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Sanders Meets with Obama

June 9, 2016 at 1:11 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 168 Comments

President Obama and Sen. Bernie Sanders discussed at the White House “how to engage Sanders’ largely young, enthusiastic supporters and bring their ideas into Hillary Clinton’s campaign against Donald Trump,” Bloomberg reports.

“Afterward, Sanders said he thanked Obama and Vice President Joe Biden for remaining impartial through the Democratic primary campaign… He said he still planned to compete in the Washington, D.C., primary election on June 14, but that he looked forward to discussing with Clinton how they can work together to defeat Trump. He did not endorse her.”

Said Sanders: “Needless to say I am going to do everything in my power and I am going to work as hard as I can to make sure Donald Trump does not become president of the United States.”

Extra Bonus Quote of the Day

June 9, 2016 at 1:01 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 23 Comments

“Hard to say. If you look at Twitter, they have this thing called ‘trending.’ It’s trending poorly.”

— Gov. John Kasich, quoted by Politico, when asked if he would back Donald Trump for president.

The Black Hole That Could Swallow the GOP

June 9, 2016 at 1:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 80 Comments

Matt Bai: “The critical window between Trump’s effective nomination five weeks ago and next month’s convention is closing fast, and far from projecting more gravitas, Trump seems bent on making a fool of every credible Republican who has stepped up to tepidly endorse him… Here’s the thing Ryan and I both should have understood about Trump, and that now seems to me the central fact of his existence: He is a man tragically enslaved to his own neediness.”

“For Trump, insecurity is not a manageable motivator. It is the black hole that consumes him…He has an almost pathological obsession with ratings, polls, flattering profiles…Every criticism, every judgment, every potential obstacle seems to evoke in him a latent rage, a sense that the world – as embodied in Manhattan’s unbreachable elite – is condescending to him again… The black hole, left unchecked, could swallow the party’s electoral hopes and leave no trace.”

Why Trump’s Campaign Is a Total Disaster

June 9, 2016 at 12:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 111 Comments

Jonathan Chait: “If Donald Trump were an otherwise normal candidate — with a reasonable knowledge of public policy and no pronounced affection for authoritarian rulers or habit of blurting out overtly misogynistic and racist comments — the Republican Party Establishment would still be in complete meltdown right now over his campaign’s political incompetence.”

“Recent reports have uncovered a slew of hair-raising details about the campaign’s amateur/quasi-nonexistent status. Trump is raising nowhere close to the level of money required to run a modern presidential campaign. His campaign staff is skeletal and lacks the ability to coordinate a message, leading to chaotic setpieces where the entire Democratic Party message apparatus is being countered only by Trump’s personal Twitter account. (Sad!) Trump is wedded to bizarre strategic notions like competing in heavily blue states. He is devoting what few resources he does have to hopeless projects like hiring a pollster to help him win New York, where Republican presidential candidates have failed to reach even 40 percent of the vote in decades.”

How Trump Plans to Win New York

June 9, 2016 at 11:19 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 116 Comments

“Carl Paladino, the campaign’s co-chair in New York and the 2010 gubernatorial nominee, said they will also rely on conventional get-out-the-vote efforts and blanketing the upstate region with signs and bumper stickers,” CNN reports.

Said Paladino: “Upstate will give us a wave in this election, and my instruction from HQ is really simple. It’s one word: Win. And that’s what we intend to do.”

Flake Says There Is ‘Fear and Loathing’ of Trump

June 9, 2016 at 10:56 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 27 Comments

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) told KTAR that there is “some mixture of fear and loathing” of Donald Trump among his Senate colleagues.

Said Flake: “Donald Trump did not receive a lot of — well, I guess there was one endorsement from the Senate prior to his claiming the nomination or being the presumptive nominee, just one. It’s not as if a lot of senators were clamoring to support him during the process. In fact, many had supported one of the other candidates or hadn’t supported any at all. So, there’s not a lot of enthusiasm.”

Warren Weighs Potential Role as VP

June 9, 2016 at 10:53 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 42 Comments

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) “has considered the idea of serving as Hillary Clinton’s running mate but sees obstacles to that choice as she prepares to endorse the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee,” Reuters reports.

“While her thinking could evolve, Warren has concerns about joining a Clinton ticket, including the question of whether running two women would give the Democrats the best shot at defeating Republican Donald Trump… Advisers to Warren, a fiery critic of Wall Street and a popular figure among progressive Democrats, have been in close contact with Clinton’s campaign team and the conversations have increased in frequency in recent weeks… Warren has signaled to people close to her that she is intrigued by the possibility of being Clinton’s No. 2 but has not discussed the role with Clinton, 68, or anyone else from her campaign.”

Obama Steps In to Broker the Peace

June 9, 2016 at 9:46 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 172 Comments

Rick Klein: “The sitting president of the United States, of course, has an outsized role in achieving party unity. But this president has something extra to offer now that his services are needed in this endeavor. Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders share something special: Both have run against Hillary Clinton, riding waves that crashed them into the establishment. Until now, the president has also resisted pleas to put a heavier thumb on the scale for Clinton, during a tense and often raucous primary season. He has particular credibility to broker peace now because Sanders is open to actually listening to his advice.”

“Even a president can’t change the math, a fact that Sanders will have to acknowledge. But he can change the Democratic Party’s conversation to make sure it includes the views of the man who came way closer to the nomination than anyone could have honestly predicted.”

Trump Continues to Make the Campaign About Him

June 9, 2016 at 9:08 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 31 Comments

Stuart Rothenberg: “Unless you are Ronald Reagan running for re-election (‘It’s morning again in America’), most competitive presidential campaigns are about a single objective: making the race a referendum on the opponent, particularly if he or she is a long-time politician who has high negatives.”

“That’s how Barack Obama won a second term. He defined Mitt Romney and ran against that caricature he created (with Romney’s help, of course).”

“But whether it’s because he really doesn’t understand campaigns, or more likely, that his obvious narcissism makes it impossible for him to see that any topic could be more interesting than himself, Donald Trump continues to make the 2016 election a referendum on his accomplishments, his past statements and his beliefs.”

Bonus Quote of the Day

June 9, 2016 at 8:54 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 79 Comments

“Let me say that I can’t answer that, because I’ve never even met Donald Trump. I think it’s odd that he hasn’t come to speak to the Republican Senate caucus, but I’ve never even been in the same room with Donald Trump, whereas I do have a personal relationship with Hillary. We did work well together when she was in the Senate on causes like Alzheimer’s disease. And, I worked with her when she was Secretary of State on the empowerment of Women in Afghanistan.”

— Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), quoted by NBC News, when asked whether she could work better with Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

Democrats Move Towards Unity

June 9, 2016 at 8:52 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 56 Comments

First Read: “No one is 100% sure how President Obama’s meeting with Bernie Sanders will go at 11:15 am ET at the White House, but it sure seems like Democrats are unifying in a more orderly manner than Republicans are. After he meets with the president, Sanders huddles with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid at 2:00 pm ET.”

And note this dispatch from NBC’s Chris Jansing: “Last night, Bernie Sanders called members of his senior staff and longtime aides to his house for a meeting that included Jeff Weaver, Tad Devine, Michael Briggs, Shannon Jackson and others. He’s now said to be in a positive frame of mind and focused on Thursday’s meetings — some of the good feeling apparently motivated … by Biden’s ‘we should be graceful’ comment, but I also got a very positive reaction to [Obama’s remarks to Jimmy Fallon] giving Sanders props for bringing ‘new ideas’ and tremendous energy to the campaign.”

A New Trump, But Not Improved

June 9, 2016 at 8:30 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 41 Comments

Jeff Shesol was not impressed with Donald Trump’s use of a teleprompter on Tuesday night:

Trump’s speech was both gaseous and inert, like radon. It was ineffective on two axes: on the Trump axis (X), where cheap insults and racially charged attacks are the measure of manly authenticity, and on the Mainstream Republican axis (Y), where rehashed Reaganisms about overregulation are a substitute for a policy platform. Both rhetorically and substantively, Trump flatlined last night. It is hard to see how this speech, or more speeches like it, will help Trump broaden his appeal.

Trump Prepares ‘Charge Sheet’ Against Clinton

June 9, 2016 at 8:21 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 56 Comments

“Donald Trump’s team is hunkering down to draft the charge sheet the presumptive GOP nominee will unveil against Hillary Clinton on Monday, intent on laying out a credible general election argument that leads voters to question her trustworthiness,” Politico reports.

“But many Republicans worry that the former reality TV star’s penchant for focusing on the Clintons’ personal lives and scandals of years past — he declared them ‘fair game’ months ago as he bulldozed to the finish line of a Republican primary — could undermine the more disciplined case party leaders have been making against Clinton for a year — that the Democrat’s email controversy and actions in Benghazi show she is too irresponsible to be commander in chief.”

‘The Stupidest Campaign in the World’

June 9, 2016 at 8:12 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 31 Comments

Looking back at the primaries, Jeb Bush super PAC adviser Mike Murphy told CNBC that he doesn’t see a scenario where his candidate could have won.

Said Murphy: “You know, once the debates started and it was clear that Jeb’s style, which would lend itself very well to a president of the United States or even a general election candidate, was the opposite of what they were looking for in the primary — I mean, when Trump said low energy, what he was really saying was too polite, too civil, too many big words. Jeb’s not built for the stupidest campaign in the world.”

Quote of the Day

June 9, 2016 at 8:10 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 8 Comments

“If my race was a lesson Donald Trump would have been disqualified a long time ago, because he’s said things that make Todd Akin look totally mainstream. What Todd Akin said was nothing compared to what this guy said his entire life about women, marginalizing women, being disrespectful of women.”

— Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), quoted by the New York Daily News, comparing Donald Trump to former Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), who said women can’t get pregnant from a “legitimate rape.”

There Are More White Voters Than We Thought

June 9, 2016 at 8:07 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 63 Comments

Nate Cohn says there’s “a growing body of evidence suggests that there is still a path, albeit a narrow one, for Mr. Trump to win without gains among nonwhite voters.”

“New analysis shows that millions more white, older working-class voters went to the polls in 2012 than was found by exit polls on Election Day. This raises the prospect that Mr. Trump has a larger pool of potential voters than generally believed.”

Democrats Ran No Negative Ads In Primary

June 9, 2016 at 8:04 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 15 Comments

Bloomberg: “According to Kantar Media, Clinton and Sanders aired 206,528 spots between them this year—and not one was deemed “negative” by the analysts in Kantar’s Campaign Media Analysis Group.”

Said Kantar exec Elizabeth Wilner: “In an open presidential primary, this is probably unprecedented.”

Trump Hires Pollster to Help Him Win New York

June 9, 2016 at 7:27 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 49 Comments

Donald Trump “has hired a new pollster to help him capture an elusive Republican victory in New York,” the New York Times reports.

“The pollster, John McLaughlin, will be focusing exclusively on New York, polling to determine what type of climb Mr. Trump would face in a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican in a presidential race since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Mr. McLaughlin’s role was described by two campaign sources briefed on the move, who were not authorized to speak publicly.”