topics that might upset some students with dainty ears. These are Trump's people.
As background for an article, the New York Times interviewed dozens of people all over the country and discovered a lot of white people greatly resent what they see as special privileges given to nonwhites and non-Christians. There has always been at least an undercurrent of racism in the U.S. (and sometimes much more than an undercurrent); what Trump has done is bring it out in the open and make it legitimate. Sarah Palin tried to give voice to these people in 2008, but she was too confused and inarticulate to do a good job of it. Trump is far more forceful and articulate than Palin ever was.
While Trump's slogan is "Make America Great Again," an equally good slogan for him would be Howard Dean's 2004 slogan: "You have the power to take our country back." Only Trump and Dean have different ideas about exactly who hijacked the country and how to get it back. (V)
Many Republicans in Congress are hoping and praying that Donald Trump picks former congressman and current governor of Indiana Mike Pence (R) as his running mate. He would bring stability, policy expertise, fundraising ability, and a wide network of connections to the ticket. Pence is running for reelection as governor and has only until Friday at noon to withdraw, putting time pressure on Trump if Pence is his man. In anticipation of a possible announcement that Pence will be #2 on the GOP ticket, The Hill has compiled a short fact list about Pence:
Of the various options Trump has, Pence would probably bring more to the ticket than any other.
However, Politico is reporting that some people in Trump's inner circle are upset that Trump seems to be moving away from Pence in favor of Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), who has Trump's in-your-face style but brings no state, regional, ideological, or demographic group to the ticket. Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is his de facto campaign manager, is said to be very much against having Christie on the ticket. Kushner wants Newt Gingrich, in no small part because putting Gingrich on the ticket probably means megadonor Sheldon Adelson would quickly pony up, say, $100 million for the campaign. On the other hand, Paul Manafort definitely dislikes Gingrich and sees him as a loose cannon. He wants Pence. But it is Trump's call; we will learn whom he's chosen on Friday. (V)
At this point, the commentariat feels like it has a pretty good grasp on the VP shortlists of both Donald Trump (Christie, Gingrich, Pence) and Hillary Clinton (Warren, Kaine, Castro). But sometimes, the candidate throws a curveball at the last minute. Politico's Josh Zeitz reminds us of five occasions where that has happened in the last 50 years:
Zeitz seems to have missed the most recent one: John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin in 2008. No one south of Juneau had ever heard of her, Alaska is not a swing state, and the Republicans in the Alaska state legislature hated her. But McCain, ever the maverick, thought that an attractive woman would really shake things up. It certainly did, but not in the way he was expecting.
It is worth noting that five of these six surprises were sprung by Republicans. And since there have only been nine VP candidates chosen by Republicans since 1964 (Miller, Agnew, Bob Dole, Bush, Quayle, Jack Kemp, Dick Cheney, Palin, and Paul Ryan), it means there's been a surprise candidate over half the time. Given Donald Trump's taste for challenging convention, and for monopolizing headlines, nothing that happens on Friday should surprise us. (Z)
Political conventions are usually tightly scripted, leaving nothing to chance. With this year's Republican National Convention, however, all bets are off. It could involve a lot of surprises of the sort that the planners would like to avoid. David Lightman at McClatchy has made a list of ten possibilities:
Are any of these likely? With Trump, you never know what to expect. (V)
Fox News released two new state polls on Wednesday. Their survey of Colorado, one of the swing states, has Hillary Clinton up 10 points over Donald Trump. And their Virginia poll has her up by seven.
These polls are bad news, first of all, because Fox has a Republican house effect of about two points. So, Trump is very possibly down by 10 or more points in both states. More important, however, is that the Democrats' "blue wall" (the states the party has taken for six or more presidential elections in a row) has 242 electoral votes. Virginia has 13 EVs, and Colorado has 9, for a total of 264. So, if Trump cannot make some big inroads into these two states, then Clinton will be only six electoral votes from victory. And the odds that The Donald can somehow take all of the other 10 or so swing states are very long, indeed. (Z)
Donald Trump's problems with Latino voters are well known, but his problems with black voters are even worse, as multiple recent polls make it clear. In a national Quinnipiac poll released at the end of June, Trump was getting 1% of the black vote. Could it get worse? Yes. In a new Marist College poll of Ohio, Trump gets 0%. In Marist's poll of Pennsylvania, he also pulls down 0%. The bad news is that not even John McCain in 2008 or Mitt Romney in 2012 sank this low. The good news is that it can't get worse. (V)
Non-disclosure agreements are fairly common in the world of business, and so Trump the businessman has brought them into the world of politics. Lawsuits over NDAs are also somewhat common, and now The Donald introduced that tradition into the political realm, too, seeking $10 million in damages from former adviser and now critic Sam Nunberg.
Trump has had a lot of success in the business world, including using the legal system as a tool to aid his financial pursuits, so it's hard to question his use of NDAs in that part of his life. But we can certainly question it in this domain. Such a lawsuit, since Nunberg undoubtedly does not have $10 million lying around, makes Trump look like a bully. Not great optics for a presidential candidate. Further, this kind of thing can cause a lot of dirty laundry to get aired, either in court documents or through the press. Again, not a desirable outcome in politics. Trump would do well to drop the suit. And if Paul Manafort cannot convince him to do that, hopefully he can at least persuade The Donald not to comment on the ethnicity or gender of the judge assigned to the case. (Z)