The week started with attacks on the Clinton foundation (which fizzled, to the consternation of many in the media and to the embarrassment of the AP) and ended with a scathing attack on Donald Trump’s anti-Semitic and racist connections.
Nancy LeTourneau/Washington Monthly:
“Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future,” Trump said at a campaign rally here, speaking to an overwhelmingly white audience of supporters in the deep-red state. “She doesn’t care what her policies have done to your communities. She has no remorse. She’s going to do nothing for Hispanics and African-Americans.”
It is interesting to watch Trump squirm and dive when Anderson Cooper tried to tie him down on what that means. But there is a reason why people like Rove and Trump employ this tactic: the media buys it. For example, here are some of the headlines emanating from yesterday:
ABC: Clinton, Trump Tangle Over Racism
Washington Post: Clinton, Trump exchange racially charged accusations
CNN: Clinton says Trump leading ‘hate movement’; he calls her a ‘bigot’
Politico: Trump and Clinton throw more blows in bigotry fight
In other words, projection isn’t just a psychological defense mechanism anymore. It is a political strategy used to ensure that the media reports moments like this as a “he said/she said” that is the basis of bothsiderism. It works. And the media can simply fall back on saying that they are simply reporting the facts of what happened.
In terms of validating the speech Hillary gave Thursday, this was ill timed for Bannon:
Greg Sargent with a nice tweet storm about media responsibility in covering Donald Trump’s immigration policy:
MSNBC:
Hillary Clinton may have been a Goldwater Girl in college, but she's cribbing from the playbook used to defeat the former Arizona senator when he ran against President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
Sharp observers immediately spotted the similarities between the video Clinton's campaign released this week connecting Donald Trump and white supremacists to a similar ad Johnson's campaign cut, but never ran, during his campaign against Goldwater.
Clinton's video, which aides have suggested will not run on TV, featured KKK imagery and testimony of white supremacists explaining why they agree with Trump.
Rick Valelly/HuffPost with a political science view of Trump and the election:
But think about it. He has threatened his opponent’s life, said that if he is President he will try to prosecute her and jail her, asked a foreign power and dangerous adversary to intervene in the election on his behalf, encouraged violence at his rallies, urged a massive assault on the civil liberties of a group of Americans, offended an historic ally and neighbor, the Republic of Mexico, in the most unhinged way, threatened to rip up stable treaty alliances that protect our security, lied constantly about policy questions of fact, engaged in smears and conspiracy thinking, flirted with anti-Semites and white nationalists, suggested that he will encourage nuclear proliferation if he is President, and he has urged his base to treat his electoral defeat, if it happens, as a case of illegitimate and rigged defeat.
Yet this rhetorical barrage has been effectively normalized. We have gotten all too used to this kind of menacing, deranged talk. The basic reason for that is his own party. It has refused to disown him. There is no line that he cannot cross. The Republican cohabitation with Trump is understandable. It’s not admirable, but it has a clear organizational logic. Given the enormous gains that Republicans made in 2010 and 2014, in Congress and among the states, they have a lot to protect. Most of the party’s office-holders have obviously decided that they must live with Trump and ride out the election to wherever it may lead. That has given him a license to say things that should have cost him his campaign long ago.
I think that he is going to lose the election – but I also think that more and possibly very damaging mischief is possible…
So here is my suggestion. The moderators of the first presidential debate, scheduled for September 26th, should ask both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump the following simple question.
If you lose, do you commit to telephoning your opponent and to publicly congratulating him ― or her – on winning the election fair and square?
Business Insider:
But in 2016, the criticism from Hannity and a vocal faction of the conservative news media reached a fever pitch. The occasional needling of Republicans morphed into full-blown, searing criticism. Even figures like Ryan and Cruz, considered by most to have iron-clad conservative credentials, were no longer safe.
In fact, throughout the election season, it has appeared that Republicans have fielded more attacks from their supposed friends on the right than their political opponents on the left. It's an incidental twist, considering how Republicans helped foster the growth of the conservative news media in order to avoid the skewering of mainstream journalists.
Instead, it appears their plan of using friendly pundits to tap directly into the vein of red-blooded Americans sympathetic to their political views has backfired. That has boosted the candidacy of Donald Trump, who last week named Steve Bannon, the former chair of the Trump-friendly Breitbart News, as his campaign's CEO.
"The analogy that I think of is somebody who has a baby alligator in their bathtub and they keep feeding it and taking care of it," said Charlie Sykes, a popular conservative talk show host in Wisconsin. "And it's really cute when it's a baby alligator — until it becomes a grown-up alligator and comes out and starts biting you."
Jamil Smith/MTV:
On May 1, 1989, Donald Trump published an ad in the New York Daily News calling for the state to kill five schoolchildren. None of the “Central Park Five” were older than 16. All of them were black or Latino. Under police coercion, they’d confessed to the brutal rape and assault of Trisha Meili, an investment banker who had been jogging in Central Park. Though they were convicted, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise were not guilty of the crime. Twelve years later, a serial rapist named Matias Reyes fessed up to being the sole attacker, and his DNA was a match to what was found at the scene.
But the possibility of the Central Park Five’s innocence, it seems, did not occur to Trump when he paid to condemn them in print. He concluded with a clarion call to anger and fear: “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!"
As an eighth-grader growing up in Ohio, I wasn’t keeping track of Trump’s more salacious media mentions (including his deliberate efforts to build an image through the tabloids as a playboy tycoon who seemed proud of his marital infidelity). But thanks to the nightly news and library microfiche — 1989’s internet — I knew about his characterization of five brown and black boys (and, by proxy, others who looked like them) as catalysts of urban downfall and the erosion of law and order.
In 1989, I learned who Donald Trump is. Twenty-seven years later, he hasn’t changed a bit.
Paul Waldman/The Week:
Can Hillary Clinton convince the Republican Party that Donald Trump is a racist?And now, Hillary Clinton is trying to make sure that Trump pays a price not just for what he has said, but who's supporting him. She put out a web video with KKK members and other white nationalists praising Trump, then gave a speech in Reno on Thursday arguing that Trump is "taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America's two major political parties."
The particulars may not be all that new, but it's the first time Clinton has devoted an entire speech to this critique. And the political context is that Clinton is almost where she needs to be in order to win; polls put her support at or just below 50 percent. Trump, on the other hand, trails her by somewhere between 7 and 10 points, and in order for him to pull even he needs to win over Republican moderates and independents, particularly women.
That's a big part of the reason Trump is now "reaching out" to minority groups and flailing about on immigration in an apparent attempt to "soften" his views. If he can't persuade those few undecided voters, he simply can't win.
Rosie Gray/Buzzfeed with a very good piece on the white nationalist movement:
How 2015 Fueled The Rise Of The Freewheeling, White Nationalist Alt Right Movement
In a year dominated by Trump, the alt right — a loosely connected movement related to obscure political theories and a great feel for how the internet actually works — has hit it big
Annie Karni/Politico:
GOP plots early wake-up call for Clinton
Looking past Election Day, Republicans sketch plan to stymie a President Hillary Clinton agenda.
That’s because they know they are going to lose.
MSNBC with a long read on possible paths for the GOP post-Trump loss:
BEYOND TRUMP
Where will the Republican Party go after 2016?