Clinton outspending Trump $23 million to $0 in key states

For years, political scientists -- and some political operatives -- have wondered how much difference political advertising really makes in a campaign.

Measuring the effect is hard because, typically, both sides advertise, and one campaign’s work tends to cancel out the other.

But Donald Trump seems set to run a real-time experiment in what happens when one side has a monopoly on the airwaves.

The Clinton campaign and its allies are airing just over $23 million in television ads in eight potential battleground states: Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and New Hampshire, according to data released by NBC News.

The Trump campaign? Zero.

Trump didn’t advertise much in the primaries, and he has expressed skepticism about whether expensive television campaigns are worth what politicians pay for them.

The bigger problem, however, is that Trump’s campaign lacks the money to respond to Clinton’s ads. Although Trump has often claimed to be “self funding” his campaign, he hasn’t been willing to fund very much, and it’s unclear how much actual cash he has access to.

Many of the party’s big donors, whom Trump attacked during the primaries, have shown little desire to bail him out. Some Republican mega-donors, including Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino operator, have said they will give money. Others, including the Koch brothers, have said they will not.

So, at least for now, the Clinton ads -- mostly biographical spots designed to improve her image with voters -- will remain unchallenged. And political scientists will get a real-world experiment they never expected: a gift from Donald Trump.

The California Democratic Party on Sunday called for a broad overhaul of how the party nominates its presidential candidates, including the elimination of caucuses and most super-delegates.

The resolution urging the Democratic National Committee to change the nominating rules for the 2020 contest has no official power, but is a symbolic statement from the largest state Democratic party in the nation.

Many of the changes were sought by supporters of Bernie Sanders, but Hillary Clinton backers also endorsed the effort, resulting in the resolution being unanimously approved at the state party’s executive board meeting on Sunday.

“It’s very exciting and healing for our party to be able to make a strong statement that we believe in democracy and that leaders should never trump the will of the voters,” said Christine Pelosi, a California super delegate, daughter of House Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and a Clinton backer who co-authored the resolution.

Co-author Daraka Larimore-Hall, the party secretary and a Sanders backer, added, “There are a lot of people, whether they’re Clinton supporters or Sanders’ supporters, who see ... there are broken things in our nominating process.”

The issue of super-delegates, who are elected officials and party leaders who are not bound by election results and can support whomever they want, has been a major point of contention in the 2016 presidential contest.

Their support of Clinton led to her being named the presumptive nominee on June 6, the night before California and five other states voted. Sanders argues they are not democratic, although, somewhat paradoxically, he also argued until this week that they should go against the will of voters in their states and support him, rather than Clinton.

Sanders’ campaign now says it is not contacting super-delegates to ask for their support.

The California resolution calls for Democratic governors and members of Congress to lose their status as super-delegates and instead attend the nominating convention as nonvoting guests. Members of the Democratic National Committee would remain super-delegates, but would be required to vote for the candidate who won their constituency.

The resolution also calls for replacing all state caucuses with state primaries. Critics say that caucuses are undesirable because most working people don’t have time to attend them and they typically have very low turnouts. Sanders won most caucuses this year, while Clinton won the bulk of states that held primaries.

The resolution also repeats a long-standing call by California Democrats to change the primary election calendar. California Democrats have long complained that the tiny, homogenous states of Iowa and New Hampshire have an outsized voice in the nominating process, while an enormous, diverse state like California is largely marginalized.

The DNC is also being urged to schedule the convention to include weekend days so more people are able to participate.

Valarie Martin, a Sanders supporter who leaned on a walker as she protested outside of the meeting, said she wept when she learned that the resolution would likely pass.

“This is what democracy looks like,” said the 63-year-old.

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“They don’t look like Indians to me,” Donald Trump declared to a congressional committee, referring to a tribe whose casino threatened to compete with his operations in Atlantic City.

The style, tone and vocabulary that have become familiar in Trump’s improbable political rise could be seen two decades ago in his dealings with Native American tribes, right down to his denunciations of “political correctness.”

Trump attacked some tribes while romancing others, all depending on what was best for business. At one point, he and his associate Roger Stone used a front group to attack another tribe that wanted to open a casino near New York City.

“Nothing has changed,” said former Rep. Bill Richardson, the Democrat who chaired the subcommittee that took Trump’s testimony. “He’s always operated this way.”

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The United States should consider profiling Muslim Americans as part of a counter-terrorism strategy, Donald Trump said Sunday.

In a telephone interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation,” the presumptive Republican nominee said it was a “common-sense” approach already in use in other nations and one that should be considered here despite even his own reservations.

“I hate the concept of profiling. But we have to start using common sense, and we have to use our heads,” he said.

Trump alluded to security at his own campaign rallies, saying some people “that obviously had no guns” were being screened the same “as somebody else that looked like it could have been a possible person,” a thought he did not expand upon.

Referring to the gunman who killed 49 people at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub, Omar Mateen, Trump said there were “red flags” that were ignored because of “political correctness.”

There has been no evidence that “political correctness” played a role in the law enforcement scrutiny of Mateen. FBI officials said they investigated him on two occasions and both times determined that although he showed signs of anger and bluster, he did not appear to pose a threat.

Trump also spoke favorably of what he said was a policy in France to monitor mosques and in some cases shut them down.

“You have a problem. You have to report these people. And everybody knew this guy had a problem,” he said in another interview on ABC’s “This Week.”

“They actually did report him and the authorities didn’t act. And I think it’s very unusual. And I’m a big fan of the FBI, but they had a little bit of a bad day.”

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said elected Republicans have the right to withhold support from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and suggested he might not have endorsed the party’s presumptive presidential nominee if not for his own leadership position.

“I have certain responsibilities, as not just as Congressman Ryan from the 1st District of Wisconsin, but as speaker of the House,” Ryan told NBC’s “Meet The Press” in an interview that aired Sunday.

“Imagine the speaker of the House not supporting the duly elected nominee of our party, therefore creating a chasm in our party to split us in half, which basically helps deny us the White House and strong majorities in Congress.”

Ryan said that Trump has made comments and taken policy positions that he does not agree with, but he added that a Hillary Clinton presidency was a bigger concern for him because she would “continue taking the country in the wrong direction.”

Despite his reservations about Trump, Ryan said, he had to respect the will of Republican primary voters.

“This isn’t a top-down party where a handful of people pick our nominee and the president. The voters picked him,” he said.

Ryan would not comment on the prospect of changing party rules to allow delegates to deny Trump the nomination at the convention, a notion – however unlikely – that some chief intra-party critics of the wealthy real estate executive have raised.

“It is not my job to tell delegates what to do, what not to do, or to weigh in on things like that,” said Ryan, who will serve as the convention chairman.

“All I want to make sure is that it’s done above board, clearly, honestly and by the rules. So I see my role now, given that he’s got the plurality, he actually won, is pretty much a ceremonial position. But the last thing I’m going to do is weigh in and tell delegates what to do – how to do their jobs.”

Trump, in separate interviews, reiterated his view that Republican leaders “shouldn’t be talking so much.”

“I won the primaries with the largest vote ever,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“We brought additional people in that wouldn’t have been in if I weren’t doing this and I were not running. And I would say this. … They should go out and do their job. Let me do my job. I have tremendous support from both politicians and the people.”

On NBC, Trump said it would “be nice if the Republicans stuck together.”

“I can win one way or the other,” he said. “I obviously won the primaries without them.”

(Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

This Los Angeles Times celebrity endorsement tracker has it covered.

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