Wall Street Journal: “Some 30% of undecided voters call themselves Republicans, compared with 21% who call themselves Democrats, an analysis of Wall Street Journal/NBC News national polling shows.”
“In another sign of the Republican tilt of undecided voters, some 42% of those voters say they want the next Congress to be controlled by the GOP, suggesting that they are Republicans at heart. Some 35% say they prefer Democratic control.”
Richard Branson writes about first meeting Donald Trump:
Some years ago, Mr Trump invited me to lunch for a one-to-one meeting at his apartment in Manhattan. We had not met before and I accepted. Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people.
He didn’t speak about anything else and I found it very bizarre.
“Federal investigators have obtained a warrant to begin searching a large cache of emails belonging to a top aide to Hillary Clinton, federal law enforcement officials said Sunday, as prosecutors and F.B.I. agents scrambled to review as much of the information as possible before Election Day,” the New York Times reports.
“It remains unclear, though, whether they can finish their work by then.”
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said that FBI Director James Comey “may have violated a federal law when he disclosed, less than two weeks before the presidential election, that his office was pursuing potential new evidence related to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Reid: “I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act. Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law.”
“Federal agents are preparing to scour roughly 650,000 emails contained on the laptop of former Rep. Anthony Weiner to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, as metadata on the device suggests there may be thousands sent to or from the private server that the Democratic nominee used while she was secretary of state,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The review will take weeks at a minimum to determine whether those messages are work-related emails between Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide and the estranged wife of Mr. Weiner, and State Department officials; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.”
Politico: “In the hours after FBI Director James Comey threw a wrench into Hillary Clinton’s home-stretch plans, her campaign launched into an uncharacteristic frenzy of activity, quickly trying to turn the development into a base-energizing tool. But in her New York headquarters and her battleground state outposts, the news sent shivers down operatives’ spines, and immediately had them scrambling to gauge the effect on voters they need most…”
“Clinton’s strategists have projected a confident front, shrugging off any possible impact from Friday’s bombshell news and pointing to weeks of strong early voting and persistent polling leads, even as they blast Comey for re-injecting the email issue into the race with his cryptic letter to Congress. Their goal is now to convert Democrats’ anxiety over the FBI chief’s move into a fury and a rallying point for a base that has flirted with overconfidence in recent weeks.”
“He is like a recurring nightmare. It’s like one of those Damien movies – it’s like every time you think he’s dead, he keeps coming again.”
— Rev. Al Sharpton, quoted by the New York Times, on disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY).
Here are the latest state polls from the presidential race:
Alaska: Clinton 47%, Trump 43%, Johnson 7% (Cracium)
Florida: Trump 46%, Clinton 42%, Johnson 4% (NYT/Siena)
Florida: Clinton 45%, Trump 44%, Johnson 5% (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
North Carolina: Clinton 47%, Trump 41%, Johnson 8% (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
Pennsylvania :Clinton 48%, Trump 40% (CBS News/YouGov)
North Carolina: Clinton 48%, Trump 45% (CBS News/YouGov)
Colorado: Clinton 42%, Trump 39% (CBS News/YouGov)
Arizona: Trump 44%, Clinton 42% (CBS News/YouGov)
Utah: Trump 32%, McMullin 30%, Clinton 24% (Dan Jones & Associates)
North Carolina: Clinton 49%, Trump 47%, Johnson 1% (Gravis)
Florida: Clinton 48%, Trump 47%, Johnson 1% (Gravis)
Maine: Clinton 48%, Trump 37%, Johnson 5% (University of New Hampshire)
“I thought I could beat Hillary. I thought I could beat anybody that ran. No one should run for president unless they think they can do that. I didn’t run for one simple, overarching reason: My son was dying and he died. That’s the total reason.”
— Vice President Joe Biden, in an interview with CNN.
The Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll shows Hillary Clinton barely edging Donald Trump in the presidential race, 46% to 45%.
Key finding: “Greater Republican unity has buoyed Trump’s rising support, which has wavered throughout the year. Trump’s 87-percent support among self-identified Republicans, ticking up from 83 percent last week nearly match Clinton’s 88-percent support among Democrats. Independents also have moved sharply in Trump’s direction, from favoring Clinton by eight points one week ago to backing Trump by 19 points.”
“The Kansas Republican Party is sending out mailers in legislative races around the state depicting ISIS fighters and explosions from terrorist attacks,” the Wichita Eagle reports.
“It’s like Humpty Dumpty fell and broke, then a giant lawn mower ran over it, acid was thrown on the pieces — and a bunch of racist idiots ran off with an arm and a leg. How do you put it back together? I don’t know.”
— GOP strategist John Weaver, quoted by the Boston Globe.
“Donald Trump’s path of destruction has pushed the Republican Party to the cusp of a historic reckoning, an existential crisis that has left half of America’s political establishment in desperate need of new leaders, a new message, and even a common orthodoxy,” the Boston Globe reports.
“Party members say it is almost impossible to underestimate the challenges facing the 162-year-old GOP, which for the last three decades has been largely defined by a hagiographic vision of Ronald Reagan but is now riven by a civil war with multiple dimensions.”
“Some Republicans are even studying the collapse of the Whig Party in the mid-19th century, hoping they can avoid a similar fate. Others are girding for proxy wars that will be waged on Capitol Hill, within the Republican National Committee, and live on the set of Fox News.”
Nate Silver: “If the Clinton campaign does have something major on Trump — or even something minor — there’s a lot of art and science involved in when it drops the story. Too soon, and it could get swept beneath the undertow of the FBI story. Too late, and it might look desperate. But one way the campaign could end is with a whole crescendo of major stories dropping. That could make things complicated for pollsters and forecasters.”
“For as long as he has been rich and famous, Donald Trump has also wanted people to believe he is generous. He spent years constructing an image as a philanthropist by appearing at charity events and by making very public — even nationally televised — promises to give his own money away.”
“It was, in large part, a facade. A months-long investigation by The Washington Post has not been able to verify many of Trump’s boasts about his philanthropy.”
“Instead, throughout his life in the spotlight, whether as a businessman, television star or presidential candidate, The Post found that Trump had sought credit for charity he had not given — or had claimed other people’s giving as his own.”
Sam Wang: “Such high stability in polls is not new. It started several decades ago. One measure of the stasis of modern campaigns is how much each party’s support in polls changes over the course of a campaign. From 1952 to 1992, the average range — the difference between maximum and minimum levels of support — was 17 percentage points. Since 1996, the range has dropped to 8 points. Mr. Trump’s range is 4 points, from 39 to 43 percent.”
“At his lowest point, Mr. Trump still had more support than George McGovern, who got the smallest percentage of the popular vote by a major party candidate in the postwar era in 1972, with 38 percent. Mrs. Clinton’s average margin over Mr. Trump of five points has been enough to make her the first candidate to maintain a durable lead in an open presidential race since Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson in 1952. So the bigger question is not about Mr. Trump, but why the last six presidential campaigns became so stable.”
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.