“The super PAC backing Democrat Hillary Clinton vastly outraised the outside groups supporting Republican Donald Trump in July,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The pro-Clinton group, Priorities USA Action, raised $9.9 million last month, less than the $12 million it raised in June, and ended July with more than $38 million in the bank. Meanwhile, a pro-Trump group called Great America PAC raised $2.4 million last month and ended July with less than $990,000 on hand.”
“A sharpening debate has emerged in Republican circles over whether and when to cut ties with Donald Trump, who has shaken up his campaign team as his poll numbers have dropped,” The Hill reports.
“While some in the GOP have called for Republicans to cut Trump loose sooner rather than later to avoid lasting damage, strategists concerned about control of Congress in 2017 say that would be disastrous.”
“Donald Trump doubled his campaign expenses last month yet was still spending at a far slower clip than Hillary Clinton,” the AP reports.
“New finance documents show the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign spent about $18.5 million in July. By comparison, the Democratic presidential nominee spent about $38 million.”
FiveThirtyEight: “As you can tell from the chart, Trump rarely tweets about polls these days. Indeed, he’s done so only four times in the past 30 days.”
“Republicans, worried about preserving their House and Senate majorities in the face of fierce headwinds, are accelerating their plans to distance themselves from Donald Trump – and may soon concede, if only implicitly, his defeat,” Politico reports.
“Party strategists are mapping out blueprints for down-ballot candidates, in TV ads and on the campaign trail, to present themselves as checks on a Hillary Clinton presidency. It’s an approach that would essentially admit a Trump loss. In interviews, nearly one dozen Republican operatives said they had begun poll-testing the idea – which one labeled a “break glass in case of emergency” strategy – to gauge how the public would react to it.”
“On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has sold himself as a businessman who has made billions of dollars and is beholden to no one,” the New York Times reports.
“But an investigation by The New York Times into the financial maze of Mr. Trump’s real estate holdings in the United States reveals that companies he owns have at least $650 million in debt — twice the amount than can be gleaned from public filings he has made as part of his bid for the White House. The Times’s inquiry also found that Mr. Trump’s fortunes depend deeply on a wide array of financial backers, including one he has cited in attacks during his campaign.”
“Donald Trump’s team has always been a lean operation fueled by the candidate himself rather than the organization around him, but from the very beginning the Trump campaign included people who had at least some experience running political campaigns,” ABC News reports.
“But now the top ranks of the team include family members, conservative media executive Stephen Bannon and Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, the new campaign manager. None of them have experience managing a campaign.”
A federal judge said that he “will refer Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to the U.S. Attorney’s Office to be charged with criminal contempt of court,” the Arizona Republic reports.
“The decision comes after U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow found that Arpaio intentionally violated various orders rooted in an 8-year-old racial-profiling case.”
“A federal judge ordered Hillary Clinton to provide written testimony under oath about why she set up a private computer server to send and receive emails while secretary of state, ensuring that the issue will continue to dog her presidential campaign until the eve of the election,” the New York Times reports.
“Only six weeks ago, the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey Jr., declined to recommend prosecuting Mrs. Clinton, saying that while her actions had been careless, they did not amount to a crime. Yet the controversy refuses to dissipate.”
“At the end of four years, I guarantee you that I will get over 95 percent of the African-American vote. I promise you. Because I will produce.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by Politico.
Washington Post: “Until this week, it had been possible for party elders to convince themselves that Trump might prove to be a passing storm in their ranks rather than a portent of climate change. But to their dismay, the party standard-bearer has now signaled that he intends to go for broke in the final stretch of the campaign.”
“Trump’s decision to ditch his establishment-bred campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in favor of Breitbart News executive Stephen Bannon, who shares Trump’s scorched-earth approach to politics and his worldview, is perhaps the most overt example of the mogul’s closing strategy.”
“Theirs is an amorphous alternative to traditional conservatism — often associated with the ‘alt right’ movement — that is leery of liberal immigration, multiculturalism, military involvement overseas and free trade. Its critics also accuse the alt right of flirting with white supremacism, anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance.”
“Fewer than a third of Republican members of the Politico Caucus — a panel of activists, strategists and operatives in 11 key battleground states — believe Trump’s reshuffling will move the campaign in the right direction. Just as many, 31 percent, say the installation of Breitbart News executive Stephen Bannon as campaign CEO and pollster Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager, represent a turn for the worse.”
Charlie Cook: “Given her own substantial negatives, the odds of a Clinton landslide are pretty remote, but even if she scores a massive win, it doesn’t necessarily mean Democrats will fare well down-ballot. Over the last 52 years, there have been four presidential landslides: Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater in 1964, Richard Nixon over George McGovern in 1972, Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter in 1980, and Reagan again over Walter Mondale in 1984. All won by margins of 10 points or more and carried at least 44 states. Only one resulted in big Senate and House gains for the winner’s party—Republicans picking up 12 Senate and 34 House seats in Reagan’s 1980 win over Carter.”
Trump campaign chairman and chief strategist Paul Manafort has resigned from the campaign, the Washington Post reports.
Donald Trump confirmed the news in a statement: “This morning Paul Manafort offered, and I accepted, his resignation from the campaign. I am very appreciative for his great work in helping to get us where we are today, and in particular his work guiding us through the delegate and convention process. Paul is a true professional and I wish him the greatest success.”
“House Republicans are doubling down in their effort to bring perjury charges against Hillary Clinton over her testimony last year to the House Select Committee on Benghazi,” The Hill reports.
“GOP lawmakers have claimed that the Democratic presidential nominee broke the law by lying under oath about her private email setup during her marathon appearance in October.”
Greg Sargent: “Last night, Donald Trump delivered a speech in which he spoke in soothing tones about the need to unify the country and expressed ‘regret’ about any remarks that have caused ‘personal pain,’ though he didn’t specify which particular remarks he regrets. This led some commentators to suggest that another ‘pivot‘ is underway.”
“This morning, Trump released his first general election ad, an ugly and dishonest production which shows he isn’t changing a thing.”
Nate Silver: “One quirk of the American political system is that a candidate can win a primary with a much narrower slice of the electorate than he’d need to win a general election. Donald Trump claimed 45 percent of the vote in Republican primaries and caucuses this year, about 14 million votes. That’s a healthy total as these things go: the highest number of votes ever received by a Republican in the primaries. But Trump will need four or five times as many votes — perhaps 65 million — to win in November. His primary voters are just a drop in the bucket.”
“All presidential candidates face some version of this problem. But most make at least some effort to expand beyond their base and build a majority coalition. Trump hasn’t — and he has his work cut out for him like no nominee in history. Trump’s decision this week to make Stephen Bannon of the combative, anti-establishment website Breitbart News his campaign’s chief executive suggests that he’s moving in the opposite direction.”
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.