Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

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

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The willow is too close to the house.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Infrastructure week. at last.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Open Thread: “Loki Does Not Rule in Asgard”

Open Thread: “Loki Does Not Rule in Asgard”

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The ephemeral-we-all-hope success of the Trumpster has Ross Doubthat reduced to shouting comic-book Wagnerism at the uncaring skies. No, seriously — the quote in my title is from his NYTimes explanation of “How Donald Trump Loses”:

… Yes, Trump leads all the national polls, and he keeps busting through what look like ceilings. But (unlike Dean) he doesn’t lead in Iowa, and his ceiling there looks very stable: He’s been hovering around 25 percent since September, and he’s never broken 30 percent.

He does lead in New Hampshire, but there, too, his poll numbers have been relatively flat since August, and he tops out around 30 percent. Likewise South Carolina, where his polling has hovered in the 30 percent to 35 percent range since he grabbed the spotlight last summer.

There is no credible scenario in which a consistent 30 percent of the vote will deliver the delegates required to be the Republican nominee. So for Trump to lose, he doesn’t actually have to collapse; he just has to fail to expand his support. And in the states where candidates are actually campaigning, voters are paying the most attention, and the polling screens for likely voters are tightening, he hasn’t expanded his support meaningfully since he first climbed into the lead.

Foolish pundit that I may be, I don’t think he will. Instead, I think that Ted Cruz will continue to consolidate evangelicals as Ben Carson fades, and someone (probably Marco Rubio) will eventually consolidate the moderate-conservative vote — which is currently splintered among five candidates in New Hampshire, but which if it were consolidated would very easily beat Trump’s total in that state…

Think about it this way: It now looks very likely that Cruz will beat Trump in Iowa, at which point Carson’s campaign will be pretty much finished, and Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum will disappear — and with Cruz suddenly ascendant, he’s likely to pick up their supporters, pushing him up to Trump-like levels in the national polls…

…[I]f we treat New Hampshire as a plausible template for outcomes in those states, then Trump needs Rubio and Chris Christie and Jeb Bush to all stay in the race and for all of them to keep winning exactly 15 percent of the vote; then and only then would his 30 percent be sufficient to prevail…

Which is not to say that in that scenario the establishment candidate will win. Trump is a genuinely disruptive force, and if his coalition holds together it could make genuinely unlikely outcomes — Cruz as the most right-wing nominee since Barry Goldwater, a battle on the convention floor — far more plausible than they would have been without him.

But disruption doesn’t get you to the 1,236 delegates required for the nomination. Loki does not rule in Asgard. And Donald Trump isn’t going to be the Republican nominee.

… As long as Sanctorum and Hucksterbee give up graciously after getting out-organized in Iowa, rather than hanging on to (a) promote their own grifts non-campaign careers, and (b) punish Cruz for stealing “their” Talibangelical base. And if someone with enough influence explains to Carson that his God was only funning with him, so he needs to go back to working the inspiration circuit. And then Rubio, Jeb, Christie & Kasich play rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock to find out which three graciously withdraw, preferably before the New Hampshire primary but certainly in advance of ‘Super Tuesday’ in the South. (As per the top tweet, Fox News seems to be pretending that Rand Paul is the fifth Beatle, but only devout glibertarians have the strength of will to pretend Little Prince Rand is a potential 2016 winner.) And even then, Donald Trump has to resist the urge (& his followers’ urging) to go third-party as The Voice of the People (possibly with attached reality show!).

Among the many things Young Ross failed to learn, in all his years of hanging around rich and well-educated (or at least conspicuously-educated) people, is that the Trickster never goes away. Sure, Loki isn’t sitting at the head of the high table in Asgard… but then, there’s rumors that Loki was around before Odin raven-clawed his way to the top of that bloody Nordic heap, and his folklore outlasted the All-Father long after the Christians claimed a theistic monopoly. Whether or not he gathers the ‘right’ delegates in the ‘correct’ fashion — whether or not he gets bored with his Celebrity Victory Campaign Tour as the shine wears thin and the media find newer playtoys — Donald Trump will be making the Permanent Republican Party unhappy at least through October, and probably for some time after that. There are certainly ways to beat him (and more ways for him to beat himself), but pretending that some kind of Natural Law requires him to shuffle off-stage before the final aria is just… Doubthat-level silly.

Reader Interactions

131Comments

  1. 1.

    Amir Khalid

    I Marvel (ahem) at a man who can liken the Republican party to Asgard. And as for Loki not ruling, we all remember the George Walker Bush presidency. It wasn’t that long ago.

  4. 4.

    raven

    I’m still digesting “The Revenant”. Great cinematography and so really graphic battle and survival scenes but it doesn’t have the heart of Jeremiah Johnson.

  5. 5.

    Elizabelle

    Good morning, all.

    Top left of the NYTimes website today:

    Ex-Analyst Says He Warned of Growing Militia Movement

    front page blurb: Daryl Johnson, a former Department of Homeland Security official, said his warning in 2009 of a growing antigovernment movement drew fierce criticism from Republican lawmakers and his office was quietly dismantled.

    from the story:

    Daryl Johnson once worked in the branch of the [DHS] that studied the threats posed by antigovernment militia groups. His former office [the Extremism and Radicalization Branch] was shut down more than five years ago.

    But when members of an armed militia took over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon last week, Mr. Johnson was not surprised.

    In 2009, the former analyst wrote a report that warned of a growing antigovernment movement and the possible recruitment of returning military veterans that could “lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone-wolf extremists.”

    His words drew fierce criticism from Republican lawmakers and conservative news media, labeling the report an unfair assessment of legitimate criticisms of the government. The document was retracted after [then DHS Secretary] Janet Napolitano apologized to veterans, and the Extremism and Radicalization Branch was quietly dismantled.

    …. The Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based organization that tracks extremist organizations, [says the antigovernment militia movement grew to 276 groups in 2015 … up from 202 in 2014, a 37 percent increase [in one year!!]

    The center said the militia movement grew explosively after Mr. Obama was elected in 2008, from 42 groups to 334 in 2011, before declining in recent years. The number of militia groups peaked at 370 in 1996 with President Bill Clinton in office.

    The radicalization office was meant to monitor domestic threats, with a major focus on militia groups, particularly because Homeland Security analysts worried that these groups might be able to recruit returning military veterans. The reference to veterans, in addition to claims that the report was targeting Tea Party activists, promoted the backlash that led to the closing of the office.

    … John A. Boehner, … then House minority leader, criticized Ms. Napolitano for the department’s failure to use the term “terrorist” to describe groups such as Al Qaeda, while “using the same term to describe American citizens who disagree with the direction Washington Democrats are taking our nation.”

    Chickens, meet roost.

    So: militia activity surges when a Democrat is president, because these tinpot “patriots” find Democratic leaders illegitimate, despite carrying copies of the Constitution in their pockets.

    Republican politicians only want to focus on external threats. The rightwing domestic radicals in our midst? Not so much.

    Also funny that the bird sanctuary militia drew not only military veterans, but ersatz ones too — a few cases of pretend soldiers. Disordered thinkers, all of them.

  6. 6.

    F

    By far the most entertaining part of Trump’s rise has been watching the VSP cohort curl up in the fetal position, muttering quietly to themselves, “conventional wisdom,” ad nauseam.

  8. 8.

    Virginia Highlander

    Odin may rule in Asgard, but they didn’t name him, Glapsviðr, “Swift in Deceit”, for nothing.

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    First off, Loki rules in Texas, not Asgard. One would have to be completely ignorant of all that passed in the last year to not see that. Second, “moderate conservative” is a contradiction in terms because ‘conservative’, as it is defined today, means ‘radical’.

    @raven: Glad to hear that. I’m really looking forward to it as the story of Hugh Glass is just plain epic in Homeric proportions. As to not having the heart of JJ, I don’t see how a movie could. Not even sure a JJ could be made today. That movie makes a supporting actor of solitude and wilderness.

  12. 12.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @OzarkHillbilly: Well, it’s just getting more insane in Texass, Gov. Abbott want’s to convene a Constitutional convention to allow states to veto acts of Congress and Supreme Court decisions, among other minor(not) changes.

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Raven: No, I don’t generally buy Blu-ray simply because other than when I am checking out, I can’t tell the difference. I’d like to hear that discussion however.

    @BillinGlendaleCA: If we have a Constitutional convention I am going to push for an Amendment that people in Massachusetts get to veto Texas.

  15. 15.

    Schlemazel

    @Origuy:
    There is a youtube channel, “The Great War”, that does a weekly 10-15 minutes on events from 100 years ago this week. The started in 2014 and plan to go till 2018. I binge watched the first year after I discovered it, the host has some annoying habits but in small doses it has been a very good and fairly even-handed, look at the war.

  16. 16.

    WereBear

    As always, they ignore their elephant, which is why Trump is so ascendant. Democratic nominees are endlessly picked over. But when a reality show star has LEDs the polls for months? Crickets.

  17. 17.

    Raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: The prints of Jeremiah sucked, even the ones shown on the tube, the blu Ray visuals are really much better. When I get home I’ll check to see if that voice over is on the old dvd’s.

  19. 19.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Raven:

    if that voice over is on the old dvd’s.

    Pretty sure my copy doesn’t have it. If I see the Bluray cheap, I’ll buy it on your recommendation, but I’m not sure I will really notice the diff. It’s one thing to see them side by side, but we don’t watch movies that way and I generally don’t pay that much attention to anything other than the story and the acting. But with Jeremiah Johnson, I just might. As I said before, the solitude and wilderness is a supporting actor.

  20. 20.

    debbie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Not even sure a JJ could be made today. That movie makes a supporting actor of solitude and wilderness.

    That old chestnut “they don’t make movies like that anymore” is true, and it’s true of all movies now. Would there be a studio or production company that would take the kind of care in the actual script and character development like they used to? Can you imagine anyone making a film with the kinds of faces character actors and actresses had back in the day?

    CGI and purty gals and guys are all that matter anymore.

  21. 21.

    Schlemazel

    @Raven:
    No, I read the book a very long time ago but I never saw the movie

    I hadn’t thought about it in a very long time but I see parallels between the Governor as a cynical manipulator & a populace that sees no need for responsibility with today a a certain reality star

  22. 22.

    Gimlet

    Why are we neglecting a late Republican entry into the Presidential primaries? He should do well in Iowa against Huckabee and Santorum.

    Stockert drove his pickup truck from North Dakota to New York to Washington, Secret Service officers found him at a Hampton Inn at 901 6th Street NW

    Upon his arrest, Scott D. Stockert, 49, of Dickinson, N.D., made a series of outlandish claims to officers: that he was Jesus Christ, that he was the son of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, that he planned to run for president

    Agents found the two firearms under the back seat — a 12-gauge pump shotgun and a bolt-action .22-caliber rifle. They learned that he was not registered to own a gun and arrested him, the court document said.

    They also found more than 350 rounds of ammunition, a billy club and a machete with a 12-inch blade.

  24. 24.

    MattF

    Douthat and his ilk (e.g., George Will) make a distinction between ‘conservative’ and Der Trump– but how do they think their party has been able to win elections all these years? Hint: it’s not by being conservative.

  26. 26.

    Origuy

    @Schlemazel: Thanks. I think I’ve seen some of those as full hour documentaries. If you can find a series called The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire, it’s worth seeing. It’s about the Indian, African, etc. men who fought for their European colonizers in WWI.

  27. 27.

    Schlemazel

    @MattF:
    DoughHat makes his living comforting the comfortable and they are scared to death that Trump is going to break their marvelous little toy. He, and all the other toadies, are going to have to turn themselves into silly putty trying to cover the average American’s eyes from being exposed to the actual Republican Party. They still hope against hope that the great white hope will appear and end their nightmare. If that happens DoughHat and company will do an “I told you so” turn. If The nightmare becomes reality the same clowns will stretch & twist and deform more than humanly possible to try and convince those not really paying attention that Trump really is pretty mainstream and nothing to worry about. It would actually be funny to watch if I didn’t have kids and grandkids.

  28. 28.

    BGinCHI

    One of the things Douthat misses is that Trump isn’t just going to stand there with his hair flapping around while things happen.

    Say what you want about him, but he is a shrewd operator in terms of positioning and reacting to the situation. And really all he has to do is outsmart a bunch of dipshits who so far have made him look like a genius.

    I think we are in for a surprise, but it isn’t going to look like Romney in 2012.

  29. 29.

    Schlemazel

    @Origuy:
    Thanks, I’ll look for it. “The Great War” discusses them also but it is ‘funny’ how little attention they get from Western history otherwise.

  31. 31.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Elizabelle:

    Also funny that the bird sanctuary militia drew not only military veterans, but ersatz ones too — a few cases of pretend soldiers. Disordered thinkers, all of them.

    The logical result of guilt-worshipping members of the armed services is that people with personality disorders are quick to become fake vets to get some of that adulation.

    A coworker told me just yesterday morning he was dealing with with a client who was claiming stolen valor. My coworker was in the Marines and just destroyed the guy, told him nothing he was saying made any sense. It helped they were the same age so he could pinpoint exactly where the training schools were at that time and whether their cohort was likely to have seen combat.

    Militias have a strong aspect of cosplay. It drives away anyone with real experience (not just military, but anyone who’s had experience running an organization or team in their life … I mean, these guys (and gals) are a joke) but attracts the ones with crazy claims, some of which they may actually believe themselves. The thing about personality disorders is that (this is part of the reason they’re considered a disorder) the person really believes a goodly portion of their own bullshit. They may strongly believe they are just more skilled than most people, more perceptive, that they have a “sixth sense” or that some sort of powerful force is guiding events in their lives.

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie:

    CGI and purty gals and guys are all that matter anymore.

    All too often, that is the all too sad truth. Thankfully, there are exceptions to the rule like Kevin Smith and… and… and…..

  36. 36.

    Another Holocene Human

    @debbie: Pretty sure the women always had to be purty, which was always disconcerting, all these gnarly looking guys and some insanely beautiful girl. Okay, whatever. I’m pretty sure what happened is that, at long last, studios finally figured out they could make tons of money by getting women to buy tickets to movies once thought unmarketable to women by making the men purty. It’s something the Japanese have known for a long time but the Americans only apparently cottoned onto ten years ago.

    Seriously movies with serious acting don’t make such big potential profits. Not that they can’t be made, but they’re more of a niche thing.

  38. 38.

    Tommy

    @Another Holocene Human: There are a lot of people running around saying they served. They did not. I am always leery of people that said they served and want to take up arms aginst the nation they swore to protect.

  40. 40.

    Another Holocene Human

    @OzarkHillbilly: You’d be surprised at what, for example, NPD can cough up. Think woo is real … sometimes think they are a master at it or can control it. And that’s not the only personality disorder with that element.

  41. 41.

    Princess

    The fallacy at the bottom of Douthat’s argument about how Trump will lose, which is the same fallacy at the bottom of Nate Silver’s account is an assumption that all the candidates are in the race because they want to be president, can see a path in which it could happen, and will leave when that path closes. Since fully half of them are in it only to fleece the rubes, why should they leave when there is a rube left to be fleeced?

  43. 43.

    Baud

    I hope Booman forgives my copyright infringement.

    Thanks, Obama:

    The Chinese stock market is plummeting so fast that authorities there keep shutting it down. North Korea set off a bomb in a nuclear test. Two of the Middle East’s great powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are eyeing each other menacingly. In the European Union, political extremists are on the rise, migrants are pouring in and Britain may drop out (three phenomena that are not unrelated).

    And in the United States, the number of people filing unemployment claims is hovering near the lowest levels in four decades, the jobless rate may well fall below 5 percent for the first time since 2007, and whatever the noise on the presidential campaign trail, Congress recently passed bipartisan legislation to keep the government running comfortably into next year.

    Maybe some people will notice how well we’re doing relative to everyone else. I do get tired of listening to how angry everyone is all the time.

  44. 44.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @magurakurin: Thanks, I had two problems: first I didn’t realize the topography of the San Gabriels really doesn’t lend itself to great morning shots(I wanted to get the maximum amount of snow on the peaks), and most of the shots(before those shot at the observatory) were shot at ISO 800(I’d been experimenting with IR filters the day before).

    ETA: The shots to the west(West LA and Venture county turned out really well).

  47. 47.

    Schlemazel

    @Tommy:
    I got a new boss one time & his introduction included a rant on his lack of fear. The rant included “I was a Navy Seal, I have killed men!”

    That is a dead give away for a fraud. I have known people who have killed and never heard one brag about it. My default is to disbelieve anyone claiming any elite unit because the odds are so small as to not matter. They had “welcome home” parade for Viet Nam vets in Orlando shortly after Desert Storm. I watched on the news and my guess is well over half of the guys marching were wearing green berets. Thats when I knew the real reason we lost over there – no supply Sargents to deliver supplies to all those special forces!

  48. 48.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Baud: Photoshop works wonders.

    ETA: And much cleaner and less smellier than my old darkroom from my teenage years.

  49. 49.

    Another Holocene Human

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Omg, thanks for the tip. That list is batshit. On the one hand, he wants a 2/3 majority of states to be able to override the feds … right, has he not read the constitution? On the other hand, the SCOTUS can only overturn a law with a supermajority of 7/9? WTFBBQ?! That way lies perdition, for fucking real. Especially given our culture of sloppily passing politically expedient unconstitutional laws trusting that the courts will take out the trash.

    Where is Abbot going to find his supermajority of other states to back his “back the fahck offa mah ohl feelds” agenda?

  52. 52.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Another Holocene Human: In fairness, Abbott wants to have a convention to add his amendments to the Constitution. He doesn’t seem to understand(I guess he missed that day in Law School) that you really can’t limit what a Constitutional Convention does(didn’t work in 1787).

  53. 53.

    Gin & Tonic

    @debbie: Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo are not what one would consider “purty”, and Spotlight is a character-driven film that also explores an ugly and important issue, just for one example I’ve seen recently.

  55. 55.

    Robert Sneddon

    @BillinGlendaleCA: He probably expects to get pinkie-promises from all the other like-minded Constitutional Republicans who will make up this Convention with him (he would of course be part of it himself since he thought of it) to do as he wishes because, well, it’s the obvious thing to do.

    The problem with this belief is that he’d be dealing with Republicans.

  56. 56.

    MattF

    @BillinGlendaleCA: He has the typical Texas-winger delusion that he’s marching at the head of a vast army of like-minded individuals. So, all his proposals will be approved by overwhelming majorities. Obviously.

  57. 57.

    Robert Sneddon

    @OzarkHillbilly: It’s probably the fumes from all the chemicals that invoke “a certain magic” in the darkroom for you. You might want to turn up the ventilation a bit more.

    BTDT got the bleached fingers and dissolved fingernails…

    “Woo! The colours, man!”

    “Uh, we’re processing B/W here.”

  59. 59.

    Another Holocene Human

    @efgoldman: American movies used to have happy endings. Now they feature cities being blown away. At the same time, US has gone from having the largest middle class in the world to having stagnant wages with all gains going to the 1%, diminished union participation (this is largely because unions are defanged and it’s almost impossible to legally form one), large swathes of the population without access to healthcare and other public infrastructure being sold off bit by bit or dismantled, schools, public transit, fresh water supplies, electrical power, etc.

    Rome went through a period like this too in the 1st century. And somebody in the angry red hinterlands wrote a little book called Revelations where the great city of Rome is epically wasted by an wrathful god.

  61. 61.

    NotMax

    If wishes were horses Douthat would require multiple stables.

    In keeping with the Norse mythology theme, Kvasir he ain’t.

  64. 64.

    Dave

    @Schlemazel: Lol yes. The number of people claiming to be Force Recon, SEALS, Rangers (at least there are a lot of jamoches with the tab), and Delta guys I meet is huge. It’s special. Then you have the guys that are in are SSG’s, SFC’s, CPT’s and Majors who somehow missed the last fifteen years of deployments but talk tough as anything but now crawl out of the woodwork to go to Djibouti or Kosovo. I love it. Really if you were smart enough not to go chasing into the stupidity of Iraq and Afghanistan (I wasn’t) good for you. Yeah am I a little sketchy about you as a soldier? Sure.

    Do you have sad-face when all your peers look a little askance at you sure. That’s the cost of the decisions made. And really that goes away after working with you for a while if you don’t prove to be soft and untrustworthy. To actual make this pertinent these are invariably the guys that wear the camo, own the guns, and talk tough. It’s a fascinating phenomenon.

  65. 65.

    amk

    @Another Holocene Human:

    gopolitico     had a piece coupla days back in which seiu chief said that 64% of their members are conservatives and that they are more interested in the kkklownshow than the dems and that trump can be the prezinent. So, unionization doesn’t seem to solve the problem.

  66. 66.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @efgoldman: I don’t have TV (I have a tv for movies etc, but no broadcast TV) and I rarely listen to music anymore, don’t know why I don’t listen to music anymore, I just don’t. It may have something to do with my inability to hear live music without a major investment of time and money, but who knows. As to vinyl, my ex sold all my vinyl for drug money.

  68. 68.

    Amir Khalid

    @WereBear:
    I don’t think even the Times’ op-ed editor gives a damn what Chunky B thinks or says. Said editor appears completely indifferent to the lack of truthfulness and coherence in his columns.

  69. 69.

    bemused

    @khead:

    I sometimes watch those southern/mountain justice type reality shows which feature a lot of meth/opiate arrest cases and it just occurred to me that I can’t remember any of those arrested being non-white.

  70. 70.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Currently raining. AND snowing. At the same time. Now predicting 2-4 inches of the white stuff with temps dropping to single digits for lows and low 20s for highs. Winter is coming. Finally.

  73. 73.

    Doctor Science

    I can’t believe we got this far in this thread with no one mentioning Thor 2: The Dark World. At the end of that movie Loki rules in Asgard.

    Given that the Marvel version of the Aesir is now more familiar to Americans than the Norse version, what are the chances that Douhat is thinking of the movie, but has garbled it in his mind?

  74. 74.

    Oatler.

    I thought Rand was a contender, judging by the amount of air time MSNBC gives him. But then, Chuck Todd interviews Rick Santorum for words of wisdom.

  75. 75.

    geg6

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Nor here in Pennsyltucky. Seems that the meth, heroin and oxy arrests are all morbidly overweight white people. Which seems weird because I don’t recall seeing many fat addicts in the past. But maybe they’re just dealing and not consuming any of the product.

  77. 77.

    Amir Khalid

    @Iowa Old Lady:
    Adam dealt with that yesterday, when mclaren brought it up. Adam said it’s irrelevant because Ted was born in 1970, before that voter roll was published, and there is no documentary evidence that his mother was a Canadian citizen at the time of his birth.

  81. 81.

    Germy

    @amk: True. I love how some of them are afraid to attack him (because they hope to scoop up his supporters if he gracefully bows out) while the others who DO attack him get laughed at.

  82. 82.

    bemused

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Not here either in almost all white rural small town MN. In the listing of sentences in area newspaper, the majority of names involving meth, etc are usually easily identifiable as white people last names.

  83. 83.

    Ken

    There is no credible scenario in which a consistent 30 percent of the vote will deliver the delegates required to be the Republican nominee.

    “So obviously one of the guys consistently polling at 7 percent will take it.”

    Yeah, he’s assuming that lots of them will drop out, soon, and their supporters will go to someone else. But he’s also assuming that “someone else” won’t be Trump.

  87. 87.

    Germy

    @ThresherK: Anybody who invents a product that, if you skip using it for one day you get a massive headache, will get rich beyond imagination.

    Coffee!

  88. 88.

    redshirt

    @Doctor Science: Darn you! I was coming to post this.

    Yes, Loki does now rule in Asgard, which makes the setup for Thor: Ragnarok interesting. My non-spoiler speculation is Thanos comes to Asgard for the Stones and Loki makes a deal with him to save his neck. Much destruction ensues.

  90. 90.

    ThresherK

    @Germy: Plus, think of getting the third-graders hooked on dental care!

    You know there is soap with caffeine in it, right? Its efficacy depends on how long a shower you take. Well, this new toothpaste takes advantage of the permeability of gum tissue to deliver the punch you need!

    My wife, who has been a substance abuse counselor, is laughing at the image of people rubbing it straght into their gums like other drugs.

  91. 91.

    SRW1

    I wish I had a job in which whistling past the graveyard were as well-paid as in Doubthat’s case.

  92. 92.

    dmsilev

    @ThresherK: I was told once that medical students, experts in ways of staying awake, sometimes get their caffeine fixes by taking instant coffee crystals and putting them underneath the tongue for fast dissolving and absorption.

    Never really felt the urge to test that approach myself.

  94. 94.

    feebog

    The Doughboy is assuming that several establishment candidates will drop out after New Hampshire and the last one standing will consolidate all their votes. We may see Santorum and Huckabee drop out, but their support is almost nil. Paul can’t drop out until the Kentucky primary. Certainly Rubio, Bush and Christie will stick around until Super Tuesday. That leaves Kasich, maybe. Don’t see it at this point, maybe after Super Tuesday.

  95. 95.

    kindness

    I have to say, the salty tears of conservatives realizing they are apt to lose 2016 has some sweet schadenfreude to it.

  96. 96.

    jl

    I confess for a while I was of the Douthat school: Trump’s negatives are too high and most of the worst losers would drop out early, so no Trump. That was my all purpose Ronko Trump-eliminator-o-matic. But when it arrived it turned out to be cheap crap that didn’t work like it did on TV and then fell apart like a 3 dollar suit, or shoes, or whatever.

    Sam Wong at the Princeton Election Consortium blog analyzed how much disapproval Trump can take and still have a good shot at the GOP nomination, and Trump is currently below that.

    And as long as Malheur and Paiute are in the news, Douthat has forgotten the warning of Paiute tales: even if Coyote dicks himself, you are going down with him and will get dicked as well (edit: with hilarity ensuing for those not involved. Get out of the house NOW, Ross! The call is coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!).

  97. 97.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @dmsilev: My autistic brother would eat instant coffee by the teaspoon when he was a kid. I don’t think he does that anymore though.

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who has never liked coffee.)

  99. 99.

    JPL

    @feebog: Bush, Kasich and Christie drop out after New Hampshire. imo I change my opinion daily, so take it with a grain of salt.

  101. 101.

    debbie

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Take the number of films that are similarly character-driven and well-written and calculate what percentage they are of the total output.

    @Another Holocene Human:

    There isn’t a single pretty face in Grapes of Wrath, for instance. Jane Russell wasn’t a classic beauty. Not even Donna Reed would make it today. Her face moves too much!

    @efgoldman

    I know! It’s either cartoon characters in human bodies or it’s actual animation. At least the plots and themes are better developed in animation.

  103. 103.

    sdhays

    @Ken: Exactly! I’ve seen polls that put Trump well over 50% if you add in 2nd choices. We can’t know if that will hold, but the evidence so far does not suggest Trump has plateaued any more than Romney had back in 2012. And if anyone can take a hit in Iowa, it’s Trump. The Republican Iowa caucuses are a meaningless joke, and Trump will say that very explicitly, and the media will have to talk about “does Trump have a point that all of the time spent in Iowa was actually a total waste of time?” and then he’ll be the big winner in New Hampshire and we’re off to the races.

    If Rubio sees a big surge in New Hampshire (and post-Iowa Cruz doesn’t), maybe he’ll have a chance at consolidating the anti-Trump vote. I have my doubts that he has the political chops to sustain that, though. He’s been incredibly lazy so far and he hasn’t really had to deal with real sustained scrutiny or Trump making fun of him all the time or talking about him palling around with drug dealers (you know he’ll go there if Rubio starts to seem like a threat). Rubio may not be as inept as Jeb?, but I feel like he’s the one being talked up because he has basically kept his head down all this time and let others take the heat. That can be smart, but it also means there’s no indication that he can actually take the heat when it actually hits him.

  104. 104.

    geg6

    Off to the grocery store. Gonna make braciole for dinner tonight. Never made it before but found a recipe by Giada DeLaurentis that has rave reviews and Giant Eagle has the steaks on sale two for one. I think braciole with sides of broccoli and risotto will be nice and something different.

  105. 105.

    CaseyL

    @efgoldman: Not just the 19th C. In 1660, when Charles II was crowned King of England after the Cromwell interregnum, England went on a “happy” binge. Nearly all the Shakespearean tragedies were revised to have happy endings. I would love to see someone stage those revisionist plays today; it’d be a hoot.

  106. 106.

    sdhays

    @JPL: I can’t believe Jeb? will drop out before Super Tuesday. Maybe if he gets 1% or something incredibly embarrassing, but if he gets 9 or 10% in a still crowded field, I just don’t see him being able to call it quits. If he was able to call it quits that early, I think he’d have already done it.

  107. 107.

    debbie

    @JPL:

    The smart minds in Ohio (such as they are) are predicting that Kasich will stick it out, hoping that everyone else will drop out.

  108. 108.

    liberal

    How come liberal/left blogs aren’t full of discussions of “Making a Murderer”?

    That said, I’ve only seen 5/10.

  109. 109.

    PurpleGirl

    @Schlemazel:

    Thats when I knew the real reason we lost over there – no supply Sargents to deliver supplies to all those special forces!

    There are no more Radar O’Reilly’s. The DOD, in its august wisdom, and with the help of the Congress and the Executive Branch at the time, outsourced all that stuff to private corporations. That’s how we got water supplies that were contaminated and showers that could electrocute the people taking a shower. Thanks Darth Cheney.

  110. 110.

    Anon A. Mous

    Hoping that if Trump get the R’s nomination, that Hillary can run with the D’s nomination with great success. Because I really get scared thinking about President Trump swinging things around without any notion of what is legal in our nation.

  111. 111.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Doctor Science:
    Quite high, since the Norse mythology Loki was not trying to rule Asgard. The sequence goes ‘Loki is a shit -> Odin gets Thor to force Loki to save Asgard -> Repeat a few times -> Loki is not invited to dinner -> Loki breaks in and lays a verbal smack down so hard it resonates even with modern readers, such as revealing he had sex with Thor’s wife -> Loki is locked in semi-eternal agony as punishment -> Loki is not on Asgard’s side in Ragnarok.’

    One cute aspect of this: It’s Thor’s job to force Loki to do things, because all the gods swore an oath not to hurt each other, but Thor was out that day.

  112. 112.

    Ruckus

    @PurpleGirl:
    I wonder how many people in total there are/were actually waging war in the middle east for us? Add up the military and they contractors and see how that looks compared to when there was a Radar. And of course the costs are much higher with all those contractors making a profit, which of course they couldn’t/wouldn’t have bothered without.

  115. 115.

    Mnemosyne

    @CaseyL:

    It would be relatively easy to give “Romeo and Juliet” a happy ending — she wakes up from her fake death before he can kill himself. Problem solved.

    “Hamlet” is the tricky one.

  116. 116.

    Fair Economist

    @Another Holocene Human:

    American movies used to have happy endings. Now they feature cities being blown away.

    What’s really horrible is that cities get blown away and they still seem to think it’s a happy ending. In Man of Steel, towards the end New York is collapsing all around them with tens of thousands (at least) dying and Superman and Lois Lane take time out to – kiss? Since when are heroes supposed to be sociopaths?

  117. 117.

    Anne Laurie

    @Baud:

    And what happened to Christie? I thought he was ascendant in New Hampshire.

    His horrible commercial spots are sure-the-fvck ascendant on the local news, right now. (Massachusetts gets all the slop because New Hampshire’s ‘native’ media channels are puny.) Black-and-white fake-doc-style reel of Big Chicken swinging his weight around, literally — the stomach stapling hasn’t helped his swinging-a-bass-drum-before-him fat-guy physique — ranting about how on his watch, nobody gets out of Gitmo, ever. Right now it’s mostly him and Trump, and Trump’s ad, while equally horrible, is YOOGE and CLASSY in comparison.

  118. 118.

    Princess

    @Amir Khalid: I don’t feel like Adam’s post “dealt with it” at all. At the very least, Cruz needs to come clean about when his parents became Canadian citizens. If it was 1972 or 73, all very well. If it was before his birth, he has serious problems. In 1970, taking on another citizenship was enough to out your Amerian citizenship in question, and I know people who were living in Canada then who did not get Canadian citizenship because of this. Later, some court case decided that Americans could take up Canadian citizenship without penalty, but this was not the case when Cruz was born in Canada.

    Why hasn’t Cruz told us before that his mother became a Canadian citizen. What else is he concealing about his origins? Was his father actually divorced and did he ever marry Cruz’s mother legally? It would be irresponsible not to speculate. We should not rest until Cruz has supplied us with all the documents about his birth, his parents’ births and multiple marriages, and their citizenship documents from every country in which they held citizenship.

    *winks*

  119. 119.

    Fair Economist

    @Mnemosyne:

    It would be relatively easy to give “Romeo and Juliet” a happy ending — she wakes up from her fake death before he can kill himself. Problem solved.

    Or have Romeo not be crazy and kill himself. That was the lesson I got from it when I read it as a pre-teen – it’s sad when loved ones die, but don’t kill yourself over it.

  123. 123.

    Germy

    @Fair Economist:

    In Man of Steel, towards the end New York is collapsing all around them with tens of thousands (at least) dying and Superman and Lois Lane take time out to – kiss?

    To be fair, in Batman v. Superman, the Man of Steel will face a senate subcommittee.

  124. 124.

    Redshift

    @jl:

    Sam Wong at the Princeton Election Consortium blog analyzed how much disapproval Trump can take and still have a good shot at the GOP nomination, and Trump is currently below that.

    However, Wang has also explicitly disproved Douthat’s assertion that “There is no credible scenario in which a consistent 30 percent of the vote will deliver the delegates required to be the Republican nominee.”

    They may not be a good chance, but it is absolutely possible, especially if the post-Citizens United GOP means nobody with a billionaire’s backing has much incentive to drop out, since that amounts to quitting the big grift and going back to being invisible.

  126. 126.

    catclub

    @BGinCHI:

    I think we are in for a surprise, but it isn’t going to look like Romney in 2012.

    Paul Ryan comes out of a brokered convention.

  127. 127.

    catclub

    @debbie: Or at least stay in until Ohio – when is it?
    Bush and Rubio should both be guaranteed to stay in until Florida. Rand Paul should stay in until Kentucky.

  128. 128.

    Irony Abounds

    The Republicans are likely going to have to decide between Trump and Cruz, and if Cruz can get any kind of bounce out of an Iowa win he might come in second in NH and could win SC. If that happens, I say the establishment throws up its hands and simply goes with Cruz. President Cruz is an extremely scary prospect, but don’t discount it.

  129. 129.

    A

    Good old Dross Asshat auditioning to be Bill Kristol’s understudy. Can he overtake the McMegMonster?

  130. 130.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Frankensteinbeck: I think it was actually the 70s. That was when we started getting a lot of movies about vigilante heroes blowing away the criminal scumbags the liberals set free. Though I suppose they were really variants of Western plots.

  131. 131.

    Matt

    Of course Douthat is worried – Trump’s ascendance directly challenges the entire “I’m just in it for the tax cuts and social issues” wing of the GOP, by adopting standard-issue GOP racism and militarism but thoroughly-unGOP positions on most everything else.

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