For one shining moment, Trump actually took the high road, and praised Clinton for never quitting, and for being a fighter. She seemed surprised and a little flattered — and she should, since those are undoubtedly among the qualities that Trump admires the most in himself.
.. The Horrible, Horrible Evan Bayh
In June 2010, Bayh was among a small group of Democrats who helped kill a tax increase on private equity gains known as carried interest that was opposed by Apollo Global Management. That fall he stayed overnight three times at one Apollo executive’s Central Park South residence in Manhattan, and met twice with the company’s chief executive, Leon Black.
Weeks after Bayh left the Senate, Apollo announced he had been hired as a senior adviser.
In May 2010, Bayh lunched with a Marathon Oil board member. Then in June, he and a minority of Democrats joined with Republicans to defeat an amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that would have eliminated billions in tax deductions and exemptions for oil and gas companies.
Marathon Petroleum Corp., a new Marathon spinoff, announced Bayh had been elected to its board in July 2011.
.. Separately, in post-Senate life, Bayh “earned $440,033.72 as a Fox News analyst.”
Hillary Clinton’s Poisoned Prize
Trump isn’t going anywhere, nor are his provocations. It was the birther conspiracy yesterday; it will be something else tomorrow. And Clinton isn’t trading war for peace. Her presidency, should it indeed happen, will be a battle royal. The circumstances surrounding it are as politically daunting and inhospitable to accomplishment as those facing any of her predecessors over the last half-century.
.. And nearly all of the seats that Republicans are projected to lose, he said, are those of relatively moderate lawmakers. It’s not the hyper-conservative members of the Freedom Caucus who are on the run. They’re from safely Republican districts. They’re fine. They’ll be back — and, proportionally, they’ll be a bigger, more forceful presence among the Republicans remaining in the House.
.. “What’s often missed about the Freedom Caucus is that the majority is less of a priority for them than having a pure ideology.”
.. Already, some House conservatives have called for hearings about Clinton’s emails after any Clinton inauguration; one of them has already raised the specter of impeachment. At this stage, it’s in the very DNA of the relationship between Clintons and Republicans for there to be dire threats, special investigations, public grilling. It’s a reflex, a tic. Not even a landslide on Nov. 8 would change that.
.. Many of the votes she gets on Nov. 8 will come from people more committed to suppressing Trump than to elevating her
.. the percentage of voters who viewed her unfavorably (54 percent) was still 12 points higher than the percentage who viewed her favorably (42 percent).
That spread was 15 points in a CNN poll over the same period. No president in modern history has taken office after such sustained unpopularity in the run-up to the election.
.. And no president in my lifetime has confronted what Clinton surely will: an opponent who is vanquished but not remotely humbled.
Leaked Speech Excerpts Show a Hillary Clinton at Ease With Wall Street
In lucrative paid speeches that Hillary Clinton delivered to elite financial firms but refused to disclose to the public, she displayed an easy comfort with titans of business, embraced unfettered international trade and praised a budget-balancing plan that would have required cuts to Social Security, according to documents posted online Friday by WikiLeaks.
.. Mrs. Clinton comes across less as a firebrand than as a technocrat at home with her powerful audience, willing to be critical of large financial institutions but more inclined to view them as partners in restoring the country’s economic health.
.. In the excerpts from her paid speeches to financial institutions and corporate audiences, Mrs. Clinton said she dreamed of “open trade and open borders” throughout the Western Hemisphere. Citing the back-room deal-making and arm-twisting used by Abraham Lincoln, she mused on the necessity of having “both a public and a private position” on politically contentious issues.
Donald Trump is trying to claim the moral high ground?
Here’s the twist: Look at the man who threatens to pull the trigger on mentioning the Clinton scandals — a serial adulterer who is more removed from twinges of conscience than any figure in American political life. He boasts of his extra-marital affairs. He humiliated the mother of his children. He is the Playboy philosophy made flesh. He even found the time to mock Paula Jones as a “loser” and argue that Bill Clinton’s conduct was “totally unimportant.” His factotums, Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, are also serial adulterers, though they didn’t boast about it. Still, their boss’s crudeness has now rubbed off.