Stuart Rothenberg:
Long-time Republican strategists and campaign consultants privately acknowledge they are so certain of Hillary Clinton’s victory – and so worried about its impact on Senate races and GOP control of the Senate – that they are already considering a controversial tactic that explicitly acknowledges Donald Trump’s defeat.
The tactic, used by congressional Republicans two decades ago, late in the 1996 campaign, involves running television ads that urge voters to elect a Republican Congress so that Clinton won’t have “a blank check” as president.
Rick Wilson sums it up:
The Trump Scampaign’s Only Chance Now Is If Hillary Is Mauled by a Bear
When normally diplomatic people say this, pay attention:
Yes, even grown-ups use the word now and again.
Greg Sargent:
Today, Hillary Clinton will campaign for the first time with Elizabeth Warren, and the duo will make the case in Ohio that Clinton has a real economic agenda that will help working Americans, while Donald Trump is offering them nothing but bluster.
This comes as the conventional wisdom is already hardening that the surprise victory for Brexit just has to be good news for Donald Trump. It shows a rising groundswell for protectionism and a restrictionist approach to immigration, and a declining faith in globalization, which — bluster or not — may supposedly foreshadow more support than expected for Trumpism here, too.
But just as the conventional wisdom turned out to be wrong in predicting that terrorism would be good for Trump, so, too, will it prove wrong about Brexit helping Trump.
ABC News:
Mirroring her rebound in the overall race for the White House, Clinton leads Trump by 50-39 percent in trust to handle terrorism in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates. That’s similar to the gap in March after a more closely divided view last month.
This reflects Clinton’s superior marks for her response to Orlando. More think she did a better job than Trump responding to the attacks overall (by 18 points, 46-28 percent) and showed better temperament in her response (by 34 points, 59-25 percent). Looking forward, more say Clinton gave them confidence that she could handle a similar incident as president (+19 points vs. Trump, 53-34 percent). She also prevails, albeit more narrowly, in having better proposals for preventing future attacks (+9 points, 44-35 percent)..
This was a year ago:
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable right? But we put together a Benghazi Special Committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping," McCarthy said. "Why? Cause she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened had we not fought and made that happen,”
Clinton's Press Secretary Brian Fallon immediately seized on the comments.
"Speaker-in-waiting confesses what the true goal of taxpayer-funded Benghazi Commitee is," he tweeted Tuesday night.
NY Times headline shows 2 year Benghazi report as a dud (emails excepted):
Unscathed by Report, Hillary Clinton Faces Emails as Final Benghazi Chapter
Paul Waldman on Whitewater II (aka Benghazi):
If you haven’t fainted dead away at those earth-shattering revelations, you might ask what the point of all this was, if after this spectacularly lengthy and expensive investigation we didn’t actually learn much that we didn’t already know, other than some details here and there.
But ah, the emails. That we got. And that gives Republican officials and voters something they can hang their visceral loathing of Hillary Clinton on. Even those who long ago gave up hope in the absurd conspiracy theories swirling around Benghazi (like the idea that Clinton issued a “stand down” order that directly led to the four deaths) now say that it’s the email server that demonstrates the true depths of her villainy. “She oughta be in jail! Because, you know, that email thing!” they say (and Donald Trump says it too), which sounds a lot more like a substantive critique than “God I just hate that b-tch.”
Huffington Post:
On Monday, Politico published a lengthy profile of Stephen Miller, the 30-year-old Senate staffer turned Donald Trump adviser who now revs up crowds for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee by railing against trade, immigrationand political correctness.
It’s a comprehensive look at Miller, from his early conservative rabble-rousing to his time as a top staffer for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the first senator to endorse Trump, to his role today — which involves everything from warming up crowds to attending policy meetings to ordering Ubers. The piece, written by Julia Ioffe, is well worth the read to understand the mindset of a person who could very well be a top policy adviser to the next president of the United States.
PPP:
Swing State Voters Don’t Trust Trump on Supreme Court, Overwhelmingly Favor Hearings For Garland
New Public Policy Polling surveys in 6 key battleground states where Republican Senators are up for reelection this year find that voters don’t trust Donald Trump and would rather have Barack Obama picking a new Supreme Court justice than him. As a result they overwhelmingly support hearings on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and are inclined to punish the vulnerable Republican Senators who are holding up his selection.
Another bad media day for Bernie Sanders yesterday.This was driven by a confluence of things: a TV interview with Andrea Mitchell, a NYT Brexit op ed, and the Elizabeth Warren appearance with Hillary Clinton Monday. The following are all political reporters and pundits following the primaries, no axe to grind.
Jamelle Bouie:
Bernie Blew It
Elizabeth Warren is the surrogate he was supposed to be. His supporters have become Clinton’s. How Sanders overplayed his hand.
This is an active topic because Bernie is making it an active topic (note date of tweets and stories — i.e., yesterday). Also, contrasts and comparisons to Jeremy Corbyn are unavoidable (not Bernie’s fault, but there it is).
Chris Cillizza:
The Democratic presidential primaries ended two weeks ago today. Bernie Sanders is still kind of, sort of running for the nomination despite the fact he lost -- by every possible metric -- to Hillary Clinton. Clinton and her campaign have been generally fine with all of this, pivoting to the general election and assuming the Sanders thing works itself out.
That approach may change after the interview Sanders gave to MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday. It was by turns baffling and surreal. But, most of all, it was remarkably condescending.
If you are Team Sanders managing the end game this way for PR reasons, be aware of the PR results.
Just saying.
If you got this far, Chris Hayes has a great read on elites:
But I don’t want to downplay the sheer terrifying, barbaric power of atavistic ethnonationalist sentiment. That is the political equivalent of enriching uranium when you cultivate that. It is ungodly dangerous and morally odious for people to cultivate, despicable and contemptible.
My feeling about all this is you reserve your contempt for the people with power and not for the relatively powerless. The contempt is not for the voters here. The contempt is for the people who went about cultivating that sentiment.
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