Month: March 2016

Short Attention Span Theater
by Tom Sullivan

After several years of delays, Short Attention Span Theater will again resume production on Repatriation Tax Holiday 2.

Robert Reich flagged District Studios’ announcement yesterday on Facebook:

I’ve spent the last day in Washington, where Democrats are quietly gearing up to negotiate a “tax amnesty” for American-based global corporations that have parked some $2.1 trillion in untaxed profits abroad (mostly in tax havens) to avoid paying their U.S. taxes. The U.S. corporate tax rate is 35 percent, but Obama is ready to offer 14 percent if they’ll bring the profits home; Republicans want 10 percent; some Democratic senators are willing to go even lower (Barbara Boxer is teaming up with Rand Paul to offer 6.5 percent). Corporate lobbyists are swarming over Capitol Hill, suggesting if they don’t get a great deal they might not just keep the profits abroad but even move their corporations abroad (like Pfizer is doing).

It’s corporate extortion on a giant scale. The best way to deal with extortionists is not give in to them at all. If America’s global corporations knew there’d never ever be a tax amnesty, they’d stop waiting for it. They’d bring home the profits they need to invest in their American businesses. As to those threatening to move abroad – let them. If they’re unwilling to pay taxes for the benefits of being American (including protection of their global assets and intellectual property), then sayonara.

William Greider agrees:

If the big corporations wish to leave America, I say good riddance—call their bluff. On their way to the door, though, Congress should present them with their unpaid due bills. It should cover not only the taxes they have dodged for years but also the much larger debt they owe the country for all the free services and subsidies they received from taxpayers as they developed their profit-making machinery. If accounts were settled fairly, Congress would have plenty of money to spend. If lawmakers found the courage to cut off the corporate free riders, that would be a political revolution.

Remind me again, why is it “amnesty” (bad) to allow undocumented persons to stay in this country, but okay to lavish billions in giveaways to corporate persons who flee it to dodge taxes?

This is, after all, the sequel to George W. Bush’s 2004 feature, the American Jobs Creation Act — which didn’t, you recall. Carly Fiorina would too. Her Hewlett-Packard used the windfall for stock buybacks:

Never mind that the bill prohibited such buybacks.

And all that talk about putting more Americans to work did not stop the corporations from cutting as many as 100,000 American jobs in the name of even greater profits.

Hewlett-Packard saved more than $4.3 billion and put more than $4 billion into stock buybacks. It laid off 14,500 workers.

Billed as a one-time-only tax giveaway, the 2004 Bush vanity project was a sloppy, wet kiss to studio investors that let them repatriate hundreds of billions at a steep discount, the way those letters of transit let Victor and Ilsa escape Casablanca for America. Just without the dead Nazis.

Like the quotable Casablanca, the Bush bill at least gave us this memorable one about repatriation’s stimulus effect (emphasis mine):

“There will be some stimulative effect because it pumps money into the economy,” said Phillip L. Swagel, a former chief of staff on President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, which had opposed the tax holiday. “But you might as well have taken a helicopter over 90210 [Beverly Hills] and pushed the money out the door. That would have stimulated the economy as well.”

Pretty pathetic, actually, that Democrats in 2016 are trying to revive this stinker
from the trickle-down school of lawmaking.
The last failed revival involved Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Kay Hagan (D-NC). Is it any wonder people argue there’s no difference between the parties when rival studio executives climb into bed with each other to produce a mockbuster of American Hustle?

Obama the divider

by digby

One of the most annoying habits of the right is their propensity for  “I know you are but what am I” rhetoric.  Among the stupidest is their obstructing every proposal and bringing the government to a crashing halt and then blaming President Obama for failing to achieve bipartisan nirvana after promising that he “would bring people together.”  It’s a cute trick.

They’ve gone one step beyond that in recent times by proclaiming that Obama is a divider because he somehow “made” them act like barbarians. He was asked about this at his press conference today:

QUESTION: Some of your critics have pointed to the incredible polarized political climate as under your administration as contributing to the rise of someone as provocative as Donald Trump. Do you feel any responsibility for that, or for the protectionist rhetoric from some Democratic candidates. Do you have a timeline for when you may make a presidential endorsement?

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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I have been blamed by the Republicans for a lot of thing, but to be blamed for their primaries and who they are selecting, that is taking place in their primary is… novel.

Look, I’ve said — I said at the State of the Union that one of my regrets is the degree to which polarization and the nasty tone of our politics has accelerated, rather than waned over the course of the last seven and a half years, and I do all kinds of soul searching in terms of — Are there things I can do better to make sure we’re unifying the country, but I also have to say, Margaret, that objectively it’s fair to say that the Republican political elites, and many of the information outlets, social media, television stations, talk radio, have been feeding the Republican base for the last seven years, a notion that everything I do is to be opposed, that cooperation or compromise somehow is a betrayal, that maximalist absolutist positions on issues are politically advantageous.

That there’s a them and us, and it’s the them that are causing the problems we’re experiencing, and the tone of that politics — which I certainly have not contributed to — I have not — you know, I don’t think that I was the one to prompt questions about my birth certificate, for example. I don’t remember saying, hey, why don’t you ask me about that.
Why don’t you question whether I’m American or whether I’m loyal or whether I have America’s best interests at heart.

Those aren’t things that were prompted by any actions of mine, and so what you’re seeing within the Republican party is to some degree all those efforts over a course of time creating an environment where somebody like a Donald Trump can thrive.

(I’m fairly sure that if Clinton somehow wins the presidency she too will provoke them into acting like animals. Women have been hearing that stuff for a very long time … why do you make me hit you baby? You know I don’t want to …)


I’m glad to hear the president answer that stupid question and answer it with the proper disdain. It’s ridiculous.

There was a time when I used to say that the GOP defined bipartisanship as the Democratic president passing their agenda with no questions asked. I learned that was dangerously naive. They wouldn’t have agreed if he had produced Paul Ryan’s budget verbatim and lined up every Democrat in both houses to vote for it sight unseen.  Anything they would vote for and he would sign had to be vigorously opposed. Until there is a major come to Jesus moment for the GOP that’s just the way it’s going to be.

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The Nones, the churches and the welfare state

by digby

We have known for some time that one of the reasons the US was unable to build a socialist welfare state like western Europe was our history of slavery and attendant racism. (It seems many Americans would rather be poor themselves than allow the government to provide any breaks to African Americans.)

This bit of numbers crunching from 538 adds another dimension to the question:

[R]eligion inhibits socialism’s spread and explains its lack of political mobilization.

To understand the relationship between socialist values and religion, we used the 2013 Public Religion Research Institute’s “Economic Values Study.” As part of the survey, respondents were asked how much they agreed with a battery of statements regarding economic values, including “It is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves,” The government should do more to reduce the gap between the rich and poor” and “The government should guarantee health insurance for all citizens.” We combined these into a “socialism scale,” the results of which suggest the average American is just left of center.

The conventional wisdom is that the individualist, evangelical style of American religion is a strong antidote to socialism. If faith alone can lead you to salvation, then efforts to reshape society are beside the point. But the animosity between them has been more pointed, especially regarding so called “Godless communists” who portrayed religion as the “opiate of the masses.” In these data, those who agreed that social problems would be resolved if enough people had a personal relationship with God were 20 percent less socialist than those who disagreed. A worldview that pits faith directly against collective action explains clearly why collectivist efforts have traditionally foundered in the U.S.

By the same token, Americans who are not religious (sometimes called the Nones)2 would be those most likely to hold socialist values. And indeed, this is what we find: Nones are 10 percent more socialist, on average, than religious Americans. The gap is greater among older people (15 percentage points at retirement age) and smaller among the young (5 percentage points at 18-24), perhaps because younger people are exposed to many more Nones and to greater economic insecurity than their elders. In what may be seen as a cruel irony given Sanders’s difficulty with black voters, there is no such gap among nonwhite respondents — support for socialist values is high across the board. Even more, nonwhite respondents favor socialist values at equivalent levels as white Nones.

It seems that the Nones are key to socialism’s fortune. While their growth in numbers may lead to more openness to socialist ideas, that is by no means certain. Nones are at a disadvantage in politics precisely because they lack religious affiliation: Churches are the most widespread social organizations in the U.S. Though not their primary purpose, churches connect individuals to political organizations and identities. Nones lack the organizational structure that helps connect their ideology to politics — in these data, 20 percent more young Nones are Independents than their religious peers, and they vote in very low numbers (about 12 percent in recent elections). Perhaps a portion of the lower than expected turnout among the young this nomination season can be attributed to the Nones.

He concludes that without religion’s organizing function, socialism has a rough road in American political life.

I don’t know about that. I suspect that one of Bernie Sanders’ strength in this election is that young socialist minded activists are all connected on social media. It may not be there yet but there is still the possibility of it becoming a serious mass organizing tool.

This is an interesting thesis, though. One of the insights in the study I linked above is that American social services had all been centered in churches in the early days and that government tended to be the provider of last resort to African Americans who had no wealth in their own churches. This was considered to be one of the reasons why a government welfare state was espised — it catered to African Americans. So these ideas may intersect in various ways.

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The racist blood is up

by digby

They’re losing control. As we knew they would eventually:

The man was arrested and charged with assault. Thank God for cell phones …

Think Progress:

Protesters at prior Trump rallies have been dragged, kicked, beaten, choked, and shoved to the ground.

Trump himself has failed to condemn his more violent supporters. Instead, he’s invited them on stage to be publicly honored for beating up a high schooler, argued a Black Lives Matter protester deserved to be roughed up, and told a crowd that he wished he could punch a protester at a Nevada rally in the face.

“You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher,” he said at the time.

His crowds have heard him:

Q: What do you think of that, that they want to “get those people out of here? “

Woman one: I loved his comment on punchin’ back in old days, when you could fight and punch ’em right in the nose and they’d be carried out on a stretcher…fine wi’ me.

Trump (on video): Bye bye … I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you that. If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of him will you?

Woman two: He’s a leader. He can do what he wants.

Woman three: He can do anything he wants to! He’s our future president!

This one is just chilling. The look of bloodlust and hate on their faces reminds me of those videos of stoning in Afghanistan.

An anti #Trump protestor, getting shoved out of Tuesday’s rally in #Louisville. pic.twitter.com/Azw8fWOfVw

— Christina Mora (@ChristinaWLKY) March 2, 2016

Update:  Jesus

‘They used to treat them very, very rough, and when they protested once, they would not do it again so easily,’ said Mr. Trump. 

The cops arrested the protester instead of the man who punched him. They’ve since charged the assailant, who said on Inside Edition, “Yes, he deserved it. The next time we see him, we might have to kill him.”

Fame, puts you there where things are hollow


by digby

There’s an awful lot of magical thinking in this election. More than usual I’m afraid.  And maybe it’s an understandable reaction to the GOP’s bizarroworld insistence that Obama has transformed the nation into a socialist dystopia with the helping hands of his minions in the Republican party. This makes no sense and yet people believe it. So why not just embrace whatever fantasy you choose?

This piece by Arthur Goldhammer gets at something few people understand about the Trump phenomenon:

The French historian Antoine Lilti has described “the invention of celebrity” in the late 18th century. For Lilti, celebrity is a phenomenon of fusion. The relationship of admirer to celebrity is a mediated one, but in the mind of the admirer the mediation disappears: She becomes one with the object of her devotion, his desires becomes hers, his fulfilments as well. What he detests or fears, she detests or fears. One sees this urge to identify, to erase critical distance, in this video of a group of young women being shown around Trump’s penthouse. One sees it in his assumption that the things (and women) he collects are what everyone else covets as well. One sees it in his followers’ belief that no opposition will be capable of resisting him, because he has mastered “the art of the deal.”
“The deal,” ultimately, is the trumpenproletariat’s answer to the potential for paralysis that the Founding Fathers built into the American Constitution to allay their fears of faction and tyranny. To prevent a faction or a tyrant from seizing power, they installed checks and balances into our system of government and sought to ensure that no individual or group would likely be able to control every possible veto point. But in recent years this veto-ridden system has shuddered to a halt. Immobilized, the great engine of government has failed to respond to the needs of many groups of citizens, not just those who see their salvation in Trump. 

With celebrity and the illusion of omnipotent wish-fulfilment it bestows, Trump now promises to slice through this Gordian knot. He has made a career of portraying himself as a man who gets things done, who builds buildings, beds women, pummels opponents, hires and fires apprentices. His followers want things done and, having identified with his self-presentation to the point of fusion, they have convinced themselves that with him their wishes, no matter how contradictory, will all be fulfilled. They mistake their man’s celebrity for the kind of power and mastery needed to unfreeze the system. And why shouldn’t they? As Thomas Hobbes put it, “Reputation of power is power.” Thanks to his reputation of power, Trump’s ignorance of government, of foreign policy, of economics counts in his favor, because as Hobbes also said, knowledge “is small power,” since the truths it contains are evident only to “such as in a good measure have attained it.” Ignorance cloaked in celebrity appeals to the many, while knowledge, with its frustrating acknowledgment of difficulty and of incompatible goods, does not please crowds. 

Trump’s celebrity is thus the ultimate Trump-l’oeil. It deceives his followers into thinking that if they elect him, opposition both political and material will simply melt away. Citizens and hero will simultaneously occupy both the White House and the penthouse and squeal with joy at the commanding view. Losers will give way to winners, the weak will succumb to the strong, and everything will be as “beautiful” as the megalomaniacal Trump-tower lair when all the lilies have been gilded with the Midas touch of Donald J. Trump.

We’ve been talking about how people treat electing a president like American Idol for a while. It’s happening.

(What’s most depressing is the idol these people have chosen is Sanjaya. )

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John Kasich is not Ward Cleaver

by digby

I wrote about everybody’s favorite 50s dad for Salon. He’s actually quite the crusader. Ted Cruz should be careful.  He might just be outwingnutted.

Staff of a Columbus, Ohio Planned Parenthood clinic were greeted Monday morning with a freshly painted message in red scrawled on the outside of their clinic: “SATAN DEN OF BABYKILLERS GOD SEE ALLLL Mark 9:14.”

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QOTD: Lindsey Graham

by digby

Dropping the pretense:

“We are setting a precedent here today, Republicans are. That in the last year at least of a lame duck eight year term, I would say it’s gonna be a four year term, that you’re not going to fill a vacancy of the Supreme Court based on what we’re doing here today. That’s going to be the new rule.‎

 Well, until a Republican wants to do it anyway …

Update: Lulz. Tom Sullivan writes in to alert me to this:

Ron Johnson seems to think there is a rule that only conservative presidents can replace conservative justices https://t.co/FHePmFjhZi— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 10, 2016

Johnson is easily the dimmest person in the Senate. Maybe ever. Also very rich. Which just goes to show you …

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How dark money infects American minds

by Spocko

I recently listened to two interviews with Jane Mayer on her book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

During the interviews she explicitly pointed to the power of the Koch Machine to change the public opinion and attitudes with their think tanks, universities, and media.

They push an idea that the climate problem doesn’t exist, or–if it does exist--there is nothing we can do about it. 

Marketeers and messaging gurus from the fossil fuel industry have invested 100’s of millions in a narrative that rejects science and human governments’ ability to act. They want to destroy the hope that we have the ability to make changes.

They throw doubt into scientific successes (“Blank can never replace coal/oil/gas”) while killing legislation that supports other forms of energy

In the superior interview Mayer gave on The Majority Report with Sam Seder she talked to an audience who knew of the Koch brothers and understood the damage they have done that goes beyond elections.

The Koch network’s influence extends into academia, media, state and local politics. This influence will continue no matter who is elected President this fall.

In the interview  on KQED’s Forum, host Michael Krasny suggested that because the Kochs aren’t winning Presidential elections they aren’t effective. He quotes polls saying the public isn’t buying the Koch message. Fortunately Mayer strongly pushes back on that idea and reminds listeners the Kochs are painfully effective.

She points out how the Kochs’ have already pushed the conversation to the right on the national scale regarding climate change. Their captured politicians are repeating radical right wing ideas.  Then she drops the other shoe, all the money that doesn’t go to Presidential candidates won’t be held back, it will go down ticket to Koch candidates at the state and local level.

Jane Mayer is the author of “Dark Money:  The Hidden History of the Billionaires  Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.”  –photo Stephen Voss

When I listen to an analysis by the mainstream media of the power of money in the current Presidential elections, I can almost hear a sense of relief, or even glee behind their stories. “Relax Americans, money can’t buy the Presidency!” They point to Romney’s failure last time and the failure of  Jeb and all the billionaire backed boys this time.

Stories like Sanders raising money from the 99% with his “average contribution of 27 dollars” or Trump’s record of “barely spending any money” assuages their fear that their reporting is obsolete. Ads still don’t trump editorial (yes that works as a pun, but damn it, I’m not giving up a perfectly good word!).

On the publishing side they are gleeful about Citizens United and dark money. Not only are the billionaires still spending money on advertising, they can say it isn’t impacting the electoral results therefore they are in the clear for not acknowledging the power of money. Plus, the entertainment value of the GOP debates has boosted boring old viewership, so the prices the media corps can charge for regular advertising is maintained.

This whole scenario is perfect for them. They can avoid their role as the 4th estate in putting a check on power. “You see folks? Citizens United advertising dollars didn’t impact the Presidential elections and since that’s the only one that matters, our hands are clean. “

What is bizarre is that media companies always tell advertisers that ads work, that’s why they are expensive. They will continue to tell candidates they work, even when they have been proved wrong.

Some big money people have figured out that “earned media” (I hate that phrase) is very powerful, so they have created their own media network and print outlets.  Others, “the dumb money” still pour millions into ads, it’s not like anyone is going to turn down their cash on a 4th tier candidate who doesn’t have a chance in hell of winning. “Of course we’ll take your ads for our network of media outlets. And, by the way, we know some TOP people who can help you create new ads tailored for our market. Your people might know New York, but WE know the midwest/south/northeast market.”

Krasny ends with the classic, “What is to be done?” question. Mayer doesn’t point to a specific answer, since her role as a journalist is to show people what is happening. It is up to us to act.

Following Mayer’s interview I read the comments on Forum. Between the Koch defenders and libertarians, a listener, Ben Rawner, asked:

Center for Media and Democracy’s Koch Exposed Wiki

They have not only exposed the Kochs in the past, they have actively combated their schemes to change laws and influence politicians at multiple levels. Mayer’s took on the task of writing about a very powerful secretive group. You think it was chilling when the Kochs went after Mayer with a private investigator? Imagine how they respond to a group that regularly gets between the Kochs and their plans.

The main stream media might want to ignore the real impact of dark money, but we can’t. I recommend donating to CMD, since, unlike the MSM, they don’t make money off Koch product ads or Koch political ads.

Dying from despair
by Tom Sullivan

Downtown Appalachia, VA. Photo by pfly from Pugetopolis [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Michael Cooper, Jr. sends a message from Donald Trump’s America, meaning, the last places and people in America the casino and real estate magnate would care to visit. You know, “losers”:

I live in Trump’s America, where working-class whites are dying from despair. They’re dying from alcoholism, drug addiction and suicide, trying to take away the pain of a half century’s economic and cultural decline. In the foothills of Appalachia, Wilkes County, North Carolina, is second in the nation in income lost this century, where the number of manufacturing jobs decreased from 8,548 in the year 2000 to about 4,000 today, according to Stateline.

Empty storefronts in downtown Richwood, WV

If the color coding on the
Stateline map of income decline appears less dire for Appalachia proper, it is because once at the bottom there is no further down to go. Near-ghost-towns dot southwest Virginia and West Virginia. Small but once prosperous from logging or coal, they hug hillsides along what are barely secondary roads. And that’s what their people feel like: secondary. Voters have been forgotten in towns where over 20 percent live in poverty and a quarter never finished high school, Cooper explains:

They lost their influence, their dignity and their shot at the American Dream, and now they’re angry. They’re angry at Washington and Wall Street, at big corporations and big government. And they’re voting now for Donald Trump.

My Republican friends are for Trump. My state representative is for Trump. People who haven’t voted in years are for Trump. He’ll win the primary here on March 15 and he will carry this county in the general.

His supporters realize he’s a joke. They do not care. They know he’s authoritarian, nationalist, almost un-American, and they love him anyway, because he disrupts a broken political process and beats establishment candidates who’ve long ignored their interests.

This is the America where the unemployed and underemployed still line up for free health care each year at the fairgrounds in Wise, Virginia and in smaller places. They are “poorer, less educated citizens who are fiscally liberal and socially conservative,” Cooper believes, and both parties have ignored them for years. In part, because they tend not to vote. But they are voting now, now that Trump has given voice to their grievances.

Thousands receive free medical care at the Remote Area Medical clinic each year in Wise, VA. The greatest need is dental care.

This year’s primaries are like a real-life exercise in those old Verizon Wireless ads. America’s forgotten working class left behind and discarded by globalization, automation, and deindustrialization has found an unlikely voice in Donald Trump, if not really a champion. Independent Bernie Sanders too is finding traction there, as his Michigan win this week proved. In primary after primary, the American worker is asking party elites, “Can you hear me now?”

It is not clear yet that they have.

Somebody’s dreaming

by digby

Ok, maybe Trump’s successful at finding some of those “missing white voters” who allegedly sat out the 2008 and 2012 elections because the GOP was just so icky. But Rush is having hallucinations if he actually thinks this is true:

RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST): Donald Trump has actually put together the exact kind of coalition the Republican Party has been telling us that it needs in order to win. That it will not win if it doesn’t succeed in branching out and expanding the party. And the expansion includes people that were normally qualified as Reagan Democrats, Hispanics, African Americans, women. Trump is doing it, and there is all mounds of evidence for it.

[…]

Now, Trump is specifically making a play for this group. And in this group of people is white middle class voters who the Democrat Party has written off. And Dan Balz, I think it was Dan Balz, a former Washington Post columnist, wrote in November of 2000 — I think it was 2011, yeah, yeah, 2011, that the Democrats planned to write off white working class votes. And if you look at Obama’s economic policy, look at Obama’s Obamacare policy, he is. White working class voters are persona non-grata.

And Trump is getting them. He is getting them in droves. And the Republican Party doesn’t want them. It’s the most amazing thing. Trump is actually putting together what the Republican Party has told us is the coalition they cannot win without.

And now apparently they really don’t want to expand the party to include white middle class Democrats, Hispanics, and others from the Democrat Party if Trump is responsible for bringing them. Look at it this way, Trump has assembled a package the GOP says it desperately needs and wants in order to win in the future. But now they’re not interested because they don’t like the delivery company.

There is no mountain of evidence that Trump is getting Hispanics, African Americans, middle class Democrats or women. In fact, in the case of Hispanics, he’s driving them to register to vote against him. African Americans aren’t going to vote for him, they know the score, and middle class white Democrats show no signs that they are leaving the party. Married white women always tend to vote Republican.

He’s just making stuff up. If Trump is bringing in new voters they are previously non-voting white working class types. That’s not to say that it’s insignificant for the Republicans if that’s the case, but it’s not a “broad coalition.”

*And by the way, one of the greatest acts of malfeasance on the part of the media this cycle is the absurd notion that Trump is bringing in Latinos based upon some dramatic win with them in the Nevada caucus. Despite the numerous headlines that day saying Trump scored big with something close to 50% of that population, this was based upon an entrance poll that may have only sampled around 130 actual humans who called themselves Latino:

 We are only talking about the very small percent of Nevada Latinos who are Republican today. An overwhelming majority of Nevada Latinos are Democrats. In a recent poll asking about party identification, 55% of Latinos said they were Democrats, 29% said Independents and just 16% said they were Republicans.  Assuming the entrance poll is correct (a very big assumption) and Trump won 44% of Latino Republicans, that means he was supported by about 7% of Latinos in Nevada (44% of 16 = 7.04).  What that mean is that most likely, 93% of Latinos in Nevada did not vote for Trump.

The entrance poll has a very, very small sample size of Latino Republicans, perhaps only 130, which means that even if everything else is perfect in its methodology, it carries a +/- 8.5% points on the Latino sample. Further, the Nevada entrance polls are not designed to get accurate subgroup vote share estimates, but rather report on statewide numbers, so their design is not trying to capture a representative sample of Latino Republicans, which adds some amount of unknown bias, beyond the +/- 8.5% 

More importantly:

In a poll of Latino voters in general election battleground states (which included Nevada), impreMedia and Latino Decisions found that 80% of Latino voters said Trump’s statements about Mexicans and immigrants gave them a less favorable opinion of the GOP overall. This has been corroborated by Gallup’s monthly tracker and NBC polling, and reported by CNN in their headline “Latinos see Donald Trump as hurting GOP brand“and most recently by Political Science professor Lynn Vavreck writing for the New York Times Upshot who called him “damager-in-chief to the party reputation” among Latinos.