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Trump would be trounced in Latino vote, poll finds

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Welcome to the Los Angeles Times trail guide, a daily run through what’s happening in the 2016 presidential campaign. It’s Thursday, July 16, and here’s what we’re watching:

  • A new poll of Latino voters find Donald Trump is broadly unpopular
  • Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined her plan to urge companies to share profits with employees
  • Jeb Bush is reaching out to the tech sector in San Francisco.
  • President Obama toured a federal prison in Oklahoma, pushed sentencing reform
  • Chris Christie is jumping into President Obama’s territory with a speech on criminal justice reform.
  • Fundraising reports show Clinton campaign weaknesses.

Bush says his father is in 'pretty good shape'

Midway through Jeb Bush's three-day fundraising and campaign swing through California, the Republican presidential candidate was shaken by news that his father, former President George H.W. Bush, was hospitalized with a broken neck bone.

“He fell and he cracked the second vertebrae ¿ the bone, thankfully, not the nerve ending. So he's in some pain and discomfort, but I think he's in pretty good shape,” Bush told reporters on Thursday, after speaking to employees at Thumbtalk, a San Francisco firm that connects consumers with local businesses. “It's kind of hard to deal with this when I'm out and about here.”

Bush said he had not yet spoken with his father, who is in stable condition. But he talked to his mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush, who he described as a “trooper” and a “great caregiver.”

Trump hits back at McCain

Sen. John McCain complained that Donald Trump and his immigration comments had "stirred up the crazies" in Arizona. Trump hit back on this afternoon. For the record, McCain graduated near the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy.

Clinton: Chattanooga shooting 'act of senseless violence'

Hillary Rodham Clinton called the shooting at a military center in Chattanooga, Tenn. "tragic and regrettable."

"I just want to say a word about how tragic and regrettable it is that we lost four Marines in an act of senseless violence, what is being called another instance of domestic terrorism," Clinton told reporters after a town hall in Dover, N.H. "It's terrible when we lose Marines anywhere in the world, but to lose four in Chattanooga, Tennessee is just heartbreaking."

Clinton called for tighter gun laws in the wake of the shooting in a Charleston church last month, but she did not address the issue directly on Thursday.

"I hope that we can find a way to stop this kind of violence that is stalking our children, people in bible study and people who wear the uniform of our country," she said.

Poll finds Trump would lose Latinos in a landslide

Donald Trump boasts that he'd win the Latino vote in a presidential general election; not likely, a new poll shows.

Trump's image among Latino registered voters is overwhelmingly negative, and he would lose them by a landslide in a race against Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to the survey for Univision by two prominent pollsters -- Bendixen & Amandi, a Democratic firm, and the Tarrance Group, a GOP firm.

Among Latino voters, 71% have an unfavorable view of Trump, compared with 17% who see him favorably, the poll showed. Matched in a hypothetical horse race against Clinton, Trump would lose 70%-16%, the poll found.

For Trump, the good news, sort of, is that he didn't do much worse against Clinton than any of the other GOP hopefuls in the poll. Asked how they would choose between unnamed Democratic and Republican candidates, Latino voters said by 62%-23% that they'd go for the Democrat. When they were then asked a series of matchups between Clinton and several of the better-known candidates seeking the GOP nomination, Clinton outpaced the generic Democrat in every case by at least a few points.

Matched up against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, for example, Clinton took 69% of the vote. The two Floridians in the Republican race, former governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio, did only marginally better, despite their presumed appeal to Latino voters. Clinton led Bush 64%-27% and Rubio 66%-25%, the poll found.

The poll showed that although about one-third of Latino voters consider themselves at least “somewhat” conservative, they favor the Democratic party's positions by significant margins. On jobs and the economy, for example, the issue that Latino voters listed as the most important facing the electorate, they favored the Democrats' position 56%-22%.

The poll, which surveyed 1400 Latino registered voters, has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.

Clinton's town hall in tweets

The Times' Mike Memoli is in Dover covering Clinton's town hall -- a first for a campaign that has largely kept the candidate in small, invite-only settings or behind a podium for major speeches. But that's not going to fly in New Hampshire, which takes its town halls seriously. Voters come prepared to vet the candidate. On Thursday, they asked about climate change, LGBT non-discrimination laws and space. And, of course, robocalls.

Obama: 'There but for the grace of God'

President Obama on Thursday toured a cell block at the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Okla. Obama is the first sitting president to visit a federal prison. The president is pushing to change sentencing laws for nonviolent offenders and other factors he says contribute to inequity and overcrowding in U.S. prisons.

"We have a tendency sometimes to take for granted or think it's normal that so many young people end up in our criminal justice system. It's not normal, it's not what happens in other countries. What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things. What is normal is young people who make mistakes," Obama said Thursday.

"That's what strikes me, there but for the grace of God."

Clinton to detail profit-sharing plan at New Hampshire town hall

DOVER, N.H. -- Hillary Rodham Clinton will propose Thursday giving companies tax credits in return for offering their workers a share of their profits, part of an economic agenda she says would address the problem of stagnant wages for many Americans.

Under the plan, employees would be eligible to a share of their employer's profits of up to 10% of their actual wages. To incentivize businesses to implement such an arrangement, the proposal calls for allowing them to deduct 15% of the total profit sharing disbursements for two years.

Firms would have to provide the profit-sharing benefits to a majority of employees, and the tax benefit would be capped for very large corporations, the campaign said. It estimates the proposal would cost the federal treasury $10 to 20 billion over 10 years.

Clinton was set to discuss what her campaign calls the “Rising Incomes, Sharing Profits” tax plan at a town-hall meeting in Dover, N.H. A campaign official said she would point to local businesses that already engage in such practices, like the shopping chain Market Basket, and how the system has proven to be a win-win for those who participate.

The event is Clinton's first town-hall meeting, a staple of campaigning in the first-in-the-nation primary state. Clinton's now three-month campaign has slowly ramped up to this point, after focusing in the early stages on intimate invite-only conversations and small house parties.

The town that's hosting it has special meaning for the Clintons and local Democrats who have supported the couple for decades. It was at a local Elk's Lodge here on the eve of the 1992 primary that an embattled Bill Clinton pleaded with New Hampshire voters to give him a second chance and vowed to “be there for you until the last dog dies.” Clinton's second-place finish in New Hampshire revived his campaign.

I have a message for my fellow Republicans and the independents who will be voting in the primary process: what Mr. Trump is offering is not conservatism, it is Trump-ism -- a toxic mix of demagoguery and nonsense.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Donald Trump, who has made controversial comments about Mexican immigrants in recent weeks

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Video: Reporters swarm Bush as he exits Uber

This performance with our friend out in Phoenix is very hurtful to me. Because what he did was he fired up the crazies.”
Republican Sen. John McCain, in an interview with the New Yorker, talks about the impact of Donald Trump's presidential campaign on his own reelection bid in Arizona. Trump held an anti-immigration rally in Phoenix on July 11.

Obama calls Bush 41

President Obama called former President George H.W. Bush this morning to wish him well, the White House says. Bush, the 91-year-old father of GOP candidate Jeb Bush, fell and broke a bone in his neck on Wednesday. Bush was hospitalized at the Maine Medical Center and is in fair condition, spokesman Jim McGrath said in a statement Thursday. Doctors plan to brief reporters later in the day.

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The Uber pushback

Democrats are fighting back on the Uber front. AmericanBridge, the liberal opposition research PAC, is up with a web ad that points out how Uber and other contractor-dependent companies have benefited from President Obama's healthcare law. Check out the ad and the argument below.

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Too early for a light snack?

Bush joins LinkedIn

It's tech-sector outreach day for the Jeb Bush campaign. Ahead of a visit to a San Francisco start-up and a trip in an Uber, Bush joined LinkedIn as a LinkedIn Influencer, "a group comprised of about 500 of the world's top thought leaders who publish their ideas and insights," his campaign says.

Bush's first post is titled "Disrupting Washington to Unleash Innovators," and its message is aimed at courting the libertarian-minded entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley. It also hits Hillary Rodham Clinton for her recent comments expressing concerns about the impact of the so-called sharing economy on workers.

"She sees these emerging companies as a threat to the established order. ... We have to challenge the assumptions, regulations and laws that protect most of Washington from true digital disruption ¿ and that means the liberal ideology which would squash so much innovation if it could."

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New poll shows Clinton's standing slipped

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at a the National Council of La Raza Annual Conference Monday, July 13, 2015, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at a the National Council of La Raza Annual Conference Monday, July 13, 2015, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Clinton's unfavorables are up, her approval rating is down and more voters are questioning her compassion and trustworthiness, according to a new poll by Associated Press-Gfk.

"The drop in Clinton's numbers extends into the Democratic Party. Seven in 10 Democrats gave Clinton positive marks, an 11-point drop from the April survey. Nearly a quarter of Democrats now say they see Clinton in an unfavorable light," according to AP.

The tough findings for the Clinton camp don't track with a Washington Post-ABC poll released earlier this week. That survey found Clinton's favorability had ticked up slightly in recent months.

But a Suffolk University-USA Today poll released Wednesday also showed signs that a barrage of GOP attacks, bad headlines and a low-key campaign strategy might be taking a toll. Clinton's position had slipped in head-to-head matchups against several Republican rivals. Her 10 percentage point lead over Jeb Bush is down to four, writes David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.

"And she is polling under 50% not only against Bush, but also against Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee."

When Bush calls an Uber, he'll get a debate over regulation

SAN FRANCISCO -- GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush plans to catch an Uber en route to a rare California campaign event at a tech start-up here on Thursday, placing him squarely in the middle of a simmering debate about the so-called “sharing economy.”

The company, popular as an alternative to taxis but controversial among those who argue it is not regulated enough, took a blow on Wednesday when an administrative judge recommended that the ride-sharing giant be fined $7.3 million and suspended from operating in California.

More broadly, the company and others like it such as Lyft and AirBnB are becoming a flash-point in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Such companies are being hailed by GOP candidates such as Bush and Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz as examples of the job-creating possibilities that are possible when the free market is unfettered by government. But others, notably Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, have expressed skepticism about the fall-out from such efforts where employees are contractors rather than full-time employees who earn standard benefits.

On Monday, Clinton said that while this sector had exciting potential, it also raised important questions about workplace protections.

Bush plans to take the Uber to a morning visit at Thumbtack , a well-funded tech start-up that connects local businesses with consumers.

“What are you doing to grow the list today?”

The Times' Mike Memoli goes inside the Clinton campaign's "Hillbuilder" operation, the effort to rebuild the out-of-date email lists left over from Clinton's 2008 bid.

"One early successful tactic in seeking to build a new online army was the creation of a daily, rapid-response style newsletter supporters could subscribe to called 'The Briefing,' launched to coincide with a new book critical of the Clinton Foundation," Memoli writes.

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Reports show cracks in the Clinton money machine

Wednesday was a FEC filing day and the campaigns had to offer a glimpse at their books. The Times' <="" a="" href="https://twitter.com/JTanfani"> Joe Tanfani has this round up of the big picture : Jeb Bush is miles ahead, thanks to a well-funded super PAC backing him, while Hillary Rodham Clinton led the pack in donations directly to her campaign. Tanfani notes Clinton's burn rate was stood out. Her campaign raised $46 million, but spent $18 million in the quarter. That's more than any other candidate raised.

Clinton's camp has others reasons to worry about in the numbers, Politico reports. Clinton's haul is dwarfed by the totals of the 15 candidates on the other side, although she is the overwhelming front-runner for the Democratic nomination. "So far, the 15 candidates vying for the Republican nomination have raked in more than $280 million to Clinton's $71.5 million, through a mix of campaign fundraising, super PAC donations and other money groups," Politico found. "Hillary's squaring off against a lot of Republican cash."

Others noted Bush's success winning Wall Street money. The Wall Street Journal reports Bush collected $145,000 from employees of Goldman Sachs in just 15 days.

If you prefer your fundraising information in chart form, check out this The New York Times feature.

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