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When Predictions Go Bad

May 22, 2016 at 7:04 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 67 Comments

Matt Lewis: “As of this week, Nate Silver — FiveThirtyEight founder, political prognosticator, and wunderkind — is giving Donald Trump just a 25 percent chance of defeating Hillary Clinton in November. I’m considering putting a few benjamins down on Trump.”

“Keep in mind, it’s not just the Trump nomination that he botched. In recent years, he has gotten Super Bowls wrong, the Oscars wrong, the 2014 Scottish independence referendum wrong and the 2015 U.K. elections wrong.”

“We all make mistakes, of course. The difference is that Silver’s entire raison d’etre — and he has been wildly celebrated for this — rests on his ability to make picks. But really, his track record for the last, I don’t know, four years, is spotty on some pretty big things. Now, if Silver were known for his flowery prose or for cultivating terrific sources on the House Budget Committee, we might forgive him for botching a big prediction. But this is his bread and butter. This is what he does.”

Quote of the Day

May 21, 2016 at 4:12 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 110 Comments

“Crooked Hillary wants to get rid of all guns and yet she is surrounded by bodyguards who are fully armed. No more guns to protect Hillary!”

— Donald Trump, quoted by the Washington Post.

Trump Has No Florida Strategy

May 21, 2016 at 4:05 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 120 Comments

NBC News: “The Trump campaign has said it will focus on about a dozen states during the general election, including Florida, but the candidate has not held a single campaign event there since winning the state’s primary in March… Even though Trump has become the presumptive nominee well before his Democratic rival, his general election team doesn’t yet have a real presence in the state. The campaign has yet to set up any of the infrastructure necessary to win a campaign in Florida, leaving its 29 delegates very much up in the air.”

“Trump’s lack of a ground game isn’t surprising. It’s been a criticism of his campaign throughout the primary process, but as both parties turn to the general election, the lack of local organization becomes more of an issue.”

How Transgender Rights Became a Big National Issue

May 21, 2016 at 4:03 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 14 Comments

New York Times: “How a clash over bathrooms, an issue that appeared atop no national polls, became the next frontier in America’s fast-moving culture wars — and ultimately landed on the desk of the president — involves an array of players, some with law degrees, others still in high school.”

“The sweeping directive to public schools seemed to come out of nowhere. In fact, it was the product of years of study inside the government and a highly orchestrated campaign by advocates for gay and transgender people.”

GOP Megadonor Explains Why He’s Backing Trump

May 21, 2016 at 1:09 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 77 Comments

“Republican mega-donor Foster Friess says he’s decided to support Donald Trump because he doesn’t believe people should be judged based on their past, or even present, behavior,” The Hill reports.

Said Friess: “My success came from harnessing people’s strengths and ignoring their weaknesses. And also, from assessing people not according to their pasts or where they are today, but rather based on what they can become. I believe that as Republicans continue to unite behind Donald Trump, he’ll become an even better candidate.”

New York Times: Key GOP donors still resisting Trump

Weiner

May 21, 2016 at 1:02 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 11 Comments

The AP reviews Weiner, “the compulsively watchable new film about Anthony Weiner and the implosion of his 2013 New York mayoral run amid a revival of his sexting scandal.”

“There are lots of fly-on-the-wall documentaries. But occasionally there’s one that makes you want to ask the fly: Just HOW did you get onto that wall, and how did you manage to stay there?”

Trump Begins Vetting Running Mates

May 21, 2016 at 11:52 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 38 Comments

The vetting process for Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate is expected to fully begin next week, a source with his campaign told CNN.

“Trump has repeatedly stressed that he would pick a running mate with political and government experience — versus a businessman like himself — whose relationships with powerful members of Congress could help him enact his agenda legislatively.”

Cruz’s Campaign Is Still Fighting

May 21, 2016 at 11:47 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 28 Comments

Los Angeles Times: “It still filed a slate of potential presidential delegates for California’s June 7 primary, and continues to monitor delegate selection in states that already voted in the GOP nominating process.”

“The end result is that Cruz will have more than 550 loyalists attending the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July — a ground force that helps him establish himself as the national leader of the conservative movement, protect the party’s conservative platform from what the senator has called Trump’s “New York values,” and lay the foundation for a potential 2020 presidential bid.”

Obama Is Suddenly Much More Popular

May 21, 2016 at 11:45 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 55 Comments

Washington Post: “Looking at quarterly averages of Obama’s approval, you can see how stark the improvement has been by party. Democrats have slowly looked at Obama more favorably since the beginning of 2015, but independents have begun to look at Obama much more favorably. After a sharp slide following his reelection, independents turned their opinions of Obama around at the beginning of 2014. Over the past year, that’s escalated. And since ratings from Democrats and Republicans are more stable, that shift by independents moves the needle a lot.”

A Different Kind of Choice In 2016

May 21, 2016 at 11:42 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 19 Comments

Dan Balz: “His political instincts are as rash as hers are cautious. Her policy proposals are as detailed and numerous as his are broad and few in numbers. Her public appearances are controlled and careful. His are the political equivalent of The Truman Show. She says he is unqualified to be president. He says she is unfit to serve.”

“There are certainly ideological differences between the two. But this is not an election that presents voters with the kind of choice they had in 2012. President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had sharply different views about social and cultural issues, the size and scope of government, the best ways to create jobs and projecting U.S. power abroad.”

The Hidden Danger of Donald Trump

May 21, 2016 at 8:04 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 100 Comments

Adam Gopnik: “One can argue about whether to call him a fascist or an authoritarian populist or a grotesque joke made in a nightmare shared between Philip K. Dick and Tom Wolfe, but under any label Trump is a declared enemy of the liberal constitutional order of the United States—the order that has made it, in fact, the great and plural country that it already is. He announces his enmity to America by word and action every day. It is articulated in his insistence on the rightness of torture and the acceptable murder of noncombatants. It is self-evident in the threats he makes daily to destroy his political enemies, made only worse by the frivolity and transience of the tone of those threats. He makes his enmity to American values clear when he suggests that the Presidency holds absolute power, through which he will be able to end opposition—whether by questioning the ownership of newspapers or talking about changing libel laws or threatening to take away F.C.C. licenses.”

“To say ‘Well, he would not really have the power to accomplish that’ is to misunderstand the nature of thin-skinned authoritarians in power. They do not arrive in office and discover, as constitutionalists do, that their capabilities are more limited than they imagined. They arrive, and then make their power as large as they can.”

Clinton’s Campaign Dwarfs Trump’s

May 21, 2016 at 7:55 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 45 Comments

“At the outset of the general election, Hillary Clinton’s campaign looks like a well-oiled juggernaut next to Donald Trump’s vastly smaller, self-funded operation,” a Politico analysis of FEC reports found.

“Through the end of last month, the period covered by the most recent FEC filings, Trump’s campaign had spent less than a third as much Clinton’s ($57 million to $182 million) and had assembled a staff about one-tenth the size of her (70 employees to 732), with a fraction as many offices (Trump last month paid $101,000 in rent vs. $328,000 for Clinton), the analysis found.”

Oklahoma Governor Vetoes Anti-Abortion Bill

May 20, 2016 at 6:42 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 46 Comments

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) vetoed a bill that would have effectively banned abortion in her state, The Oklahoman reports.

“She said the measure was vague and would not withstand a constitutional legal challenge. Senate Bill 1552 would have made it a felony for physicians to perform abortions. It also contained a provision to revoke their medical licenses unless the abortion was necessary to save the life of the mother.”

Why Trump Is Surging in the Polls

May 20, 2016 at 6:38 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 60 Comments

Politico: “The main reason for Trump’s surge over the past few weeks? He is earning increasingly larger shares of the Republican vote — even as some prominent GOP leaders, like House Speaker Paul Ryan, haven’t yet committed to supporting their party’s apparent nominee. But rank-and-file Republican voters are lining up behind Trump in large numbers, closing the gap with Clinton’s support among Democrats, which had been higher during earlier stages of the campaign.”

Perry Would Be Willing to be Trump’s Running Mate

May 20, 2016 at 4:34 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 67 Comments

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), who once called Donald Trump “a cancer on conservatism,” told CNN that he would be willing to serve as the presumptive Republican nominee’s vice president.

Said Perry: “I suspect I’m going to be helping him in a myriad ways — but if it’s the vice presidency, if a cabinet position is where he needs somebody with my experience then I’m not going to go back to Texas and say, ‘Aw shucks sir, I’m gonna go fishing.’ I’m gonna go serve my country.”

Trump Says Clinton Will Abolish the 2nd Amendment

May 20, 2016 at 3:44 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 96 Comments

Donald Trump told the National Rifle Association that Hillary Clinton would take away the right to bear arms, moments after the gun group endorsed the presumptive GOP nominee at its annual meeting, CNN reports.

Calling the endorsement a “fantastic honor,” Trump dove right into attacking Clinton, saying she “wants to abolish the Second Amendment.”

Said Trump: “We’re not going to let that happen. We’re going to preserve it, we’re going to cherish it.”

Lawmakers Seek to Impeach Obama Over Bathrooms

May 20, 2016 at 1:31 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 156 Comments

“Oklahoma’s Republican-dominated legislature has filed a measure calling for President Obama’s impeachment over his administration’s recommendations on accommodating transgender students, saying he overstepped his constitutional authority,” Reuters reports.

“Lawmakers in the socially conservative state are also expected to take up a measure as early as Friday that would allow students to claim a religious right to have separate but equal bathrooms and changing facilities to segregate them from transgender students.”

Extra Bonus Quote of the Day

May 20, 2016 at 1:19 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 44 Comments

“Trump is a dick.”

— Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau, quoted by Politico.