Tag: Donald Trump

Clinton Has Narrow Lead Over Trump in Fall Projection

Buck Banks

46% to 43%

Hillary Clinton’s lead over Donald Trump in a general election matchup, with 11% undecided, according to a new GW Battleground Poll. Pollster Ed Goeas: “The Republican Party has a strongly favorable political environment for winning the White House. If a mainstream Republican candidate were the presumptive nominee, the GOP would likely be in a strong position for a lot of wins, top to bottom, in November.”

Why Trump’s “Rigged System” Meme Works

Buck Banks

It also helps that Trump’s system-is-rigged message is relatively simple and plays into the media’s master narrative of the Republican race as a conflict between the Republican base and the GOP establishment. The Republicans’ delegate selection rules, by contrast, require an attention to detail that narrative-driven stories about the Republican race can misconstrue.

— Nate Silver, Five Thirty Eight

Two Models Predict Trump Will Reach 1,237

Buck Banks

1,285

Number of delegates (or more) Sam Wang predicts Donald Trump will accrue in the remaining GOP primary votes (1,237 are required to win the nomination outright), using two independent methods for estimating the results of the remaining Republican primaries without relying on either demographics or polls. The first is a border-county analysis and the second relies on Google Correlate.

Cruz: Trump Is Mounting a ‘Washington’ Campaign

Buck Banks

His campaign manager is now a big-time Washington lobbyist. They’ve brought in tons of Washington lobbyists. This has become the Washington campaign.

— Ted Cruz, intensifying “his rhetorical attacks on Donald Trump, attempting to tie the Republican front-runner’s recent campaign shake-up and hires to the Washington establishment that conservative voters oppose,” Politico reports.

The Donald’s Top Lobbyist Assures the RNC That Trump’s ‘Dirtbag Don’ Persona Is All an Act

Jon Ponder

Paul Manafort
Paul Manafort
After railing against Washington lobbyists for months, Donald Trump recently hired one of the worst of the breed to run his campaign. Paul Manafort, a former partner in the D.C. powerhouse lobbying firm, Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly and now a principal at Davis, Manafort, has a client list that, according to right-leaning Politico, has been described as “the torturers’ lobby.” Manafort’s clients have included Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos; Mobutu Sese Seko, the longtime military dictator of Zaire; Angolan guerrilla Jonas Savimbi; the I.S.I., an alleged front group for Pakistani intelligence; and Ukrainian strongman and Putin ally Viktor Yanukovych.

But in his first major outing representing the Donald, uber-lobbyist Manafort committed the ultimate D.C. insider gaffe — he got caught on tape revealing that his client’s Dirtbag Don persona is all an act intended to fool rubes in the GOP base into supporting him.

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World Leaders Unsettled by Notion of a Trump Presidency

Buck Banks

According to more than two dozen U.S. and foreign-government officials, Trump has become the starting point for what feels like every government-to-government interaction. In meetings, private dinners and phone calls, world leaders are urgently seeking explanations from Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Trade Representative Michael Froman on down. American ambassadors are asking for guidance from Washington about what they’re supposed to say.

— Politico

Trump Predicts Turmoil If He Doesn’t Get Nomination on First Ballot

Buck Banks

I think if the millions of people that came out to vote for me are disenfranchised, I think there’s gonna be unbelievable turmoil.

— Donald Trump, saying that he’s confident he’ll secure the GOP nomination on the first ballot, but cautioning about the consequences if someone else left the convention as the nominee, Politico reports.