Mitch Perry
Michelle Obama brought her newly awakened star power to the Hillary Clinton campaign Thursday, giving a speech with the Democratic nominee yesterday in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she said the Donald Trump campaign modus operandi in the final 10 days of the election was to discourage them from going to the polls.
“Here’s where I want to get real. If Hillary doesn’t win this election, that will be on us,” she said to one of the biggest crowds a Clinton campaign event has held this year. “It will be because we did not stand with her. It will be because we did not vote for her, and that is exactly what her opponent is hoping will happen. That’s the strategy, to make this election so dirty and ugly that we don’t want any part of it.”
She continued, “So when you hear folks talking about a global conspiracy, and saying that this election is rigged, understand that they are trying to get you to stay home. They are trying to convince you that your vote doesn’t matter, that the outcome has already been determined, and you shouldn’t even bother making your voice heard. They are trying to take away your hope. And just for the record, in this country, the United States of America, the voters decide our elections, they’ve always decided. Voters decided who wins and who loses, period, end of story.”
For weeks (if not months), political analysts have said that while he’s got a solid 40 percent or so of the electorate banked, Trump has to add voters to his coalition to win the election, yet has done precious little to bring in those wavering independents suspicious of Clinton but not sure they want to pull the trigger for him.
Then came the report from Bloomberg Thursday that quoted a senior official in the Trump camp that, ‘We have three major voter suppression operations underway. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African-Americans.”
This isn’t exactly new information. This is from what the Wall Street Journal reported more than two weeks ago:
“Following the release of a tape-recording of his lewd comments about women and several high-profile Republican defections over the weekend, Mr. Trump has effectively given up the conventional wisdom of trying to reach voters far outside his core of support, one high-level Republican supporter said.”
That Bloomberg article also had a lot more information about how the Trump campaign has built a direct marketing operation that “could power a TV network — or finish off the GOP.”
Translation: Trump, Inc., will still be very much in the political/media world post Nov. 8 — and, who knows, maybe he could still pull off a stunning election victory. He’ll do it his way, however, like he’s done it for the past two years — but it doesn’t look it’s going to work in this general election.
In other news …
The Florida Commission on Ethics dismisses a complaint made against Hillsborough property appraiser candidate Todd Jones.
And Hillsborough County Commission District 6 candidate Tim Schock has resorted to pumping out short videos on his Facebook page, as he attempts to get his message out.
Tim Canova’s progressive political action group is calling on a movement to try to support five separate constitutional amendments on the 2018 Florida ballot.
A tete-a-tete on Syria during Wednesday night’s Senate debate prompted Arizona Democratic Representative and Iraq war veteran Ruben Gallego to call out Marco Rubio.
The major party candidates in the SD 18 race — Dana Young and Bob Buesing — announced some big endorsements.
