.
Final Trump tweet: I've dismissed such conspiracy theories before…but how do we REALLY know that Trump isn't a Clinton double agent?
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) December 7, 2015
I don't believe Trump believes most of what he's said. Or he just believes it for as long as it's of use to him.
— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) December 7, 2015
Is the @realDonaldTrump candidacy a stealth operation to make Republicans unelectable for the next 20 years? Call it a working theory.
— Eli Lake (@EliLake) December 7, 2015
So many Beltway people prefer to think Trump is a conspiracy, not a reflection of actual GOP voter preferences. https://t.co/BelMC2BIWe
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) December 7, 2015
News update: Trump will not be attending tomorrow’s big RNC fundraiser… although there seems to be some disagreement as to whether he was dis-invited, or just decided it wasn’t worth it.
***********
Apart from getting healthful exercise rolling our eyes, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
David Koch
They hit Trump were it hurts him worst – his hair.
Boooooooooooom goes the dynamite!
Jerzy Russian
Let’s take Mr. Kristol’s theory and go one step further: When Mr. Trump is making his acceptance speech at the GOP national convention next summer, he reaches up and pulls off his latex mask to reveal that he really is Bill Clinton. Has anyone ever seen Mr. Trump and Mr. Clinton together in the same room? I rest my case.
JPL
@David Koch: Paul Ryan denounced him and then said he’d vote for him.. hmmm
Grover Norquist was instrumental in creating the shift in the party. I wonder what he thinks about Trump’s screeds now. His wife must be so proud.
David Koch
Poll: CNN/WMUR — New Hampshire (Nov 30-Dec 7)
Trump………………32
Rubio……………….14
Christie………………9
¿Jeb ?……………….8 ◄
Kasich……………….7
Cruz………………….6
Carson……………….5
Trump has nearly a 20 pt lead and leads the champion of the political media, ¿Jeb ?, by a whopping 4 to 1 margin.
Keith G
Agenda?
Finding ways to soak up the cooler than average weather before it turns back to warmer than average as predicted for tonight and the rest of the week. And also, staying as far away from political news as one can and still be breathing. Frustration and negativity can be easily spread.
But, I’m trying.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jerzy Russian: Alternate theory: “Donald Trump” is actually Andy Kaufman, and he’ll say “Thenk you very much” as he accepts the nomination.
beltane
@David Koch: What happened to Fiorina? She must have evaporated when I wasn’t looking.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane: No Rand “I’m as worthless a sack of shit as my old man” Paul, either.
Jerzy Russian
@Villago Delenda Est: That actually is quite plausible, as I have never seen Mr. Trump and Mr. Kaufman in the same room together. I hope that one of these alternate theories are true, since the reality that there exists millions of people who would actually vote for Mr. Trump is too painful for me to think about right now.
Brachiator
@beltane:
She had a town hall meeting which was attended by nobody. She was on the news this morning, but the sound was off and nobody cared what she was saying.
Meanwhile other GOP women go nuts over Muslims. The craziness is offensively off the charts:
Nuttiness is a warm gun.
David Koch
@beltane: wingers are never gonna nominate a woman. they don’t see women as equals.
Just wait until the fall. The amount of sexist comments against Hilz will be staggering.
beltane
@Villago Delenda Est: Dust in the wind.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Jerzy Russian:
Since there are seemingly unshopped photos of the two together, my theory is that it’s Ralph Nader under the mask.
beltane
@Brachiator: Last week I saw Fiorina posters in the window of a home in Montpelier, VT, a liberal stronghold if ever there was one. I’m not sure if the person was serious, has a grudge against HP, or was simply trolling the neighbors.
Turgidson
Trump’s routine started out being kinda funny and useful to the extent he called out the other GOP candidates in ways the Both Sides media refuses to do. His “puppets?” tweet when the other candidates lined up to give the Kochs fellatio was an instant classic. And his retweet accusing Iowa voters of having brain damage was something everyone (apparently even Iowa voters!) could agree was humorous, if a bit low-brow. His earlier anti-immigrant nonsense was ugly, but it didn’t seem all that different from what other GOPers were saying in slightly less explicit terms.
If his campaign really is just a massive trolling of the GOP, he’s taking things too far now (obviously). I think he’s actually just a contemptible piece of shit – this is true whether he is saying this stuff because he believes it, or just for the attention he gets. He’s egging on a really nasty strain of hate in this country (which was already in the midst of a mental breakdown before he started campaigning) and needs to stop.
Baud
@David Koch: I’ll admit, I’m surprised to see Jeb! as high as 8%.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
If anyone is looking for a nice gift for their favorite kitty or small dog (or owners thereof), I can wholeheartedly recommend Glacier Point pet fountains. Not a paid advertisement, just a happy customer. We’ve had the Spectrum fountain since this summer and both we and the cats love it. It’s also BY FAR the easiest to clean pet fountain I’ve ever used.
Plus the way they pack it for shipping is a sight to behold. I made my coworker who packs repro artwork for shipment come admire it when I first received the fountain
Baud
The funny thing about all the crazy conspiracy theories on Trump is that none of them can explain why Trump is actually succeeding with GOP voters in the polling. Are their voters in on it too?
Turgidson
@Villago Delenda Est:
I find Rand to be much, much, more worthless than his father because he’s not even sincere in his demented dipshittery. He jettisons it out of expediency all the time, and either flip-flops so blatantly that even Mitt Romney finds it embarrassing or ends up supporting an even worse policy than before.
Which probably explains why he couldn’t even hold together half of his father’s loyal band of weirdos and morons. I wonder how many of them have since joined Trump’s army of braindead lollygaggers. Probably a lot.
Brachiator
@David Koch:
I don’t think this is entirely the case. The GOP loved themselves some Sarah Palin, and many of them preferred her to top of the ticket McCain.
Religion and right wing ideology motivate them more than gender politics. This will not prevent them, from going after Hillary, though, with brutish nastiness.
Mike in NC
Some poll (MSNBC?) stated that 68% of the people favoring Der Trumpenfuhrer would vote for him even if he ran independently.
Maybe in six months he’ll go on the Colbert show and admit that the whole campaign was an elaborate hoax to benefit his businesses.
mdblanche
RIP Florida Man.
Schlemazel
@srv:
How about his current wife, Melanoma, are they friends too?
The Republic of Stupity
I’d say we’re going to Hell at this point but I’m too late…
I think we’ve already arrived…
Schlemazel
@Baud:
Right to Retch will be here any moment claiming the comeback is almost complete!
TaMara (BHF)
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Thanks for that. I’ve wanted to get the cats a fountain, but difficult to find non-plastic ones. These look promising. Though have to wait until I ever move, so I have place away from the pup.
David Koch
Barro is right.
Trump is simply reflecting the base which was hateful to begin with but has been whipped up by Hate Radio, trash internet organs, and Fixxed News for 15 years.
The establishment is horrified because he’s blowing their gig of carefully using dog whistles to stoke hate to gin up turnout, while not alerting moderates in suburbs to their game.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Good to know! I featured it in a recent post on pet fountains based on your recc.
Jerzy Russian
@Baud: Well, Mr. Trump is a billionaire, so he could hire a few million people to go along with the gag.
Baud
@Schlemazel: If I had to pick a clown to be the nominee, I’d pick Jeb!
David Koch
@Brachiator: it’s a mixed bag. The fundies and no-nothings loved palin, but the rest simply objectified palin. And she knew it too. She was constantly playing the sex appeal card.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
Thats the thing, if Dump really is a fraud perpetrated by “the Klinton Masheen” then how do you explain his leading in every poll since the beginning? Does it mean that the Clinton’s know the GOP voter better than Ted Crud, L’il Orfice Aynie or Boy Blunders stupider brother? What magic is this fraud using to be a more successful candidate for the GOP nod than all the ‘real candidates’?
WereBear
And, just to be fair, here’s our favorite:
Thirsty Cat Fountains
Porcelain, easy to clean, and lovely to look upon. We got ours on sale! I can’t imagine why, it is a deep rose pink with a sea motif.
Zinsky
Trump is what capitalism looks like in human form – biased, vicious, self-important, and ultimately, nihilistic.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
R2R, is that you?!?
:-)
He has the funders, the question is where does he win? Not Iowa, not New Hampshire, not South Carolina. Remember he has to not just beat the Dumpster he has to beat everyone ahead of him and piecemeal is not going to win him the nod.
WereBear
This is the part which pleases me.
lamh36
@David Koch: did you see the Trump Disqualification hashtag on twitter…they had me LMBAO all afternoon
JPL
@Schlemazel: I agree with this. If Trump goes down, his support goes to Cruz. Pray for Trump.
rikyrah
The New Attack on ‘One Person, One Vote’
It’s been settled law for five decades—but now the Supreme Court might shoot it down.
By Ari Berman
In 1963, while preparing for his speech at the March on Washington, John Lewis saw a photo in The New York Times of a group of black women demonstrators in Rhodesia holding signs that read: one man, one vote. The 23-year-old chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) adopted the phrase as a rallying cry against the disenfranchisement of black Americans in the segregated South.
……………………..
While literacy tests and poll taxes kept African Americans from registering to vote, malapportionment helped preserve the power of segregationists in places like Lowndes County, Alabama, which in early 1965 was 80 percent black but didn’t have a single registered African American. The county’s 15,417 residents had as many representatives in the Alabama Senate as the 600,000 residents of Birmingham’s Jefferson County.
The Supreme Court ended this perversion of democracy in a series of landmark cases in the 1960s, most notably Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims, ruling that legislative districts had to be roughly equal in population. “The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing—one person, one vote,” wrote Justice William Douglas. Chief Justice Earl Warren famously added, “Legislators represent people, not trees or acres.” The Court’s rulings shifted power from rural to urban areas, where people actually lived. In tandem with the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, the “one person, one vote” cases led to “the greatest peace-time change in representation in the history of the United States,” wrote Harvard University political scientists Stephen Ansolabehere and James Snyder. Warren called it his most important achievement on the bench.
But on December 8, the Supreme Court will hear a new challenge to “One person, one vote” in Evenwel v. Abbott, brought by the same conservative organization, the Project on Fair Representation, responsible for the gutting of the VRA in the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder. The obscure Evenwel case, which challenges the drawing of State Senate districts in Texas, will have major ramifications for political representation in the United States.
The plaintiffs want legislative lines to be drawn based on eligible or registered voters instead of total population as measured by the US Census Bureau, thus not counting children, immigrants (documented and undocumented), prisoners, and other nonvoters. They claim the current system, by including nonvoters, denies “eligible voters their fundamental right to an equal vote.” Edward Blum, founder of the Project on Fair Representation, calls it “the principle of ‘electoral equality.’”
…………………..
A three-judge federal court in Texas dismissed Blum’s claim as “a theory never before accepted by the Supreme Court or any circuit court.” But if he prevails, legislative districts would become older, whiter, more rural, and more conservative. “It clearly is a case designed with the intent to shift political power from urban areas to rural areas and, quite frankly, from Democratic areas to Republican areas,” says lawyer Emmet Bondurant, who argued the 1963 malapportionment case Wesberry v. Sanders. Of the 38 congressional districts where more than 40 percent of residents are ineligible to vote, for example, 32 are represented by Democrats, in such cities as Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Dallas, Miami, and Chicago.
http://www.thenation.com/article/the-new-attack-on-one-person-one-vote/
seaboogie
I am feeling and hoping that “Trump” and “Jumped the Shark” are soon going to be one and the same and playing in heavy rotation together.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
This. Even if you accept that he’s faking it to get attention, the positive response from the Republican base shows just how base they really are. I suppose you could spin it as a positive sign that the Republican elites haven’t engaged in Trump’s level of naked pandering to the crazy, but the degree of sheer nastiness on display should be a warning of just how awful the Republican party really is.
Baud
@Schlemazel: I’ve always felt that the one thing Baud! 2016 was missing was a dedicated troll.
I don’t see how Jeb comes back, absent some major scandal with Rubio. Even then, how does he take down Trump and Cruz, both of whom are more in line with base voters.
mdblanche
@beltane: Her bounce evaporated as quickly as it arose. Classic flash in the pan.
@Baud: And fourth place! Brinks trucks, baby!
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@TaMara (BHF):
@WereBear:
I probably should not admit to how infrequently I clean it (out of sheer laziness) but it works just fine and keeps chugging away. They definitely like to have a “flow,” not a “bubble” of water, so it took some experimenting to figure that out.
? Martin
The candidates aren’t really that interesting if you think about it. They’re only saying what the base demand, and the base are demanding what the GOP and the Tea Party and the blowhards have been demagoguing against the Democrats for decades. This call for banning Muslims is a logical extension of the war on Christmas and the now constant Fox News claims of war against Christians. The GOP has spent ages marinating their supporters in fear, and the problem with people who are terrified is that they are really unpredictable.
What the GOP won’t acknowledge is that the only people who can unwind that fear are the ones that put it there in the first place. Obama can’t convince Americans that Muslims aren’t trying to kill Christians, only conservatives can do that because it was conservatives that sold that line in the first place. The people who would believe Obama don’t believe that, and the ones who do believe won’t believe Obama (because they believe Obama is a muslim.)
So the GOP has driven us to this, and only they can drive us back. And they’re not going to because they’d rather win the election than end this madness. (All of the candidates that are critical of Trumps comments still indicate they will support him if he wins the nomination – winning is clearly the priority.) The GOP said after 2012 that they would win back latino support, though they could never actually be bothered to do so. I’m sure they’ll promise to win back support of non-Christians, though they’ll never actually bother to do that either. (Consider how a Muslim ban would need to be implemented – you can’t ask them, too easy to lie, so the only way to do it is to make it a test of Christianity – name the apostles, that kind of thing. Granted, I’d wager atheists would pass that test at a higher rate than Christians would, but atheists have to assume that a Muslim ban is also an atheist ban since there is no affirmative test for atheists.)
I don’t see how the GOP brings the party back from this. I don’t see how they pull back their voters from what Trump is offering and which they clearly want. It’s always been the case that the party has to protect from its most extreme voter instincts, but the GOP is unable and unwilling to do that any longer. The easiest thing they could do is disinvite him from the next debate unless he recant this policy, but they won’t do that. They have now completely lost control. Forget about Trump – if Trump wasn’t there, Cruz or Santorum or Carson would have gone there eventually because thats where the voters want a candidate to go and that’s where the party is allowing them to go.
bemused
@David Koch:
I remember watching one of her campaign stops seeing many, many guys crowded in front staring fixedly at her, slack-jawed, almost drooling.
Baud
@bemused:
That’s . . . um . . . actually their normal appearance.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Mr WereBear cleans it. He says it is so easy compared to previous pet fountains.
Such is important.
MattF
@? Martin: It’s the ‘no enemies to my right’ dynamic. Going rightward captures the base, puts pressure on the other candidates, makes the money guys think that they’re in on the game (fooling the rubes), gets the libruls and the national media riled up, persuades your therapist that you need less medication (‘Hey doc, it’s the new normal’). What’s not to like?
Archon
Short of Trump saying, “This was all performance art, I hate conservatism” can someone explain to me a comment he could make that would cause his poll numbers to collapse with primary voters?
Schlemazel
@Baud:
You would say that you limp-wristed nancy-boy!
I feel like all your cabinet slots are filled so I have to settle for troll-in-chief. I promise to do my best in that role.
bemused
@Baud:
lol although I’d have to say those guys were exceptionally drooly.
David Koch
@Baud: Well, he has spent $33,000,000.00 million in advertising, which is $10 million more then the combined expenditures of the rest of the field.
JPL
@? Martin: They all agreed to support the republican nominee. I just don’t remember democrats lining up to support Wallace, unless they were from the South.
Ryan.. Trump bad.. yes I’d vote for him.
Stella B
It’s long been my hypothesis that Trump is a disgruntled PUMA.
Baud
@srv: That’s the magic of Trump. He combines the worst features of all our past presidents and defends the result on the basis of precedent.
SiubhanDuinne
@David Koch:
Whatever happened to Carly? I thought she was doing so well, just a few short weeks ago. Now, she doesn’t even break 5%?
ETA: Heh. Should have scrolled down a few comments to Beltane at #7. GMTA and all that.
ETA even more: And all the responses to Beltane. Just ignore me.
Baud
@David Koch: So what you’re saying is that he would be a good person to have in charge of our defense budget.
mdblanche
@Schlemazel:
Not to worry. Jeb’ll fix it.
Hey, it’s worked wonders for Bashar Assad in his war against Daesh.
bemused
I just heard from a family member that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated Trump and his campaign a hate group.
The Dangerman
I don’t think Trump wants to be President.
Sure, he wanted to run, get some attention from the public and the occasional media hummer…
…but he doesn’t want to win. This Ban the Muslim thing feels like an attempt to blow it all up…
…except it will probably cause his popularity to go up.
If he IS trying to blow it up, he will have to go on stage, take a dump, and wipe with a picture of Reagan. That MIGHT do it.
Peale
@Archon: well, he did call Iowan voters brain damaged and his numbers there are slipping. It took a few weeks for that to sink in with the republican voters of the state, since they tend to be a bit on the slow slide.
Calouste
@Schlemazel: The problem for Bush, and the other establishment candidates, is that Trump/Carson/Fiorina combined have been polling in the low 50s quite consistently. Carson is now faltering, but that support mostly goes to Cruz. There’s about 60% of the voters polled that are just not available for Bush or Rubio. They have to hope that those people are not going to show up to vote, but even then, with Christie and Kasich also hanging around, pulling off an early win is looking to be near impossible for either Rubio or Bush.
David Koch
@bemused: Hmmmm. Why would the do that? Doesn’t every politician pose for photos bending over and touching their toes? Isn’t that how thatcher got her start?
Anoniminous
Today’s Huffpollster Poll of Polls:
Donald Trump 34.2%
Ted Cruz 15.4%
Marco Rubio 13.5%
Ben Carson 12.6%
Jeb Bush 4.3%
If being a bigot is a loss for Trump it’s not yet being reflected in the National Polling.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Jerzy Russian: There is a pic of Bill & Hill with tRump and his latest mrs. at his last wedding.
Brachiator
@Stella B: @David Koch: This is like saying that JFK played the charm card. Palin’s straight talking ignorance is a clear precursor to Trump.
BillinGlendaleCA
@beltane: Someone threw water on her.
Calouste
@mdblanche: Giuliani spend $50 million in 2008 and had 1 (one) delegate to show for it. Meg Whitman spend $179 million when running for governor of California in 2010 and lost by 13 points.
Some supposedly mainstream Republican candidates haven’t realized that, just like for most other Republican candidates, for the GOP consultants, the grift comes first and winning second.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Golden State just dropped 44 points on a pretty good Indiana team, in the first quarter. This winning streak doesn’t look like it’s ending soon.
SiubhanDuinne
@The Dangerman:
This, kind of. I’ve thought from Day One that Trump didn’t really want the big job, just wanted a lot of attention for a month or two. But then events took over, rather like the mops and water buckets in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. I think it’s interesting that he’s been touting today some poll that says a YOOOGE number (can’t remember the percentage, but something like 68%) of Republican voters* would follow him and support him if he left the GOP and campaigned as an independent. I won’t be surprised if that’s exactly what he ends up doing. Of course there is no way that would win him the WH, but he could end up being a “nominee” of sorts, and when he inevitably loses, he can scream “liberal media” and “stupid weak Republican Party” to make him and his supporters feel better about things.
*Edit. Sorry, not Republican voters, but his supporters.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Peale:
In other words, the only thing that hurts Trump’s polling is telling the truth.
Schlemazel
@Calouste:
Yes, a much better description of exactly what i was talking about. Even sans Trump JEB? does not look like a winner.
JPL
Carly rose because of baby parts. She also has fallen because everyone has called her a liar. To much baby parts and nothing else.
OT.. So if I’m waiting for packages from fedex that were suppose to be delivered today, and the notification went from by the end of today to pending.. what does that mean?
? Martin
@MattF: Well, but it didn’t actually work that way. In the past candidates too far right couldn’t get funded – the party would cut off infrastructure. Citizens United changed that. Fortunately the richest candidate in 2012 was relatively moderate and won the nomination, but that’s not true this year. And even if Trump wasn’t there, it would only take 1-2 billionaires in support of Cruz to put him in that same safe spot.
But that old dynamic also served to deny validation for the worst impulses of your base. It allowed them to claim that these weren’t widely held positions within their party – but now there’s no way to do that. Support for this is going to be as clear as Trumps national standing in the next poll – and I’ll bet anything it doesn’t go down from where it is now. That widens the party right but not center. That’s not a long-term winning strategy.
mdblanche
@mdblanche: The more I think about it, the more the Syrian Civil War works as a metaphor for the GOP nomination race. The establishment is led by the irredeemable fuck-up second son of a father who was nothing good but at least better than everybody who’s come after him. The leading insurgent is a stronger than predicted juggernaut constantly topping the previous record for extremism they just set. The alternatives range from extremists who are only marginally preferable at best to moderates whose moderation is an informed attribute. The conflict can only be solved from within and not by outsiders, therefore the situation is hopeless. It will just continue on until the day it finally gets us all killed.
Anyways, if you still feel you can laugh about Trump maybe this will cheer you up.
p.a.
What’re Trump’s numbers among probable voters? I’ve read he actually has a ground game in place, but I find it hard to believe; to me he’s still just an idiot gadfly. (Admittedly, a popular fascist idiot gadfly.) Maybe the world has changed to the point that you can win elections via twitter?
? Martin
@JPL: Probably means its on the truck but the driver shift may end before they get to you.
redshirt
I’ve seen my first two Trump yard signs (outnumbered by like 8 Bernie signs, and no other signs), and one of them is in front of a convenience store. Which boggles my mind – why would a business put themselves out there like this, guaranteeing they’ll piss of a percentage of possible customers. I get it if you own a gun store – screw liberals – but a convenience store?
WarMunchkin
@David Koch:
? I can’t imagine ever saying this about any woman, including Sarah Palin, and not feeling like it’s a morally reprehensible thing to say. There’s enough about Sarah Palin to criticize without accusing her of being some sort of weird seductress.
Davebo
@JPL: It means you’ll probably not be seeing a package today.
catclub
@Mike in NC: if he wins the Presidency, I will blame NBC for not renewing his contract. Which was the whole reason he started this thing.
SFAW
Yeah, yeah, all this Trump-dumping is great and all that, but what I find interesting (he wrote, going OT for a minute) is the article in Salon, wherein Shane Ryan, a Sanders supporter of no
apparentlittle intellect, is suggesting that a Repub winning the White House could be good for the country. His (well, I assume Ryan’s a he) theory, which is his, which is to say he thought of it, and it’s his, is that it would be an unmitigated disaster, and there would then be a new wave of progressivism/liberalism which will sweep the land, and America will experience a Renaissance of all sorts of good stuff, and so on.If there were such a thing as a just God, he/she would have smote that motherfucking moron before the ink was dry (so to speak). And far too many people in the Comments were donning their Mumia sweatshirts to let me think that there won’t be some not-insignificant percentage of purity-troll non-voters next year.
I may need to lay in a multi-year supply of rotgut, to be able to tolerate those morons.
Baud
@SFAW: From what I’ve heard, that drivel was met with significant pushback, which, if true, is a good sign.
Anoniminous
@p.a.:
Take with mucho-much salt but the last poll had Clinton 48%, Trump 44%.
raven
@WarMunchkin: Yea, even if it’s true.
David Koch
Aretha Franklin’s performance moves President Obama to tears.
Corner Stone
@WarMunchkin:
“Well,” she said, as the audience started to chuckle, “it wasn’t that exciting. It’s a metal rack, a case carrying hunting rifles to put on the back of a four-wheeler. And, ah, then I had to get something for him to put into a gun case, right? So this time around, he’s got the rifle and I’ve got the rack.”
I’m not big on this line of thought either, but she clearly had a plan and knew what she was doing.
JPL
@Davebo: @? Martin: Thanks.. Turned the lights off. They’re xmas presents so if they come tomorrow, it’s not a problem.
SFAW
@Baud:
It was, but there were still far too many holy rollers (in the liberal purity sense) for my liking. But I tend to be a worrier. Like the time I was nervous about Allison Grimes’s chances, or thought that Charlie Crist was not running a strong-enough campaign. Thank FSM I was worng!
jl
Barro:
” So many Beltway people prefer to think Trump is a conspiracy, not a reflection of actual GOP voter preferences. ”
Is it a conspiracy that the GOP primary voters continue to give Trump a big lead?
As for Trump, I see that very glib glibertarian Paul, Cruz and Rubio are Trump-curious and Trump-sympathetic on banning Muslim immigrants of any sort. Is that cowardice and depravity a Clinton plot too?
So many plots!
SFAW
@jl:
No, it’s just that it’s All Clinton’s Fault until around January, 2017 (if a Rethug wins the WH), then it will All Obama’s Fault for another four or eight years.
eemom
@SFAW:
Look at it this way: the FDL twatterati had to go SOMEWHERE after that cesspool bit the dust.
Schlemazel
@SFAW:
YES!!! Just like the Bush “win” in 2000 was a huge success for liberals. The idiot/Nader theory.
David Koch
@WarMunchkin: It’s the truth. I realize that some people can’t handle the truth. Why else did she repeatedly wink into the camera doing a national debate. why did she announce that she was wearing red Naughty Monkey Double Dare pumps to the debate if she wasnt engaging in sexualiztion. I mean, Joe Biden didn’t issue a press release describing his shoes.
SiubhanDuinne
@SFAW:
… and what it is too.
Baud
@SFAW:
It’s a concern. If it’s a close election, it won’t take many to affect the outcome, like in 2000.
mdblanche
@SFAW: Nach Trump uns. As true now as it was then (i.e. not true at all).
goblue72
@beltane: She did her job. She helped her paymasters defund Planned Parenthood in various states.
David Koch
@SFAW:
The nutty left always say that. Leftist is Germany in 1930s used to love to say “After Hitler, our turn!” Red brigades used to love to say “the worst, the better”
Here in the US the nihilistleft are usually upper class whites who are financially insulated. Idiot Matt Stoller used to say things would be better if a fascist won, because it would subsequently usher in leftist utopia. Of course he can say that, he’s a white guy with a trust fund.
Hal
I had first trump sticker sighting last week attached to a very big truck that was also adorned with a nra sticker. It was a “upscale” liqour store parking lot, with really good prices. Even Trump voters like a good deal on 9.99 wine.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hal: I saw a Ben Carson sticker on a Prius today. I am not sure if that signifies anything in particular.
Mike J
@David Koch:
I haven’t seen any evidence that actual people think that Trump has been legally disqualified and is therefore out of the race, the first page of results for “Trump Disqualification hashtag” shows a lot of people trying to explain to the poor dears that it ain’t so.
catclub
Kevin Drum saying that cable news really loves Trump. I will note again, Berlusconi owned about 60% of the Italian media, so they were not going to start attacking him. Not so Trump. They could start attacking rather than reporting at any time. He has to earn his ‘free media’. So far he is doing a bang up job.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
My theory is that Trump is a “false flag” candidate to make Cruz seem reasonable and moderate enough to get the establishment behind him. But Trump’s campaign is like Springtime for Hitler in The producers. It has succeeded where it was supposed to fail. At least, so far.
JPL
@jake the antisoshul soshulist: Trump is Cruz’s friend and they protect each other.
Mike J
@jake the antisoshul soshulist: That’s all well and good until somebody asks Cruz what trump believes that he doesn’t.
catclub
@jake the antisoshul soshulist: I think for this to work as a conspiracy, Trump has to get enough out of it to satisfy his ego. So what does trump get under this idea? A quiet thanks from Cruz in some dark room? I am not seeing it.
ThresherK
@SFAW: Are you sure this isn’t from The Onion?
Omnes Omnibus
@ThresherK: You will it it here as time goes by.
David Koch
@Anoniminous: that poll over samples whites by a lot.
it says whites will make up 75% of the vote, when they will likely be 70% of the vote.
The white vote has declined 5 consecutive general elections by an average of 2.4 percent.
Takaway: even in their best case scenario, where Whites reverse a 20 year decline, they still lose.
tazj
@catclub: Oh no, that can’t possibly be true or have anything to do with why Trump leads most Republican polls. According to Chris Matthews, the fault all lies with the establishment of both parties. Poor and working class people have no choice but to support Trump because they’re scared and no one has solved their problems yet (terrorism, jobs going to China). That’s what he said at the end of Hardball.
Ok, for argument’s sake let’s say he’s right. He said both the Bush and Clinton campaigns had no good answers to their fears and neither did the present administration. Well, that still leaves a few candidates who aren’t crazy racists, why aren’t they supporting other candidates? I only caught the end of his show and I’m sorry I did that.
Shana
@JPL: It means that it’s the holiday season, they’ve got a ton of packages and deliveries are slower. I got something last week around 7 pm.
SFAW
@Schlemazel:
Nader was also a promulgator of that meme. Tell that to the hardcore Naderites, and they ignore you.
@ThresherK:
Wait, let me check … sadly, no.
Think of it as Poe’s Law in action (to paraphrase Niven/Pournelle).
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW: This is the “Nacht Hitler, Uns” argument of the Naderites.
Villago Delenda Est
@David Koch: This. Palin was definitely using her feminine wiles on a bunch of shitheaded Rethuglican swine, like the idiot “starbursts” guy from NRO, Rich Lowery.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est: (and others)
Ja, dass weiss ich. (Except it was “nach,” of course.)
sukabi
@Baud: what’s the margin of error? 3 or 5%? So his more likely number is somewhere right about where you’d expect it hovering around 5%. (No, not even considering the higher number, as he hasn’t managed to even keep the Brinks Trucks guys interested.)
Amir Khalid
@SFAW:
You probably won’t see this, and if you did you might not care. But the past participle of smite is smitten.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Thanks. I was thinking of Allan Sherman, when I should have been thinking of writing correctly.
ETA: For a second, I was tempted to write “when I should of,” but thinked better of it.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne (tablet), @WereBear
Those look good, and I’m saving the links for reference, but I will say that the housecat is very happy with her Drinkwell pagoda.
Steeplejack
@JPL:
Probably the FedEx truck got T-boned by one of Jeb’s Brink’s trucks racing through an intersection.
David Koch
@tazj:
Senator Sanders just said the same nutty thing on Maddow’s show.
Sasha
My friend called this a little while ago: The Coming of Trump Trutherism.
NotMax
@JPL
It means the delivery person’s kids haven’t finished playing with it yet.
(I keed, I keed.)
PaulW
just wanna say two things:
1) X-Files are coming back, any ‘Shippers or OBSSErs out there?
2) Tocqueville, Sinclair Lewis, Trump and the Threat of Populism http://noticeatrend.blogspot.com/2015/12/it-can-happen-here-its-happening-now.html
mclaren
@SFAW:
For proper effect, this must be intoned in the voice of Mojo Jojo from The Powerpuff Girls.
FlipYrWhig
@David Koch: the problem with this theory is that Trump is getting 30% of Republicans. If we trust the poll that said 68% of Trump supporters would follow him to an independent candidacy, that means two thirds of 30 percent of half the country. That’s 10%. Why do we have to come up with an elaborate theory for why 10% of the country is a bunch of racist morons? If anything that figure strikes me as desperately low.
mclaren
Wait. Why is that nutty?
Poor people and working class people are certainly not having their problems addressed by Hillary Clinton, by Jeb Bush, by Ben Carson, by Ted Cruz, or by Marco Rubio.
Trump and Sanders are the only candidates who have been talking about the offshoring of U.S. jobs.
“Economists Fact-Check Donald Trump’s Plan to Bring Back Millions of American Jobs From China,” The Blaze, 5 August 2015.
“10 ways Bernie Sanders would make the economy work for everyone,” Salon.com, 7 August 2015.
Of course Trump’s plan is bullshit and economists have shot it down — but that’s not what we’re talking about here, the question here is: which candidates have addressed the concerns of poor and working class people at least by giving them lip service?
And the answer is: only Trump and Sanders.
Hillary Clinton doesn’t seem to give a shit about your economic situation if you’re not the president’s daughter or married to the guy who runs a hedge fund at Goldman Sachs. Jeb Bush has been straightforward that he intends to do nothing for the average American. “Jeb In 94: I Would Do ‘Probably Nothing’ For African-Americans.” TheDC.com.
It’s hard to get any clearer than that.
So what Sanders is saying makes perfect sense and sounds correct. Poor and working class people are gravitating to Trump or Sanders because no one else is addressing their problems. Why is that “nutty”?
cmorenc
@Baud:
If Trump doesn’t represent where at least 25% of the Republican base really are, why has he been consistently getting enthusiastic support from at least that portion for months? And what of another 10%-20% who have been strong admirers of Ben Carson, who for long was able to soft-peddle his own unanchored-in-reality xenophobia by playing the lovable eccentric uncle.
Mike G
Funny, I’ve often wondered if Kristol Meth wasn’t an agent on a mission to destroy the country.
SRW1
Trump is a false flag Hillary operation? How did she supply the racist fans?
Myiq2xu
@SRW1: You must be new here. Everyone knows that Hillary supporters are racists.
David Koch
@PaulW: New 4th member joins the cast
Sherparick
@mdblanche: To bad about the “gator.” If they had kept him around, it would have probably permanently eliminated the crime problem in that neighborhood.
Sherparick
@mclaren: I would say “poor, working class” white people, are gravitating to Trump. People in the categories likely to be banned, registered, and otherwise suppressed such as Asians, Hispanics, and Blacks (because “Muslim” is for many people just another word for “Black.”), not so much. You have a point that starting in the 1970s, the Democratic Party’s governing class basically turned its back on blue collar, union, voters (white, black, and brown) in pursuit of socially liberal, economically conservative suburban voters and Wall Street money. Hilary and her husband were very much part of that DLC moment (after all, Bill was Chair of the DLC in 1990-91 and its policies were basically his policies during his administration, hence NAFTA and China’s Admission to WTO (which actually was much bigger deal then NAFTA). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrats
But even a “New Democrat” such as Hilary is so much better than any Republican running. and Trump speaks for only the tribal fears of white working class, not the real material problems of their lives. You can take what Kevin O’Brien writes about the European economy and the triumph of the National Front in the French elections and use it to explain Trumpism. As he says, “…Globalisation creates losers as well as winners, for example, and if no-one really cares about the losers, and we just pay lip service to the problem, then it is predictable that there will be a backlash…” http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2015/12/07/slow-train-wreck/
If Hilary beats Bernie in the primaries, it will be in part because she co-opts his positions. Bernie’s supporters will not advance his and our agenda by sitting on their hands in a general election with the hope a Trump or Cruz beats her. Such a Presidency with a Tea Party Congress will not be pretty, and likely very deadly to tens of thousands of people. (I read in one comment on a different blog about how “the nation survived” Nixon’s election in 1968. Well, a lot of Americans killed in Vietnam between 1968-1973 and Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians (and if the war had ended in 1969, it is very unlikely that Pol Pot would have come to power in 1975 in Cambodia), did have their “world’s end” because Nixon and Kissinger found keeping the war going politically useful). The 2000 election may be 16 years ago, but we are still leaving (and many dying) from the results of that catastrophe. On Environmental policy, Women’s rights, and the Supreme Court, Hilary should get the vote of every progressive who is not a complete jerk.
FlipYrWhig
@Sherparick:
Blue collar voters starting voting for the other party because of racism. At a certain point you have to start dropping your line where the fish are running. If that’s with affluent suburbanites, oh well. No one _made_ blue collar white people decide to choose racism and resentment over solidarity and progress.
Matt McIrvin
@Hal: I’ve seen several Trump stickers, but one of the first was on a car whose special plate indicated, I think, that the driver was a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.
SFAW
@mclaren:
Maybe, but the first part is all John Cleese.