Paul Waldman:
After all, they know, with every fiber of their beings, that Obama is deeply corrupt. He hates America, he's a racial avenger out to destroy white people, he's the embodiment of everything and everyone they despise. Yet somehow they can barely seem to lay a glove on him. So in their latest bit of acting out, Republicans in the House of Representatives are trying toimpeach Josh Koskinen, the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. The last time Congress impeached a high administration official other than the president was 140 years ago, but nobody ever accused today's GOP of being bound by history.
These Republicans say that Koskinen gave them misleading testimony about the IRS supposedly targeting Tea Party groups (which happened before Koskinen was at the agency), but this is better understood as an expression of their frustration over the failure of that scandal to take down Barack Obama. After all, when that story broke a few years back it seemed like it would prove everything they believed about this administration. Using the cruel hammer of the tax agency to go after political enemies? That's exactly the kind of thing Obama would do! Much to their chagrin, it didn't turn out the way they wanted — even if they did succeed in slashing the agency's budget, making it harder to enforce the tax laws, which is actually just fine with Republicans.
NY Times:
Ever since talk radio, cable news and the Internet emerged in the 1990s as potent political forces on the right, Republicans have used those media to attack their opponents through a now-familiar two-step.
Political operatives would secretly place damaging information with friendly outlets like The Drudge Report and Fox News and with radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh — and then they would work to get the same information absorbed into the mainstream media.
Candidates themselves would avoid being seen slinging mud, if possible, so as to avoid coming across as undignified or desperate.
Yet by personally broaching topics like Bill Clinton’s marital indiscretions and the conspiracy theories surrounding the suicide of Vincent W. Foster Jr., a Clinton White House aide, Donald J. Trump is again defying the norms of presidential politics and fashioning his own outrageous style — one that has little use for a middleman, let alone usual ideas about dignity.
Politico:
A Trump campaign plan to target Hillary Clinton over the decades-old Whitewater real estate scandal was made public on Wednesday afternoon when a Trump spokeswoman accidentally included a Politico reporter on the email thread.
According to Politico’s report, Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo emailed a researcher at the Republican National Committee asking him to “work up information on HRC/Whitewater as soon as possible. This is for immediate use and for the afternoon talking points process.”
Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks, who was cced on Caputo’s email, accidentally responded to Politico reporter Marc Caputo instead, making the entire email exchange visible.
RNC chief strategist Sean Spicer defended his committee’s research team as “the best in the business” in a statement to Politico.
Trump is really hoping for an impeachment do-over. No, it won’t work. Yes, that’s all he’s got.
Paul Waldman on the email report from the State Department IG:
How valid are those arguments? Clinton’s case is meant to lead you to the conclusion that in the end this is not that big a deal. The Republicans’ case is that she was reckless and irresponsible, and terrible things might have happened as a result. On one hand, we don’t have any evidence of anything terrible happening, but on the other hand, speculation is all Republicans need to get what they want out of this matter.
That’s because the political reality is that Republicans aren’t making a big deal out of this because of their deep and abiding concern for cybersecurity. They just want something to hammer Clinton with. Which is fine — that’s politics. But they also know that the details are all but irrelevant.
Politico:
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have seemingly agreed in principle to give the world the debate it's been waiting for.
Appearing on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" in a show that aired Wednesday night, Trump said he would be willing to debate Sanders if proceeds from such an event went to charity.
Within minutes of the statement airing, Sanders had agreed to the idea.
"Game on. I look forward to debating Donald Trump in California before the June 7 primary," he tweeted early Thursday morning.
Greg Sargent on Whitewater talk:
One Republican strategist tells me that he thinks this effort is very likely to backfire — and he is in a good position to make this prediction, because he was actually involved in a previous GOP campaign’s effort to research whether this would work on Hillary Clinton.
GOP strategist Rick Wilson was a senior adviser to former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s campaign for the New York Senate seat in 2000 that Hillary Clinton ended up winning. Before Giuliani dropped out of the race (to be replaced by Rick Lazio), and his fellow strategists extensively tested attacks on the Clintons over Whitewater and Bill’s sexual exploits.
“We tested Whitewater and it was a nothingburger,” the Florida-based Wilson tells me. “We did polling and focus groups, testing the whole pantheon of Clinton scandals.”
Telegraph:
Exclusive: Donald Trump signed off on a controversial business deal that was designed to deprive the US Government of tens of millions of dollars in tax, the Telegraph can disclose.
The billionaire approved a $50 million investment in a company – only for the deal to be rewritten several weeks later as a ‘loan’.
Experts say that the effect of this move was to skirt vast tax liabilities, and court papers seen by the Telegraph allege that the deal amounted to fraud.
Independent tax accountants and lawyers said that the documents Mr Trump signed – copies of which were obtained by this newspaper as part of a three-month investigation - contained “red flags” indicating the deal was irregular.
But the Republican presumptive presidential nominee signed nonetheless.
Stuff like this is why Trump is slinging mud. Maybe folks won’t notice.
That feeling when you’ve lost Charles Murray on the race card:
We Establishmentarians, therefore, should all go on the record about our view of Donald Trump. That includes me. I have done so in 140-character tweets, but it’s time to elaborate. Apart from that, I have a specific need to go on the record:
While I am already on record with my sympathy for the grievances that energize many of Trump’s supporters, I am thinking about writing a book that is even more explicitly sympathetic with those grievances. I want to forestall any suspicion — especially if Trump is elected — that writing in sympathy with some of the content of Trumpism indicates any form of sucking up to Trump the man. Here goes:
In my view, Donald Trump is unfit to be president in ways that apply to no other candidate of the two major political parties throughout American history.
Steve Benen:
The Post’s analysis was based on Gallup data, but even if we take a broader view and consider the president’s average standing across all of the recent polling, Obama not only finds his head above water – supporters outnumber detractors – but he’s also currently seeing his strongest support in three years.
There’s no one explanation for this. Some have argued his improved standing is the result of several recent governing successes. Others point to steady economic gains. Many have suggested Americans aren’t overjoyed with the president’s would-be successors, prompting some voters to say, “You know, maybe that Obama guy isn’t so bad after all.”
Whatever the cause, every Republican – and every pundit, for that matter – who said in November 2014 that the president might as well give up on trying to get anything done was mistaken. The more Obama has done in the last quarter of his presidency, the stronger his public support.
The Upshot reiterates a point I’ve made repeatedly — it’s too early to rely on head to head polls. Bernie supporters, this includes you. Talk to me September 1, and don’t claim polls today prove candidate X is better than candidate Y in November. You hear me, John Kasich?
At this point – 167 days before the election – a simple polling average has differed from the final result by about nine percentage points. We expect this average to become more meaningful by the week, until the national party conventions temporarily make it less so, as shown in the bump about 100 days before the election. The average difference begins to flatten about two months before the election. The day before the voting, an unadjusted polling average has been about 3.5 points off the final result.
Of course, there are many ways to take an average. Our average, which has Mrs. Clinton leading by three points, looks at a somewhat longer time window at this stage in the race, making it a little slower to react to new polling information and less subject to sudden shifts in public sentiment. By comparison, the Huffington Post average has Mrs. Clinton up by 1.6 points. RealClearPolitics gives Mr. Trump the slimmest of leads. A more sophisticated method would probably include state-level polls, pollster house effects and adjustments for how states have voted in the past.
But this far out, a simple polling average is not particularly helpful at predicting the final result. (An analysis from the political scientists Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien concurs. That analysis focused on the correlation of polls with the final result, instead of the difference in percentage points.)
WaPo on Hillary’s strategy:
Clinton advisers are trying to stitch together an overall narrative that they are confident will destroy Trump, but they are still experimenting with tone and tactics as they seek an effective equilibrium. And even as they launched their first big effort this week, Trump’s response to it stole some of their thunder — illustrating vividly that breaking through his barrage of attention-getting words will not be easy.
Clinton’s aides say they have settled on the big story they want to tell about Trump: He is a business fraud who has cheated working people for his own gain, and his ideas, temperament and moves to marginalize people by race, gender and creed make him simply unacceptable as commander in chief.
I think this trumps Whitewater.
Greg Sargent on surrogate Elizabeth Warren’s strategy:
The line that is driving all the attention this morning is Warren’s suggestion, in the context of Trump’s 2006 comment that a housing crash might enrich him, that the Donald is a “small, insecure money-grubber.” But Warren isn’t merely dissing Trump’s manhood. Warren — who went on to note that Trump “roots for people to get thrown out of their house” because he “doesn’t care who gets hurt, as long as he makes a profit” — is making a broader argument. Trump is not just a small, greedy person, but a cruel one, too.
Harry Enten with another myth buster:
Sanders did slightly better with Democratic-leaning independents (71 percent favorable) than he did with plain-old Democrats (68 percent favorable), but that appeal does not seem to extend to true independents — those who are most likely to change party allegiances between elections and whose split between the Republican and Democratic candidates nearly matched the split in the nation overall in the last two elections, according to the ANES. In the Gallup poll, Sanders had a 35 percent favorable rating among independents who don’t lean toward either party. Clinton’s favorable rating with that group was 34 percent. Trump’s was a ridiculously low 16 percent.
One could argue that Sanders has greater potential with these true independents than Clinton: Just 63 percent of them had formed an opinion of him, according to the Gallup poll, while 83 percent had done so for Clinton. But it’s also possible that these true independents will turn against him in greater numbers as they learn more about him.