Donald Trump has had a horrible week. Some of it was his own doing , much of it was Hillary Clinton’s in refocusing the election from frustration at the establishment to Donald Trump’s fitness for office. But this week is what ‘pivoting to the general’ looks like, and why so many Democrats were eager to do so.
It’s no knock on Bernie Sanders to say so. California is tight, and Bernie might win. He’s run a campaign of ideas that Democrats wanted and needed to hear. Millennials are an electoral force to be reckoned with. But it’s Hillary vs Trump, and it’s already on.
So even if Bernie wins CA (and it’s not clear at all that he will), the primary will have been declared over by the media earlier in the evening (it’s actually been over for a lot longer than that). if Hillary wins narrowly, same thing. You don’t have to like it, but it’s what will happen. In fact, if this weekend’s Virgin Islands (7 delegates, today), and Puerto Rico (60 delegates, tomorrow) go her way, the remaining 122 uncommitted superdelegates could, in theory, end it, since she’s less than 70 delegates short of the 2382 needed to win as of this morning. Me, I think better to let them vote, but the cruel delegate math is what it is.
What you will like is the picture of the general election we saw this week. Hillary outworked, outshined and outclassed Donald Trump, and that’s the way it is going to go down.
And it isn’t just me saying it.
Dana Milbank:
On Thursday, Donald Trump escalated his racist attacks on Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge hearing one of the fraud cases against Trump University.
The presumptive Republican nominee had already called the judge a “Mexican” — the Latino jurist was born in Indiana — and floated the allegation that Curiel’s ethnicity biases him against Trump because of the candidate’s immigration stance. Trump had threatened to use the power of the presidency against the judge, saying “we will come back in November” and people “ought to look into” the judge. Then, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Trump said Curiel’s “Mexican heritage” presented “an absolute conflict” in hearing a case against him.
Brookings:
A pill he can’t swallow
So Clinton had to drive a wedge between Trump and his advisers. She had to close off the path where Trump could disguise himself in the protective garb of prudent nationalism. She framed the choice as between America as a superpower leading an international order and America as a rogue state. She detailed why alliances have a practical benefit for the United States. She connected Trump’s worldview with his temperament and explained why it would destabilize the world and weaken America. And she did this by using Trump’s own words over the last three decades.
The only way that Trump could effectively rebut the speech would be to disavow dozens of his own prior statements and demonstrate he is a responsible steward of American foreign policy—that he understands why alliances matter, why the United States defines its national interests broadly, and why the U.S. economy does best when the rest of the world does well. But this is the one thing that Trump cannot do. Trump’s view of the world is perhaps more deeply held than any other belief he has. Much as he is on every side of multiple issues, he has been remarkably consistent in his core foreign policy beliefs.
Joe Klein:
No sooner do I write a column lamenting Hillary Clinton’s inability to “win” news cycles than she starts winning them. She won one the old-fashioned way in California Thursday, with substance—but also with high-class mockery and disdain—withher brilliant speech about Donald Trump’s ridiculous attempts to articulate a foreign policy. The speech was so potent that Paul Ryan’s perfectly timed attempt to steal her thunder, by finally endorsing Trump, fell flat.
Why? Because Clinton used blunt, confident language for a change. There was almost a Thatcherite clarity to her attack on Trump’s foreign policy ideas:
They’re not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies.
It was devastating and Trump’s response was lame.
Brian Beutler:
The Trump University case has nothing to do with immigration policy, or racial bias. It’s a fraud case. If a Mexican federal judge can’t preside impartially over a race-neutral civil suit against Trump, it follows that a Mexican federal judge can’t fairly adjudicate anyclaims against him. Because what supposedly animates the bias isn’t any underlying substance, but the controversial nature of Trump himself. As Republicans continue their indiscriminate filibuster of Merrick Garland, and slow-walk other federal judicial nominees, keep in mind what they’re holding out for.
Most conservative analysis of Trump (not all conservatives, see below) is flat out wrong. I’m talking about “it doesn’t matter, he’s an outsider, who cares if the rules are broken, and besides, emails and Benghazi?!” stuff that passes for thoughtful discussion. That’s all them still not recovered after their real choices got blown away in the primaries. But this ain’t a primary we’re heading into. In the general election, the old rules, the civilized rules, apply.
This was a disastrous week for Trump. Clinton’s speech clobbered him. Trump U devastated him. And his self-destructive reaction to a Federal judge besting him in a process argument caused him to look unhinged. Hillary is right. He is unfit for office, and everyone can now see it.
That’s certainly true for the conservatives #NeverTrumpers like Philip A. Klein:
On a day in which Donald Trump gained the stamp of approval of House Speaker Paul Ryan, he added to another dark chapter of his candidacy by upping his attacks on the heritage of a judge in a case involving Trump University.
Specifically, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel had an "absolute conflict" overseeing the case because of his "Mexican heritage" and his membership to a Latino lawyers' association.
Curiel was born in Indiana to Mexican parents. "I'm building a wall," Trump said. "It's an inherent conflict of interest."
Putting aside the fact that Trump's position that a judge of Latino descent would be inherently biased against him is at odds with his campaign boasts that Latinos love him and will vote for him in droves, it gives lie to the idea that his position on immigration is rooted in wanting to prevent illegal entry and criminal acts.
First Read:
Bernie Who?
The other takeaway from Clinton's speech yesterday -- which was delivered in San Diego, CA -- was that it served to marginalize Bernie Sanders. Indeed, it made the Democratic primary race seem so much smaller, despite the competitive race in California. The Clinton-vs.-Sanders contest seems a lot less significant today than it did yesterday. In many ways, California voters will decide whether the Democratic race ends on June 7-8, or whether it will continue into July. And you could make the case that Clinton was trying to make this argument to California Democrats: It's time to start the general election ASAP.
NY Times:
Hillary Clinton’s blistering new assault on Donald J. Trump has mollified many Democrats alarmed about the closer-than-expected presidential race — while inflaming Republican fears that Mr. Trump’s improvisational style and skeletal campaign will prove inadequate in repelling the type of attack Mrs. Clinton unleashed on Thursday.
Mixing stark warnings that Mr. Trump would imperil America’s security with caustic personal critiques — “I’ll leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants” — Mrs. Clinton offered the first indication that she was willing to confront her unconventional opponent in the fashion many in her party believe his candidacy demands.
NY Times:
Even as much of the Republican political establishment lines up behind its presumptive nominee, many conservative and libertarian legal scholars warn that electing Mr. Trump is a recipe for a constitutional crisis.
“Who knows what Donald Trump with a pen and phone would do?” asked Ilya Shapiro, a lawyer with the libertarian Cato Institute.
With five months to go before Election Day, Mr. Trump has already said he would “loosen” libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations. He has threatened to sic federal regulators on his critics. He has encouraged rough treatment of demonstrators.
His proposal to bar Muslims from entry into the country tests the Constitution’s guarantees of religious freedom, due process and equal protection.
And, in what was a tipping point for some, he attacked Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel of the Federal District Court in San Diego, who is overseeing two class actions against Trump University.
Mr. Trump accused the judge of bias, falsely said he was Mexican and seemed to issue a threat.
Politico:
Call them Hillary’s home-state haters.
A group of rabble-rousing Bernie Sanders supporters from New York is headed for the Democratic National Convention next month as hand-picked, at-large delegates -- and they’re threatening to make trouble for Hillary Clinton at the very moment she hopes to make history as the first female nominee of either party and unite Democrats for the coming battle with Donald Trump.
The interesting thing is that NY was and is Clinton country. Huge win for her there. Stories like this don’t make Democrats tremble. They just make them shrug and think Tuesday, when she will be labeled the presumptive nominee, can’t come too soon.
Molly Ball:
While the Republican Party continues to grapple with its Trump-fueled identity crisis, Democrats are poised to nominate Hillary Clinton, thus putting down the party’s left-wing insurgency of 2016, albeit with unanticipated difficulty. In doing so, Democrats will be choosing as their avatar a candidate who, though she’s made rhetorical gestures to the left, remains essentially centrist in orientation—a candidate friendly to the party’s donor class and elites, well-connected with its institutions, and incrementalist in her approach to policy. Despite some assertions to the contrary, liberal populism has not taken over the Democratic Party the way right-wing populism has taken over the GOP.
It’s not just Hillary Clinton. In down-ballot primaries, the candidates favored by left-wing pressure groups have not prevailed, starting with the Maryland Senate race: Progressives backed the firebrand Donna Edwards, and outside groups spent millions on her behalf, but she lost by a 15-point margin to Chris Van Hollen, a member of House Democratic leadership. An establishment nominee, Kate McGinty, also fended off anti-establishment challengers in Pennsylvania. The populist left failed to field serious primary challengers to other establishment-backed Senate candidates, with the result that the Democrats’ general-election slate across the country consists entirely of party-backed career politicians. Progressive hopes for a big primary bang now rest on Florida, where left-wing provocateur Alan Grayson is up against establishment-backed fellow Representative Patrick Murphy, a former Republican. The primary is in August.
(Interestingly, insurgent down-ballot candidates have also failed to topple incumbent or establishment candidates in Republican primaries, raising the possibility that Trump is an aberration—albeit a really big one—and 2016 is actually a pro-establishment year for both parties.)
Reuters:
Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton has opened up a double-digit lead over Republican rival Donald Trump, regaining ground after the New York billionaire briefly tied her last month, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday.
The shift in support comes as Clinton steps up her attacks on the real estate mogul's policy positions, and as Trump fends off criticisms of his eponymous university and the pace at which he doled out money that he raised for U.S. veterans.
State of the race right there.