After the big post on the Democratic National Convention and the mad scramble to wrap up July's Streamnotes, I figured I'd skip attempting a Weekend Roundup today. I started this in the Notebook, then decided what the hell, might as well share it. Tried to avoid adding comments. Read the links at your leisure and the comments will probably be obvious. Some links:
One quote from these pieces I want to single out: from the Frum article, a quote from an anonymous Trump supporter:
"The Putin thing. You think you've really nailed Donald with the Putin thing. Get it through your head: Our people are done fighting wars for your New World Order. We fought the Cold War to stop the Communists from taking over America, not to protect Estonia. We went to Iraq because you said it was better to fight them over there than fight them over here. Then you invited them over here anyway! Then you said that we had to keep inviting them over here if we wanted to win over there. And we figured out: You care a lot more about the "inviting" part than the "winning" part. So no more. Not until we face a real threat, and have a real president who'll do whatever it takes to win. Whatever it takes.
My emphasis. Funny thing is that the first time I heard "New World Order" in the last decade -- I think the phrase goes back to people in the first Bush administration, circa the first Iraq War -- was in the house of a Trump supporter. He attributed it to Obama, and was greatly bothered by the whole idea. Democrats are vulnerable to this because they grew up in the internationalist tradition from Wilson to Roosevelt to Johnson, and the Carters and Clintons and Obamas have just sheepishly followed in line. It started just helping US companies do business abroad, evolved into a protection racket for global capitalism, and eventually became a self-serving monster, starting wars just to punish countries for disrespecting our omnipotence. This never meant anything to most Americans aside from the fears they were dictated, but after Eisenhower beat Taft in 1952 the Republicans were always in on the deal, so nobody had a chance to hear otherwise -- until Trump. This is a big risk for Hillary: her political education has taught her to always spout the Washington establishment's clichés and, if pressed, always to hedge on the side of being more hawkish. Against Trump, especially viz. Russia, she could easily convince people that she's the dangerous maniac (as well as that she's weak -- not willing to do "whatever it takes" because she's hung up on sensitivities to foreigners and international law).
I also might have noted that on Saturday 538's Who will win the presidency? showed Clinton and Trump dead even at 50.0%, with Trump enjoying a slight edge in electoral votes (269.4 to 268.2) but Clinton still leading the popular vote (46.3 to 45.5%, with Gary Johnson at 6.9% and Jill Stein off the chart). Clinton's decline nudged Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, and New Hampshire into the Trump column. On Sunday new polls bumped Clinton up to 51.0%, 270.2-267.4 in the electoral college, 46.3-45.4% popular vote, but didn't tip any states. Right now, the closest state is Pennsylvania, only D+0.8, followed by Nevada R+0.9, Florida R+1.2, and Virginia D+1.2. Clinton has been sinking since FBI Director James Comey's press conference put the private email server issue to rest (at least the threat of a possible indictment), so the RNC bounce had some prior momentum. We're not seeing much of a DNC bounce yet -- at least it's not coming as fast as what was taken as a RNC bounce did. (Silver footnote from the article cited above: "Although interestingly, if you chart the numbers, it's not easy to distinguish Trump's convention bounce from a continuation of the previous trend toward him.")
Don't know if this has been factored in, but RABA Research's post-DNC poll has Clinton ahead of Trump 46-31% (7% for Johnson, 2% for Stein), a big bump from their post-RNC/pre-DNC poll, which Clinton led 39-34%. (Still, aren't the undecided remains awfully large here? Seems like a lot of people don't want to face the choice they've been given.)