Why? Because he’s a hysterical, pants-soiling drama bear? Let’s not forget, this is the same Sully who, after President Obama had a subpar debate performance in 2012, covered himself with beagle shit and ran through the streets of D.C. bellowing doom and woe (okay, only in my imagination, but it’s just a slight exaggeration!).
And Sully likes Obama. He hates Hillary Clinton, with such an irrational intensity that it’s as if he thinks she’s the evil harpy who personally circumcised him with a rusty teaspoon in a squalid NHS clinic. So of course he’s sure she’s going to lose to Trump, though Sully says he’ll vote for Clinton if there’s no palatable third party alternative.
[An aside: before all you puling BernieBabies show up in comments to shriek about how much Hillary sucks, we get it! You hate her! Go read the Sullivan interview — you’ll get a righteous stiffy, and maybe you’ll forget to crap all over the comments section.]There was also something in the Slate interview that reminded me of Adam’s post last night. If you haven’t read Adam’s post yet, do. You won’t enjoy it as it is a compendium of the slime extruded on Twitter by pro-Trump, anti-Semitic creepy-crawlies who emerged when a journalist turned over a rock. Horrifying.
But anyhoo, the Slate article addressed the incident Adam talks about and also a headline at the Trump-friendly Breitbart site earlier this week that refers to Bill Kristol as a “Renegade Jew.” Now, it’s important to bear three things in mind when considering the Breitbart headline:
1) Kristol is a loathsome piece of shit
2) Breitbart is a flophouse for unemployable wingnut morons rather than a legitimate media organization
3) The person who called Kristol a “Renegade Jew,” David Horowitz, is himself Jewish (and a nasty wingnut hysteric of the WND variety)
But all that said — damn. As Michelle Goldberg notes, “the Trump campaign has been associated with white nationalism and a resurgence of raw, violently threatening anti-Semitism. Breitbart’s headline suggests that the Jew baiting popular on pro-Trump social media feeds is creeping toward the mainstream.”
That’s scary shit. Several weeks ago on a thread here, I expressed a thought I’ve heard many fellow American liberals express since Trump clinched the GOP nomination, something along the lines that the fact that Trump will top a major party ticket makes me ashamed even though I’ve never voted for a Republican in my life.
A commenter (I’ve forgotten who — sorry) replied that one advantage she enjoyed as someone who was raised by African American parents was never having to feel ashamed about something a white fool like Trump does. I don’t think I replied — didn’t know what to say.
Because honestly, it never occurred to me for a second to be ashamed because Trump is a fellow white person; rather, I felt shame as an American, that such a vile, bigoted dunce had captured the nomination of one of only two relevant political parties in my country.
That’s an aspect of white privilege, no doubt — the freedom from feeling any responsibility for what some random white shithead does, the certainty that it doesn’t reflect in any way on me. But as this white nationalist aspect of the Trump campaign asserts itself, I do feel a special responsibility to respond to it, as an American of the WASP variety.
I’m not sure how, aside from doing everything I possibly can to help elect Hillary Clinton. Maybe grab the lapels of fellow Saltine-American friends, relatives and neighbors who say they might vote for Trump and shake some sense into them? I don’t know.
But I do feel responsible. And more determined than ever.
Baud
I don’t want to win if it means accepting Sully’s support.
Emma
Andrew Sullivan despises any female not named Margaret Thatcher, which may or may not give you a deeply regrettable look into his psyche. In addition, in his inimitable British way, he’s all about social class, which allows him to attach himself to the conservative groups that basically want him either back in the closet or dead.
Poopyman
@Baud: Be very very glad Andrew Sullivan does not consider Baud! palatable.
lollipopguild
Sully can vote for Baud!
Immanentize
Sully loves drama. Preferably his and his alone. Oddly, although I read him all the time, I have not missed his absence.
PS Favorite Betty line yet.
FlyingToaster
I’m sure Sully will vote for Gilmore/Weld. Heh.
eemom
It is unfair that fucking Sullivan is a thing again, as if decent people don’t already have enough to endure in this hellscape of a 2016. SO unfair.
Major Major Major Major
Interesting.
I can think of a few white people where I’ve been like, ugh, stop making me look bad (Dolezal for instance), but it’s not a feeling I generally get. And I definitely don’t care when other gay guys do embarrassing shit. Like Sully. Drama queen.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I have never felt so compelled to work at GOTV, because in my (voting age) lifetime, it’s never been so important.
I am ashamed to be a US citizen, now that it’s clear(er than ever) how many of the others are eager to unleash spittle-flecked hatred on anyone who isn’t part of their affinity group.
Amir Khalid
A post so nice, John Cole tweeted it twice. We’ve all noticed — well, those of us who ever followed Sully, anyway — how weird he can get with women politicians: his Mummy fixation on Maggie Thatcher; his obsession with the circumstances of the birth Sarah Palin’s youngest child (and with whether the child was even hers); and here, his quite irrational hate for Hillary Clinton. He seems personally offended that Hillary is by far the best candidate running in 2016.
Irony Abounds
I’m not going to jump too high to Sullivan’s defense, but when he talks about voting for a third party candidate instead of Hillary he frames in terms of a third party that will split the conservative vote and ensure Trump’s defeat. He does hate Hillary but he indicated he will gladly vote for her if she is the only alternative is Trump. I also didn’t get the sense that he is convinced Trump will win. I share his major concerns about a Trump Presidency, so I also won’t condemn him for getting a bit hysterical about that prospect – it should GREATLY concern anyone with even the tiniest of brains. I know the HillBots around here don’t see it, but Clinton is the probably the only Democratic candidate Trump could possibly beat (with the possible inclusion of Bernie), so no one should scoff at Trump’s chances.
JPL
I have no problem telling folks that I can’t support a racist pig. If time allows, I also mention his tax cuts will add ten trillion to the deficit.
Schlemazel Khan
You mean he is NOT a credit to his race?
ghetto-yid
And while we’re on the subject of Jews, Sheldon Adelson seems to want to cover Trump in some casino money. Shelley, why are you on the same team as David Duke?
FlyingToaster
@Irony Abounds: I don’t think Sanders could survive a general election, between the word “socialist”, the illegitimate son, his wife’s Bennington college problem, and the media focussing on the BernieBros instead of the (sane) majority of his supporters. His lack of cooperation with the DNC means that there would be a lot fewer people willing to pound any pavement or make any calls (wave), which will hurt his GOTV.
srv
Part of me now wants Hillary to win so we can look forward to Sullivan’s great insights every week.
How much fingernails on the chalkboard can Balloon-Juice take?
Schlemazel Khan
@Irony Abounds:
It is stupid shit like that last sentence that makes people not trust your judgement.
lollipopguild
@Schlemazel Khan: Not to orange skinned short fingered vulgarians-no.
aimai
@Baud: I want to win so much I will accept Sullivan’s stuffed, mummified, and eviscerated body to use as a footstool if it gets Hillary to the White House. Oh, wait, I would be happy to have it anyway, even if it doesn’t help her win.
burnspbesq
@srv:
Not that much. Not remotely that much.
aimai
@Irony Abounds: What could that even mean? She is the only candidate, other than Bernie, that Trump could beat? How could that possibly be true? There is an infinity of other Democratic candidates not running–in fact the category “democrats not running in this election” is so large, and filled with such incompetent and unloveable people that it simply can’t be true that Hillary, of all of them, is most likely to be beaten by Trump. In reality Hillary Clinton, having already won 13 million votes in a hotly contested primary in which some 23 million votes have been cast–far more, as far as I know, than have been cast in the Republican primary or amassed by Trump–is a fantastic candidate.
Betty Cracker
@aimai: Okay, that made me laugh so hard I scared the dog out of the room!
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai:
Ew.
hellslittlestangel
I wouldn’t quite say that Trump and his followers make me ashamed to be white, but they have definitely evoked unpleasant memories of the racism I grew up steeped in. My parents would have loved him.
divF
Ms. Cracker, you do have a way with words.
Emma
@aimai: I’ll get my sister to crochet you a nice cover for it if you send me the dimensions of the final piece.
Mary G
Andrew said he was so depressed that he could hardly get out of bed, and he has no evidence, but just a feeling, that Trump is going to win. One pretty much explains the other, no?
FlyingToaster
@aimai: Going all Cheradenine Zakalwe, are we?
ThresherK
@eemom: All I can think of is that Molly Ivins isn’t here to see this, and Sully is.
I thought of Molly’s evergreen line about Pat Buchanan at the 1992 GOP convention. We are ginning up for months of speeches which “probably sounded better in the original German.”
JPL
@Omnes Omnibus: It certainly wouldn’t match my decor.
WJS
The images and the memes circulated in that thread did not just spring up when Donald Trump decided to run for president and beat fifteen other Republicans. The people behind those images have been around for a very long time. They have used 4chan and reddit and comment threads at free republic.com for over a decade or more. They have always been vile pieces of shit. Now they have been given the green light to come out and start attacking people because they feel that Trump is their only shot at having a voice that will have to be heard.
They’re used to being banned, blocked and they’re used to having their content removed. But these overloaded, understaffed social media platforms can’t remove their stuff fast enough. Where you once had hundreds of commenters, now you have tens of thousands and they have normalized vile hate speech.
Think about that–the normalization of violent rhetoric has been made possible because another vile piece of shit was allowed to hijack a completely incompetent political party that has kept begging for their money and their votes by appealing to their base instincts. I saw a headline today that said that Trump is now the Tea Party in action. You’re damned right he is. And he’s bringing a horde with him that has normalized hate speech and transacts in it every day.
People who aren’t ashamed of Trump weren’t participating in polite society already.
patroclus
If Sully is on our side again, I say welcome! More likely, he’s gonna think of everything he can possibly say that “makes it hard for [him] to support Hillary,” so he’s only gonna be partially on our side at best, but the more he’s an asset, the better. His hysterical hand-wringing might be helpful in that it might convince at least some that the election will be close; hence they’ll vote for Hillary too.
A Ghost To Most
@Irony Abounds:
NR, is that you?
schrodinger's cat
Why should I care what Andrew Sullivan thinks? What is so speshul bout him other than his posh accent?
PatrickG
I thought you were on the side that didn’t believe in unicorns?
I’ll show myself out, but thanks for reminding me of how awesome the word “puling” is.
TaMara (HFG)
Wow, I remember the debate, but I DO NOT remember the snake skin story. Must’ve blocked it out. LOL
jl
Trump is a White-American? I thought he was an White-masked-orange-raccoon-living-in-ungodly-symbiosis-with-a-yellow-possum-on-its-head-American. A small demo, but stereotyped as having a peculiar genius for self-promotion.
Anyway, holy shit, you learn something new every day.
sm*t cl*de
@aimai:
A variation on “give him an enema and bury him in a matchbox”.
Redshift
@ThresherK: Garrison Keillor did a bit last weekend about the meeting between Trump and Paul Ryan that had the actor speaking mostly in German with Trump’s accent and speaking style.
I enjoyed, but it was an odd sketch.
Soylent Green
All bets are off this year. Yes, Trump could win, because demagoguery works. Probably the reality is that the country that elected Obama twice is not foolish enough to hand the job to Trump, but I’m all for this potential outcome throwing a very big scare into people who might otherwise blow off going to the polls. Broken glass, etc.
jl
Also, maybe Sullivan will eventually land on the Weld-whoever third party thing, if gets going. He may exhaust himself with his own pants-pissing panic attacks.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@schrodinger’s cat: Isn’t his action not so posh in the UK? Of course in the US, any British accent is automatically posh.
ThresherK
Hope you didn’t all tune into the Pitt-TBay game late.
Mnemosyne
@Irony Abounds:
I’ll ask you the same question I’ve asked all of the other pessimists: which group of the Obama coalition do you picture staying home or switching to Trump in November? Is it African-Americans, Latinos, or Asian-Americans? After yesterday, I think we can safely put Muslim-Americans and Jewish-Americans on Hillary’s side as well. Which of those groups do you envision voting for Trump in large enough numbers to swing the election?
In 2012, Romney received 62 percent of the white male vote and 56 percent of the white female vote. What percentage of white Obama voters do you see staying home or switching to Trump?
It’s undeniable that Trump is appealing to white voters who vote Republican. What I don’t see is his purported appeal to white liberals. He’s also not getting white independents in the large numbers he’ll need to win.
peej01
I do have one thing to thank Sullivan for…he led me over here. It was when Tunch went missing, and me being a cat person had to investigate.
greennotGreen
Perhaps sadly, but the most guilt I ever felt about being white was exiting the theater in tears at the end of “Dances with Wolves.” I remember crying, “I don’t want to be white anymore!”
I mean, they even shot the wolf!
NotMax
“Andrew Sullivan Thinks”
Ah, so it’s a fantasy story, then.
rikyrah
‘A Million Questions’ From Descendants of SlavesSold to Aid Georgetown
African-Americans have long lived with unanswered questions about their roots, missing branches in their family trees and stubborn silences from elders reluctant to delve into a painful
past that extends back to slavery. This month, scores of readers wrote to us, saying they had finally found clues in an unexpected place: an article published in The New York Times.
The story described the sale of 272 slaves in 1838. The men, women and children were owned by the nation’s most prominent Jesuit priests. And they were sold — for about $3.3 million in today’s dollars — to help the college now known as Georgetown University stay afloat. We asked readers to contact us if they suspected that their ancestors were among those slaves, who had labored on Jesuit plantations in Maryland before

being sold to new owners in Louisiana.
With the help of Judy Riffel, a genealogist hired by the Georgetown Memory Project, a group dedicated to supporting and identifying the descendants of the slaves, we were able to confirm the ancestry of several respondents. Here are their stories, edited and condensed for clarity.
Charles Hill, 74
Great-great-grandson of Bill and Mary Ann Hill
My father always told me that we came out of Maryland, and that the name of the slave ship was Jackson. But that’s all he would tell us.
So when my cousin called me about the story, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. I said that was why my father wouldn’t tell us. He didn’t want to disturb our Catholic faith. He didn’t want to lose us.
That whole part of my family is Catholic. They didn’t cuss. They didn’t drink. They didn’t smoke. I’m the middle kid. I wanted to be a bad boy, and my father wasn’t going to have that.
I’m still Catholic today, Knights of Columbus, fourth degree.
You know, that’s pretty much what saved me. I grew up with all those renegades and hoodlums, but I’m 74 years old and haven’t been to prison. I believe in my rosary. I believe in my prayers. I believe in my candles. I’m not angry at the church. I love my church. What happened with slavery, that was back in the day.
I feel good about knowing more about my family’s history. My uncle Abraham was a carpenter like my great-great-grandfather. He thought he was Noah, he could make boats so smooth. Peter Hill, the grandson of Bill Hill, a slave, was a blacksmith. And you can’t beat me with sheet metal and a hammer. I owned my own body shop in Santa Monica, Calif.
What should Georgetown do? Put up a monument with our forefathers’ names on there. Give some scholarships to the kids. I’m 74. I’m on my way out of this world. If I could leave something behind to educate my grandkids, that’s what I would like to do.
trollhattan
@A Ghost To Most:
I’m convinced this one is a wingnut posing as a lie-brul. The posts are too disjointed to be a purity pony.
rikyrah
Jesus ‘Chuy’ Garcia: We want socially responsible businesses. Here’s how to grow them.
Too many residents of Cook County are living on the outskirts of hope. And the challenges that poverty brings with it are tougher than ever.
Yet the social sector that helps our poorest residents is under enormous stress. Nonprofits can no longer count on government contracts and grants, and charitable resources are inadequate to fund the deepening problems too many face.
While public and social-sector programming has improved the lives of countless people, increasingly so have market-based businesses.
Alone, and in combination with government and philanthropic efforts, disruptive business strategies are effectively addressing the most intractable social problems. For-profit, social-purpose businesses are defining success in terms of both financial and social returns. While some nonprofits are closing or consolidating for lack of funding, others are becoming entrepreneurial, supplementing charitable donations and government grants with revenue earned by businesses they own and run, instrumentalities of mission in their own right.
The Cara Program’s Cleanslate is one example. Local governments contract with Cleanslate to beautify neighborhoods along high-traffic corridors; Cleanslate, meanwhile, employs people outside the economic mainstream who thereby gain valuable job skills.
Other progressive nonprofits are partnering with each other and even with traditional businesses, breaking down cultural barriers, leveraging their competencies and gaining economies of scale. And a growing number of so-called impact investors are deploying capital to test and develop market-based solutions to social problems.
Against this backdrop, the Cook County Board has created a Commission on Social Innovation. This commission will optimize the County Board’s role as an agent of positive social change—as a convener, as a catalyst and as a collaborator. The commission will provide actionable, data-driven social policy recommendations for the County Board’s consideration—some socially impactful in the short term, others over the long term.
greennotGreen
A little more seriously than my previous comment, I think the only chance Trump has of winning is whether he convinces enough journalists that he has the butter for their bread, and I don’t think they’ll go for that. I doubt he gives them cute nicknames, he’s bound to offend most of the female journalists… and Jewish ones and reporters of color or who are gay or care about anyone who fits in one of those categories. Of course, journalists have been disappointing me for decades now, but it may be that Trump is a bridge too far, and so few members of our news media understand German, anyway.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Accent, not action.
Suzanne
I am scared of Trump winning. I lean toward the anxious side of the spectrum in temperament, so I’m sure that has much to do with it. Plus the consequences are so huge.
I just don’t really have faith in my countrymen and -women anymore. I fully believe that at least half of this country is mean and dumb. And they vote.
smith
@Mnemosyne: My brain agrees with you, but I think that the little twinge in the gut most of us are feeling is about those white voters. Anybody who’s been around more than a few years knows that there remains an underground river of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia among white people who are too respectable to say it out loud. Every time a commenter here expresses surprise that a family member or friend is unexpectedly Trump-curious, that twinge starts acting up. Some of those family members and friends apparently have voted Obama in the past. Trump has succeeded because he’s been much more effective than the standard issue Republican at scratching an itch that is not always acknowledged among white Americans, and it’s hard to gauge how many feel that itch.
greennotGreen
@Suzanne: I agree that way too many of our fellow citizens are mean and dumb. We just have to out-vote them.
trollhattan
@greennotGreen:
So instead of a tire swing, a Meet Russian Girls Who Love Reporters dating site for the press corps? It’ll be yooooge!
Amaranthine RBG
Among those people who think that Clinton is going to soundly thump Trump, could we get a show of hands of those who thought 5 months ago that Trump would be the nominee?
MazeDancer
Betty, what an outstandingly excellent post. Inspired language. Deft verbiage. You always demo skillz, but this is a step more. If you’re thinking maybe you want to increase your writing, please do.
Been thinking that part of white privilege is you never have to think about skin pigmentation. Or that other fish under belly colored people have anything to do with you. Doesn’t cross your mind. Other white people have nothing to do with you. Idiots, towering talents, they’re not connected to you.
On Twitter, where I follow a great deal of interesting people, who happen to have a skin color not of the pinky hue, I am always shocked when they mention “white people”. They see something that exists as “white people”. To me, there is no such monolith. There are a gamut on folks of varying shades of needing more color in their cheeks who have nothing to do with each other. Or me.
Yet, the idea of “white people” exists. And looking at Trump and his supporters, and having grown up in the South, I understand why. Even though, having grown up in the South, I consider all those pale bigots as “not my people”.
Baud
@Amaranthine RBG: By the logic, no one could ever beat Trump.
NotMax
Just as those with half a frontal lobe rightfully feel shame about people such as Clarence Thomas or Alan Keyes or John Yoo.
Not everything need be wrestled into the pigeonhole labeled race.
schrodinger's cat
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): No idea. I don’t detect any regional accent. May be Littlebritdifferent can weigh in.
eemom
@schrodinger’s cat:
Welcome to the forlorn little community of BJ commenters who have pleaded in vain for an answer to that question over the course of many thousands of Sullivan threads.
trollhattan
@Amaranthine RBG: Overestimating Hillary and overestimating every Republican candidate are not related. JEB! is a mouse–who knew besides Floridians?
Betty Cracker
@smith: Is misogyny stronger / more prevalent than racism? Maybe that’s what we’re about to find out? I don’t think so, but only because women outnumber men (slightly).
WarMunchkin
Did anybody notice just how fantastically written this post was? You’ve upped your game, Betty. rusty teaspoon in a squalid NHS clinic, indeed.
Amaranthine RBG
@aimai:
MAybe now would be a good time for Ms Laurie to post that video of people reading mean tweets directed towards those two sports writers.
Then we could all take a minute and cluck about the loss of civility on the internees and how it’s a shame that you can’t do a thing about it.
greennotGreen
@trollhattan: Delete your comment immediately! A Trump minion might see it and copy the idea. With a lot of reporters it would probably work!
rikyrah
North Carolina Bill Could Force Several HBCUs To Close
20 hours ago
Sound the alarm — Historically Black Colleges and Universities are under attack in North Carolina.
The North Carolina State Senate has introduced a bill that could bankrupt five of the state’s universities.
The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Western Carolina University, Elizabeth City State University, Winston-Salem State University, and Fayetteville State University could be impacted adversely by Senate Bill 873.
Three of the named universities, Elizabeth City State, Fayetteville State and Winston-Salem State, are historically black colleges and universities. The fourth, UNC Pembroke, was founded in the late 1800s to train American Indian teachers and today enrolls a large number of African-American and American Indian students.
The “Access to Affordable College Education Act” proposes to change the names of those schools and cut the tuition down to $500 per semester. Though that may sound inviting, cutting the tuition that low will cause the state to lose millions in revenue and will most likely force those universities to cut major programs.
From Insider Higher Ed:
A pair of measures specifically affect the five universities in question. The first would require them to slash tuition in 2018, down to $500 a semester for in-state students and $2,500 for out-of-state students. The other would call on the UNC board of to consider removing the state’s 18 percent cap on out-of-state students for the five institutions named in the bill. The board would be allowed to change or eliminate that cap if it determines doing so would increase the number, academic strength and diversity of student applications at the universities.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Misogyny is stronger, its the basis of pretty muc every religion that I know of.
NotMax
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Michael Caine will never pass for posh.
Nor Ringo Starr or Mick Jagger, for that matter.
jo6pac
I want it to be over, it doesn’t matter who will put the finally knife the workers of the New Amerika.
hueyplong
@rikyrah:
North Carolina aspires to be a poor man’s Kansas.
Literally.
scav
@aimai: Footstool? Entirely pleasurable but don’t give him delusions of being a emperor, even a conquored one. Maybe door mat or a shoe tree?
schrodinger's cat
@NotMax: Damien Lewis is pretty posh. When he is not playing an American he sounds like he has marbles in mouth. He was the only one I had trouble understanding in Wolf Hall. Mumblty mumble while barely opening his mouth.
Starfish
@aimai: I didn’t know that Ramsey Bolton had an account on this website.
Amaranthine RBG
@Baud: I think the “logic” here would be that the opinions of people who are confident that Climton is going to crush Trump should be trusted only to the extent they have some demonstrated relationship to what is happening with the electorate.
It seems people are more interested in projecting their fantasies onto the electoral landscape instead of recognizing that Trump has a floor, not a ceiling, of 40-45% of the electorate.
rikyrah
Michelle Obama gets her way on nutrition labels
The final rule has been in the works for more than a decade, but the East Wing has been instrumental in shaping the policy and moving the process forward.
05/20/16 08:48 AM EDT
First lady Michelle Obama will unveil Friday the country’s first update to nutrition labels in more than two decades — a move that helps cement her campaign to encourage Americans to eat healthier.
The new Nutrition Facts labels, which will take effect in two years and appear on billions of food packages, for the first time require food companies to list how much sugar they add to their products and suggest a limit for how much added sugar people should consume — two changes vehemently opposed by many food companies
NotMax
@scav
One vote for Goux pail.
Baud
@Amaranthine RBG:
That’s true of any generic Republican. I suppose one could say confidence is never justified, but that has nothing to do with Trump.
SiubhanDuinne
@TaMara (HFG):
Okay, I’m mystified by your comment. Read the linked article, read through all the comments, cannot find any reference to a debate and snake skins.
‘Splain, please?
tsquared2001
@schrodinger’s cat: Oh, I disagree and most heartily. There is no United States of America without white supremacy. Baked in the cake, as it were.
Hell, even misogyny has a racial element.
schrodinger's cat
@tsquared2001: I was taking a more global view. Misogyny is everywhere even in ethnically and racially homogeneous enclaves.
seaboogie
@ThresherK:
Dare we hope that our better angels now departed are working on behalf of what is right and good, and destroying the GOP in the process? Lord knows they are assembling quite a wonderful band, lately. Maybe instead of the Tribulation, there will be a kickass bunch of musicians playing for the Jubilation.
NotMax
@schrodinger’s cat
One of the characters in Misfits had an accent so thick* that sometimes the other characters’ dialogue suggested they couldn’t understand her either.
*semi-NSFW
SiubhanDuinne
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Oh, stewardess! I read Autocorrect!
(IOW, we knew what you meant!)
debbie
@JPL:
After all the years of the GOP shrieking about the debt! How will they explain this one?
LAO
Walking home from the NYC meet up, which was a slamming success. Just wanted to give a shout out to Redshirt cause she rocks!
AkaDad
If Bernie were the nominee, he’d be the only one that could make Republicans finally tell the truth.
“Bernie’s a Socialist who wants to raise everyone’s taxes and his plans would add 18 trillion to the debt.”
Jonathan Holland Becnel
Fuck Sullivan.
This is the same asshole, who said that there’s too much Democracy in America.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: Link in the words “my imagination” in the first graf goes back to an old post I did after the Obama-Romney debate — snake skin photo included!
Mike J
@Betty Cracker:
Arguing over who has it worse is a game for chumps. I don’t think it helps make things better for anyone. It all sucks, and we need everyone working together to mitigate it for now, and end it eventually. Or we need to find aliens. Then we’ll have somebody *everybody* can hate.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@BettyCracker
Why do you lump us Balloon Juice Bernie Supporters in with pieces of shit like Sullivan anyways? We hated him before and the enemy of my enemy is def NOT my friend.
D58826
@FlyingToaster: His support for Castro will hurt in Fla. While the younger generation is willing to support Obama’s opening to Cuba that is different than saying Castro was positive role model. His stand on the Sandinistas won’t help either. Even if he can explain those two away, there is support for a socialist labor party that supported the hostage takers in Tehran in 1979. Now maybe his involvement with that group pre-dated the embassy takeover but in the various stories on this I have not seen where he repudiated that group. Look how much trouble Bill Ayers caused Obama in 2008 and that was a very tenuous relationship. .
patroclus
@rikyrah: Well, as a G-town alum, this is interesting. Georgetown also had the first former slave (of a prominently white university) to be its CEO – Patrick Francis Healy was mixed-race but was born a slave in Georgia, but nonetheless became President of Georgetown from 1873-1891. He is often referred to as Georgetown’s 2nd founder because the university changed significantly during his tenure. Of course, while mixed-race, he identified as “white” (and Irish Catholic) out of obvious expediency, but while publicly “white,” there were many who knew the truth. And it all came out publicly after his death. And we also hired John Thompson, who significantly changed the school as well.
But it’s got a huge endowment now (and it certainly took a lot of money from me) and could certainly part with some of it for a good cause. A statue and a memorial park on campus would be cool to recognize the slaves’ founding history. But endowed special scholarships sound good too. An endowed professorship or two would be cool. A building named for them would seem appropriate. An endowed lecture series. A memorial day each year to remind everyone. A scholar award to the best graduate every Spring that best exemplifies the spirit of the slaves and their descendants. Honorary doctorates. The list is endless. I hope they do something good.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Ta ever so! I had not clicked that link. My bad.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
I’m not sure this election is the time to find out. After all, Trump spills out plenty of both.
tsquared2001
@schrodinger’s cat: Fair enough. But I am convinced that a white woman instead of a black man atop the ticket will illustrate that racism trumps (couldn’t think of a better word and man, am I pissed about that) misogyny all day and twice on Sundays.
No way in hell that dumb fuck from South Carolina yells “You lie” at a white woman.
Baud
@LAO:
I’m like 0 for 10 when it comes to gender guessing.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): His accent sounds middle not upper class to me.
NobodySpecial
Why exactly does any self respecting member of the left listen to Sullivan about anything? I’ve been asking this question since Cole used to treat him as a serious entity and year after year people STILL post his shit like it’s useful or thought provoking.
cokane
saying that something “may” happen has to be the weakest form of horse race punditry. Seriously? what the fuck insight is in that interview?
Adam L Silverman
@Irony Abounds: The fervor for a third party is to reduce the Democratic nominee to a mere plurality of the popular vote. This would allow conservatives and Republicans to immediately do what they did with President Clinton, state emphatically and over and over that he had no mandate, and no real legitimacy because he didn’t win the votes of a majority of Americans (who actually showed up to vote). And yes, I do remember the 2000 election, why do you ask?
tsquared2001
@LAO: I know at least one of the commentariat is living in Minnesota. I’d be willing to leave the house for a meet up. Let’s make it happen! Ski U Mah!
Baud
@NobodySpecial:
There are members of the left who respect themselves?
Adam L Silverman
@ghetto-yid: A lot of the sane and normal tweets in Weisman’s timeline yesterday were directly aimed at both Adelson and the Republican Jewish Committee to alert them to what they were supporting.
Iowa Old Lady
Before Trump even announced his candidacy, we were talking politics with a younger couple and I said that sometimes it was embarrassing to be an old white person. Mr IOL put me in my place by saying I should try being an old white man. So then I didn’t feel so bad. :-)
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
I apparently do not have permission to edit my earlier comment FYWP so I’ll just say here what I had planned to add:
Yikes! Yes, upon seeing it I do remember that post with the snakeskin. What I don’t remember is whether there was ever a Chapter Two. Did you find the serpentine (former) owner of the skin? Did you make an attractive belt or hair accessory of the sloughed skin? Did you consider adding a friendly mongoose to the Cracker Family menagerie?
Central Planning
@Baud:
You need to do a George Costanza and guess the opposite of what you’re thinking.
Matt McIrvin
@aimai: We shoulda nominated Ed Rendell!
Matt McIrvin
(Sadly John Silber is no longer available)
dr. bloor
@Betty Cracker:
I’ve been all over this question for a while, and I’m completely uncomfortable about the possible outcome. In addition to the incalculable number of men with serious woman issues, a lot of women are going to vote for him for the same fucked up reasons Republicans vote against their own best interests year over year.
Great post, BTW.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: Oompa-Loompa American.
Omnes Omnibus
@Central Planning: Then it will turn out to be the first time he gets it right.
hueyplong
@Adam L Silverman:
Republicans consider all Democratic presidents to be illegitimate, period. If it’s not the plurality thing, it will be some other excuse.
I’ll gladly take that third party candidate so long as he’s taking votes from Trump and not Clinton.
smith
@Roger Moore: I agree — it’s not either/or, it’s all of the above, and not as much about Hillary as it is about Trump.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Bingo.
AkaDad
Republicans are angry because they wanted to easily beat Bernie instead of losing to Hillary.
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: I saw this a couple of weeks ago. The accounting, so to speak, on this is going to be hard. The institution is going to have a lot of trouble coming to terms with this now very public reality.
Baud
@Central Planning:
I have to agree with @Omnes Omnibus. She makes a good point.
Mike in NC
What has Sullivan been up to lately? Not railing against the decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts?
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: ?
schrodinger's cat
@tsquared2001: Its a bit different I think, a black man is to be feared while a woman is not necessarily feared but she is to be controlled. Fear trumps everything and Trump knows that.
seaboogie
@Mike J: @schrodinger’s cat:
I think that you are missing Betty’s point. Ladies don’t like the Trumpster dissing them. We are networking motherfathers who understand what is at stake for us and for future generations. We are generally not writing lofty Op-Eds, and we – even as professionals – have the ability to kitchen-table the fuck out of this election. Men-folk can posture all they want, but women are generally purely driven to survival of the species – think Mama bear and her cubs.
ETA: @shrodinger’s cat: I just included you in the discussion, comment directed more to Mike J
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t know how many will, but it’d only take about 4 percent of the total white vote switching to Trump, or, I guess, about 8 percent staying home or voting third-party, to give the election to Trump. That’s more than Nader got in 2000, but not tremendously more.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@peej01:
Sullivan led me here too, because of his years long pissing match with Eric Alterman. Sully had a really great blog roll at the time and linked me to here and Unclaimed Territory, GG’s old place when he was against Bush after he was for him. Around 2007, after John turned.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@Amaranthine RBG: Ooh! Me! Me! I think it was late August when I got into aback-and-forth with my son on who could possibly be the Republican nominee. Actually I said I didn’t think anyone could win the Republican nomination, but that the probable last man standing would be Trump. He advocated for Bush being the nominee because he had the money and the party apparatus. I think this when The Party Decides was a thing. If you looked at the Republican field, there was just no one who could pull out of the stupidity quicksand. Since Donnie was only tiptoeing around it, I figured he was the only one who could win.
Oh right, and I always knew Clinton would win. Not because ‘the fix was in’ but because she was the only one of the 5 (remember Webb, Chaffee, and O’Malley?) with real qualifications.
D58826
@rikyrah: I’m not sure how many students pick a college based on it’s name. Even when Beaver college was a womens college it managed to attract students. They have since changed the name for the obvious reason. They got tired of being on Letterman’s top ten lists. IT just an attempt to send a piece of African american history down the memory hole.
And I will believe that this is really meant to be’ Access to Affordable College Education Act’ when they apply the same tuition cuts to UNC-Chapel Hill.
The GOP is ever more creative and imaginative in scrapping the bottom of the hole in the outhouse
tsquared2001
@Baud: Cracker jack!
dr. bloor
@Adam L Silverman:
As per usual, the least worst approach is taking it head on.
Adam L Silverman
@hueyplong: This provides a better sounding excuse, though I am in agreement with your point.
tsquared2001
@schrodinger’s cat: Yeah, because black men (or women or children) have never been controlled.
Gelfling 545
Just wondering what aberration of the algorithm sends me ads for vitamins for my non-existent horse. Weird.
debbie
Too much Sully angst to be watching Grimm?
AkaDad
@seaboogie:
If there’s one thing I know about women, it’s that they don’t hold grudges over past insults.
John D.
@Matt McIrvin: Demographics have shifted even since 2012. It’s closer to 6/11% now.
schrodinger's cat
@tsquared2001: I am not even sure what we are arguing about.
seaboogie
@AkaDad: Nope – not ever.
SectionH
Betty – as a bunch of ppl have already said, your post is brilliant. “Saltine-American” goes into the family lexicon with thanks.
D58826
@patroclus: Well if he does come over to the ‘dark-side’ his vote for Hillary will count just as much as Obama’s so every vote is welcome on No. 8th
LAO
@efgoldman: that would be because I’m an idiot and meant reddirtgirl. Not red shirt.
NotMax
@AkaDad
Not even against people whom they’ll never forgive.
;)
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@AkaDad:
This. Bernie is so easy to beat in a matchup with Trump, it’s ridiculous. Who would you rather go to war with – run away Bernie and his dudebro purity whinebag army against Trump’s orcs, or, the Obama coalition, including Obama?
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: oh, you wanted an argument? This is abuse.
LAO
@Baud: I’m an idiot. Reddirtgirl not redshirt. I’m going to blame the drinking.
Matt McIrvin
@tsquared2001: I don’t know if they can be disentangled either way. American racists’ anxieties are psychosexual in nature; that’s why white supremacists these days go on so much about “cucks” and “beta males”.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: Funny Oompa-Loompa story. I had a colleague, not going to say were, but it was while I was still in academia. About 5’2, red hair, ruddy complexion when angry (which was almost all the time) or drunk, absolutely obnoxious when sober and completely over the edge after a drink or two. One year at one of the professional meetings I was standing in the lobby with several other colleagues/friends and she came staggering through and trailing behind, because of the staggering, the group of people she was with. When she got to us she asked which way her people went. Or more correctly she slurred it at us. Before anyone could say anything I replied: “I have no idea, you’re the first Oompa Loompa I’ve seen tonight, but I’m pretty sure they’re hiding from you.” She got an angry look and her mouth opened and nothing came out because she was so hammered she couldn’t process out what she wanted to say. So she stumbled off in the direction, coincidentally, that the group of people she’d been with were heading. Everyone else just burst out laughing. The next morning she was still drunk – hadn’t even really proceeded to the hung over phase – had no memory of what happened, but the rest of us took perverse delight in making far more noise than we needed too in her immediate proximity.
cokane
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: false choice cos. obama would campaign for any of the dem primary winners
? Martin
Protip:
Assume everything men say about the upcoming election is utterly wrong, including things I say. Some of us will be right, but that’ll probably be dumb luck more than any particular insight.
Prior evidence: the 2012 election when every white person seemed convinced Romney would win in a landslide and instead he got his ass handed to him.
Baud
@LAO:
Wait, Reddirtgirl is female??!!
Man, I’m bad at this.
LAO
@LAO:
Time for bed!
Adam L Silverman
@dr. bloor: No disagreement here.
LAO
@Baud: ? Not as bad as me!
smith
@tsquared2001: It’s really irrelevant which kind of Other is to be controlled (or eliminated) in the coming Trumpian paradise. What matters is that white men are to be reestablished as supreme authorities to whom we must all defer. In this sense Trump is actually running a positive campaign, not necessarily against the Others, but for the appropriate Ones. This may be why he believes he’s looooooved by blacks, Hispanics, and women.
D58826
As if Fla. didn’t have enough problems with Rick Scott, Marco Rubio and Jeb!
Maybe they can be traine to eat burmese pythons.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dna-confirms-nile-crocodiles-found-in-florida/ar-BBthr4q?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp
Tom
@Mnemosyne: What Mnemosyne said!
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@cokane:
Not quite – he unequivocally stated he would not actively campaign for a candidate that didn’t support full gun control. That was a thumb on the scale for Hillary.
Soylent Green
The members of the Obama coalition are not going to switch their votes to Trump. But if half the electorate fails to vote each time, all Trump needs to do is turn out another ten percent of the knuckle draggers. That’s what worries me.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: you are the only person I “know” with an actual Oompa Loompa story. I like that about you.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
It would actually be a bit more than that, because whites have shrunk as a percentage of the electorate since 2012. And that assumes that minorities vote for the Democrats in the same percentages as they did in 2012. Given how much Trump has gone out of his way to offend them, that’s not necessarily a safe assumption; they’re likely to be even stronger for the Democrats than before.
dr. bloor
@LAO: Oh thank FSM. For a minute there, I thought I had to rethink my animus.
Next time, just drink enough so that “reddirtgirl” comes out as “snalec,sos*”
D58826
@tsquared2001: No he’ll tell her that her voice is to loud.
seaboogie
@Baud:
I’m usually pretty good, but I got it completely wrong with McParagraphsen. Not the only one to miss that, either.
LAO
@dr. bloor: I know. Can you imagine if I wrote Bob in Portland? I swear, I’m easily confused by colors.
aimai
@Mnemosyne: I think a lot of lazy thinkers really just believe that there is a huge number of uncommitted, swing voters, who are up for grabs. And if there were, we would be in trouble. But there aren’t. There are reflexive republican voters who will vote trump, if they vote at all,with no trouble. They won’t pay attention to the things he says that would ordinarily bother them, because they will pay attention to the shit he says about the democrat (any democrat) and they will never change their baseline vote.
On the other side of the partisan divide is everyone else–women, POC, LGBTQ, progressives, etc… Those people will hop, skip, run, crawl, etc.. to vote for the Democrat, any Democrat but many of them very happilly for Hillary. They, too, will not pay attention to the major media freak out and attack on Hillary either because they’ve already heard it or they just don’t care, compared even to Hillary skull fucking a kitten on national tv they still prefer Hillary to Trump.
This is going to be a war to the knife, not an election. If Hillary can turn out her voters, she wins. Hands down. There aren’t really going to be any middle of the roaders who are up for grabs.
? Martin
@Matt McIrvin:
More than that. 3% of the white vote died since 2012 and wasn’t replaced. Instead there are now 3% more latinos voting.
Another way of looking at this: 53% of voters are women and a declining number of voters are white. Trump is only appealing to white men, which is the only shrinking demographic group in the electorate. He’s got to pull more women and more latinos and african americans than Romney did. You think that’s going to happen?
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: What is abuse?
aimai
@tsquared2001: Really? We are probably going to see someone yell “you C@nt” at Hillary really soon. For fuck’s sake they named Citizen’s United as a direct attack on her and no one blinked an eye.
hovercraft
As minorities we are always expected to apologize or disavow abhorrent behavior by members of our group, something that white privilege saves most people. No one asks white people to disavow those yahoos in Oregon. Yet I have to answer for black on black crime every time a black kid gets shot by a cop. When Newtown happened how many white people were asked about his broken family, and how that contributed to his crime.
White criminals are disturbed individuals, people of color, muslims, and LGBT people who commit crimes are indicative of shortcomings within our communities. Funny how that works.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: All part of the service. Please keep your receipt in case of refund or exchange. There will be a 15% restocking fee to place me back on the shelf.
Bjacques
@patroclus: if Sully comes over to our side, he won’t be an asset. At best he’ll be a half-asset.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Thanks enormously for this, Betty. This is our work to do as white people to call this out, and to call out our family and friends for believing in white supremacy. It’s really hard to do because it’s like explaining water to fish, but, once seen it can’t be unseen.
Sasha
A friend’s theory is that the real reason that conservatives hate Hillary is because she was one of them and had she remained one, she would have been the American Maggie Thatcher.
If true, that would doubly explain Sully’s disdain.
Adam L Silverman
@D58826: One of my aikido students at UF was doing his graduate research on alligators in the Everglades. He had to get sperm samples from them. As you can imagine this was a touchy procedure.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@tsquared2001:
We’ve done it before. We can probably do it again.
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: That’s some scary research.
dr. bloor
@Adam L Silverman:
This looks like a challenge to Rule 34 if there ever was one.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m pretty sure he always wore gloves…
redshirt
@efgoldman: We are legion. Apparently.
And here I spent the day making a new trail.
dr. bloor
@aimai:
Yep. The only question is whether it happens before or during her first State of the Union speech.
tsquared2001
@schrodinger’s cat:
We ain’t arguing – just conversing. :)
As a black woman, I come at the which is worse: misogyny or racism question from a different perspective. Being black has affected my life way the fuck more than being a woman.
Adam L Silverman
@dr. bloor: Or whether its a politician or someone on a cable news show.
LAO
@redshirt: my bad. Seriously too much alcohol.
tsquared2001
@D58826: HAH! Probably.
redshirt
@LAO: No worries. We’re interchangeable.
Jack the Second
@efgoldman: I don’t know why you Bostonians have to take every opportunity to insist Boston is a real city, like NYC or Maine.
patroclus
@aimai: Well, if I wanted to be a Cassandra, here would be the theory. (1) African Americans – even Republican-leaning ones – voted more overwhelmingly for Obama than they will for Clinton. The old split used to be 90-10, Obama pushed it up higher. It might go back down to where it used to be. (2) Obama overwhelmingly won young people and they turned out. Clinton might win huge amongst the young, but not as overwhelmingly, and they might turn out in fewer numbers. (3) Trump might actually win some voters by emphasizing trade – he is clearly the most protectionist Republican since Hoover, and Republicans (way back when) used to win voters on that. It’s untested (since the 20’s), but it’s possible that the upper midwest could become more marginal. It’s not just demographics; it’s where those demographics are located. (4) Something could happen – like a 9/11 or even a Boston-style event, that suddenly makes voters more swing-like than they normally would be.
Adam L Silverman
@Jack the Second: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qYbVQu7YAQ
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: I was basing that on 538’s Swing-o-Matic, which already factored in changing demographics.
I assumed 20% Hispanic support for Trump, which sounds absurdly high but is actually in line with recent polls (Romney got 27%), and no gigantic increase in Hispanic turnout. (But the Swing-o-Matic takes into account that a lot of Hispanics are concentrated in safe states, so their votes don’t matter much.)
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: Well I calculated rates of ionization after beta decay, but I was far away from any beta emitters myself.
rikyrah
I found on Groupon, a reflexology session. I have an ankle that I have severely sprained a few times, and it gets aggravated from time to time. I don’t know if the reflexology helped, but it did feel good. ?
eemom
@NobodySpecial:
Holy shit, we agree on something.
gex
@tsquared2001: I’m in Minneapolis. Been here on BJ a long time, though I don’t comment as much as I used to. I’d love to do a meet up.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@aimai:
Well, sort of. You’re thinking of Citizens Untied Not Timid, a group Roger Stone founded in 2008. It isn’t connected to the group Citizens United, founded in 1988, that was the plaintiff in the Citizens United case.
dr. bloor
@patroclus:
By mid-July, you won’t be able to turn your teevee on for more than 20 seconds without seeing an ad featuring a visual of a Trump product made in China or Mexico juxtaposed against his demagogic speechifying.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@jo6pac:
Do you know any women who want to maintain control over their bodies? Do you know anyone who would miss their healthcare if it were obtained under the ACA and taken away? Do you know anyone who enjoys the national parks and public transportation?
Kay (not the front-pager)
@Sasha: She was never a conservative. That’s complete and utter bullshit.
aimai
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:I stand corrected. If there is a connection between Stone’s CUNT and David Bossie’s CU incarnation I can’t track it down. But I really remember very clearly that they were, in fact, connected.
debbie
@schrodinger’s cat:
Sullivan’s accent sounds like my friend from Manchester.
aimai
@Sasha: So dumb it makes stupid look smart. How old are you? Hillary has been considered a far leftist witch by allllllllllll the conservatives since the get go.
dr. bloor
@Kay (not the front-pager): Hey, she was a Goldwater Girl. Like you’ve changed your views on anything since you were sixteen.
Betty Cracker
@patroclus: Even if all that came to pass, I think women will put HRC over the top. I think the gender gap will be unprecedented. The pundit class has decided that having the first woman at the top of the ticket is no big deal because it’s Hillary Clinton, and she’s old news. I think they’re wrong.
gex
@aimai: And even people on Bernie’s side have shown GamerGate style impulses. Think the right will be better behaved?
different-church-lady
Oooh, this TBu is going to be so much fun, I’ve skipped reading the body of the post altogether!
different-church-lady
@eemom:
You never really get rid of weeds. You only pull them up on a periodic basis.
Smiling Mortician
@Baud: Same. Jeez. I’m really doubting my human-fu.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Even reptiles enjoy a happy ending.
trollhattan
@different-church-lady:
I dunno. [eherm and douchy eherm] haven’t descended, so there’s yet hope for a civil Friday, free of a massive ctrl+c ctrl+v attack.
The Lodger
@efgoldman: A cwook? Wepwehensible!
Smiling Mortician
@LAO: Oh! Nevermind. /Emily Litella
patroclus
@Betty Cracker: Well, I agree. But it depends on where those women are. For example, LDS women are really turned off by Trump – he’ll lose a lot of them in Utah and Idaho and Wyoming, but will they tip those states. Probably not. And women in California, New York, Illinois and all the blue states will just make them more blue, without changing anything. And, similarly, Hispanics will be more anti-Trump, but will that tip Texas or Arizona? Probably not. It’s still a state-by-state thing – I could see Hillary winning the popular vote, but just losing the electoral vote.
Now this isn’t my real opinion. I still believe that, if the Dems unify after Bernie is beaten, then this could be a big win, with downballot implications. But the devil’s advocate in me suggests that it will be closer than that.
Major Major Major Major
Eh, I don’t sense a TBU for this one.
MomSense
Snap out of it Sully (and everyone else who is scared)! Fear doesn’t help. We have won the last two elections against much, much, much better candidates. We know how to do this provided we all do the work.
Phone calls,knocking on doors, donations, voter protection and fun. Yes fun. Let’s be kind to each other and work well together.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amaranthine RBG:
Me. The moment Iowa was over, I said the race was Trump’s to lose, and before Iowa my main caveat was ‘Can he translate his polls to votes?’ Similarly, I knew Clinton had it locked up. There have been very few surprises since. The state by state polling turned out to be pretty much right, and that polling now says Trump is a dead candidate walking. When people said ‘surely this latest offensive statement is a bridge too far?’ I argued that Trump’s base are bigots, and being offensive will only improve his primary numbers.
Everything has gone how I expected so far, so now I will tell you what I expect to come: Clinton’s popularity polls will look worrying until Sanders is officially out and silent. Then they will start to rise. There is room for change in the state by state polling, but only to improve for us. The more the public gets to hear Clinton’s actual positions, the more they will like her. The MSM will be less and less able to keep them hidden as the general election goes on. Trump will remain rock solid the candidate of bigotry. He’ll get about the same white male vote Romney did. Republican turnout in women voters will be sad. Multiple minorities, especially Hispanics, will go from ‘lean strongly Democrat’ to AA levels of ‘overwhelmingly Democrat’ and stay there for a generation.
It’s going to be a route. Getting the House is not out of the question, because gerrymandering is a ‘mile wide inch deep’ strategy, but it’s too early to say that for sure. And it will change elections going forward.
gex
@Frankensteinbeck: I like this post very much.
Amaranthine RBG
@Kay (not the front-pager):
I salute you!
@Frankensteinbeck:
And you, too!
smith
@Frankensteinbeck: Please save this pep talk and bring it out for us whenever those queasy feelings start to swell up. I wonder how much of the nervousness is due to the Dems having so much good luck this time around? We’re just not used to that — something’s got to go wrong.
different-church-lady
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
I don’t know what Betty’s reason was, but I’d be willing to do it just to get on your nerves.
J R in WV
@SiubhanDuinne:
Some years ago a friend was working for us as a handyman, and was installing a new water heater. Nearing the end of that job, he called me down to the basement, and asked me to climb a ladder propped on the AC return duct. So I did.
Then he said look to your left… up some from there… don’t you see it? “IT” was a 60+inch shed snake skin, later identified as from a black king snake which was evidently living in the walls and floor space between the downstairs and upstairs. We never saw any rodents, not even many big bugs, beetles, etc.
And from time to time you could hear a faint sliding sound in the wall/ceiling/floor. I suspect he escaped at some point, we haven’t seen more shed skins, or heard sounds, etc.
And once we were reading in bed before turning the lights out when I noticed Rufus (big cat) staring at something under the chair by the bed. I leaned forward to look, and it was a little brown snake. I crawled over Mrs J and went to get a pair of gloved, picked littke snake up, and dropped him off the back porch into a pile of leaves.
Lots of harmless snakes around our farm, and very few copperheads, the most common dangerous snakes in this area. Big black snakes will predate copperheads, and out compete them for rodents and other small snakes sized wildlife. We have black snakes over 6 feet long on the farm, which is a good thing, a very good thing.
? Martin
@Matt McIrvin: Univision has already registered 100,000 new latino voters. Their goal is 3 million.
That’s a big surge in turnout. I don’t think the usual white media (TV, big newspapers) are picking up on this, but we saw when prop 187 came through that latinos saw an opportunity to have an outsized voice and organized to meet that. This year is looking a little bit that way to my eye. It’s early, but Trump may be that catalyst. If so, watch out, because once they get a taste of political power, they’re going to wield it.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think you are correct. But. And you knew it would be a big, firm, round but. The dumpf is bringing out the loud and proud assholes and getting a lot of the republican regulars to, if not endorse him, at least not say anything bad out loud, and that makes it difficult to believe that a good portion of the electorate is anything but major fucking asshole bigots and that there won’t be major problems, violence wise. Now a lot of the loud and proud may just be whiners who now have an opening to be loud and proud but will still be the chickenshit assholes they have always been. Makes me think that it may be a very, very long time before the human race becomes slightly less full of complete fucking assholes. As in many, many lifetimes after I’m gone long time. And I was hoping that we had a slight chance of being better.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
You get 2 points on the board for that one. We keep track of this sort of thing. Not checking to see if you are leading now but you are surly in the race.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck: I like your post even if I don’t share your optimism just now. But you offer a number of clear signposts that we can look out for once the conventions are over and the actual campaign begins. I would add on the optimism side that the Democrats have an almost unbeatable combination of campaign boosters in Obama, Biden, Warren and Bill Clinton.
I’ll hold onto your post and refer to it throughout the election season.
different-church-lady
@Ruckus:
I rather am, aren’t I?
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
I disagree with you on a lot of political theory, but by goat, I can’t ask fairer than that. Thank you.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@different-church-lady:
In other news, DNC holds out small Olive Branch to Bernie peeps writing the Dem platform. Of course, Barney Frank is running the Show so I don’t see Sanders supporters getting much even though they made up 45% of the vote.
Do yall see Clinton offering Sanders a deal for his support like Obama offered Clinton the SoS position?
Fuck Sullivan.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: First, why the Franks hate? How is he not pure enough? Second, Sanders would be a disaster as a Cabinet member. He is best placed as a Senator. Hopefully, his presidential run has raised his national profile enough that he can push good legislation.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus:
Barney’s said unkind things about Bernie.
Otherwise, I agree. Bernie’s agenda is much better served by his more prominent position in the Senate. I really disagreed with Obama’s pulling Senators and Governors(especially red stater) into the Cabinet.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: you might even call it “dangerously touchy.”
Gretchen
I’ve always liked you, Betty, but this phrase cemented you in my pantheon of Best Writer Ever: And Sully likes Obama. He hates Hillary Clinton, with such an irrational intensity that it’s as if he thinks she’s the evil harpy who personally circumcised him with a rusty teaspoon in a squalid NHS clinic.
Keith G
I don’t know what Andrew Sullivan has to say and I don’t really care. What I do know centers around 3 reasonable ideas.
First, it’s very likely that the widest possible spread of the popular vote in the upcoming election will be 53-47 favoring Hillary, but that’s the widest possible and it’ll probably be narrower than that.
Second, I’m pretty sure that Donald Trump will over-perform what many on the Left thought he would do in the general election. The question is, by how much.
Third, since Bernie Sanders can no longer be considered a rational actor, at least in our definition, it is incumbent upon Hillary Clinton to be the one who unites the party. I would assume she knows that by now, and I do hope that she and all of her staff are on DefCon 5 and that all hands are indeed on deck.
The good news is a that it’s two months out from the convention and that is quite a bit of time to prepare for a variety of contingencies.
Contrary to what most of us started out thinking a year ago, this campaign cycle will end up with Hillary Clinton having to show every bit of just how good of a politician and political leader she is.
Chris T.
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): According to http://qideas.org/contributors/andrew-sullivan/:
That’s about halfway between London and Brighton, for whatever this is worth.
Elizabelle
This was a fantastic thread.
And blogpost goes in my “best of Betty Cracker [Saltine-American]” anthology.
PIGL
@Ruckus: they need to be drowned at birth, and I am not kidding. There are seven billion people on the planet in worsening conditions. We do not need them, and their mere presence makes finding solutions almost impossible.