Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

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

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

In after Baud. Damn.

Cole is on a roll !

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Sunday Evening Open Thread: Fun with Numbers

Sunday Evening Open Thread: Fun with Numbers

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Apart from that, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the weekend?

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161Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Apparently there has been some violence in California between neonazi groups and protesters.

  7. 7.

    zmulls

    I have a serious question about the bound delegates. Most delegates are bound to vote for Trump on the first ballot, and without a rules change, that stands. They can’t vote for another candidate.

    Would they be able to abstain on the first ballot? Does abstaining violate their “bound” status? In other words, could they say “Yes, I am bound to Trump, but I choose to not vote” and get away with it?

  8. 8.

    JPL

    @Baud: I hate neo-nazis, so I can understand the urge to attack, but I wonder if it doesn’t give them more attention than they deserve.

  9. 9.

    lollipopguild

    so when Brexit turns into the biggest ball of crap-any moment now-will Trump stop plugging it and saying how great it is?

  10. 10.

    PaulWartenberg2016

    NO COMPLACENCY.

    Get the damn votes out, vote for the Democrats. Got to make sure. Got to stop the Far Right across the board.

    We can’t let happen here what the Brits did voting #Leave like they did this weekend. When they let it slip away. We can’t afford that as a nation…

    VOTE VOTE VOTE

  12. 12.

    Mike in NC

    So, Drumpf’s little visit to Scotland might pay off in the same way Romney’s visit to the London Olympics did: heaps of derision and ridicule. Sad!

  13. 13.

    Mnemosyne

    @Baud:

    Unfortunately, California has a group of anarchists based in and around the Bay Area who just love to run around and break shit. Without looking for the story, can I guess that the confrontation happened in the Bay Area or Silicon Valley?

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @JPL: The neonazis have been reinvigorated for some reason. I’m sure it’s Obama’s fault.

    @lollipopguild:

    so when Brexit turns into the biggest ball of crap-any moment now

    That day was Friday.

  15. 15.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Here’s John Scalzi with a few words of wisdom:

    folks, when it comes to politics, if you don’t vote, what you think kinda means dick. Here in the US, the people who love Trump are gonna show up on election day. 100% sure of that prediction. We know they will because they already did. And you can say, yes, but there’s not enough of them overall, and I will say to you, fuck you and your complacent ass, I want him to lose in a goddamn landslide. I want him electorally nuked from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. Everyone needs to vote. It’s really that important.

  18. 18.

    MattF

    But… skewed! Polls are just numbers, and numbers can be affected by addition and subtraction, so it’s not fair.

  19. 19.

    PaulWartenberg2016

    @Baud:

    realistically? Trump is going to have his followers among enough of the Far Right to keep at least 27 percent (hello, Crazification Factor) and figure at least 33 percent.

    This time around, a lot DOES depend on how many disgruntled voters between the three factions – Conservative, Moderate, Liberal – bolt from the two-party dominance and throw votes towards the Libertarian and Green candidates. In which case, Trump still loses, but Hillary may fall under 50 percent popular vote…

  22. 22.

    EBT

    So here in Sacramento there was a nazi rally that ended up being cancelled after five people got stabbed.

  23. 23.

    lollipopguild

    @Baud: The Guardian has several good stories on the fallout. Some/all of the Leave leaders were in it for shits and giggles and had/have no plan for what comes next.

  24. 24.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: YES. I don’t just want him to lose. I want it to be humiliating. I want the entire Republican Party to lose. I want this to be a terminal illness for those racist, mustache-twirling shitpimples.

  27. 27.

    Baud

    @PaulWartenberg2016:

    Speaking for myself, I will not regard anyone who doesn’t vote for Hillary as a credible voice in liberal politics. The Scarlet T is something you wear for life.

  31. 31.

    hovercraft

    @Baud:
    Unfortunately I believe the rule of 27% will thwart our efforts. It’s true that shrub was able to beat that down to 22% briefly, but it is a powerful number. So that should be our goal, 27%.

  32. 32.

    PaulWartenberg2016

    @lollipopguild:

    I think the UKIP leader Farage is hoping the Leave win turns into bigger electoral gains for him. But he’s under fire now for admitted he lied about things leading up to the vote.

    Boris is reportedly very muted and slightly worried. He wanted to be Prime Minister but with Cameron’s resignation and his likely ascension he’s suddenly realizing he’s responsible for cleaning up his own shitshow for once.

  33. 33.

    EBT

    @PaulWartenberg2016: Anti Fa type folks told the Nazis they would come and wreck them if they held their rally. The Nazis tried to hold the rally six people get stabbed and the rally is cancelled.

  38. 38.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @zmulls: Apparently a GOP Delegate not voting on the first ballot is not an option. CNN:

    Carroll Correll is suing Virginia election officials in federal court, arguing that his right to free speech is infringed upon by legal requirements that he cast his ballot for Trump. His suit comes as efforts to unbind delegates and subvert Trump at the convention intensify, though remain very unlikely to succeed.

    Correll is bound to vote for Trump on the first ballot at the convention. Trump won Virginia’s primary on Super Tuesday.

    “Correll believes that Donald Trump is unfit to serve as President of the United States and that voting for Donald Trump would therefore violate Correll’s conscience,” the complaint reads. “Accordingly, Correll will not vote for Donald Trump on the first ballot, or any other ballot, at the national convention. He will cast his vote on the first ballot, and on any additional ballots, for a candidate whom he believes is fit to serve as President.”

    Anti-Trump Republicans are exhausting every possible step to nominate someone who is not Trump, with the most recent effort being television ads that encourage delegates to vote their “conscience.”

    But the Rules Committee at the Republican convention is stocked with party stalwarts, and ousting Trump would require a series of extraordinary changes to the RNC nomination rules.
    Several delegates have led an effort to create enough pressure to permit a majority of Republican delegates to vote however they choose. But their path is uphill, in part due to the make-up of the committee announced this week.

    The lawsuit sounds frivolous to me.

    The convention can change its rules whenever it wants, IIUC, so that’s probably going to be the way the ABT folks are going to try to stop him. But (at the moment) it sounds unlikely to work.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  40. 40.

    Kay

    @MattF:

    Trump says the poll “sample” is bad. I don’t even care if the polls are predictive. I get a huge kick out of how bothered he must be by them.

  43. 43.

    Major Major Major Major

    Could be the Black Bloc kids involved at the Nazi rally. Could be something got out of hand. Could be the Nazis started it. I imagine we’ll find out where the responsibility lies.

    As my momma taught me, people are not for hitting. They are however for hitting back.

  44. 44.

    MattF

    @Kay: And he can’t just dismiss the polls– they’re a basic part of his schtick.

    ETA: And, as we’ve all said repeatedly, single polls don’t mean much– but being down in multiple polls is the real thing.

  47. 47.

    Elie

    @Kay:

    Especially since he does not have a data/IT section in his campaign — he is not using data I have read in several places…. This has multiple impacts from get out the vote info all the way up through polling.

  48. 48.

    lollipopguild

    @PaulWartenberg2016: Pretty much everyone who le
    d the “Leave” effort is guilty of lying their asses off and now that they have won they are left to clean up their own mess.

  49. 49.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    If it was Black Bloc vs neo-Nazis, it’s hard to come up with a good guy. Stabbing anyone, even a neo-Nazi, is wrong.

    ETA: Also, too, mockery is usually more effective. Shoulda been a group lip-syncing and dancing to “Springtime for Hitler.”

  52. 52.

    Jeff Spender

    I had a discussion with someone who didn’t think that the Democratic Party represented her anymore. But she lives in a solid blue state.

    I come from Michigan, I said. Where my problem is that my government doesn’t respesent me. Think about Flint, or the legislature bowling over referendums with slightly tweaked versions of the laws that were voted down with budgetart riders that make them referendum proof.

    Disagreeing with the Democratic Party because your preferred candidare didn’t win is one thing, and that’s fine.

    But blowing everything up and making other people (mostly poor and minority) pay the price for your principles isn’t moral.

  53. 53.

    hovercraft

    From the LA Times

    At least five people were stabbed, with some injured critically, during clashes between rallying neo-Nazis and counter-protesters at the Capitol in Sacramento on Sunday, fire officials said.

    Five patients were transported to local hospitals with stab wounds, said Chris Harvey, public information officer for the Sacramento Fire Department. Several other people suffered cuts, scrapes and bruises but were not taken to the hospital, Harvey said.

    “It was quite a bit of a melee,” Harvey said, mentioning that several different groups had descended on the Capitol, including counter-protesters.

    Harvey said he did not know which groups the stabbing victims were from.

    Emergency responders got the call at roughly 11:45 am. The victims were spread out over the Capitol grounds, which covers multiple blocks in downtown Sacramento, Harvey said. As of 12:45 p.m. the crowds had been dispersed and most protesters had left the area.

    The Traditionalist Worker Party, a white nationalist group, was holding a march Sunday “to protest against globalization and in defense of the right to free expression,” according to the group’s website. The members appeared to be vastly outnumbered by counter-protesters, who held up signs that read “Nazi scum,” according to photos and videos posted on social media.

    An organizer of the rally who wasn’t at the Capitol, said on a web live stream that one person from his group had been stabbed and was being transported to the hospital.

    “They got one of us but we got six of them,” he said.

    Frances Wang, a local ABC10 reporter at the rally, wrote on Twitter that there were “blood spatters all over the ground. Police trying to control crowds.”

  62. 62.

    Jeff Spender

    @MattF: It’s a difference of perspective. I’ve seen what happens when a GOP takeover goes into full swing.

    Regardless of how you feel, there’s still an opposition party that, on a state level–at least in Michigan–is strong and composed. Splintering our vote will ensure our political defeat for generations where it matters most.

  65. 65.

    Heywood J.

    @Suzanne: This, a thousand times over. Merely winning is insufficient; Clownstick and his sore-loser supporters would just cry sabotage and vote theft. This needs to be a beatdown of Goldwater/McGovern/Mondale proportions, with down-ticket repercussions. There should be no doubt in the Drumpfkins’ wittle minds what the deal is. He needs to be beaten like a rented mule, until the spray-tan smears and the hair looks like Don King’s.

    Right now it feels like a football game heading into halftime with a 3-TD lead. The temptation is to coast in the second half, play not to lose, and run out the clock, but it would be much better to keep pounding and win by six or seven touchdowns.

  66. 66.

    smith

    @hovercraft: Before the vote I was sorry that David Cameron and Boris Johnson were on opposite sides. because that way they couldn’t both lose. I should have had more faith. The fact that Johnson has in effect been hiding out ever since he supposedly had a big win tells you all you need to know…

  69. 69.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @MattF: I’m thinking to taking the kid to do that(I won’t), she hiked to the Bridge to Nowhere and bungee jumped*.

    *She said it wasn’t that great, skydiving was better.

    ETA: I’d like to go to the observation deck and take some pics. Ah, no sliding for me.

  70. 70.

    Calouste

    @hovercraft: One thing I haven’t read much about so far, even in the British press, is the fact that Cameron resigned but there won’t be a new PM for four months. That’s unprecedented in Britain. I think the plan is that the resignation only takes effect when there is a new party leader, but even that is very unusual.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    @Elie:

    The @ABC poll sample is heavy on Democrats. Very dishonest – why would they do that? Other polls good!

    I’m old enough to remember when millions and millions of Democrats were voting for him, and he was going to carry Maryland.

  72. 72.

    Jeffro

    @gogol’s wife: As I told a friend (who was crowing about HRC’s double-digit lead on FB today): I won’t truly be happy until she has a triple-digit lead, but for now I’ll take this and stay frosty.

  73. 73.

    Amir Khalid

    @Elie:
    Without proper data that he uses, Donald is likely to underperform even these poor polling numbers. But his fundamental problem is that he figures he’s smarter than any expert, and his instincts are a better guide than any database. He’ll put on his usual great show at his rallies,and then be completely taken aback when that doesn’t turn into enough votes on election day.

  74. 74.

    Gimlet

    So because of all the many reasons given for voters choosing Brexit, who in EU is happy with these issues or just doesn’t have them? Germany? France?

  76. 76.

    Suzanne

    @Heywood J.: Precisely. I want him to earn his own nickname: Blowout Donald or something. I want it to decimate his businesses and his show and the entire party and everyone who was ever in his orbit. I want them to have the unshakable stench of LOSER forever.

  79. 79.

    AkaDad

    @Mnemosyne: Rumor has it that you kind of like Hamilton.

    ICYMI, you might want to check out Carpool Kareoke ft. Hamilton on Youtube.

  80. 80.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    I don’t think “enthusiasm” matters or “complacency” but I do think the impression of being ahead matters because people would rather be on the winning side. That goes double for Republican voters. They will lose faith. I actually think the “unskew the polls” stuff was really helpful to Romney. That was all about beating Obama. That was the only energy.

  81. 81.

    Anne Laurie

    @PaulWartenberg2016:

    In which case, Trump still loses, but Hillary may fall under 50 percent popular vote…

    Bill Clinton got in with, IIRC, 42% — because Perot. (Perot, because so many Repubs not happy with the guy at the top of their ticket.) He still got to be President, and he was reelected four years later, too.

    Doesn’t matter what percentage of the popular vote Hillary gets, as long as she gets enough electoral collage votes (ask Al Gore!) — she’ll still be President. Yeah, I’m gonna scrum & pray for every possible HRC vote, but worrying about comparative percentages right now is chicken-littling.

  82. 82.

    hovercraft

    From Steve M

    THE “EMBATTLED WHITES” PROBLEM IS WORSE IN AMERICA THAN IN BRITAIN, AND TRUMP’S STILL LOSING
    Do the result of the Brexit referendum mean that Donald Trump is going to be our next president? I agree with Jamelle Bouie that differences in the two electorates mean that the outcomes probably won’t be the same:
    The chief reason is that, unlike the U.K., the U.S. has a large voting population of nonwhites: Latinos, black Americans, Asian Americans, etc. In Britain, “black and minority ethnic” people make up about 8 percent of the electorate. By contrast, people of color account for nearly 1 in 3 American voters. In practice, this means that in the past two national elections, there has been an electoral penalty for embracing the most reactionary elements of national life. And we see this in the polling between Trump and Clinton. If the United States were largely white — if its electorate were as monochromatic as Britain’s — then Trump might have the advantage.
    “Might” is an understatemnt, as I’ll explain below.

    There’s far less polling in the U.K. of the kind we’re used to, but the Lord Ashcroft Poll tells us this about the ethnic breakdown of the Brexit vote:
    White voters voted to leave the EU by 53% to 47%. Two thirds (67%) of those describing themselves as Asian voted to remain, as did three quarters (73%) of black voters.
    “Leave” was the winner in the Brexit referendum by approximately 4 points; according to this poll, whites backed “Leave” by 6.

    By contrast, a new Washington Post/ABC poll has Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by 12 in a two-person race, and by 10 in a four-person race (with Gary Johnson and Jill Stein) — but this massive Clinton lead comes despite the fact that Trump leads by 10 among white voters in a two-person race, and by 12 in a four-person race. So Trump is doing much better among whites than Brexit did — yet he’s getting clobbered in the overall race.

    And Trump isn’t even able to take full advantage of the fact that the Republican Party is the party of Team White People: Exit polls showed in 2012 that Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama by 20 points among whites, in an election he lost overall by 4 points. In 2008, John McCain beat Obama among whites by 12 points, in an election he lost overall by 7. So Trump is underperforming those guys among whites — he’s even underperforming McCain, who ran in a year when Obama had the second-best Democratic vote percentage in a presidential election since 1944.

    Does this mean Trump can’t win? No — the Post/ABC poll is somewhat of an outlier; a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows Clinton up by only 5 in a two-person race, and up by 1 in a four-person race. It’s a contest, according to this poll — though he’s still losing.

    But what if the polls are underestimating support for Tump, as they did for Brexit? Note that the final Brexit poll average, according to Pollster, showed “Remain” leading by 0.5; “Leave” won by 3.8% But in the presidential race, poll averages suggest that Clinton’s lead is solid — Real Clear Politics says she’s now up by an average of 6.7 in a two-person race and 5.6 in a four-person race. That means that even if Trump’s support is being underestimated by 4.3 points, as Brexit’s was, he’ll still lose.

    But in that case it’ll be a tight race — and yes, that will be thanks to “embattled whites,” with non-whites saving us from ourselves once again.

  85. 85.

    The Ancient Randonneur

    @Amir Khalid:

    It’s also being reported that many top Republican campaign operatives are unwilling to work for him even if he did want to hire them. From the reports I’ve read many of them are trying to protect their personal brand for another election cycle. Couple that with the infrastructure Clinton has put in place around the country and the Democrats built in advantage in the electoral college and with each passing day his path to victory narrows.

  86. 86.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    That gives him too much credit. He’s running around in circles. There’s another story out about a Trump scam. The idiot son has some sleazy alliance with a “personal brand” company. They rip off old people. It’s the “personal brand” scam section of Trump U.

    They’re disgusting. They didn’t even have the decency to keep their fake businesses below the radar. They have to also demand respect. Not satisfied with being ordinary con men. The money isn’t enough.

  87. 87.

    aimai

    @PaulWartenberg2016: I think that post Obama HIllary’s camp knows how to GOTV and vote bank, bank, bank as far ahead of the election as can be done. This seems to come as a surprise, to Mitt Romney et al, but the movement is to lock down votes as early as you can so you can’t be knocked off your stride by events close to the election, or bad weather on election day. Frankly I’d be all over that argument in places like New Jersey or anywhere else that has experienced climate damage on or near election day.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    They’re not good people:

    The sales pitches seeking to separate Cheryl Lankford from her money began during the recession as she struggled to get back on her feet after the death of her husband, an American soldier serving in Iraq.
    Two of them were from companies that have boasted the Trump name.
    One was Trump University, the real estate sales seminar that Donald J. Trump promoted as a way for average people to profit from opportunities in the housing market. Ms. Lankford said she spent $35,000 from an Army insurance payment to learn Mr. Trump’s secrets.
    Another was Cambridge Who’s Who, a vanity publisher promising “branding services” that seemed to complement the real estate business she hoped to create. She paid thousands of dollars to Cambridge, whose spokesman and “executive director of global branding” was Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr.

  89. 89.

    Baud

    @Kay: You don’t have to convince me. There’s a reason I said that voting for Hillary will be my litmus test for any public figure from here on out.

  90. 90.

    hovercraft

    @Calouste:
    I think in a normal leadership change/ vote of no confidence there are people who are deemed acceptable successors, and the process is more orderly. This situation is so unprecedented that the uncertainty over succession is the story.
    Per The Guardian

    Peter Walker, Anushka Asthana and Heather Stewart
    Sunday 26 June 2016 13.50 EDT Last modified on Sunday 26 June 2016 17.27 EDT

    Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+
    Boris Johnson and Theresa May, the main contenders to succeed David Cameron as prime minister, are set to launch their formal leadership bids this week amid a slightly chaotic and febrile atmosphere inside the Tory party, with renewed splits developing between leave and remain supporters.

    The Anyone But Boris campaign is up and running | Isabel Hardman
    Johnson stayed silent on how he might plot a path forward for a post-Brexit UK, surfacing only to play in a charity cricket match before hunkering down with backbench Tory MP allies at his Oxfordshire country home before an imminent launch of his succession attempt.

    Conservative MPs told the Guardian that Theresa May had been canvassing support among colleagues and was likely to announce her leadership bid in a speech later this week. The home secretary has been a potential contender for a long time and is keen to be viewed as not merely a stop-Boris candidate.

    While Labour is engulfed in the attempt by much of the shadow cabinet to oust Jeremy Corbyn, the Conservative differences are far lower key but threaten to become equally bitter. The Johnson and May camps immediately ran into potential opposition as various Conservatives did the rounds of the Sunday political talk shows.

    Iain Duncan Smith backtracks on leave side’s £350m NHS claim
    For Johnson, a likely problem will be bitterness from some remain supporters. Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, was among the first to signal his dissatisfaction by warning Johnson that he and other Brexit backers needed to tell voters how they planned to reconcile “mutually incompatible” promises made during the referendum campaign over restricted immigration and continued free trade.

    “The key leave campaigners made contradictory promises to the British people,” he told ITV’s Peston on Sunday. “I’m sorry to say that but they did … Boris is one of those.

    “Now they will have to resolve that by explaining how they will balance the tradeoffs … between the different things they promised which are mutually incompatible. That will be hugely disappointing to a lot of people in this country who voted leave. How that tradeoff is made is the key question now for the future prosperity of this country.”

    Reports suggested Michael Gove, Johnson’s co-figurehead in the official leave campaign who has laid low since Friday, had called the former London mayor to formally pledge support to his leadership bid.

    Any delay in officially launching Johnson’s run could be in part because the former London mayor did not anticipate events moving so fast. One MP campaigning for Britain to leave the EU said that many on his side had not expected the outcome, insisting: “Boris wanted to succeed David Cameron, not topple him.”

    May’s difficulty is that she would face the ire of some Brexiters in the party for her choice to side with the remain side, however low-key her role. Iain Duncan Smith, a prominent leave supporter, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that the new Tory leader must be from his wing of the party.

    He said: “Whoever takes up that job … it would be very, very difficult for the public who have voted for leaving the European Union to find that they then had a prime minister who actually was opposed to leaving the European Union.”

    May would nonetheless be a serious rival, preventing any Johnson coronation. According to a poll by the Mail on Sunday newspaper, while Johnson remains the top pick for Conservative supporters when presented with a long list of candidates, if the choice is between just him and May, she edges it by 53% to 47%.

    One Tory backbencher said he had spoken to “an awful lot” of pro-Brexit MPs who were sceptical about whether Johnson was the right person to lead Britain through the complex negotiation process. “The wheels are already beginning to come off the Boris campaign,” he said, adding that his own constituency party, which backed Brexit, had asked him to consider alternative candidates.

    Justine Greening, the international development secretary, suggested the party should avoid a contest at all and anoint a Johnson/May joint ticket, in either order.

    “A leadership contest now is not in the interests of our country,” Greening wrote on Conservative Home. “It will mean our party focuses inward – at the very time our country most needs us to focus outward.”

    This would seem an unpopular choice with others, however, with a series of Tory MPs looking set to enter the fray, including Liam Fox and Andrea Leadsom. The pensions secretary, Stephen Crabb, set out his stall in the Sunday Telegraph, writing about disenchantment in poorer areas with “a political class in Westminster which now looks the same, dresses the same way, and speaks the same strange language”. The education secretary, Nicky Morgan, meanwhile took to the Sunday Times to set out an “optimistic and positive” one-nation vision.

    There is some support for more voices to be heard by delaying the selection of a two-strong shortlist to be voted on by party members until after the Conservative annual conference in October. When Cameron announced he was stepping down on Friday, he said a new leader should be in place by the conference.

    However, Fox suggested the process could be extended. Another Tory MP, Phillip Lee, told the Guardian he was writing to Graham Brady, chair of the backbench 1922 committee, to urge that no shortlist be made before candidates had a chance to present themselves to the conference, with a new incumbent in place in November instead.

    “I don’t quite see what the rush is,” he said. “I think we should take some time over this – it is about the future direction of the country. As a practising doctor I know that people don’t make good decisions at a time of shock.”

  91. 91.

    Mnemosyne

    @AkaDad:

    At this point, I’ve probably seen it more than LMM’s own mother has.

    @rikyrah:

    If you follow LMM’s Twitter feed and see any of the videos he posts of his dad driving him around NYC, you will recognize the look of barely suppressed terror on his face. ?

  92. 92.

    MattF

    @Kay: Ah, widows and… one presumes… orphans too. I’ll bet the members of the Republican donor class think twice before signing any check payable to the Trump camaign.

  93. 93.

    AkaDad

    @rikyrah:

    I liked it a lot and that’s coming from a life-long Metalhead. In fact, I ended up watching all of them last night. I think my favorite ones were Adele and Gwen Sefani.

  94. 94.

    The Thin Black Duke

    In some respects, running for President might be the worse decision Donald Trump ever made. Even the dumbest conman is smart enough to realize that you never want to bring too much unwanted attention to yourself, and thanks to Trump’s delusional ambitions, the world’s biggest and brightest spotlight is centered on him and it’s not going away.

  97. 97.

    dmsilev

    @MattF: His June fundraising numbers will be interesting. They’re bound to be better than the atrocity of May, but there hasn’t been much sign that he’s putting much effort into serious fundraising.

  98. 98.

    redshirt

    @MattF: Brexit will be catastrophic for all British political leaders, with a few winners emerging. What’s even worse is the entire thing is an “own-goal”. Didn’t have to happen in the least.

  100. 100.

    dmsilev

    @The Thin Black Duke: I think he convinced himself that the glory of his Trumpitude would keep the press from reprinting inconvenient and unpleasant stories about him, or that if they did, nobody would care. To be fair, the latter was true during the primary. Of course, the general electorate is a tad different, and to put it mildly Hillary is just a tad better at campaigning than Jeb? or Zodiac-Killer-Ted were.

  102. 102.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @shomi:

    The Clinton grassroots ground game and big national media buys haven’t even started

    Actually, the Clinton ground game is already underway in New Mexico. We’re organizing volunteers, establishing a neighborhood leadership structure, training people to do voter registration, and building our data bank. There’s of course a lot more work to be done, which will ramp up especially after the convention, but I suspect (hope!) the activities we’re engaged in are taking place across much (hopefully most!) of the country.

    ETA: 100% in agreement with the commenters who urge NO COMPLACENCY. And GOTV.

  103. 103.

    hovercraft

    @smith:
    Poor Boris

    The Anyone But Boris campaign is up and running
    Isabel Hardman
    Conservative MPs have four weeks to pick two candidates to go forward to a vote. And manoeuvres have started

    Boris Johnson has been told to have Michael Gove as a running mate. Photograph: Mary Turner/Getty Images
    @IsabelHardman
    Saturday 25 June 2016 19.06 EDT Last modified on Sunday 26 June 2016 13.39 EDT

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    No one worries about what David Cameron will find to do after stepping down as prime minister: like every former leader, he has a lucrative post-Downing Street career ahead. But if he fancies going into motivational speaking, Cameron may want to think about some of his key slogans. After all, this was the man who told the nation in front of the Number 10 door on Tuesday: “‘Brits don’t quit!” only to walk out of that door again on Friday to announce that this Brit was quitting.

    But what senior Tories are more annoyed about is the timetable that the prime minister set out for appointing his successor. The executive of the powerful backbench 1922 Committee will meet on Monday to discuss the leadership contest, but already there are grumbles that Cameron hasn’t left the party with very much time to consider the candidates to take over from him.

    As one senior backbencher points out, the summer parliamentary recess, which begins on 21 July, means MPs have just four weeks to pick the two candidates who will be put to the wider Conservative membership. Then the candidates will spend the summer at hastily organised hustings, with ballot papers going out while many are on holiday, with just a month before the new leader starts work at the Tory party conference in Birmingham.

    “This all seems a bit tight,” says one MP and there may well be moves to change the timetable so that the party has a good amount of time to consider who it wants leading it through one of its rockiest periods in history.

    One reason for supporting a longer leadership contest is if you’re part of the growing Stop Boris campaign. A short election favours the frontrunner, preventing other, less well-known candidates from establishing themselves.

    Meanwhile, the Anyone But Boris squad in the Tory party is up and running and made up of a curious mixture of Cameroons, social Conservatives who disapprove of Boris’s romantic entanglements and dry Conservatives who don’t think the former mayor is an authentic Tory or suspect that he didn’t really back Brexit because he believed it but because it would boost his leadership chances.

    Already, anti-Boris WhatsApp groups are furiously buzzing away. The Cameroon ABB faction met on Friday morning shortly after the prime minister resigned and ran through a list of names of potential contenders. The group, which included Nick Boles, arch-Osborneite Matt Hancock and Thérèse Coffey, considered Nicky Morgan and Stephen Crabb before alighting on Theresa May as their preferred candidate.

    May stayed studiously quiet for much of the campaign. She backed Remain, but in a more half-hearted way even than Jeremy Corbyn. She won’t be the only pro-Remain minister to have a go. Stephen Crabb is said to be weighing up his options. He has the support of the hugely popular Ruth Davidson, who seems keen to act as kingmaker in this campaign, but he – and Davidson – enthusiastically campaigned for staying in the EU.

    The contenders need to get moving if they are to woo those running partners before going to the party. And when the party starts considering whom to back, it will need to choose someone who is capable of doing the toughest job at the toughest time in politics. Someone who will really take Cameron’s “Brits don’t quit” mantra to heart.

  104. 104.

    MattF

    @dmsilev: I suspect the Trumpites were caught somewhat unawares by the attention given to the May FEC report. The next report will probably be a lot more murky.

  106. 106.

    Shana

    Let’s see if this link works. Just got back from London where the family saw two Belle and Sebastian shows. Hubby and I had seats, but the girls were on the floor and got on stage for this song. They’re next to Stuart Murdoch wearing a white shirt and a red shirt that says Peace Now. Enjoy.

  107. 107.

    Felonius Monk

    @MattF:

    It seems like the whole UK leadership class is circling the drain.

    And this is a bad thing?

  108. 108.

    AkaDad

    @Mnemosyne: LOL

    I know that look of terror. It’s that look a woman has, in the morning, after a drunken one-night stand with me.

  111. 111.

    lollipopguild

    @Felonius Monk: No, this may blow things up in both parties enough that you get new and better leadership in both . Maybe leaders who will not constantly lie to their voters. To quote Doris Day- Que Sera Que Sera.

  112. 112.

    CaseyL

    @MattF: I’m with redshirt: that looks like it’s only, what, 20 or 30 feet? And it’s totally enclosed? Pfui.

  114. 114.

    lollipopguild

    @redshirt: The other cons he was always selling you a service or and item-steaks-vodka-college. Now he is selling himself directly-he is the “winner’, the guy with all the answers-not.

  117. 117.

    Emma

    Well, no wonder Boris is in hiding:

    Boris Johnson says the UK will continue to “intensify” cooperation with the EU and tells his fellow Leave supporters they must accept the 52-48 referendum win was “not entirely overwhelming”.

    The pro-Leave campaign head, says “the only change” will be to free the country from the EU’s “extraordinary and opaque” law, which “will not come in any great rush”.

    Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he dismisses Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s calls for a second independence referendum, insisting he does not “detect any real appetite” for one.

    And, he says, Britain can now have a “new and better” relationship with the EU based on free trade.

  118. 118.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @CaseyL: It would look really cool in 360 degree video.

    ETA: I should note, in my misspent youth, I took a pic from the top of Half Dome looking down at Yosemite Valley.

  120. 120.

    redshirt

    @CaseyL: Right? I did the Sears Tower (screw Willis) walkout thing – at the observation deck they built boxes that stick out from the building so you can see straight down – and while I can experience a fear of heights in some situations, this did nothing for me, other than being cool. It’s an interesting psychological event, because I assume it means my logic has countered my instinct, as I trust that the builders of the boxes did so in a manner that was overly safe. The same thing happens when I sky dive – there’s absolutely no fear of height feeling even though I am objectively very high up.

    Now, walking across some old rickety bamboo bridge over a raging river in the canyon far below? No thanks. Unless I have to.

    So at least my mind knows when to properly panic, it seems.

  122. 122.

    redshirt

    @lollipopguild: His reality show was in large part about Trump selling himself.

    I can’t believe we have a literal and actual reality TV star as the nominee for President. I’m going to pinch myself to make sure I’m awake.

    Ouch. Damn.

  123. 123.

    Fair Economist

    @Kay:

    The @ABC poll sample is heavy on Democrats. Very dishonest – why would they do that? Other polls good!

    IOW, the polls that have him down by 5-6, more than “loser” Romney.

  124. 124.

    Vhh

    @PaulWartenberg2016: yup, old Cameron may just hv neutered 3 rivals in one go: Boris, Corbyn, Farage. Brits suddenly asking where all that money that Brexit promised has gone.

  125. 125.

    Mnemosyne

    @redshirt:

    He’s not a reality TV star — that would imply that he actually competed and won.

    He’s a game show host. “The Apprentice” was a game show, and he was its host.

  126. 126.

    Fair Economist

    @Emma:

    Boris Johnson says the UK will continue to “intensify” cooperation with the EU and tells his fellow Leave supporters they must accept the 52-48 referendum win was “not entirely overwhelming”.

    The pro-Leave campaign head, says “the only change” will be to free the country from the EU’s “extraordinary and opaque” law, which “will not come in any great rush”.

    What Tory MP is going to vote this airhead for PM? He is so *not* going to be the next PM.

  127. 127.

    Felonius Monk

    @MattF:

    suggest they blame Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis for their predicament.

    The Politics of Vorticity or is it the Vorticity of Politics?

  128. 128.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @redshirt: Tour CN Tower in Toronto is like that too, if I remember. The spaceship part has tempered glass and you don’t stand on it, but you do get a panoramic view in all directions, plus down.

  130. 130.

    Mnemosyne

    @redshirt:

    “Reality TV star” gives Trump too much credit. He’s a game show host. “You’re fired” was just that show’s version of “You are the weakest link.”

  133. 133.

    catclub

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I imagine we’ll find out where the responsibility lies.

    Like we will find out who will go to jail in that firefight between motorcycle gangs and cops in Texas a year ago, in which there have been no indictments.

  135. 135.

    catclub

    @MattF: I bet all of Clinton’s reports are just as murky, in the sense that there are dodgy things there, but hers are probably ten times as voluminous, so who can find those few dodgy things?

  140. 140.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    They’re disgusting. They didn’t even have the decency to keep their fake businesses below the radar. They have to also demand respect. Not satisfied with being ordinary con men. The money isn’t enough.

    Keep bringing it, Kay.

    Keep on telling it.

    But, it’s good that this is being revealed, drip by drip.

  142. 142.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Fair Economist:

    [Boris Johnson] has been out-maneouvered and check-mated.
    If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over – Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession … broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.

    Source.

  143. 143.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Baud: This is going to be a long, hot Summer. I expect both conventions to be ugly.

    O/t Just watched “Free State of Jones”. Pretty good account of an anti-Confederacy story which feels timely given the flare up in racism thanks to Trump.

  144. 144.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Mnemosyne: Now that should be our goal. President Clinton will need a functioning Congress. The House remaining in Republican hands would thwart her from getting much done, beyond judicial appointments. Ryan is going to be desperate to please his rabid base if the Senate flips to Democrats.

  150. 150.

    sdhays

    @Anne Laurie: To me, the importance of the size of Hillary’s win has always been a proxy for the effect on down-ticket races. I don’t want Hillary to limp across the finish line and leave our Congress similar to what it is now and has been since 2011; I want a Congress which will confirm Hillary’s appointees and justices and which will actually start doing the work of government. I want Republicans swept out of safe seats in state elections. I want there to be a thunder-crack so loud that all of the bigots and racists and misogynists in the Republican Party can hear it without mistaking its meaning. I want to utterly break the Republican Party as it currently stands.

    I don’t really trust Hillary on foreign policy; she’s far too interventionist for my taste and seems to have difficultly being patient – like many in the Beltway, she always seems impatient to be doing “something”, whether or not that “something” will improve the situation. But on domestic issues, I have confidence that her performance will mostly be a function of how good the Congress she has to work with is. With a Democratic Congress, she can be a great President, far better than her husband and perhaps even eclipsing President Obama’s legislative record. And that’s why her margin of victory is important.

    It sure would be sweet to sweep away McCain’s career with Hillary’s landslide.

  152. 152.

    randy khan

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    Apparently the lawsuit is about a Virginia law that requires him to vote the way he’s pledged, not about the RNC rule. Of course, if I were a lawyer for the Commonwealth, I’d point out that he’s bound whether or not the law is in place.

  153. 153.

    Anne Laurie

    @catclub:

    I bet all of Clinton’s reports are just as murky, in the sense that there are dodgy things there, but hers are probably ten times as voluminous, so who can find those few dodgy things?

    Uh, no. Even HRC’s worst enemies concede that she’s learned to be painstaking about bookkeeping. There will be some ‘we are totally not affiliated with that SuperPAC’ wink’n’nods, and no doubt a few paperwork fails — stuff like selling a half-dozen souvenir t-shirts at a rally to a Canadian citizen who isn’t legally allowed to “make a campaign contribution” by doing so.

    Trump’s financial declarations, on the other hand — according to the experts who’ve actually been combing through it — consist of massive payments to his own companies and his cronies, plus some underdocumented throw-it-against-the-wall-see-what-sticks listings, and the equivalent of a whole lot of checks made out to ‘bearer’ and cashed by ‘illegible rubber stamping’. If his businesses were documented as badly, he’d already have had to turn over his books to a board before the IRS shut them down. His handlers seem to have assumed that political finance laws didn’t have the same “teeth” as real business laws, but Dinesh D’Souza could’ve told them different.

  154. 154.

    sinnedbackwards

    @Mnemosyne: Usefully for us, gerrymandering works backwards in a wave election. Since the secret of gerrymandering is to spread your marginal support across as many districts as possible, in order to win more places fairly closely, when the tide turns it swamps that many more of their marginal wins.

    Pity we aren’t running strong candidates in ALL the marginals.

    The House should be within our reach if Hillary wins nationally by 8% or more; maybe a bit less, depending on the states.

    And I’m fairly sure the dems will maximally exploit a potential control of Congress in the first two years, since 2018 may revert to progressive turnout collapse.

    Coyote, I wish most people were not so ignorant or stupid.

  155. 155.

    SFAW

    @Mnemosyne:

    At this point, I’ve probably seen it more than LMM’s own mother has.

    Perhaps the least surprising thing seen on the Intertubez in the last N years. (Where “N” is a large positive integer.)

  156. 156.

    SFAW

    @dmsilev:

    Zodiac-Killer-Ted

    Stop that! Just STOP IT!!

    You KNOW that it has never been proved — well, not beyond a reasonable doubt, that is — that he was/is/will be the Zodiac Killer.

    Yet.

  157. 157.

    SFAW

    Who CARES about polls? Everyone KNOWS that the only poll that matters is on Election Day. *

    * Unless you’re black. **
    ** Or a woman. ***
    *** Or a Democrat

  158. 158.

    redshirt

    @SFAW: All that matters is Hillary wins.

    Hopefully wins big and crushes, allowing a possible Senate and House flip, though the House is very tough. Lots of seats. I bet Trump will have disgusted most of them when it comes time to vote. Till then he’s just making death noises.

  159. 159.

    rikyrah

    GramatikVerified account
    ‏@Gramatik
    UK protesters try to burn the EU flag, but can’t because of EU regulation on flammable materials. I’m dead ???

  160. 160.

    debbie

    TopConservativeCat
    @TeaPartyCat:

    Donald Trump: “The ABC poll is very dishonest. I’m not losing. I get tons more retweets than Hillary, and that’s worth way more than votes.”

  161. 161.

    sigaba

    @randy khan: Couldn’t a pledged delegate just get “stuck in traffic” when the first ballot is held? Some people would have to show, enough for a quorum, but if you’re not in the room and you haven’t delegated a proxy I don’t see how they count your vote.

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