Remember, the best post-debate stories will come tomorrow and have not been written yet. The most important moment of the debate was captured by the WSJ and AP (see headline above) and simply put, is a disqualifier. Mike Pence, when asked, agreed with Trump. Meanwhile…
Brian Beutler/New Republic:
Hillary, Don’t Blow This Golden Opportunity
Trump’s election-rigging conspiracy theory is her best way to tie him to the Republican Party, just as Obama has done.
Josh Barro/Business Insider:
I actually agree that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg should not have injected herself into the election by calling Trump a "faker," even though he is one. But that's not what's important right now.
What's important is that, when Donald Trump was asked what he thinks the Supreme Court should do with its power, the first thing he thought was important to address was that the justices on the court should be nice to him — and that he had made one of them apologize to him when she wasn't.
This should not reassure conservatives who have somehow convinced themselves Trump's approach would be to appoint judges who would closely follow the Constitution, rather than judges who show sufficient respect to him personally.
And over and over again during the debate, Trump brought matters back to himself — to his own detriment.
Non-debate stuff follows...
Matthew Yglesias/Vox:
There's a new “silent majority,” and it's voting for Hillary Clinton
Trump voters and Bernie Bros get all the press, but it’s Hillary voters who are going to win.
In research conducted exclusively for the Boston Globe and Colby College of Waterville, Maine, SurveyUSA finds:
* Trump leads by 6 points among white voters.
* Clinton leads by 79 points among African American voters.
* Clinton leads by 35 points among Hispanic voters.
* Trump leads by 15 points in rural America.
* Clinton leads by 8 points in suburban America.
* Clinton leads by 34 points in urban America.
Among all women, Clinton leads by 13 points. That breaks down this way:
* Trump leads by 9 points among rural women.
* Clinton leads by 12 points among suburban women.
* Clinton leads by 44 points among urban women.
Seniors split, 41% for Clinton, 40% for Trump. Clinton leads by 30 points among the youngest voters. Independents split, 34% for Trump, 34% for Clinton. Moderates break for Clinton 45% to 33%. The most affluent voters break narrowly for Trump. Clinton leads 2:1 among the least affluent voters.
Tim Miller/The Ringer, Jeb Bush’s comms guy, with an extraordinary piece:
Donald Trump Is on a Presidential Death March We’ve Never Seen Before
A political survivor describes what it means when a campaign fails, and how this bizarre election cycle is exposing the worst in Trump
Even those candidates who handle losing poorly often have the basic decency or self-awareness to attempt to fake it. Or at minimum, they feel a faint sense of responsibility to a democratic system that is based on a peaceful transfer of power.
None of that is in Donald Trump’s character. Trump does not place value in virtue. There will be no trying to go out with his head held high. There is only the low road. There is only an emotional toddler lashing out because he hasn’t been given what he wants.
When a man whose entire candidacy and public standing is predicated on themyth that he is a winner has to face in every single moment a reminder that he is going to face one of the biggest, most humiliating losses in presidential history on the biggest stage imaginable, you better believe he will lash out. We cannot predict exactly the manner it will play out, but we have seen the embers already and they are ugly.
ADL:
The report, the first of its kind, presents findings based on a broad set of keywords (and keyword combinations) designed by ADL to capture anti-Semitic language on social media. Using this metric, a total of 2.6 million tweets containing language frequently found in anti-Semitic speech were posted across Twitter between August 2015 and July 2016. Those tweets had an estimated 10 billion impressions (reach), which ADL believes contributed to reinforcing and normalizing anti-Semitic language – particularly racial slurs and anti-Israel statements -- on a massive scale.
There was a significant uptick in anti-Semitic tweets from January 2016 to July 2016 as coverage of the presidential campaign intensified.
Washingtonian:
Just ten journalists were the targets of 83 percent of anti-Semitic tweets over a one-year period reviewed by the Anti-Defamation League, according to a report published Wednesday by the civil-rights organization. The ADL studied Twitter messages sent between August 2015 and July 2016 and found that the offending messages were fueled largely by rhetoric in the presidential election and hate groups that have encouraged anti-Semitic speech.
The rise in social-media accounts explicitly targeting Jewish journalists is not just part of an unprecedented surge inanti-Semitic speech in American life, says ADL National Director Jonathan Greenblatt, it represents an assault on free speech.
Media fail:
Daily Beast:
Sandy Hook Dad Mark Barden: ‘Disgusting’ That Trump Advised by Truther Alex Jones
Mark Barden lost his beautiful boy, Daniel, in the Sandy Hook massacre. He opens up about the doc ‘Newtown,’ gun control, and Trump’s alliance with Sandy Hook truther Alex Jones.
Mother Jones:
Revenge—it's a big part of Trump's life. Following the first presidential debate, he spent days of valuable campaign time (and hours of valuable sleep time) slamming Alicia Machado, the former Miss Universe. At other times during this contest, he could not let go of his feud with Rosie O'Donnell. He tried to smear Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the American-born federal judge hearing a fraud case against Trump University, as a "Mexican" unqualified to preside over this litigation. For days, he derided Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq, after Khiz criticized him during a speech at the Democratic convention. He launched misogynistic attacks against Carly Fiorina and Megyn Kelly. Rather than attempt to unify his party after a divisive primary fight, he threatened to finance future campaigns against GOP rivals, most notably Ohio Gov. John Kasich. He encouraged violence against protesters at his rallies. And there were the mean and nasty nicknames: Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco. Why all the insults, bullying, and grudge matches? There is a reason. Trump fervently believes in retaliation. How do we know? Because he has said so numerous times that he is driven by revenge and that it is a basic tool to use in business. He is obsessed with payback.
Mark Blumenthal/HuffPost:
Even though Johnson and Stein will both appear on the ballots in 44 of 50 states, the final result will likely fall somewhere between the estimates from our 4-way and 2-way vote questions. First, support for both Johnson and Stein has been gradually declining. Second, those who opt for the third party candidates are far less certain of their choice. Third, polling questions that prompt for third party candidates typically overstate their support, even late in the campaign.
While the national story is more about stability over the fall campaign than big dramatic shifts, one important trend is nonetheless modest but real: Hillary Clinton has been gradually consolidating her vote among Democrats, while Trump continues to bleed support among Republicans to Clinton and the third party candidates.
Click through!! for bigger modified Dilbert:
Jonathan Blitzer/New Yorker:
The pundit and Republican strategist Ana Navarro has called Donald Trump a “vile bigot,” “flat-out racist,” “jerk,” “swamp thing,” and “crazy orange man with an unidentifiable furry object on his head ranting into the wind.” She makes her living coining tag lines, but she cemented her reputation by quoting the man she reviles verbatim. Earlier this month, the day a 2005 tape surfaced in which Trump bragged about “grabbing” women “by the pussy,” Navarro, who is forty-four, was sparring with a panel of commentators on CNN about what to make of the scandal. “Every single Republican is going to have to answer the question ‘What did you do the day you saw the tape of this man boasting about grabbing a woman’s pussy?’ “ she said. The rest of the panelists had been avoiding the vulgar term, and one of them, a Trump booster named Scottie Nell Hughes, visibly flinched. “Will you please stop saying that word? My daughter is listening,” she interjected. “Don’t tell me you’re offended when I say ‘pussy,’ but you’re not offended when Donald Trump says it,” Navarro responded, evidently taking some pleasure in the repetition.
Jeet Heer/New Republic:
Donald Trump Can’t Stand Losing to a Girl
Since Trump can’t respect Clinton as a peer or worthy foe, he has to figure out some way to reframe the battle. So he portrays her as a mere facade of a larger system he’s fighting: “Crooked Hillary,” the face of the corrupt establishment. And he accuses her of cheating—by “rigging” the election in coordination with the media, and by taking performance-enhancing drugs that help her win debates (as Hannah Fearn notes inThe Independent, this carries with it the suggestion that as a woman she’s too weak for power without medical aid).
This delusional counter-narrative is the only salve for his wounded ego, his only defense against the psychic shock that’s coming. Because if and when Trump loses on election day, he’ll face the ultimate indignity for a sexist: He got trounced by a girl. And she’ll have beaten him fair and square.
Richard Wolffe/Guardian:
Sure enough, Obama’s approval ratings (52%) are almost identical to Reagan’s in August 1988 (53%) and a dramatic contrast to those of George W Bush (32%) in 2008. One of these Republican presidents was succeeded by his own vice-president; the other was succeeded by Barack Obama.
This should lead to some serious soul-searching inside the Republican party. Not a post-mortem about how to reach out to Latino voters, but a dismantling of the politics of personal destruction, and the creation of a new, hopeful agenda that can appeal to the mainstream.
Instead, the only point of unity inside the GOP is its gleeful hatred of Hillary Clinton, and its thinly veiled disdain for a nominee who has yet to find a politician he can’t insult.
The Republican party did not entirely fail to destroy Barack Obama. For a few years, aided by the great recession, they almost succeeded. But then they contrived to revive him by nominating a man who would destroy everything Obama stood for, along with much of the free world as we know it.