Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

Tick tock motherfuckers!

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

Republicans don’t trust women.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / Message of love

Reader Interactions

218Comments

  3. 3.

    Warren Terra

    Karma is a b!tch, aint it? Which doesn’t for a moment make this advertisement and its cruel parody of an argument anything but repugnant, doesn’t make it fair on Jeb!, and could never excuse The Donald for releasing it. Sadly, his superpower is that he’s comfortable being inexcusable.

  5. 5.

    Germy Shoemangler

    Bar is wearing a mouthguard, she’s grinding her teeth so much at night. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Who is this Trump character, and why is he stealing her son Jeb’s thunder?
    Disgusting!

  7. 7.

    Cacti

    There’s no such thing as a low blow or fighting dirty against the Bush family.

    They practically invented modern gutter politics.

  9. 9.

    Amir Khalid

    Even Jeb doesn’t deserve to be quoted out of context like that. The Donald, he’s some vile piece of work. And I have this sinking feeling he’ll have said worse than this before the end of the primaries.

  10. 10.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @guachi: Jeb calling immigrant crimes (murder, rape) an “act of love” while Trump shows mugshots of wooly-headed dusky-skinned people.

    It’s willie horton for the 21st century.

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @guachi:

    A new Instagram video from GOP frontrunner Donald Trump posted Monday attempts to draw a connection between former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s “thoughts on illegal immigrants” and murders allegedly committed by undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

    The short rehashes Bush’s much-maligned “act of love” remark from April about undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. illegally as a means of providing for their children.

    The ad cuts between Bush and mugshots of Francisco Sanchez, Santana Ganona, and Brian Omar Hyde, all of whom are undocumented immigrants linked to high profile murders in recent months.

    “LOVE? FORGET LOVE [sic] IT’S TIME TO GET TOUGH!” the ad booms.

    via TPM

  13. 13.

    kdaug

    Ohhh, I had forgotten about ads. Here I was focused on debates and press, but holy shit the ad wars are going to be epic.

    Political ads are a seasonal business, but ’tis the season, and I’m looking for a new gig…

  17. 17.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Cluttered Mind: Brutal! She picked the wrong runt from the litter. What does she have against Jeb? He could be the light of her life for god’s sake.

  18. 18.

    Hal

    I remember Mary Matalin going ape shit on Jane Wallace way back in the 90s when Jane referred to the Willie Horton ad as racist. Good times.

  19. 19.

    rk

    Even Jeb doesn’t deserve to be quoted out of context like that.

    I think he does. He handed his brother the election in Florida. Karl Rove derailed McCain with his foul ads about McCain’s adopted black daughter.It’s about time the establishment which created these monsters was made to face them. The Bushes have never hesitated to play dirty.

  20. 20.

    Another Holocene Human

    @OzarkHillbilly: I knew it was out of context. But Jeb!’s smirky demeanor works against him here.

    He looks eerily like the head of a dept I have to go up against in negotiations who is such an asshole he actually openly admits he’s an asshole to anyone who asks.

  21. 21.

    Another Holocene Human

    @rk: JEB! was completely evil in Florida but when it came to voter purges, he had help from the orange juice heiress. Never Forget.

  22. 22.

    Hurling Dervish

    @Cacti: so true. Senior accused Bill Clinton of being a closet communist because he visited Moscow in college. Junior accused Kerry of cheating to get his medals and made up endless crap about Al Gore. No decency.

  24. 24.

    Warren Terra

    @guachi:

    Link blocked at work. Could some kind soul describe it for me?

    It’s really short, 14 seconds in all, a few interspersed shots, all text is in huge block letters, allcaps, white on black:
    1) “Jeb Bush’s thoughts on illegal immigrants”
    2) An apparent mugshot, next to “(name) charged with murder”
    3) video from Fox News of Jeb Bush speaking (in sync with the voiceover, more on that in a sec)
    4) Another apparent mugshot, next to “(name) convicted murderer”
    5) Yet another apparent mugshot, next to “(name) charged with murdering three people”
    6) Back to another couple seconds of Jeb Bush speaking, ending with his saying “it’s an act of love”
    7) “LOVE?”
    8) “FORGET LOVE, IT’S TIME TO GET TOUGH!”
    9) “Trump (linefeed) make America great again!”

    The voice over is fiddly, slightly nervous music, a couple of bonging bell tones at effective points, with Jeb! Bush saying “Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony, it’s an act of love”.

    Obviously, Jeb! was talking about people crossing the border illegally to support or to join their families – but that’s interposed with supposed murderers. And how chickenshit was it to have two of the three be suspects, not convicts? What if they’re not guilty?

  25. 25.

    Lee

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

    *gasp*

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

    Couldn’t have happened to a nicer family.

  26. 26.

    C.V. Danes

    As Orwell would probably say, if you want someone to stop thinking, roll out the atrocities. Conversely, look out for the atrocity laden argument: it’s baiting you with emotion instead of reason.

  29. 29.

    redshirt

    @MattF: I don’t think so. Certainly no Democrats.

    That’s why I love Trump – he’s saying true things about other Republicans that we all know to be true, but never gets mentioned in the MSM because if it’s a liberal saying it, well, they can’t be trusted. But a fellow Republican? The Donald?

    And so the republican foundation is assaulted.

  30. 30.

    SatanicPanic

    I don’t like it, even if it is directed at Jeb. Some face-tattooed skinhead is going to go out and beat on some brown person cause they saw this.

  32. 32.

    Cacti

    @Hurling Dervish:

    so true. Senior accused Bill Clinton of being a closet communist because he visited Moscow in college. Junior accused Kerry of cheating to get his medals and made up endless crap about Al Gore. No decency.

    Even against their fellow GOPers:

    They started a whisper campaign in South Carolina about John McCain having an illegitimate black child.

  33. 33.

    JustRuss

    While I’m more than happy to see Jebby get some out-of-context karma, Trump’s doubling-down on the “immigrants are all rapists and murderers” meme is disgusting.

  34. 34.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Amir Khalid: I have this sinking feeling he’ll have said worse than this before the end of the primaries.

    I’d put real cash money on the proposition that he will have said worse before the beginning of the primaries.

  36. 36.

    AxelFoley

    @Amir Khalid:

    Even Jeb doesn’t deserve to be quoted out of context like that. The Donald, he’s some vile piece of work. And I have this sinking feeling he’ll have said worse than this before the end of the primaries.

    Jeb? deserves every bit of shit Trump throws at him.

  40. 40.

    Amir Khalid

    @rk:
    I don’t think Jeb has much right to complain about the Donald hitting him below the belt, I just think hitting below the belt is always wrong. The only thing Jeb can do about it now is to hit Donald below the belt as well. But I don’t think he’s got the stones to do it.

  43. 43.

    Zinsky

    For all the death and suffering that the Bush family has created over the past 75 years, this seems like weak tea, by comparison. That said, this is hideous, filthy hateful propaganda. It isn’t poor brown people that have degraded America – it is the wealthy white people.

  44. 44.

    Bobby Thomson

    Apart from the bullshit sins of the father argument, the real victims of this ad are not named Bush.

  46. 46.

    boatboy_srq

    @rk: JEB! handed his brother the election twice: first time with the ballot miscounting in 2000, the second time with hurricane emergency response in 2004. If Heckuvajob Brownie’s FEMA had been allowed to be the miserable excuse for cronyism an agency in the Charlie/Frances/Ivan/Jeanne response that it was just for Katrina a year later, the ’04 [s]election would have looked very different, GW2 or no GW2.

  49. 49.

    trollhattan

    @Amir Khalid:
    With a forty-year record of shamelessness in the public eye there’s basically nothing to be revealed about The Donald that can cause significant damage unless it’s PROOF he’s a RINO. IIRC he and Newt have the same wife count and his divorces are far less messy and nasty than either Newt’s or McCain’s. The rubes just don’t care.

  51. 51.

    Paul in KY

    @C.V. Danes: If I know JEB! (and maybe I don’t), he’ll roll out the butthurt & act all saintly & stuff, bemoaning the perfidy of this nasty ad.

    However, it may not work on The Donald. His alien hairpiece/lifeform from the Xpthynix (closest we can come to pronouncing it) dimension protects him from emo-butthurt ripostes.

    Edit: Above is standard practice when a Democrat has a strong/nasty ad. they may not know what to do when it is by another ‘Repub’.

  52. 52.

    Goblue72

    @Roger Moore: Bernie is keeping Hillary & O’Malley honest. They can’t go personal/negative on the guy who has made a career of ALWAYS punching above the belt, without risking a massive backfire. He’s like an Akido master of anti-negative campaigning.

  54. 54.

    Keith G

    Folks are actually taking the time to view political ads? Shame on them.

    I do listen to the New York Times Digest via Audible and Prof. Krugman took a crowbar and blow torch to Jeb in his latest column. which is in today’s paper.

  57. 57.

    jl

    ¿Quien es mas Trumpo?

    Ni Christie ni Scotty ni ¿¡Jeb!? ni Bobby ni nadie es mas Trumpo.
    Solo El Donaldo es mas Trumpo.

    ¡Vive Trumpismo!

  58. 58.

    Roger Moore

    @Amir Khalid:

    But I don’t think he’s got the stones to do it.

    If he ever did have the stones, they’ve just taken quite a bruising. That said, it’s not ¡Jeb!’s stones that are in question; it’s his lackeys’. They’re the ones who are going to be responsible for his response.

  59. 59.

    Cervantes

    @Amir Khalid:

    Even Jeb doesn’t deserve to be quoted out of context like that.

    I agree that no one deserves to be lied about.

    @DougJ:

    Trump’s nasty “Act Of Love” ad is pretty much Willie Horton 2, Electric Boogaloo. I suppose you could say that Jeb deserves it, since his dad gave us the Willie Horton ads.

    Horton was, among other things, a convicted murderer and rapist. Comparing undocumented immigrants to him, even indirectly, is … well, you tell me what it is.

  60. 60.

    boatboy_srq

    @Bobby Thomson: True; but considering what ars3h0les the entire GOTea primary field is being on this issue, there’s no reason to assume any of the rest would be any kinder, and plenty of reason to point to this as proof that the GOTea does not deserve to govern until it outgrows its elitist, racist, sexist, anti-Otherist faux-moralist bent. They’re going to keep doing this, no matter how nicely we ask them not to or now angrily we denounce them. Complaining that the victims are the one-would-think innocent-until-proven guilty persons splashed all over the ad, and pointing out the “deport’em all” attitude in the ad, isn’t going to make the GOTea stop; only mashing them into the dirt every single election (until they either grow up or implode) will do that.

  62. 62.

    jl

    I’ve been supportive of the Sanders campaign. Not sure I agree with him that we should start debates between Democrats and Republicans asap. May be better that they be left alone to destroy each other and what is left of the party’s reputation trying to out Trumpo each other, and babbling toxic garbage, making idiotic fantasy proposals, and avoiding any facts, substance and reality for as long as possible.

    Maybe it is just me, but I think that is excellent preparation for them for debates with the Democratic nominee for the general election.

  63. 63.

    dedc79

    @Cervantes:

    Horton was, among other things, a convicted murderer and rapist. Comparing undocumented immigrants to him, even indirectly, is … well, you tell me what it is.

    This is unfair. DougJ is comparing the ads (and most critically, the purpose of the ads) not the people who are the subject of those ads.

  64. 64.

    SuperHrefna

    @rk: Oh yes, and though I’ve never had any time for Trump I do thank him for his petulant insistence that Jeb? will never be president. I read somewhere that he’s so down on the Hebster because he blames him for Univision pulling out of a bunch of lucrative contracts with Trump. I have no idea how true that is, but it does ring true to both Trump and Bush’s characters.

  65. 65.

    Keith

    In a not too distant future – an SNL skit depicting Jeb weepily lamenting his status as a “one primary candidate” – well, at this rate that may be his fate.

  67. 67.

    gene108

    @Face:

    Who or what is “Bar” that everyone is referring to?

    Barbara Bush the Elder (John Bush’s mom)

    Barbara Bush the Younger is one of George W. Bush’s daughters.

  68. 68.

    jl

    @Roger Moore: Yes, Jeb? is running a conventional GOP BS slimebucket campaign. His people arrange for a guy who knows a guy to sing buckets of shit and mud. While Jeb? whines hypocritically, and shadow boxes by the Marquess of Queensberry rules.

  69. 69.

    lgerard

    /JEB is such a loser.

    When is he going to start punching Trump for employing the same undocumented workers he rails against, buying all the crap he sticks his name on from China and promoting a pyramid scheme and a ripoff “University”.

    /JEB is so petrified of alienating the bigots and racists that he seems catatonic.

  70. 70.

    SenyorDave

    @trollhattan: With a forty-year record of shamelessness in the public eye there’s basically nothing to be revealed about The Donald that can cause significant damage unless it’s PROOF he’s a RINO. IIRC he and Newt have the same wife count and his divorces are far less messy and nasty than either Newt’s or McCain’s. The rubes just don’t care.

    I’ve seen some stuff about The Donald and the mob. I am shocked that his opponents haven’t started to go there. Jeb!’s window is closing fast.

  71. 71.

    MattF

    It occurs to me that this ad sends a pointed message to all the R candidates– if you mock candidate Trump, you may regret it. It’s already clear that most of the candidates are reckless. However, this ad may be the horse’s head in the bed– it’s OK if you’re not Donald’s pal, but you don’t want to be his enemy.

  72. 72.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:
    And possibly not the ammunition.

    What can you say about a washed up reality TV star with a bad comb over, 4 bankruptcies that he willingly talks about, who is a raging hypocrite, and cares not a wit about anybody knowing?

  74. 74.

    NonyNony

    @jl:

    Not sure I agree with him that we should start debates between Democrats and Republicans asap. May be better that they be left alone to destroy each other and what is left of the party’s reputation trying to out Trumpo each other, and babbling toxic garbage, making idiotic fantasy proposals, and avoiding any facts, substance and reality for as long as possible.

    Actually I think the best approach would be for the Dems to mostly leave each other alone while lobbing rhetorical bombs at the GOP candidates to see who can get each GOP candidate to alienate the most people or haul out the most vicious attacks against his fellow Republicans. Winner gets, I dunno, center stage at the next Dem candidate debate or something.

  76. 76.

    gene108

    @Amir Khalid:

    But I don’t think he’s got the stones to do it.

    I think it is more “people in glass houses should not throw stones” that keeps people from piling on Trump.

    They all have shady business dealings, though none made as much cash as Trump, and none of their actual policies make any sense.

    Trump’s been in the spot light for 30+ years. He’s a relatively open book. There’s not a lot of damning revelations about him that have not been published already. He’s just fine in living in a “glass house”.

  77. 77.

    J R in WV

    This isn’t really dirty pool, Bush said those things, the film isn’t doctored.

    It is evil in the sense that Trump is beating the nativist drums, trying to make Bush look like a RINO moderate with feelings (Impossible! Bush family feelings are removed at birth!) while pandering to white neo-nazis.

    On the other hand, this is probably the best attack ad since the anti-Goldwater ad from the 1963-64 campaign, with a little blonde girl, 3 or 4 years old, playing with a daisy flower in the foreground, while in the background an atomic mushroom cloud silently rises over the American landscape.

    That ad only ran in a few markets, only a few times, but it exploded in the election news coverage, ran on all the evening news shows in an era where that was THE news source for everyone, and killed Barry Goldwater’s chances of election in one fell swoop.

    Maybe John Ellis shrub is a goner now? Hope so, I think that’s Trump’s whole point, that J.E.B! is an ass and the nation can’t stand another Bush assministration.

    And if the Republican nominee isn’t Trump, the Dem candidate is going to cakewalk to the White House.

  78. 78.

    Amir Khalid

    @trollhattan:
    Alas, I wasn’t out doing that. Still recovering after my recent hospital stay.

    But I happen to understand why Najib won’t resign. Right now, being in office as PM is his only way to keep that little matter of the extraneous 2.6 BILLION RINGGIT IN HIS PERSONAL BANK ACCOUNT from ever being properly investigated.

    But the stink of it isn’t going away. The last couple of general elections have Najib’s coalition Barisan Nasional on a down trend, losing their 2/3 majority in Parliament and the total popular vote to Pakatan Rakyat. Barisan and Najib’s own party UMNO must at some point cut their losses with him.

  79. 79.

    SuperHrefna

    @lgerard: Jeb is unbelievably bad at this. It seems like I’ve been hearing for twenty years that he’s the smart one of the Bush crime family, and now I finally get to see him in action and he’s just this pathetic little runt. OK, he’s a Bush so he’s sleazy as all get out, but really he’s mostly just hopeless at politics. It’s a scary thought, but Dubya might just turn out to be that smartest puppy in that litter. Most conniving, anyway.

  80. 80.

    MattF

    @SuperHrefna: It’s also notable that we all tend to blame the people that Dubya hired– Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, etc. But, somehow, Dubya himself gets kind of a pass, ’cause he’s really not all that clever…

  81. 81.

    trollhattan

    @gene108:
    That’s not just any glass house; it’s the Trump! Glass House and it’s YOUUUUUGE, classy and better than yours.

    There’s just not enough popcorn. I’ve been waiting for RtR and srv to duke it out in one of these threads but am not completely convinced they’re not the same person and that person might just be DougJ.

  83. 83.

    NonyNony

    @SuperHrefna:

    It’s a scary thought, but Dubya might just turn out to be that smartest puppy in that litter.

    W was certainly the best political campaigner in the family. Head and shoulders above Poppy Bush. Jeb! is looking to me more like Poppy Bush II than the second coming of W. Remember – HW Bush only ended up in the White House by riding on Reagan’s coattails – he didn’t make it in on his own campaigning chops.

    I don’t know if that makes him smarter though. W’s intelligence was highly focused on the kinds of things that make you good at political campaigning. Jeb! might well be smarter at other things.

    I’ve seen no evidence of this – his tenure as governor was mediocre at the best of times – but everyone keeps saying he’s the smart one so who knows? Maybe he’s really, really good at Trivia Night at BW3s.

  84. 84.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @dedc79:

    I’m surprised (and maybe a little disappointed) you didn’t go with Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together“

    But let’s save their “Muskrat Love” for the inevitable attack ad directed at the semi-sentient creature on Trump’s head.

  85. 85.

    rikyrah

    @Amir Khalid:

    But I happen to understand why Najib won’t resign. Right now, being in office as PM is his only way to keep that little matter of the extraneous 2.6 BILLION RINGGIT IN HIS PERSONAL BANK ACCOUNT from ever being properly investigated

    Everytime I see reference to his bank account, I LOL.

    If you’re gonna be a thief..

    BE A THIEF!!

  86. 86.

    trollhattan

    @Amir Khalid:
    Thanks for the backgrounder. I’m amazed our media are paying any attention at all, so there’s that. Continue getting back to healthy status!

  88. 88.

    redshirt

    @NonyNony:

    W was certainly the best political campaigner in the family. Head and shoulders above Poppy Bush. Jeb! is looking to me more like Poppy Bush II than the second coming of W. Remember – HW Bush only ended up in the White House by riding on Reagan’s coattails – he didn’t make it in on his own campaigning chops.

    I forget where I read it (here, maybe), but someone described Jeb! as HW in the grocery store scanner gaffe, but all the time. Made me laugh.

  89. 89.

    Paul in KY

    @Bobby Thomson: I know! However, that’s the way they always respond. Because, it’s usually a Democrat putting one on them in a general election. If that’s the only arrow in your quiver, what do you do?

  90. 90.

    Ruckus

    @SenyorDave:
    The mob is not going to scare t rump. If he’s done business with them and survived, and prospered, so did they. The mob may not like having a light shined on them but do you think they are going to blame t rump when any ad has say, Jeb’s name on it? And can you imagine that Jeb and/or family doesn’t have similar or the same contacts?

  91. 91.

    NonyNony

    @redshirt:

    How in the world is Ben Carson polling second, to Trump? What a crazy country.

    Shockingly, if you build a political party around the idea that professional politicians are all crooks who should be booted out of office, a portion of your voting base is going to be the group of people who take that idea seriously and think that the remedy is to vote for people who aren’t politicians.

    Carson is snapping up the people who don’t like politicians but also don’t like Donald Trump.

  93. 93.

    J R in WV

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Now, now! I was listening to Trump’s speech in South Carolina last Thursday when he invited a lady in the crowd to come up and physically inspect his hair. She confessed that it is real hair attached to his head.

    The fact that he has a goofy comb-over and would look better with even a cheap wig isn’t really the same as having a Tribble or o’possum on his head.

    But I hate him with a passion, so go ahead, diss him any way you can, it’s vital to our nation to keep him out of the Oval Office.

  94. 94.

    lgerard

    @redshirt:

    How in the world is Ben Carson polling second, to Trump? What a crazy country.

    This is the single most inexplicable thing about the whole GOP debacle. As far as I can see, he is invisible, only surfacing on rare occasions to say something monumentally stupid.

    I can only believe that the RWHJ mantra about all government being evil elevates him above anyone who has ever held or run for office.

  95. 95.

    DougJ

    @redshirt:

    I find Carson’s popularity the strangest of all. He’s spent zero time mastering policy, even less than Trump, and he’s at least as low energy on the stump as Jeb. He does have a pleasant voice and he uses it to talk about the bible. Maybe that’s all it takes.

  96. 96.

    EdinNJ

    @trollhattan:

    I keep seeing stuff like this posted here, and I can’t help shaking my head at how shortsighted this thinking is. Do you realize that there are hours and hours of radio, tv, and news appearances over the last 30 years containing so much oppo research that has not even been touched? This idea that everything is out there is just silly. No one watched The Apprentice, no one was staying up late to see him on Letterman, etc. or getting up early to hear his inane arguments on Howard Stern over the years. All that will come out when it matters. The people who are supporting him right now know nothing about him other than he sounds tough and looks successful.

    Trump is sucking all the oxygen out of the room. He is commanding all the attention and is leading the Repubs, which leads to more coverage. That’s why he’s winning. Nate Silver has proven time and again that this early in the race, new coverage is directly related to polling, and that’s where we are at today.

    All the candidates, whether they are Republican or Democrat are no going to attack Trump right now. It would just feed into his strategy of being a bigger dick than everyone else. Better to let him get so overconfident that he makes even more bold statements. At some point, when there is actually voting going on, all these pronouncements will be juxtoposed with all the other things Trump has said over the years, and his supporters will either go back to not being invested in politics, or move on to the next shiny thing.

  97. 97.

    Gin & Tonic

    @J R in WV: The “Daisy” ad actually only aired once, but on a national broadcast. Even the fact that it was pulled was a move calculated for impact. Don’t forget that Jack Valenti was in charge of LBJ’s PR then.

  98. 98.

    Paul in KY

    @Amir Khalid: Hope he wouldn’t try anything unseemly like dissolve parliament & try to become a dictator.

    Crassus, back in the day, said you weren’t really rich unless you could afford to raise, pay & equip your own private army. 2.5 Billion puts you in that territory, IMO.

    Edit: Just saw it was riingit. Is that a lot American?

  99. 99.

    Paul in KY

    @NonyNony: If Mike Dukakis had run an even half way decent campaign, he’d have beat that upper class twit. Grrrr, still mad about that one.

  101. 101.

    trollhattan

    @lgerard:
    That somebody has been successful in one thing, and that one thing has zero relationship to the job he’s running for, simply seems not to be a concern. “But, he’s a successful SURGEON!” Yes, a surgeon who happens to not “believe” in evolution. How does anybody reconcile those conflicting items? Leadership material, right there.

  102. 102.

    raven

    @Ruckus: Show me a Hero by David Simon on HBO does a great job showing the mob!

    “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy”!

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

  103. 103.

    MattF

    @DougJ: Carson’s political attractiveness is infinitesimally positive, which places him higher than anyone else. The rest of the ‘deep bench’ is under water.

  104. 104.

    Ruckus

    @EdinNJ:
    It isn’t that there aren’t plenty of things wrong with t rump, it’s that he doesn’t care if you point them out. And his support doesn’t care, in fact they seem to enjoy his whatever you call it, bravado, recklessness, hate….. That won’t make dems vote for him unless they hate all politicians, at which point he might get their vote.

  105. 105.

    trollhattan

    @EdinNJ:
    It’s obvious to me why the Dems are staying well clear–The Donald’s doing their work for them. I’m quite sanguine that they’d be able to handle him with ease should he emerge as the nominee–an outcome I give less than 1 in 10 odds.

    The Republicans are just idiots, the lot of them, and they’re frozen in the headlights. Pity.

  106. 106.

    NonyNony

    @Paul in KY:

    If Mike Dukakis had run an even half way decent campaign, he’d have beat that upper class twit. Grrrr, still mad about that one.

    I disagree – I don’t think it was Dukakis’s fault. The fundamentals were all in Bush’s favor – economy was growing, Reagan had high approval ratings overall, country was fairly stable and not at open war, the long drawn out tension of the Cold War was starting to look over, etc.

    I don’t really think Dukakis ever had a shot, even if his campaign had been note perfect, Bush had too many advantages on his side to lose without a disastrous misstep on his campaign trail.

  107. 107.

    MomSense

    @SatanicPanic:

    That is my concern too. I’m rooting for injuries among the Republican candidates but not at the expense of an already vulnerable population.

    Who knew that when fascism came to this country it would be covered in a bad comb-over and soaked in orange spray tan?

  110. 110.

    NonyNony

    @DougJ:

    I find Carson’s popularity the strangest of all. He’s spent zero time mastering policy, even less than Trump, and he’s at least as low energy on the stump as Jeb. He does have a pleasant voice and he uses it to talk about the bible. Maybe that’s all it takes.

    I don’t think so – I really think Carson is pulling votes from the portion of the GOP base that hates and loathes politicians and only votes for them when they have no choice. Some of those guys are voting for Trump, but the ones who hate Trump are backing Carson. (Or Fiorina, I guess – I have no idea why she regularly seems to get about 5% support in just about every poll).

  111. 111.

    Keith G

    @redshirt:

    HW in the grocery store scanner gaffe,

    While President GHW Bush was no smooth operator, the now infamous “scanner gaffe” needs to be filed along with other over-blown (if not entirely manufactured) presidential gaffes such as, “You did not build that” or “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan”.

  113. 113.

    Cervantes

    @Amir Khalid:

    But I happen to understand why Najib won’t resign. Right now, being in office as PM is his only way to keep that little matter of the extraneous 2.6 BILLION RINGGIT IN HIS PERSONAL BANK ACCOUNT from ever being properly investigated.

    I was thoroughly amused by the UMNO vote which declared the party to be positively in favor of its leaders (such as Najib) diverting political donations into their personal bank accounts.

    They’re beyond satire — I think.

  114. 114.

    Bitter Scribe

    @Cacti: Yes, and they also invented whining when it’s used against them. Or at least set a new standard for it.

  116. 116.

    Roger Moore

    @NonyNony:

    Actually I think the best approach would be for the Dems to mostly leave each other alone while lobbing rhetorical bombs at the GOP candidates to see who can get each GOP candidate to alienate the most people or haul out the most vicious attacks against his fellow Republicans.

    I think what they should really be doing is trying to build themselves up. They should be making actual policy proposals and talking about what they’re going to do to solve the problems Americans care about. Primaries are the time to concentrate on building yourself up; dragging the other guy down is for the general election.

  118. 118.

    raven

    @Ruckus:

    Hero, which is based on Lisa Belkin’s 1999 nonfiction book of the same name, offers an elongated stare at race relations in Yonkers, N.Y., during a push to end housing segregation in the late 1980s and early ’90s. And while the climate seems ripe for a study in race, given that the backdrop of America is still cloudy with the tear gas smoke of Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, Simon assures us that the true sadness of the story is that it remains so relevant today even though he pitched the idea to HBO execs some 14 years ago.

  119. 119.

    SuperHrefna

    @Gin & Tonic: As near as I can work out its a bit more than 500 million dollars? I think you get four ringgits to the dollar.

    Edit: oops, while I trekked to xe.com quite a few got there before me!

  121. 121.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Amir Khalid: Ah, but I know how to do theoretical currency conversion calculations. That was sort of a two-part question, relating more to the practical ability of getting that large a sum *actually converted* and stored some place he could access it. The old saw about the difference between theory and practice.

  123. 123.

    redshirt

    @Keith G:

    While President GHW Bush was no smooth operator, the now infamous “scanner gaffe” needs to be filed along with other over-blown (if not entirely manufactured) presidential gaffes such as, “You did not build that” or “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan”.

    Why? I like it. It’s a cute gaffe and not mean or malicious.

  124. 124.

    SuperHrefna

    @trollhattan: I think it ties into that streak in the GOP that simply refuses to look on government work as a respectable career. According to them, communities organize themselves and any reasonable person could run the government as long as they are pure in heart.

  125. 125.

    Bitter Scribe

    The other Republicans are mostly treating Trump with kid gloves because they don’t want to alienate his supporters. Once the field narrows, if Trump’s still around, that’s when the payback will start. Every fatheaded insult he ever uttered on the air will be thrown in his face, and his thin skin will explode.

  127. 127.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:
    Did he start with anything approaching that when he became PM?
    And I noticed that UMNO voted that taking political donations for their own use was just fine. Of course that doesn’t make it reasonable but this is politics so not a lot of reason necessary.

  130. 130.

    Peale

    @Bitter Scribe: Yep. We have to remember that thin skin. My guess its going to come when he takes swipes at actual voters, not media figures and other candidates. Although I don’t know…if he can find a nurse or a nun or a school teacher to shout down, probably so much the better for him since we don’t have a lot of respect for any of those professions.

  131. 131.

    Warren Terra

    @redshirt:

    someone described Jeb! as HW in the grocery store scanner gaffe

    While it’s quite likely George H W Bush hadn’t handled a sales transaction personally in a decade or more, that incident was reportorial malice. H W was at a trade show, where the latest shiny new technology was being demonstrated. Some spokesperson showed off their latest grocery scanner, which had some improvements like displaying the product details on a big screen or some such, H W made the sort of generic laudatory comments expected of a celebrity at a product demonstration (some version of “gee, isn’t that neat? well done!”), and this became “H W is so out of touch he’s never seen a bar code scanner before!”. As I said, maybe he was that out of touch, but his pleasantries at a trade show aren’t evidence of it.

  132. 132.

    Kay

    @Roger Moore:

    I love this today, from Clinton.

    But increasingly, Americans’ trust in government is eroding. And a big reason for that is the so-called revolving door between government and the private sector.

    Good job.

    I’d like to make the ban on bonuses go into effect immediately so people would have to resign but I’m vindictive :)

  133. 133.

    Peale

    @Roger Moore: I hope people pay attention to those proposals. For now, the press is going with “Here is what Crazy Bernie said this time. Get a load of this guy!” and “Hillary gave a speech today about student loan debt relief to a group of students. She is obviously trying to deflect criticism from her latest murder allegations. What do you think? Is Hillary trying to cover up her scandal? Why hasn’t she dropped out yet?”

  134. 134.

    Ruckus

    @Peale:
    I believe it’s one poll and is being considered as out side the normal. For now.
    Many on the repub side may consider that Carson wouldn’t be any worse than t rump and he’s black and was a successful surgeon and an evangelical so they would rather vote for him as a non politician. And I’d bet they think that if he is black the left won’t attack him. Didn’t work for Palin, bet it won’t work for him. The left didn’t attack her as a person or a woman, just for her lack of ideas and experience. They can easily do the same with Carson.

  135. 135.

    Amir Khalid

    When she comes up against him in the election proper, I hope Hillary won’t waste her time trying to shame the Donald. She needs to show that you can’t lead a nation with bluster and cockamamie stunts. She needs to make him look like a boor who will embarrass America every chance he gets, which he is. She needs to make it plain that a Vladimir Putin or an Iran is going to take the Trump administration to the cleaners at the negotiating table every single time because he, the Donald, doesn’t understand how the world works.

  136. 136.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Warren Terra: I look at it even more charitably, myself. I think having a sense of wonder when technology works is a good thing. I know a lot about data transmission in various forms, but I still find it neat when I drive through an E-ZPass lane at 55 mph and my account gets validated and debited correctly, or when a satellite sends back an image from Pluto. Yeah, it’s bits, and it’s just wireless – Guglielmo Marconi would “understand.” But it’s still way cool.

  137. 137.

    trollhattan

    @SuperHrefna:
    True. Ever since Reagan codified and packaged “the gummint is the enemy” for them it’s a go-to reflex. I hear it constantly from otherwise smart, successful people because they can’t envision anybody going into government and politics for “respectable” reasons. What really bugs me is the same cudgel is now being used on teachers.

  138. 138.

    NonyNony

    @Roger Moore:

    I think what they should really be doing is trying to build themselves up.

    I agree.

    But if they can build themselves up by contrasting themselves with the clown car over on the right, it’s just as good :)

  140. 140.

    Paul in KY

    @NonyNony: Well, I must disagree too. We were ahead till late August (even with the bumbling campaign). There was a lot of Reagan fatigue & Repubs weren’t super-motivated by GHWB. No silly tank riding & better debate performances & a better response to the Willy Horton ad (IMO), and we would have had Pres. Dukakis. There were a lot of state where Bush won 51 – 49, 52 – 48, etc.

    Also could have used VP candidate Sen. Bentson a little more. he was a better campaigner than Gov. Dukakis

  144. 144.

    Belafon

    @Goblue72: I believe there was this Democratic election in 2008 where one guy refused to attack the other person personally. Strangely enough, he ended up winning. Smart people would have probably tried to learn a lesson.

  145. 145.

    Anoniminous

    @Peale:

    Trust in the media is so low their influence on swing voters is questionable. And there’s not all that many actual swing voters anyway and their vote has almost no effect on elections.

  146. 146.

    Mike J

    @trollhattan:

    Ever since Reagan codified and packaged “the gummint is the enemy” for them it’s a go-to reflex. I hear it constantly from otherwise smart, successful people because they can’t envision anybody going into government and politics for “respectable” reasons.

    There’s a woman I go sailing with who shares that attitude about the government, even though her husband worked for the Q during Carly’s reign. I asked her how she can think the government is incompetent compared to that. At least the government usually isn’t trying to screw you. The entire point of free enterprise is to get more value than you give in return.

  147. 147.

    Myiq2xu

    Poor, misunderstood Willie Horton. Why does everyone pick on him?

    BTW – Al Gore first brought up Willie.

  148. 148.

    japa21

    @Kay: Walker was supposed to be the safety net for the party if Jeb lost. And all the earlier polls showed him displaying a lot of strength, particularly in Iowa. I know history is replete with cases where early opoll leaders bombed out and folks lower in the polls surged, but I am not familiar with any where an early leader or number 2 dropped as significantly as Walker has and rebounded to win.

    He may think the Canadian wall theory (which I have a feeling was a very off the cuff, not thought out comment) will help him, but even among the xenophobic Iowans, it just makes him into a laughingstock.

  149. 149.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Paul in KY: There were 10 states in 1988 won by Bush where he got less than 53% of the vote, including CA, PA and IL. Flip all 10 and Dukakis still loses by 28 EV’s.

  150. 150.

    Brachiator

    Holy shite. It’s months until the primaries and Trump is setting fire to Jeb!’s house already. All the GOP civility is thrown out the window. Has he, will he, go after Rubio as hard as this?

  151. 151.

    Amir Khalid

    @Ruckus:
    Najib’s a minor aristocrat from Pahang and his first marriage was into minor Terengganu royalty; so no, he wouldn’t have started out filthy rich. His dad Tun Abdul Razak was our second PM, but is not thought to have been corrupt — at least, not on that scale.

    It was stupid of UMNO to hold that vote. All it does is make plain that UMNO condones corruption. If Najib wasn’t keeping that money for himself, then he was mishandling donated funds in a criminally negligent way. There’s simply no other way to interpret it. That vote was like Richard Nixon saying that if the President does it, then it’s not illegal.

  152. 152.

    japa21

    @Paul in KY: To me, the biggest mistake that Dukakis made, and which has hurt the left ever since, was not responding to Bush’s use of “The ‘L’ word” as if the word liberal was as distatseful as the F word. Dukakis never chose to stand up and defend liberalism, unlike Kennedy who did so in 1960.

    A stalwart defense of what being a liberal means would have encouraged the Dem base, may well have helped bring in some voters who viewed his hesitation to defend liberalism as admitting it was bad, and would have meant a lot in ensuing years.

  153. 153.

    Roger Moore

    @Peale:
    If the press is going to lie and distort, they’re going to lie and distort no matter what the Democratic candidates do. The best they can do is to ignore the people who are going to interpret anything they do the worst way possible and go on doing whatever they were planning on doing. Putting out policy proposals is the way Democrats show that they care about an issue, so they should continue putting out policy proposals on issues they think are important.

  155. 155.

    Amir Khalid

    @Gin & Tonic:
    The question became moot when Najib let the money pass through HIS PERSONAL BANK ACCOUNT, which is unforgivably stupid for a crook.

  156. 156.

    Paul in KY

    @japa21: If that was a factor (stupid liberals staying home due to butthurt), then he certainly should have. I’m a Liberal & I voted for him, gave money, had yard sign, etc.

  157. 157.

    redshirt

    Yeah, Dukakis wasn’t winning that election.

    That was my first election, and I voted HW. :( Sorry.

    Flash forward to 2007 or so and I’m walking in Kenmore Square and who do I see walking towards me but Mr. Dukakis. I saw him from a ways off and I was getting ready to say hi, and then he veers off and picks up a piece of trash and dumps it into a trashcan well out of the way, and then he continued on walking home. Really impressed me – he’s the kind of man who picks up other people’s trash.

  159. 159.

    RSA

    @SatanicPanic:

    I don’t like it, even if it is directed at Jeb. Some face-tattooed skinhead is going to go out and beat on some brown person cause they saw this.

    Me either. This kind of information sometimes feeds into policy decisions, and attack ads can distort the prevalence or importance of specific examples. In this case, it seems to me that Trump’s ad, if it’s effective, might make it harder for other Republicans to bring up compassion when talking about immigration laws.

    (I can’t say I’m well-informed on this, though.)

  160. 160.

    Calouste

    @Ruckus: RealClearPolitics has a poll published yesterday by the DesMoines register that has Trump at 23 and Carson at 18 in Iowa. Not too surprising considering the heavy evangelical bent of the Iowa GOP voters. Huckabee won there in 2008, and Santorum in 2012.

  161. 161.

    Mandalay

    @redshirt:

    How in the world is Ben Carson polling second, to Trump?

    Well he checks two important boxes for likely Iowa voters:
    – He has the highest favorable rating (81%) and the lowest unfavorable rating (6%) of all the candidates.
    – Like Trump, he is not a politician.

    So I suppose it could be argued that he’s doing so well simply because he is not as awful as his rivals. That said, it was also a pretty worthless and meaningless poll (only 405 Iowa voters with margin of error of +4.9 percent).

  162. 162.

    SenyorDave

    @Ruckus: I wasn’t talking about Trump being scared of the mob, I was talking about his opponents linking Trump to unsavory types.

    I’ve seen some stuff that indicates that Trump directly dealt with “some people” in regard to the unions (he somehow managed to avoid using union people on some jobs, allegedly used immigrant Polish workers and paid them far below scale). As badly as politicians are regarded among the GOP, I don’t think those guys are very popular either. It might be that Trump has now reached the point where he is untouchable to his followers, but these guys aren’t even fighting back. You sure as hell are now going to beat Trump at his own game.

    At this point I’m scared that the combination of hating furriners and going after some of the .01% (his tax on hedge fund income, which is actually a good idea) could pull in some conservative independents.

  163. 163.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:
    Thanks.
    That’s what I thought but not up on the politics/history at all. Barely have the stomach for the politics in this country. But at least one side here is trying to make it about governing and not a 9th grade popularity contest. That is after all what a presidential election is supposed to be about, governing. Isn’t it?

  165. 165.

    NonyNony

    @Paul in KY:

    We were ahead till late August (even with the bumbling campaign). There was a lot of Reagan fatigue & Repubs weren’t super-motivated by GHWB. No silly tank riding & better debate performances & a better response to the Willy Horton ad (IMO), and we would have had Pres. Dukakis. There were a lot of state where Bush won 51 – 49, 52 – 48, etc.

    But as @Gin & Tonic points out – flip all of those states and Bush still wins.

    The fundamentals were hugely in Bush’s favor in 1988, and I’m a big believer in a) the fundamentals and b) GOTV. I don’t believe that silly gaffes or media shenanigans alter the vote in meaningful ways – they edge out at the margins, but Democrats don’t vote for Republicans because the Dem put on a silly helmet and rode around in a tank, and Republicans don’t vote for Dems because the Republican said “Read My Lips – No New Taxes” and then had to raise taxes.

    (The fundamentals screwed Bush in ’92 too – a better economy and he would have narrowly beaten Clinton instead of losing – broken tax promise or not. )

  166. 166.

    Roger Moore

    @Paul in KY:
    I think you need to go back and look at the election results a bit more closely. Bush won the popular vote by close to 8%. There were not “a bunch of states” that Bush won by just a few percentage points; there were only 6 that he won by fewer than 4%, and he still would have won the election if he had lost all 6. He would have won if he had lost every state where he won by fewer than 7% in the actual election.

  168. 168.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    @Amir Khalid: Don’t let that feeling sink you – we know Trump will say worse things than that by the primaries.

    Trump is doing more damage to the image of the Republican party in the eyes of the not-crazy than anyone or anything else right now, and to that I say “keep on keepin’ on”. Vile and dangerous as the message is, it’s working with just enough people that other klowns in the kar are starting to incorporate it into their own spew. Trump’s gonna drive the klown kar right off the goddamned cliff, and the crash will be glorious.

    Is he being unfair to Jeb? Yes. Do I care? Not a goddamned bit. My only hope is that he grabs enough delegates to make the convention a total circus.

  170. 170.

    Ruckus

    @SenyorDave:
    I disagree.
    T Rump is not embarrassable, his supporters are not embarrassed by any of his history. They like that he supposedly gets things done. That he’s made more than they will in a billion lifetimes. They like how he talks to people, that he had his own reality show. That he is a bully. That he is not a politician. That he may have been successful in dealing with the mob. All the things that we think should easily discredit him are what engages his supporters. We dislike him for all the right reasons and they like him for all the same reasons. Unless someone can get him charged and convicted before the election, the mob doesn’t scare him. And maybe not even then.

  171. 171.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @NonyNony: I remember the bumper sticker (or was it in a TV ad?) “Saddam Hussein still has his job. Do you?” It really got under the collective skin of the Bush campaign.

    Now all Trump has to do is call Jeb? “a low energy kind of guy”

    and mad props to whoever came up with “Jeb?”

  172. 172.

    Myiq2xu

    Willie Horton:

    William R. “Willie” Horton (born August 12, 1951) is an American convicted felon who, while serving a life sentence for murder (without the possibility of parole),[1] was the beneficiary of a Massachusetts weekend furlough program. He did not return from his furlough, and ultimately he committed assault, armed robbery and rape.

    […]

    On October 26, 1974, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Horton and two accomplices robbed Joseph Fournier, a 17-year-old gas station attendant, and then fatally stabbed him 19 times after he had cooperated by handing over all of the money in the cash register. His body was dumped in a trash can. Fournier died from blood loss.[2] Horton was convicted of murder, sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and incarcerated at the Northeastern Correctional Center in Massachusetts.[3]

    On June 6, 1986, he was released as part of a weekend furlough program but did not return. On April 3, 1987 in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Horton twice raped a local woman after pistol-whipping, knifing, binding, and gagging her fiancé. He then stole the car belonging to the man he had assaulted. He was later shot and captured by Corporal Yusuf Muhammad (formerly named Joseph Bell) of the Prince George’s County Police Department after a pursuit. On October 20, Horton was sentenced in Maryland to two consecutive life terms plus 85 years. The sentencing judge, Vincent J. Femia, refused to return Horton to Massachusetts, saying, “I’m not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released. This man should never draw a breath of free air again.”[4]

    On April 18, 1996, Horton was transferred to the Jessup Correctional Institution (then called the Maryland House of Correction Annex), a maximum security prison in Jessup, Maryland, where he remains.[5]

    Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis was the governor of Massachusetts at the time of Horton’s release, and while he did not start the furlough program, he had supported it as a method of criminal rehabilitation. The state inmate furlough program, originally signed into law by Republican Governor Francis W. Sargent in 1972, excluded convicted first-degree murderers. However, in 1973, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that this right extended to first-degree murderers, because the law specifically did not exclude them.[6][7] The Massachusetts legislature quickly passed a bill prohibiting furloughs for such inmates. However, in 1976, Dukakis vetoed this bill arguing it would “cut the heart out of efforts at inmate rehabilitation.”[8] The program remained in effect through the intervening term of governor Edward J. King and was abolished during Dukakis’ final term of office on April 28, 1988. This abolition occurred only after the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune had run 175 stories about the furlough program and won a Pulitzer Prize.[9]

  174. 174.

    Ruckus

    @Grumpy Code Monkey:
    The only real issue is collateral damage. And we’ve already seen that. Will it get worse? Most likely. Will that win the hearts and minds for our side? Only of those that have them. So it may keep him (and the rest of the clown car) out of the white house and power.
    But, and it is a big, round, firm but, collateral damage.

  175. 175.

    Heliopause

    @japa21:

    Nate Silver took another Trump Dump today, with a special guest appearance by Ben Carson. He says that neither are at all likely to win. Now, we’re all familiar with the argument that GOP voters often have brief polling flings at this stage of the election cycle that ultimately fade away, and that’s true enough, but has it ever been the case that the eventual Establishment winner was polling as abysmally as Jeb and Walker are currently? They’re at 8 and 4.7 in the current Pollster average. Closest in recent memory would be McCain in 2007, who at least was in double figures, and the general makeup of that field was much different from this one. So yes, early frontrunners often fade, but if an Establishment candidate eventually wins he’ll have dug himself out of a gargantuan (unprecedented?) hole.

  178. 178.

    boatboy_srq

    @Bobby Thomson: Yes, and…? This is the GOTea in 2015 we’re discussing. Reprehensible is what they do. You’re not seriously suggesting that if any of us complained to Trump’s (or any other) campaign that they’d do anything but laugh, are you?

  179. 179.

    Bobby Thomson

    @NonyNony: Atwater was a very effective campaigner. Dukakis had a huge bounce after the June convention and wound up losing handily.

  180. 180.

    Frank Bolton

    @NonyNony:

    The fundamentals were hugely in Bush’s favor in 1988, and I’m a big believer in a) the fundamentals and b) GOTV. I don’t believe that silly gaffes or media shenanigans alter the vote in meaningful ways – they edge out at the margins, but Democrats don’t vote for Republicans because the Dem put on a silly helmet and rode around in a tank, and Republicans don’t vote for Dems because the Republican said “Read My Lips – No New Taxes” and then had to raise taxes.

    To put things in perspective, let’s just extrapolate from exit-polling.

    If the so-called milquetoast, fumbling Dukakis had faced 2012 Obama’s electorate in 1988 then he would’ve won by pretty similar margins. If the smooth-as-hell, transformational Obama had faced 1988 Dukakis’s electorate in 2012 then he would’ve lost by pretty similar margins.

    Despite all of the focus on campaigning and the horserace, Presidential elections are largely won years in advance. You can of course lose a Presidential race in the span of a few hours, but if you don’t have the demographics and appeals to the demographics no amount of awesome campaigning will net you victory short of a catastrophic misstep or misfortune by your opponent.

  182. 182.

    Mandalay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Now all Trump has to do is call Jeb? “a low energy kind of guy”

    Putting everything else aside, Jeb’s demeanor must be a nightmare for his handlers. He gets himself into some weird body positions, he frequently seems confused or bored or lost, and sometimes he looks like he is ready for his afternoon nap.

    If he gets the GOP nomination the Deomocrats won’t need to sink to Trump’s level to go after him. Just show silent but damning clips of Jeb!, and in the background have Mr. Scary-voice saying “Is this the person you want to deal with Putin? ISIS? The Taliban?….Vote CLINTON!”.

    Being perceived by the voters as a wimp is deadly for a campaign.

  183. 183.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: I see that the floor people finally finished last night. You mentioned something about tile today – was that a subfloor they were putting in yesterday?

    Seems like things are moving along now, you must be pleased about that. Though after 6 weeks and no kitchen, I might be kind of cranky.

  188. 188.

    catclub

    @Heliopause: Good points. Digging out would be pretty surprising.
    But the difference for McCain to do it in 2007-8 was that he had little money, if I recall correctly. Bush has plenty to manufacture a comeback. (Doesn’t mean he will be able to do so, though.)

  189. 189.

    Ruckus

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    I do like that you seem to not give up too quickly on some. Sterner stuff and all that. I have to recognize a glimmer of something, a back light of hope or reasonable writing, anything that might portend a level of intelligence or possibility of change to keep listening.

  192. 192.

    Cervantes

    @WaterGirl:

    Muskrat Love was by America, not Captain and Tennille. :-)

    Actually, those were both covers of the almost-never-heard original by Willis Ramsey. The version by (the) Captain and Tennille was the most popular.

  193. 193.

    Cervantes

    @redshirt:

    You’re being sarcastic, right? Do you have a sense of humor?

    Not sure it’ll help but I’ll spell it out for you: what is hilarious is that you “still love that gaffe” that never actually happened.

    What other imaginary events do you find lovable?

  194. 194.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Myiq2xu:

    Wait, you actually think that complaints about the “Willie Horton ad” are somehow defenses of Horton’s crimes and not a complaint that Dukakis was blamed personally for the parole board’s decision?

    Time to change your nym to “Myiq2x0.”

  195. 195.

    redshirt

    @Cervantes: No, it actually happened, whether it’s true or not. How else are we talking about the same thing? The same historical event?

    And I assume the answer is no, you have no sense of humor. Pity.

  197. 197.

    Cervantes

    @redshirt:

    No, it actually happened, whether it’s true or not.

    You’re killing me here.

    And I assume the answer is no, you have no sense of humor. Pity.

    That must explain it, yes.

  198. 198.

    Myiq2xu

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): Reading is a life skill.

    The Massachusetts legislature quickly passed a bill prohibiting furloughs for such inmates. However, in 1976, Dukakis vetoed this bill arguing it would “cut the heart out of efforts at inmate rehabilitation.”

  200. 200.

    WaterGirl

    @boatboy_srq: America performed it long before the Captain and Tensile! But yes, I see that it was written by someone else.

    @Cervantes: I didn’t even know Captain and Tennille had even done that song – the only version I have ever heard is by America.

  201. 201.

    Bobby Thomson

    @redshirt: did you laugh when Al Gore invented the internet or discovered Love Canal, even though those were dishonest stories?

  204. 204.

    Cervantes

    @redshirt:

    they are real events that happened and shaped history.

    Yes, they are real distortions and lies that may have shaped history.

    @redshirt:

    You’re right, there was never a big media kerfuffle over HW’s reactions to a scanner. I must have imagined that.

    Can’t help you any further, sorry.

  207. 207.

    Cervantes

    @rk:

    I understand: you think it’s OK to “play dirty” if someone else does so first, or even all the time.

    Others disagree.

    No further discussion is necessary.

  210. 210.

    Patricia Kayden

    @JustRuss: It’s a racist meme which is working for him — at least for now. Trump is leading in all the Repub polls precisely because of his racist bombast. Try to imagine a Democratic Presidential candidate opening his campaign with a xenophobic comment. Just wouldn’t work. But it’s worked extremely well for Trump and other candidates are noticing and following suit. Hope this damages the entire Republican Party permanently with pro-immigrants, non-racist voters next year.

  211. 211.

    Heliopause

    @catclub:

    Holy cow, Trump just jumped to 31.3 in the Pollster average. That plus the fact that Jeb’s unfavorables are as bad or worse than Trump’s and it’s hard to see how he overcomes that. Walker is 4.5% Maybe Rubio as an “establishment” alternative? He’s at 6.0%.

  212. 212.

    Cervantes

    @Myiq2xu:

    BTW – Al Gore first brought up Willie.

    No, you’re mistaken.

    Gore brought up the furlough program but not any particular convict with any particular complexion or criminal history.

    It was Atwater and company who singled Horton out and used him.

  214. 214.

    Brandon

    Is there a reason Trump is posting this stuff in Instagram but not YouTube? His verified YouTube channel only has 3 videos. And he does not have separate personal & campaign social media accounts. The whole thing is weird if you ask me.

  215. 215.

    Brandon

    @Brandon:

    Is there a reason Trump is posting this stuff in Instagram but not YouTube? His verified YouTube channel only has 3 videos. And he does not have separate personal & campaign social media accounts. The whole thing is weird if you ask me.

    This got me thinking, so I did a little research. Trump’s entire online operation are basically his Twitter and Instagram profiles. His Twitter profile has 3.9m followers, which seems like a lot. But consider that Hillary Clinton has 4.15m and Piers Morgan has over 4.5m and couple that with his lack of organization and you realize that his campaign amounts to little outside of saying outlandish things to talk about on cable news.

    Trump was this years summer of the shark and I suspect once the leaves turn he’ll be a fading memory.

  216. 216.

    J R in WV

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I’m prefectly willing to believe that it aired as a commercial once, but it was also on the news shows multiple times, as people argued about it; it was famous instantly.

    It was also pretty accurate about people’s fears and Goldwater’s positions on first use of atomic weapons. Which were used for reals just 20 years before.

    So this Trump ad also uses real words that came out of John Ellis Bush’s stupid pie hole, or he wouldn’t have that video, would he? Anyone bitching about using JEBush?’s own words against him is not of this world, politically.

Comments are closed.