A new PPIC poll in California shows Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by a stunning 26 points, 54% to 28%.
The San Jose Mercury News reports Trump “is careening toward a historically poor showing in California, a prospect that has left several GOP congressmen fearful for their seats and Democrats hopeful they can regain a supermajority in the Legislature.”
“And just thinking to myself right now, we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump, right? What are we even having it for? What are we having it for?”
— Donald Trump, quoted by Politico.
“Senate Republicans are choosing sides ahead of a brutal conflict over how to handle the lingering Supreme Court vacancy, with Jeff Flake firing back at a suggestion by Ted Cruz that the party could indefinitely block any nominee from Hillary Clinton,” Politico reports.
“The internal GOP battle over what to do about Merrick Garland — President Barack Obama’s choice for the court — and any future Clinton nominee will dominate the lame duck session of Congress after the election. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is holding the seat vacant for the next president — but Cruz has suggested that Republicans could continue to block Democrats from appointing a new nominee for much longer.”
Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno (R) staked her independence from Gov. Chris Christie (R) , “in a highly public break with the governor who had plucked her from relative obscurity to serve as his running mate,” Politico reports.
“Christie and Guadagno racked up impressive margins sharing the ticket in 2009, and again in 2013, but have seldom appeared in public together in recent years… In a radio interview on Thursday morning, Guadagno went public with their breach, contradicting the administration’s position on a major ballot measure by suggesting voters can blow up a hard-won $16 billion infrastructure plan by opposing the amendment.”
S.E. Cupp: “As a conservative woman who wanted very much to support the Republican nominee, it’s been a deeply disappointing year and a half. After helping the Republican National Committee address some of the troubling deficiencies the party faced after 2012, as outlined in its so-called autopsy report, and witnessing some real progress in our outreach to women in the ensuing years, I did not expect an egomaniacal arsonist to come along and set all that ablaze.”
“Mr. Trump has sent the party back to the Dark Ages — or at least the 1950s — with his provincial notions of masculinity and misogynist notions of femininity, his cartoonish bombast, his vulgar jocularity and his open hostility to women who question him. In short, he’s reaffirmed the worst stereotypes about Republicans that Democrats have pushed for decades.”
Here are the latest state polls from the presidential race:
Texas: Trump 45%, Clinton 42%, Johnson 7% (UT/Texas Tribune)
Texas: Trump 45%, Clinton 38%, Johnson 7% (Austin American Statesman)
Florida: Clinton 43%, Trump 39%, Johnson 6% (University of North Florida)
Pennsylvania: Clinton 46%, Trump 39% (NYT/Siena)
Michigan: Clinton 41%, Trump 34%, Johnson 9% (EPIC/MRA)
Georgia: Trump 44%, Clinton 43%, Johnson 8% (Quinnipiac)
Iowa: Clinton 44%, Trump 44%, Johnson 4% (Quinnipiac)
North Carolina: Clinton 47%, Trump 43%, Johnson 5% (Quinnipiac)
Virginia: Clinton 50%, Trump 38%, Johnson 4% (Quinnipiac)
New Mexico: Clinton 45%, Trump 40%, Johnson 9% (Zia Poll)
New Hampshire: Clinton 43%, Trump 38%, Johnson 8% (YouGov)
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) “is reaffirming her support for Donald Trump, vowing to vote for the GOP nominee despite his attacks on her earlier this year,” CNN reports.
A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds that 64% of Donald Trump’s supporters say they’re more likely to have serious doubts about the accuracy of the vote count if the Republican nominee is not the victor.
By contrast, 69% of Hillary Clinton’s supporters say they’ll accept the outcome if Trump wins.
A new Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll in Massachusetts finds Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) leading former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling in a U.S. Senate race, 58% to 24%.
Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) told Yahoo News that he merely was “talking metaphorically” when he tweeted “I’m grabbing my musket” if Donald Trump loses the election and not about actual violence.
Matt Bai explains how the Trump campaign’s nightly news show on Facebook isn’t only about reaching Trump’s voter; it’s about consolidating his new consumer base, too, which he describes as the “working-class consumer who watched his show and came to his rallies, who aspires to wealth but can never afford a room at the Trump International.”
“Trump’s feed, streaming live from the ‘war room’ in Trump Tower, is remarkable in that it self-consciously mimics everything about your conventional cable show. There’s lively banter between the hosts, a parade of genial guests who appear to have just dropped in, a platinum blond bomb-throwing commentator with no particular qualifications in anything. There’s breaking coverage of Trump’s evening rally, perfectly timed to make air. It shows you, basically, how easy it is for any moron with a laptop and a dream to perfectly imitate the cheerful vacuousness of most TV news.”
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.”
“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.
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.