Essential Politics: Angry, raw and racially charged

Race has been a constant — if not always explicit — subtext for the entirety of this highly charged presidential campaign, thanks in no small part to the rhetoric of Donald Trump.

This week the issue burst forth: angry, raw, front and center.

Good afternoon, I’m Mark Z. Barabak, filling in for Washington Bureau chief David Lauter. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look back at the events of the past week in the presidential contest and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

In Reno, the battleground portion of a battleground state, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton delivered an extraordinary speech accusing Trump of fomenting racial hatred and turning the Republican Party into a haven for white nationalism.

“There’s always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, a lot of it arising from racial resentment,” Clinton said. “But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it and giving it a national megaphone until now.”

Trump fired back on multiple fronts.

“Hillary Clinton’s short speech is pandering to the worst instincts in our society,” the candidate said on Twitter. “She should be ashamed of herself.”

Speaking later in a CNN interview, Trump accused Clinton of being a bigot.

“She is selling [black voters] down the tubes because she’s not doing anything for those communities,” he said. “She talks a good game. But she doesn’t do anything.”

Even before Clinton leveled her attack, Trump had undertaken a notable shift in tone, urging African Americans to abandon their longstanding allegiance to the Democratic Party while painting a dire — and, to many, misleading and highly offensive — portrait of black life in America.

But as Noah Bierman and Michael Finnegan pointed out, Trump’s summons to black voters — which he has been delivering to virtually all-white audiences — may be less about rallying African American support than convincing white voters he is not racist and thus make them feel better about supporting the Manhattan business mogul.

IMMIGRATION STRUGGLES

Much of Trump’s week was occupied sprawling all over the place on the immigration issue.

The promise of building a wall along the Mexico border — to be paid for by the Mexican government — and deporting millions of people in the country illegally have been at the heart of Trump’s campaign since he very first entered the contest.

But in a series of appearances he offered various conflicting statements on whether he intended to soften his stance on forced deportations and supporting a pathway to legal status for people in the country illegally. A planned speech on immigration, which would have allowed Trump to clarify his thinking, was postponed.

Will Trump’s zigzagging hurt him politically? Lisa Mascaro found no clear consensus.

More practically, would it be possible for the federal government to actually round up and deport 11 million people, given the go-ahead? Brian Bennett explored that question and found it would be difficult and extremely costly: in the range of $300 billion.

DESERT STORM

There is no love lost between Trump and the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

In one of the earliest jaw-dropping moments of his campaign, Trump belittled McCain and the more than five years he spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. McCain chose to turn the proverbial cheek, but now finds himself in the toughest reelection fight of his long and storied career, in part because of his willingness to forgive if not forget.

The five-term senator is caught in a vise between his Trump-backing Republican primary opponent and a Democrat rival eager to take him on in November. The GOP primary is Tuesday.

MONEY MONEY MONEY

Hillary Clinton and her allies spent much of the week defending her actions as secretary of State and the access that was granted donors to the Clinton Foundation, the nonprofit, do-gooder organization founded by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Editorial cartoonist David Horsey, putting pen to paper, suggests legalities aside, the episode just plain looks bad.

Clinton, meantime, devoted the bulk of her week to a blitz of fundraising — including a run through California — which, Evan Halper reported, left even some of her staunch supporters a bit unsettled.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Our daily USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times tracking poll has been at variance with most other election surveys of the Clinton-Trump contest, owing in part to its different methodology. Polling maven Nate Silver weighed in on the disparity on his FiveThirtyEight website. The latest tracking numbers can be found at the top of the politics page.

TRUMP! TRUMP! CLINTON! CLINTON!

Can’t get enough of the Republican and Democratic nominees? Here and here are everything you ever wanted to know, and more.

LOGISTICS

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That wraps up this week’s summary. 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, on our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

Comments, suggestions, news tips? Send them along to politics@latimes.com.

Have a swell weekend.