Hi all! I'm covering HNV today for Lysis, who's in a sunny swing state getting a much-needed vacation and tan.
The biggest news yesterday took place in Scranton, of course:
For Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, their joint campaign stop Monday in Scranton, Pennsylvania, was a play for the swing state’s crucial voters, particularly those from the white working class who Donald Trump has taken pains to attract.
But it was also something of a homecoming: Both the vice president and Clinton’s father, Hugh Rodham, were born in the city, a former coal-mining and manufacturing hub. Biden has long used Scranton as a symbol of the American dream, and often invokes his early years there as evidence he’s a man of the people. During his remarks Monday, he framed Clinton as a fellow child of Scranton: the product of one of its families, yes, but also of its ethos.
The city “is made up of so many people with grit and courage—I mean this sincerely, from the bottom of my heart—with grit, courage, determination, who never, never, ever give up,” Biden said. “They deserve someone who not only understands them, they deserve someone who's with them. And they deserve someone who's made of the same stuff. That's Hillary Clinton. That’s who she is.”
Monday’s rally marked Biden’s first appearance on the campaign trail with Clinton, his former Senate and Obama administration colleague.
NBC News has more:
Vice President Joe Biden excoriated Donald Trump here on Monday, saying his "shame has no limits" and arguing that "he can't be trusted" with America's national security during his first appearance on the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton.
Biden stressed, "without hesitation," that no major party nominee "has known less or been less prepared" to lead than Trump.
"What actually amazes me is that he doesn't seem to want to learn it," the vice president said to a hometown crowd. "Even confronted with the facts, he doesn't want to learn them."
He slammed Trump for recently claiming that President Obama "founded" ISIS and said his charged rhetoric has caused threats to American troops overseas to go "up a couple clicks."
"Ladies and gentlemen, does he have any idea the adverse consequence these outlandish comments have on our allies, our friends, and the physical safety of our troops? Trump is already making our country less safe," Biden declared.
On foreign policy, Biden also hit Trump for his ties to Russia and Vladimir Putin, adding that "he would have loved Stalin."
For full video of both speeches and more choice quotes from joltin' Joe, go here.
And check out this nice bonus pic:
xHillary Clinton and Joe Biden in the VP's childhood kitchen in Scranton, PA. (Photo by pooler @vaughnFNC) pic.twitter.com/yEdYkUlXKu— Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) August 15, 2016Nate Cohn at NYT's The Upshot (which has an excellent stats sections comparable to 538) is already openly asking "Is It Over?". The answer, of course, is a resounding hell no...as the president kindly reminds us:
Declaring he was tired of talking about Donald Trump, President Barack Obama urged Democrats on Monday not to grow too confident about their prospects in the 2016 election despite Hillary Clinton's strong position in the race for the White House.
Obama, who is on a two-week vacation in Martha's Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts, took a short break from his relaxation time to raise money for Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee he hopes will succeed him when he leaves office in January.
Clinton leads Trump in opinion polls, and the Republican nominee's campaign has suffered following remarks he made denigrating the parents of a fallen Muslim American soldier and charging that Obama was the founder of the Islamic State militant group.
The president warned his party, however, to maintain a sense of urgency until the Nov. 8 election.
"If we are not running scared until the day after the election, we are going to be making a grave mistake"..."If we do our job, then Hillary will be elected president of the United States. But if we do not do our jobs, then it’s still possible for her to lose."
He's right, obviously. I'm not letting up and neither should you or anyone else.
That being said...in further encouraging polling news, Clinton is totally crushing Trump in their home state:
Donald Trump was never going to win California. He was never going to win Connecticut, despite reiterating over the weekend that he intended to do just that. And he was never going to win his home state of New York.
Some new numbers drive that last point home. A new survey from the Siena College Research Institute gives Hillary Clinton a 30-point lead in the state both she and Trump claim as their home territory. Clinton leads Trump in liberal New York City, of course, by 55 points. (A reminder that the one county Trump lost in the Republican primary in the state was his own: Manhattan.) But she leads him in the more blue-collar environs of upstate as well, by 11.
Perhaps her popularity isn't surprising, though, as even Trump supported Clinton when she was his senator saying "I think she’s fantastic."
In what will not help insure a win in November but also bode very well for future elections, millennial voters are clearly in Hillary's corner for the general election:
A new USA TODAY/Rock the Vote Poll of Millennials, conducted by Ipsos, finds Hillary Clinton is consolidating the support -- but not yet the enthusiasm -- of the young adults who backedBernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries. In the survey, Clinton trounces Donald Trump by 36 percentage points nationally (56%-20%) among Americans ages 18 to 34; nearly one in four either are undecided or don't plan to vote.
With third-party candidates in the race, Clinton leads Trump 50% to 18%, with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson receiving 11% and the Green Party’s Jill Stein trailing with just 4% of the vote.
The survey also shows that the Democratic convention boosted Clinton a bit, but the Republican convention was a catastrophe for Trump with Millennials. In the week following the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, just 19% of Millennials surveyed said that they paid no attention to the major party conventions.
Yep, the Republican Party is losing an entire generation because of Trump and whatever that thing was in Cleveland last month. Deservedly so!
The polling must be pretty darn good in three crucial swing states, because look at this power move:
xSOURCE: @prioritiesUSA nixing TV ads in VA, CO, PA Sept 2-20; @guycecil confirms on #WADR super-pac is "significantly reducing" spending— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) August 15, 2016Also, I highly recommend this piece from Media Matters whose title explains it all:
How Clinton Emails Became The New Whitewater: A “Scandal” In Search of A Crime . And now I'll leave you with Tim Kaine and Anne Holton jamming on some tunes in Asheville, NC. Are they cool or what? x.@timkaine headed down south to the land of the pines to play some Wagon Wheel at Asheville's Catawba Brewing Co pic.twitter.com/u87MrrupnB— Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) August 16, 2016 xAnd now @timkaine's wife Anne Holton is clogging here in Asheville pic.twitter.com/7DsLPaLflH— Jessica Hopper (@jesshop23) August 16, 2016*** SUPPORT HILLARY CLINTON *** Donate Today!
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Originally posted at HillaryHQ.com