Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post reminds us that Hillary Clinton “is blazing a momentous trail”:
Not enough has been made of two obvious facts: Hillary Clinton, if she wins, will be the first woman elected to the White House. And it will have been the votes of women who put her there. [...] The historic nature of Clinton’s candidacy has been all but lost amid the clamorous sound and fury of the Donald Trump eruption. The campaign has seen many unforgettable moments, but one that I believe will prove truly indelible came during the third and final debate, when Clinton was speaking and Trump interrupted her by snarling, “Such a nasty woman.” [...] President Obama’s election meant that African American parents were no longer lying when they told their children they could grow up to be president. Likewise, if Clinton wins on Nov. 8, all parents will be truthful when they tell their daughters that there is nothing they cannot achieve.
Damon Linker at The Week writes about a Clinton mandate and provides historical context:
The wider Clinton's margin of victory and the closer she comes to winning an outright majority of the votes cast, the more persuasive her claim of a mandate will be. And if she actually crosses the 50 percent threshold, she'll have one of the strongest claims to a mandate in nearly a century.
The Real Clear Politics polling average has Clinton pulling 45 percent of the vote and prevailing over Trump by 5.8 percentage points. Viewed in historical context, a 45 percent showing would be quite strong for a multi-person contest, especially one that is actually an unprecedented five-candidate race. [...]
When it comes to the margin of victory in multi-person races, 5.8 points would place Clinton far ahead of Nixon's narrow 0.7 percentage point victory in 1968, ahead of Harry Truman, who prevailed over Thomas Dewey by 4.5 points in 1948, slightly ahead of Bill Clinton's margin of 5.6 points in 1992, and quite a bit behind both Bill Clinton's 1996 spread (8.5 percentage points) and Ronald Reagan's in 1980 (9.7 percentage points).
That's a solid mandate, if not a massive one.
Dave Schilling at The Guardian takes a look at Trump’s attempt to stream a nightly show from Trump Tower:
“I thought there’d be snacks,” RNC strategist Sean Spicer said to the hosts of the debut installment of what the media is generously referring to as Trump TV.
We were all in a bit of a frothy lather over this being the long-awaited rollout of Donald Trump’s real 2016 endgame – a 24-hour news empire to go toe-to-toe with Fox News for the eyeballs of America’s far right. At last, Trump would reveal his true intentions.
Instead, we got a grown man asking where the craft services table is. [...]
As potent as [Trump’s] brand is, Trump cannot be on Trump TV all 24 hours of the day. At most, he’ll be a mascot for the channel, not unlike Oprah on OWN – hosting a show or two and appearing in adverts. The viewership dipped to 35,300 people at 7pm, once people realized the show would be people agreeing with each other for a half-hour. [...] I tuned out after Trump’s sensual massage of Old Glory, but I’m happy to report that Spicer got to eat. “I did see there’s food coming,” Epshteyn said, glancing over at the room behind him. On the walls of that room were multiple mounted televisions, which the hosts said were always tuned to cable news, the target of their scorn. If they intend to join them on that wall, they might want to try harder. Start by feeding the guests.
Jessica Taylor at NPR:
The initial live viewership was at about 60,000, but half and hour in, just half of that was left. At the end of the roughly 45-minute broadcast, they then cut live to Trump's rally in Florida. [...]
The duo of Epshteyn and Sims held a similar broadcast after last week's final debate, where they also painted a rosier picture of their candidate's performance than non-partisan analysts and polls found.
Conway, too, faced much friendlier questioners than she had throughout the day, where she was on cable TV defending her candidate even as multiple non-partisan polls show the GOP nominee with an increasingly shrinking path to the presidency.
Josh Feldman at Mediaite:
The main thrust of Trump TV, it seems, is answering the question “What would happen if a team of people who like Donald Trump got to say whatever they wanted for 45 minutes without anyone challenging them on anything?”
Alex Wagner at The Atlantic explains why Chris Christie is over:
Trump’s gift to Christie has been shadow: the top Republican’s national meltdown has obscured that of the one-time rising Republican star and sitting New Jersey governor. But make no mistake—Christie’s is a fall of epic proportions, precipitated by an unfathomably petty revenge plot. The contrast of the two, the top-heavy-ness of the fallout compared to the insignificance of the initial transgression, would be comic, were it not so tragic. Remember that in November of 2012, Governor Christie had a 72 percent approval rating. Today, it stands at 21 percent.
At Rolling Stone, Lincoln Blades writes about the racism behind Trump’s “rigged election” talk:
[I]t's clear Trump doesn't care about black Americans, and his debate performance last Wednesday solidified that. Because if Trump truly cared about "the blacks," as he's called us, he would've vigorously walked back his comments about monitoring polling places and would not have further insinuated that the election results might be illegitimate, given our nation's long history of voter intimidation and election violence targeted at African-Americans.
On a final note, make sure to read this fantastic piece by Dana Milbank, who calls out those in the press who have been reluctant to properly report on Trump’s outrageous acts and statements:
Journalists for generations styled themselves “watchdogs of democracy,” growling at falsehoods and barking at abuses in the system. David Fahrenthold, Glenn Kessler and many of my Washington Post colleagues have upheld this proud tradition throughout the 2016 campaign.
But in general, watchdogs until recently were outnumbered in this election by those who cover politics as horse race, praising the maneuvers of whichever candidate is ahead in the polls. This avowedly neutral approach — process journalism — is apolitical. But it’s also amoral — a he-said-she-said approach that in this case confused tactics for truth and what works for what’s right. [...]
In an ordinary presidential campaign, press neutrality is essential. But in Trump we have somebody who has threatened democracy by talking about banning an entire religion from entering the country; forcing Muslims in America to register with authorities; rewriting press laws and prosecuting his critics and political opponents; blacklisting news organizations he doesn’t like; ordering the military to do illegal things such as torture and targeting innocents; and much more. In this case, attempting neutrality legitimized the illegitimate.