Conservative Blogger
Thursday, August 25, 2016
After Clinton bounce, polls indicate tightening race in key battlegrounds
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| Hillary Clinton's lead declines among likely voters |
A Monmouth University Poll released Wednesday showed Clinton holding onto just a 2-point lead in North Carolina.
She leads Trump 44-42 percent in the state, while Johnson is pulling 7 percent. The poll also shows Trump with a double-digit lead among independents.
North Carolina is one of several battleground states considered critical to Trump’s hopes of capturing the presidency in November. He still trails in most swing state polls, but the latest from Monmouth University marks an improvement over a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist survey showing him down by 9 points in the state.
“North Carolina has given us tight presidential races over the last two cycles and this year appears to be no different,” Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, another poll released Wednesday, by Florida Atlantic University, showed Trump leading by 2 points in Florida, 43-41 percent. Just last week, Monmouth University showed Trump down by 9 points in the state.
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Trump still has a long way to go in the polls, considering Clinton has a far more substantial lead in swing states like Pennsylvania and Virginia.
But the slight movement in his favor comes as the Republican presidential nominee has been barnstorming the country at rallies, town halls and fundraisers – yet Clinton has mostly stuck exclusively to private fundraisings events over the past week.
She was making a swing Wednesday through Silicon Valley to raise cash, while Trump was holding rallies in Florida and Mississippi.
Trump has been hammering Clinton at these stops over a string of reports about the overlap between the Clinton Foundation and State Department under her tenure. Most recently, the Associated Press reported Tuesday that more than half of the people outside government who met with Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money to the foundation.
"It is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and where the State Department begins," Trump told supporters in Austin on Tuesday night.
The Clinton campaign countered that the AP report “relies on utterly flawed data” and “cherry-picked a limited subset of Secretary Clinton's schedule to give a distorted portrayal of how often she crossed paths with individuals connected to charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation.”
The latest Monmouth University Poll in North Carolina was conducted Aug. 20-23. The poll of 401 likely voters in the state had a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.
Surrogate Silence: Dem officials mum as Clinton battles foundation allegations
As critical reports pile up about the access Clinton Foundation donors enjoyed with Hillary Clinton’s State Department – and Donald Trump and his allies hammer her over the allegations – few elected Democrats have rallied to the party nominee’s defense.
The fact that many of her usual allies are locked in tight House and Senate races may be contributing to the surrogate silence, as they focus on their own races. But, as the Trump campaign was quick to point out Wednesday, the Democratic nominee has even faced criticism from her own side.
Most recently, former Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell said in a Philadelphia radio interview that the so-called firewall between department and foundation officials was “ineffective” and the reported dealings create a “bad perception.” Comments like this, combined with a number of tough newspaper editorials, have left Clinton and her core team effectively on their own to combat a near-constant barrage of Trump condemnation.
On Wednesday, Trump called once again for a special prosecutor to investigate foundation donors getting special access to Clinton while she was secretary of state.
“She provided favors and access in exchange for cash,” Trump said at rally in Tampa. “She had a pay-to-play scheme. That’s why Congress or a special prosecutor should look into this.”
Trump’s comments came after the Associated Press reported Tuesday that more than half of the non-government people who met with Clinton while she ran the State Department donated to the foundation, either personally or through companies or groups, based on a review of agency calendars released to the wire service.
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The campaign released a statement Wednesday from Rep. Dan Donovan, R-N.Y., backing his call for a special prosecutor.
And Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, asked Attorney General Loretta Lynch in a recent letter to investigate why the Justice Department declined to investigate the Clinton Foundation after recently released emails suggested donors sough preferential treatment while or after Clinton was secretary of state.
“This kind of conduct … reflects the worst concerns harbored by the public about the abuse of government office to benefit the powerful at the expense of the American people,” Cornyn wrote.
Republican strategist Rob Burgess said Wednesday that Clinton’s ethical issues have become a “liability” for some Democrats, though questioned whether they’d be able to avoid it.
"Try as they might, national Democrats will be unable to successfully distance themselves from the train wreck that is Hillary Clinton,” he said. “It seems that many Americans are referring to the old adage, 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.'”
Even Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton ally who has boasted about vacationing with the family, appeared to duck a foundation question Tuesday when asked about the issue on MSNBC.
He instead responded by questioning Trump’s trustworthiness.
“I would say first and foremost, Donald Trump has zero credibility talking about any of these issues until this man releases his taxes,” McAuliffe. “So the idea that he's calling for a special prosecutor is crazy. We need to know what is in Donald Trump's taxes.”
New Hampshire Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan, who is trying to upset first-term Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, also dodged multiple questions last week on CNN about whether she thought Clinton was honest and trustworthy. The campaign later clarified she indeed thinks Clinton is honest and trustworthy.
Late Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton stepped forward to defend his family's foundation, saying that it was "trying to do good things.
"If there's something wrong with creating jobs and saving lives, I don't know what it is," Clinton added. "The people who gave the money knew exactly what they were doing. I have nothing to say about it except that I'm really proud. I'm proud of what they've done."
Bill Clinton also said changes at the foundation are needed if Hillary Clinton becomes president that weren't necessary when she led the State Department. The foundation won't accept foreign donations, and he will stop personally raising money for the foundation, he said.
"We'll have to do more than when she was secretary of state, because if you make a mistake there's always appeal to the White House if you're secretary of state," Clinton said. "If you're president, you can't."
"You have to [make those changes] in a way that no one loses their job, no one loses their income and no one loses their life," he said. "That's all I'm concerned about. We'll do it as fast as we can."
Clinton campaign spokesman Brain Fallon on Tuesday said the AP report relied on "utterly flawed data" and said the AP "cherry-picked a limited subset” of Clinton's schedule.
Clinton ally and veteran strategist James Carville told “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday that nobody in the Clinton family has ever “taken a penny from the foundation and in fact have given it millions of dollars.”
“I think it is a terrific organization,” he said.
Clinton herself has been off the trail for almost a week to fundraise. Her running mate Tim Kaine has been the face of the campaign in public and has defended the nominee.
On Tuesday, the Virginia senator told an ABC affiliate while campaigning in Las Vegas that the foundation taking foreign donations while Clinton was secretary of state was appropriate because of the charitable work it does.
Clinton pushes back on foundation controversy, says its been transparent
WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton defended her family's charitable foundation on Wednesday against criticism from Donald Trump, saying it had provided more transparency than her Republican rival's sprawling business interests.
Clinton called into CNN's "AC360" to address Trump's suggestions that the foundation started by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had been used to facilitate a pay-for-play scheme during her time at the State Department.
"What Trump has said is ridiculous. My work as secretary of state was not influenced by any outside forces. I made policies based on what I thought was right," Clinton said. She said the foundation had provided "life-saving work," adding that neither she nor her husband had ever drawn a salary from the charity.
"You know more about the foundation than you know about anything concerning Donald Trump's wealth, his business, his tax returns," Clinton said.
The phone interview came as her top campaign officials and allies are playing defense, arguing that the foundation has helped millions of people around the globe while Trump's business interests carry their own blind spots.
Before her interview, Clinton had largely ignored Trump's criticism of the foundation, with campaign officials figuring her late-summer advantage gives her few incentives to personally push back against the email criticism or allegations of pay-for-play.
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Clinton leads Trump in national and state polls, leaving many of her aides and supporters to conclude that addressing the issue isn't worth the risk to her electoral standing. But the issue is one that ties into voters larger questions about her trustworthiness — a problem that will follow her into the White House should she win.
Traveling in California, the Democratic nominee has kept out of the public eye for days, spending most of her time wooing celebrities, financial titans and technology moguls at private fundraisers. On Tuesday alone, she raised more than $6.2 million at four events in Southern California and the Bay Area.
Her last full-blown news conference was December 2015 in Iowa, more than 260 days. But the questions about emails and the foundation keep piling up, and she is certain to be challenged at the first debate with Trump on Sept. 26.
On Monday, the State Department said it was reviewing nearly 15,000 previously undisclosed emails recovered as part of the FBI inquiry, which was closed after investigators recommended against criminal charges.
On Tuesday, an Associated Press report found at least 85 people from private interests who met with or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to the Clinton foundation. Combined, the donors contributed as much as $156 million to the charity.
Pushing back, Clinton said of the AP report, "I know there's a lot of smoke and there's no fire." She said it excluded 2,000 meetings she had held with world leaders and U.S. government officials and came to the conclusion that meetings she held with philanthropists like Melinda Gates or Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus was connected to the foundation. "That is absurd," she said.
"It is only now because she is running for president that the work of the Clinton foundation is being tarred," spokesman Brian Fallon told MSNBC earlier in the day. "If any American voter is troubled by the idea that the Clintons want to continue working to solve the AIDS crisis on the side while Hillary Clinton is president, then don't vote for her."
In the CNN interview, the former secretary of state reiterated her regret about her use of a private server, saying, "I've been asked many, many questions in the past year about emails. What I've learned is that when I try to explain what happened, it can sound like I'm trying to excuse what I did. And there are no excuses."
Clinton is not expected to discuss the issue during a Thursday speech in Reno, Nevada, which will be focused on attaching Trump to the so-called "alt right" movement within the Republican Party that has strayed from mainstream conservatism.
"Hillary Clinton is in a pretty strong spot right now in the campaign given the repeated missteps by Trump and quite frankly if I'm her it may not be a bad thing to let Donald Trump be the only candidate making news on any given day," said GOP strategist Ryan Williams, a veteran of Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns.
Bill Clinton announced that next month's Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York will be the final gathering. The meeting is scheduled for September 19-21, which means it will happen exactly one week before his wife's first presidential debate in New York.
'Alt right' conservative movement embraces the Trump campaign
Hillary Clinton is set to launch a full-fledged attack Thursday on a newly evolving group that's embracing the Trump candidacy: the so-called "alt right."
Her campaign describes the alt right as "embracing extremism and presenting a divisive and dystopian view of America which should concern all Americans, regardless of party."
What is the alt right? In the words of National Review's Washington Editor Eliana Johnson, like so many other creations of the digital age, its, "an amorphous internet movement." Its members are indistinguishable from other Trump supporters - mostly white, male, blue collar, rural or red state, and enthused about Trump’s immigration reform and his promise to bring jobs back to America.
But unlike other Trump supporters, the alt right followers have rejected the philosophy of the traditional GOP with unusual vehemence - even coining a new phrase, "Cucks," to label traditional, inside- the -beltway Republicans. It means conservatives who are emasculated or neutered by globalist/progressive forces.
Critics on both the left and the right have found a villain in the alt right, labeling its followers as uneducated racists and sexists who are energized by Trump’s rejection of political correctness.
But the alt right movement is marked by a diversity not so easily categorized. Among its members - Jared Taylor, editor of the non-profit American Renaissance. Asked if he is a white supremacist, as many critics contend, Taylor told Fox News, "Absolutely not. I don't even know what that term means."
The latest headlines on the 2016 elections from the biggest name in politics. See Latest Coverage →
Also identifying with the alt right - Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopolis. A flamboyant, openly gay conservative, he is embarked on what he describes as his intentionally offensive "Dangerous Faggot Tour" of college campuses.
In a recent interview, Yiannapolis described his mission. "If people rise up now and say this social justice thing, this language policing, this political correctness, safe space, trigger warnings, micro aggressions, this stuff is horseshit... and if enough people smash its stranglehold on the public square, it will never recover."
Some Jewish conservatives who have criticized Trump - Fox News contributor and National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg among them - have been targeted by the alt right with hate mail and tweets that use holocaust imagery.
Conservative writer and pundit Anne Coulter, author of the new book, "In Trump We Stand," believes the alt right is a predictable outgrowth of multiculturalism, as presently manifested in California, perhaps the most diverse state in the union.
"When you have a multicultural society, you don't have political parties anymore," she says. "You have people voting their ethnic group and that's what you see in California. It’s not like the Nancy Pelosi Democrats against the Chuck Schumer Democrats, it's the Asian Democrats voting against the Hispanic Democrats."
National Review's Johnson says, "Whatever you say they are, they tend to say they are not - whether it's anti-semitic, racist, countercultural or anti-establishment. They've become very difficult for people to nail down and define as a political movement ."
History has shown that whenever cultures undergo economic hardship and technological upheaval, ethnic groups often blame one another for their difficulties. The present political season may be no exception.
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