RNC Chairman Reince Priebus contended Sunday morning that the GOP’s post-2012 election “autopsy” report was meant for the “long term, not the short term,” the Daily Beast reports.
Said Priebus: “We’ve put money in Hispanic and black engagement for four straight years like no party in modern history has ever done. What this prescription is—it’s a prescription for the long term, not the short term.”
“With two weeks to go, Donald Trump’s path to an Election Night win is almost entirely closed,” Politico reports.
“Hillary Clinton enters the final 15 days of the race safely ahead in states worth more than 270 electoral votes. Indeed, the suspense of this final stretch is less about whether Trump can turn it around than how many down-ballot Republicans he will drag down with him.”
“I really think those polls are very inaccurate when it comes to women. I think we’re doing better with women than with men, frankly.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by CBS News.
“The political organization of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, an influential Democrat with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, gave nearly $500,000 to the election campaign of the wife of an official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who later helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email use,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The Virginia Democratic Party, over which Mr. McAuliffe exerts considerable control, donated an additional $207,788 worth of support to Dr. McCabe’s campaign in the form of mailers… That adds up to slightly more than $675,000 to her candidacy from entities either directly under Mr. McAuliffe’s control or strongly influenced by him.”
Washington Post: “What few people talk about — but should — is that this could be a very short-lived majority for Senate Democrats, as the 2018 field is remarkably bad for them.”
“The numbers for that year are stunning: 25 Democratic or Democratic-affiliated independents are up for reelection, compared with just eight Republicans. That’s as lopsided an election cycle as you will ever see.”
“But a look inside the numbers makes the Democrats’ challenge in 2018 all the more daunting. Fully 20 percent of the 25 Democratic seats are in states that then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney carried in 2012.”
BuzzFeed: “There are few limits to how far Assange will go to try to control those around him. Those working at WikiLeaks – a radical transparency organization based on the idea that all power must be accountable – were asked to sign a sweeping non-disclosure agreement covering all conversations, conduct, and material, with Assange having sole power over disclosure. The penalty for non-compliance was £12 million.”
New York Times: “Two outside groups aligned with Republicans, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Senate Leadership Fund, have begun running television commercials in Senate races implying that Mr. Trump’s defeat is likely and asking voters to send Republican lawmakers to Washington as a check on Mrs. Clinton.”
“And the Congressional Leadership Fund, a powerful ‘super PAC’ that supports Republicans in the House of Representatives, will begin running ads in the coming days that attack Democratic candidates as ‘rubber stamps’ for Mrs. Clinton, and urge voters in swing districts to support a Republican instead.”
Nate Silver: “The nightmare scenario for the GOP is that high-information Republican voters, seeing Trump imploding and not necessarily having been happy with him as their nominee in the first place, feel free to cast a protest vote at the top of the ticket. Meanwhile, lower-information Republican voters don’t turn out at all, given that Trump’s rigging rhetoric could suppress their vote and that Republicans don’t have the field operation to pull them back in.”
For members: A Wave May Be Forming
“I have never seen a campaign that has less discipline, less focus than Donald Trump’s.”
— Frank Luntz, in an interview on CBS News.
Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling held a Trump “rally” outside Boston’s city hall on Saturday, “but uh, it wasn’t much of a rally,” Sports Illustrated reports.
“According to folks passing by, there were around 10 or 15 people in attendance to see the three-time World Series champ. He was pictured with a dejected gaze on his face.”
“He is not willing to not concede if he loses and there’s no fraud.”
The Las Vegas Review Journal, owned by casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, is the first major newspaper to endorse Donald Trump for president:
Yes, Mr. Trump’s impulsiveness and overheated rhetoric alienate many voters. He has trouble dealing with critics and would be wise to discover the power of humility.
But neither candidate will ever be called to the dais to accept an award for moral probity and character. And we are already distressingly familiar with the Clinton way, which involves turning public service into an orgy of influence peddling and entitlement designed to line their own pockets — precisely what a disgruntled electorate now rises up to protest.
Mr. Trump represents neither the danger his critics claim nor the magic elixir many of his supporters crave. But he promises to be a source of disruption and discomfort to the privileged, back-scratching political elites for whom the nation’s strength and solvency have become subservient to power’s pursuit and preservation.
“Six years after a Supreme Court decision opened vast new channels for money to flow into national elections, Democrats have built the largest and best-coordinated apparatus of outside groups operating in the 2016 presidential campaign, defying expectations that conservative and corporate wealth would dominate the race,” the New York Times reports.
“The Democrats’ success this year reflects, in part, Mrs. Clinton’s close personal ties to her party’s elite donors and her allies’ willingness to exploit the 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case far more aggressively than President Obama did.”
Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, who left the Democratic party after he lost a Senate primary and eventually endorsed Sen. John McCain for president, is now working as a surrogate for Hillary Clinton in Florida, according to the Times of Israel.
“Donald Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, a longtime Republican pollster, admitted Sunday that her candidate is currently losing to Democrat Hillary Clinton,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Conway: “We are behind. Clinton has some advantages, like $66 million in ad buys just in the month of September, thereby doubling her ad buys from August. Now, most of those ads are negative against Donald Trump — classic politics of personal destruction, cesspool kind of ads. And she has tremendous advantages: She has a former president, who happens to be her husband, campaigning for her. The current president and first lady, vice president, all much more popular than she can hope to be.”
New York Magazine: “On Monday, Breitbart plans to announce former Red Sox pitcher and Trump supporter Curt Schilling will begin hosting a daily online radio show featuring political commentary and calls from listeners. The broadcast will eventually include a video livestream. The show marks Schilling’s return to media six months after ESPN fired him for sharing an anti-transgender Facebook post.”
President Obama “will make a late splash into races for state senate and assembly over the next week, endorsing roughly 150 candidates across 20 states,” Politico reports.
“The endorsements—which will come along with a variety of robocalls, social media, mailers, photos of Obama with the candidates taken as he’s been traveling to campaign in recent weeks, and even a few radio ads—are Obama’s biggest investment in state races ever by far, and come as he gears up to make redistricting reform at the state level the political priority of his post-presidency.”
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.