Anti-PC, Pro-Trump

Thomas B. Edsall writes of Trump at The New York Times:

Why is his opposition to immigrants and Mexicans in particular so resonant when immigration liberalization ostensibly has majority support in most polls?

Research conducted by Lefteris Jason Anastasopoulos, a lecturer and data science fellow at Berkeley’s School of Information, provides one answer: Support for immigration “may be greatly overestimated.”

In an email, Anastasopoulos writes that

polls conducted by large survey organizations never ask about immigration in geographic context. Instead they ask questions about whether respondents support increasing immigration or granting amnesty for undocumented immigrants in the “United States” overall rather than, say, Dayton, Ohio, or Wilmington, North Carolina, places where immigration has been rapidly increasing over the past few years. This kind of abstract framing tends to push respondents toward giving more “politically correct” answers to standard poll questions about immigration.

The result is

a significant underestimation of the backlash against newly arriving immigrants and an overestimation of the support for immigration among the public.

The refusal of Democrats and the American left to hear — or to grant some legitimacy to — the grievances of white America as it loses power and stature to ascendant minorities and to waves of immigrants from across the globe undergirds the Trump movement. In the zero sum world of immigration politics, it has proved impossible so far to convincingly affirm the validity of the claims of both sides.

The quest by American liberals and progressives for support, or at least tolerance, of diversity, inclusiveness and multiculturalism is likely to prevail — particularly if the compulsory dimension of compliance is curtailed.

Jonathan Haidt, a professor at N.Y.U., suggested to me that one way to better understand the intensity of Trump’s appeal is by looking at something called “psychological reactance.” Haidt describes reactance as

the feeling you get when people try to stop you from doing something you’ve been doing, and you perceive that they have no right or justification for stopping you. So you redouble your efforts and do it even more, just to show that you don’t accept their domination. Men in particular are concerned to show that they do not accept domination.

Conservative Talk

At National Review Online, Peter Spiliakos has a true insight. Trump talks to people in language they understand, even when he is lying through his teeth.  Conservatives don't even when they are telling the truth.

Cruz had big wins in Iowa and Wisconsin. Those wins gave him media coverage and an opportunity to make a public impression. Cruz had amassed enough money that he could have used commercials to drive his message in key markets.

And yet, Cruz’s message stayed “below the awareness threshold.” Part of the problem (though there are many parts of the problem) is the language that conservatives have used to communicate with the public. Trump is (sometimes) perfectly clear. If you like him or hate him, you know that he wants to build a border wall and ban Muslim immigration. Conservative politicians have developed rhetorical habits that make them incomprehensible to the average person.

Take the phrase “culture of life.” It isn’t just meant to be poetic. It is meant to signal to pro-life activists that the candidate opposes abortion while being obscure (though pleasant-sounding) to everyone else. Throwing “culture of life” into a speech allows a politician to imply a political commitment while making it difficult for opponents to create soundbites that will be used against them in the court of public opinion.

This has infected the rhetorical style of conservative Republicans. Religious liberty means giving people of faith the benefit of the doubt when government regulations conflict with deeply held beliefs. Growth means lower taxes (usually on the rich.) All of these phrases signal something to an activist community, but they add up to gibberish when they are strung together for a general audience. [emphasis added]

Leaked Oppo on Trump

The Smoking Gun reports:

An online vandal using the name “Guccifer 2.0” has claimed credit for the recent hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s servers and has provided The Smoking Gun with documents stolen during the illegal operation, including a 237-page opposition research report on Donald Trump.

In an e-mail today, the hacker wrote, “Hi. This is Guccifer 2.0 and this is me who hacked Democratic National Committee.” Claiming that the incursion was “easy, very easy,” the hacker added that, “Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton's and other Democrats' mail servers. But he certainly wasn't the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get access to the DNC's servers.”

...

To download a PDF of the DNC’s Trump report, click here ...

Politico reports:

The document relies on publicly available information from news reports and does not appear to offer much in the way of original research. A note above the section about Trump’s business record states, “The business research is being handled by an outside consultant. The following is only representative of some of the business-related research that the DNC has come across naturally in monitoring Trump’s campaign.”

And the document, apparently the work of a Democratic operative from Georgia named Warren Flood, was created in December, according to Gawker, making it six months out of date.

Clinton Won Fair and Square

Ari Berman writes at The Nation:

• "Clinton did do better than Sanders in closed primaries, winning 17 to his 9, but she also won more open primaries than he did, 13 to 10."
• "Nor did superdelegates decide the nomination for Clinton. They gave her a symbolic early lead and momentum, but Clinton’s pledged delegate lead over Sanders was three times larger than Obama’s margin over Clinton in 2008, under the same rules." 
• "`To the extent that the nomination was rigged in the sense that there was illegal activity going on that was directed by the Democratic Party or the Clinton campaign to sabotage Bernie Sanders’s chances, I’ve seen no credible evidence of that,' says law professor Rick Hasen of the University of California–Irvine."
• "The eight states with the lowest voter turnout in 2016 were all caucuses, according to political scientist Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, with an average turnout of 8.4 percent. Turnout was three times lower in caucuses than primaries in 2016. Yet Sanders has refrained from criticizing caucuses because he won 12 out of 18, compared to 28 of 38 primaries for Clinton."

"If We Must Have an Enemy at the Head of the Government..."

On May 10, 1800, Hamilton wrote:

For my individual part my mind is made up. I will never more be responsible for him by my direct support—even though the consequence should be the election of Jefferson. If we must have an enemy at the head of the Government, let it be one whom we can oppose & for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures. Under Adams as under Jefferson the government will sink. The party in the hands of whose chief it shall sink will sink with it and the advantage will all be on the side of his adversaries.

Mona Charen wrote last month:

If Clinton is president, a united Republican Party will oppose her. Assuming Republican control of the House, she will not be able to pass a single piece of liberal legislation. She may attempt -- as she has promised on the campaign trail -- to rule by executive order, in the manner of Barack Obama. If she does, there will be pushback by Republicans. Just this month, a federal judge ruled in favor of the House of Representatives in its suit against Obama's use of executive orders in the implementation of Obamacare. If she nominates terrible judges to the federal courts, a Republican Senate (assuming Republicans hold the Senate) could decline to confirm. If she attempts to reprise or even exceed the many arrogations of power Obama has attempted, Republicans will block her as best they can. It will be ugly, and Republicans will not always be successful.

If Donald Trump is president, by contrast, there will be no united opposition among Republicans. As we've seen in the past few weeks, the urge to bend the knee is very strong. How much more intense will it be if he sits in the Oval Office? Republicans will actively assist President Trump in undermining conservatism. From entitlements to trade to NATO to nuclear proliferation to universal health care to abortion, President Trump will get a free hand. He thus has it within his power to sabotage the whole conservative enterprise.

At The Washington Post, Robert Kagan follows up:

Consider the reasons Republicans support Trump today. The first is party interest. Trump was chosen by the voters in a legitimate race and according to the rules of the Republican primary process. To abandon him, they fear, would destroy the party. Moreover, it would hand a victory to the “Obama-Clinton-Sanders” Democrats, who some Republicans insist would be an even bigger disaster. Finally, Republicans up for election fear that if they oppose Trump and anger his supporters, they will face dangerous primary challenges or lose in the general election.

Which of these motives will disappear once Trump becomes president? He will still be the Republican Party’s legitimately chosen leader, as well as the legitimately elected president. The election cycle doesn’t end in November. To oppose Trump as president will be even more contrary to the party’s interests than it is now. Will Republicans line up with Democrats to vote against Trump-inspired legislation — to ban Muslims from entering the country, for instance, or to deport 11 million illegal immigrants? To do so would only hand the opposition major political victories, setting the stage for Democratic congressional gains in 2018. Party interests will require that the party support its president.

Trump's Orlando #Fail

Nick Gass reports at Politico:

A majority of Americans surveyed in a CBS News poll out Wednesday say they disapprove of the way Donald Trump is responding to the terrorist shooting at a gay nightclub Sunday in Orlando, Florida.

In the wake of the deadliest shooting in American history as well as the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, 51 percent said they did not like the way Trump has been handling the situation, compared with 25 percent who said they approve and 24 percent who said they do not know or did not give an answer.

...
Americans are markedly more positive when it comes to the way they feel about President Barack Obama's response, with 44 percent giving him favorable marks, 34 percent unfavorable and 22 percent who did not know or declined to respond. As far as Hillary Clinton is concerned, Americans are largely split, with 36 percent favoring her response to this point and 34 percent disapproving, with 30 percent saying they did not know or did not answer.

Trump and the Media

Thomas Patterson writes at the HKS Shorenstein Center:

A new report from Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzes news coverage of the 2016 presidential candidates in the year leading up to the primaries. This crucial period, labeled “the invisible primary” by political scientists, is when candidates try to lay the groundwork for a winning campaign—with media exposure often playing a make or break role.

The report shows that during the year 2015, major news outlets covered Donald Trump in a way that was unusual given his low initial polling numbers—a high volume of media coverage preceded Trump’s rise in the polls. Trump’s coverage was positive in tone—he received far more “good press” than “bad press.” The volume and tone of the coverage helped propel Trump to the top of Republican polls.

The Democratic race in 2015 received less than half the coverage of the Republican race. Bernie Sanders’ campaign was largely ignored in the early months but, as it began to get coverage, it was overwhelmingly positive in tone. Sanders’ coverage in 2015 was the most favorable of any of the top candidates, Republican or Democratic. For her part, Hillary Clinton had by far the most negative coverage of any candidate. In 11 of the 12 months, her “bad news” outpaced her “good news,” usually by a wide margin, contributing to the increase in her unfavorable poll ratings in 2015.