Hillary Clinton is warning voters not to believe Donald Trump when he starts to soften his image, the New York Times reports.
Said Clinton: “Trump keeps saying things like, ‘Well, you know, uh, I didn’t really mean it. It was all part of my reality TV show.’ Well, you know what? If we buy that, shame on us. Because he’s already showed us what he believes and he’s already said what he wants to do, and he wants to go after every one of the rights we have.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “is urging Republican delegates to focus on a single politician: Barack Obama,” the AP reports.
“McConnell focused nearly all of his speech during Saturday’s Kentucky Republican Convention on opposing the outgoing Democratic president. Not mentioned were any of the potential Republican alternatives, who are embroiled in a nasty fight over delegates heading into a possible chaotic national convention this summer.”
Billionaire GOP donor Charles Koch told ABC News that “it’s possible” Hillary Clinton could make a better president than the remaining candidates in the Republican presidential primary.
Koch also said that he believed Bill Clinton was a better president “in some ways” than George W. Bush.
Said Koch: “In other ways, I mean Clinton wasn’t an exemplar. But as far as the growth of government, the increase in spending. It was 2.5 times [more] under Bush than it was under Clinton.”
You're reading the free version of Political Wire
Upgrade to a paid membership to unlock full access. The process is quick and easy. You can even use Apple Pay.
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) came out against a minimum wage bill saying it’s hard to understand workers “from Bulgaria” and workers from India are “the worst ones,” the Portland Press Herald reports.
He described Indians as “lovely people but you’ve got to have an interpreter.”
A new CBS News/YouGov poll in Indiana finds Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential race with 40%, followed by Ted Cruz at 35% and John Kasich at 20%.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders 49% to 44%.
A new CBS News/YouGov poll in Pennsylvania finds Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential race with 49%, followed by Ted Cruz at 26% and John Kasich at 22%.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders 51% to 43%.
A new NBC News/Marist poll finds Trump leading with 45%, followed by Cruz at 27% and Kasich at 24%.
“I have never been more worried about the Republican Party breaking apart than I am today.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by The Hill.
“Ted Cruz notched another delegate landslide Saturday, stretching his advantage in a competition that might never occur: the second ballot of a contested Republican National Convention in July,” Politico reports.
“Cruz won at least 65 of the 94 delegates up for grabs Saturday (and he may have won more, but Kentucky’s 25 delegates haven’t revealed their leanings). The Texas senator has so thoroughly dominated the fight to send loyalists to the national convention that if front-runner Donald Trump fails to clinch the nomination on the first ballot, Cruz is well-positioned to surpass him — and perhaps even snag the nomination for himself — when delegates are free in subsequent convention rounds to vote for whomever they want.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders “has built his campaign on a message of combating income inequality, but that message doesn’t seem to be resonating in many of the states with the country’s highest levels of income inequality,” NBC News reports.
“Of the 25 states with the highest levels, 17 have held primaries so far — and Hillary Clinton has won 16 of those contests.”
When asked why he thinks he’s losing in those states, Sanders responded: “Well, because poor people don’t vote. I mean, that’s just a fact.”
Donald Trump told supporters that he’s “not toning it down,” a day after his chief adviser assured Republican officials the GOP front-runner will show more restraint on the campaign trail, the AP reports.
Said Trump: “I’m not toning it down. Isn’t it nice that I’m not one of these teleprompter guys?”
“I don’t know how to pronounce his name — Kasich. It’s -i-c-h. Every time I see it I say Kas-itch. But it’s pronounced Kas-ick. Can we ask him to change the spelling of his name? Are we allowed to do that? It’s so ridiculous.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by The Hill.
Nate Silver: “It also helps that Trump’s system-is-rigged message is relatively simple and plays into the media’s master narrative of the Republican race as a conflict between the Republican base and the GOP establishment. The Republicans’ delegate selection rules, by contrast, require an attention to detail that narrative-driven stories about the Republican race can misconstrue.”
New York Times: Why Trump says the delegate system is rigged
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “has done his best until now to stay out of the rambunctious 2016 presidential fray. That will change this weekend,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Kentucky Republicans on Saturday will select 25 of the state’s 46 presidential delegates in a secretive back-room process controlled by Mr. McConnell’s longtime allies, offering the first meaningful clues on his strategy ahead of an unpredictable GOP convention in Cleveland this summer.”
Dan Balz: “For Trump, the bridge-building represents the challenge of trying to reassure nervous Republican leaders that he can avoid the erratic behavior and divisive rhetoric that have given him the highest negatives of any candidate in the 2016 race while reassuring his angry base that he is not selling out to a party establishment that many of them loathe.”
“For state and national Republican leaders, the outreach highlights the conflict between the revulsion many of them have felt toward a candidate who has trampled on core GOP values and inflamed much of the electorate and a grudging acceptance that it is increasingly likely the controversial New York billionaire will be leading them into a fall campaign against Hillary Clinton.”
“Hillary Clinton’s advisers and allies have begun extensive discussions about who should be her running mate, seeking to compile a list of 15 to 20 potential picks for her team to start vetting by late spring,” the New York Times reports.
“Mrs. Clinton’s team will grapple with complicated questions like whether the United States is ready for an all-female ticket, and whether her choice for vice president would be able to handle working in a White House in which former President Bill Clinton wields significant influence on policy.”
For members: How Likely Is a Clinton-Warren Ticket?
Sen. Bernie Sanders said that “he would wait to see what Hillary Clinton includes in her platform before deciding how actively to campaign for her in the fall if she is the party’s nominee,” the Washington Post reports.
Hillary Clinton “is doubling down on a strategy of not releasing transcripts of speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs and other investment banks,” The Hill reports.
Said one ally: “She’s not going to basically create a standard that isn’t applied to anyone else in this race.”
A new Fox News poll in Indiana shows Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential race with 41%, followed by Ted Cruz at 33% and John Kasich at 16%.
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.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.