From The Atlantic:
A few houses down, a middle-aged black woman with carefully penciled-in eyebrows and curly, graying hair answered the door. She looked at the Clinton flier and frowned. “I’m sorry, I’m voting for Trump,” she said, handing the flier back to Lewis.
Then she doubled over with laughter. “I lied! Gotcha!” She wiped her eyes, and leaned against the door frame. “No way in hell.”
Rick Hasen: “Standing by itself, what the campaign describes may be odious, but it is not illegal. There is no law against negative campaigning, or discouraging people from voting through legal means (not by, say, giving misinformation about where to vote).”
“But the Trump campaign also has promoted ‘poll watching’ and other operations which many see as a sign of voter intimidation. Trump has engaged in so much of this activity, that the DNC is trying to use it to extend the consent decree against the RNC for voter intimidation activity extended for up to 8 more years. These brazen statements from the Trump campaign marginally increase the chances of success of that effort, because they confirm that the campaign has an interest in making it harder for likely Democratic voters, including minority voters, to come out to the polls and vote.”
Rick Klein: “John Podesta’s hacked emails have provided enough raw material to fill a bookshelf with campaign retrospectives. We now have a picture of fierce internal debates over how to handle Hillary Clinton’s paid-speech transcripts, emerging primary challenges from the left, and of course how to handle the matter of her email server. (‘There Is Just No Good Answer,’ Philippe Reines wrote to Podesta and several other top aides, with dramatic spacing for effect.)”
“But the peek behind the curtain is perhaps nowhere more revealing than in the warfare revealed between Chelsea Clinton and top Bill Clinton aide Doug Band over the Clinton Foundation and the web of personal and business connections that grew around it. A memo out this week via Wikileaks has Band describing what he labeled ‘Bill Clinton Inc.,’ describing his work to secure ‘in-kind services for the President and his family – for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like,’ in addition to highly paid speeches to private enterprises.”
“This is the kind of operation the Clintons’ critics have long warned about – with revolving doors, intersecting public and private interests, and opportunities for lined pockets all around. Donald Trump this week was criticized for taking a break from his campaign to attend to and hype business matters. Inside Clinton Inc., that doesn’t look so out of the ordinary.”
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“Apologies to LBJ: difference between endorsing Trump and voting for Trump is difference between chicken shit and chicken shit on salad.”
— GOP strategist John Weaver, on Twitter.
Joe Klein: “We are about to experience a radical change in American politics: a woman may well be our next President. It’s a transformation that’s been lost in the roil of the campaign. Clinton is so familiar a character that she has been disaggregated from her gender. She is the experienced candidate, the status quo candidate, the Establishment candidate; she is the awkward, slippery, morally challenged candidate.”
“All true, but she is also a woman—and women are different from men…. when you think about it, having an intellectually mature and experienced President would be a seismic shift away from the long run of ‘outsiders’ in the oval office. And guys, if you don’t believe that having a female President would be a dramatic rupture from male governance, well, your wives probably have a list of reasons why it would.”
“Nah. They don’t get out and vote. They don’t vote.”
— Former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R), quoted by the Boston Globe, on whether Latino voters could help Hillary Clinton win Arizona.
A new CNBC poll finds Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by nine points nationally, 43% to 34%.
A new Fox News poll shows Clinton up by just three points, 44% to 41%.
For comparison, the HuffPost Pollster polling average shows Clinton leading by eight points, 49% to 41%.
For members: No, the Presidential Race Isn’t Tightening
“More Americans than at any time in Barack Obama’s presidency now say that things in the United States are going well, a sharp uptick in positive views and the best reviews of the country’s trajectory since January 2007,” according to the latest CNN/ORC poll.
“Overall, 54% say things in the country today are going well, 46% badly.”
A must-read Businessweek piece explains how Donald Trump’s campaign has “three major voter suppression operations under way” aimed at three groups: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans.
On Oct. 24, Trump’s team began placing spots on select African American radio stations. In San Antonio, a young staffer showed off a South Park-style animation he’d created of Clinton delivering the “super predator” line (using audio from her original 1996 sound bite), as cartoon text popped up around her: “Hillary Thinks African Americans are Super Predators.” The animation will be delivered to certain African American voters through Facebook “dark posts”—nonpublic posts whose viewership the campaign controls so that, as Parscale puts it, “only the people we want to see it, see it.” The aim is to depress Clinton’s vote total. “We know because we’ve modeled this,” says the official. “It will dramatically affect her ability to turn these people out.”
Cook Political Report: “Less than two weeks from Election Day, Democrats are on track to pick up between 10 and 20 House seats, a slight uptick in their fortunes but still well short of the 30 seats they need for the majority. Low enthusiasm for the top of the GOP ticket remains a concern for down-ballot Republicans, but Trump isn’t as much of a drag outside of well-educated suburbs, which could limit Democrats’ gains. View our full House ratings here.”
On the podcast: Can Democrats put more House seats in play?
After a disheartening presidential campaign, we could use more political ads like this one:
Businessweek: “Almost every public and private metric suggests Trump is headed for a loss, possibly an epic one. His frustrated demeanor on the campaign trail suggests he knows it. Yet even as he nears the end of his presidential run, his team is sowing the seeds of a new enterprise with a direct marketing effort that they insist could still shock the world on Election Day.”
“Beginning last November, then ramping up in earnest when Trump became the Republican nominee, Kushner quietly built a sprawling digital fundraising database and social media campaign that’s become the locus of his father-in-law’s presidential bid. Trump’s top advisers won’t concede the possibility of defeat, but they’re candid about the value of what they’ve built even after the returns come in—and about Trump’s desire for influence regardless of outcome.”
“Here’s a woman, she makes a speech for 15 minutes, she goes to home, goes to bed. Honestly, she has less energy than Jeb Bush. I mean it. I mean it.”
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) “again reversed his position on Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy on Wednesday night, saying he’d vote for the Republican nominee but wouldn’t endorse him,” Politico reports.
“Chaffetz is one of six Republican members of Congress who have recommitted to voting for Trump after yanking their support.”
New York Times: “Big crowds still mob Donald Trump when he comes to town, with fans waiting in long lines to attend his rallies, where they eagerly jeer his Democratic rival and holler happily at his message.”
“But beneath the cheering, a new emotion is taking hold among some Trump supporters as they grapple with reports predicting that he will lose the election: a dark fear about what will happen if their candidate is denied the White House. Some worry that they will be forgotten, along with their concerns and frustrations. Others believe the nation may be headed for violent conflict.”
Washington Post: “A growing number of prominent Republican women are worried that as members of their male-dominated party step up to defend Donald Trump against accusations of sexual assault, they are causing irreparable damage to the GOP’s deteriorating relationship with female voters.”
“The controversy also comes as the Republican Party continues to struggle to attract women, who make up a majority of the electorate and who have supported the Democratic presidential candidate in every election going back to 1992. President Obama won women by 11 points in 2012, and several polls show Clinton leading among women by an even bigger margin this year.”
“The Republican Party’s grip on U.S. state legislatures could loosen in next month’s election as Democrats seek to link Republican candidates to the sinking fortunes of the party’s White House candidate, Donald Trump,” Reuters reports.
“The bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) estimates 18 legislative chambers in 12 states could switch party control, including in Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nevada, Washington and Wisconsin.”
“In a vintage return to his confrontational style, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) indicated that Republicans could seek to block a Democratic president from filling the vacant Supreme Court seat indefinitely,” Politico reports.
Said Cruz: “There will be plenty of time for debate on that issue… There is certainly long historical precedent for a Supreme Court with fewer justices.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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