This might be a problem, right? pic.twitter.com/jShfbW1ot1
— Charles Sykes (@SykesCharlie) May 8, 2016
But he's got like 103% approval with guys who won't see the next Star Wars unless the black guy isn't in it. pic.twitter.com/RtcNeoTlv9
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) May 9, 2016
Happy Monday morning, Republicans. Hillary Clinton leads Trump in North Carolina, 49%-40%. https://t.co/6c1Arwle74 pic.twitter.com/IYCTCDYo2j
— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) May 9, 2016
All the chattering nonsense about "southern states don't matter" looks idiotic now that polls show Trump has no lock on NC, GA or MS.
— AlGiordano (@AlGiordano) May 10, 2016
The only way Trump wins is if Democrats don't turn out at 08/12 levels. And that's reason enough to go knock a door. https://t.co/AbNljmsYTz
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) May 9, 2016
As Washington Post humor columnist Alexandra Petri puts it, “Donald Trump is terrible. Good thing there’s this ‘nominee’ guy!”
***********
Apart from This Nominee Guy, and the WV primaries, what’s on the agenda for the day?
magurakurin
People making noises about voting third party in the threads these days. I say fuck that noise.
Anyone who votes third party this November is a putz of the first order and deserves nothing but scorn and ridicule.
But I mean that in a nice and loving way.
rikyrah
Good Morning ?, Everyone ?
Wag
@magurakurin:
I think that you mean a putz of the First Order. Which makes Trump to be Emperor Snopes and makes the granny starving Paul Ryan into Kylo Ren.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@magurakurin: Yeah, my troll filter is getting a workout. At least it lets me speed through reading the comments now.
Most of them, I’ll check after the election to see if I can let them out or if they’ve gone full PUMA. But for now, hiding them is better than letting my subconscious get convinced that they’re long-planted ratfuckers.
Baud
@magurakurin:
Is that happening here? Haven’t seen it. I’ve only seen standard Bernie/Hillary bickering.
maurinsky
What I’m seeing a bit of is people who say their vote is so, so precious that they cannot use it for anyone but the candidate who is pure of heart and has no flaws. This makes no sense to me at all. Your vote is NOTHING unless you use it, so at least use it to vote against the worst candidate.
Of course, these are also the same people who say that Trump and Clinton are indistinguishable from one another, so I think these folks have lost the plot completely.
Patricia Kayden
Thank you, Republican base, for choosing such an odious candidate! Not that any other Clown Car Occupant was much better.
@rikyrah: Good Morning!
OzarkHillbilly
Back to the barn. Got rained out right after lunch yesterday. Today will be a warm and humid 79 with no rain.
satby
Based on the above comments, I guess I’m not going to go back and catch up on yesterday’s posts.
So good morning rikyrah and everyone! Supposed to rain only part of the day today, which will be a nice change because I really need to weed whack the catio and dog yard. It’s starting to look like a jungle in those two parts of my yard.
Baud
@satby: Yeah, sounds like last night was a doozy. Glad I missed it.
NotMax
Neglected to mention earlier that the beast so nice they named it thrice is now our National Mammal.
msdc
Dan Pfeiffer’s point up above is important, but holy shit, that thread he’s responding to is a masterclass in liberal bedwetting. They honestly think Trump is going to win because liberals on Twitter are too smug.
I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that twitterprogs who have taken up smugness as their stock in trade are convinced that liberal smugness is the most powerful force in politics. Meanwhile, Hispanic voter registrations hit record highs and Trump’s favorability hits record lows with the key parts of the Democratic coalition.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: It was the same old…
They say Trump(and the Opossum on his head) needs to raise 1.5 Billion by September.
geg6
Took Koda and Lovey to the vets for shots (Koda for Lyme and Lovey for rabies and Lyme) and heartworm testing. Koda is very careful to keep her leg bandage undisturbed. Lovey ripped hers off before we got home. Tells you every thing you need to know about my beautiful pups.
As for Deadbeat Donnie, I’m liking those numbers up top.
Mustang Bobby
The Miami Herald (paywall) reports that Hillary Clinton leads Trump 52-25 in Miami-Dade County, with 1 in 5 Republicans supporting her.
The first number is not really a surprise. Obama won the county handily in ’08 and ’12, and so did Kerry in ’04. The GOP number isn’t all that surprising either since a lot of them are Hispanic or Cuban (there’s a difference, trust me) and immigration reform is high on the list for those who don’t get frontsies thanks to certain laws.
BillinGlendaleCA
@msdc: Rachel had a PPP poll that compared Trump to various things. Things more popular that Trump: head lice, Nickleback, root canal, being stuck in traffic. Trump did edge out cockroaches and hemorrhoids(though not with women).
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: I assume he’s given up on self-funding his campaign.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: With 1.5 billion, I really could have been president. Gotta start saving for next time around.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Yup, that’s why he’s meeting with the bigwigs in DC on Thursday.
@Baud: Every penny counts!
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: I would love to be a fly on the wall when they tell him that due to his business history they don’t view him as a good investment.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
@OzarkHillbilly:
I would love to hear Trump’s pitch on return on investment.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: You think that would be different from a Trump stump speech?
Matt McIrvin
@Wag: Which makes Trump to be Emperor Snopes
Kylo kneels before the big hologram whenever he wants to know if something in his Facebook feed is true.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Baud
@Baud: I do. He’s asking people for money. I don’t think he’ll talk about Mexicans.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: No.
OT: The kid came over to take her mom out to dinner for Mother’s Day, I asked her if the homeless guy in the UCLA baseball cap bothered her. She was OK with him?.
She’s getting really stressed out lately; mostly not due to school, though there’s a bit of that in that she has an exam in 2 weeks that she has to pass or she doesn’t graduate. Mostly it’s that her father and sister haven’t spoken in 9 months and I guess her sister won’t go to her graduation. She was so stressed out she started smoking again. Poor thing?.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Good luck to her.
Kay
@msdc:
There’s some concern among Democrats here that Trump will co-opt some of the Democratic economic agenda- minimum wage, raise taxes on wealthy, protect Social Security. It’s justified (I believe) because they just don’t know what he’ll say or do. They would prefer a Romney-Obama 2012 clear contrast on those issues- it’s easier and there’s less uncertainty. Obama ran an unabashedly economic populist campaign in Ohio in 2012. It was all auto industry jobs and Romney as uncaring plutocrat. The focus differs depending on what state you’re in, of course, but the Obama campaign + Dem-aligned interest groups in 2012 was ALL economic issues here. That was the theme.
Elmo
Somebody talk me down off the ceiling: Quinnipiac has Trump up over Hillary in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Which is the scenario I was worried about.
Matt McIrvin
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: If you look at all the polls, Trump’s numbers have been improving since about the middle of that period. Clinton’s overall lead in polls closer to the end of April-beginning of May is more like 7 points, even if you exclude Rasmussen.
Baud
@Kay: Romney’s campaign was all about his economics, however. Trump is about white power.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: She’ll do fine on the school stuff, though she was a bit upset that she won’t be invited to the nurse’s honor society(they use cumulative GPA which includes her rather undistinguished first attempt at college immediately after high school).
Punchy
Yesterday, I switched back and forth between ESPN and MSNBC. Every 5 mins, just looked at the MSNBC topic. Trump’s name was involved in the chyron EVERY TIME I LOOKED. It’s literally “Trump” all day, seemingly every day on these cable news networks.
Seriously, everything he’s says/does/destroys is being covered non-stop. Unreal
Matt McIrvin
@Elmo: Don’t freak out about individual polls! Here are recent averages in Ohio and PA:
elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-ohio-president-trump-vs-clinton
elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-pennsylvania-president-trump-vs-clinton
Aggregation is the antidote to being either dismayed or unreasonably thrilled by outliers. There aren’t many polls yet, but the more there are, the better aggregation will do, but also, the more likely you will be to find an outlier that tells any story you want.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: But our primary isn’t over yet. Our side hasn’t consolidated.
Schlemazel Khan
@Mustang Bobby:
I believe Gore won Dade in 00. Please for the love of holy pasta do whatever you can to help HRC. Take nothing for granted.
Raining here yesterday and today so no walkies for me, kind of a drag. But it is the last full week of tne mandatory training hell so I am trying to look at the positive
Kay
@msdc:
So this was 2012:
That’s the concern with Trump. Clinton can’t get to his Left on these issues like Obama did with Romney, partly because no one really knows where Trump is on any given day. Democrats don’t have a replacement for that big block of states.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Hmmmm…. I distinctly recall reading just yesterday that he has now called for an end to the federal minimum wage.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Punchy: you realize he’s the oj simpson bronco chase of politics.
Kay
@Baud:
Oh, I don’t know about that. Romney said it was all about economics. The food stamp stuff was pure dog whistle.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
First he said wages should be lower then he said he would consider higher and now he’s gone to no federal minimum.
That didn’t happen with Romney. They could define him early because he stayed in the same place.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
–
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Baud
@Kay: We’re going to lose them eventually, unless the minority population increases at a faster rate than white flight.
Schlemazel Khan
@Kay:
They may have to splice togther clips of Dumpster taking every side on a position and beat him hard on ‘untrustworthy’ They have to start early to paint him as a liar and a loser, lard knows he has given them the ammo
Hal
I’m trying to figure out how someone who is not popular with any groups other than certain white men is winning in any polls outside of Republican stronghold states. I hate to be in denial like Romney but something isn’t lining up correctly.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
I think you worry too much Kay.
Iowa Old Lady
Jeb Bush was right when he said Trump was a chaos candidate and would be a chaos president. By definition, it’s hard to define chaos.
Schlemazel Khan
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Ah don’t you just love having to referee squabbles between adult children? We are lucky in that ours have never had any major tiffs. The Mrs sister (a major drama queen) is always involved in major day time soap opera proceedings with her two drama queen 40 YO daughters. Hopefully things will smooth out for you
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: They said then that Romney was a weather vane. We can now say that Trump is a broken weather vane.
Kay
@Baud:
There is an inevitability to it and it was exacerbated by losing so many governor’s races in those states. In a way it doesn’t matter- Hillary Clinton was probably the strongest candidate Democrats had for those states- she has a long history in those states and she does well with older voters- so if she can’t win there against Trump no one else could either.
I genuinely do not know what they would though if those states started to flip in national races. A couple of southern states added would do it but boy that’s a reach and risky. That’s kind of the last, best hope for the GOP forTrump- flip a state like PA.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: Tend to agree. If Trump doesn’t actually have a plan, you nail him on that. Tell voters they’re buying a pig in a poke.
Schlemazel Khan
@Iowa Old Lady:
Good point! I have to remember that line when discussing him. Thanks
BillinGlendaleCA
@Schlemazel Khan: Heh, it sometimes makes me happy I was an only child.
Matt McIrvin
@Elmo: Also, a couple of points about those specific polls:
1 It looks to me as if Quinnipiac has Trump over Clinton in Ohio, but Clinton +1 in Pennsylvania.
2. Just eyeballing their last several polls in both states, it appears to me that Quinnipiac’s systematic house effect leans a little more toward Trump than the average poll. That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily wrong and the others are right! The others could be doing sampling wrong. PPP (not a right-wing hack company) is similar. But it does mean that you can’t compare their number to, say, that NBC/Marist one in PA that was Clinton +15 and conclude that the race dramatically shifted in two weeks. Much of the variation you see in day-to-day polling reports is some combination of noise, and changes in the systematic biases of whatever company released a poll last.
Baud
@Kay:
Anything is possible. The current alignment of red and blue states didn’t exist as late as the 1990s. States are always shifting. Maybe Georgia and Texas will change over just as we are losing the Midwest.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
They won’t even say his name. Not even Senators from blood red states, not even those who aren’t up for election this year will say his name.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I’m not particularly worried about the election; I think Clinton will win handily. But I do think it will be different from anything we’ve ever seen before.
Just in the week or so since Trump became the presumptive front-runner, he’s been all over the place on so many issues — core issues like wages, as you noted. J. Granholm was on Maddow’s show last night and compared trying to pin him down to nailing Jello to the wall.
I think Trump will also try — and might partially succeed — in shaking up the usual red-blue map. It’ll be a roller-coaster. But in the end, I suspect the Republicans will stick with Trump and the Democrats with Clinton, who will win bigly. Still, I’m not taking any chances personally. I’ll knock on more doors and donate more money than I did even for President Obama.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
The chaos element is this- we found out that the Right-leaning voters don’t actually give a shit about “conservative economic principles” which we knew anyway- Bush added a huge new entitlement (Medicare drug plan) and none of them cared about that.
Trump is not as far from the GOP norm as we would like to think. They’ve always been full of shit on economic issues- he just doesn’t pretend to care.
debbie
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I’m more interested in his meeting with Ryan on on Thursday. We’ll see how much of a purity pony Ryan really is.
mike in dc
@magurakurin:
It’s spite-voting. As in, cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. “I’m voting for Jill Stein, because having a 5-4 left-leaning SCOTUS just isn’t worth the stain on my purity.”
amk
Pfeiffer is spot on. Otherwise, another short-fingered vulgarian could win, just like this one.
Jeffro
@Kay:
My 2 cents? That concern is silly. On any given day, Trump is on three or four sides of these supposedly Democratic economic agenda items. It doesn’t create a great impression and perhaps more importantly, for any wavering and/or low-info Dem who might fall for it, Trump a) loses an independent with his gobbledygook, b) loses a Republican for daring to (even momentarily) support a Dem position, and c) hardens another Dem into even stronger opposition.
I’lll take that trade any day.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
There’s this pain in the ass element in the Dem base that is just such a constant, year after year. My middle son was here last weekend and he told me his union is telling them to vote Clinton for the good of the Party and there was all this muttering going on at the meeting “that’s some Nazi Germany shit”- grumble, grumble. It’s a Party composed of malcontents and rugged individualists :)
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker:
I suspect you’re right about shaking up the map…shaking 4-5 more red states into the blue column, that is. =)
Seconded! It’s unfortunate to have that same surge of interest for negative reasons, but Trump is truly a threat to the country. HRC is worth voting for on her own merits and I’ll keep telling friends and family that. But in the end, I would vote for a random Democratic city councilman to run the country over Trump. I’d actually vote to leave the office vacant for four years if that were the only alternative…
amk
@Kay:
It’s high time dems start running on their own populist agenda instead of bed wetting over what donald derp might or might not do.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel Khan:
I had a saying for the boys when they were growing up and got into an argument: “Figure it out guys, because if I get involved neither one of you is going to like it.” They always found a compromise they both could live with.
About a year ago one called** and asked what I thought about the fairness of some arrangement they had made. I replied, “I think this is none of my business.” End of conversation.
**iirc, the only time as an adult that either have
Kay
@amk:
Right, but Thurston Howell III and the Granny Starver boy wonder from Wisconsin was easier to do that with in 2012 than this crazy person.
amk
@Kay:
Simple. Follow the kenyan mantra. GOTV, GOTV, GOTV. And stick to the message and f…k the noise, which the emmessem will generate to deafening levels.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
That “big block of states” is not a uniform block. These analyses that treat Ohio as if it were a bellwether for Michigan and Wisconsin drive me nuts. Ohio is really close, probably Trump’s single most likely get among the 2012 Obama states. Wisconsin is really consistently about Clinton +11 in recent polls; Michigan is Clinton +10 and has a lot of minority voters. I think the Scott Walker phenomenon and vague notions about the Rust Belt drove people a little nuts about the upper Midwest.
There isn’t any recent polling at all in Iowa or Minnesota; I’d like to see some. I’m guessing Clinton is not in danger in Minnesota.
If the Democrats lost the whole upper Midwest they could lose. But they could lose Ohio, Pennsylvania and Iowa while keeping the other 2012 Obama states and still win.
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: I think your approach is very wise. I hope to adopt a similar strategy when I grow up.
My mom, siblings and I had a weirdly circular communication pattern. We were all pretty close with each other, but we definitely colluded behind one another’s backs on issues and vented about each other’s horrible partners, in-laws, etc. We still do, though it’s not the same without our mom, who was the funniest and most on-point about family dramas.
JMG
It is my belief resentment-to-hated feelings for Clinton among white men are even stronger than that group’s feelings for Obama. Much stronger, in fact. So sexism will keep the election close unless other factors (people really don’t care for unpredictability in their lives, so it’s not a desirable leadership trait) intervene. But it’s very early days. FWIW, Quinnipiac has consistently had the weakest polls for Clinton in both general election and primary matchups of any reputable pollster,. which they are. They could be on to something or missing something, who knows?
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Sounds just like the Republicans.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
My personal nightmare scenario is that it doesn’t consolidate. There’s some fraction of Sanders supporters who are currently spinning conspiracy theories about Clinton stealing the nomination. Sanders has promised to support the Democratic nominee. If he decides by convention time that he was robbed and he’s really the nominee, he could blow it all up.
I’ve noticed that in Trump vs. Clinton head-to-head polls, depending on the methodology, there are still often a lot of “Other” respondents. Don’t know what that means yet, or whether it’s good or bad for us.
MattF
Via TPM: Trump Says He Would Make Exception To Muslim Ban For London Mayor. So, you see, who qualifies to get into the US is up to Him. How would that work, one wonders.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve always taken the view that elections are decided by people who can’t make up their minds. Frustrating, but that’s the way it works out. It’s possible that 2016 will be the exception, but maybe not.
MomSense
@Jeffro:
His temperament is the big problem. I wouldn’t leave him alone with my kids let alone holding the nuclear codes. He’s a wild card. There is nothing reassuring about his personality.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
Yeah, and if the union had told them to vote for Trump for the good of the Party these exact same guys would be “Trump!! fuck yeah!!” I bet the complainers are not actually Democrats at all.
amk
@MattF: And the muslin mayor sez, fuck you, donnie
BillinGlendaleCA
@MomSense:
And the whole thing about dating his daughter…
Lamh36
Good morning!!! Hide yo kids, protect yo shins… #NiecyZoe is on the move!!!
twitter.com/psddluva4evah/status/730006056173068288
OzarkHillbilly
@MattF: Republicans say the same thing about Obama.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s always a risk. My guess is that it’s a low one. I take Bernie at his word that he will work to ensure Trump’s defeat in November, which will help consolidate the party.
MomSense
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Exactly. Please democrats – run soccer mom ads. Moms on the side lines cheering kids and talking about how weird and creepy he is. I volunteer to write the copy. “You never know what he’ll say or do next. I just don’t feel comfortable with him”
His trading in wives for newer models won’t exactly go over well either. We like the idea of commitment, stability, and fidelity.
ETA okease Democrsts start early. Define him now so this is the first thing in people’s minds.
NotMax
@Iowa Old Lady
A match made in purgatory:
Trump/Hexadecimal ’16.
;)
Frankensteinbeck
WEIRD FRONT OF POST EDIT – Trump’s numbers are well into ‘GOP forgetting the primary’s bickering’ process. Hillary’s are still deep in a primary drenched in personal attacks, and her positions still are not known on the national stage. Trump’s positives will pick up a bit among hardened Republican voters. Hillary’s will skyrocket with everyone else post-convention.
@Kay:
While I understand the concern, because they’ve heard a couple of sound bites and the election hasn’t actually swung into Hillary vs. Trump mode yet, for the observer what Trump will do is already obvious. He will say whatever random shit pops into his mind at any moment, then reverse it five minutes later. When that becomes glaringly obvious, ‘attacking Hillary from the left’ will be a non-issue. I’m sure she’s gleefully anticipating roasting him for his constant flip-flops. This isn’t even Daily Show ‘Here’s what you said a year ago’ fodder. She can bring whole lists to a debate of ‘Here is what you said yesterday. Here is what you said last week. Here is what you said a month ago. Here is what you said the day before that. Why should anyone listen to anything you say, ever?’ Except she won’t have to, because that will become plain by itself.
The MSM will unquestionably try to run interference. They tried to present Romney as likable and moderate and winning. Once they’re forced to let the actual candidates show themselves on a scale so broad nobody can miss it, their power to obfuscate dies. They never had the power to convince in the first place.
MattF
Via NYT: Der Trump’s national finance chairman is pretty much the epitome of Wall Street privilege.
ET
I have to wonder if those numbers will hold when the election numbers come in. How many people don’t want to lie to the voice on the telephone or even the recorded voice on the telephone for fear of being judged on their choice?
Jeffro
OT but OMG: Dubya’s presidential library (the jokes write themselves, but that’s for another day) just released some never-before-seen photos of him reacting throughout the day on 9/11
In one of them, taken around midday. On. 9/11…he has his feet on the desk.
Tell me that wouldn’t get a Democrat retroactively impeached.
NotMax
@Jeffro
If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be
BelgiumBoojum.:)
WereBear
Hi guys,
Just letting you know I’m still around, just wrestling with the awful bronchitis/flu thing that is going around, which dragged down my underlying illness, and keeps most efforts out of my reach.
At least it is Spring.
OzarkHillbilly
@ET:
I have never bought that. Most of the racist people I know hold their racist positions while absolutely convinced that they are not in fact racist. They didn’t go full on birther because Obama was a n*gger with a Muslim terrorist name, it was all about the CONSTITUTION! They aren’t against Hillary because she’s a strong woman, it’s because they just can’t stand the c*nt!
MomSense
@Jeffro:
I saw those photos and thought the exact same thing about the feet in the desk one. Also too his suit didn’t seem quite dark enough for the seriousness of that day. It was more taupe than tan but still.
Matt McIrvin
@JMG: Quinnipiac’s performance in the 2012 cycle is interesting: from what I can find, they seemed to have one of the more Republican house effects for most of the year (comparable to Rasmussen), but in their likely-voter polls in just the last month of the campaign they were actually almost dead on, maybe leaning slightly Democratic. Probably they just refined their sampling.
There’s a popular legend that Rasmussen does this on purpose, putting their thumb on the scale for the Republicans but then adjusting their polls at the last minute to look accurate, but as far as I can tell nothing like that happened in 2012; Rasmussen was calling it for Romney right up to the end.
MomSense
@WereBear:
Hope you feel much better!
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: Feel better soon.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: There was a huge amount of speculation in 2008 that Obama might be doomed because of the Bradley Effect, that racist-but-ashamed voters were lying to the polls but wouldn’t actually vote for him when it came down to marking a ballot. Didn’t happen. (In fact, most studies I’ve seen of the Bradley Effect seem to conclude that it may have really existed back in the 1980s but it doesn’t any more.)
msdc
@Kay: Oh no, Trump’s constant flip-flopping will make him unstoppable!
And his charming personal manners will win over black voters, Hispanics, women, millennials, professionals…
rikyrah
@geg6:
Glad to hear the update.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense: In all due fairness, he dressed for a kindergarten reading, not a terrorist attack.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: One thing about putting your thumb on the scale that’s not usually mentioned/understood– it not only changes your answers, it changes the probability distributions of your answers, generally in a negative way. So not only do you get wrong answers, you get worse distributions.
rikyrah
@Elmo:
Then, there are the polls that have Hillary Clinton UP in North Carolina and tied in Georgia.
Forcing the GOP to spend money to defend North Carolina and Georgia would be good.
Come off the rails.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I used to tell my sons the same thing. Having to learn how to work stuff out is what adulthood is all about.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
I know but this is why a President must always be dressed in dark colors – or something. Like most of the other Reoublican outrage, it makes no sense.
satby
@Matt McIrvin:
First thing I thought when I read that.
Matt McIrvin
@MattF: I suspect that likely-voter screens undercounted minorities in 2008 and 2012, especially in national polls. We may see even more of that this cycle, especially if huge Hispanic turnout actually materializes.
satby
@WereBear: Good to “see” you WereBear. Get better soon!
rikyrah
@Kay:
The Dems can define him.
He’s a con-man, carnival barker who used bankruptcy court several times to game the system.
Push on the tax returns. Keep on pushing on them.
I am not worried. Let the polls show it’s close, so that we can keep folks from being complacent.
I always go back to the fundamentals.
Willard Romney got 27% of the Latino vote.
Donald Trump is polling in the low double digits (less than 15%) with Latinos.
The ONLY part of the media that has had Trump’s number from day one, and tells the truth about him consistently is the Spanish-language, Latino focused media.
So, while the MSM Media purses their lips to try and clean up Trump and make him appealing….and not the farce that he is…
The Spanish-language media is having none of that, which is why Country Last was whining about it last week.
Because, they won’t go along with the program.
As I have said for awhile….
They didn’t have a problem with Trump’s POLICIES..
they only had a problem with that he didn’t speak in dogwhistles, which gave the MSM their plausible deniability.
Look at the fundamentals.
Low double digits for Latinos..
Where’s he going to make it up with?
White people?
Willard ran the Southern Strategy campaign that got him 60% of the White Vote.
And, it didn’t even matter.
Jeffro
@OzarkHillbilly: I see MomSense got there before I could…
For what it’s worth, I am glad that we live in an age where pics of Dubya – or St. Ronnie, for that matter – with his feet on the desk can be readily pulled up and shown to Obama haters trying to use that as their latest excuse to knock the President.
Also for what it’s worth, I hate that said haters just move on to the next stupid thing…Flag pins! Tan suits! Feet on the desk! Selfie stick! He’s a far better guy than me for ignoring it all.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: Look at the pictures taken that day of him reading My Pet Goat. He had a dark suit on in the classroom.
debit
@WereBear: Feel better. I’ve had some sort of crud going on two weeks now, so you have my heart felt sympathy.
rikyrah
@Lamh36:
awe, Zoe!!!!
Go Zoe!!
She’s so darn adorable :)
rikyrah
@WereBear:
Get some rest…glad to hear from you :)
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
There’s some sexism going on in my opinion, but, again, you can’t do anything about that. Irrational bias is impossible to overcome. She just has to bake it in and move on, as Obama had to do with bias that came out among Democrats based on his race. It was always there among some Democrats. I was in a tiny little town last night for work and right at the entrance to town was a big old house with a huge confederate flag and two Trump signs flanking the flag. This little town is as far north as you can go in Ohio and still be in Ohio.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Also, I know no one likes to mention it, but Trump is really popular among NE Republicans all the way to New England.
This stuff may be a tad less regional than Democrats like to think. It doesn’t mean he’ll win any of those ultra-blue states but there’s a bright red vein running thru them, apparently, and it isn’t “moderate Republicans” who are concerned about deficit spending. The more obnoxious and stupid he gets the more they like him.
amk
@Kay: So, let’s give him 100% of NE repubs. What happens then?
MattF
@Kay: Yeah, I’ve noticed that the MD Republican party has a strong right-wing flank. A lot of the non-crazy ones either split off or gave up on politics– e.g., I don’t think you’re going to hear much about the national races from Connie Morella. On the other hand, the current MD Governor, Larry Hogan, is quite moderate and quite popular. And has nothing to say about Der Trump.
Ken
@satby: Maybe he had to change suits after he heard about the attack?
Betty Cracker
@Lamh36: Such a cutie! Wait until she gets up and starts running! That’s when the real fun starts!
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
@Matt McIrvin: There it is again: Clinton’s is at 39% behind Trump’s 43% which a truckload of ‘other’. Clinton’s poll numbers in Ohio over the past couple months bounce all over from 37 to 50%. Trump meanwhile keeps a constant 39 to 43%.
In polls I’ve been checking, Il Douche has constant support in the low 40s with a 43% ceiling (for now). Meanwhile, Clinton’s numbers are a Magic 8-Ball of polling results. Its almost as if… well, I’ll wait on Nate Silver for that analysis.
Chris
@Jeffro:
How many copies of “My Pet Goat” can one fit into a single building?
JMG
I sincerely doubt Trump will win, but I also sincerely doubt it’ll be a landslide. Too many Americans now believe hate, fear and ignorance are not only OK, but justified by the presence of an outside world that dares to be mostly poor, mostly young and mostly not white.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
Trump appeals to white male assholes. They are particularly concentrated in some areas, but definitely not limited to one region. It’s not a secret source of strength that will surprise us. Without this factor he wouldn’t have any support at all.
WereBear
@geg6: What an odd couple!
WaterGirl
@Lamh36: Rut roh! But adorable as always.
Frankensteinbeck
@JMG:
I think the definition of ‘landslide’ has changed. Even with gerrymandering, a few more percentage points would flip the House.
ruemara
@amk: thank you. Jesus, this party should be called depends because pissing yourself is the constant state.
The Q Poll over samples whites. And if you’re that damned worried, sign up to do phone banking and start registering voters in your area. But stop whining, armchair campaign managing or generally pissing yourself at an election in November when it’s fucking May!
I’m so over this primary. I’m over how ahistorical Sanders mania has made formerly sensible people. I’m over liberals saying and doing pretty fucked up, misogynistic and yes, prejudiced things. I’m sick of woe begotten handwringing and smugness. If paying attention to politics wasn’t of critical importance, man, I’d be tuned out for good.
WaterGirl
@WereBear: So sorry to hear that, WereBeear, but thank you so much for checking in! I hope things turn around for you soon.
Hoodie
@Frankensteinbeck: And the way to deflate them is with shame, so that their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters will turn out and pull the lever for Hillary. Trump is a tailor made target for negative advertising because he is fundamentally unserious, and Hillary probably wouldn’t drive her negatives any lower by going negative. Run the equivalent of nonstop Daisy ads, maybe a montage of Trump’s more ridiculous statements, followed by a montage with the serious things a president actually has to deal with on a daily basis, stuff like war, refugee crises, economic crises, etc. Start out with a Daily Show or Colbert Report parody tone, maybe even use some of that footage, but then pivot to endings that are deadly serious, the equivalent of “the stakes are too high for you to stay home” except “the stakes are too high to let this clown anywhere near the White House.” Repeatedly reinforce the impression that only unserious morons who care nothing about the future of their children and grandchildren would want to be associated with Trump. I think that’s what really scares some of the GOP leaders, because that characterization can easily spread down ticket if they look like they’re lining up behind Trump. They really screwed up when they didn’t strangle him in the crib, e.g., when they didn’t shut him down on the birther nonsense or his racist remarks in the early campaign.
gene108
@Lamh36:
So sweet…and she can talk up a storm too ?
Joel
@msdc: the very limited pool of PUMA types this year are all butt hurt that no one gives a fuck about them. They probably feel hurt and betrayed that upwards of 90% of Bernie voters don’t give a shit about them either.
Chris
@OzarkHillbilly:
All this.
And all the conservative blog and Facebook posts I’ve ever read suggest that patting each other on the back about how non-racist you are and commiserating about how horrible it is that liberals think you’re racist is a ritual that rivals Sunday morning church in terms of its importance in their lives.
Miss Bianca
@Lamh36: aw, da sweetie! Is she a shin-biter? ; )
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
I mention it all the time because they live in my neighborhood. For the presidential election, to first approximation, it doesn’t matter. If you went down the street in my town counting yard signs like Peggy Noonan you’d think Trump was winning Massachusetts, but the latest polls are about 60-30, 55-30 against him. In New Hampshire, which people keep mentioning as a swing state, it’s about 50-30, even though you go into Rockingham County and it looks like Trumpapalooza over there.
This week I’ve been hearing people saying strange things about Trump maybe winning New Jersey. I can’t figure out why they think that. Do they think Chris Christie is an automatic vote-getter or is it “everyone in New Jersey is an asshole, I bet they love Trump over there”? Polls are about 50-35 for Clinton.
Betty Cracker
A few Trump signs have sprung up in my little town. I’m glad — lets me know where the assholes live!
Miss Bianca
@ruemara: I hear you.
@WereBear: Hope you feel better soon!
Aimai
@Frankensteinbeck: this!
Rolling Along
According to the new SHOCK POLLS, quite a few swing state voters like Trump at least in comparison to Clinton.
This election may very well be down to the wire, to-close-to-call!
D58826
A piece about your dark money politics in action.
huffingtonpost.com/entry/montana-dark-money-judicial-race_us_572b9f4ce4b016f378951c8f
If you can’t win in court, just elect people as judges that you have bough and paid for
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@ruemara: The Q Poll over samples whites.
yup
amk
@ruemara:
Yup, in 2012, qpac did the least no. of ‘polls’ and yet even with the dem ‘bias’ and all important ‘cell phones’, they ended up with a meh accuracy.
Chris
@Kay:
I think the point is that by now, Republicans are the same everywhere. Regional differences like the old East/liberal vs. West/conservative divide have pretty much been bulldozed away and Republicans who weren’t conservatives have either become that way or left the party. Whatever the climate of the state they’re operating in (and regardless of whether they’re capable of winning elections in their current state), the party remains the same.
Rolling Along
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Unskewed polls!!! Lol.
This election will be down-to-the-wire due to sky high unfavorables for both candidates.
We may very well not have a winner until Christmas!
D58826
@Rolling Along: Well some of the numbers appear all over the place and if the argument is that Bernie is more electable, he doesn’t seem to be doing so well either
pamelabrown53
@ruemara:
THIS. ruemara. Every single word.
Chyron HR
@Rolling Along:
Maybe this year your presidential election fanfiction should have drift racing in it. Everybody loves drift racing!
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, I don’t think Trump will carry those states any more than Romney carried Massachusetts. I DO think there is some crowing sometimes among liberals on the hicks in the sticks and their backward notions- Trump puts the final nail in that for me.
geg6
@amk:
This. I love Kay and all, but she’s turned into the world’s biggest Eeyore this election season. Where I live, the political environment isn’t all that different from hers. And I just can’t seem to be concerned with them or with Deadbeat Donnie. I just can’t see how he wins and I don’t fear him as an electoral force. I just don’t. There are too many things happening outside our little slice of the northern tip of Appalachia, filled with low education Teabaggers and bigots that just aren’t all that visible to us. I read these reports about the huge surge in Hispanic voter registration. The Trump unfavorables at the top of the post are simply astonishing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like those numbers. Ever.
I’m not stupid enough to become complacent and will be working hard for Hillary through the fall, but I am cautiously optimistic.
amk
@Kay:
Hicks, racists, NE repubs, establishment repubs, whatever their nomenclature, they all fall in line, come nov. So?
imonlylurking
@MomSense: I would seriously donate money to a Balloon-juice PAC. I like the soccer mom idea. Somebody a few months ago had some other really good ideas. I’d love to see those ads on the air.
msdc
@geg6: I get the sense that she’s going to be calling Ohio for Trump all the way to election night, and pretty deep into election night at that. Kind of like Rove in 2012.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
@Rolling Along: We all heard it from our very own Bill Kristol: Trump’s toast!
Rolling Along
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Q-Pac is catching the latest anti-Clinton wave! NBC polls are old news.
#NeverClinton
#TooClose2Call
#2000Redux
I just wish it were Jeb in this position.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: In New England, rural areas are granola-liberal, and conservatism is a suburban/exurban phenomenon.
Kay
@geg6:
I don’t like the national analysis of Trump because it doesn’t really apply in some states. I think Latinos are 6% in PA. These population differences are just facts, geg6, and Presidential elections are a set of states :)
Too Early To Call as they say on election night.
Matt McIrvin
@Rolling Along: You’re the reason I laugh whenever I see the words SHOCK POLL. Those cherries won’t pick themselves!
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s interesting. Kasich was the candidate of the suburbs in Ohio- that plus the counties that would vote for a cat if there were an R by the cat’s name was his “secret sauce”.
Kay
@geg6:
The polls will narrow because Republicans will fall in line, just like Democrats will all end up at Clinton after Sanders/Clinton.
Germy
@Kay: But how many cats would run as a republican?
Every cat I’ve ever known was liberal socially and economically.
D58826
A few election day EV scenarios on Huffington. When they have Ga, UT, Az, NM and IN as possible blue states something is up
huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/five-optimistic-electoral_b_9877990.html
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
We have people who roll coal and fly the Confederate flag in Massachusetts.
My town also has a Trumpster right at the entrance, with one of those Trump billboards set up on a high hillside so it’s the first thing you see dead ahead when you drive across the town line. I don’t know if it’s a conscious strategy of the campaign, to get these displays right on the border next to the Kiwanis and Knights of Columbus signs so they sort of mark the whole town as Trump territory, but if so it’s clever.
Mike in NC
@Rolling Along: JEB!zzz position is with your pointed head jammed up his low energy asshole.
#LoserMamasBoy
liberal
@amk:
LOL. With Hillary as the standard bearer?
amk
@liberal: No worries, no one stopped you voting for your pretty pony. Most of the dems have already found theirs.
Paul in KY
@Kay: I think she can get to his left, if she wants to.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I went to the Kiwanis Mother’s Day dinner and I was trying to get them to talk about Trump but they wouldn’t do it :)
They’re on to me.
Mike in DC
Food for thought : 100 years ago, our presumptive nominee would have been barred from voting, let alone running for president. Amazing what we take for granted nowadays.
Kay
@Paul in KY:
I hope she gets to his left on education. She’s really well informed on it and Dems care about it more than R’s do- they rank it much higher as an issue. She’ll be better than Obama on education.
Betty Cracker
@srv: That motherfucker stole my Circus Peanut line!
Betty Cracker
@Mike in DC: Yep. My old grandma turned 96 last fall, and I remarked that when she was born, women couldn’t vote but that it looked like she might see a woman in the White House. Being the paleo-con religious nutjob that she is, she launched into an anti-Hillary rant, LOL!
Paul in KY
@Kay: That & hammer Trump on his fake university & scamming gullible people trying to better themselves, etc. etc.
Iowa Old Lady
Anecdote: I just got back from getting my hair cut. The woman who does it is the wife of an extreme right winger who ran for state office and was, thank god, defeated. She started in on Trump, saying he said terrible things about women and in her opinion had no impulse control. I think that last thing is a mom’s observation. She has two kids in their early twenties.
trollhattan
@Jeffro:
Please tell me he was in jeans and Air Jordans.
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: Glad you can laugh about it! I wonderwhat my grandmas would have made of HRC. I can see my mother’s mother being horrified, my father’s toasting her with a Bloody Mary.
D58826
Well if this is true then the election is over and Trump has it in the Bag – Louis Farrakhan has endorsed the Donald!
Elie
@Matt McIrvin:
Have any of these polling organizations solved the issue of the cell phone? My concern is who are they calling? On my own Democratic voter sheets for my precinct, phone numbers are frequently wrong or altogether missing. To get valid phone numbers AND also stratify by each demographic (blacks, whites, olds, youngs, Hispanics, women, men) must be quite difficult. Have no idea how they account for this cell phone reality that even the olds like me mostly use.
Chris
@Elie:
I’ve always wondered about that. I don’t know a single person in my generation who doesn’t still have the same phone number they got as a teenager, and it rarely corresponds to where they live now.
Matt McIrvin
@Elie: I think the landline phone polls just try to re-weight the demographics of whatever sample they do get.
I remember there was a lot of speculation that cell phones would doom election polling even back in 2008, but state-poll aggregation ended up doing very well at predicting the result anyway. But it may be that we’re approaching a limit in which that no longer works.
Matt McIrvin
…I’m wondering about Southwestern Hispanics particularly. They historically have low voter turnout, but there are anecdotal indications that that could change this year. But they are also unusually hard to poll: more of them have made the leap to using only cellphones than the general population, and there are language and cultural barriers to getting good data, depending on the polling organization.
Bob In Portland
And yet the Quinnipiac poll puts Trump ahead in Ohio. It’s funny with those unpopularity numbers.
Has anyone got any more information on that lawsuit coming out of Flint? Is that fund the Pritzker money?
Bitter Scribe
The latest line is that Trump and Clinton are equally loathsome, unpopular, despised, unlikable, etc.
Chapter 2,193 in Tales of False Equivalence.
Elie
@Matt McIrvin:
How do you re-weigh ,”truth” , or validate what you have? Do exit polls serve in some way to “truth” or validate their models? I don’t expect an answer, but its pretty interesting to me….
Elie
I find it interesting that some white people think that if Trump wins, there will be no impact on them or their lives. Our country would be torn to pieces with not only the immediate reaction, but to the impact his reckless pronouncements and decisions would have on our financial, health, social services, security and international relations. Our financial system and economy would take a hit and our standing in the world would crash. Somehow, through all of this, BiP would do fine. I guess it would be victory of sorts for him and other Putin supporters but make no mistake, White Americans who care about our country as a whole, would suffer right along with blacks, browns, and others. I thought it was interesting that in the Trump unfavorability poll, that blacks had the highest unfavorability ratings for Trump — not Hispanics. Blacks were ten points higher than Hispanics at 91% while Hispanics were 81%… still high but not as high.
Elie
@Bob In Portland:
Do you ever go after Trump with such vigor? Why don’t you go pester some of those folks for a change?
Applejinx
I think it’ll be nearly impossible to make sense of the election right until votes start coming in.
That’s why I grudgingly but strongly prefer Clinton and the Clinton machine to be in charge at that time. I love the Bernie people I worked with, but either they’d abandon every principle to beat Trump (kind of like that data breach?) which is dangerous because better a sketchy organization that knows where the line is, to an idealistic organization that doesn’t WANT to know… or worse, they would stay strictly honorable and idealistic and I think the Dem machinery would fucking abandon them to twist in the wind.
And this is no time for that scenario.
It’s going to come down to control of the old school voting mechanisms with no quarter asked or given, and I want Clinton on the one side and then Trump posturing over a deeply bitter and alienated Republican machine.
Because it’s GOING to come down to whether the ‘establishment machine’ for each respective side, is fighting to win or trying to throw it to fuck over its candidate. And I’m thinking if we had ended up with Bernie, the Republicans would rally behind Trump in a desperation move hoping for favor. But since it’s liable to be Clinton, there’s actually a case to be made for throwing the election to Clinton and hoping for mercy and some concessions to the right, at least economically. I’m not saying she would, but the oligarchs ARE among her constituencies and it’s a pretty stark choice between her and Bernie + his supporters, if you’re an oligarch.
It becomes,
Bernie: jump, you fuckers! Impale all banker heads on spikes! (and then, he gets no cooperation from Washington, and gridlock)
Hillary: hunker down and try to lock in net gains and scheme how to ride a tax-driven economic wave, which can be good news
Trump: gridlock, and the only things that do happen are crazy: T-bills no longer safe haven, learn Chinese or Arabic
All Hillary really has to do is say, “Like my husband during the 90s, I am going to whack the rich and balance the budget and run surpluses, but like my husband during the 90s the rich will end up making MORE money than if I hadn’t. That’s what we did when Bill was President and we’ll just have to do it again. What was Donald doing in the 90s? Going bankrupt.”
There’s even a lot of truth to it, and conditions now are perfect for re-running that play, perhaps with better adjustments to hose the poor less, perhaps without even bothering to do that. If you are a Republican you would have to be crazy not to secretly vote for Hillary and have her fix up the budget etc. for you, especially considering that she would be making conditions better for you (austerity sucks as a strategy for nation-states)
MCA1
@rikyrah: I agree with this. It doesn’t matter if he takes a position to the left or right or on top of Clinton’s on any issue, so long as he’s been preemptively painted as a charlatan whose general position is “whatever I think the majority of the room in which I’m sitting wants to hear.” If he’s tarred as a no compunction, lying, snake oil salesman without any underlying principles guiding his positions, who’s running a con, often and early enough, then his shifting around is a benefit to Clinton rather than not a hindrance. Then if ever does actually alight on a solid policy position on anything, she can hammer him on how stupid it no doubt is, and draw out his ignorance on policy matters and how the world actually works.
Bob In Portland
@Elie: Here you go, the story behind that nasty piece of work against Ted Cruz by Trump:
ctka.net/2016/jfk-assassination-and-2016-presidential-election.html
Matt McIrvin
@Elie: You have some kind of model of what the electorate’s demographics are really like, and you try to get a poll sample that reflects that, or you take all the crosstabs for your poll and re-sum the numbers with some kind of weighting factors that correspond to your model.
And if you’ve guessed wrong, you get it wrong.