This is why we can’t have nice things. Here is Donald Trump, ruining the Al Smith Memorial Dinner (from Erin Glorida Ryan at The Daily Beast):
Thursday’s Al Smith Memorial Dinner offered America the opportunity to take a desperate breath from the trash swamp America’s been drowning in for the last year and a half. It delivered, but then again, 45 minutes of footage of a stranger yelling would have been more enjoyable than most of the 2016 presidential campaign. [..]
The Republican nominee for president hit some high notes, like the plagiarism joke about wife Melania’s Republican National Convention speech, which was cribbed in part from a speech Michelle Obama had given. But then he gestured to his wife, ordering her to stand up while the crowd cheered, a bizarre break in momentum. He further lost the crowd with a joke about Hillary Clinton hating Catholics that was met with boos. Then came another one about Donna Brazile sharing all of the jokes from the dinner in advance. More boos. Then one about Hillary Clinton destroying Haitian villages, which was borderline inscrutable and met with silence. If Trump is half as effective at bombing ISIS as he is at bombing stand-up routines, he’s ready to be commander-in-chief.
Charley Lanyon at New York Magazine:
Ever the entertainer, Donald Trump was probably responsible for the biggest laugh of the night but also the event’s loudest boos — until this year booing was unheard of at the dinner. [...] Trump quickly lost the room when he switched to a pointed attack on Clinton, calling her corrupt. [...]
And the unprecedented booing only got louder when Trump dropped this ill-advised joke: “Here she is in public, pretending not to hate Catholics.”
Here’s Eugene Robinson’s take on Trump’s debate performance this week:
Any kindergarten teacher could see that Trump would have benefited at that point from a spell in the timeout chair. Unfortunately none was furnished by the Commission on Presidential Debates, so he blathered on and went steadily downhill from there. He lost the ability to wait his turn, instead interrupting with “no” or “wrong” when Clinton was making a point. He denied ever saying that nations such as Japan and South Korea should develop their own nuclear weapons rather than rely on the U.S. shield, even though there is videotape of him saying precisely that in an interview with moderator Wallace.
He maintained that all of the women who have accused him of groping or making other unwanted sexual advances are lying, saying improbably, “Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody.”
“Everybody” would be closer to the truth.
Paul Krugman explains why Hillary Clinton would have performed well against any of the GOP candidates:
[T]he person tens of millions of viewers saw in this fall’s debates was hugely impressive all the same: self-possessed, almost preternaturally calm under pressure, deeply prepared, clearly in command of policy issues. And she was also working to a strategic plan: Each debate victory looked much bigger after a couple of days, once the implications had time to sink in, than it may have seemed on the night.
Oh, and the strengths she showed in the debates are also strengths that would serve her well as president. Just thought I should mention that. And maybe ordinary citizens noticed the same thing; maybe obvious competence and poise in stressful situations can add up to a kind of star quality, even if it doesn’t fit conventional notions of charisma.
Furthermore, there’s one thing Mrs. Clinton brought to this campaign that no establishment Republican could have matched: She truly cares about her signature issues, and believes in the solutions she’s pushing.
Jeva Lange at The Week details 51 things Donald Trump has said about women:
On Hillary Clinton
8. "If Hillary Clinton can't satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America?” [April 16, 2015]
9. "She got schlonged." [Dec. 21, 2015]
10. On Clinton taking a bathroom break at a Democratic debate: "I know where she went, it's disgusting, I don't want to talk about it … No, it's too disgusting. Don't say it, it's disgusting." [Dec. 21, 2015]
11. "If she were a man, I don't think she'd get five percent of the vote." [April 26, 2016]
12. "Does she look presidential, fellas? Give me a break." [Sept. 6, 2016]
13. "Such a nasty woman." [Oct. 19, 2016]
At Rolling Stone, Neil Strauss examines Trump’s legacy and its long-term impact:
If there's one thread tying together the Great Panic of 2016, it's that it dates back to one of the most destructive political tactics in history: scapegoating.
One would think that we'd have learned better by now. Because when a politician points a finger at a group of people and says, "It's their fault," and backs this assertion up with distortions, lies, and stereotypes that spread fear, what usually follows is at best discrimination and at worst genocide. And with the hindsight of history, similar so-called threats from witches, Jews, communists, intellectuals, Tutsis, Croats and so many others have proven to be groundless manipulations spread through bold lies with a high human cost. [...]
Steven Shepard and Charlie Mahtesian at Politico details Trump’s “incredible shrinking map”:
In June, POLITICO identified 11 key battleground states — totaling 146 electoral votes — that would effectively decide the presidential election in November. A new examination of polling data and strategic campaign ad buys indicates that six of those 11 are now comfortably in Hillary Clinton’s column.
Clinton leads Donald Trump by 5 points or greater in POLITICO’s Battleground States polling average in Colorado, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. If the Democratic nominee won those six states, plus all the other reliably Democratic states President Barack Obama captured in both 2008 and 2012, she would eclipse the 270-electoral-vote threshold and win the presidency.
And, on a final note, Sasha Chanoff, founder and executive director of the nonprofit RefugePoint, explains the intense process already used to vet refugees in America:
You might well call this the strictest vetting. Our government has not been lax about this. The program is not run by incompetent government people, as some appear to believe.
The United States has brought in 3.3 million refugees since 1975, including some 800,000 since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. They are not terrorists, and you have a better chance of getting killed by lightning than being harmed by a refugee carrying out such an attack. Rather, refugees have started businesses and helped to revive depressed downtown areas in places such as Lewiston, Maine; St. Louis; and Utica, N.Y.