Consult the lede on Jim Newell’s latest column every time you hear that Trump has “finally” gone too far:
Donald Trump has allegedly committed another devastating gaffe. That’s great news for Trump, because with each universally condemned howler, he has historically gained another couple of points in the polls.
It’s hard to blame journalists looking to mark “the moment” when Trump finally did himself in, since nobody ever lost a click overestimating the vanity of the the American public. The vast majority of us wants to think that the American masses are just good, decent folk who don’t pay attention until the bigot of the day goes a little too far. If you buy that line, then you’ll also buy into two other myths: first, that some truly odious and vile comment is somehow far, far worse than the other shitty comments Trump makes every day. And, second, that some savior will rise from the streets to finally point out how shameful and ugly Trump was on some particular day out of all the other days that he was shameful and ugly.
The birther/Muslim moment in New Hampshire is the supposed “gone too far” comment (or lack of comment) of the past week, and Carly Fiorina, with her relatively mild rebuke at the debate, is the candidate for savior of the week. I doubt if either is going to make a dent in Trump’s poll numbers.
The simple truth is that Trump is an amusement who will stay around as long as his shtick doesn’t get old. At the point his one-trick pony nature bores the Republican primary voter, he will fade away. As a one-trick pony, most of what he says is predictable, so anything he says in the future will not be much different from past comments that didn’t sink his boat. For those with short memories looking for the Joseph Welch who will finally knock Trump out of the ring, remember that Obama put a verbal beat-down on Trump that was a couple of orders of magnitude harsher than Fiorina’s, and it made no difference to his supporters today. (I realize it was Obama, but it really was devastating.)
Joe McCarthy’s shit show wasn’t stopped in its tracks the day some Harvard-educated lawyer stood up to him–people slowly got bored after months of that drunken fool’s televised b.s. Similarly, if Trump doesn’t come up with some new material, his end will come after the Republican electorate decides that it’s time to change the channel, and not a moment before.
Schlemazel
Got caught listening to Brooks and Deyon on NPR yesterday. Brooks particularly hit the “too far finally” meme and got all dreamy for Carly the corporate destroyed. I’m a wait and see on the end of Trump. If what he has said and done so far is not too far I can’t imagine what will be.
I thought it impossible but it turns out I CAN be more disappointed and disgusted with my fellow Americans.
Derelict
As I’ve said before, Trump is the Republican id running naked through the fields. Everything that comes out of his mouth is the distillation of 40 years of rightwing victimhood and grievance mongering. There is NOTHING he can say or do that will make his supporters turn away.
And not even boredom can make a dent in that.
Baud
I wish people would stop substituting “Americans” for “Republicans.” Right now, Trump is a Republican problem, and my guess is that not even that many Republicans are paying much attention to the primary right now.
WereBear
It was. But part of these bizarre mindsets is a perverse relationship with shame.
beltane
I don’t see any of the other Republicans running as being less vile than Trump. It is quite disingenuous for the punditry to make Trump the scapegoat for the decades-old festering carbuncle that is the base of the Republican party.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
Last I checked Republicans were still Americans (I’d like to discuss fixing that during your administration) so we are not wrong, but I get your point.
Still, Dump has generated a lot of attention and a lot of support when his positions, statements and attitude should relegate him to drunken shouting out of a dumpster in the ally that people steer clear of
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
Look at the head-to-head polls.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-election-trump-vs-clinton#!
Trump is our problem.
WereBear
@Derelict: Exactly. Why should they get tired of him when he is exactly what they want?
honus
@beltane: Agreed. In particular, Fiorina’s blatant lie about Planned Parenthood should uttrly disqualify her. Instead, both Scarborough and Brezinski are lauding her for it on even the liberal MSNBC.
AxelFoley
@Baud:
Thank you. Common sense like this is why Baud will get my vote.
Baud 2016
@beltane:
Baud/beltane 2016
NotMax
Oy vey.
(Badly written sentence there, but interpret it to mean for concealed carry.)
BGinCHI
Let Trump keep at it. Let it keep succeeding. It is driving the GOP into an alley that it will have no chance of getting out of in a general election.
Polls are not elections. Unless the Dems nominate a total idiot and/or wallflower who can’t argue policy, Trump will get crushed in a contest that does not include a dozen idiots and a howling mob of racists. If it turns out that the latter IS the American Public, then the country will get exactly what it deserves.
BillinGlendaleCA
I’m really liking this little tablet, perfect for reading this here blog.
Schlemazel
@NotMax:
And you know this would be a law that the oh so very strong states rights Republicans would insist superceeds and invalidates any state or local law.
Dump only diverges from GOP orthodoxy on the issue of taxes. That needs to be pointed out regularly
D58826
Apparently this has been knocking around since 2013 but first time I have seen it. – the BAP principle. i.e ‘bs asymmetry principle. It states ‘The amount of energy necessary to refute bs is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it’
Schlemazel
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Reading yes, commenting no. I hate typing on this thing. I sometimes use the speech to text but it makes some silly mistakes.
RK
You think his supporters watched that, or remember it if they did? And Obama simply ridiculed Trump for his Apprentice show, he didn’t argue Trump wasn’t capable. What that rally question may’ve done–or what is hoped, especially by the establishment–is put a roadblock in Trump’s path by revealing the ugliness he’s generating and attracting.
honus
@Schlemazel: Wasn’t it St Reagan who said something to the effect that he didn’t consider Democrats to be Americans?
Hal
The praise Fiorina is getting seems so overblown to me. It’s Ann Romney’s I love you women all over. I’m listening to republicans talking about how it took a woman to put Trump in his place, how only a woman could do to Trump what Fiorina did at the debate. Women! So mysterious, so complex, so confounding.
Lige
Still can’t believe Newell joined Slate just as it went behind a pay wall (or at least the first I noticed said paywall!)
OzarkHillbilly
Trump: Come see the Bearded Lady, the Two Headed Man, The Lizard Girl!”
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: If you’re still interested, I left another reply for you on the use of Eminent Domain issue.
Schlemazel
@honus:
It sounds like him. Many of the GOP says it regularly
Peale
@Hal: yep. It definitely seems like Grover and his talking points call got the message out to declare Carly the winner. The fact that they all landed on the same idea independently is silly.
RK
Don’t forget that Trump’s success is largely the result of a system the average American feels has failed them. Sanders is doing well for the same reason. Samders/Jesus 2016!!
Amir Khalid
@Derelict:
Where’s that jug of brain bleach?
Newell’s piece concludes that Trump would have been wasting his breath to try to correct that fool, that there are more important things for presidential candidates to worry about than fictions about Obama’s birthplace and religion. There certainly are; but these particular fictions are intended to erode the authority of a sitting President. As one who seeks the office himself, Trump has an obligation to work against its diminution by such means.
beltane
@Hal: Fiorina was declared the winner of the debate at least 48 hours before the debate took place. The Republican establishment needed her to be the winner and the talking points were distributed accordingly well before the candidates even took the stage.
Kay
I have what I consider “in state bias” where you think your governor is stronger than he/she really is but Kasich worries me because of this:
It was easy to see that Romney was going to be the nominee in ’12 because there was no one else. None of the other people were suitable as far as the Money Party and the Money Party is the real power in the GOP.
The upside of that is Romney lost, so although the Money Party always picks or at least agrees to the nominee they don’t always win the general. I’d much rather have Bush than Kasich (both are Money Party approved) so Kasich /Rubio worries me.
Kasich won the governors race the first time because Democrats were complacent. Strickland was ahead in June and then Kasich started this full-on assault and by August it was too late to stop him. He also got huge promotion on Fox News (he used to work for Fox News).
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Sadly, Trump’s only obligation is to promote Trump.
/armchair psychologist
RK
I think the polls indicated that a plurality felt Fiorina won the debate.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
That’s the only obligation Trump recognises.
MomSense
Why is the NH Muslim birther question a problem for the pundits now when they were perfectly willing to ignore when Trump was spewing it back in 2011-13? Obama ridiculing Trump at the correspondents dinner followed a Trump driven storm of bigotry and birtherism directed at the president such that he had to get Hawaii to special issue a long form birth certificate and hold a press conference to prove his U.S. citizenship. It was a devastating moment for a lot of us watching our president put through that mess. The pundits and VSP did not rent their garments over it then. It served a purpose for the republicans. Until I hear one of the “gone too far this time” opinionators apologize for not saying anything then, I will just dismiss their sudden concern. They were fine with it when it benefitted them and now they should accept the blowback. They built this.
Steeplejack
@BillinGlendaleCA:
What tablet is that again?
beltane
@MomSense: CNN et al were perfectly OK providing a platform for Orly Taitz, Andy Martin, and other birthers. It is the media, the same people who are pretending to be shocked at Donald Trump, who legitimized the birther conspiracy in the first place. The media’s only, ONLY, problem with Donald Trump is that he is not the fascist of their choosing.
Svensker
@Matt McIrvin:
Gawd. Really? That is horrifying.
RK
@MomSense: Trump wasn’t running for President then which does make things different. Not that the media does it job like it should.
Calouste
@RK: Because the media had already told them two days in advance she was going to win.
Gimlet
WASHINGTON — Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) blocked three of President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees from getting votes Thursday because he said Democrats confirmed too many judges last year that Republicans wanted to take credit for this year.
Cornyn said Obama doesn’t get to have his nominees confirmed right now because Democrats “rammed through 11 federal judges” during the lame duck congressional session in December. He said “regular order” rules in the Senate mean those nominees should have been held over until the new year, when the GOP became the majority.
Had those judges been confirmed this year, Republicans could take credit for confirming them, which he said would “roughly be on pace” with the rate of judicial confirmations in 2007, when Democrats controlled the Senate under President George W. Bush in his seventh year in office.
Cornyn went ahead and counted them as judges Republicans confirmed this year.
Cornyn glossed over the fact that everyone in the Senate, including him, voted to confirm those 11 nominees in the lame duck session. Three were from his home state of Texas and he had been pressing Democratic leaders to hold votes to confirm them — in that lame duck session.
“I certainly will be urging those Texas judges, including Judge Mazzant, to move through during the lame duck session so we can get these judges on the bench,” Cornyn told a Texas newspaper in November.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Kasich scares me too. His response to the woman over his expansion of medicaid was picture perfect for swaying individuals in the middle. I know deep down he’s a monster but I cheered.
NotMax
@Kay
Granted I have had but limited exposure to him, but first takeaway (aside from a perception of his being an economic troglodyte) is that he doesn’t strike me as having the chops for a national race nor the willingness to appear to have credibly signed on to Tea Party/evangelical extremism as a True Believer.
Kay
@MomSense:
Especially because we’ve seen them marginalize opinions that are widely-held and based on fact, like opposing the invasion of Iraq. They’re pretty effective at it when they want to be.
Birtherism was pure malice. No one has ever questioned the legitimacy of a birth record before. Birth records are regularly accepted all over the US thousands of times a day in matters ranging from adoption to probate. Just this one birth record was questioned, and only in this one scenario. It was ridiculous on its face and were it widely believed the entire system would come to a grinding halt.
OzarkHillbilly
@OzarkHillbilly: I know deep down he’s a SMALL GOVERNMENT monster but I cheered.
WereBear
@RK: the only saving grace in the media’s incompetence is that the younger the person, the more irrelevant they are.
And while that has problems, it means each outlet must earn its own respect, not coast under false colors.
Steeplejack
@Gimlet:
Link, or at least a source?
RK
@Calouste: I think being the underdog and only woman made a difference, but she also did well (at least relatively) and stood out. Maybe the media helped drive her numbers some but I think people are overestimating their influence.
Gimlet
Perhaps the criteria you are overlooking when it comes to the GOP Presidential candidates is “Whom would you rather have a beer with besides Trump”?
Gimlet
@Steeplejack: Huffington Post.
Zippity
Trump is whining on Twitter about why he should be expected to defend the President. And, would the President defend him if someone said something awful about Trump. His answer was “Hell no!” It’s just astounding the amount of people who seem to want a petulant, thin-skinned teenager as the leader of the free world. Even my 74 year old, reliably republican voter (because gays, abortion!) has said negative things about Trump. We do not discuss politics, but it surprised me when she mad a couple offhand remarks.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Would have thought the “armchair psychologist” designation made that evident.
beltane
@Gimlet: The fundies love Ben Carson. The ones who would like to have a beer with their candidate don’t seem to have anyone they’d like to have a beer with other than Trump, especially since they feel Trump will provide the beer “on the house.”
Tazj
@beltane: I know,it seems completely ridiculous to me that this one thing Trump did, or really didn’t do is so egregious that it has to be the end of him. What about all the other truly crazy things other Republican candidates and elected officials have said and done?Didn’t Carson compare the president to Hitler? Threatening shut downs of the government every few months, who cares about that? Trump has gone too far now.
SFAW
What I want to know is: who paid the NH “citizen” who asked the question? As someone hinted at on another thread – where was DougJ during all of this? The questioner sounded the way one would expect a troll to sound – the content of the question, the relatively smooth delivery, making sure the birther/Muslim talking points were front-and-center. So the only question in my mind is: was he paid by Jeb!’s campaign? Or by a Dem? Or Rancid Prickus?
Of course, the subtext is that – if the questioner is NOT a troll – it’s kinda scary that someone so fucking stupid/hateful/crazy lives “next door” (i.e., in NH).
Elmo
Goddammit. Why are people focused on what Trump’s questioner said about he President, and practically ignoring what Trump agreed to about “getting rid” of American Muslims?
Focusing on “he said the President is Muslim! Unthinkable!” actually reinforces the idea that a Muslim isnt a “real” American, and allows the other part – the far far worse part – to disappear.
The leading Republican candidate for President of the United States openly said he wanted to look into the idea of getting rid of Americans based on their religion. And instead of that being the main, horrified focus of the coverage, we have Eric Cartman coverage of the supposedly mean things said about the President.
WTEVERLASTINGF
beltane
@SFAW: Lots of crazy people in NH. It’s the Northeast’s Kapitol of Krazee. Still, R2R hasn’t been seen here in a while. Maybe he hit troll paydirt with that question.
MBunge
The comparison of Trump and McCarthy is off because McCarthy was a part of the political establishment and it, eventually, was that establishment that took him down.
Mike
SFAW
@Gimlet:
All it would take is one trial for treason, followed by a very public, very messy execution, to get the Rethugs to stop trying to destroy America.
No, I’m not serious, but sometimes I wish those motherfuckers would just move to Somalia or Dumbfuckistan or anywhere but America, so that the rest of us – well, those of us who truly care about America – can be allowed to fix what needs to be fixed.
Thoughtful David
@Peale:
It’s actually been going on for a couple of weeks. All of the MSM have been fluffing Fiorina like crazy. The Wingnut talking points went out and they’re all very assiduously repeating them.
RK
He never said that.
SFAW
@MBunge:
And I don’t think there’s a latter-day Roy Cohn pulling Trump’s strings.
Matt McIrvin
@Svensker: Some of these are from questionable sources (many from this “Morning Consult” operation I’ve never heard of before, and Gravis Marketing/One America is famously terrible, but their numbers are all over the place).
But the best you can say is that on the head-to-head question, Trump and Clinton are closer than they should be. Part of this may be that Hillary Clinton really isn’t concentrating on campaigning against him yet, and he’s getting such a large share of the relatively meager attention being paid to the campaign. But you can see clearly that Trump isn’t doing worse than the other Republican candidates in a hypothetical general-election poll; he’s doing better.
Kay
@NotMax:
I think that part is over-rated by liberals. McCain and Romney. People told me again and again that evangelicals would not vote for Romney but even if that was true it doesn’t matter. If they vote for the religious nut in the primary they need the moderates and money party voters to elect the nominee and if they stay home in the general they don’t matter. It really comes down to who you believe holds the most power in the GOP and I still think the Money Party does, outside of states they were going to carry anyway, like the entire south. They get those whoever they nominate. It’s nice if the GOP base loves the nominee in Texas or South Carolina but because they’re getting those states regardless those voters don’t matter in a close race.
WereBear
@Elmo: exactly. It’s normalization of psychopathology, & it’s been grinding along for decades.
WereBear
@SFAW: We had our shot at it with Cheney.
Gimlet
This nation is evolving into a third world country with first world armaments just like the old USSR.
beltane
@Thoughtful David: In fact, Fiorina was given a place at the main debate for the purpose of declaring her the winner of the debate. This is some very transparent bullshit.
SFAW
@Thoughtful David:
As well they should.
It takes a smart, powerful woman to nearly-destroy a company like HP – just the kind of person Republicans, and traitors like Grover Norquist, want.
RK
@beltane: She was the polled winner. Were those polled in on the conspiracy?
Gimlet
@RK:
The news media shaped opinion prior to the poll.
SFAW
@WereBear:
He’s still “alive” – as much as the Undead can ever be, that is – so there’s still hope that we can remedy that mistake.
Right to Rise
With Trump on the downswing, the dynasty issue neutralized by #HeKeptUsSafe, and Fiorna’s HP record coming under scrutiny, everything us coming up Jeb.
It was always inevitable that we would nominate a Bush.
NotMax
@Kay
Doesn’t belie that not publicly drinking the Kool-Aid makes getting the delegates for nomination an ultra-steep climb.
Mulling on it a bit more, it seems (from a distance, anyway) that Kasich is more holding a trial run in anticipation of 2020.
Davis X. Machina
@Kay:
He had an R after his name — he could have worshipped Cthulu, and that’d be good enough.
Fred Clark has been banging on about this at Slacktivist for years.
People don’t choose their politics based on the teachings of their churches any more.
People choose their churches based on their politics, and not the doctrines they espouse or their liturgy.
In the old days, maybe. Now with cars and good roads, you can parish- or congregation-shop until you find a bunch of people who vote the way you do, hate the people you hate….
Watch how American Catholics respond to Pope Francis. They’ll leave the Church before they abandon their politics. Non-Neanderthal Catholics largely already went through that cycle.
Elmo
@RK: the man asked “when are we going to get rid of them.”
Trump answered, “we’re looking into that.”
Given an opportunity to walk that back, and expressly disavow it, he did not. All he had to say was “The idea of discriminating against Muslims is offensive and ridiculous, and I want no part of any such idea.”
At which point he loses 75% of his current Republican base.
NotMax
@Right to Rise
You left out “I’ll be here all week, folks. Try the chicken wings.”
Gimlet
@Right to Rise:
So how many converts have you made here at BJ? Must not be the end-point of your message.
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
Only “neutralized” with the morons who would vote for Jeb! anyway, and the TeaBagger morons to stupid to understand reality.
Jeb: “It’s going to rain $100 bills when I get elected”
RtR and TeaBaggers: “Yaayyyyy!”
SFAW
@Davis X. Machina:
You say that as if it’s a bad thing
RK
@Gimlet: So Republicans who distrust the media are influenced by them? And I believe only about 35% said she won, so you’d think such a concerted effort would’ve fared better. I watched most of the debate and it’s more than legitimate to think Fiorina won. Her answers were concise, well presented and she was the only one who appeared to have a command of foreign policy vis-a-vis Russia. But saying she won really doesn’t say much because of her competition.
Davis X. Machina
@SFAW:
#HeKeptUsSafeFromGayMarriageAndSlightlyHigherTopMarginalRatesOfIncomeTaxButTerroristsNotSoMuch
Peale
@Elmo: yeah. I really do think he was referring to the supposed al quaeda training camps in Iowa and Wst Virginia that Obambi knows about but is too much a Muslim to shut down. He’ll look into those camps.
Davis X. Machina
@SFAW: The thing is, to those voters, it should be, but beyond a moment’s pause while they ask themselves “Does this candidate hate whom I hate?” it wouldn’t.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elmo: This.
RK
He asked about getting rid of the training camps. Trump does not believe anyone should be deported because of their religion. No candidate believes that.
NotMax
@Peale
Jade Helm is over. They’ve gotta whip up a new ludicrous conspiracy.
Davis X. Machina
@RK:
No candidate has said that. That’s all we know for sure, and all we can know for sure.
Full metal Wingnut
@Matt McIrvin: read Nate Silver. Too early for polls to mean much.
RK
@Davis X. Machina: lol okay
OzarkHillbilly
@RK: Go back and listen again. That’s exactly what he said.
dmsilev
@Gimlet: I’m (slightly) impressed by his persistence. He’s the Mark Halperin of comment-section trolls: _everything_ is excellent news for Jeb Bush.
gbear
I haven’t checked all of the previous comments to see if this was already mentioned, but White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest had a really nice two-minute takedown of all republicans yesterday. I’ve watched this a half dozen times. He’s low key but just keeps twisting the knife.
Bobby Thomson
Otherwise smart people like Nate Silver are invested in those myths.
SFAW
@Davis X. Machina:
Picky, picky, picky.
Davis X. Machina
@SFAW: I’m going to be charitable and assume that’s what they meant, but if the hashtag is long enough, there’s no room for the tweet.
MattF
@Right to Rise: What you mean ‘we’?
WaterGirl
@gbear: I liked what Josh Earnest was saying. But he kept looking down like he was reading that from his notes, which I thought made what he was saying MUCH less effective.
I have never watched Josh Earnest before – is that how he normally speaks in press conferences?
OzarkHillbilly
@RK:
So Trump is going to look into shutting down all the RightWing Militia training camps being run by the Last True American Patriots ™? When pigs fly farting rainbows. That is some willful parsing of words you are doing there.
“You can’t say “Ni**er Ni**er Ni**er Ni**er any more. Now you say “forced busing”, and “welfare cheats”.
bystander
That, and the kittens.
Thoughtful Today
What may be the worst part of Trump is what beltane said:
“I don’t see any of the other Republicans running as being less vile than Trump.”
RK
@OzarkHillbilly: That the questioner wants to get rid of Muslims, not training camps? Even if he did say that, which I don’t think he did, Trump didn’t say he was for deporting or “getting rid of” American Muslims. His response that “we’ll be looking into a lot of things,” or something to that effect, was clearly in regard to the training camps.
Another Holocene Human
@Schlemazel: That’s the program where Brooks slobbered over JEB?’s WASP gentility.
This is why people run cars into trees, people.
p.a.
Please note; McCarthy didn’t go ‘over the line’ until he went after the US Army. If he had stuck to State Dept ‘elitists’ or Treasury ‘internationalists’, or *dog whistle* ‘cosmopolitanism’ in the gvt., or shifted to non-gvt targets, say the NAACP, I don’t think he would have met resistance.
A history prof told this story. Apocryphal, or true? McCarthy was a first-term junior Senator approaching the next election without much of a track record and without a defined election strategy. One Sunday in (Catholic) church the priest’s homily was on the evils of communism. The normally staid congregation went nuts in response. The little 15 watt lightbulb in Joe’s head went off. (This seems to me to be apocryphal: can’t imagine a 1950’s Catholic congregation ‘going nuts’.)
Thoughtful Today
Latest polls:
Likely Voters have TRUMP beating Clinton by 4%.
Registered voters has Clinton beating trump by about the same margin.
Trump is exciting the right-wing’s base(st) and they vote.
It’s a GOTV race and Dems are lousy at it.
Mandalay
@gbear:
I don’t see it that way at all. He’s totally scripted, clearly reciting talking points from the script under his nose, and doing it very badly. And oozing condescension with the smirks, and “anybody paying attention” comment. It’s all so staged.
The sentiments themselves are fine, and bang on the money, but they need to be coming from his heart instead of a piece of paper.
RK
Why not? Priests were.
MomSense
@Elmo:
Oh clearly the idea of rounding up people based on their religion ame getting rid of them is vile and horrific and should be condemned. The point I was making is that the VSP are only appalled now because the bigotry is not helping their agenda. The VSP are conveniently underplaying the holocaust aspect because it gives away their game.
cckids
@RK:
No, he wasn’t, was he? I notice that as much as he likes to slam Pres. Obama as “the worst ever”, and “easy to beat”, Trump didn’t have the balls to take him on. Talk is cheap, asshat.
Davis X. Machina
@Mandalay: He’s a press secretary. He’s not in the running to replace Jon Stewart…
Mike J
@NotMax:
You don’t seem to understand how right wing conspiracy theories work. It doesn’t matter if it is over. It’s still a threat, and always will be.
Davis X. Machina
@p.a.: Who knows? McCarthy’s earlier signature move — plea-bargaining for SS war criminals to appeal to the Wisconsin German vote — wasn’t working any more.
D58826
@SFAW: Hey look what W did with his Harvard MBA!!!!!
wuzzat
@Thoughtful Today: The worst part is that several of the other Republicans running are, in fact, more vile than Trump. But they’re the cone snails and cobras to Trump’s rabid dog.
scav
it’s somehow rather amusing to watch the “we have the math” crowd now grasping polls! as magic infallable proof! wands — irregardless of context, timing, source or applicabiliy.
Mike J
@Davis X. Machina: Many Democrats believe that any press conference that doesn’t end with a burning effigy of Bush/Cheney/Trump/Reagan is an admission of defeat.
cckids
@RK:
She was also served up the perfect question to completely slam Trump’s face into the podium (his remarks about her looks). To give her credit, she handled it perfectly – short, sharp then silent so it soaked in. But it was a great setup.
hoodie
@Kay: Kasich’s greatest strength for the general (Medicaid expansion) is also his greatest weakness with the base. However, considering how Mitt was able to dodge Romneycare, that may not be a fatal liability. Kasich doesn’t have the Mormon thing, either. I think Kasich/Rubio (or, even more so, Kasich and Sandoval or Martinez) would be a problem for Democrats. Hillary might have trouble using the Lehman Bros thing against Kasich due to her husband’s cozy relationship with Bob Rubin, repeal of Glass-Steagall and other Wall St. shenanigans. Anyway, that issue has too many moving parts to make good campaign sound bites unless you’re Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. I don’t know much about Kasich on women’s issues. I imagine he is the usual GOP troglodyte, but I don’t know if that’s enough to carry a campaign (e.g., witness Udall). Frankly, I’m warming a bit to the idea of a Biden run as a one-term continuation of the Obama administration. He may be able to pull out the Obama coalition, because Biden is one Dem politician whose loyalty to Obama is without question and could serve as a firewall against whatever the GOP is threatening. I’m not sure Hillary can do that due to lingering issues from 2008. Biden could pick someone as VP who represents a new generation (e.g., Gillibrand?), because the GOP would be selling Kasich as “fresh face” (even though he’s warmed over Gingrichism).
Davis X. Machina
@Mike J: I just don’t think it matters very much. That position used to be a key generator of sound bites, back in the Mike McCurry era, but in the present age of self-sourced media circulated on social networks I’m not sure that matters much any more…
So long as you’re not up there Ron-Ziegler-ing about ‘inoperative statements’ it’s probably irrelevant who the bod is, or how wow-ful their podium manner….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
uh huh, that’s what Mitt Romney was thinking right up until about 9 pm eastern on election night three years ago.
Everybody talking about general election polls needs to go look at polls from September of 2007 and calm down
danielx
Why would they change the channel, when he’s telling them all the things they want to hear? El Rushbo has been using the same shtick for thirty fucking years, and the wingnut base hasn’t tired of it yet. The only way Trump will leave the race is of his own accord, if and when he gets bored with the whole deal. Which will be whenever he decides he’s not having a good time any more.
WaterGirl
@Davis X. Machina: Every other press secretary I’ve ever seen under President Obama has appeared to be speaking extemporaneously and not following a piece of paper.
Randy P
@D58826:
Longer than that:
“
trollhattan
@Right to Rise:
Awfully early to be drinking, unless you’re posting from BiP’s St Petersburg bunker.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Testing… :-/
Okay…
Cheers,
Scott.
Mandalay
@Davis X. Machina:
If he can’t present three or four talking points without smirking and reading from notes then replace him with a press secretary who can.
Jeffro
@beltane: this. Her and Rubio both.
Cacti
@hoodie:
I don’t think running as “the reasonable one” in this primary cycle is a winning position in the GOP. The Teabaggers want a red meat true believer and aren’t going to settle for anything less. They’re certain that the reason they lost big in 2008 and 2012 is because squishes like McCain and Romney were the nominees. I think Trump will either win the nomination outright, or no one will, and the GOPers will have a fully brokered convention.
Either way, I’m just content to watch them bring out the rhetorical knives on each other.
Davis X. Machina
@WaterGirl: @Mandalay:
But does it matter?
Randy P
@Right to Rise:
I know it’s a silly question, but why does a day not being bombed count as “Keeping us Safe” when a Republican is president and not when a Democrat is president? Haven’t we been safe longer under Obama than under Bush, who did let that one tiny incident in New York get past him despite lots of warnings?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think Mark Halperin is seriously suggesting here that Trump’s muslim bashing friend was a plant.
because racists, birthers and people who see Moozelims under the bed would never go to a Trump rally
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@RK: Dunno.
From today’s New Yorker:
The question is open ended, and the answer even more so, but if you look at the preface to the question, it’s not hard to think that the ‘training camps’ is not the only issue and he wants the ‘problem’ taken care of.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who tried 11 times to get this to post, even switched browsers. Something’s broken. Something in the blockquote between OK this man and many other things breaks the post.)
Keith G
When I see Trump spending big money to organize the type of ground game he will need to win the early primaries and caucuses, then I will believe he’s in it to put up a good fight till the end.
Polls in September and October are interesting enough, but can he assemble a team of competent professionals who are good at the mechanics of winning at this specific political process….and who Trump will listen to?
Cacti
I’ll also say it now.
Carly Fiorina won’t win a single primary or caucus.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I realize I am counting the eggs of a chicken that has itself not hatched, maybe even that chicken’s grand-eggs (I don’t know from chickens) but I think Trump write in votes will be a thing we will be talking about the second week of Nov 2016
Mike J
@Cacti: If she’s running for VP she won’t have to.
Frankensteinbeck
The simple truth is that a plurality, possibly a majority, of Republican primary voters are single issue racism voters. Trump said that Mexicans are rapists and murderers, and went from ‘nobody’ to ‘front runner’ overnight. How is this anything but obvious? Pussyfooting around the presence of hard racism in American politics is exactly what has allowed racism so much power over the last forty years.
I think the Muslim issue will hurt him slightly, because his ‘we’re looking into it’ is weak tea when his followers signed on for open hate speech. Only slightly, since he’s still given them much better than anyone else has.
@Peale:
We landed on that idea without any help from Grover ourselves. Well ahead of the debate there was discussion about how she had to be next because the Republican establishment candidates were tanking.
Frankensteinbeck
Moderated for using a word that’s synonymous with ‘tiptoeing’. Ah, well.
WaterGirl
@Davis X. Machina: I think it really DOES matter. In spite of his words, what he said was not compelling and did not move me in any way. He may as well have not opened his mouth.
In a press secretary? Presentation absolutely matters. If that presentation is really typical for him, I think Obama should get a new press secretary.
WaterGirl
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Wow, 11 times, you are dedicated. FYWP
Cacti
@Mike J:
I don’t think she gets the VP nod either.
They tried the female VP gambit in 2008 and it was a total dud.
Chris
@Elmo:
Yep. Like I said in the other thread: the correct response to “is Obama a Muslim?” isn’t “no,” it’s “who gives a shit?” The only Republican I’ve seen actually get that right in the last seven years was Colin Powell. (Not surprisingly, I believe that was also around the time he stopped identifying as a Republican).
Cervantes
@p.a.:
You may want to re-word that.
McCarthy met plenty of resistance. Hundreds of people lost their livelihoods, some even their families, for resisting him.
Cervantes
@gbear:
I saw that. It was good.
Helen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s irrelevant if he’s plant. The point is Trump wiffed. In fact I think it’s even better if he’s a plant. Really, how unbelievably wonderful would it be if Bill Clinton was on an awesome political rat-fucking mission when he called Trump and told him to get into the race?
Bringing guns to a gun fight. Finally.
Kay
@hoodie:
I;m not sure about that. I know it matters to the Koch Bros. It reminds me of the people who said Common Core was a problem for Bush. Bush has a lot of problems- he’s a lousy candidate, for one, but none of them are about the Common Core.
I wouldn’t bet money on stopping Kasich by counting on Medicaid expansion and if he’s nominated it’s a plus because fake-compassionate suburbanite conservatives love it and rural areas love it because rural hospitals and providers rely on Medicaid. They’re thrilled with Medicaid,. They used to have to chase down 50& of their patients and garnish their paychecks in rural ears where the median income is 15 bucks an hour.
Debbie
@Kay:
When the facts come out (and they will) about the charter schools attendance fixing, White Hat’s getting to keep millions of dollars in school equipment given to them by the state even when the schools have been closed, and the dearth of living-wage jobs created by the non-accountable state agency he lovingly (but secretly) created, Kasich will be an irrelevant joke. Kasich will prove himself to be nothing more than Bush 2.0. He will never be other than an anathema to the Tea Party. He won’t get conservative Democrats. Kasich will slink back to the State House and find that even the Republican legislators don’t like him. Bah!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Mandalay: I imagine, but don’t know for sure, that a team is working behind and with Earnest and they’re coming up with talking points until 3 seconds before he walks out there. Maybe there wasn’t time to do more than put that in his hands – he didn’t have time to memorize it.
It’s not a big deal. As others say, hardly anyone pays attention to WH press statements any more.
Cheers,
Scott.
Villago Delenda Est
@Thoughtful Today: This explains the elections of Presidents McCain and Romney, then.
Cervantes
@Randy P:
Funniest — most ironic — thing about that is that Mark Twain never said it!
Jeffro
@Davis X. Machina: the Zig!
I know who he is from DOONESBURY
/old
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m not entirely sure if this question is appropriate, I’m kind of a stickler for that whole “no religious test” thing, but the fact that Santorum is 1) apparently offended by the question 2) thinks pointing out Obama’s religion is ‘defending’ him and 3) thinks reporters reporting facts (even of questionable relevance) is evidence of media bias kinda makes Josh Earnest’s point all over again.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think that, at this point, a question like that is a simple test to see if the person is at all connected to reality, and Santorum failed it – badly.
Thoughtful Today
====================================
heh
“Everybody talking about general election polls needs to go look at polls from September of 2007” …
… and would assume that Bernie Sanders is going to win as he’s polling slightly better than Obama was at this point in the election cycle.
;)
Polls have utility, even this far out.
Even Nate Silver is making predictions already. He’s pulling them out of his @$$ for linkbait this far out, sure, and trying to have it both ways by simultaneously saying predictions are meaningless while making predictions.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@WaterGirl: :-) I refuse to give up sometimes, and it didn’t really take all that long.
I sent Mr. Mix a note about it – maybe things like this can be fixed in the new version. We can hope!
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Omnes Omnibus: yeah it just grates on me (and there is the whole question of what people like Trump’s friend or McCain’s bag lady or Jennifer Rubin think a “Muslim” is, but we’d have to crawl around in their brains to figure that out)
As Pierce always likes to point out, Santorumarola isn’t just a creepy genitalia-obsessed perv whose mother did something horrible to him when she caught him looking at the ladies’ underwear pages of the JC Penney catalogue, he’s also a colossal dick
SFAW
@p.a.:
Much more likely is that he was just a patsy/shill/whatever for Roy Cohn.
AxelFoley
@MomSense:
Exactly.
Mandalay
@Davis X. Machina:
If you are only preaching to the choir then no it doesn’t, but in that case why bother in the first place?
I assume that Earnest is trying to persuade those with no opinion, or the opposite opinion, that he is right. And he isn’t going to win any hearts and minds with that kind of unprofessional performance.
At a minimum he needs to drop that condescending lecturing tone when he’s speaking; even though I agree with everything he is saying it’s just a turn off.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mandalay: Jesus Christ, how many people do you know who watch the White House press briefings?
They help rock hobby horses, I’ll give you that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay:
He is speaking to the WH press corps. How else would you have him talk?
Cervantes
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Hmm …
That’s the first part.
Cervantes
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
And here’s the last part:
That intervening paragraph is being tagged as “spam.”
pluege
trump is not so much a condemnation of trump as he is a condemnation of the American public/American society that embraces extreme indecency such as trump spews. An embrace of extreme indecency that extends to 30% of the society. trump himself is just a disgusting example of what a human can become when it all goes wrong. Except for the damage he does, he’s mostly a tragic figure – a complete waste of human potential, worthy of at least apathy, if not sympathy, but otherwise only good as an example of how not to be.
sukabi
It’s hard to blame journalists looking to mark “the moment” when Trump finally did himself in, since nobody ever lost a click overestimating the vanity of the the American public.
I disagree. A large part of WHY the American public is in its current condition is because the majority of folks that claim to be journalists don’t actually produce anything close to journalism. It’s been a long process to take all relevant information out of what passes for news, but the “journalism profession” has achieved it.
Rand Careaga
@honus: I believe you’re thinking of Reagan’s despicable Energy Secretary James Watt: “I never use the words Democrats and Republicans. It’s liberals and Americans.” Quoted in the NYT 10/10/83. Newt Gingrich was no doubt taking notes.
Ruckus
@danielx:
I think even more than him getting bored you have to take his gigantic ego into account. He’s no politician but he has the how to influence people part down pretty good. Decades of selling a useless image has done that for him. So why is he running? To govern? I don’t think so. To prove to everyone that his ego is just the right size, look what he’s done with it? I’m going with bingo here. He’s done everything he can at business, and made just about the same as if he put his inheritance in a decent mutual fund. All that bullshit and no actual reward? The T Rump name is the only tangible thing he has and what he’s really done with what that name meant since he started was make a laughing stock out of it. Well who’s laughing now? Yes I’m saying this entire thing is ego based. And as long as that is getting fed he will not lose interest.
Villago Delenda Est
@Rand Careaga: He was Secretary of the Interior. He changed the buffalo on the seal of the Department of the Interior to face right, instead of left (that is, to the west, where the frontier was).
He was that petty and ignorant.
Chris
@sukabi:
Chicken and egg situation, no? Is the public doing this badly because the media only sells them crap, or does the media sell them crap because that’s what sells?
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris: The corporate media long ago lost the notion that they did what they did in the public interest. Now it’s only what sells, what causes profit, what makes the short term balance sheet look good.
We are well and truly fucked by Capitalists who seem determined to destroy Capitalism. Adam Smith weeps.
Matt McIrvin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t necessarily think the general election polls mean Trump is going to beat Clinton. For one thing, in the past couple of cycles, even national polls late in the general election campaign seemed to give a few points to the Republicans that weren’t there in the final vote. (Aggregated state-level polling was much more accurate.) I don’t think this has ever been adequately explained, though Nate Silver and Sam Wang had some hypotheses. But it was part of the reason that the Republicans were so optimistic up to election night 2012.
However, what I do think it indicates is that the Republicans wouldn’t be obviously walking into a trap by nominating Trump. You can compare the performance of different Republican candidates. It appears to me that the head-to-head questions actually more or less track the fluctuations in primary numbers. The candidate who is doing the best in the primary race is also the most electable, even if it’s Donald Trump. So it doesn’t amuse me when he’s doing well in the primary race.
(On the Democratic side, this ought to hearten people who are wondering whether they would sabotage anything by supporting Bernie Sanders, because I actually think the same thing applies there. It’s unlikely that Sanders could be both the stronger primary candidate and the weaker general-election candidate; if he turns out to be a good pick for one he will do well in the other, and contrariwise if he’s a poor one.)
More generally, though, I have this horrible crawling feeling that the reason Republicans have done poorly in the past couple of presidential-election cycles is that the top-line candidates have been too scared to just come out and be blatant racist demagogues on TV. And that maybe this was an unwarranted fear: maybe you can still get enough white support to make it that way. And maybe the national polls are telling us that.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Cervantes: Good work!
“a m b i g u o u s i n d i c a t o r of both s a r c a s m and g l e e.”
It’s one of those 4 words. I suspect “g l e e” for some reason.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: glee
Works?
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: So much for that theory.
ambiguous
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: sarcasm
WTF?
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I dunno. My FYWP diagnostic skills are rusty.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@RK:
Sure sounded like Trump was telling his folks that he was going to study getting rid of Muslims in America to me.
Maybe you need to work on reading comprehension? Or just read it again? Here you go, first the “questioner” in the crowd, then Trump’s reply to him:
So what do you think Trump said there?
p.a.
@Cervantes: agreed. I don’t think he would have met with successful resistance. It’s all in who you attack, as Allison Moorer sings, “it’s unpopular, to be unpopular…”
Steeplejack (tablet)
@J R in WV:
I believe the questioner was referring to the camps, not “Muslims in America.”
Mike G
T Rump is the perfect candidate for a generation of Repukes conditioned by the mental junk food of rabies radio, with its cheap sensationalism and calculated ‘outrage’. They’ve bred an army of antisocial vandals who cheer on Trump’s vulgarity as vicarious ‘freedom’.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
With a name like Watt, confusion was inevitable.
I recall someone at the NWF saying we should all just be grateful that the buffalo wasn’t replaced by a bull-dozer.
People did joke about the change, blaming Watt for it, but I’m not entirely sure he was responsible. Old Departmental stationery had the seal on right with the buffalo facing left. The new stationery had the seal on the left with the buffalo facing right. You could argue it was a wash.
Anyway, the buffalo soon reverted, even before Reagan left office.
Cervantes
@J R in WV:
You’re saying that “them” is “Muslims in America.” Here’s the version the New Yorker published (you can see it above as well):
Ambiguous?
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Cervantes:
Thanks for running that down. Too lazy to do it on my tablet.
Matt McIrvin
@Cervantes: Given that the guy believes that Muslims in America constitute a fifth column who are running terrorist training camps, this may be a distinction that makes no difference.
Rand Careaga
@Villago Delenda Est: Secretary of the Interior, of course. You can understand, I trust, how that mental short circuit might have occurred.
Cervantes
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes, but if Trump understood the (other) lunatic to be calling for (non-existent) “training camps” (as opposed to Muslims) to be destroyed, then perhaps we should see his response [sic] in that light.
Thin reed, I know.
Heliopause
@Thoughtful Today:
Nate’s been strange this cycle and has had virtually nothing of utility to say so far. Whenever “look at ’07 and ’03” is brought up it’s as instructive to look at the differences as the similarities.
In ’07 McCain was competing with three others who were, roughly speaking, about as “establishment” and “moderate” as he was. When Giuliani and Thompson crapped out because they were simply poor candidates McCain was a logical place for those voters to turn. This cycle, last I checked, “antiestablishment” types were sucking up a staggering two-thirds of the support, and those people will only turn to Jeb kicking and screaming. Furthermore, the polling hole that McCain dug himself out of was only about half as big as Jeb’s. As more polls are released in the coming days I think Rubio will be in the best shape of any of the establishment guys, so we’ll see how that goes.
When Kerry was at his nadir in ’03 his numbers looked about as poor as Jeb’s, yet he was only about 20 points behind the leader and only had to leapfrog one or two candidates. And again, all the viable candidates were mainstream (notwithstanding the MSM’s laughable attempts to paint Dean as a leftist) or competing with Kerry for the same voters (Wes Clark). Jeb has to worry about Trump, Carson, Fiorina, Rubio, Cruz, maybe even Kasich, and as I mentioned before a huge majority of the voters are currently pledging their troth to “outsiders.”
One big problem for these stathead types is that there are thousands upon thousands of baseball games and the vast majority of them are played within a standard deviation or two with one another. Presidential election cycles are much rarer and the general dynamic can be vastly different from one to another. So saying “there are similarities to ’07” isn’t telling us anything particularly interesting. They’re on firmer ground if they simply say, “the establishment guy always wins in the end” and leave it at that. It could very well be the case again, in fact, if forced to bet I would say that the establishment will eventually prevail, but on the other hand I can’t ever remember a cycle where so many candidates from so far out of the mainstream were sucking up so much of the support, at any point.
A guy
You guys are scared of trump and watching u obsess over him is hilarious
Debbie
@Cervantes:
Could he have meant the training camps in the Middle East?
Cervantes
@Debbie:
Good point. I don’t know the answer. The guy apparently thinks Obama is a Muslim. Who knows what other fever-dreams he has?
Joel
@SFAW: Cthulhu for president! Cut out the middleman.
J R in WV
@Joel:
This! Whoever the republicans nominate with be an incarnation of Cthulhu, and will govern accordingly.
Thanks for cutting through the fog of war and showing us the way!
sukabi
@Chris: being conditioned to buy crap isn’t the same thing as freely choosing crap.
Frank Bolton
@Kay: Believe it or not, not all white culture warriors are created equally. The % white vote turnout (not white vote %, just raw turnout) has been dropping steadily since 2004. It was 67.2% then (that and Bush’s very strong relative performance with the Latino vote are the the biggest reasons why Kerry lost) and in 2012 was 64.1%.
The GOP simply cannot afford to drop any further with this cohort. Not just because it makes winning the Presidency impossible, but because there’s a very real possibility that they will lose the House. If white turnout drops to 2000 levels (granted, that election had unusually low turnout across the board) and black turnout drops to ‘only’ 2004 levels (this will still be a titanic 6% drop) while the Latino/Asian vote remains mostly the same, the 2016 Dem candidate picks up the House just by doing 2% better than Obama. Raw demographic shifts will do the work for us.
Because of that, I must be one of the few Democrats who thinks that Kasich 2016 would be a paper tiger. Out of all of the non-joke candidates (Bush, Kasich, Rubio, Walker though I might have to take Walker off of that list), I fear him the least. Because there’s no way that a Romney-style campaign will keep the white turnout high, which is the only chance a Nixon-Reagan style candidate has to prevent an across-the-board drubbing. And he doesn’t have Jeb nor Rubio’s Latino vote trump card. Not saying that they would win the vote, but if they can keep the bleeding to ‘just’ 60%-40% against that makes keeping the House all but certain. Kasich getting Romney numbers with Latinos while dropping another 1.5-2% with the white turnout would make that very difficult.
Frank Bolton
Caveat: Obama really, really kicked ass with the black turnout vote. They were the reason why Virginia and North Carolina flipped so early and why Pennsylvania went from being difficult to impossible for the Republicans to pick up. It’s not really clear if the Democratic Party can maintain this unprecedented level of black turnout. I wouldn’t bet on it, but if the Republicans keep flying their racist freak flag so high I wouldn’t be against it either. We won’t lose any 2012 states by black turnout reverting to 2000-2004 levels (though that will delay Texas and Georgia flipping by another one or even two cycles) but it does make things that much harder.
Curiously enough, black turnout can drop to atrocious 2000 levels and have little impact on the Democrats picking up the House. Unfortunately, the black vote is suppressed by being concentrated in urban areas (where Democrats already overperform) and in the South.
Barry
“Joe McCarthy’s shit show wasn’t stopped in its tracks the day some Harvard-educated lawyer stood up to him–people slowly got bored after months of that drunken fool’s televised b.s. Similarly, if Trump doesn’t come up with some new material, his end will come after the Republican electorate decides that it’s time to change the channel, and not a moment before.”
From what I heard, he went after President Eisenhower and the US Army. At that point he was shut down.
Barry
@Frank Bolton: “And he doesn’t have Jeb nor Rubio’s Latino vote trump card.”
I don’t think that either Jeb (!) or Rubio would have much there, after at least 7 straight months of anti-Latino agitprop from the GOP candidates.
Tyro
Joe McCarthy’s shit show wasn’t stopped in its tracks the day some Harvard-educated lawyer stood up to him–
This is, however, what the public myth about him is. Everyone else has this right: the public and political establishment was fine with him ruining other people’s lives until he went after the army. As long as the rest of Washington’s politicians weren’t affected, they weren’t going to stick out their necks for anyone.
Tyro
We have quite literally, when it comes to Joe McCarthy, invented a myth about his downfall to comport with what we would like to think the public is like.
TriassicSands
I’m not convinced that there will be a single Trumpism that finally goes too far and puts an end to his campaign. But It is possible that people will simply tire of Trump whose act is repetitive and ultimately both boring and exhausting. The latest Michigan poll puts Carson up by two points over Trump.
Carson isn’t really the anti-Trump, because on substance he’s every bit as crazy — crazier even — than Trump is. However, Trump seems like an ADHJD adolescent off his meds, while Carson seems like an old-timer whose taken an overdose who could lose consciousness at any time.
If Carson does take over the lead from Trump, I doubt he’ll have it very long — as just another right wing lunatic with no qualifications to be president, he’ll have a hard time holding the interest of the Republican base.
@Matt McIrvin:
Or, maybe, HRC is our problem. And why is the Democratic Party so lacking in electable, progressive candidates? Does that mean that I think HRC is unelectable? No, especially since the GOP has a way of nominating terrible candidates. But with the entire Republican slate of potential candidates being nothing but clowns, it is disheartening that the Democrats don’t have a candidate who polls in double digits over each of the bozos. Unfortunately, the American electorate may finally have fallen so low that it is incapable of differentiating among clowns and legitimate candidates.
amk
@RK:
what training camps?
skjellyfetti
After Trump is elected, we’ll all fondly look back on our glory days when President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho was in office–and we thought it was scandalous to a have porn star and five-time ultimate smackdown wrestling champion in the White House. Trump’s gonna make Camacho pale in comparison.
Idiocracy. You is we.
Bobby Thomson
@Thoughtful Today: correct. He is predicting with a high degree of confidence that Trump will fail, and not based on any current polls. It’s based entirely on personal bias and question begging that defines Trump as a fringe or bandwagon candidate without any evidence.
Bobby Thomson
@Matt McIrvin: unfortunately, I agree with everything you just said.
sharl
@amk: Like so many things they do, wingnuts took that Muslim training camp thing and distorted/mutated/amplified it from its undramatic and modest origins. WaPo’s Philip Bump traced the history of this fable in this Friday article, and IMO he saved the best for last: a map from the report issued by the National White Collar Crime Center*, but with dates included (tl;dr summary – incidents mostly from the 1980s and 90s).
*Note also the name of the original reporting organization – the fact that the NWCCC (which I’d never heard of) was behind this report also offers a hint as to the true criminal nature of the Islamic organization (Jamaat Ul Fuqra) behind these camps.
Juan Cole also wrote about this, although more from the perspective of Trump’s history of his utterances about Muslims and their “U.S. training camps.”
sharl
This was all very informative, both the OP and the comments. I do agree with those commenters who said it wasn’t so much that the public got tired of Joe McCarthy – though that was probably happening – but that he finally picked on the wrong target (Army), with the resulting blow-back ultimately diminishing him until he was just a pathetic pipsqueak.
I’m not old enough to have experienced any of the 50s directly, at least as a politically sentient person, so I think I was (mis)informed by 60s and 70s opinions of the 50s, which seemed to view those times as quiet and tight-assed conservative. That may have been largely true for most of us white folks I suppose – those under continuous threat of lynchings and physical and economic abuse certainly didn’t find those times to be ‘quiet’, nor did commie witch hunt victims and others – but in reading the relevant Wikipedia sections of the entry for McCarthy (starting here), that decade had far more political turmoil and dysfunction than I had once realized. In hindsight I guess that would have to had been the case in order for the rise of McCarthy to even be possible.
Regarding vanity of the American public, I think there’s something to that, probably related to the American Exceptionalism that all of us born and raised here are immersed in 24/7 (there’s a Matrix red-vs-blue pill analogy waiting to me made here, I suppose). It can be hard for even a lot of us non-wingnut types to escape this.
Finally, I think this July tweet captures the Trump candidacy rather well:
ETA: I don’t think Barb Haynes’ tweet applies to comment sections like B-J’s, at least not as a rule…
sharl
@honus:
I was just shutting down open tabs when I saw stuff for this issue. I think the relevant Reagan quote was this one (key part bolded):
Further background on this quote comes from a 1984 book review in the Atlantic:
In today’s political discourse, especially in GOP commentary of President Obama, a crack like this wouldn’t get a second look, let alone a shocked response. But I’m old enough to remember the response to those words at the time, which wasn’t so serene. Democratic Party spokescritters and allies (and I) thought it was a slimy way to say that Dems are un-American, if not in fact traitors. Reagan himself of course went into “aw, shucks, there they go again” mode in response to the criticisms, which as I recall worked…as usual. He really was the Teflon President!
sharl
deleted – duplicate of what I thought didn’t post…
fuckwit
Trump is a troll.
He’s trolling a whole damn country! And in fact even trolling other countries now, who are watching this and SMDH’ing.
Please stop feeding the troll.
Trump is the old male successor to Sarah Palin.
Ignoring her was the right thing to do, and ignoring Trump is also the right thing to do.
Stop feeding the fucking troll. Please.