From the Washington Post: How Donald Trump came up with ‘Make America Great Again’

They turned out to be four very powerful words.

Here's a look at how the phrase came about.

- Click here for the article.

It happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the day after Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to be a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crisis, one that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit in the Oval Office again.

But on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his own moment was at hand.

And in typical fashion, the first thing he thought about was how to brand it.
One after another, phrases popped into his head. “We Will Make America Great.” That one did not have the right ring. Then, “Make America Great.” But that sounded like a slight to the country.

And then, it hit him: “Make America Great Again.”

“I said, ‘That is so good.’ I wrote it down,” Trump recalled in an interview. “I went to my lawyers. I have a lot of lawyers in-house. We have many lawyers. I have got guys that handle this stuff. I said, ‘See if you can have this registered and trademarked.’ ”

Five days later, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use “Make America Great Again” for “political action committee services, namely, promoting public awareness of political issues and fundraising in the field of politics.” He enclosed a $325 registration fee.

His was a vision that ran against the conventional wisdom of the time — in fact, it was “much the opposite,” Trump said.

To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, become kinder and more inclusive. “Make America Great Again” was divisive and backward-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.
It sounded like a death wish.

But Trump had seen something different in the country, and in the daily lives of its struggling citizens.

“I felt that jobs were hurting,” he said. “I looked at the many types of illness our country had, and whether it’s at the border, whether it’s security, whether it’s law and order or lack of law and order. Then, of course, you get to trade, and I said to myself, ‘What would be good?’ I was sitting at my desk, where I am right now, and I said, ‘Make America Great Again.’ ”

From Scientific American: Explaining Donald Trump's Shock Election Win Five factors behind America’s staggering decision

Here's what they isolate:

- Click here for the article.

1. SILENT TRUMP VOTE 

2. CELEBRITY BEAT ORGANIZATION 

3. POPULIST REVOLT AGAINST IMMIGRATION AND TRADE

4. OUTSIDERS AGAINST INSIDERS

5. AMERICA, THE DIVIDED

From Sabato's Crystal Ball: Is Clinton Slipping?

This is from Friday - which might as well be last year - but it shows tightening in the race, but maybe mot enough to swing the race - maybe.

- Click here for the article.

Hillary Clinton has picked an awful time to hit one of the rough patches that has plagued her throughout the campaign. Now with just days to go until Election Day, there’s added uncertainty about the outcome. But while she may not be on the brink of an Electoral College win the size of Barack Obama’s in 2008 or even 2012, her position as the clear frontrunner in this race endures.

Now, granted, some of this is, for her, bad luck and poor timing out of her control: The “Comey Effect,” referring to FBI Director James Comey’s controversial decision to inform Congress of new emails potentially related to the bureau’s investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server, has put a dent in Clinton in the final stages of the race, although the contest was tightening in some ways before the news. The campaign’s actions also tell us that there must be at least a little bit of alarm in Brooklyn: It is putting some advertising money (not huge amounts but very noticeable) into some states that the campaign has largely ignored in recent months, like Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Trump has also campaigned in these states recently and has said he is advertising in those states.

The pro-Clinton interpretation of these moves is that the campaign is so flush with cash that they can afford some last-minute spending to block Trump in these states; the anti-Clinton view is that the campaign is panicking and took some of these states, all of which are basically must-wins for Clinton, for granted.

From Lawfare: James Comey, Hillary Clinton, and the Email Investigation: A Guide for the Perplexed

In case you need it - I do.

- Click here for the article.

Yesterday, FBI Director James Comey threw the presidential election campaign into turmoil with a letter to Congress declaring that the Clinton email matter was, perhaps, not entirely done after all.

Ben analyzed this disclosure yesterday, and a great deal of digital ink has been spilled both blasting Comey’s decision and trying to figure out what it means.

The Clinton forces are furious, with the candidate declaring that “we are 11 days out from perhaps the most important national election of our lifetimes, voting is already underway in our country, so the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately,” and campaign chairman John Podesta saying, “It is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election.”

The Trump forces, meanwhile, are triumphant, with Trump—who only recently was calling the FBI corrupt—saying, “I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the Department of Justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made. This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understood, and it is everybody’s hope that it is about to be corrected.” The chant from Trump’s crowd yesterday: “Lock Her Up!”

Below are eighteen questions on the subject of the campaign, the email investigation, and the actions taken by Comey and the FBI, along with our views as to the answers.

Full disclosure: We know Director Comey personally and one of us has worked with him in prior government service. Of course, we are writing this on our own behalf, not his, and stating only our own views of these matters.

We are also writing it based on the information we have as of 2:30 pm on Saturday afternoon. Our views may change as further facts emerge.

From Vox: The debate over FBI director James Comey's new Clinton email letter, explained

The latest.

- Click here for the article.

On Friday, FBI Director James Comey sent a three-paragraph letter to several members of Congress, in which he said that new emails related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation had been discovered.

The timing of Comey’s letter — sent just 11 days before the presidential election — created a media and political firestorm, and seemed to pose the prospect of some sort of smoking gun deeply implicating Clinton that could swing the election.

But as more facts have emerged after hours of leaks from anonymous government officials to various media outlets, it’s become pretty clear that what actually happened is not necessarily all that earth-shaking. Namely: 

- The new batch of emails is from a laptop that Clinton aide Huma Abedin shared with her husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
- The FBI came upon them because they’re investigating Weiner’s reported sexting of an underage girl, not anything related to the Clintons.
- The FBI doesn’t seem to even really know what’s on the new emails yet. They could well be duplicative of emails the bureau has already examined.
- And there are conflicting reports about whether any of them are even from Hillary Clinton.

As a result, Comey has fallen under intense criticism for his handling of this public disclosure.

Who is James Comey anyway?

- Wikipedia: James Comey.
- Wikipedia: Director of the FBI.

From the NYT: Emails in Anthony Weiner Inquiry Jolt Hillary Clinton’s Campaign

Yet another October surprise.

- Click here for the article.

The presidential campaign was rocked on Friday after federal law enforcement officials said that emails pertinent to the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server were discovered on a computer belonging to Anthony D. Weiner, the estranged husband of a top Clinton aide.
In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said the emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, which law enforcement officials said was an F.B.I. investigation into illicit text messages from Mr. Weiner to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. Mr. Weiner, a former Democratic congressman from New York, is married to Huma Abedin, the top aide.

Mr. Comey's letter said that the F.B.I. would review the emails to determine if they improperly contained classified information, which is tightly controlled by the government. Senior law enforcement officials said that it was unclear if any of the emails were from Mrs. Clinton’s private server. And while Mr. Comey said in his letter that the emails “appear to be pertinent,” the F.B.I. had not yet examined them.

By the end of a day that brought stinging criticism of Mr. Comey from both Democrats and Republicans, he appeared on the defensive, saying in an internal email to bureau employees that he had felt obligated to inform Congress, and “we don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails.’’

From NPR: Why Texas Is Closer To Turning Blue Than It Has Been In Decades

No one is predicting a Clinton victory, but the race is tighter than it would normally be.

We would not be having this conversation if Senator Cruz was the Republican nominee.

- Click here for the story.

Polls show the presidential race in Texas is closer than it's been in decades. Some even show the two candidates within the margin of error.

Does Hillary Clinton actually stand a chance in Texas? It's unlikely, but it could be closer than at any time in the past 20 years. The reason for how competitive the race looks lies in two demographic groups — Republican-leaning suburban women offended by Trump's comments about women, and Latinos, who are fired up to vote against him.

From 538: Nearly All Of Silicon Valley’s Political Dollars Are Going To Hillary Clinton

Most went to Obama in 08 and 12 also.

In return they got one of their own put in charge of the FCC.

- Click here for the article.

. . . while many technology companies have shared policy interests, they don’t yet see themselves as a political cohort, which “makes it quite hard to organize them in any sort of politically effective way.”

“Until just a few years ago, the perspective in Silicon Valley was to have nothing to do with Washington,” he said. “It’s only in the last few years that tech companies have really established a significant lobbying presence in Washington.”

Becky Tallent, the head of U.S. government relations for Dropbox and a former immigration assistant to former House Speaker John Boehner, also sees technology’s relationship to government as just starting to grow.

“There is a generational gap between the people who are running our government right now and the people who are using the technology and creating the technology,” she said.
The big political concerns for the tech industry this election cycle include trade and the status of high-tech H-1B visas. In 2015, the U.S. exported nearly $205 billion worth of computer and electronic products, constituting 13.6 percent of total U.S. exports, the second-largest category of exports. That’s why many tech executives have been alarmed by Trump’s opposition to free trade and trade agreements. Clinton now opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership but is much more supportive of free trade than Trump is. In addition, Clinton wants to continue the H-1B visa program, while Trump has criticized it and said he will severely limit it. The program is designed to supply workers in specialty fields when Americans are in short supply, though one pending lawsuit alleges it has been used improperly, with Americans training their cheaper replacements.

The H-1B program, along with various post-student work visas, have been gateways into American entrepreneurship for some of America’s biggest tech companies. A 2016 report by the National Foundation for American Policy, a business-oriented research group that supports immigration, found that more than half of America’s billion-dollar startups were founded or co-founded by immigrants.

Fact Checking the Third Debate

- NPR: Fact Check And Full Transcript Of The Final 2016 Presidential Debate.
- NYT: Fact Checks of the Third Presidential Debate.
- Politifact: Live fact-checking the third Trump, Clinton presidential debate.
- Washington Post: Fact-checking the third Clinton-Trump presidential debate.

From 538: How Evan McMullin Could Win Utah And The Presidency It’s unlikely, but far from impossible.

Lot's of strange things have been predicted for this electoral cycle - brokered conventions, splintered parties - but none have happened. This might not happen either, but that's no reason to not speculate about it.

- Click here for the article.

With the election only weeks away, Hillary Clinton appears to have the lead and the momentum. As of this writing, the FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecast gives her around an 87 percent chance of winning — up from around 55 percent in late September – and that may not have fully absorbed the fallout of Trump’s lewd video, debatable debate performance or the daily deluge of fresh scandal jeopardizing his candidacy.

But if Clinton doesn’t run away with this, there is another candidate who may also have seen his chances of becoming president skyrocket. The third-most likely person to be the next president of the United States: Evan McMullin.

It would take a fascinating scenario — in which much of the technical detail of how we select presidents comes into play — for McMullin to be sworn in as the 45th president, but the chances of its happening are slim, not none.

. . . According to the bio on his website, he served in the CIA for about a decade, and spent time in investment banking, as an adviser for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and as policy director for the House Republican Conference. On the issues, McMullin has taken fairly orthodox Republican positions, including supporting free trade. He has been critical of Trump on immigration, refugees, anti-Muslim rhetoric and on temperament and fitness to be president.

The idea that an independent candidate could swoop in to win has been largely dismissed, on the grounds that any conservative-leaning third-party candidate would be more likely to hurt Trump than Clinton, thus making a Clinton victory more likely. But McMullin may have one advantage that other second-tier candidates do not: Utah.

His path to the presidency basically looks like this:

1. Win Utah
2. Deadlock the Electoral College
3. Win in the House

An Update: Here’s How We’re Forecasting The 4-Way Presidential Race In Utah.

From the Pew Research Center: In Presidential Contest, Voters Say ‘Basic Facts,’ Not Just Policies, Are in Dispute

More evidence of political polarization - as well as selection bias.

- Click here for the article.

Some graphics pulled from the article:

From the NYT: Some in G.O.P. Who Deserted Donald Trump Over Lewd Tape Are Returning

The dump Trump movement didn't last long.

Republican incumbents are worried about their base - who not only support Trump, but participate feverishly. A wrong move now can encourage a potentially powerful primary opponent in 2018, if not a defeat in three weeks.

To me, this demonstrates the importance of voter turnout - otherwise, why should incumbents care?

- Click here for the article.

Stung by a fierce backlash from Donald J. Trump’s ardent supporters, four Republican members of Congress who had made headlines for demanding that Mr. Trump leave the presidential race retreated quietly this week, conceding that they would still probably vote for the man they had excoriated just days before.

From Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the only member of the Republican leadership in either chamber who had disavowed Mr. Trump, to Representative Scott Garrett of New Jersey, who is in a difficult re-election fight, the lawmakers contorted themselves over Mr. Trump. Some of them would not mention him by name, preferring instead to affirm their support for the generic “Republican ticket,” still grasping for a middle ground.

They said that if Mr. Trump would not make way for his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, to lead the party after the release of a recording on Friday showing Mr. Trump bragging about groping women, they had little choice but to vote for their embattled nominee. But the collective about-face owed less to his refusal to exit a race in which ballots are already being castthan to the fury his supporters unleashed at the defectors at rallies and on social media.

And Mr. Trump himself escalated his bitter feud with the country’s highest-ranking elected Republican, Speaker Paul D. Ryan, saying at a rally in Florida on Wednesday that Mr. Ryan’s refusal to actively support his candidacy was part of a “sinister deal going on.”

For some numbers, click here:

- Nevada Republicans Abandon Heck For Abandoning Trump.
 

From 538: Where Do Clinton And Trump Have The Most Upside?

Yet more on a theme that seems to grow over the course of the campaign:

Non-college-educated whites are moving toward Donald Trump. Non-whites and college-educated whites are swinging Hillary Clinton.

Plus the follow up question: are we finally witnessing the realignment in the parties that has been anticipated for several election cycles?

- Click here for the article / study.

The 2016 election is poised to be among the most polarized elections ever, not only along gender and generational lines, but especially along lines of race and educational attainment.

In August, Nate Cohn of The New York Times put it well when he wrote: “The simple way to think about Mr. Trump’s strength is in terms of education among white voters. He hopes to do much better than Mitt Romney did in 2012 among white voters without a degree so that he can make up the margin of Mr. Romney’s four-point defeat and overcome the additional losses he’s likely to absorb among well-educated voters and Hispanic voters.”

There’s evidence that Trump is underperforming Romney among Asiansand African-Americans, not just Latinos and college-educated whites. Clinton, on the other hand, has been underperforming President Obama among non-college-educated whites.

To get a handle on how these shifts could affect the electoral landscape, we modeled how many of Romney’s votes came from college-educated whites and minorities and how many of Obama’s votes came from non-college-educated whites in each state, county and congressional district. The difference between these two vote totals, shown in the map above, can tell us where Clinton and Trump have the most potential to build on 2012.

Then we went a step further: How would the 2016 map look if one out of every five whites without a college degree who voted for Obama in 2012 defected to Trump and if one out of every five non-whites and college-educated whites who voted for Romney in 2012 switched to Clinton?

From Vox: Trump’s campaign wants to salvage his ground game. But an expert says “the damage is done.”

In addition to providing a look at campaigns, this also provides a glimpse into the the decentralized nature of political parties and the advantage a party has when it holds the White House.

- Click here for the interview.

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

One thing that is a little bit overlooked is the extent to which building a good ground game relies on years of investment, in staff but also in technology: building voter databases and interfaces, and making them useful in the field. It’s just clear not only that the Democratic Party was ahead of the Republican Party in 2012 but also that the ability of the Republican Party to narrow that gap or to overcome that gap has been significantly undermined by the fact that the party nominee has not prioritized investing and catching up here.

One side of this question of campaigning is: Where do you place your bets, where do you invest your money, what is your messaging in terms of strategy and organization?
But you can’t buy this off the shelf. You can’t order a good database even if you have all the money in the world. You can’t just go to Amazon and buy a perfect voter file and the technology to put it to use. There is an important question of whether the Republican Party is falling even further behind in having an effective infrastructure for an effective ground game and a competitive ground game.

Tara Golshan

So when Kellyanne Conway admitted that the Trump campaign was behind in building a ground game, but that they weren’t going to give up, you’re saying the damage has been done.

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

The damage is done. You can’t unfurl a cutting-edge ground operation in such a short period of time. There is no question about that. That is simply impossible. You can always invest and always improve, but you can’t possibly put together the kind of operation or the kind of infrastructure that it would require to have a fully competitive organization.

The fundamental issue here is that when you think about American political parties, there is no centralized decision-making. The only time you have that is when you have an incumbent president who will run for reelection.

We saw this very clearly in the 2000s. George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 2004 was the most sophisticated, well-organized, and professional campaign in a long time. It was an extraordinarily well-run and well-thought-through campaign in part because they knew who the candidate was going to be. They could fundraise. They could invest. They could collaborate with the state parties and other actors. Again, the 2012 Barack Obama campaign was a similar story: It was a very well-run and professionally organized and well-thought-through campaign in part because of the fact that they knew who was running and they could build the organization around that.

But if you are out of power and you don’t have a presumptive nominee, and then you have a primary process that leads to a candidate that then is regarded with some skepticism by many of the players you need to line up — but also if that candidate, in particular, himself does not chose to catch up — then it becomes very difficult.

The Wikileaks leaks

A handful anyway - not quite getting the media coverage they would if the Trump tape hadn't emerged.

- WikiLeaks hack reveals cozy relationship between Clinton campaign, super PAC.

A top attorney for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign sent a memo to campaign aides teaching them how to legally communicate with a pro-Clinton super PAC, emails released Monday by WikiLeaks show.

While Clinton has claimed her campaign has nothing to do with the super PAC Priorities USA, a leaked email from the personal account of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, suggests differently.

In the email, Clinton attorney Marc Elias outlined what is basically a strategy for steering large campaign donors to the super PAC without breaking the law.

- Hillary Clinton transcripts: WikiLeaks posts apparent excerpts from private Wall Street speeches.

Wikileaks has dumped thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, which includes apparent excerpts from Ms Clinton’s paid, closed-door speeches to Wall Street executives after leaving her position as Secretary of State.

In the excerpts, flagged in a 25 January email, Ms Clinton apparently suggested that Wall Street insiders were best qualified to regulate the banking industry and also included her apparent admission of the need for money from banking executives for political fundraising.

The group posted more than 2,000 emails on Friday evening, claiming they came from an email account belonging to Mr Podesta. Wikileaks promised to continue publishing emails from a trove of more than 50,000 emails obtained from a hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) this year.

- Search the emails yourself here.

From the NYT: Latest Election Polls 2016

- For perusal in class today.

Catching up with the Republican Party and its presidential nominee

- The GOP tumbles toward anarchy: ‘It’s every person for himself or herself’.

The Republican Party tumbled toward anarchy Monday over its presidential nominee, as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) cut Donald Trump loose in an emergency maneuver to preserve the party’s endangered congressional majorities.

Ryan’s announcement that he would no longer defend or campaign with Trump prompted biting condemnations from within his caucus and from Trump himself, who publicly lashed out at the speaker.

It was an extraordinary display of personal animus just four weeks before the election, destroying any semblance of party unity behind a nominee who many GOP leaders said they could no longer stomach because of his character traits and tawdry campaign tactics.

- Paul Ryan Turns Focus From Donald Trump to House Races, Roiling G.O.P.

The House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, dealt a hammer blow to Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy on Monday, dashing any remaining semblance of Republican unity and inviting fierce backlash from his own caucus by announcing that he would no longer defend Mr. Trump.

Mr. Ryan’s stance drew an immediate rebuke from Mr. Trump, who posted on Twitter that Mr. Ryan should focus on governing “and not waste his time on fighting Republican nominee.”

Mr. Ryan informed Republican lawmakers on a morning conference call that he would never again campaign for Mr. Trump and would dedicate himself instead to defending the party’s majority in Congress, according to five lawmakers who participated in the call and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Effectively conceding defeat for his party in the presidential race, Mr. Ryan said his most urgent task was ensuring that Hillary Clinton did not take the helm with Democratic control of the House and Senate, two lawmakers said.

- Paul Ryan Needs Trump More Than Trump Needs Ryan.

House Speaker Paul Ryan is not a big fan of Donald Trump — that much is clear. He refused to back Trump during the Republican primaries and thenheld out on endorsing him even after Trump became the presumptive nominee. But eventually, Ryan did get behind Trump. And now, even after video of Trump bragging about being able to commit sexual assault has come to light, Ryan said he won’t defend Trump, but he has refused to unendorse the GOP nominee. Trump responded by attacking Ryan on Twitter.

A reasonable person might ask why, if Ryan was reluctant to support Trump to begin with, the speaker of the House isn’t washing his hands of the whole Trump campaign.
But the answer is simple: Republican voters like Trump; Ryan risks losing the support of rank-and-file GOPers if he hits Trump too hard.

From Vox: A modest proposal to replace Trump with Pence — with or without Trump’s consent

The author is a well regarded constitutional scholar, so I'd give this some weight.

New territory here - but nothing outlandish.

- Click here for the article.

Sober Republicans understand that Donald Trump is unfit to wield the awesome power of the presidency, power that in his unsteady hands could imperil the republic and perhaps — given his cavalier discussion of nuclear weapons and generally reckless approach to foreign relations— doom the planet. But even now, at this very late date in the election season, there is one last chance for the Republican establishment to dump Trump: by flipping the ticket and putting the plodding, but at least plausible, Mike Pence in charge.

Watching the vice presidential debate, quite a few Republicans surely wished they inhabited the alternate universe in which Pence, an experienced politician with apparent steadiness and self-discipline, was their nominee. That does not have to be an idle thought; there’s a way to make it happen.

True, early voting has already begun in some places, and almost everywhere it is too late to revise ballots. But a flipped ticket does not require any formal ballot change.

The first step of The Flip must begin very soon — ideally, this week or next. At a joint press conference, Pence and Trump should with fanfare announce that, if they win in November, Pence will be in charge, thanks to the rules laid down by the Constitution’s 25th Amendment, which was ratified in 1967 after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

At the press conference, Trump would solemnly pledge that on Inauguration Day, January 20, he will, only minutes after taking his oath of office, step aside by invoking the presidential disability provisions of Section Three of the Amendment — much as he might step aside if he were undergoing a scheduled coronary bypass that day. He will give notice on Inauguration Day to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the house that he is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

Once Trump does step aside on Inauguration Day, Pence would automatically become acting president of the United States under Section Three, entitled to all the powers of the office until Trump seeks to reassert his rights — which Trump at the press conference must promise he will never do. Trump, however, would technically retain the title of president.

For more:

- This Is How Republicans Could Force Trump Off the Ballot.
- There’s no longer any way for Republicans to boot Donald Trump from the ballot.
- Replacing Trump would mean mayhem for GOP: experts.
- Constitutional scholar offers plan to replace Trump.
- How Republicans Could Replace Trump Even if He Stays In.

From 538: Where Clinton Is Setting Up Field Offices — And Where Trump Isn’t

A look at the ground game.

Neither is close to where Obama was in 2012.

- Click here for the article.

Neither campaign can claim a field operation equal to their party’s 2012 nominee. The Clinton campaign has work to do if it wants to reach Obama’s total of 790 field offices nationwide: Obama had 103 offices in Florida alone, for example (compared to Clinton’s 68), and his 61 Virginia offices far outpace her 27. Clinton may open more offices before the election is over, but she seems unlikely to match Obama.

Clinton’s operation is already much larger than Romney’s was, however. Her 489 total offices well exceed Romney’s 283, with larger disparities in battleground states (75 vs. 40 in Ohio; 57 vs. 25 in Pennsylvania; and 29 vs. 14 in Colorado).

On the Republican side, Trump’s operation lags well behind Romney’s. Romney had far more offices than Trump does in battleground states like Iowa (13 vs. 5), North Carolina (24 vs. 8), and Virginia (29 vs. 11). Of the 10 most critical states, Trump’s field offices exceed Romney’s only in Pennsylvania, which Trump currently has only about a 20 percent chance of winning. Trump has so far failed to match the organization of his Republican predecessor.

From the Washington Post: How 10 mega-donors already helped pour a record $1.1 billion into super PACs

More support for the argument that we are more of a plutocracy than a democracy.

- Click here for the article.

Super PACs seeking to influence the 2016 elections have collected more than $1 billion, a record haul driven by jumbo-sized contributions from rich donors on both sides of the aisle.

Just 10 mega-donor individuals and couples contributed nearly 20 percent of the $1.1 billion raised by super PACs by the end of August, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal campaign finance reports. The total exceeds the $853 million that super PACs collected in the entire 2012 cycle.

In a reflection of how once-reluctant Democrats have fully embraced the big-money system, the top givers were split roughly equally along party lines, with five Republicans, four Democrats and one independent, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.
On the left, large check writers have pumped millions into Priorities USA Action, the top super PAC allied with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who has struggled to demonstrate her independence from her wealthy supporters.

On the Republican side, the big money has largely flowed into super PACs working to keep GOP control of the Senate rather than to the muddled collection of competing groups supporting presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Together, super PACs seeking to sway the White House and congressional races have pumped more than $674 million into TV ads and other outreach through September, filings show. By the end of the 2012 elections, such groups had spent $608 million.
The figures illustrate how American campaigns have been reordered by the ability to give unlimited sums to political committees. In the six years since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision created new paths for massive contributions to flow into elections, a tiny sliver of donors with immense financial capacity have rushed to participate.