We begin today’s roundup with The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky who thinks Trump’s confusing positions on immigration won’t go over well with his own voters:
Well, if they give Trump a pass on this stunning a flip-flop on the hard right’s core issue, these people are pathetic. My instinct is that they won’t, or enough of them won’t. None of these people will be Hillary voters, of course, but some may stay home, distraught that their hero caved into the very same dark forces he won their ardor by maligning. Illegal immigration is The Big Issue for the hard right. Has been for a decade. It was the No. 1 issue for Tea Partiers, despite much media misunderstanding about this; Tea Partiers viewed immigrants as a bunch of freeloaders.
If Trump drops deportation in his big speech Wednesday night, it’s hard for me to see how he doesn’t lose huge chunks of that base. Even if he speaks words something like “I’m not dropping deportation” but then proceeds to outline steps that smell like he’s dropping deportation, he’ll lose big portions of the base. And Clinton should be able to have great fun with it. This is a much grander flip-flop than anything John Kerry did in 2004, and it was the flip-flopper label that probably cost him that election.
Aaron Blake at The Washington Post looks at suggestions by some Trump campaign folks that “the wall” would be a “virtual” wall:
"You have some of his surrogates now saying that Donald Trump, when he talks about the wall, is also talking about not just a physical wall, but a technological or a virtual wall, raising some questions about what exactly that means," NBC's Hallie Jackson reported Monday afternoon. [...]
But were Trump to actually go back on his pledge to build a physical wall, it would truly be one of the biggest flip-flops in political history. While the idea of a "deportation force" was central to Trump's appeal in the GOP primary, perhaps no one policy is so synonymous with the Trump brand as that wall.
And when people have suggested that the wall is impractical or not going to happen, Trump's response has always been the same: It's not the difficult, and it'll be a real wall.
CNN’s Maeve Reston:
Donald Trump's lack of clarity on his plans for dealing with some 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country has been so head-spinning in recent weeks it's starting to look deliberate.
Facing headwinds among moderate voters who view his past rhetoric as racist, but trying to assuage his core conservative base, Trump has attempted something of an image makeover during the past two weeks -- leaving Democrats and Republicans alike unclear on where actually Trump stands. [.,.]
But there's no certainty that Trump will provide any more clarity on Wednesday -- or that this plan will be the last one he offers. Moreover, the safest course for him politically may be to continue to obfuscate on immigration policy to avoid antagonize either side of the debate.
At The New York Times, Patrick Healy and Matt Flegenheimer dive into Clinton’s debate strategy:
Hillary Clinton’s advisers are talking to Donald J. Trump’s ghostwriter of “The Art of the Deal,” seeking insights about Mr. Trump’s deepest insecurities as they devise strategies to needle and undermine him in four weeks at the first presidential debate, the most anticipated in a generation.
Her team is also getting advice from psychology experts to help create a personality profile of Mr. Trump to gauge how he may respond to attacks and deal with a woman as his sole adversary on the debate stage.
They are undertaking a forensic-style analysis of Mr. Trump’s performances in the Republican primary debates, cataloging strengths and weaknesses as well as trigger points that caused him to lash out in less-than-presidential ways.
Meanwhile, The New York Times editorial board urges the Clintons to cut ties with the Clinton Foundation (but not shut it down) to avoid the appearance of impropriety:
Mr. Clinton has said he will resign from the board of the foundation and the CHAI board if Mrs. Clinton wins the presidency. Simply closing the foundation, as even some Democrats recommend, could kill programs helping tens of thousands of people. While that’s unwarranted, the foundation could do much more to distance itself from the foreign and corporate money that risks tainting Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. Its plans to restrict its funding sources only after the election will likely dog Mrs. Clinton.
A wiser course would be to ban contributions from foreign and corporate entities now. If Mrs. Clinton wins, Bill and Chelsea Clinton should both end their operational involvement in the foundation and its affiliates for the duration of her presidency, relinquishing any control over spending, hiring and board appointments.
Mrs. Clinton has said she intends to give Mr. Clinton a role in her administration. Cutting his foundation ties would demonstrate that he is giving any role he would have in the administration the priority it deserves.
Damon Linker examines the rise of the American conspiracy theory at The Week:
What was once confined to UFO and Big Foot obsessives has now metastasized into the political mainstream and captured one of the nation's two major parties — with the encouragement of some of its most prominent members. Who's to say that Hillary Clinton isn't suffering from a debilitating illness? Just "go online" and you'll find all the evidence you need. What, you say she's denying it? Of course she is: That's exactly what we'd expect her to say!
This is what happens when the principle of democratic egalitarianism is applied to questions of knowledge and truth — when instead of working to reform institutions devoted to upholding norms of objectivity and verifiable evidence, critics turn them into a target for destruction altogether, transforming public life into an epistemological free-for-all in the process.
Dana Millbank writes about Russian interference in the election:
We learned earlier this summer that cyber-hackers widely believed to be tied to the Kremlin have broken into the email of the Democratic National Committee and others. The Post’s Ellen Nakashima reported Monday night that Russian hackers have also been targeting state voter-registration systems. And, in an apparent effort to boost Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, they’re leaking what they believe to be the most damaging documents at strategic points in the campaign.
Last week, we learned something else: The Russians aren’t just hackers — they’re also hacks. Turns out that before leaking their stolen information, they are in some cases doctoring the documents, making edits that add false information and then passing the documents off as the originals.
Mark AbAnd, on a final note, Stuart Rothenberg says Trump’s claim about putting blue states in play is a pipe dream:
The presidential electoral map shows Trump losing key swing states and even barely holding on in some GOP bastions. Given the current numbers, the major question is the size of Hillary Clinton’s electoral vote victory. [...] It was only a month ago that Paul Manafort, then-Trump’s campaign chairman, told The Washington Post’s Dan Balz and Philip Rucker, “We can carry Michigan. We can compete in Wisconsin and win.” [...]
Of course, the candidate himself set the stage for these kinds of wild promises. According to CNN, Trump said in January, “We are going to win New Jersey.” In May, he asserted, “We are going to focus on New York.” “We’re going to play heavy as an example in California,” he also promised, along with, “I put so many states in play: Michigan being one. Illinois.”
None of these promises rested on serious political strategy or logic. As often is the case with Trump, they were little more than braggadocio.