Looks like Trump’s outreach to Bernie Sanders supporters will be as spectacularly successful as his appeals to the Hispanics, the blacks and the broads [Politico link]:
“I don’t want to hit Crazy Bernie Sanders too hard yet because I love watching what he is doing to Crooked Hillary,” Trump wrote [on Twitter]. “His time will come!”
“I think a lot of the young people that are with Bernie Sanders are going to come to my side because they want jobs. Bernie Sanders and I agree on one thing, trade, that we don’t know what we’re doing on trade,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “The difference is, I’ll make great deals out of it. He doesn’t know what to do. The people that are with Bernie Sanders, the young people, I really believe they’re going to come over and vote for me. I think we’re going to have a lot of crossover.”
Yeah, that’ll work.
Speaking of plutocratic deadbeats, the six Walmart heirs share a $145 billion fortune, according to the Economic Policy Institute. That is equal to the wealth of nearly 1.8 million median-income American households — the numerical equivalent of the population of Louisiana.
One way the Walmart heirs amassed such a gargantuan pile was by paying their employees so poorly that U.S. taxpayers must help feed, shelter and provide medical care to Walmart workers and their families. Public assistance for Walmart employees costs taxpayers about $6.2 billion each year.
But public assistance isn’t the only way Welfare Queen Walmart shifts its operating costs to taxpayers: According to a Tampa Bay Times report, the big-box deadbeat also saddles local police departments with store security:
Law enforcement logged nearly 16,800 calls in one year to Walmarts in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco and Hernando counties, according to a Tampa Bay Times analysis. That’s two calls an hour, every hour, every day.
Local Walmarts, on average, generated four times as many calls as nearby Targets, the Times found. Many individual supercenters attracted more calls than the much larger WestShore Plaza mall.
When it comes to calling the cops, Walmart is such an outlier compared with its competitors that experts criticized the corporate giant for shifting too much of its security burden onto taxpayers. Several local law enforcement officers also emphasized that all the hours spent at Walmart cut into how often they can patrol other neighborhoods and prevent other crimes.
It’s not just the Tampa Bay area — communities nationwide are footing the bill for providing store security while Walmart rakes in revenues that surpass the GDP of most countries on this planet, all the while socializing the risks and privatizing the profits. “Save Money. Live Better” — if you’re a Walmart shareholder.
MattF
There’s a need to redefine the ‘makers and takers’ argument. Walmart ‘made’ a system that takes goods and dollars from the public and deposits them in off-shore accounts.
Frankensteinbeck
Please proceed, governor.
Jerzy Russian
Are we sure this “Donald Trump” is not some elaborate prank being pulled on us? If not a prank, then some kind of large-scale psychological experiment. That is the only way any of this makes any sense.
liberal
@Jerzy Russian: You know the conspiracy theory, right, that he’s a Clinton plant?
NorthLeft12
Another story about how Walmart leeches off the American taxpayer to support its’ unethical and Darwinian business model? Colour me shocked.
I am sure the Republicans have a plan wherein every police call will result in a charge to the home/business where the incident occurs. If it occurs in a public place, charge the perp if they catch them, or the victim if not. That would work, eh?
Chris
Conservative response: “But don’t you see, that just enables WalMart further. If there was no government relief to depend on, then the market would straighten itself out and reach a wage that’s fair to everyone.”
CONGRATULATIONS!
The size and scope of the con this guy is pulling is staggering. The rank and file GOPers that are pulling for this combover will eat this up and believe it, of course.
Worst part is that, unlike most here, I think this hacked-up furball actually has a reasonable chance of winning. I’m not crapping my diapers about it, not yet, but he’s already gotten far more traction than I thought he would and I think he’s not going to have a problem getting more. He’s got that “happy warrior” mixed with psychotic racist Reagan thing down to a tee. Hopefully, he’ll keep saying things about women and The Mexicans.
Plus, you know, American voters. Same people that put Bush back in office after we all knew he was a total disaster. The salt of the earth, you know. Morons. Not a confidence-building situation.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Jerzy Russian:
Another way of looking at it: If he WAS a Dem mole tasked with disrupting the GOP, what would he be doing differently? I don’t think our politicians are smart or crooked enough to pull that off but superficially it does look that way.
My wife and I discussed this last night. What if he went into the race as a plant to disturb the GOP candidate selection process and just won by accident? He certainly doesn’t seem to have a traditional, serious campaign under way. It’s almost like success caught him by surprise and he’s winging it.
Capri
I listened to Sander’s speech in Oregon last night. The line that got the most audience response – by a lot – was when he said the most important thing to do was make sure Trump didn’t win. I’m not feeling the crossover.
Betty Cracker
@CONGRATULATIONS!: It definitely concerns me that Trump has a not-zero chance of becoming president. I don’t get the “happy warrior” vibe, though. He seems like a petulant, mean, self-aggrandizing crybaby to me.
wuzzat
OT, but does anyone have some suggestions for reputable charities taking aid for the people and animals displaced by the Fort McMurray fire?
Benw
Fuck Walmart for sure, but I’m kind of coming around on Trump. Not that I would ever ever want him to be President, but in a “you go and do your thing, you awesome, orange lunatic!” way.
Chris
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Speaking for myself, my stance has always been this;
1) Any candidate who wins the Republican nomination starts out with 45% of the vote as an absolute floor.
2) It doesn’t take very much to turn that into a majority of the vote – bad luck or bad campaigning on the Democrat’s part, another major terrorist attack or economic crisis at exactly the wrong moment, simple voter fatigue.
3) And, in fact, something like that is eventually going to happen – liberal Democrats are very unlikely to be able to pull off another Roosevelt/Trumanish 20-year streak in the White House (the public support today isn’t anything like it was back then). And if it’s not Trump, it’ll be someone just as fucked up.
Doesn’t mean it’ll be this time and with Trump, but it’ll be in the not too distant future and with someone equally fucked up. Which is part of the reason I want to see more energy put into winning at the state and congressional level. Presidents come and go, but if you’ve got a strong enough base at the lower levels (i.e. Republicans in the nineties, Democrats in the Eisenhower and Nixon and even into the Reagan years), you can endure the loss of one office and still do a whole lot.
RSA
As far as I can tell, most of my friends who support Bernie (they’re not young, though) are focused on inequities in income and wealth. I can’t recall any of them mentioning trade, ever.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Betty Cracker:
The Presidential election will have one of two outcomes: HRC or Donald wins. That’s a 50% chance of disaster. I’m not complacent about the polling that shows her crushing him in electoral votes. A lot can happen in 6 months.
Ella in New Mexico
Great strategy, Dumold. Except, this won’t be the World Series in November. It’ll be the World Cup. And our and our Striker is gonna lay you out with a head shot before you even see it coming, asshole. It’s gonna be such a shutout that when it’s over, our Keeper is gonna be standing in your half of the field, just to watch Her score one more time…
So keep on playing baseball, moron.
Betty Cracker
@Chris: I agree with all of that, only I do wonder if a terrorist attack would drive voters to Trump after all. I used to think so, but he’s demonstrated such ignorant buffoonery when it comes to foreign affairs. Of course, voters did elect GWB in 2004 after it was clear he’d screwed the pooch in Iraq. Still, the timing would have to catch voters in the “mindlessly lashing out” phase.
rikyrah
Security?
They don’t pay for phucking security?
Ugh.
Damn, I hate that store.
schrodinger's cat
The post WWII global economic and financial order was determined by the United States in a series of conferences in Bretton Woods NH after WWII. Similarly the United States is among the chief architects of the WTO and its predecessor GATT. Through the World Bank and IMF we have bent other countries to our will as a precondition for loans.
If some is screwing over the American people its certainly not the Chinese.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
Might I assume that you were part of the American populace who was on the other side of the Iraq debate, and would have been called a ‘ traitor’ and ‘ un-American’ in 2002 as you questioned why we needed to go into Iraq?
If you were, I would say that you were wrong.
By 2004, it wasn’t obvious to the conned that Iraq was a disaster. They weren’t getting a clue about it yet. They were annoyed that those of us who didn’t support the war in the first place were screaming even louder about what a disaster it was. They resented us. They were not yet willing to admit that they were wrong,and had been conned.
Shell
This is a headline over at Daily Kos. At first I thought, now what has John gotten himself into?
Pogonip
Re unusually high number of police calls to Walmart–would that be the regular police, or the fashion police?
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t think so.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: Possibly. Like when McCain got all het up about Russia vs. Georgia, multiplied by 1000. It was obvious (to the few who were paying attention) that McCain had a problem. Add to that the fact that Der Trump’s inevitable tantrum would be compared with the reaction of a former SoS.
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
The petulant, mean, ego inflated crybaby now says he has a “mandate” from the people.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Betty Cracker: That’s how Reagan always came off to me as well, him and his scummy climber of a wife and sleazy inner team, but others seemed to have a different opinion.
Yeah, I’m still furious about that asshole. I was only fourteen at the time and could see it clear as day. Why couldn’t everyone else?
Chris
@Benw:
I wouldn’t even go so far as to call it “coming around,” in my case.
However, 1) I freaking love him for tearing the Republican establishment a new one as completely as he has, something that was long overdue and couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch, and 2) I consider him an absolute trainwreck waiting to happen, but no less so than any other candidate who could get elected in the Republican Party of 2016. Really, who would we rather have in charge of the nation than Donny? Jeb “I would’ve invaded Iraq absolutely even knowing what we know now” Bush? Ben “a lot of people go into prison straight but when they come out they’re gay” Carson? Rick “no exceptions for rape and incest” Santorum? Newt “we’re going to build a base on the moon, because we totally don’t have anything better to do with our money” Gingrich? Chris “BLM supports cop-killing” Christie? Ted Cruz, who couldn’t grok the moral of “Green Eggs and Ham?”
Ultraviolet Thunder
@rikyrah:
I questioned the need to go into Iraq at the time. It was on the basis that their WMD intelligence looked highly doubtful. PLus you’d better have a REALLY REALLY good reason to start a land war in that part of the world, not just some fuzzy aerial photos.
When I expressed doubts and opposition I was assured by backers of the invasion that the President ‘knew things he couldn’t tell us’. He didn’t. There were no WMDs and we’re still getting killed over there, to say nothing of the populace.
Morley Bolero
@wuzzat: Canadian Red Cross. All donations are being matched by the federal gov’t.
gvg
ehh, I don’t agree with attacking Walmart for calling the police. Police for everyone is part of what we pay taxes for and I sure don’t want that function privatized. It’s not like security guards have authority to arrest and charge. Not paying enough yes, that’s on them. I know Walmart does have guards. I haven’t noticed them at Target but they probably do. Grocery stores don’t usually. People may not know but grocery stores have a huge problem with theft, always, statistics back a century. A lot of the plastic “overpackaging” we see is about reducing casual theft because it adds up. Its not just customers either, employee theft is a big problem, in transit theft, all the stages have theft in groceries. Walmart has been going more grocery and less dry goods in recent decades and it doesn’t surprise me they call the cops a lot. They clearly from the begining knew they had to watch theft, and always had those signs up that they prosecute. Some grocery chains or stores don’t for a while because it costs them to prosecute due to employees spending time in court rather than just working, however they always find out it cost more if it’s know they don’t prosecute. My Uncle was a grocery store manager for around 30 years. He was the named witness in hundreds of cases a year etc. I got out of jury duty once because the random case they were seeking a jury for was one of his stores…do you know so and so and would you believe their testimony over someone elses? well yeah. Anyway, I don’t think this is a valid knock on Walmart. there are plenty that are.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: I think you’re right that the hardcore wingnuts hadn’t yet accepted that the Iraq invasion was an absolute clusterfuck by 2004 — some still haven’t and/or are even today dishonest and evil enough to say that Bush had it won but PBO let it slip away. But by 2004, it was clear there were no WMDs in Iraq — Bush even joked about that and the National Correspondents Dinner prior to the election and rightly got skewered for it. From my recollection, seems like most non-wingnut people at least understood that the justifications for the invasion were bullshit in 2004.
Betty Cracker
@gvg: The article (and common sense) suggests that stores with a visible security presence, a non-cluttered layout and more uniformed employees in the aisles will experience lower shoplifting rates. No one is suggesting that Walmart shouldn’t call the cops when a crime is committed — just that they should do more to prevent crimes instead of hogging law enforcement resources after the fact. Other retailers do.
Tokyokie
Daddy Walton’s business model was using market power to undercut the downtown businesses of the American heartland and force them out of business (destroying the jobs they provided in the process). Because his utterly useless progeny didn’t feel as though they had enough unearned wealth, they instituted horrible personnel policies (“in-time” staffing that means hourly workers have to be available 24/7 even though they’re only being paid for 28 hours week, and paid lousily at that) and outsourced production of their shoddy goods to Third World hellholes where workers are receiving virtual slave-labor wages. But then, Alice may need to buy another couple of barrel-racing horses.
If it takes producing custom models with leather and mahogany interiors to satisfy them, fine, but the Walton heirs (and their top corporate lackeys) need to be at the head of tumbrel parade. And every Democrat running any office anywhere in this country should respond to the inevitable GOP call for lower taxes (on the incredibly rich) by asking how giving more money to the Waltons (and not to John-Boy) has ever helped anybody but the Waltons.
Rolling Along
The Crooked Hillary tag is pretty good, and fits Clinton to a “T”. Looks like Hillary is making the same exact mistakes as Jeb did…the race is TOO CLOSE TO CALL when many democrats were smugly expecting a blowout.
#TooClose2Call
#CrookedHillary
#BadNewsForDems
Jerzy Russian
@liberal:
Well, if that is the case, just stop watering him.
Frankensteinbeck
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
The primary has gone exactly as I expected. Trump’s behavior fits what appeals to the GOP base as I understand them, the polls were clear, and the only question – whether those polls would translate to votes – was answered in Iowa. While everyone else was going ‘He lost!’ I was going ‘He was below polls by only 3%. Barring a meltdown, Trump has the nom.’
Now I think he’s going to get crushed and it will effect voting patterns going forward. He will destroy the remaining support Republicans had among Hispanics, do some permanent damage to their support with women (and vast damage in this election), and solidify the GOP as the party of racism in the eyes of a broad swathe of people who didn’t want to believe it across America. We won’t know the extent of the damage until we see the polls after both conventions, but he could even lose the Republicans the House. Their control is a mile wide and an inch deep, like their ‘deep bench’ going into this election.
The white male vote will go to him about as well as it usually does for the Republican candidate, but shave 2 or 3% of the total vote off with minorities and women (I’m trying to be conservative with women) and you will see electoral chaos.
EDIT – @Betty Cracker:
By late in Bush’s administration they hadn’t admitted it, but they also wanted the issue to go away. Conservativism didn’t fail, Bush failed conservatism, and Republicans were embarrassed.
Calouste
@CONGRATULATIONS!: People like being lied to. It’s been blindingly obvious that Sanders is a clueless bullshit artist (NYDN interview, tax returns) for the best part of two months, but still people think he is “honest”, because he tells them he is.
Frankensteinbeck
(Oh, and the Democratic primary also went as I expected. When Sanders lost Iowa, he was toast. Everything went pretty much like the polls showed, and Clinton has been nailing his hide to the wall.)
schrodinger's cat
@Calouste: Sometimes I think that BS buys his own bs. He is a believer.
Germy
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Exactly why I take nothing for granted. I don’t care how many humorous polls you show me that Trump is less popular than belly button lint, I remember the feeling I had in the pit of my stomach when Reagan won the white house. I’d spent most of the ’70s believing the alternative press when they told me he was a clown with no chance. And then his “revolution” cast a long shadow on my working life.
And how we laughed when we imagined what the Gore/Bush debates would be. And then when our war hero ran against him.
I’ll be right back. Just looking for my passport…
burnspbesq
Strictly speakimg, Walton Enterprises LLC, the Walton family’s investment vehicle, does not control Wal-Mart. In fact, last year it sold Wal-Mart stock in order to avoid owning a majority. Certainly, it has imfluence, as the largest shareholder.
Only two of 15 Wal-Mart directors are Walton family members, and there are no Walton family members in senior management.
But the only public company known to be controlled by a Walton heir is Red & White Holdings plc, which operates Arsenal Football Club.
Rolling Along
@Germy:
Yup yup, they laughed at Reagan too. How’d that work out for liberals?
Or remember when they said Nixon was “finished” after 1962? Lol. Liberals always believe their own hype.
#LiberalSmug
#SurpriseSurprise
#TooClose2Call
Cat48
@rikyrah:
That was actually polled. Poll results show Hillary is trusted more by 20pts to handle a national emergency.
rikyrah
Trump’s promise: ‘I will appoint judges that will be pro-life’
05/11/16 09:21 AM
By Steve Benen
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appeared on Fox News last night, where he fielded a question from a viewer who wanted him to “name one specific thing he would do to protect the sanctity of human life.” The GOP candidate quickly turned his focus to judicial nominees:
“I will protect [life] and the biggest way you can protect it is through the Supreme Court and putting people in the court. And actually the biggest way you can protect it, I guess, is by electing me president.”
Trump added that he expects to name “as many as five” high court justices in the coming years, adding, “I will appoint judges that will be pro-life, yes.”
I think there are two broad angles to keep in mind with a quote like this one. The first is the extent to which Trump’s position relates to his party’s Supreme Court blockade. Senators like Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and others don’t like to see it framed this way, but Republican lawmakers aren’t just holding open a court vacancy for a year in order to empower Trump, they’re also doing so to help guarantee the confirmation of “judges that will be pro-life.”
Or put another way, GOP senators are operating from an informal plan: partner with Donald Trump so the Supreme Court can roll back the clock on reproductive rights.
Betty Cracker
@burnspbesq: I don’t follow soccer. But from now on, I will rejoice when Arsenal loses.
Tokyokie
@Rolling Along: “Lyin’ Ted.” “Crooked Hillary.” “Crazy Bernie.” Too bad “Bereft of All Human Virtues” Donnie is too long for Twitter. But then your mind probably can’t grasp any concept of more than 140 characters.
Germy
@Rolling Along: Yes, the Scum Also Rises.
Rolling Along
@Tokyokie:
Keep on whining, but the nickname thing works!
#CrookedHillary
#Benghazi
#Servergate
schrodinger's cat
How delusional does one have to be to buy Trump’s bullshit, that other countries are taking undue advantage of the poor widdle United States?
shomi
@liberal: That was a Republican thing to try soften his support. After he gets the nomination they can’t use that anymore and will fall in line like all good Republicans do.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@schrodinger’s cat: His speech in Oregon last night was a grab bag of points from every speech of his that I’ve heard so far. He said (roughly) “I’m in this race to win the nomination” and also said (roughly) “The math is against us … The most important thing is to keep Trump from being elected President.” The mandatory Millionaires and Billionaires™ Buying our Elections, Our Corrupt Campaign Finance System™. He also said that one of the Waltons had given “Hillary” some huge amount of money (hundreds of thousands?) Of course, that is illegal. Waltons can only give $2700 per campaign just like everyone else. He’s conflating a PAC or SuperPAC with her campaign when it’s illegal for campaigns to coordinate with PACs. He’s feeding the “Corrupt Hillary” meme, still.
He seems to want to justify his keeping up his anti-Hillary rhetoric while also trying to say to those who want him to get inside the tent and to ‘cut it out’ that he’s really a team player. He’s wanting it both ways, and trying to prepare a “it’s not my fault” excuse. It’s maddening.
Cheers,
Scott.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Frankensteinbeck: We agree on this but disagree on the outcome. I think he’s been what a lot of Republicans have been waiting for – a human permission slip to start using racial slurs again and ideally to reinstitute segregation. I think a HUGE swath of white America would really like to see that, but will never say so in public.
As to damaging the party, oh yeah, he’s done that already. And will do more. And frankly it’s the kind of damage that they needed. The GOP needed desperately to lose the social conservatives and the Randian budget kooks in order to stay viable as a national party, and he’s doing that. Very nicely. Those groups will still vote for him and all the following GOP candidates, because where else can they go? But Trump’s trying (and slowly succeeding) at getting them out of the driver’s seat, and that’s needed to happen for the last 40 years to give the Republicans any shot at a future at all.
shomi
Hillary has the best comeback to Drumpf’s “Make American great again” slogan. “When did America stop being great?” That just kills the whole argument right there. It trumps (couldn’t resist) the cynicism and fear with hope. That is exactly how Obama won and exactly how Hillary is going to win even bigger. Hope is more powerful than fear and Drumpf’s entire campaign strategy will be one of cynicism and fear.
Calouste
@Betty Cracker: You can also rejoice when the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Colorado Rapids, or the L.A. Rams lose, because they have the same owner. We should nickname them all the “Shelf Stackers”.
Amir Khalid
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I suspect Bernie’s being pulled both ways by those of his people who want him to keep fighting for the nomination and those who want him to get behind Hillary to defeat the common enemy, Trump
Mai.naem.mobile
NPR had a story the other day about an uptick in people going through naturalization to vote in this election. These are people who have been eligible for years but decided to do it now because of Trump. Take that and the anti-muslim stuff, the misogynistic stuff, the anti-Mexican stuff and you have lots of people showing up to vote against him and a win for Hills.
Tokyokie
@Rolling Along: It works for you and idiots like yourself, maybe. But then, you demonstrated the clairvoyance of a Bill Kristol in how you laid out JEB!’s path to victory, and subsequently did likewise for other GOP losers before falling obediently in line with the loudmouth racist fascist. If you’re this confident now, it must mean that Bereft of All Human Virtues Donnie is going to lose 48 states.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
You give them so much credit. I remove the wingnuts completely. I’m talking about that squishy middle, who fell for the ‘compassionate conservative’ con, and then fell for the con of going into Iraq. I just don’t think we see eye to eye as to when they were finally willing to admit that yes, they had been conned. Yes, they voted for that liar. Yes, they bear responsibility for their vote.
I don’t believe they began on that journey until they saw the incompetence in the response to Hurricane Katrina.
Rolling Along
@Tokyokie:
I don’t like Trump either. I’m holding out for a Ben Sasse candidacy to #TakeItToTheHouse.
Sasse is young, quite handsome, articulate, and offers a clear and consistent conservative voice (including getting serious about entitlements), as well as impeccable character.
#SasseForAmerica
And before I get anybody gloating about Texas ballot access, lawyers are filing challenges to the law as we speak baby!
What’s more, Sasse will have immediate access to ‘ON DEMAND’ FUNDING from the Kochs and Adlesons.
greennotGreen
1) Walmart and Target may not be a valid comparison. You have to control for socio-economic status of their respective customers. Maybe more criminals shop at Walmart.
2) Perhaps if Walmart had more security staff, John Crawford would still be alive. A Walmart employee might have recognized Crawford’s “weapon” for a BB gun sold in the store and not murdered him for holding it.
3) In the various explanations of how the American electorate could be so stupid as to elect Bush the Younger and Reagan twice (the second time Reagan was already showing signs of dementia,) no one has so far mentioned the complicity of the media. Gore should have won handily in 2000. Blaming his loss on a poor campaign is like blaming the victim for a sexual assault. (I guess he shouldn’t have worn earth tones.) The media routinely misquoted Gore or took his comments out of context, and let Bush’s numerous lies and errors remain unchallenged. Perhaps Gore didn’t push back hard enough. Hillary will be carrying pepper spray.
gex
You know, I might be okay with outsourcing security to the cops, an organization that ostensibly reports to the citizenry somehow (despite how it seems most times) and jackboot thug cops on the WallMart payroll.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: He does generally appear to be having a good time bloviating like he does.
schrodinger's cat
@rikyrah: You are conflating the squishy middle with the MSM, it was the media that got a wake-up call after Katrina. They could no longer brush Bush’s incompetence under the rug. Like they did in Iraq.
Frankensteinbeck
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
But the problem is, he’s shedding voters and not bringing in any new ones. The ‘Democrats’ crossing over to vote for him in the primary? When investigated, it turns out they were the Dems who have voted Republican faithfully since Reagan, but never changed their official affiliation. He’s shedding Hispanic voters and they’re having massive registration drives to oppose him. Most of those Hispanic voters will never return. The racists he’s energizing were already energized. Nothing will make them more enthusiastic to vote than voting against Obama. You are right about his appeal to the GOP base, but that doesn’t gain Republicans anything, and only gains him the nomination.
Germy
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/05/the-presidential-election-will-not-be-decided-by-the-house-of-representatives
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: I think a segment (probably Republican anyway) generally votes for the Republican after an attack like that, because they think there’s a higher chance the Repub will blow shit up (which is what they want done).
MattF
@shomi: Well, there’s dueling dogwhistles in that exchange. Der Trump is reminding his supporters that there’s you-know-who sitting in the Oval Office… and, fwiw, Hillary is making the same point to her supporters.
schrodinger's cat
Has Trump’s make America Great Meme received any serious push back from the media? I mean a high school student newspaper could refute that without breaking a sweat.
Mike in NC
@Rolling Along:
#JebbyCryingForHisMommy
Imbecile
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: Fuck yeah is was a disaster by 2004!!! Going into Iraq, period, was a disaster!!
Iowa Old Lady
@Betty Cracker: My senator, Joni Ernst, a possible VP for Crybaby, says she has inside info that there really were WMD in Iraq.
OzarkHillbilly
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Sure they will. They call it “school choice”. Don’t you speak Dog Whistle?
Germy
@Chris:
Cruz will keep trying until he gets in. 2020, 2024, 2028… his (and his father’s) whole life has been leading up to it. He will not stop until he wins or dies of old age. And he’s got a very good healthcare plan, so he’ll probably see 100.
Paul in KY
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Think it was the contrast in Reagan’s ‘genial’ public demeanor & Pres. Carter looking gloomy all the time (of course he had a whole lot of reasons to look gloomy) that made dumbasses vote for Reagan. Also the racist dogwhistles, too, also.
Tokyokie
@Rolling Along: Oooh, he’s pretty, you say? Damn, that’ll make him as electable as Scott Brown, who, after all, still has 48 states left in which he can lose elections. Although he might not be so pretty by the time he moves to Hawai’i. You should really change your handle to Judas Thaddeus, given your predilection for lost causes.
rikyrah
@Frankensteinbeck:
Remember….the second highest Non-White voting percentage for President Obama came from ASIANS, not Latinos.
ASIANS also, percentage-wise, have a higher % of their families that are immigrants – so, that should tell you how they’ll be responding to Trump.
I will repeat this, and it’s part of the reason why I’m steady in my belief that Trump will be defeated.
Willard Romney received 27% of the Latino Vote- and was crushed.
Trump’s approval ratings in the Latino community are in the LOW double digits (MAX – 15% if that).
The ONLY media that has, from the beginning, had Trump’s Number, and reports him as such is the Spanish-Language Latino-focused Media.
So, while we have turds like Todd, Halperin, Murdering Joe, trying to shill the swill of Trump’s ‘Presidential Pivot’, that Spanish-Language media will be telling the truth to their audience about him. The canyon is VAST, and they won’t go along with the con – thus Country Last’s whine about the Spanish-language media last week.
Please show me where and how Trump makes up for the loss from Latinos.
I’ve been one of the ones who said Hillary would be foolish to depend upon White women for victory. After all, if it had been left up to White women, we’d have Presidents McCain and Romney.
But, Trump is so offensive, that he actually could provide a gender gap for Hillary with White Women. The gap with non-White women is obvious.
Germy
@Tokyokie: If chins were all that mattered, we would have had president John Kerry.
Frankensteinbeck
@Germy:
Good for Ted. He and Ron Paul can swap tips.
Germy
@Frankensteinbeck: Sounds somewhat… unsafe. Didn’t Harold Stassen catch an STD that way?
Paul in KY
@Rolling Along: Fuck off.
cmorenc
@Chris:
The streak was actually much longer than that when you take into account that Eisenhower was such a bona fide moderate Republican that he was largely outside of the usual ideological and partisan divides, and made no attempt whatever to reverse the New Deal. The more decisive end of the streak didn’t come until 1968, when Nixon narrowly defeated Humphrey.
rikyrah
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
yep.
yep.
yep.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Betty Cracker: You’re in luck, that happens fairly often these days.
Matt McIrvin
@Rolling Along:
Says the commenter who somehow managed to tout the impending victories of five failed Republican candidates over just an eight- or nine-year period.
Paul in KY
@greennotGreen: VP Gore did not run the best campaign. His team was not as sharp as Batshit McChimpy’s & (IMO) VP Gore misread the electorate (with his choice of Lieberman, etc.)
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
I haven’t seen numbers on how Trump is doing with Asians! I assume ‘badly’, but I don’t want to factor it in until I know for sure. He’s certainly not bringing them in.
different-church-lady
Well, based on WV exit polls, he’s right.
Germy
@rikyrah: It’s already begun.
Stories about high school kids chanting racial slurs to the opposing team.
An uptick in random attacks on Hispanics and Muslims
Kids yelling “when did you come out as gay” to visiting entertainers
Of course, the venom started in 2009. But lately the volume has increased.
All they wanted was permission…
Chyron HR
@Rolling Along:
It’s so unfair that the guy who won the Republican primary in a landslide just coincidentally happens to embody every loathsome attribute that the evil media falsely ascribes to Republicans. :^(
Paul in KY
@Iowa Old Lady: Whenever the scum that got us in there said ‘there are WMDs in Iraq’, they were technically correct. Iraq had poison gas, which since WW I has been considered a ‘weapon of mass destruction’.
However, they did their level best to make it appear as if Saddam had nuclear WMD stuff (which they knew he did not). So they did a great job of bait & switch there.
Punchy
Looks like I nailed this months ago. I KNEW he wouldn’t release his tax forms; he’s not nearly as rich as he says he is. This ought to be a HUGE red flag, but I’m sure Republicans will find a way to justify it.
Honestly, can you imagine the run on heart medication and fainting couches if HRC declined to release these? The shelves would be empty; backorders on the magnitude of months or years. But Trump? No biggie, says the MSM.
OzarkHillbilly
@Germy:
I don’t remember a time when the venom wasn’t there. I remember when “gay bashing” wasn’t just words. It does feel like the volume was turned up a little in 2009.
MazeDancer
@rikyrah:
And Trump happy to offer SCOTUS in exchange for lack of opposition from GOP
Stan
@Ultraviolet Thunder: That’s a math error. Just because there are two choices doesn’t mean each has a 50% chance of happening.
different-church-lady
@Rolling Along: Listen, I gotta admit you really nailed it on President Jeb!, so who am I to argue?
Ruviana
@Germy: Thank you so so much for giving me a reason to quote wjts at LGM who called Sasse “Chin-dar, the living chin.” I’m still laughing. I’m easily amused.
OzarkHillbilly
@Paul in KY: All of that poison gas was completely unusable, way past it’s sell by date.
Iowa Old Lady
@Paul in KY: Shh! Charlie Pierce’s new friend Joni Ernst says her info is secret!
Germy
@OzarkHillbilly: You’re right. It was tweaked upward in 2009.
But yeah, I remember hearing co-workers in 1992 who had just discovered Rush Limbaugh. I was sort of a captive audience for their poison, until I told them to fuck off.
And the ’80s had the Ronnie Raygun enthusiasts and their obsession with letting their thoughts and “ideas” be known loudly and proudly…
Mike J
@Germy:
I missed that one. What was the story?
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
I would say this would be very likely to drive voters to Trump. And there are probably some terrorist organizations too stupid to try to restrain themselves.
Trump’s response would not require foreign policy smarts. It would be an easy fallback to the most simplistic “with us or against us,” “hit back hard” reaction that worked so well for Dubya in terms of rallying citizen support. And it would be like a jolt of hillbilly heroin to idiots who think that you need a “real man” to deal with Amurrica’s enemies.
Germy
@Ruviana: I often migrate over to LGM to chuckle at the comments. A corrective for all the stupidity thrown in my face every day.
schrodinger's cat
@Stan: True, the election is not a coin toss, where heads or tails have each a 50% likelihood.
Germy
@Mike J:
https://balloon-juice.com/2016/05/11/wednesday-morning-open-thread-bob/#comment-5797393
cmorenc
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
The context of 1980 was that Reagan had the great fortune to run against an apparently stumble-prone incumbent (Carter) whose administration coincided with a particularly miserable economic period (stagflation) and spectacular foreign policy disaster (US-allied regime in Iran falls to radical Islamic regime, followed quickly by hostage crisis, followed by failure of attempted hostage rescue mission by helicopter crash in sandstorm before it ever reached Tehran). Carter is among the best, most honorable ex-Presidents this country ever had, but he was frankly inept as President.
I’VE OFTEN THOUGHT that in hindsight, the US would have been far better-off in the long run had then-incumbent Ford won the 1976 Presidential race – he closed quickly in the end and might have won had the campaign lasted another week or two. BECAUSE the deeply-rooted economic difficulties of the time (stagflation) and Iran situation would have likely equally afflicted a Ford Administration 1976-1980, and the public would have been ready for the “change” to have been a probable Ted Kennedy win in 1980, and the 1980s might have instead been one of the great progressive revivals instead of descent into voodoo economics and right-wing social policy stupidity.
Schlemazel Khan
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Drumpf is a bullshit artist, the mega-buck development business is full of them. Because of his rich daddy he has never had to do anything but bullshit for his whole life. He is bullshitting his way through this campaign and it has worked so far because he figured out a line of bullshit a specific segment of morons love to eat. I think given his ego he thinks he can bullshit his way all the way to the White House. I don’t think he can but Pasta save us if he does pull that off.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Tokyokie: His latest posts are making me think it’ll be all 50. He was whatever the opposite of “100% right” is with Romney last cycle.
different-church-lady
@Germy:
We really need a whole lot more of this. About three-quarters of what passes as “conventional wisdom” in this country is people just sharing mindless call-and-response howling for the purposes of being social. There’s no thinking going on, so nobody ever realizes just how appalling what’s being said is.
Instead of arguing with them (which is just another form of social interaction, and gives the awful people perverse pleasure) we should just be shunning them. When dealing with wingnuts on the job; when they launch into a wingnut screed they’re expecting one of two things. The primary thing is agreement. The secondary thing is an argument. I deny them both by saying, “I do not discuss politics on the job.” If they persist, I shun them outright.
The lack of social interaction is what gets the point across far better than arguing — it hurts them far more than any intellectual pushback ever would.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Stan:
Sorry I should have been more clear. It’s a different way of looking at probability than we’re used to with polls and such. There are two possible outcomes. I didn’t refer to likelihood, just that one of those two things would happen. I do think that HRC would beat Donald if the election were held this week but it isn’t.
Mike J
@cmorenc: Volcker said that he lost the election for Carter.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s precisely why I said it. My wife’s a teacher. It has been pretty obvious for years what the “school reformers” were after, and it has ZERO to do with “better schools”, unless you consider “better schools” ethnically segregated schools, which most parents do.
JMG
Trump is proof that the seminal summary of American politics was given in the 1950s TV show “Maverick” when hero Bret Maverick said, “My old Pappy used to say that you could fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, and those were pretty good odds.”
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Just like people voted for McCain when Lehman and Bear Sterns collapsed?
Schlemazel Khan
@Stumbling Along Blindly:
Ah, so you ARE an idiot unable to count electoral votes or understand how the system works. That certainly explains your inability to correctly predict the results of any election in the last 12 years
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Schlemazel Khan:
There’s a line of thought that Donald entered the race for the attention and brand building, and ended up the presumptive nominee by accident. A victim of his own success and a weak field.
We’ll never know.
different-church-lady
@Schlemazel Khan:
In support of that point, I’ll observe that the general differs from the primary in a fundamental way: for the GOP primary, the debates are structured as circuses deliberately — the bigger the clown show, the more the networks love it. (Imagine “Network” rewritten for a political campaign.) Trump is the biggest clown in the car, so that environment suits him perfectly.
For the general, the adults take over. It stops being a infotainment series and gets real. Antics don’t play nearly as well. Trump’s about to get hit with a venue shift and I’m pretty sure he won’t be able to handle it.
greennotGreen
@Paul in KY: I agree that Gore did not run the best campaign, but I don’t think he (or anyone else) should have had to run against his opponent and a biased press. Just like it may not be wise for a woman to walk home alone at night through a rough neighborhood, but that doesn’t mean she deserves to be attacked.
Germy
@different-church-lady:
Exactly. When I made it clear I wasn’t playing their game; I was here to work and not play “point counter point”, they faded away.
srv
Bill didn’t call trump to lose to Hillary, he called him to beat her.
Presidentialing will cut into Foundation revenues.
Rolling Along
@Matt McIrvin:
I’ve only been on here four years.
Ben Sasse will get in this race and #TakeItToTheHouse, rising above the dirty campaign. We will play the media for fools as he’s spun as the “moderate and reasonable” candidate “above the fray”.
‘ON DEMAND’ FUNDING will take care of the rest when its Crooked Hillary vs Deadbeat Donald. Ben Sasse will be the “adult in the room” by comparison. After he’s elected we’ll nominate a worthy successor to Scalia and finally solve our impending entitlements crisis, taking a chainsaw to what’s left of the New Deal and Great Society, putting this country on the path to fiscal sanity at last.
#TakeItToTheHouse
#401k(s)4All
Germy
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I read he entered the race not really expecting to win (according to an ex-staffer) but to fuck with Jeb Bush, because Bush had frustrated some project Trump had wanted in Fla. He’s the dog who caught the car. Surprised the hell out of him. Now he’s telling everyone “not only can I drive, but I can win NASCAR.”
[insert visual of crumpled car wreck wrapped around spurting fire hydrant]
Tim C.
@cmorenc: I don’t know about that. The dry rot had been settling in for a long time. Ted Kennedy had some serious downsides, and the bench wasn’t terribly deep on the Democratic side at that point. Counterfactuals are hard to judge, but the forces that elected Reagan would have been present in the 80s: White resentment, the fundamentalist ascendency, laffer curve nonsense, all of it would have still been there.
Schlemazel Khan
@Paul in KY:
Ah, no. No. NO! Iraq’s supply of poison gas was outdated and probably useless. Saddam had been cooperating with the UN and the weapons investigators on the ground were reporting that he was destroying not only what little he had left but also the means to obtain more. They reported unprecedented cooperation and if you recall Boy Blunder issued them a warning to get out because he was going to start blowing stuff up. The entire war was a sham.
Calouste
@rikyrah: The main impact of Trump’s low approval among Latinos is that it puts Florida completely out of reach. Going from Romney’s 27-71 to about 12-86 is a 30% swing among that electorate, which works out to 4-5% among the general electorate. Colorado will be solid blue, and it will also safeguard Virginia. It could put Arizona into play (McCain only won by 8% in 2008). It is unlikely to have any effect though on the outcome in the two states where the most Latinos live, California and Texas.
Tim C.
@Rolling Along: You should try some fan-fiction sites.
Rolling Along
@Calouste:
That’s not what the Q-Pac poll says!
#TooClose2Call
different-church-lady
@Rolling Along:
But it feels like 400.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yeah, this is true. But Asian Americans are only 5 percent of US population and about 2 percent of the electorate. Their votes are icing on the cake, but rarely are the critical difference in electoral votes.
That said, in a December 2015 poll, Sanders had the highest approval rating among Asian Americans, at 41 percent. Donald Trump had the lowest favorable (20 percent) and the highest unfavorable (63 percent) for a net favorable of -43. Bernie’s net was +29 and Hillary’s was +21.
That is a very steep hole to have to climb out of.
Schlemazel Khan
I hope you are right but I have seen too much evidence that there are no adults left in the media and it is all circus all the time.
different-church-lady
@Schlemazel Khan: There’s the distinction: the media runs the debates in the primaries. A commission runs the debates in the general.
Schlemazel Khan
@Stumbling Along Blindly:
Please tell us which states Sassy is going to take from the Clinton column that will prevent her from getting to 270. I am sure given how well you detailed JEB?s rise to the nomination you have this all gamed out so, please, fill us in.
#TakeItToTheOuthouse
#moronsForSassy
Rolling Along
You guys are delusional. Trump will simply refuse to debate Hillary and say the commission is “treating him unfairly”. That will be that–no debates in this election outside of Twitter.
cleek
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-supporters-boost-bernie-sanders-west-virginia-n571791
because they’re young liberals. the future of the party.
Rolling Along
@Schlemazel Khan:
Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, possibly even Michigan and Pennsylvania. He will run very well in “purple” states as he’s portrayed as the only “adult in the room”.
Suburban white women in places like Bucks County, Loudoun County, and Orlando are going to love him!
different-church-lady
@cleek: No, most of them are rat-fuckers who don’t really support Sanders, crossing over to the Dem primary.
Germy
@Rolling Along:
“Congratulations President Romney” (Q-Pac, 2012)
Schlemazel Khan
@Rolling Along:
and, if you have someone read the details of that poll to you you might learn that they intentionally under sampled blacks and Hispanics on the assumption they are not going to vote this fall. If you buy that assumption Drumpf has a penis pump he swears works that he will sell you
Rolling Along
Out of the Trump column, Sasse will take Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, Nebraska (of course!), Iowa, the Dakotas, and possibly even Texas!
Mormons and most westerners will flock to him!
rikyrah
@Brachiator:
I’m thinking Congressional races.
I’m thinking money.
I’m remembering the story posted here about an Asian businessman who went, with other Asian friends, to volunteer in Iowa for Hillary. Didn’t even live in the state. I remember the story because they commented him driving in his Mercedes SUV ($$$$), and by all accounts, this guy should be right up their GOP alley – immigrant, self-made, obviously making $$$$. But, he’s a solid Dem, and Trump scared him enough to actually go volunteer.
I have to believe this is being replicated all across the country.
I have long said that the MSM uses dogwhistles to pretend that the GOP is something other than what it is. Trump has removed that. But, as they pretend, and try to Pivot Trump….they want to believe that they can do the con, while non-Whites in this country are very clear about what they’ve heard from Trump.
NorthLeft12
@wuzzat: The governments of Canada and Alberta [and my own corporate enslaver] are matching any donations to the Canadian Red Cross……..if you are a Canadian I believe. The Canadian Red Cross is an okay charity I think.
The Canadian Red Cross have also offered financial support to other charities that are working in the area and helping the evacuees.
Ruviana
@Germy: So I wrote a beautiful comment that was eated so here I go again. Szuszana Anderson, wife of Steven Anderson whose church is cited by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an LGBTI-hate group, explicitly teaches her children to do this and then writes about it on her blog.
different-church-lady
Since we’re making predictions here: six months of “SHE’S BLOWING THIS, SHE’S BLOWING THIS!” followed by a month of “SHE’S NAMING THE DEVIL’S ANGELS TO THE CABINET” followed by three years of “SHE’S BLOWING THIS, SHE’S BLOWING THIS!” followed by “WE GOTTA PRIMARY HER!” followed by six months of “SHE’S BLOWING THIS, SHE’S BLOWING THIS…”
Cacti
@cmorenc:
Reagan also followed a 16-year period where white America’s “exceptionalism” mythos had taken a spectacular beating.
They lost a political war to African Americans in the civil rights movement, that made them confront all sorts of ugly truths about their “land of the free”. They lost a shooting war to the brown skinned peoples of Vietnam, who wanted no part of being a US puppet state. They got punched in the junk by the OPEC nations with the oil embargo, which showed how easily the American economic juggernaut could be brought to its knees. And finally, they got their nose tweaked by Iran, with the hostage crisis.
Reagan patted them on the head and promised them it wasn’t their fault, and made them feel comfortable with their prejudices and failures again.
different-church-lady
@Rolling Along:
Oh dear, you gave away your game with that one.
rikyrah
@Rolling Along:
This premise continues to crack me up.
This will be the equivalent of McCain’s ‘ I’m suspending my campaign because of the financial crisis’ moment.
And, will be treated as such.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Rolling Along: I think they’re talking about you
chopper
@Tokyokie:
and to think, “crooked hillary” is the best this guy can come up with.
#shutthefuckupDonnie
NorthLeft12
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Donald has a 50% chance? Really? Does that mean a third candidate on the ballot will make it a 33% chance for all three of them?
I believe you did very poorly in both statistics and logic in school……..and life.
Cacti
@Calouste:
Will likely also add to the margin of victory in Nevada, and could also be crucial in potentially tight races like North Carolina, where they make up about 5% of the population.
NorthLeft12
@rikyrah: I believe it was Mark Twain who said, “It is easier to fool someone than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
Human nature is a real bitch.
Germy
@Ruviana: Their indoctrination is child abuse. I wonder if the kids will grow up to understand the extent of their abuse, or will they become newer versions of their parents.
Brachiator
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I think this line of thought is unconvincing, especially since a lot of it comes from people who thought that Trump never had a shot in the first place. And the idea that the GOP was weak is only clear in retrospect.
If you do a rewind, you will find a lot of hand wringing over how Jeb!, backed by all that corporate money, was nearly invincible.
JMG
@different-church-lady: What’s the old line? The market climbs a wall of worry. If liberals couldn’t fret and be anxious, they’d have almost no other approach to politics left for them.
Rolling Along
@rikyrah:
Worked in the primaries quite beautifully! He let the others beat up on Cruz, and later there were simply no debates at all.
See also: Nixon in ’68 and ’72: he knew debating wasn’t his strong point, so he just plain refused to have any. and he WON
The only debates here will be on Twitter!
The Twitterization of politics continues apace!
The media won’t treat him like McCain–instead it will be along the lines of “Donald refuses debates! He’s so CRAZY and BOLD! What will he do next? What will he SAY next? Let’s cut live to a Trump rally to find out!” and give him all the free media time in the world.
Only Sasse can stop him by #TakeItTotheHouse.
chopper
@Rolling Along:
you’ve been right about everything so far, so I’ll trust this statement.
Chyron HR
@chopper:
No, you’re supposed to pretend that he’s a different person every time he publicly humiliates himself so badly that he has to change his name. Why aren’t you PLAYING FAAAAAAAAAAIR?!
(Now imagine how pathetic that plaintive whine of “PLAY FAAAAAAAAAAIR YOU GUYS” will sound when it comes out of a Presidential candidate’s mouth. HA HA HA.)
NonyNony
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Just keep in mind that Romney got 65% of the white vote and 27% of the Hispanic/Latino vote to win the states he won. Trump has to maintain both of those numbers to tie Romney’s performance, and for every Hispanic/Latino voter he loses, he has to make it up with another white voter. And since Hispanic/Latino voters as a percentage of the overall voting base has grown ever year for decades, it’s a good chance that he actually has to do better with Hispanic/Latino voters than Romney did just to maintain that 27% ratio.
I’m not relaxed about it – as I’ve said (too many times) before, I’m sure he’ll end up with 45% of the popular vote in the end. Every single white voter who voted for Romney will likely vote for Trump – no matter what they’re saying now. But I don’t think he’s going to do better than Mitt Romney either. (I’m not counting on Republican women to save our bacon though – they’re as crazy as the men and they’ll come around to voting for Trump in the end when the other choice is “a Democrat wins” – no matter who the Democrat is).
Ruviana
@Germy: On her blog she has little thumbnail bios of her kids and one of them sets off my gaydar like crazy. I hope for that kid’s sake that I’m wrong.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@NorthLeft12:
Computer Systems Analyst. Business Analyst.
I’m not talking about what you’re talking about, but you don’t realize it.
trollhattan
Aside from the bleatings of the Remora of Misunderstanding, is it still possible to add names to the November ballot in any states?
Archon
@Rolling Along:
A little early to be drinking don’t you think?
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Brachiator:
I agree that the field was not supposed to be weak. Jeb!’s failure to launch was a surprise.
I welcomed Donald to the race for the entertainment potential, and to make the GOP look stupid.
I don’t think anyone anticipated how incapable the GOP establishment had become. Or how well Donald’s messages of anger and resentment would be received.
Anyway that’s all hindsight.
Gin & Tonic
@Rolling Along:
Um, news flash, moron. The equal-time rule is long gone.
You seem to get stupider every day. It’s truly a sight to behold.
Schlemazel Khan
@trollhattan:
Getting on in Texas closed Monday so
UNLIMITED CORPORATE CRAP. . . er . . .Right2Retch. . . er . . . TakeItToTheOuthouse. has all his rubber duckies in a row as ususal.Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: Yes, most.
shomi
@MattF: Yes of course it’s a dog whistle to some. Hillary will never get their votes anyways. White supremacists,bigots, racists etc. will always vote for a Drumpf or a Cruz or whoever they pick at the convention.
I still think they are going to try do an endaround and try bypass Drumpf at the convention. There are no laws and since the Republican party is really run by the super rich anyways, they will do whatever they want if they think they can get away with it.
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: Right on that. However, it’s presence allowed them to go on & on about ‘WMDs in Iraq’, which low-info voters thought meant ‘nuclear’. They were a diabolical bunch.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Even in California, Asian Americans are so small a fraction in some districts that their numbers are not counted in exit polls.
Money may be another matter, but here we are still talking about a very small number of extremely wealthy individuals.
But Trump is having a big impact on some Asian Americans. Here is a bit from a story from March 2016, not that long ago.
Another little nugget about Asian Americans: “74 percent of the Asian American vote went to the Republican presidential candidate just two decades ago. The Democratic presidential vote share among Asian Americans has steadily increased from 36 percent in 1992, to 64 percent in the 2008 election to 73 percent in 2012.”
I don’t believe much in blather about the MSM or dogwhistles. I think you may be saying, and I agree, that most nonwhite people recognize racism for what it is fairly quickly and react accordingly. And I think that Asian Americans saw in Obama the hope that people from diverse backgrounds truly had a chance to rise to the top, and they also see that many white people are fiercely determined to slam shut all doors of opportunity.
Chyron HR
@Rolling Along:
I’m a little impressed that the GOP managed to shart out a candidate so pathetic that not even Mr. “Romney is winning in a landslide!” will support him.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Brachiator: Trump’s announcement speech:
He didn’t mention anyone else by name on the GOP side. He seemed to have it in for JEB? and Rubio. His announcement was 6/16/2015. JEB?’s was 6/15/2015. These things can’t be coincidences.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Haydnseek
@Rolling Along: It will never end. After Hillary beats the shit out of Trump, assholes like you will still be bleating: “Enjoy it while you can, libtards! Impeachment is right around the corner!”
#Fuck you
Capri
@Paul in KY: To be fair, the inflation rate was 18% and there were lines at gasoline stations due to shortages. Carter had a lot to overcome.
Betty Cracker
@different-church-lady: Pretty much. Looking forward to relieving the “Palin dead-cat bounce” when Trump has a run of positive poll numbers. Not.
Matt McIrvin
@Benw:
I start getting those feelings, and then some of his fans beat somebody up, or he gets another endorsement from the Klan.
Brachiator
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I can proudly say that I was also as wrong as wrong could be. I thought that Trump would self-destruct early. But I also noted that he reminded me of how Governor Arnold fooled the California pundit conventional wisdom in appealing to voters during the recall election.
And I think what still is not clearly understood is that it was not a matter of the GOP establishment becoming incapable. They were clearly and firmly rejected by an insurrection consisting of their base and independents. The GOP had all the standard flavor of mainstream candidates. Social conservatives, those with strong evangelical appeal, the faux moderate business types (Kasich), the pro-amnesty pro-business Republicans, and the crazies (Cruz and company). Trump ran through them all and kept gaining voter support.
And now you still have people talking about disorder within the GOP, but what is actually happening is that the establishment is slowly but decidedly accepting Trump. It is the wildest thing that I have ever seen, and I am not sure that there is any clear antecedents for this in American political history.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: A lot of late-20th-century East Asian immigrants were, or were descended from, refugees from Communist countries, so there was a certain amount of affinity for Reagan and his hardline anti-Communism. A lot of them were hardcore Republicans. The party pissed that all away.
And a lot of other stuff too. It’s amazing now to think that George W. Bush got a majority of the Muslim vote in 2000 and was making a serious play for Latinos.
trollhattan
@Capri:
The second gas crisis plus 3 Mile Island were a factor too. Folks didn’t cotton to “Turn down your thermostats and put on a sweater” from a preacher man, and it’s no coincidence St Ronaldus took the solar panels off the WH as soon as his tribe invaded the joint.
Matt McIrvin
@chopper: My mistake, probably. I thought another incarnation of him was on here in 2008 touting McCain’s unlimited corporate cash.
So maybe it’s just four failed presidential candidates in four years, which is actually more impressive.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, anticommunism used to make a major common ground between the right wing and many immigrant communities. Conceivably, it still might (Middle Eastern diasporas are full of people who were chased out by various elements that are also enemies of the United States and hate them far more than any neocon ever will), except that the racism has now overwhelmed pretty much all other considerations, so now everyone from an enemy war zone is considered an enemy.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Brachiator:
I think the GOP establishment lost their grip on the base because for decades they’ve been promising the Evangelicals, blue collar voters and fiscal conservatives that they would come through for them, and the only ones who got what they wanted from GOP politicians were the plutocrats. The base found the man who tells the happy lies more convincingly and they flocked to Donald. Simplification, but not completely wrong.
singfoom
I’d be less worried about Sanders supporters crossing over and voting for Trump (sure, they both talk about trade but the words are very different and the rest of Trump’s positions are anathema to anyone slightly liberal) and more worried about Sanders supporters NOT voting in the Presidential general or doing a write in.
It’s a long 6 months until election day too, and anything can and most likely will happen.
Paul in KY
@greennotGreen: Welcome to runnin for President while a Democrat. He did have much more of an uphill battle than Dubya/Darth Cheney, that’s for sure.
Paul in KY
@Schlemazel Khan: It doesn’t matter whether it was old or outdated. That’s what they were saying when they talked about ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (and were being true). Once in a while, when someone pressed them & multiple follow-up questions were asked, it would come out. They did try & give the impression that nuclear weapons were the thing he had, but in their official docs sent to UN, they were harping on the chemical weapons (gassing the Kurds, etc. etc.)
benw
@Chris:
If the house and senate stay controlled by Republicans, any R president is approximately equally a disaster. I’m getting to appreciate Trump’s instinct for sticking the dagger in where it does the most damage. Jeb, Marco, and Cruz know how that feels. I do think Hillary will be better prepared for Trump’s nastiness than those losers.
Paul in KY
@Cacti: Good points, there.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
This. What turned Republican voters against Bush was not Iraq, but New Orleans. I worked with one guy (white non-crazy Republican voter) who came in after Katrina and was LITERALLY red in the face talking about how Bush was letting our fellow citizens drown and was the worst president ever. I’ve lost touch with him, but I guarantee you that guy voted for Obama in 2008. The Republican Party lost him the day they decided New Orleans was expendable.
Paul in KY
@efgoldman: Those things you mentioned were part of what saddened Pres. Carter. Agree that Reagan was a much more obvious choice to run for Pres than the fat liar.
HRA
I am responding without having read all of the comments. I will go back later.
A few days ago I was going to mention how weird it was that my long street had no signs for any candidate. Today I went up the street on my way to my MD and signs only for Trump have sprouted up like I cannot even believe. What happened in a few days?
I have a close relative who works for Walmart. The main office has determined this Walmart to be high risk for theft. It is not a surprise. They got rid of the people greeters at the doors after a woman greeter was injured by a customer at one not too far away. The coast is clear for theft. Now they have asked certain employees if they would like to train as security/greeters at the doors after they take a course in security training.
Also there is some kind of health insurance Walmart does offer.
gwangung
@Frankensteinbeck:
Just remember what Trump said about China.
Asian Americans have long memories.
ThresherK (GPad)
@gvg: There’s a reason big box stores.are built at the edge of My Town. It’s so the negative externalities will be born in part by Their Town, without the property tax assessment.
This security thing is just another one on the list for me.
Paul in KY
@Capri: I mentioned this in the comment you responded to: ‘of course he had a whole lot of reasons to look gloomy’
Mnemosyne
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
The voter demographics of 2016 America are much different than the voter demographics of 1980 America. Everyone who’s not a white dude HATES Trump: African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, white women.
He cannot win UNLESS we allow conservatives to block people from voting. Priority One is making sure everyone who’s not a white dude is able to vote.
benw
@Matt McIrvin: a fair point. Trump on twitter is one thing, Trump heading a mob is another.
Origuy
I live in a part of East San Jose that is mostly Latino and Asian, heavy on the Vietnamese. There’s a Vietnamese sandwich shop near me that had a handwritten sign in the window supporting Trump a while back. It was in pretty bad English, no Vietnamese. I thought it was odd, but I didn’t ask anyone about it. The shop is part of a local chain (Lee’s), so I don’t know if it was just someone at that location. It was gone a week later. Hopefully a Vietnamese customer explained to the poster why Trump wouldn’t be good for the community.
Mnemosyne
@Mai.naem.mobile:
Something Republicans keep forgetting is that when they rant against “immigrants,” it’s heard by ALL immigrants regardless of national origin. They mean it to be a dogwhistle for “Mexicans,” but immigrants from other places don’t like to hear it.
NorthLeft12
@Stan: Ha! Don’t you know its just like flipping a coin.
sinnedbackwards
@Iowa Old Lady: It is frustrating when language serves to hide truth.
It is widely accepted that the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) includes chemical weapons. Iraq undoubtedly had chemical weapons.
The Shrubistas tried falsely to prove that Iraq had nuclear weapons, and the village let them hide the fudge by repeatedly letting them use “WMD”.
Joni is playing the old Republican game of imply-the-lie-by-telling-an-obscure-literal-truth.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
If only 2 percent of white women who voted for Romney vote for Hillary instead of Trump, Trump gets crushed in a landslide.
schrodinger's cat
@Origuy: Vietnamese Dinesh D’souza?
Scott S.
I gotta say, the longer Rolling Along blathered, the more ideas I got for ridiculous sci-fi stories where his fever dreams came true.
“GREETINGS, AMERICA, I AM BEN SASSE. YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF ME, BUT I HAVE JUST BEEN INSTALLED AS PRESIDENT BY A BUNCH OF CRAZY WINGNUTS WHO HATE DEMOCRACY. I WILL SPEND MY ENTIRE PRESIDENCY WITHIN THIS 20-FOOT-TALL ROBOT BECAUSE EVERYONE IN THE COUNTRY WANTS ME DEAD. HA HA, AMERICANS, NOTHING CAN STOP ME NOW!”
“NOT SO FAST, ROBOT BEN SASSE!”
“GASP! IT IS ELIZABETH WARREN INSTALLED INTO A 40-FOOT-TALL ROBOT! MY PLANS FOR DOUCHEBAGGERY ARE UNDONE!”
Meanwhile, a world where attention-starved moron Donald Trump refuses to debate with a woman he’s convinced he can beat by waving his short-fingered winkity-boo around — it doesn’t really count as science fiction. It’s more like an underwritten Piers Anthony fantasy…
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
This may have been part of it. But it may also be that many of these immigrants came here and ran small businesses or otherwise found the economic policies of Republicans to be appealing.
Some historical highlights:
China may include Hong Kong and Taiwan, not sure.
NorthLeft12
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Sorry, that was a cheap and snarky and uncalled for comment on my part. I’ll be more careful of what I say in the future to you and others on here.
gwangung
No, the anti-Communism thing swamps that. It’s a strong strain in the Chinese and Vietnamese communities; much less so in the Japanese, Korean and Filipino communities. That closeness to the experience trumps all that, much like in the Cuban community.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t think they mean this one as a dogwhistle, per se. Rather, they they make very little distinction. Their assumption is that the vast majority of ‘immigrants’ are illegal aliens from Mexico (Central and South America are concepts they’re barely aware of), but they’re happy to be reminded that The Chinese Are Taking Their Jobs and broaden it. Trump has gone straight out and named ethnicities in vile language, which is why they love him.
germy shoemangler
“When you’re born, you get a ticket to the freakshow. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.”
– George Carlin
Doug R
@Rolling Along: You can do better, you’re showing about the same energy level as ¿Jeb?
Betty Cracker
@Scott S.: FTW!
LAC
@Rolling Along: and I thought meth heads didn’t have the attention span to post numerous times. Congrats
Paul in KY
@sinnedbackwards: Better said than my comments.
Brachiator
@gwangung: RE: This may have been part of it. But it may also be that many of these immigrants came here and ran small businesses or otherwise found the economic policies of Republicans to be appealing.
Obviously it depends on where the immigrants are from. We and Canada had a burst of Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong before the island reverted to China. Immigrants from India are not strongly anti-communist. The motivations of immigrants from Taiwan and South Korea may not have much to do with anti-communist sentiment.
sempronia
@Origuy: Lee’s is also a well-known supporter of the Communist northern Vietnamese regime. My friends who came here as refugees from the south never eat there because of it.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Here’s the thing, though: yes, each of the ethnic voter groups are a small percentage of the electorate when looked at individually. What you need to do is add them together and suddenly that 5 percent is a much bigger slice of the electorate.
That’s why people talk about the Obama Coalition. When you put a majority of each minority voting group together with a minority of white voters, you win. McCain and Romney both got a majority of the white vote, and they both lost decisively.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I think you may need to think this one through again.
schrodinger's cat
@Frankensteinbeck: I have read a lot of vile stuff about Indian immigrants too, especially in tech forums.
ETA: Most nativists and restrictionistas don’t make any distinction between different countries/continents, legal/undocumented/temporary workers.
Trollhattan
@Scott S.:
Make it so!
40-Foot Liz Warren will be my band’s name.
LAC
@Rolling Along: but will congressional pages flock to him? ?
schrodinger's cat
@Frankensteinbeck: I have read a lot of vile stuff about Indian immigrants too, especially in tech forums.
ETA: Most nativists and restrictionistas don’t make any distinction between different countries/continents, legal/undocumented/temporary workers.
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
W got 41% of the Latino vote.
FORTY-ONE PERCENT.
Paul in KY
@Trollhattan: The Tubes have a great song called ‘Attack of the 50 Foot Woman’. Maybe some new lyrics would work great with Sen. Warren crushing this Sasse joker.
Edit: The whole album, The Completion Backwards Principle, is badass.
Trollhattan
@Paul in KY:
My inherent indolence prevents me from googling “sasse” to learn who he/she might be. It’s as though the Republican panic room has a literal entire U.S. phonebook and an infinite number of darts.
[Thwack] “This guy!”
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Trollhattan:
He’s a corn fed anodyne white male doofus from Nebraska. You know the type – aw shucks, but could have bodies buried in his back yard.
gwangung
@Brachiator:
KMT, refugees from the PRC? N Korea vs. S. Korea?
I’ll take my insider (Chinese American at least) and historical knowledge any time.
Cacti
@rikyrah:
Also got 48% of the women’s vote overall.
What chance does Trump have of coming within sniffing distance of either number?
Paul in KY
@Paul in KY: Just some dickwad that troll doofus was ranting about earlier in thread. Don’t waste any time on it.
Edit: Meant this comment for Trollhattan.
Tim C.
@rikyrah: Again, and this pains me to give credit to the worst president of my lifetime, W was an incurious, lazy, dolt, but he wasn’t a bigot. He advocated policies that only helped the wealthy and hurt the poor, which in effect was almost identical to the desires of actual bigots, but he gave no indication of any personal animosity toward non-whites.
That’s why they call him a RINO
WereBear
Mr WereBear has been talking to people who are just now paying attention to the front runners in either party, and he’s distressed about the whitewashing Trump is receiving from the MSM.
All kinds of otherwise rational people are saying pro-Trump things, and it is obvious they don’t know who he really is.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Trollhattan:
You can tour with my fantasy band The Moderate Rebels.
Brachiator
@gwangung:
Point noted.
What I was trying to convey was this. Even though there are a number of Asian American communities in California, I typically run across people who think that pro-Republican Vietnamese are the equivalent of anti-Castro Cubans. And for some reason, until reminded, these people totally forget that people from the Philippines and India are Asian, and have no clue as to the political affiliations of any other Asians.
And I recently listened to a pretty good public radio interview on state outreach to Asians Americans by the Democrats and Republicans. The state vice chairman (I think) of the Republican Party somewhat surprisingly is Indian American. The representative from the Democrats admitted that they did not know as much as they liked about variations in political opinions among Asians. And the Democrats seemed concentrated on getting Asian voters. The Republicans, on the other hand, were trying to get more Asians to run for office.
Brachiator
@Trollhattan:
Whenever I see this “Sasse,” I think of the SNL skit with Phil Hartman.
“I just stepped into a big pile of … Sassy!”
Bitter Scribe
A guy who started a bar in a town with a notoriously autocratic and heavy-handed mayor told me that just before his grand opening, the mayor told him, “One more thing…don’t ever call my police. We’re not your babysitters.”
That mayor was a jerk in most ways. He went on to shut down that bar after it became a gay bar. Much later, he ended up going to the federal pen for corruption. And yet, I can’t help thinking that Walmart needs a little of his attitude.
Calouste
@Brachiator: One of the problems is thinking about these people as “Asians”. Latinos, despite the differences between Cubans and Mexican and Puerto Ricans and various other smaller nations, at least have the same language, although with significant differences, and mostly the same religion, and there is an overlap in culture and history. Asians don’t even share the same script, let alone language, religion, culture, and history.
Bitter Scribe
@Rolling Along: Guys like you sure do a lot of gloating over things that are always just about to happen.
schrodinger's cat
@Calouste: To Trump supporters and many others, they are all a scourge coming to take away your jerbs and hard earned munnies. Surely you jest if you expect nuance from them.
Calouste
@schrodinger’s cat: Of course, that’s obvious. But I was replying to a post by Brachiator about Democratic voter outreach to Asian communities in California.
Chris
@Tim C.:
It’s been a pretty standard trend in the last half century that the next Republican president will make you miss the last one. Back in Nixon’s days, at least they still respected the safety net and (quoth Tricky Dick himself) were “all Keynesians now.” That was no longer true under Reagan. But at least Reagan wasn’t a complete and all-around warmonger, who’d refuse to sit down and talk to America’s enemies when the situation called for it. That was no longer true under Dubya. But at least Dubya wasn’t a flaming nativist and Islamophobic bigot… etc. It just keeps getting worse.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne: RE: The motivations of immigrants from Taiwan and South Korea may not have much to do with anti-communist sentiment.
As I noted in another post, many people just assume that Asian Americans from Taiwan and South Korea are exactly like Vietnamese, and that all Vietnamese are politically just like anti-Castro Cubans.
I have not found this to be the case with the Asian Americans that I know.
True enough when it comes to actual voting. Votes count, and the Democrats are wise to try to sweep up all the votes that they can.
But here’s the odd counterfactual. In some states and congressional districts, and on the national level, the Asian American vote total is so small that they do not show up in most exit polling (this has even been true of some California vote results), so it becomes difficult to measure the impact of their votes.
Bob In Portland
First, the DNC/Hillary outreach to “moderate Republicans” is is essentially a repositioning of the Democratic Party to the right. See what’s offered to the Sanders wing at the convention. I suspect little or nothing except for fear of The Donald. Usually, in American politics, fear is good enough.
Second, if the Democratic Party succeeds in becoming truly centrist its opposition will be a nativist, racist, religionist minority on the right, and economic populists on the left. This new Democratic Party that has been created over the last twenty-five years will have most of the corporate money and control of the media. Great victories for “Democrats”. More opportunities for laughing at the poor white trash clinging to racism and more opportunities for hippie punching.
Third, didn’t one of the presidential candidates sit on the board of Walmart a while back?
Bob In Portland
Now that Hillary is proud to be praised by Kissinger, is Obama now on the Kissinger bandwagon? Or was he always on it?
sinnedbackwards
@Paul in KY:Thanks. I had missed the intervening excellent comments in eagerness to make the point, and then went back to read them. Unthreaded blogs have that effect.
But repetition is the soul of learning, so thanks to you too.
( Not sure where you are – our other house is in Lexington, but probably selling soon.)
Original Lee
I remember the days when Wal-Mart proudly stocked only “Made in the U.S.A.” goods. None with the union label, though.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Are you sure you want to start bringing up war crimes right about now? May not be the best timing for you and your buddy Vlad.
LAC
@Mnemosyne: what is this? “Post your delusion and win a box of cookies” day? First rolling away the meth head and now Boob from Portland weighing in.
Bob in Portland
@Mnemosyne: What country are you and I in? What country is Putin in? Think hard.
Again, you merely divert the conversation away from Obama giving a medal to a war criminal. Is your answer that since neoliberal Democrats cannot be critiqued from the left that we all must forgive Kissinger his crimes, as our Democratic leaders have? Real simple. Yes or no?
Apparently, you and LAC do. Who knows? If Madeline Albright was good for killing a half million kids, then giving a medal to Kissinger is just A-OK for the Village here.
There is no conspiracy theory. Obama and Clinton are embracing Kissinger. Doesn’t that tell you anything?
How inpenetrable this bubble of yours is.
Bob in Portland
@Mnemosyne: Oh, and your war crime? Apparently, it was merely propaganda. Read this if you’ve got the nerve.
Mnemosyne
@Bob in Portland:
So you’re okay with refugee camps being bombed as long as the US doesn’t do it. Gotcha.
Mnemosyne
@Bob in Portland:
Let’s see, who should I believe: a random guy with a website looking at a few pictures from 8,000 miles away, or the UN and Doctors Without Borders?
Such a dilemma.
Millard Filmore
@Chris: “… If there was no government relief to depend on, then the market would straighten itself out and reach a wage that’s fair to everyone.”
Gotta disagree here. The conservatives would lean on the bleeding heart liberals to pass legislation that allows low skill workers to live in cardboard boxes.
Original Lee
@Paul in KY: I think he also mishandled the Florida recount. He should have filed in every county, but instead he only filed in selected ones, which looked like cherry-picking to many. “Oh, he only wants to recount the ones he thinks he can finagle a win out of.”
Miss Bianca
@Scott S.: BTW, allow me to offer my congratulations on this awesome image. Huge battling robots are just what I needed to make me grin on this grey afternoon.
Bob in Portland
@Mnemosyne: Why do you bother replying when you don’t read the links? I guess if no one else here reads the links you only look stupid to me. But really, read the link or don’t waste my time.
By the way, the US bombed the shit out of a hospital in Afghanistan. By mistake. Right? That’s okay, right? But, no, you guys can complain about Walmarts and root for a former board member for president.
And, of course, all of this is to deflect criticism from Obama and Clinton embracing Kissinger in his dotage.
Let’s try again, Mnem. What country do you live in? Who bombed the hospital in Afghanistan? Hint: The country has been in endless warring for decades. Why aren’t you calling Obama a war criminal? Can you only care about what others do and not give a shit about what your country does? At the very least he’s in office when we bombed the hospital in Afghanistan (for an hour!). How is whatever happened in the refugee camp (if anything) directly in Putin’s lap?
Come on, Solomon, explain to us how come you’re able to avoid criticism of the US waging war half a world away for no good reason?
Now, who is backing ISIS, al Nusrah and the various iterations of al Qaeda in Syria? Any clue at all?
I’ll give you a hint here too: Henry Kissinger isn’t the last war criminal the US had.
Ruckus
walmart. I’m doing my part. I refuse to step foot in one. Not a penny of my paycheck goes into the pocket of a Walton. Of course they’ve made it very difficult for a lot of people to avoid doing that by their practice of coming into a town and overrunning the local businesses till they close and then raising prices and returning almost no money to the area in the form of jobs.
seaboogie
@Rolling Along:
#IKnowYouAreButWhatAmI