First Read:
Hillary Clinton is clinging to a narrow two-point lead over Bernie Sanders in California ahead of the state's June 7 primary, according to results from a brand-new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll.
Clinton gets support from 49 percent of likely Democratic primary voters in the state, while Sanders gets 47 percent, which is within the survey's margin of error...
Clinton also is ahead among those who have already voted, 58 percent to 41 percent.
Marist is a quality poll. Here is the thing, though. NJ votes first. CA may be close enough so that there’s no call for hours, possibly longer. That’s because late absentee ballots are not going to be fully counted Tuesday night. It may well turn out that for all the punditry, CA is effectively a beauty contest election that won’t decide anything even if Bernie wins by a few points, and Clinton will be declared the presumptive nominee before we have a declared CA winner. Also true if Hillary wins by 2 points, but we don’t find out for a while. More cruel delegate math.
WaPo:
Even as Sen. Bernie Sanders continues to insist he can win the Democratic nomination, several prominent liberals have lined up behind front-runner Hillary Clinton in recent days — signaling that the time is now to begin unifying the party to take on Republican Donald Trump.
In endorsements of Clinton this week, California Gov. Jerry Brown and an influential environmental group, the NRDC Action Fund, argued that Democrats must stop fighting one another over their party’s nomination. Brown wrote in an open letter that Clinton offers the best chance to defeat Trump’s “dangerous” candidacy, while the fund, a political affiliate of the National Resources Defense Council, wrote that liberal groups must rally around Clinton because Trump’s policies would “take us back 100 years.”
Both efforts seemed aimed at bolstering Clinton in California, an enormous liberal state that Clinton could lose Tuesday even as she is expected to effectively clinch the nomination in other states. They also reflected how damaging it could be to Clinton to kick off her battle against Trump with such a symbolic defeat.
James Fallows:
As this goes on, it’s not really about Trump any more. We know exactly who and what he is. He’s a genuinely-charming-at-times salesman and schmoozer with sub-Palin-level knowledge of public affairs, more on a par with “Chauncey Gardiner” of Being There. He instantly knows all about the gorilla, and next-to-nothing about the international economy (Brexit]. This isn’t his fault. It’s who he is and what he does.
Nor do I think that a litany of Trump’s knowledge-holes or judgment-lapses will make any difference to his already-committed supporters. It’s part of what they like about him.
But the people who I hope are thinking about how they’ll look in history’s eyes, are the leaders of a major political party now lining up to declare this man acceptable. Not one of them can pretend later on that they didn’t know what they were signing on for.
Emphasis mine.
NY Times:
A wave of prominent Republicans have announced their intention to skip the party’s national convention in Cleveland this summer, the latest sign that Donald J. Trump, who last week secured the delegates needed to clinch the Republican presidential nomination, continues to struggle in his effort to unite the party behind his candidacy.
The list of those who have sent regrets includes governors and United States senators — almost all facing tough re-election fights this year — and lifelong party devotees who have attended every convention for decades. Some are renouncing their seats like conscientious objectors.
“I could not in good conscience attend a coronation and celebration of Donald Trump,” wrote one Indiana delegate, Josh Claybourn, in a blog post resigning his position.
Brian Beutler:
Fortunately, the steady pace of disclosures from the civil case against Trump University—including testimony from Trump employees who say his business-education program scammed the vulnerable out of tens of thousands of dollars a head—provides Democrats a way to repurpose the Romney strategy against a very different kind of foe. The Trump University scam undermines the very notion that a man of Trump’s greed can ever be trusted to advance the interests of others. If exploited properly, it will be Trump’s undoing.
Must read pieces ICYMI from Thomas Edsall, coupled with a previously highlighted interview of a Trump supporter by Conor Friedersdorf.
Edsall:
Trump has capitalized on the visceral belief of many white voters that government-enforced diversity and other related regulations are designed “to bring Americans to submission” by silencing their opposition to immigration — legal and illegal — to judicial orders putting low-income housing in the suburbs, and to government-mandated school integration, to name just a few of their least favorite things.
Trump’s supporters, judging from the venom with which they refer to “political correctness,” perceive the network of state, local and federal anti-discrimination laws and directives as censorious and coercive. …
Haidt applies this to the 2016 election:
Translated to the Trump phenomenon, I would say that decades of political correctness, with its focus on “straight white men” as the villains and oppressors — now extended to “straight white cis-gendered men” — has caused some degree of reactance in many and perhaps most white men.
In both the workplace and academia, Haidt argues,
the accusatory and vindictive approach of many social justice activists and diversity trainers may actually have increased the desire and willingness of some white men to say and do un-PC things.
In this atmosphere, according to Haidt,
Trump comes along and punches political correctness in the face. Anyone feeling some degree of anti-PC reactance is going to feel a thrill in their heart, and will want to stand up and applaud. And because feelings drive reasoning, these feelings of gratitude will make it hard for anyone to present arguments to them about the downsides of a Trump presidency.
Trump’s anger at being policed or fenced in apparently speaks to the resentment of many American men and their resistance to being instructed, particularly by a female candidate, on how they should think, speak or behave. …
In other words, reactance can foster a totalizing loyalty that does not respond to reasoned fault finding. This might help explain Trump’s seeming immunity to criticism from his adversaries. His followers feel that they have experienced a “diminution of freedom” and believe that Trump can “restore their autonomy.”
Friedersdorf confirms, in this interview with a 22 year old Trump supporter from San Francisco:
This is a war over how dialogue in America will be shaped. If Hillary wins, we're going to see a further tightening of PC culture. But if Trump wins? If Trump wins, we will have a president that overwhelmingly rejects PC rhetoric. Even better, we will show that more than half the country rejects this insane PC regime. If Trump wins, I will personally feel a major burden relieved, and I will feel much more comfortable stating my more right-wing views without fearing total ostracism and shame. Because of this, no matter what Trump says or does, I will keep supporting him.
Read together they illustrate that going after Trump doesn’t necessarily mean going after his supporters. They have to be defeated, not reasoned with. But the rest of the population (the 60%, not the 40%) aren’t in this odd situation now that we are not in a GOP primary.
That’s a fancy way of saying resentful white dudes aren’t the election deciders any more.
Frank Rich:
The Reagan archives show no indication that the two men had anything more than a receiving-line acquaintanceship; Trump doesn’t appear in the president’s voluminous diaries. But of all the empty boasts that have marked Trump’s successful pursuit of the Republican nomination, his affinity to Reagan may have the most validity and the most pertinence to 2016. To understand how Trump has advanced to where he is now, and why he has been underestimated at almost every step, and why he has a shot at vanquishing Hillary Clinton in November, few road maps are more illuminating than Reagan’s unlikely path to the White House. One is almost tempted to say that Trump has been studying the Reagan playbook — but to do so would be to suggest that he actually might have read a book, another Trumpian claim for which there is scant evidence.
Before the fierce defenders of the Reagan faith collapse into seizures at the bracketing of their hero with the crudest and most vacuous presidential candidate in human memory, let me stipulate that I am not talking about Reagan the president in drawing this parallel, or about Reagan the man. I am talking about Reagan the candidate, the canny politician who, after a dozen years of failed efforts attended by nonstop ridicule, ended up leading the 1980 GOP ticket at the same age Trump is now (69) and who, like his present-day counterpart, was best known to much of the electorate up until then as a B-list show-business personality.
Rebecca Traister with a long article about being Hillary, but I wanted to highlight fellow Newtowners David and Francine Wheeler here:
In a locker room at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, people are waiting in line to get their pictures taken with Hillary Clinton before a rally in the school’s gym. It’s a kid-heavy crowd, and Clinton has been chatting easily with them.
But soon there’s only one family left and the mood shifts. Francine and David Wheeler are there with their 13-year-old son, Nate, and his 17-month-old brother, Matty, who’s scrambling around on the floor. They carry a stack of photographs of their other son, Benjamin, who was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, when he was 6. David presses the photos of his dead son on Clinton with the urgency of a parent desperate to keep other parents from having to show politicians pictures of their dead 6-year-olds.
Leaning in toward Wheeler as if they are colleagues mapping out a strategy, Clinton speaks in a voice that is low and serious. “We have to be as organized and focused as they are to beat them and undermine them,” she says. “We are going to be relentless and determined and focused … They are experts at scaring people, telling them, ‘They’re going to take your guns’ … We need the same level of intensity. Intensity is more important than numbers.” Clinton tells Wheeler that she has already discussed gun control with Chuck Schumer, who will likely be leading the Senate Democrats in 2017; she talks about the differences between state and federal law and between regulatory and legislative fixes, and describes the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, which extended the protections of the Second Amendment, as “a terrible decision.” She is practically swelling, Hulk-like, with her desire to describe to this family how she’s going to solve the problem of gun violence, even though it is clear that their real problem — the absence of their middle child — is unsolvable. When Matty grabs the front of his diaper, Clinton laughs, suggesting that he either needs a change or is pretending to be a baseball player. She is warm, present, engaged, but not sappy. For Clinton, the highest act of emotional respect is perhaps to find something to do, not just something to say. “I’m going to do everything I can,” she tells Wheeler. “Everything I can.”
After the family leaves the room, Clinton and her team move quietly down the long hall toward the gym. As they walk, Clinton wordlessly hands her aide Huma Abedin a postcard of Benjamin Wheeler, making eye contact to ensure that Abedin looks at the boy’s face before putting the card in her bag.
This is the empathetic and warm Clinton one sees up close (I met her at Netroots Nation in Chicago, 2007. Very good in small groups.) It’s way different than the cardboard caricature you read about on line. But the article also goes over what it’s like being a policy wonk in a reality show era. Very good read.
The Fix:
Does Hillary Clinton face a different standard for honesty?
Duh.
Philip Bump:
We are, remarkably, at the 160-day mark until the presidential election, a stretch of time that is simultaneously a ton of time (months and months) and shockingly brief (on the scale of a campaign that began in late 2014). That's 160 days, 3,840 or so hours, during which Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump need to (a) solidify their bases of support and (b) appeal to voters who may be wavering. One hundred sixty days during which Trump needs to either gain a majority of support from American voters or at least gain the upper hand in enough states to cobble together an electoral college victory.
On the first strategy, some bad news. A new Quinnipiac University survey shows that Trump's position against Clinton is essentially unchanged since the last time the school polled, in March. At that point, Clinton was up six points; now, she's up four. Why is that bad news? Because this is after Trump solidified the Republican nomination. This is after Republicans theoretically ended their intraparty feuding and settled on one guy to lead them forward toward November. And in a one-on-one contest with Clinton -- whose Democratic Party is still split -- Trump still trails. ...
The state of the race, then, is what it has been for a while. Clinton has a narrow lead, but she appears to have perhaps stopped the bleeding against Trump. Third-party candidates don't make much of a dent. And Americans, by a 47 percent to 39 percent margin in Quinnipiac's poll, would rather have Trump over for a back-yard barbecue than Clinton.
Same old, same old.