Essential Politics: Republicans hit the panic button

Donald Trump got a pretty decent bounce out of his nominating convention. Then he squashed it.

Democrats spent a good chunk of their own convention baiting Trump, hoping that he would over-react to at least one of their taunts. In their most optimistic scenarios, though, even Hillary Clinton’s campaign officials did not anticipate how big a gift the Republican candidate would hand them.

Good afternoon, I’m David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in the presidential campaign and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

THE WRATH AT KHAN

Trump’s decision to spend much of the week in a long-distance quarrel with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, Muslim parents of an American soldier killed in Iraq, managed to undo pretty much all the gains that he had made at his convention and before. (If you’re looking for the story of how the Khans became the stars of the political month, Evan Halper has you covered.)

Republican officials, who thought they had made progress in convincing their unpredictable nominee to stick to a consistent message and focus on Clinton were reminded, yet again, that Trump makes his own rules — even if they are often against his own interest.

Then things got worse.

Trump decided to pick quarrels with two of the Republicans’ own senators and the Republican speaker of the House, saying that he was not yet ready to endorse either Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire or Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who faces a primary on Tuesday.

That same day, President Obama, at a news conference, said Trump was “unfit to serve as president.”

By midweek, senior Republicans were frantically calling each other — and reporters — to discuss what to do. Party officials let it be known that senior GOP lawyers were even looking into how the rules would work if Trump suddenly dropped out of the race. (The short answer is that the Republican National Committee would meet to select a new nominee).

“A sense of panic is rising,” one longtime GOP insider said, as Noah Bierman, Michael Finnegan and I reported.

Check out our interactive on which Republicans are backing Trump, which are abandoning him and who is trying to have it both ways.

TRUMP UNIVERSITY

Trump did win one small victory: Federal District Judge Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a lawsuit brought by former students of Trump University, the now defunct real estate training program, ruled that Trump can keep his videotaped deposition sealed.

The public interest in knowing what Trump said has been served by releasing the deposition transcript, the judge said. Releasing the video tape would not add much to public knowledge, he wrote, and there is “every reason to believe the release of the deposition videos would contribute to an ‘on-going’ media frenzy that would increase the difficulty of seating an impartial jury.”

The judge also cleared the way for a trial of the lawsuit in late November, denying Trump’s motion to dismiss the case.

Curiel, of course, is the judge whom Trump earlier this year accused of being unfair to him because he is of Mexican ancestry.

THE POLLS MOUNT UP

The latest polls reflect Trump’s rough week and fed GOP anxiety. The list is grim reading for the Trump campaign:

NBC/Wall St. Journal — Clinton up 9 points

Fox News — Clinton up 10

McClatchy/Marist — Clinton up 15

CNN — Clinton up 9

CBS — Clinton up 6

New surveys in swing states had Clinton leading by four points in Florida, nine in Michigan, 13 in Pennsylvania and 15 in New Hampshire, all in hypothetical four-way match ups that included Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein.

A poll by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution even found Trump narrowly behind in Georgia.

Democrats shouldn’t get too excited. Odds are that some of Clinton’s gains are ephemeral — the result of a post-convention bounce. When the bounce settles, her lead will almost certainly shrink.

On the other hand, the former secretary of State doesn’t need to win by nine, 10 or 15 points. Obama won his reelection by just under four and still carried 332 electoral votes.

And as Bierman & Nigel Duara reported, Trump is losing support among swing state voters.

Our own USC Dornsife/L.A. Times tracking poll of the election has been more favorable to Trump; the candidate has taken to citing it during his stump speeches. But part of that is simply the poll’s structure — a seven-day rolling average, which smooths out the volatility that sometimes hurts tracking polls, but also makes it slower to adjust when the electorate shifts course.

In any case, the poll has shown the same trend as others, a drop in Trump’s support and an increase for Clinton’s that has continued steadily for more than a week. By this morning, Clinton held a one-point lead.

Whatever the size of Clinton’s lead, the calendar is ominous for Trump: He has only a few big opportunities left to shift large chunks of the electorate. The first presidential debate, scheduled for Sept. 26, is the most prominent.

CLINTON FLYING BELOW THE RADAR

And Clinton? As Halper reported, she enjoyed a week of campaigning in swing states, quietly skating past incidents that might have turned into controversies had Trump not monopolized the airwaves. The campaign is following a long-tested maxim in politics — if your opponent is hurting himself, don’t get in the way.

One telling side of Democratic confidence: Clinton’s campaign has scaled back advertising in Colorado, once viewed as a key battleground. Democrats determined that Trump was simply not competitive enough there to justify the money — a view that independent pollsters concurred with.

Democrats do still worry about whether young voters who backed Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primary will turn out for Clinton in the fall. Sanders made a pitch to his voters in an Op-Ed piece in The Times this morning. “I understand that many of my supporters are disappointed by the final results of the nominating process, but being despondent and inactive is not going to improve anything,” he wrote.

A COUPLE OF GOOD READS

Melanie Mason looked at the Koch brothers, who gathered their network of wealthy donors for an annual retreat last weekend at which they set out their case for sitting out the presidential election.

Sean Parker set out to change politics; it’s changed him, Halper reports. The co-founder of Napster has found that the political system isn’t as susceptible to Silicon Valley-style disruption as he had hoped.

WE’VE UPDATED OUR ELECTORAL COLLEGE MAP

With the conventions over and a raft of new polls, we’ve taken an updated look at the states. Check out our best assessment of where things now stand. And play political strategist for yourself. You can try out as many scenarios as you like on the interactive map.

QUESTIONS ABOUT TRUMP, CLINTON? WE’VE GOT ANSWERS

Where they stand on issues, what they’ve done in their lives, their successes, their failures, what their presidencies might look like: We’ve been writing about Clinton and Trump for years, and we’ve pulled the best of that content together to make finding what you want to know easier. So check out All Things Trump and All Things Clinton.

LOGISTICS

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That wraps up this week. My colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in the 2016 campaign with our Trail Guide, at our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com.

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