*** SUPPORT HILLARY CLINTON ***
Donate Today!
Volunteer
Make Calls
For more coverage of Hillary Clinton at Daily Kos, visit the Hillary Writers Circle.
For breaking news, follow First Amendment.
Look for Hillary-friendly open threads and hangouts throughout the day.
.
Happy Saturday Morning, everybody.
A bit later than usual, and again there was a lot of material that I was able to use, so this one is pretty good sized.
.
Index:
1. Hillary vs. Trump — on climate change
2. Hillary supporters are passionate in their own way.
3. Gender plays a big role how Americans view leaders
4. Hillary Clinton set to seriously outspend Donald Trump
5. Erica Jong: Why I trust Hillary
6. Melissa McEwen: Excuse Us, Bernie Sanders, But Nobody Appointed You Savior of the Democratic Party
7. Robert Reich tries again. Bernie supporters, slow to come to terms
8. When will Sanders help his party heal?
9. The Bernie vs. Hillary battle all boils down to Sexism
10. WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin warns fellow Republicans why things look dim for them
11. How Running for ‘Obama’s 3rd Term’ Became a Political Asset for Hillary Clinton
Let’s get to it:
1. Hillary vs. Trump — on climate change
Focusing on climate change, Hillary has gone to Twitter to highlight differences between herself and Donald Trump on climate change. Donald Trump, for his part, has made comments that will scare the stuffing out of any person for whom climate change is an important issue.
Yesterday Donald Trump told Californians that there really is no drought in California:
Trump tells California 'there is no drought'
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told California voters Friday that he can solve their water crisis, declaring, "There is no drought."
California is, in fact, in midst of a drought. Last year capped the state's driest four-year period in its history, with record low rainfall and snow.
Speaking at a rally in Fresno, Calif., Trump accused state officials of denying water to Central Valley farmers so they can send it out to sea "to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish."
"We're going to solve your water problem. You have a water problem that is so insane. It is so ridiculous where they're taking the water and shoving it out to sea," Trump said at a rally that drew thousands.
The comments came a day after Trump outlined an energy policy plan that relies heavily on expanding U.S. fossil fuel exploration and reducing environmental regulations.
California has suffered the effects of a major drought for years. Climate expert “The Donald” tells California that indeed “there is no drought”? What a doofus.
The day before he vowed to get out of the way of the fossil industry:
Trump says he would 'get out of the way' of oil industry
Donald Trump pledged 'complete' American energy independence and a focus on putting workers before regulations Thursday to a crowd that is eager to make the Bakken great again.
The Republican presidential hopeful told more than 7,000 people at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference that his policies on energy will put drilling rigs and people back to work.
"I think the federal government should get out of the way," Trump told reporters prior to his public address. "The federal government is in the way. We have so much potential energy that people wouldn't even believe it."
No regulations. Just profit. Drill, baby, drill. Climate change? It’s a hoax the Chinese cooked up to make us profit less (real Trump conspiracy story, folks).
Trump also said that unlike Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, he supports fracking.
"They want to absolutely knock out fracking. You do that, you're going to be back into the Middle East and you're going to be begging for oil again," Trump said. "Not going to happen. Not with me."
"Costly regulation makes it harder and harder to turn a profit," Trump said. "If crooked Hillary Clinton is in charge, things will get much worse, believe me."
Trump said he has a 100-day action plan, which includes destroying all of Obama's executive actions. He specifically mentioned repealing the Waters of the U.S. rule and canceling the Paris climate agreement.
Trump also said he would approve the Keystone XL Pipeline, but said the U.S. should get a significant chunk of the profits.
Trump pledged his support for the coal industry and said he supports renewable energy "but not to the exclusion of other forms of energy that right now are working much better."
This guy is dangerous to the world. His climate action would put us back decades. Climate change is real, not a hoax. And cancelling the Paris climate agreement, repealing important environmental protections, approving Keystone, and on and on, is going to be extremely damaging to all of us.
In contrast, Hillary has a robust climate change plan in place.
Climate change and clean energy Making America the world’s clean energy superpower and meeting the climate challenge.
Climate change is an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time—and Hillary Clinton has a plan to tackle it by making America the world’s clean energy superpower, taking bold steps to slash carbon pollution at home and around the world, and ensuring no Americans are left out or left behind as we rapidly build a clean energy economy.
2015 was the warmest year on record—and 15 of the 16 hottest years on record have come just since 2001. Already, American families are seeing the impacts of climate change with their own eyes, from the record drought in California to the frequently flooded streets of Miami and Annapolis. While climate deniers continue to ignore settled science because it does not suit their political agenda, and climate defeatists doubt America’s ability to meet this challenge, Hillary knows that America is fully up to the task.
The choice between the candidates when it comes to climate change could not be more stark, more extremely in polar opposites.
2. Hillary supporters are passionate in their own way
Hillary supporters: We're excited, too, but also practical
Trump and Sanders get all the attention for their passionate support. But supporters at a Hillary Clinton rally are passionate, too – in their own way.
The retired deputy sheriff wears a white straw hat on which a miniature Hillary Clinton doll sits, surrounded by flowers and little American flags. Red, white, and blue peace signs clatter around her neck, and “Hillary” stickers adorn her cheeks. She even carries around a picture-book biography of Mrs. Clinton that she hopes to get autographed.
“She sends a message to little girls about what it means to be a leader,” says Ms. Boyd, a mother of two, when asked what excites her about her candidate.
A leader, not a stage entertainer.
And when placed beside the more outspoken advocates for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders – some of whom came to the Tuesday rally to protest Clinton’s candidacy – or the outrage that marks followers of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, Clinton voters do appear almost dispassionate.
But none of that means the former secretary of State fails to inspire, her supporters say. To them, the ability to excite and rile up a crowd is less important than experience, a sense of respect, and the skill to negotiate one’s way out of a problem. These voters say they choose to show their enthusiasm in less sensational ways, whether it’s donating to Clinton’s campaign or encouraging others to educate themselves and turn out to vote.
“I’m not looking for someone to entertain me,” says Boyd, as she squats on the grass to add tinsel to her “Hillary” poster. “I’m looking for someone to lead this country.”
The party atmosphere prevalent at Bernie and Trump rallies is shallow. That’s not how you select a person who leads this nation.
Which isn’t to say passion doesn’t exist among Clinton supporters. Inside the Johnson Family Practice Center at UC-Riverside, a current of anticipation runs through the gathering – an intimate affair that is typical of Clinton’s rallies. When she at last appears just after 6 p.m., the crowd cheers, waving campaign-issued balloons and posters.
“We are very enthusiastic,” says Sebastiano Grasso, a local artist, dismissing any suggestion that Clinton is unable to galvanize her supporters. “We’re just not punching people, yelling at people.”
Others, like Carrie Lucas, say they show their enthusiasm with actions, not words. Ms. Lucas, a ballroom dancing instructor from Corona, Calif., says she donates to the Clinton campaign with every paycheck.
“I put my money where my mouth is,” she says.
“If you’ve ever seen her live in person, she’s completely energizing,” Ms. Davis says, recalling how she managed to convince her mother to vote for Clinton over President Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries. “She went to see Hillary speak and that’s what swayed her decision.”
“She’s very much interested in progressive, social change, and she’s in a position to make that change happen,” Davis says. “She would be the first female president – that’s huge in itself. But she has the best ability to make change happen.
“That’s what fires me about her.”
Actions over words.
Yet the folks at the Clinton rally on Tuesday applaud her rational approach, saying they support her precisely because she is about her work and not her celebrity.
“She has done so much for this country,” says Earlene Freeman, a retired registered nurse, as she leans on her walker. “She will better represent the values that I have; she wants people to reach their potential.”
…
“Her approach is very analytical,” says Callie Scoggins, a senior at Redlands East Valley High School, about a half-hour drive from Riverside. “She won’t be quick to do something without considering the consequences.”
“What it comes down to,” adds Tyler Washington, a new graduate at Riverside, “is that the other candidates are like the tooth fairy or Santa Claus, offering magical rewards. Clinton is like the mom telling you to eat your vegetables.”
That may not make her likable, he says, but “those thinking with their brains understand what’s more important.”
“We don’t need a slogan,” adds Mr. Grasso, the artist. “We need solutions.”
3. Gender plays a big role how Americans view leaders
Americans’ views of women as political leaders differ by gender
For the first time in history, a woman is the leading candidate for the presidential nomination of a major U.S. political party. As Democrat Hillary Clinton wages her campaign to be the first female chief executive, what do Americans have to say in general about the prospects and qualifications of female candidates for high political offices?
For the most part, Americans – including similar shares of men (74%) and women (76%) – said in a 2014 Pew Research Center survey that women and men make equally good political leaders. When it comes to essential traits of a leader, both men and women saw women as being more compassionate, organized and honest than men, and saw men as being more ambitious and decisive (though for most traits, an even higher share said both genders possess them equally). But the survey found marked differences between women and men on other questions relating to gender and leadership, including the reasons that more women have not been elected. Here are five key findings from the survey on gender differences in views about women and leadership:
Women in our survey said men had an easier path to political leadership, and they also were more likely to say that having more female leaders would improve the quality of life for women. About three-quarters (73%) of women said it’s easier for men to get elected to high political office, while 58% of men agreed. And 38% of women said that having more women in top political or business leadership positions would improve the quality of life for all women “a lot.”
About half (47%) of women said that a major reason there are not more women in top political offices is that female candidates are held to higher standards than men, compared with 28% of men who said so. Four-in-ten women (41%), compared with three-in-ten men (31%), said that a major reason for the lack of women in top political offices is that many Americans aren’t ready to elect a woman to a higher office. And 33% of women, compared with 21% of men, said that females getting less support from party leaders is a major reason. Relatively small shares of men (15%) and women (18%) said that family responsibilities are a major reason that fewer women hold elective offices.
High time to shatter that glass ceiling. We are on the cusp of history, folks. Once it is done women leaders will never be viewed the same again by society.
4. Hillary Clinton set to seriously outspend Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton is set to seriously outspend billionaire Donald Trump
Donald Trump holds his first political fundraiser this week, in Albuquerque, N.M. He’s only a year behind Hillary Clinton.
Trump, on his way to becoming the Republican nominee for president, has dismissed traditional big-money fundraising since he announced his candidacy last summer, saying he doesn’t want to owe favors to rich people financing his campaign. Up until now, Trump has personally provided about 75% of the money his campaign has spent, with donations of $2,700 or less funding the other 25%. (Fundraising totals are in the chart below.)
But even billionaire Trump lacks the liquid assets to fund a competitive campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the general election, which is why Trump changed his financing plan and will now seek six- and seven-figure sums from wealthy donors. His very late start, however, will probably hamper his fundraising all the way through November and lower his election odds.
Clinton already has far more cash on hand than Trump does. Here are the figures on money raised and spent so far, including traditional campaign committees and super PACs – which can raise unlimited amounts of money – affiliated with each candidate:
But Clinton could end up trouncing Trump in fundraising once the summer conventions are over and the general election hits full stride. “The Clintons run a money-raising machine,” analyst Greg Valliere of Horizon Investments wrote recently in his daily newsletter to clients. “The Clintons will have more money, and that's a huge advantage. Many of the biggest Republican fundraisers are lukewarm at best toward Trump and may sit out the election.”
Clinton, by contrast, can tap into a network of donors likely to be energized to beat Trump, and it's far from depleted. The biggest Democratic donor, California hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer, spent $75 million on Democratic candidates in the 2014 midterms, but has spent just $13 million so far in the 2016 cycle, and none of that has gone directly to Clinton or an affiliated super PAC. He and other wealthy Dems seem likely to open their wallets wide once Sanders is out of the way.
...
But the equation may be totally different in a general election against one other candidate, especially if the race comes down to a handful of counties in a handful of swing states that are fully stuffed with advertising. That’s when money spent on other things, such as turning out voters and identifying the regions most up for grabs, can turn an election. As Trump himself should know, money really matters.
5. Erica Jong: Why I trust Hillary
Erica Jong: Why I trust Hillary Clinton
There are two men running for president and one lone woman.
Both men have been carried away by the madness of crowds. The truth is we don't know what either of them can or will do. One of the men is a carny barker who is busy proving H.L. Mencken's dictum: "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." The other is an avowed socialist who wants "a revolution" but who has only been tried in a white, low population state.
Then there is the woman. All her life she has fought for civil rights, children's rights and women's rights. We know what she stands for because she has been standing for those things forever: as first lady, senator and secretary of state. And she is standing for them now.
True, she has been around too long to be a "new face." But the men are not new either. One is a real estate guy who boasts that he pays no taxes and the other is a senator whose favorite word is "revolution." Both are old faces, but male. And both have gotten the biggest crowds of their lives and they can't get over it.
So who do you think is more likely to keep promises? The woman warrior or the two guys? For me it's utterly obvious: The woman is more likely to keep her promises to support children, women and people of color
She’s pegged it. Both men “can’t get over it”. And, the “woman warrior” will keep her promises. The two men? Likely not so much.
I'm totally comfortable with Hillary Rodham Clinton. She understands the nuclear threat. She fought against proliferation when she was secretary of state. She understands the Supreme Court and why we need more Ruth Bader Ginsburgs sitting on it.
She understands why education is important both in early childhood and adolescence. She understands why Black Lives Matter. She understands why black and white women's lives matter. She understands why men's lives matter. She understands climate change and why solutions are urgent and this is not only because she is a grandmother.
Great read. Please click on the link to read more of Jung’s article.
6. Melissa McEwen: Excuse Us, Bernie Sanders, But Nobody Appointed You Savior of the Democratic Party
Excuse Us, Bernie Sanders, But Nobody Appointed You Savior of the Democratic Party
In a Q&A with TIME, Bernie Sanders positions himself as arbiter of the Democratic Party’s future, goes hard negative on the Clintons, calls a progressive activist (and a BNR founder) “scum of the Earth,” and reiterates one of the most delusional talking points of 2015—that he’s the “strongest candidate to beat Donald Trump.” We are longtime activists, advocates, and Democrats, and we reject the hubris that would have one man disparage the work of millions who don’t happen to agree with him.
Dear Bernie,
Reading your recent TIME interview, we felt the need to respond.
First, it says so much that you’re willing to use the term “scum of the earth” about someone who has helped build progressive infrastructure, but not about Donald Trump and his sleazy operatives, who you’re obsequiously hoping will breathe new life into your campaign.
Second, when you speak about the Democratic Party as its self-appointed savior, do you realize how that offends millions of rank and file Democrats who support the nominee-to-be Hillary Clinton? Not to mention the thousands of elected Democrats who have worked their hearts out to promote Democratic and progressive causes?
Do you really imagine that, at the local level, Democrats—elected and activists—are only debating whether or not they are beholden to Wall Street billionaires? We’re working ourselves to early graves fighting for clean water, good schools, early childcare programs, abortion access, jobs programs, equality measures, library funding, needle exchanges, infrastructure improvements, dog parks, lunch programs, fair housing, and countless other issues that are more immediate and personal than the sweeping broadsides you make against “the establishment.”
We support Hillary Clinton, but Hillary Clinton is not the entirety of the Democratic Party. The DNC is not the entirety of the Democratic Party. Do you not appreciate the irony that, by constantly attacking the Democratic Party as a monolith, you’re doing more to alienate and treat as irrelevant the average Democrat across this nation than the Democratic Party leadership ever has?
With all due respect, you are not the arbiter of what the Democratic Party should be. You don’t even seem to truly understand who the Democratic Party is! You are dismissing rank-and-file Democrats and their representatives in state legislatures, in places like Indiana and Texas and Wisconsin, where elected Democrats left their states and went into hiding to try to stop various assaults on decency by their Republican counterparts.
And if all of that weren’t bad enough, you again reiterated your bizarre rationale for why you’re staying in the Democratic primary, despite having no path to victory: “I am the strongest candidate to beat Donald Trump. That is objectively the truth. You may like me, you may not like me, but that is the fact.”
That is not a fact. It is not the truth. It is a willful misreading of meaningless national polls, a self-aggrandizing belief based on data points which do not (and cannot) take into account that you have not been vetted by the media or exposed to even a glancing blow from the brutal rightwing attack machine. A machine that transformed the image of a war hero like John Kerry into that of a cowardly flip-flopper.
You are apparently suffering from the misapprehension that you’re a special snowflake who’s uniquely immune to this treatment. You seem to imagine that, because none of these personal issues became media fodder during the primary, they are simply of no interest. But you’re utterly mistaken. You’ve been given a pass because the media, for the most part, hate Hillary and because the Republicans believe you’d be infinitely easier to beat.
So, not only do you appear to know very little about the Democratic Party and the people in it, you don’t even know this basic truth about yourself. We’re supposed to take advice and censure from a man who doesn’t even understand a most basic truth about his own candidacy? HARD PASS.
We are not asking you to leave the race, but you know in your heart that it’s time to wind things down, not up.
The fact that you’re doing the opposite is why you’re rapidly squandering the legacy you spent your life building. There is only one way to regain it: Do the right thing, the ethical thing, the dignified thing, and join with Hillary to bash Trump, not the reverse.
Great rant, but needed to be said. Kudos to Melissa McEwen.
7. Robert Reich tries again. Bernie supporters, slow to come to terms
Robert Reich is still trying to talk some damn sense into Bernie supporters and it’s still not going well
This time a much more polite Robert Reich is attempting to make the same point. Last week Reich told fellow Bernie Sanders supporters that they should continue to “fight like hell” for their candidate to become the Democratic presidential nominee but, should he come up short, they should back Hillary Clinton.
It wasn’t received particularly well.
Reich returned to Facebook again today to take another stab at it by curb-stomping (but once again politely) some of the dumbest arguments to either vote third party or throw up their hands and let Donald Trump become president because — well, what’s the worse that could happen?
Reich is talking some sense. A lot of Bernie supporters don’t want to hear it.
Reich began by pointing out the obvious, writing: “Regardless of what you may think of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump is a true menace to this nation and to the world. He’s a narcissistic, xenophobic, hatemonger who, if elected, would legitimize bigotry, appoint Supreme Court justices with terrible values, and have his finger on the nuclear bomb.”
Reich then dropped a little history on folks who believe that a Trump presidency would awaken a Great Progressive Uprising that would rise up from the smoking wreckage of the lives of others here and abroad.
“Some of you say a Trump presidency would be so horrible it would galvanize a forceful progressive movement in response. The problem with this argument is twofold. First, Trump could do huge and unalterable damage to America and the world in the meantime. Second, rarely if ever in history has a sharp swing to the right moved the political pendulum further back in the opposite direction. Instead, it tends to move the “center” rightward, as did Ronald Reagan’s presidency.”
And now here comes the part that is gonna “bern” their britches:
“Finally, some of you say that even if Hillary is better than Trump, you’re tired of choosing the ‘lesser of two evils,’ and you’re going to vote your conscience by either writing Bernie’s name in, or voting for the Green Party candidate, or not voting at all. I can’t criticize you for voting your conscience, of course. But your conscience should know that a decision not to vote for Hillary is a de facto decision to help Donald Trump.”
Of course Reich is 100% correct. But, the angry responses he got speak for themselves. Many Bernie supporters are not open to reason right now.
8. When will Sanders Help his Party heal?
From The Atlantic:
When Will Sanders Start to Help His Party Heal?
Clinton has built dominant leads in delegates and the popular vote, but the tenacious Vermont senator is blocking her effort to consolidate support.
Democrats are facing the springtime of their discontent, and maybe the summer too.
….
Counting both pledged and super delegates, NBC News calculates that Clinton is now within 100 of the total she needs to secure the nomination. Yet Sanders has offered no hint of when he might concede and lock arms with her—after the final major primaries on June 7, before the Democratic convention in July, or perhaps not at all. The nightmare precedent for Clinton strategists is a replay of the 1980 convention, which was dominated by Jimmy Carter’s largely unrequited pursuit of reconciliation with his own liberal challenger, Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
Since Clinton’s lopsided victory in the April New York primary effectively ended Sanders’s chance of winning, his tone has oscillated. Initially, Sanders appeared to accept the inevitable, blunting his attacks on her. But his series of May wins sparked a shift back toward confrontation that peaked with the extraordinarily belligerent statement his campaign released after his supporters disrupted a Nevada state convention. That statement—which denounced the Democratic Party more than it condemned the violence—set off alarms among Democratic leaders that only grew louder when Sanders and his allies charged that the primaries had been somehow tilted or “rigged” against him. Even if inadvertently, that argument dovetailed with Trump’s efforts to brand Clinton as “Crooked Hillary.”
Bernie needs to pivot toward Trump and stop the destructive track he is on.
Her popular vote lead is rooted in her dominance of the big states. Nine of the ten largest states have already voted; Clinton has won eight of those nine (losing only Michigan). Nine of the next ten largest states have also voted, and Clinton has won six of those too. That means Clinton has won 14 of the 18 largest states that have participated. By contrast, 12 of the 20 states Sanders has carried rank among the 20 smallest. The principal reason for the contrast is that in virtually all of the big states, the Democratic electorate is diverse, and Clinton has won about three-fourths of all African Americans and about three-fifths of Latinos, according to a cumulative analysis of all exit polls. (Whites have split about evenly between the two.)
..
The history in both parties is that primary wounds eventually get healed. But with Trump stirring in these early polls, that healing process can’t start too soon to soothe the nerves of anxious Democrats.
9. The Bernie vs. Hillary battle all boils down to Sexism
The Bernie vs. Hillary Battle All Boils Down to Sexism
As it becomes more possible that Hillary Clinton could well be our first female president, sexism in the United States is made apparent to me in ways it never was before. The majority of the men in my life — as friends and family — are straight, socially liberal, white males, and all say they are at least pro women’s equality if they are not willing/able to identify themselves as feminists. But every straight white man I know is either supporting Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. None are supporting Hillary. And therein lies the sexist rub:
I know lots of young women who are voting for and vocally supporting Sanders. I don’t know any straight white men who are voting for nor vocally supporting Clinton.
Whether you’re a woman for Bernie or a woman for Hillary, I ask you to just please pause for a moment and think about the straight white men in your life. Do you personally know even one straight white man backing Clinton in this election?
Well, we are around, but the writer’s point is true, overall.
As The New York Times reported in March, white men have been the only demographic to consistently resist voting for Hillary during the primaries. Suggesting that difficulty securing the white male vote comes from a place of sexism, The Times noted this particular issue for Hillary is, “a sharp turnabout from 2008, when she won double-digit victories among white male voters... when [she] was running against a black opponent...”
Eight years ago white males were more okay with the idea of a white woman as president than a black man, but in 2016 they still prefer both white male contenders Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump to a potential female president. The Washington Post verified these statistics last week, stating:
One of the groups that votes against Hillary Clinton most consistently is white men. In 20 of 23 contests for which we have exit poll data, white men have preferred Sanders to Clinton...In Vermont, Sanders saw one of his most dominant demographic performances: White men in the state favored him by 83 percentage points over Clinton.
We can look at it another way. In 2016, white men are the only gender-race combination to overwhelmingly favor Sanders over Clinton. White men back Sanders by 26.4 percentage points more than do white women (who prefer Clinton, on average). In 2008, white men voted more for Clinton than Obama — but were 20.6 points less supportive of her than white women.
…..
They do not yet understand that the information that they’re being given for Bernie and/or against Hillary is coming from bros of all ages like Spencer Thayer (who mostly just wants page clicks to pay for his DJing equipment, betch).
They don’t yet know that the disrespect and hate they feel for Hillary is disrespect and hate that will soon be coming their way if real feminist “Change” doesn’t move through the United States post-haste.
And they definitely don’t get that a straight white man “fighting for the rights of women” will never, ever mean as much as a woman earning the opportunity to fight for the rights of women, the opportunity to lead both men and women, and the opportunity to run the country.
10. WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin warns fellow Republicans why things look dim for them
Right Turn Don’t underestimate Hillary Clinton
Republicans and other critics should not delude themselves into thinking she will be easy prey in the general election.
For one thing, she will run against Donald Trump from the left. She won’t play defense from the right, as she has had to do in the primary.
Her appearance at the Service Employees International Union convention in Detroit on Monday showed how effective she can be against Trump. She declared:
At a time when families are struggling to pay for childcare and so much else, Donald Trump actually stood on a debate stage and argued that Americans are being paid too much. He actually talked, hear this because you need to tell your friends, he actually talked about getting rid of the national minimum wage altogether. . . . A lot of Republicans themselves say Donald Trump is a disaster waiting to happen to America. What little we know of his economic policies would be from running up our debt, to starting trade wars, to letting Wall Street run wild – all of that could cause another crash and devastate working families and our country. Trump economics is a recipe for lower wages, fewer jobs, more debt. He could bankrupt America like he’s bankrupted his companies.
Ask yourself, how could anybody lose money running a casino? Really?
She really is better — well, any politicians is better — against Trump. Against Trump, she can bond with the audience, something she isn’t always able to do with ease in the primary, by mocking Trump and regaling it with (accurate) tales of his loony policy pronouncements. Sure, this was a union audience, where she threw in plenty of goodies — from paid leave to subsidized child care (how we pay for all this is another matter) — but the message that Trump is a danger domestically and internationally is compelling. And it is one in which her deficits in the primary — staidness, lack of soaring rhetoric, etc. — become assets against the erratic, demagogic Trump.
It’s child’s play, really. Her latest video ad highlights how Trump rooted for a crash:
If you thought Mitt Romney had a problem with the “cares about people like me” question, wait until that ad and ones like it run wall-to-wall for months in swing states.
Also working in Clinton’s favor is the math. Republicans cannot get out of their heads a demographic model long out of date. They keep aiming to turn out more and more of the white vote when there are fewer and fewer white votes as a percentage of the electorate. The Post’s Chris Cillizza reminded us recently:
The current Republican disadvantage in the electoral map is less about any individual candidate than it is about demographics. As the country, and the voting public, has become less white and as Republicans have proved incapable of winning over nonwhite voters, a number of states have moved toward Democrats over the past decade. . . .
What has become increasingly clear is that any state with a large or growing nonwhite population has become more difficult for Republicans to win. Virginia and North Carolina, long Republican strongholds, have moved closer and closer to Democrats of late.
….
Add in Trump’s considerable problems with women voters, and you see the advantage Clinton has.
In sum, while not by any stretch of the imagination a great candidate, Clinton is likely to be a better candidate in the general than in the primary election. Given her demographic advantage, which is aggravated by Trump’s racist and misogynist language, Clinton becomes formidable. Republicans taking comfort in national polls in May are kidding themselves.
This quite sober and compelling analysis of the upcoming general election battle from Jennifer Rubin?
.
.
11. How Running for ‘Obama’s 3rd Term’ Became a Political Asset for Hillary Clinton
The New Yorker:
How Running for ‘Obama’s 3rd Term’ Became a Political Asset for Hillary Clinton
Back in the days when the 2016 presidential campaign was still in formation, many Democrats feared Barack Obama would become an albatross for the Democratic nominee given poor presidential-job-approval numbers, scary-high "wrong track" sentiment, and natural fatigue with the incumbent's party.
Here's how a preview of the approaching campaign put it in late 2014:
[T]he attack against Clinton that has emerged the earliest is her obvious ties to the president and her tortured attempts to create daylight between herself and her former boss. “There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. She will continue foursquare … and put forward Barack Obama’s policy in a third and fourth term,” is how Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a 2012 also-ran positioning herself as the Anti-Hillary,put it to Politico in early October.
Obama was underwater in approval ratings back then, and the GOP candidates as well as Bernie Sanders were running against Obama’s economy and presidency, essentially.
The general-election risk of Clinton being perceived as running for "Barack Obama's third term" rose when she suddenly faced a serious challenge from Bernie Sanders and chose to associate herself closely with the incumbent strictly because it made sense in the dynamics of Democratic primaries where constituencies (e.g., African-Americans) particularly fond of Obama became critical to her ability to win. Much as she'd need to "pivot to the center" after Sanders generated left-bent pressure during the nomination contest, would she also need to pivot away from the controversial incumbent and once again become her "own woman"?
It's now beginning to appear, however, that such fears were misplaced. Barack Obama's steadily improving job-approval ratings as he approaches the end of his presidency are suddenly looking less like an albatross for Clinton and more like the wind beneath her wings. It's been a gradual rise; last year, his average job-approval number in weekly tracking from Gallupwas 46 percent. This last week, it was up to 51 percent — precisely where it was the week he was reelected in 2012.
Hillary is basically running for Obama’s third term, and it is the right thing to do. We don’t need to rock the boat, start all over. We still have the scars from the 2008 collapse, it is still fresh. We need to continue on the steady road we have been on, just make it better for more people (and by winning the Senate we will be able to get a lot more through Congress this time).
If Obama's job-approval ratings continue to rise, it could be Republicans and Donald Trump who have an incumbency problem given their relentless and redundant attacks on Obama. Because Obama-hatred and Clinton-hatred are Trump's most durable bonds with a Republican Party that is otherwise ambivalent about his candidacy, we'll probably hear a surfeit of both during the Republican Convention. For once, that could be music to the long ears of many Democratic donkeys.
Thanks for reading.
Have a great weekend, everybody.