Ron Brownstein:
There’s good reason for that concern: Trump’s tribal, racial appeal threatens the GOP in both the near and long term. Yet it’s also understandable that Trump seemed blindsided by the heated Republican reaction to his attacks on the Indiana-born Curiel as a “Mexican” who cannot judge him impartially—and his indication on Face the Nation that he might not get a fair hearing from a Muslim judge either. (It’s reasonable to ask: would a President Trump demand that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recuse herself from all cases involving his administration because of her Hispanic heritage?)
Trump has reason to be surprised because until now, Republican leaders have mustered no more resistance to his provocations than momentary grumbling, followed by capitulation. Trump personally demeaned Marco Rubio during the campaign as contemptuously as one presidential candidate has ever belittled another; yet Rubio compliantly endorsed him. Ryan criticized Trump over his Duke remarks and his proposal to temporarily ban Muslim immigrants. But then, after briefly withholding his endorsement, he too fell into line (if perhaps only temporarily).
Throughout, even the Republican leaders most uneasy with Trump have recoiled from confronting him partly because he has demonstrated how much of the GOP coalition responds to a racially barbed message of defensive nationalism.
Greg Sargent:
This is fascinating stuff on many levels. Note that McConnell “vehemently objects” to Trump’s attacks on various ethnic groups, but will continue to support him provided he reads from a prepared script that no longer includes such attacks — in other words, provided Trump stops saying these things aloud.
Remember, Republicans have known what Trump really believes for many months.
They’ve also known he’s completely unqualified and unfit to be president. But you folks just don’t understand. He’s their candidate, and the alternative — my god — is a girl.
John Harwood interviews Mike Murphy:
HARWOOD: A lot of Republicans sitting around are still saying, "How did this happen? How did Trump get to be the nominee?"
MURPHY: Well, the archaeologists will be studying the ruins for a while.
Matt Fuller:
It’s important to understand that Trump was clearly not Ryan’s first choice, according to these sources. That point was probably clear enough when, after months of saying he’d support the GOP nominee, Ryan went on CNN and said hewasn’t ready to endorse Trump “at this point.”
By holding off, Ryan managed to introduce some daylight between himself, Trump and, consequently, House Republicans. Ryan said he wanted to have real unity in the party, not just “fake unity,” which would presumably occur if the speaker just pretended to support Trump.
Four weeks later, with Trump’s tone perhaps even worse, Ryan endorsed him, prompting the question: What changed?
Ryan himself suggested recently that one big difference was the two had spoken. They met in person once, had a couple more phone calls and their staffs were in communication nearly every day, talking about Ryan and the House GOP’s agenda.
The speaker also suggested Thursday that one reason he endorsed Trump was that he “won fair and square.”
That’s all well and good. But by Ryan’s own admission, he’s now pushing for a guy who says racist things to become the most powerful leader in the world. Clearly, there’s more to this.
Michael Gerson (my bold):
Why such vehemence among Republican leaders in their condemnations of Donald Trump for questioning the objectivity of a federal judge based on his “Mexican heritage”?
This is, in House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s words, “the textbook definition of a racist comment.” But it is not materially more bigoted than the central premise of Trump’s campaign: that foreigners and outsiders are exploiting, infiltrating and adulterating the real America. How is attacking the impartiality of a judge worse than characterizing undocumented Mexicans as invading predators intent on raping American women? Or pledging to keep all Muslim migrants out of the country? Or citing the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II as positive precedent?
Is Trump himself a racist? Who the bloody hell cares? There is no difference in public influence between a politician who is a racist and one who appeals to racist sentiments with racist arguments. The harm to the country — measured in division and fear — is the same, whatever the inner workings of Trump’s heart.
Charlie Cook ($$):
So both campaigns this year need to carry out a two-track strategy. First, they need to convince people who might otherwise vote the other way that their opponent is corrupt and dangerous and should not be allowed on a White House tour, let alone to sit in the Oval Office. At the same time, they need to get out their base and win over people who don’t loathe their candidate. This is not much different from any campaign, but we will see the strategies more vividly this time round.
What has to concern Republicans is that there is no there there in the Trump campaign—no organization, no analytics, few voter lists. It will be a campaign overwhelmingly dependent on the Republican National Committee for organization and money. Meanwhile, Clinton has a hybrid operation, staffed by stars from her previous campaign and many of the best from President Obama’s runs.
For now, we just wait to see if Clinton gets the same bounce from her nomination as Trump enjoyed after his, with Democratic partisans coming home and lining up behind her. If they do, she could surge to a comfortable lead in what is now a neck-and-neck race.
Isaac J. Bailey with a tough, cautionary piece:
Minority voters have been watching in horror as millions of Republican voters choose Trump either because of, or despite, his open bigotry. The Sanders supporters who toy with the idea of shunning Clinton in November and allowing Trump to become president to force a revolution that Sanders couldn’t deliver are playing with fire. To minority voters, Trump’s candidacy feels like an existential threat. It’s one thing for Republicans to either ignore or embrace his racism; the party already seems unwilling or incapable of making the kinds of adjustments it must to attract more non-white voters. It’s quite another for white Democrats to not appreciate how liberal minorities feel about the possibility of a Trump presidency and what that would say about the state of racial progress in America. It would be a slap in the face, the latest sign that a kind of white privilege—throwing a temper tantrum because they don’t get their way despite how much it hurts people of color—is deeply rooted within liberal, Democratic ranks as well.
Rachel Keating Rott:
I have a secret Hillary group on Facebook.
Now that you know, I suppose it’s not so secret. But even if I told you the name of the group, you wouldn’t be able to find it. We keep it locked up tight, searchable only by members, and you don’t get in without an invitation.
If you’re one of the many people, typically folks who supported Bernie during the nomination, who wondered why Hillary won the nomination in spite of the purported “enthusiasm gap,” I think my secret group (and the many others like it) might be a key to understanding.
I’ll let you in on at least one secret: there is no enthusiasm gap.
Not even a tiny one.
Well, maybe there is, but I think the camp with more enthusiasm might actually be the one with more votes, which flies in the face of this year’s conventional “wisdom” (I use the term lightly, because I don’t think there was ever anything especially wise about it).
Not wanting to flaunt support for Clinton on social media or meat space is a thing, folks. (See also Joanna Castle Miller ICYMI). But the support is there, nonetheless.
Speaking of ICYMI, my millennial Bernie-voting son wrote this the other day on party unity. Give it a read. And yes, I’m a proud papa.
Lucia Graves:
Hillary Clinton’s victory securing the Democratic nomination this week shattered a glass ceiling for women across the country. And with the endorsement of a popular Barack Obama newly in hand, she may be on track to shatter the greatest one of all come November.
It’s a sign of feminist progress, and it’s a sign that we’re thinking differently – not just about her, but about the intersection of women and leadership, and even about the sometimes invisible and often insidious ways that gender affects our perceptions of political power.
But Obama becoming the first black US president didn’t mean that racism ceased to be a problem in America. Far from it. And similarly, Clinton’s victory this week doesn’t mean that the work of feminism is done. The danger, as we celebrate this most recent milestone for American women and look ahead to the bigger prize of the general election, is that we’ll lose sight once again of just how far we are from gender equality in America.
Pew Research:
More than 57.6 million people, or 28.5% of estimated eligible voters, voted in the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries that all but wrapped up Tuesday – close to but not quite at the record participation level set in 2008.
For a while it looked like this year’s primaries, driven by high turnout on the Republican side, might eclipse the turnout record set in 2008, when 30.4% of voting-age citizens cast ballots. The GOP did indeed have the highest primary turnout since at least 1980, according to our analysis – 14.8%, compared with 11% in 2008 and 9.8% in 2012. But turnout fell off markedly after Donald Trump won the May 3 Indiana primary and his two main rivals dropped out of the race.
Not bad, but not quite 2008
The latest from Reuters. Guess that pivot is going well for Donald:
Updated periodically online
Daily Banter:
There are two articles circulating right now that speak volumes about the Democratic primary race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in California and beyond. One in particular offers probably the most predictable and revealing bit of information to come out of the whole protracted contest. It's a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle that details all the ways that, despite their deafening roar both online and at rallies, Sanders's rowdy Millennial fan base basically let him down. In the article, titled "Young Voters' Low Turnout Led To Sanders' Big Loss," Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc., states unequivocally that “the young (voters)... were Bernie’s key supporters ... and they didn’t show up." The article adds that while 25% of California's record surge of over two million new registrants were under the age of 35, only about 10% of those voters actually cast a ballot. Now, eliminating any conspiracy theories about voter suppression Sanders's more fanatical base might be inclined to offer up as an explanation, that's a pretty surprising number of people who sat the election out.
Or is it? When it comes to politics, young people throughout recent history have been easy to energize but have also proven notoriously difficult to actually get to the polls.
…
The second article I mentioned is from the Los Angeles Times and it features an interactive map that allows you to go through L.A. neighborhood by neighborhood and see how the votes panned out. The first thing that stands out is the vast sea of blue, meant to signify Clinton votes, across the entire L.A. area. Clinton really did overwhelm Sanders in terms of votes and that's undeniable. What's not surprising, though, is where the bursts of Sanders orange break through: at UCLA, USC and Cal State Long Beach, of course, but also across East Hollywood, Culver City, Silverlake and Echo Park -- all areas with high populations of young people. (As someone noted on Facebook, coincidentally, also all places where white gentrification has taken hold over the past 20 years.) In other words, in keeping with the national trend,Sanders's voting base was concentrated in large parts with young, possibly first-time voters. This isn't to say he didn't also bring out some older voters, only that he dominated Clinton in terms of the youth vote.
So what we have here is clear: Sanders owned the youth vote that did turn out, but that youth vote didn't turn out in the numbers Sanders needed to put him close to winning. Again, none of this is a surprise.
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