Tucker Eskew, Never Trumper Republican, has a great tweet storm here, very much worth a read.
Speaking of tweet storms, we’ve been most interested in invigorated coverage of the working class, the poor (not the same) and how they are intertwined with race. For example, see Mikki Kendall:
WaPo is trying to keep track, but the list is growing fast:
This post continues to be updated with additional Republicans backing Clinton. The latest are former Michigan governor William Milliken, former George W. Bush aide Lezlee Westin, former Ronald Reagan aide Frank Lavin and two former officials with the Environmental Protection Agency.
Clinton is winning because she is succeeding in painting Trump as unfit for office. It helps a great deal that he is.
Jason P. Steed has a great tweet storm on the topic of jokes and “just joking”.
NY Times:
For Mrs. Clinton, the alienation of Republican women from Mr. Trump creates a rare opportunity to capture a coveted demographic. But it poses a dilemma as well.
Skeptical liberals are already looking for signs of betrayal from Mrs. Clinton, making it dangerous for her to make overt or ideological appeals to Republican women. Instead, she is making her case to them by emphasizing kitchen-table issues like job creation and by raising doubts about Mr. Trump’s temperament.
Skeptocal liberals. Huh. Who knew?
Charles P. Pierce:
OK, is hinting that maybe your political opponent should get shot The Line?
If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know.
Is that The Line?
You know, The Line, the one that He, Trump has to cross before the entire Republican Party, not to mention a good portion of the human race, finds him too revolting for their delicate stomachs? What say you, Paul Ryan? Is that the line? John McCain? Mitch McConnell? All you clowns in the tricorns and the Watering The Tree Of Liberty tank tops? What say you all? Do you stand by this?
Josh Barro:
It doesn't really matter what Trump meant. It matters what he said — a reckless comment that might or might not be outrageous, depending on your interpretation. This has happened over and over during the campaign, and it would happen, with much higher stakes, during his presidency.
What the president says matters. Presidents' comments can move markets, create policy, inflame foreign tensions, even start wars. It is therefore important that presidents be careful.
Harry Enten/Fivethirtyeight:
The Polls Aren’t Skewed: Trump Really Is Losing Badly
Now the unskewers are back, again insisting that pollsters are “using” more Democrats than they should, and that the percentage of Democrats and Republicans should be equal, or that there should be more Republicans. They point to surveys like the recent one from ABC News and The Washington Post, in which 33 percent of registered voters identified as Democrats compared to 27 percent as Republicans. That poll found Hillary Clinton ahead by 8 percentage points.
But let’s say this plainly: The polls are not “skewed.” They weren’t in 2012, and they aren’t now.
Trump is also losing the media. This is a big factor, as it was in his rise.
By the way, “losing to a girl” isn‘t disrespectful to Hillary. It’s a thing. Elizabeth Warren used it as well.
Jim Rutenberg/NY Tiimes:
A lot of core Trump supporters certainly view it that way. That will only serve to worsen their already dim view of the news media, which initially failed to recognize the power of their grievances, and therefore failed to recognize the seriousness of Mr. Trump’s candidacy.
This, however, is what being taken seriously looks like. As Ms. Ryan put it to me, Mr. Trump’s candidacy is “extraordinary and precedent-shattering” and “to pretend otherwise is to be disingenuous with readers.”
It would also be an abdication of political journalism’s most solemn duty: to ferret out what the candidates will be like in the most powerful office in the world.
It may not always seem fair to Mr. Trump or his supporters. But journalism shouldn’t measure itself against any one campaign’s definition of fairness. It is journalism’s job to be true to the readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history’s judgment. To do anything less would be untenable.
I think cable gets a fail in this regard. They are still playing for false balance (but kudos to Brian Stelter):
Alicia Shepard/USA Today:
His campaign strategy is working. For Trump, there is a truism he’s stuck to for decades: All press is good. There is no such thing as bad press. The Republican nominee is a walking, talking headline machine.
And this poses a dilemma for the press as it moves forward to cover a presidential campaign where one side makes erratic, off-the-wall comments and the other side is pragmatic and media-averse, and likes to delve into wonky details.
How do the news media fairly cover this election? The narrow slice of the electorate that is genuinely undecided and could determine who wins may hunger for more information or seeing both candidates in action. But there doesn’t seem to be enough airtime for issues. It’s Trump gaffes and unprecedented name-calling all of the time.
Maybe we need to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. Until 1987, radio and TV networks licensed by the federal government were required to give equal airtime to controversial issues in an effort to be balanced and fair.
Nicco Mele and Marvin Kalb/USA Today:
The media has played an essential role in propagating the rise of Trumpism. Although the phrase “fair and balanced” brings to mind Fox News (a network that in a single two-month period in 2011 devoted more than 52 segments to the supposed illegitimacy of President Obama’s birth certificate), the culture of the news media in America demands that reporters and producers strive to be fair and balanced. The “on the one hand, on the other hand” emphasis of our journalistic culture has far-reaching consequences, creating a false, artificial equivalency that often leads to distortion. The media seems trapped between the traditional quest for objectivity and the demands of a new political challenge.
James Hohmann/WaPo notes that Never Trumpers aren’t exactly uncalculating:
-- With the notable exception of Ted Cruz, commentators and pundits have covered GOP politicians who have spoken out against Trump as courageous and brave. While these are agonizing, career-defining decisions for lawmakers, they are also at heart based on cold political calculus. And that must not be lost in the conversation.
Most politicians respond more to political incentives than principles. That’s the single most important insight to understanding how Washington really works.
-- Every Republican who has bucked Trump can be pretty easily categorized. A clear pattern emerges: the less directly and immediately accountable to Republican base voters an elected official is, the more likely he or she is to break with Trump.
There’s nothing loke losing by double digits to make you develop a conscience.
He’s lost the elites but he’s running against them. what the rank and file does remain to be seen. But note the following from Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg:
Why Party Defections Matter
When something goes wrong for Clinton, most highly visible Democrats will speak out in support or keep their mouths shut. By contrast, when something goes wrong for Donald Trump, Republican responses are all over the place, with many condemning whatever it is he said.
And the media's preference for man-bites-dog over dog-bites-man stories means that the news about a Republican operative endorsing Clinton will receive far more coverage than dozens of Republican elected officials endorsing Trump.
Lucia Graves/Guardian:
Trump's national security nightmare: now even the neocons are freaking out
All hands on deck in an emergency. Be prepared to hold your nose at some of the endorsers. There’s a reason for it and it isn’t “see, I told you in the primaries she was BFF with Henry Kissinger!”. Clinton’s going after these people to wipe out the GOP in 2016 and help win elections in NC, GA, UT, AZ, MS etc. and it’s smart politics.
David Robinson (blog):
I don’t normally post about politics (I’m not particularly savvy about polling, which is where data science has had the largest impact on politics). But this weekend I saw a hypothesis about Donald Trump’s twitter account that simply begged to be investigated with data: