From The New York Times:
One day this past May, Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., reached out to a senior adviser to Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who left the presidential race just a few weeks before. As a candidate, Kasich declared in March that Trump was “really not prepared to be president of the United States,” and the following month he took the highly unusual step of coordinating with his rival Senator Ted Cruz in an effort to deny Trump the nomination. But according to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?
When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.
Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?
“Making America great again” was the casual reply.
Two obvious thoughts:
First: the Trump folks can’t be bothered to hide the con, not even a little.
Every Trump voter out there, know this:
Remember: in any good confidence game, most of the work is done by the sucker. So you Trump voters? You’re marks. Chumps. Just the latest in the long, long line of folks whom the ferret-headed Mussolini-of-Queens-County has played for losers. You think you’re electing a tough guy who can get things done? He tells you himself that’s bullshit.
Second: as we confront the FSM-help-us-and-save-us possibility that Trump actually wins come November, who Pence is, what he thinks, and what he wants to do are much more important than they should be, more vital even than the Cheney history would remind us.
And that should scare the living piss out of us. “Scare” isn’t the right word, actually. Try “terrify.” With Trumpismo as the public face of the United States and a theocratic, misogynist, bigoted incompetent administrator with zero effective knowledge/experience of the world beyond our borders in charge of domestic and foreign policy?….
Heed the words of Master Bruce:
Roger Moore
From a political standpoint, leaking this is genius. True Trump believers will still believe that Trump will be the guy ultimately in charge, while Republican waverers who don’t trust him will see Pence as a steadying hand on the tiller.
schrodinger's cat
Republicans have gone full metal Godwin on the rest of us. Calling them modern day Nazis is not hyperbole but fact. Most MSM denizens are either asleep at the switch or are sending tapes to become Goebbels foot soldiers.
rikyrah
It was about six weeks ago when the Campaign Manager came out and said that Trump would be like, the ‘Chairman of the Board’ President. He really wasn’t going to be bothered with the day-to-day managing of the White House. That he was going to ‘DELEGATE’ that to others.
I know I wasn’t the only one who caught it when he said it.
ONLY A WHITE MAN could have someone run from his campaign ACTUALLY SAY, that their candidate wasn’t interested in actually DOING THE JOB of President of the United States.
There is no phucking way that ANYONE OTHER THAN A WHITE MAN could utter this, and still be taken seriously.
Could you imagine what would have been said about Barack Obama if Axelrod had said something comparable in 2008?
Really?
Seriously?
So, unlike others, I have always taken him seriously. I admit that I thought the Establishment would find a way to stop him, but I was never under any delusion that he represented FULLY what the GOP is about.
So, his selection of a muthaphucka that requires FUNERALS for miscarriages?
As a woman, how could I NOT take HIM serious as phuck.
FlipYrWhig
Isn’t this the signature Trump M.O.? Find someone else’s product or service, emblazon the Trump name on it, take credit, act successful, walk away when it fails?
Major Major Major Major
So a reverse Bush/Cheney, basically.
Tom Levenson
@Roger Moore: I don’t think this is genius. I think the emerging narrative of Trump as lazy, disinterested and incompetent will put a gloss on this news — and Mike Pence was on track to lose re-election in Indiana.
All this does is draw attention to Pence — and he does not, I think, do well in the light. But FSM help us if they squeak through and he becomes the Hoosier gift to the nation.
Iowa Old Lady
I have The Wrecking Ball playing my car right now because I can’t stand the news.
amk
@Roger Moore: Nope, it’s not. His racist base can and will justify whatever con he pulls, but not the other GE voters, especially trump curious indies. This exposure is another nail.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
The biggest obstacle, like always, will be the Villagers collective disingenuous “reporting” on Pence.
He’s hated in Indiana, conservative as it may be. Yet, that narrative, his incredibly right wing, American Taliban view of ‘Murka, will be completely ignored by the Villagers. Okay, not completely ignored. They’ll write a sentence about it one time and then point to that every time they’re told “as usual you people are ignoring Pence’s total record” as proof they’re doing their job.
rikyrah
But, if taking Pence seriously means that folks will get out there and do GOTV for the Dems….fine.
whatever it takes.
Amir Khalid
For what it’s worth, a version of this trick worked out pretty well for Tom Sawyer.
Soprano2
Just wow, he keeps doing unprecedented things. Imagine any other candidate saying that they didn’t want to do the work of being president while they were running for the job. Any other candidate would be eviscerated for saying such a thing. Since it’s Trump, though, his voters will probably yawn and say “Sure, I could tell that but I don’t care because I want to piss off the establishment.” I hope the Clinton people hit this hard.
Major Major Major Major
On the Times article, I love how it gets to the final list of six or so people that he passed along to the vetter to be vetted, and this is the last mention in the article of Christie and Newt.
Joel
Bad Religion seems more appropriate.
Cermet
I disagree relative to bloody hands cheney; cheney the utterly insane war monger and war criminal tried very hard to get a nuclear strike against Iran; only massive push back by the Purple suits in the Pentagon stopped this insanity. cheney is in a class all by himself relative to who was or even who may be the most dangerous VP.
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: Yeah, this. It was funny at first. It’s no longer funny, but has moved over to ‘actively frightening’.
scav
It’s that conservative white man musk: merely having it sitting on its ass in halls of power solves all problems. Crazy people in France are no longer crazy. Bombers and ideologues in foreign climes are too afraid to bomb and ideolog, just as the Dow Jones is too terrified to drop in value. Global temperatues (on the other hand) instantly drop in due and proper obeisance.
Gin & Tonic
@Tom Levenson:
I posted the other day about my terror of an “October surprise”, given the numerous tentacles Vladimir Vladimirovich has into the Trump camp. Say the FSB knows about some US assets in Russia/Belarus/Ukraine. They leak a fake e-mail purportedly hacked from HRC’s server with a list of names. Some of those people end up publicly dead. PBO and HRC vigorously deny the list came from HRC’s e-mail. The “intelligence community” being what it is, does not confirm or deny anything. The press goes wild. Check and mate, Trump.
Comrade Scrutinizer
So, Mike Pence == Martin Bormann
Fuck Godwin’s Law. Sometimes you just have to call a Nazi a Nazi.
Downpuppy
Of course every president delegates the day to day operations.
Delegating policy? Not so much, but sure, in some respects.
What would be different with Trump would be the utter clusterfuck of having 3 different sides thinking the job was theirs, things blowing up, and then, instead of cleaning it up, he yells a lot of random nonsense and just makes the mess worse.
Every day, a new mess.
Major Major Major Major
@scav: what are you talking about? Global temperatures won’t drop, because they aren’t going up, or if they are it’s not the greenhouse effect, or if it is we aren’t causing it, or if we are it can’t be stopped, or if it can we can’t afford it!
Tom Levenson
@Gin & Tonic: Great. A new nightmare to keep me up at night. Thanks, G & T
schrodinger's cat
@dmsilev: They are already denouncing science they don’t like. The list of who they consider undesirable is a mile long.
Emma
@rikyrah: When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time — Maya Angelou
Comrade Scrutinizer
OT: @Tom Levenson – Just finished Vulcan: great book, Tom!
schrodinger's cat
deleted
Gin & Tonic
@Tom Levenson: Happy to be able to share.
Paul Weimer
The October Surprise is what worries me. People will run to the Daddy Party.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Paul Weimer: And don’t forget Trophy Mom!
bemused
It’s interesting that Kasich didn’t take up such a tempting offer of unprecedented vp power. Christie would have jumped at that.
schrodinger's cat
@Gin & Tonic: We GOTV and pay no attention to the MSM which is bought and paid for. Focus on what we can do and not obsess about things out of our hands. That’s what we should do, what I am going to do.
Frankensteinbeck
No, they’re not. They know what they’re getting. Any Trump presidency, no matter how little he pays attention to the job, will be pure Hell for minorities and allow white males open season on hurting them. That is what his voters want, and he will almost certainly provide.
@Gin & Tonic:
That wouldn’t even budge the numbers. It doesn’t make white Americans scared for their own lives, so the effect on their voting would be minimal. Trump has demonstrated himself completely unable to capitalize on the best gifts the news can give him, and by then Hillary’s competence and Trump’s incompetence will be driven home to everyone who is likely to vote.
trollhattan
@Cermet:
It remains to be seen (hopefully for an infinite period) how Pence would respond to being handed the keys to the DoD and all our killing toys. Would he divert his attention from his war on America’s uteri and go kill some browns? Cheney, having been SecDef and absolutely turgid over being denied his march on Baghdad, needed that sweet relief more than anything else, which is why he appointed himself VP in the first place. *
* Would have dismissed this theory as pitiful paranoia at the time, because I utterly underestimated Cheney’s cartoonishly evil nature.
schrodinger's cat
@Paul Weimer: Sorry I don’t buy that. This dad is a serial adulterer and irresponsible.
SiubhanDuinne
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Godwin’s Law has been repealed.
MattF
The other side of it is that Pence will effectively disappear from the campaign sometime next week. It’s going to be all “Mike who?” through November, so people (and media) will feel free to ignore any policy questions.
Eric U.
@Paul Weimer: hopefully the daddy party will continue to expose itself as batchit insane. GWBush might as well have nuked the moon in response to 9/11. Actually, nuking the moon would have been preferable to what he did given the bad outcomes that resulted from invading iraq
katie5
I don’t think it’s a con. We have to stop thinking of this as republicans thinking their party is treating them like marks. Republicans are being convinced to accept a president/prime minister setup, where one individual acts as a figurehead and the other governs.
Stan
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Funny thing is you could say that to The Donald’s face and he’d have no idea who Martin Bormann was.
schrodinger's cat
@katie5: You are right, core voters of the Republican party are driving the hate.
amk
@schrodinger’s cat: Yup. Collective voting >>>> collective peeing in the pants
lgerard
I found it interesting that the NYT article said that Susan Martinez would not return the Trump’s campaign calls.
That explains why he trashed her.
Major Major Major Major
@Frankensteinbeck: it would budge the numbers on the high-minded, pinkies-out, both-sides-do-it crowd. Fortunately for us, there’s about twelve of them. They’re Kasich’s natural constituency actually.
Unfortunately for us, they also seem to be a lot of the people in the media…
Amir Khalid
@bemused:
I can’t imagine Chris Christie jumping at anything. Besides, Donald probably wouldn’t trust a man with so much ambition.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@katie5: I agree with this. The Trump supporters are only marks if Trump does a bait and switch, like evangelical Republicans have often seen. Trump is different: he’s perfectly willing to let white supremacists and Talibangelicals run riot, while he gets serious about looting whatever he can get his hands on. Which sounds a lot like a guy who came to power in 1933.
Roger Moore
@bemused:
Maybe he (understandably) didn’t trust Trump to follow through. Or maybe he’s so angry and disgusted at Trump that he wouldn’t sign on to be part of his campaign no matter what he would get from it.
Major Major Major Major
@Amir Khalid: He does have a, er, lean and hungry look.
nonynony
@Gin & Tonic:
Your scenario doesn’t work because with Obama and Clinton both denying it anyone who was going to vote for Clinton in November will trust them no matter how deafening the silence of the intelligence community was. It would more deeply entrench the folks who think Clinton belongs in prison, but they’re already voting for Trump (or, sigh, Jill Stein). Your scenario only works if you believe the laughable narrative that the press wants to push that there are actually voters who are undecided between Clinton and Trump in October, rather than voters who are undecided about whether they’re going to bother showing up to vote or not.
OTOH – a scenario where Putin and his cronies pull something to help Trump win is not outside the bounds and it is one of the few “October Surprise” type events that I’m actually concerned about. I suspect that most of the “random” events that people are concerned would throw a victory to Trump would actually help Clinton the closer we get to the election – because Trump’s not going to get more competent in the next few months and as people start to pay attention after August competency will start mattering more – but an event engineered by Manafort’s buddies in the former Soviet bloc is not a random event and could upset things greatly. Or not – it isn’t like their intelligence services are any better or worse than our own CIA is when it comes to destabilizing governments in the direction they want them destabilized.
That’s actually the scenario that I think is most likely to throw a win to Trump. It’s out there, and probably a very unlikely thing to happen, but it’s definitely a concern I have.
Dork
In a Serious Country, this admission would be immediate dismissal of the candidate from “serious” consideration from the media and most voters. The fact that Cleek’s Law is strong enough to hold GOPers in Trump’s column speaks VOLUMES on just how insanely polarized this country has become.
I’m simply stunned beyond belief that they could just admit this so casually and expect either 1) no one to care, and 2) not a single media org to ask any follow up.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Stan: True that. Although there were a lot of people in Germany who didn’t know the extent of his power either; hence Brown Eminence.
Frankensteinbeck
@Major Major Major Major:
I do think an October Surprise is likely, unfortunately, but it won’t be anything like G&T describes. At least, if the media has half a brain. In 2014, the universal attempt by the national news/pundit class to tip the election to Republicans was shockingly obvious, and they finally figured out the one thing they had the power to do – a month of constant, 24/7 coverage of ISIS and Ebola, two topics that send Republican voters into screaming terror of brown people, while making liberals despair of the sheer idiocy of the system. Still, a presidential year, even the politically unaware getting a good look at the candidates by then, and the unprecedented difference in GOTV organization should overwhelm whatever the media comes up with.
Jeffro
The Clinton camp is going to make major hay out of this: “Why not just elect Mike Pence, then, Republicans?” “How shallow and self-absorbed does Trump have to be, to be willing to stoop so low in order to win an office he doesn’t intend to do anything with?”
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Perhaps. But there is another way of looking at this. Cynics like to believe that Reagan was a genial dope being guided by an invisible hand (though no one can quite agree who the puppet master was). But Reagan true believers see him as the rock steady embodiment of all that made America great again, leading us to that shining city on the hill. Republican waverers will see Pence as counselling Trump in the ways of true Free Market Jesus conservatism, but not directing or instructing him, or acting as the power behind the throne.
And I have heard a number of callers to talk radio shows approving the idea of Trump as a somewhat removed CEO who sets out the high level policy and lets “highly competent” underlings actually are responsible for executing policy. This is their fantasy idea of Trump running the country like a business.
But either way, a clueless Trump actively at the helm, or a detached Trump delegating power to others, we would be in a mess if he won.
@FlipYrWhig:
Of course, the problem here is that Trump has nowhere to go if he walks away.
Punchy
Can you impeach a Vice President without impeaching a President? Can you impeach a Vice at all? Doesn’t having the Vice do everything absolve Don of responsibility (i.e., he cant be impeached), but if the Constitution doesn’t allow for the Vice to be impeached, wouldnt that vaccinate both of them from whatever unconstitutional bullshit they’re certain to pull?
Uncle Cosmo
@schrodinger’s cat:
Und so weiter…
From Brown Shirts to Brown Briefs (courtesy of the no-know-virus, um, norovirus outbreak) in less than a century……
Major Major Major Major
@Frankensteinbeck: I honestly didn’t notice the media trying to do anything in 2014 other than make money. ISIS and Ebola were big sellers, and republicans just happen to be the beneficiaries of that sort of coverage. In 2012, the hurricane was the big story and that was bound to make Obama more popular, that doesn’t mean they were in the tank for Obama either.
I certainly think we’re wired for republican propaganda in a lot of ways, and the media is part of that, in a number of ways, but nothing so insidious.
Eric U.
Everyone but Pence realized that Trump would denounce them constantly. I expect Pence to be humiliated by Trump many times during the campaign. Well deserved.
I just got a call from the DCCC. Guy went off-script and started talking about the Senate race, said the republican opponent was Sestak.
Lizzy L
Nothing is going to move Trump’s voters out of his camp. He said it himself, he could shoot someone in Times Square and his base’s support would not waiver. For Trump supporters, Mike Pence is irrelevant. But I believe there is still a large group of American voters who while they don’t “trust” HRC (25 years of r/w propaganda), they don’t really want to vote third party or write in Bernie’s name, and they find Trump distasteful and/or scary. I believe those people are reachable, that they won’t like Pence’s theocratic positions at all, and that Trump’s antics will continue to worry them.
It’s quite disturbing to me that 538 is reporting poll numbers for Trump close to 40%, but he can’t win with that number, so I’ll take it.
Of course, I’m notoriously an optimist.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: @Tom Levenson: Which is why it is so critical to destroy Trump’s and the RNC’s brand as soon as possible — starting, I expect, at the Dem. convention. Then if things are as movie script as you suggest, Trump will panic, ask for the October surprise to be in end of August or September. People will be outraged and concerned, but then all will be discovered by actual journalists from other countries and some very patriotic — Republic even — security and military leaders. This is because Obama is not stupid and like LBJ, will know exactly what is going on between the Trump camp and foreign leaders, but unlike LBJ, he will orchestrate an information sharing. Trump and his traitorous plot will be exposed by an unassailable group of leaders in this country and around the world before the election. Putin, Trump and Monafort will deny everything which wull make everyone believe it is true. Hillary will win in a landslide. That is my Hollywood scenario.
Much more likely is what I have said before — that violence across the country will ratchet up. Racism will become more overt. Anti-woman attacks will be a daily occurrence. It really is Trump’s only play. It will ultimately be a test of fear versus love. And love will eek out a victory.
In the movie “Silence of the Lambs,” I tell my students from my experiences, all the serial killers are like the dangerous deranged clothing maker and none are Hannibal Lecter. Venality, mental illness and ignorance are more kinetic than twisted genius. And much more random which makes them more dangerous.
Kathleen
@schrodinger’s cat: When Trump hires the Joseph Goebbels Hologram media’s pet name for him will be JoGo. Heard it here first.
JPL
@Gin & Tonic: Now I’m going to have nightmares again.
Back to reading comments and discovered that I am not alone, when it comes to disturbing dreams.
Immanentize
@bemused: But Christie could never bring in New Jersey, but Kasich may have — maybe — have brought Ohio. It seems like Ohio is lost to Trump now.
Brachiator
@Dork:
What “Serious Country?” England, still reeling from the idiocy of their self-imposed Brexit wounds? Turkey? Russia?
The idea of media as the mystical voice of collective reason, or voters as a rational deliberative body is a quaint fantasy. Equally fantastical is the idea of a serious country. A nice ideal, never a historical reality.
cmorenc
The gut-level fear I have is that while Trump/the GOP might not succeed in inspiring a thin majority of the electorate into more than the weakest not even lukewarm approval or enthusiasm for Trump, even so there is still a small, but not at all unrealistic chance they might provoke a thin majority in enough states to viscerally disapprove of Hillary Clinton even more than they do Trump.
We are VERY fortunate the democrats and Clinton get to have their convention AFTER (and so shortly after) the GOP’s hate-fest. I have confidence that I sure hope is well-placed that Clinton and the democrats are up to the task of convincingly presenting the case for why she’s much better for the country than him for ordinary Americans.
Cermet
@Roger Moore: Where is the up side for such a job? If he is great at it, the tRump gets all the credit; if everything goes down the toilet, he gets much or even all the blame. That offer is terrible.
rikyrah
@Dork:
You have nailed it.
NorthLeft12
@FlipYrWhig: Exactly! Thanks for saving me the trouble of posting ;)
Princess
He’s Sarah Palin. He wants the title.
eric
as a white man, allow me to be blunt, african americans and latinos (and likely asians) will not allow trump to win because they see far far more clearly that he is an existential threat. Too many white americans can never see themselves as the other (the submissive to the economic and politically dominant class), so that they can never see themselves on the losing end of history. To be clear, many white americans see themselves as the white other to godless and lawless liberalism, so they see change as an existential threat and will, therefore, never leave trump. Although, many white americans get the trump threat as well, there is that mushy middle that we are talking about — a mushy middle that cannot and does not exist for “minorities” looking at the trump candidacy.
JPL
@Eric U.: Oh just great!
@Lizzy L: Johnson/Weld could take some of Hillary’s vote, so it’s possible he could win with 40%.
Cermet
@Punchy: Any high level federal official can be impeached. That most certainly includes the VP as well as inferior court judges (or any federal judge) and heads of agency’s (appointed) and cabinet officials.
Brachiator
@Punchy:
Yep.
— Article 2. Section 4.
Matt McIrvin
This should be the rebuttal to anyone who imagines that a Trump presidency would somehow be a healthy thing that “shakes up the system”. Pence is just a particularly awful Republican of the theocratic persuasion who is unpopular in his home state for running it into the ground. Making him Trump’s Grand Vizier means that you get the worst of both worlds–the same old Republican garbage with the force of fascist demagoguery propelling it.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul Weimer:
No chance. Hillary Clinton’s entire public career since 2000 has been a sustained effort to identify herself as steely, tenacious, and unflappable. OTOH, IMHO the October Surprise would have devastated a Bernie Sanders candidacy, because whatever his merits and principles, looking tough and staring down danger aren’t exactly his comfort zone.
Paul Begala's Pink Tie
Pence is terrifying — particularly for non-evangelical women, of any race, but his selection guarantees that the white female swing/moderate vote Trump has been busy alienating is going to be more galvanized than ever. Governor Pence, can we please hear more about how women can’t be trusted to make their own medical decisions, and should be forced to deliver babies with medical anomalies?
rikyrah
@Immanentize:
Camp Hillary has been running ads defining Trump for awhile now.
Kay
Pence is also dumb. It might be time to admit the Trump family aren’t all that bright. Add “hiring” to the long list of things they’re bad at.
Amir Khalid
@Princess:
Exactamundo. Donald has never wanted the job itself. People realised this about Donald’s candidacy from the beginning. No one should be surprised now.
schrodinger's cat
@eric: Too true. Relative wealth is not going to cushion minorities and/or immigrants from Trump and his policies.
Rosalita
Well this ought to be interesting when it comes to the debates…what’s weasle-head going to say “you’ll have to ask my VP about that?” How will he attempt to dodge foreign policy questions…. what a disgrace
D58826
A Trump adviser is calling for Hillary’s execution by firing squad as a traitor. I guess ‘lock her up’ isn’t good enough. But the MSM continues to obsess over Melania’s speech. I guess threats of assassination are just part of the new normal.
With all of the due warnings about polls at this point in the cycle being noted, it isn’t good that Nate Silver’s projection of the likely winner has gone from 80% Hillary to 60% Hillary in just two weeks. It also isn’t good that 70% or the voters think she is dishonest.
Immanentize
@Punchy: Simple answer to your question — Yes. The Constitution was built around each being elected separately. Even though we don’t do that anymore, a Vice President is a separate constitutional office and high crimes and misdemeanors by the V.P. are independently impeachable. Agnew was nearly impeached…
Berial
Have to admit to being slow.
I had an epiphany recently. I honestly thought the Republican base had finally got tired of the con being played on them by ‘the establishment’, but my epiphany was that this ISN’T the case. What they finally got tired of was the Establishment NOT paying out on the con and NOT the con itself.
They honestly think that by electing Trump that the darkies, women and Muslims will be put in their place, and that will somehow bring back jobs and make them great again. They are even worse people that I thought they were. I was giving them too much credit. I’ll stop doing that now.
Lizzy L
@Kay: The array of choices they had before them was not impressive. Christie? Palin? Ben Carson? Just sayin’.
schrodinger's cat
@D58826: Jeff Sessions was hating on immigrants (legal or otherwise) and not a peep from the MSM.
wormtown
@schrodinger’s cat: I also think that dems need to back off on criticizing trump. He is terrible, but it doesn’t stick and you aren’t going to change minds of people that are going to vote for him. We have to focus on why Hillary is a good candidate.
Brachiator
@eric:
There are swing states with relatively low African American and Latino populations. And some states will need a massive Latino voter registration and turnout to ensure a positive result. The Democrats will need all the Obama coalition, and a good chunk of white voters under age 50 to seal the deal.
Miss Bianca
@JPL: I see Johnson/Weld taking more votes from Trump than HRC, but I have nothing scientific to back that up with.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@wormtown: We can multitask. But thank you for your concern.
D58826
@schrodinger’s cat: Yep thank goodness for that liberal bias in the MSM (that is SNARK)
Matt McIrvin
@D58826: I do think Silver has a long history of over-hedging predictions in his model. Right now, his “now-cast” gives Trump a 35.1% chance of winning if the election were held today. With due respect to Silver’s efforts, that is bullhockey. I think Sam Wang’s analysis makes much more sense: Clinton would be a near-certain shoo-in (in a non-blowout roughly similar to 2012) if the election were held today; it’s the possibility of drift between now and November that introduces most of the uncertainty for the fall.
Immanentize
@rikyrah: True — good point. And they are very good ads too. Regular people ads. I expect a lot of the same later like the Romney ads — “Bain Capital destroyed my job and my life” type ads. Keep the regular people injured by Trump in business, in his scamaversity, etc. in the ads as much as possible. It will stick.
Major Major Major Major
@D58826: The Upshot has Hillary around 80% and Sam Wang at Princeton says 80% too. Nate’s model kind of sucks, to be honest.
amk
@JPL: They are more likely to take away from the donnie derp than from hillary. In case you missed, it’s their party in complete disarray. Dems, no thanks to bs, are coalescing.
RK
Trump is a conman who has a history of not living up to his deals. There’s no reason to believe Kasich was given a genuine offer and he would’ve been a fool to bite on it, if indeed the story is true.
GregB
Breaking news on NH Veterans for Trump and State Rep. Al Baldasarro calling openly for Sec. Clinton to be lined up against a wall and shot.
The blood thirst of this party is reaching a fever pitch.
schrodinger's cat
@wormtown: I don’t buy this. Trump is in trouble with the GOP too. Look at the empty seats in the arena at the convention. There are many who are repulsed by him, his core support is not that high.
p.a.
ASSUME NOTHING!!! FSM help us if there’s a
Reichstag firemajor terror attack in the US shortly before the election. Fear is contagious. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to Trumpism.rikyrah
@Berial:
They wanna party like it’s 1948.
They don’t understand…NOBODY is playing with them.
NOBODY.
Nobody is going back.
Capri
@katie5: But the republican party DOES think of their voters as marks, and they have for a long, long time. It’s one reason none of them are willing to give up on their crazy rhetoric even though they know that it is not sustainable. Most of this is invisible to the media because it is done through direct mail targeting. There have been 1 or 2 articles on the practice, but it’s out of the public eye by and large.
My mother once sent some money to Citizens United because she thought it was a local group trying to improve trash pick-up in her area. Since that time she gets mail solicitations from GOP notables all the time. When I visited her a year ago, Mike Huckabee sent her a letter begging for money so that he could get the US out of the United Nations. Otherwise Obama was going to give the government to UN as part of the new world order.
Donut
@SiubhanDuinne:
This is what I was going to say after reading the article and original comment about Godwin, you just got there first.
Godwin’s Law was all funny and yes, even very relevant, 20-odd years ago when he posited the idea. The social rules online that have kept people from the hyperbole of Nazi-Hitler-accusation-making have been pretty well enforced by internet users all over. That’s well and good. And at that point in time where Godwin expressed the idea, the idea that a major party would be bulldozed and commandeered by a true authoritarian narcissist was pretty abstract. Nixon had fit that bill in a lot of ways, but he was busted, disgraced, and run out of town, thankfully. His ideas lived on, obviously, but the guy himself had enough shame, and his reputation were forever ruined, and we all moved on into a new paradigm where the Bastards of 1969 (h/t to Green Day for that phrase) lived on. Yet the rational, less-authoritarian people, mostly WWII vets like Dole or G.H.W. Bush, or old-timers like Reagan, still ruled the party, up to the end of the 20th Century. They borrowed from Nixon and his proverbial sons where they could, but they never went full-on authoritarian again. Even when ended up with W and Cheney, they didn’t run on authoritarianism, they tried to create it post-9/11. Ultimately they were far too incompetent to really turn the country towards a true authoritarian regime, plus the electorate shook off it’s post 9/11 fear, wised up and threw out the GOP-led Congress in 2006. The system worked as intended.
Anyway, no other political figure subsequent Nixon and pre-Trump had the ability to pull off what Trump has done, so Godwin’s Law was still kinda ha-ha, smirk-when-it-was-invoked-funny, right up to this past primary seasons. Seriously, conditions just weren’t there until this go-round.
But now that we have Trump as the actual, bona-fide GOP nominee, and a Republican-controlled House and Senate. this is as close as we have been, maybe ever. So it’s time to stop worrying about Godwin’s Law. This fucker Trump has every intention of turning the United States into an authoritarian regime, based on both imagined and real ultra-conservative white male Christian (supposed) values and mores, and if we are stupid enough as a country to elect him and leave the House and Senate in GOP hands, then those of us who ain’t Christian male and whitey won’t be righty, and shit will be really fucked up.
Anyway, have a nice day everyone.
amk
@wormtown: yeah sure, let them take all the potshots and we will take the high road. all those swift boat attacks sure worked well for kerry.
Matt McIrvin
@wormtown: The big problem at the moment is that there are a lot of people in the “both sides are equally bad, I’m so disappointed” camp. They probably aren’t going to vote for Trump, but if they don’t vote or vote third-party, that’s lost margin. I am seeing some of the “I don’t like either of them” people start to drift in the direction of resigned votes for Clinton. That’s fine with me as long as they do actually vote.
But only part of the remedy is going to be a positive case for Clinton. I think the other side of the coin is to impress on people that this isn’t a game and Trump is not just kind of distasteful; he’s an actual threat to the republic and to their lives and livelihoods. There are still going to be some nihilist/anarchist types who vote for him because they want to watch the world burn, but there’s no helping them.
D58826
@Major Major Major Major: @Matt McIrvin: Hope your right and I know it’s early in the cycle. It’s just this hasn’t been a year where the normal rules apply. A year ago any one who said that ‘old little hands’ would be the nominee would have been taken away by the little man with the butterfly net.
Eric U.
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I wish dems were better at pointing out what people lose when they vote rpublicans into power. It’s a long boring list, but it seems like a story that’s never told. There seems to be an assumption that people just know the difference, when in fact they are barraged by the message that there is no difference. ACA is just the tip of the iceberg.
Most people that post here know the difference between parties. It’s so stark to us that it’s difficult to believe that otherwise intelligent people don’t see it. I’m still hearing it from a colleague that’s pretty liberal. I’m going to spring the Pence wants funerals for miscarried fetuses factoid on him next time I hear that bs from him
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
I think lamh posted last night something from the NYT where Hillary had like, 900 ways of winning and Trump had 72. That 72 went down to 1 if Hillary wins Florida.
GOTV.
wormtown
@amk: yeah, there is that. I guess I am naive. I would like to think that we can offer a positive alternative. Thinking of some of my friends, who should know better, who say they won’t vote for H. I don’t think they will vote for Trump; think they will just not vote.
RK
Anyone think Trump’s numbers may be, in any appreciable degree, higher than polled due an unwillingness to admit Trump support?
bluehill
The similarities between Trump and past authoritarians including you-know-you continue to grow – demonize minorities, clamp down on the press, eliminate opposition parties and the judiciary. One big difference IMO is that Trump isn’t interested in running things and I don’t think he’s even that interested in power. His whole campaign is payback for every slight he feels he’s received from the media, the repubs, Obama, etc and he’s backed by a people who feel the same way. If pandora’s box is opened, I will be tempted to buy a sporting long gun because it could get ugly.
amk
@wormtown: Politics is not beanbag, especially the bottom of the barrel kind practised by rethugs for decades. Not voting ain’t gonna solve any issues.
bemused
@Eric U.:
I just don’t get how some liberals won’t bother to spend a small amount of time to research. They would quickly find out what Pence is all about, miscarriage burials, etc. I just want to scream at these people.
? Martin
@RK: No.
ThresherK (GPad)
Can they really scare folks who are already so terrified the’ve soaked thru their pants, and are intent on setting mine?
Matt McIrvin
@D58826:
A year ago Trump was already rocketing to the top of the Republican field in the primary polls. Anyone who paid attention to poll results would have called him the nominee–people didn’t because they couldn’t believe what was right in front of their eyes.
Right now what we’ve got (pre-convention–we don’t have much polling from the past few days) is a close race with Hillary Clinton still in the lead, after a series of events in which she took a huge political hit and any law-n-order conservative pulpit-pounder was likely to gain. I’m nervous myself about the ability of big scary events to drive people to the Daddy Party out of fear. But the main question is whether Clinton can get the whole Democratic coalition behind her, and I’m hoping we see that start to happen when the D convention kicks off. I’ve heard of some Bernie-or-Busters seeking to cause a commotion, but Bernie himself is on the right side now, which should help.
japa21
The biggest supporters of Trump right now are Putin and groups like ISIS. ISIS specially would love to see Trump as President. Even a minor incident such as Orlando (and yes it was minor in the sense that it wasn’t even arranged by ISIS) would cause a major overreaction and cause thousands of Muslims to flock to ISIS’s banners. Possibly even more.
It would also cause the US to be isolated from most of its allies which Putin would love.
Trying to get Americans to understand this is not easy.
Major Major Major Major
@D58826: @Matt McIrvin: There were lots of mea culpas from the various data journalists about how they should have been paying more (any) attention to the polls that said Trump would take the nom easily.
I trust Wang because he actually releases his code.
Josie
I know it is important to define the opposing presidential candidate, but, in this case, I hope Hillary’s ad people are working on defining Pence as well. People need to know with crystal clarity what he stands for, with really specific details from his own lips.
Aleta
The Reuters article Adam S. linked to yesterday (while mostly about Trump plan to fire political civil servant hires) had one line about a law change to allow civil servants to work part time in the private sector. Had to wonder if this plan might be used for his children (god forBID) or for exempting his active relationship to his businesses.
bluehill
@Eric U.: I think the problem for the largest group backing Trump is that they haven’t seen much improvement in their economic conditions and blame repubs and dems equally. Unfortunately, they are too dumb or ill-informed or racist to realize how the repubs contributed to their current situation and how they opposed almost every proposal Obama made that would have made their lives marginally better. They also can’t appreciate how much worse their conditions could have been without ACA and even the modest stimulus packages that were passed. The working class has borne the brunt of globalization, but I believe this has been made worse by the cuts to government services at all levels.
srv
From Courtesy Bombs to Moderate Funded Beheadings:
katie5
@Capri: I agree completely. The thing is that the rank-and-file doesn’t have the same cynicism that Democrats do (“we know we’re being treated as marks sometimes but our imperfect candidate will get most of the job done”).
A disturbing read is http://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2015/12/18/9360663/is-democracy-in-trouble. It’s based on polling data that shows increasing numbers of Millenials don’t think an autocracy or even military rule is that big of a problem.
Aleta
@rikyrah: I expect some voting stations in Florida to run out of ballots and start handing out stacks of their own special “provisional ballots.”
piratedan
and while we’re busy defining Pence and The Donald, perhaps we can spend some time educating the public on just what the GOP has been doing while they’ve had control of the Congress…
No jobs bills
no health care replacement bills
refusing to evaluate SC justice noms
refusing to address climate change
shutting down the government after refusing to honor their own previously established budgetary agreements
no gun reform
wasted taxpayer money on Benghazi ad infinitum
nothing for infrastructure repair
other than that, they’ve been absolutely crackerjack!
FlipYrWhig
@bluehill: People don’t support Trump because of economic anything. People support Trump because they are assholes. They like being assholes and they want the president to be an asshole too. The confusion comes from the way that a lot of assholes are having a tough time economically. But is economic pain making non-assholes into assholes? I don’t think so.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
That isn’t a “both sides” thing, though. IMO, Left-leaning voters don’t respond to fear-based appeals in the same way Right-leaning voters do. Love Wins for Democrats, mostly because they start out thinking they will probably lose so you can’t fear them up any more than they already are :)
Percysowner
@Paul Begala’s Pink Tie: And be forced to pay for funerals for miscarriages or possibly every single period.
YellowDog
No wonder Christy was pissed at being passed over. As de facto president, he could punish all his enemies, and more thoroughly than closing lanes on a bridge.
bluehill
@japa21: I agree, unfortunately. Putin is smart and can see the fissures within the country and with the right amount of pressure – who knows. ISIS is continuing the OBL gameplan but ramped to an even more violent degree and can only hope that someone dumber than Bush will be president.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
The scariest part for me is seeing his followers not only embrace the hate but actually want to act on it. I mentioned in the thread downstairs that I honestly believe the friends I met up with last night would turn their friends and neighbors in if told to do so. They’d turn me in in a second now that they know I’m a Clinton supporter. The language that speaker after speaker used at the convention, starting with Rudy noun verb 9-11, was so dire. They are warning their supporters that this election is their last chance to save the country. They have people believing that if der Trump loses it will put our country in an existential crisis. While I was driving home I started listing in my head all the “sub groups” they hate and I just started crying. This is so wrong.
I think we tend to use mockery and humor here to preserve our sanity but this is not funny. NOT FUNNY AT ALL.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Percysowner: I await the law making abortion-seekers name the baby and paint the nursery, like The Onion prophesied.
Soylent Green
How great is this?
Border wall around Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star.
catclub
@Roger Moore:
If they don’t already know that Pence is an idiot.
Tracy Ratcliff
@RK: There was no evidence of “shy Trump” voters in the primaries, if anything he underperformed his polls by a few percentage points before the Indiana primary. After he clinched the nomination, he did somewhat better than the polls as Republican primary voters switched at the last minute.
JPL
@Percysowner: Since most miscarriages early, I think it’s important to have cremation ceremonies for feminine supplies.
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: It’s both.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
If it were me, I wouldn’t focus on Clinton so much as I would use Trump to foster Democratic Party unity. Our Team versus That Guy. That glides over the Clinton resistance (some of which I think is real in that it EXISTS, not “justified” real). The convention would be perfect for that. It’s actually what Republicans are trying, and failing, to do.
Aleta
I’ve taken Pence seriously from the start, because if Trump resigns, there we are with Pence. Trump family speeches have emphasized, so often, that when Trump commits, he doesn’t quit. Liars and cons make a point of strenuously claiming to be exactly what they are not….
JPL
The Trump campaign has identified the speechwriter… link
Melania gave her some passages, and she wrote them down, and included them in the speech. So I’m still confused, because Melania had to know they were the words of Michelle. Am I missing something?
Omnes Omnibus
For all the people worried that the Dems aren’t getting a message out to counter Trump and the GOP, I would remind you that this is the week of the GOP convention. It is going to suck up all of the air. We have ours coming up with speakers like Warren, Biden, Bill Clinton, Obama, and HRC herself. Do you really think that they aren’t going to make an impassioned and well-reasoned positive case for our side?
Kay
@Aleta:
It’s kind of mildly interesting to me that Trump is lazy and sloppy. Obviously it’s just adding to the long list of problems, but it’s one I hadn’t considered.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes, it’s built into their systems for handling modeling (as opposed to sampling) error. Silver acknowledges modeling error but assumes all models have the same error, overestimating model error and the chance of a “surprise”. Wang doesn’t account for it at all, which underestimates error. The truth is somewhere inbetween, although exactly where is unknowable.
If I totally had to guess, I’d do a geometric mean of their two predictions, which would come up with a 3% or so chance of Trump winning. To my gut that seems a bit low, but maybe it’s not much of a political expert.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
2012 was like that- a Dem unity election. It turned on whether Democrats would stick together versus Romney. It worked then and it can work again.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
GOOD!!
You’re FINALLY WOKE.
I’ve said it before – as a non-White in this country….
I TAKE THE MAN AT HIS WORD.
I have NEVER been under the delusion that I had the luxury NOT TO.
Now, go find 10 people to vote for Hillary.
Miss Bianca
@JPL: I really, really, wish I hadn’t been eating something when I read that comment. Also, I’m really, really, glad that no one was here to see me do a spit take with my morning oatmeal.
Fair Economist
@JPL:
No. The side-by-sides showed the delivery was very similar. Melania obviously watched Michelle’s speech, and rather carefully.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
I suspect we collectively are all pretty stunned by the rabid weapons-grade spittle and invective flying out of the foaming pie holes of those in the Q Arena…
Will our delegates appear like such crazed, pitchfork-wielding weirdos? I suspect not, but expect the wingnut world at large and their minions in the media to say so.
That was a scary, sad sea of angry folks last night. Damn…. Will that tsunami of uninformed fury ever break?
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Look, some people are trying to PANIC here, all right? This voice of reason stuff just isn’t HELPING in that endeavor, thank you!
rikyrah
Will George Bush Be the Last Republican President?
by Nancy LeTourneau
July 20, 2016 11:00 AM
As Donald Trump was declaring victory last night at the Republican Convention, Shane Goldmacher was reporting on a “shadow convention” held in April for former Bush administration officials. The most significant thing that occurred was that several people reported something George W. Bush said.
While those in attendance weren’t sure whether that was some kind of “gallows humor or blunt realpolitik,” it certainly expresses the feelings of a group of Republicans as they watch their party’s nominee take center stage. As I noted yesterday, John Daniel Davidson says that “Cleveland is the end of the GOP as we know it.”
That brings up what might be the most interesting question going in to tonight’s speeches at the RNC. Ted Cruz has been given a prime spot in tonight’s line-up. But he hasn’t endorsed Donald Trump yet. All eyes will be on whether or not he does so in Cleveland. Regardless of the answer to that question, Cruz definitely has his eye on a longer-game. And he seems to be betting on a Trump loss in November.
Percysowner
When Obama was elected, one of my fears was that the Secret Service would have an “interesting” 4-8 years. I’m delighted that it has turned out to be 8 years. But I’m really starting to find the anti-Hillary message to be scary. I’m starting to think that she could be in real danger. The Republican Party is stoking a really dangerous fire here and I do worry that it could eventually rage out of control.
schrodinger's cat
@Fair Economist: What is your rationale behind taking the the geometric mean? Different poll results do not form a geometric series.
cckids
@wormtown:
I agree with some posters above, we can certainly do both. I, for one, have some family members who like to respond to criticisms of Trump with “I wish I had reasons to vote FOR Hillary, not just AGAINST Trump”, along with the “can’t get inspired about Hillary crowd (looking at YOU, Bernsters).
While I think that’s BS, I don’t want to fight with them. They’re decent people, and we need their votes.
This has been bouncing around Facebook this week; its a concise, fact-based rationale to share with the precious flowers who need it. (Writing credit goes to Bob Haslanger)
I don’t see it as voting for Clinton.
I see it as voting for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air and Water Act, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, Food Stamps, Minimum Wage, Union Rights, The Affordable Care Act, Roe v. Wade, Marriage Equality, the Department of Education, National and Community Services Act, union activities by federal employees, environmental research at the Department of Energy, USAID, intercity and high-speed rail grants, Community Development Fund, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting subsidy, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, a liberal majority on the Supreme Court for the next 30 years that will overturn Citizens United, plus whatever Senator Sanders can do with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic President.
If Trump is elected, all that is gone.
It’s not about Clinton, it’s about over 80 years of the progressive movement that we’re in danger of losing because we’re not looking at the bigger picture.
Frankensteinbeck
@Major Major Major Major:
That argument falls short for two reasons. The minor one is the sheer dominance of ISIS and Ebola in that last month, ramped up from them already being topics and in defiance of plenty of other juicy news. The major argument is that a couple of days after the election, Ebola disappeared from the news, and ISIS dropped like a rock. That takes us beyond coincidence. The national news media wanted America talking about issues that motivate Republicans and demotivate Democrats. It worked, and it shocked me, because I thought they were too dimly self-absorbed to know their one strength.
jacy
If anybody needs soothing, Sam Wang at Princenton Election Consortium has put up a link to the NYT Interactive presidential prognosticator The Upshot
It shows how terribly narrow (though still possible) Lil’ Donnie’s path to the White House is.
Kay
I know this is petty but I just loathe how Trump’s mouth looks. It’s his most prominent feature and it’s awful. I cannot bear looking at him for… a year or whatever, until he’s removed :)
One of my sisters is also petty and she keeps sending me email pics of Trump with no comment except “portly”
He IS portly. From any angle. At this point she has sent me all of them.
Splitting Image
@Paul Weimer:
They didn’t in 2008. That campaign featured both a foreign policy crisis (Russia’s annexation of South Ossetia in July) and an economic crisis (Lehman Brothers collapsing in October). McCain lurched around like the complete fool that he is and No Drama Obama won handily. And remember, a lot of people were afraid right up to the point Ohio was called that enough people would balk at the last minute at the thought of voting for a black guy and McCain would pull it out.
Trump is, if anything, more erratic and less knowledgeable about potential crises than McCain was, and if there is a crisis of some kind in October, former Secretary of State Clinton will hand him his ass. Also, No Drama Obama will still be in charge, which makes things substantially different from 2008, when Bush and Cheney were still running things.
schrodinger's cat
@Frankensteinbeck: You forgot there was also the issue of the migrant children from Central America.
Trentrunner
@Omnes Omnibus: Excellent reminder.
Put another way, these are the GOP stars NOT speaking at their convention:
George W. Bush
George H.W. Bush (elderly, but still)
Dick Cheney
Mitt Romney
John McCain
Sarah Palin
Marco Rubio
John Kasich
No Reagan family/surrogates
No major CEOs
If it weren’t for Trump’s 5 children by 3 different mothers, we’d have a 2-day convention.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Good points, Double O!
Of course, the rabble on the right will just hear “SJW” whining, and the media will tut-tut about both sides doing it.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: For a man with a lot of money he sure looks terrible.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: I am a bad liberal. I seem to lack the panic gene. Obama in ’08 and ’12 and now HRC in ’16 ignored/is ignoring the whole win the day thing that the media runs. The plan seems to work. I am sure the HRC campaign has some great stuff in the works and we will start to see it at the convention. This doesn’t mean that the thought of Trump winning isn’t terrifying, but I think our side is fully capable of handling the situation.
hovercraft
@MattF:
I think we’re already there, coming out of tonight the talk will be about Eric son of drump and the other speakers. Pence is dumb and boring, he’ll give a speech that touches on all the erogenous zones of the evangelicals and takes a glancing blow at those of the hawks. The media will declare it a triumph while failing to remember any of it’s content. ump choose him because he’s a sop to the party, but won’t distract anyone from him. He will still be the star, no understudy for him, the show is him or nothing.
JPL
@cckids: Since Pence thought nothing wrong with a state run newspaper, the free press will be gone.
Matt McIrvin
@Splitting Image: In 2008, a Republican was the incumbent President. Bad things stuck to him. It was a different dynamic.
Frankensteinbeck
Oh, and I’ve been predicting the ugly, open Hillary hate. Bigotry has flavors. They’re scared of black men and desperate to obstruct. They see women as victims and attack without restraint.
chopper
@wormtown:
yeah, your concern is well-fucking noted.
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
Her last email said “expensive suit – still portly” In 2012 she made fun of me for “obsessing” on Ann Romney. I wasn’t searching the internet for unflattering pictures, although it is true I did loathe Ann Romney.
FlipYrWhig
@cckids: OK, but I think that diminishes the Hillary-ness of Hillary — which is an asset. It’s not just a vote for the progressive world-spirit, it’s a vote for a tenacious and meticulous manager who uses courage and empathy to stand up for both ideals and for putting those ideals into praxis.
Major Major Major Major
@Frankensteinbeck: it also assumes there is such a thing as “the media” and that they’re capable of coordinating something like that, which to me requires far more evidence than so far provided. My list of bogeymen goes incompetence, greed, malice, in that order. 1 and 2 explain this just fine.
hovercraft
@Roger Moore:
As Tweety pointed out last night, Kasich is still in his fifties, and is popular in Ohio. He still has an outside chance of running in 2020 and winning it all. He probably made the calculation that flaming out with Drump would end his presidential ambitions.
celticdragonchick
@MomSense:
Yep.
I was on the verge of tears a couple of times last night watching the mob on TV howling for Hillary’s head. There is no precedent in US history for threatening to jail your political opponents. None. The very idea is antithetical to democracy. But this is where we are now.
GregB
By the by. Dishonest political hack polling outfit Rasmussen is doing double time on muddying the polling waters.
The latest meme is the polls are tight as a tick, one reason is the Rasmussen outlier giving Trump a 7% lead which throws all if Sec. Clinton’s leads into the toss-up bin.
Way to go Scott Rasmussen, Goebbels would be proud.
burnspbesq
According to WaPo, a U.S. District Court has enjoined Wisconsin from applying its new voter-ID law.
So lomg, Ron Johnson. And put those ten electoral votes in the Clinton column.
Milwaukee gets to vote. Sucks being you, Wauwitosa.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: The hair, the scowling orange face with squinty eyes, he is like a nightmare come to life. At least, Mitt Romney was easy on the eyes.
JPL
@GregB: That is normal for this point in the race for Rasmussen. They don’t change their polls until the last few weeks. It’s why Repubs were shocked to see Romney lose.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m a little weary of the pants-pissing and hand-wringing, myself, in case you hadn’t noticed…//
As for me, action seems to be the antidote to fear. I’m registered to vote, I’m going to be registering others to vote, I’m signed up to volunteer on all the Dem campaigns this year. Fired up, ready to go!
ETA: Plus, kittens.
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: MSM does suffer from group think. They all keep repeating the same gibberish over and over again.
Right now it is, both Trump and Hillary have high unfavorability ratings.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: Because Wang is just one guy with no assistants and no budget, he actually makes mistakes pretty frequently–but people catch them and he corrects them with public explanations of what happened. Also, his models are conceptually simple; Silver likes to make a hundred small adjustments that are theoretically plausible but that there is no way to calibrate, so in practice they probably just fuzz out his results some more.
Frankensteinbeck
@Major Major Major Major:
Mine goes incompetence > malice > greed. People choose t screw themselves over to satisfy their ego and spite all the time, and if you have any power, it’s usually easy to find a way to make a buck off the positions you chose out of malice.
Trentrunner
Wait: So the Trump speechwriter who cobbled together an improvised speech with whatever she had at hand is named…McIver?
schrodinger's cat
@Miss Bianca: I am fired up and ready to go too. I am wondering though whether we should put off buying a house until the elections. Because though the probability of a Trump win is small it is not non-zero.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: they do, it’s true. That and blinders. Todd was talking about how we were seeing a lot of call and response in speeches yesterday, which I guess would be an interesting point if you saw your job as reporting on who’s winning, who’s losing, and so on. See ‘incompetence’ above.
But that’s different than positing there’s some sort of coordinated effort by “The Media” to push things towards Republicans. I’ll give you that Fox exists and controls some part of the narrative, but that’s different than the whole kit and caboodle.
Feathers
@Fair Economist: Or whoever coached her had watched Michelle’s speech. There are coaches for this, who go over every moment, plan every breath and glance, then rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. One thing about Melania saying that she wrote it, did it herself, etc. is that is exactly what a great speaking coach will make you believe. “This wasn’t me at all – I only helped you understand what you are capable of… what wonderfulness you’ve been hiding from everyone for so long.” I took a public speaking class with an amazing teacher. While I learned a lot about speaking, watching him just boost everyone’s self confidence so intuitively was perhaps even more important.
In one of the Howard Hawks’s biographies, he talked about how he turned Rita Hayworth from a bit player into a movie star. He hired reporters to come to the set and interview her, telling them to hang on her every word. He paid photographers to stop by and beg for candid shots. It wasn’t about the interview, it was about making her think she had something worth saying.
But yes, the Trump children, and probably wife, are undoubtedly vile.
Punchy
@burnspbesq: I’m not certifying Wisky as blue until I see how Appleton, Phelps, and Chippy Falls are leaning. Eagle River has a lumberjack mojo about it, so either they go Trump on the basis of blue collar stereotypes, or HRC on account of her concern for the environment. Fond du Lac likely to sway purple, as French-named towns dont belong in Merka and Fondies are often conflicted about whether they should support the French or English.
D58826
@Major Major Major Major: Well I guess it was easy to miss Trumps appeal since President Herman Cain or is it President Michelle Bachman are so popular. I’m being a bit sarcastic here but given all of the losers who topped the polls in 2012 and even 2016 (Ben Carson anyone) it is easy to see why most people dismissed Trump as the flavor of the month.
In the meantime on my twitter feed the mea culpa over the speech is getting a bigger response than the ‘firing squad’ comment.
schrodinger's cat
@Miss Bianca: For me, it seems to be the music, especially semi-classical Hindustani music, which I thought was a yawn when I was growing up. I particularly find myself gravitating towards devotional music, especially Bhakti and Sufi, the non conformist strands of Hinduism and Islam, respectively.
And of course, kittehs!
mike in dc
Hillary at the first debate: “I’m happy to debate Donald Trump tonight, though from what’s been reported, maybe I should be debating Gov. Pence instead since he’s the one who’s going to be doing the President’s job in a Trump administration.”
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: Its funny though, how their incompetence skews in one direction only.
Mike in NC
@rikyrah:
As was the case with Christie in 2012: with his convention speech (me, me, me!) he was setting himself up for the next nomination but now is left with no political future whatsoever. Still hoping to see him in jail, though.
Matt McIrvin
@celticdragonchick: It reminds me of the election in Citizen Kane. Kane is running for governor and he eventually ratchets up his rhetoric to the point where he’s calling for the arrest, trial and conviction of his incumbent opponent. Crossing that line is what motivates the governor to actually send some goons to rough him up–because he’s made it a personal threat now, to the governor’s person and to his family. And he stops saying that stuff real quick.
It’s not a legitimate remedy, of course! But it does strike me that one of the reasons we have something of a tradition of criminal leniency for former Presidents, even when they’ve done terrible things, is that a society in which politicians can regularly expect to be thrown in prison by a victorious opponent is also a society in which politicians are more likely to turn to violence to get and retain power. Often, when Presidents-for-Life yield to a system with free elections, it’s because they were given a frustratingly generous deal to retire peacefully and fade into the mist.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Never ever doubted you. You’ve been right all along. Shocking to see it up close. I’ll be one of those annoying phone calls soon enough. Haven’t gotten my lists yet but I’m guessing I will soon.
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t think I’m feeling panic. It is more of a profound sadness/fury/shock at what I’m seeing coming from seemingly ordinary people. I am absolutely convinced we can win this election but not if we pretend it is like any other. The evil isn’t lurking anymore. It’s proudly on display and it must be defeated.
MCA1
@D58826: That was a primary landscape, housed entirely within the radicalized Republican Party, with 15 opponents to siphon off each other and leave Drumpf to pick them off one after another while they scrambled to gather enough of the sane Republican votes under one tent. This is a general election landscape, where Trump’s opponent, for whatever weaknesses she may have, has a built-in 40% from Day 1, as well as significant advantages in the only mathematical issue that really matters, which is the EV map. Trump has moved tactically from personal bullying and dominance politics to fearmongering and scapegoating, but that’s not a strategic shift that allows him to build a coalition that can actually win some combo of 4 out of 5 of Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio (or whatever run he needs to pull off). At some point, he has to actually stand on a stage with Hillary Clinton and debate her, mano a mano.
In other words, yeah, everyone dismissed him early on in the GOP primary process, but (a) no one’s dismissing him now, and Hillary’s been defining him to the electorate for weeks already, and (b) the GOP primary process has fundamental characteristics that are nowhere to be found in the general election.
gvg
@rikyrah:
I think you aren’t giving some white people enough credit. Media tends to suck but that news is out there on the local news around here. I don’t watch it myself but my parents are of a generation that has always watched the 6:00 news and they heard that and are discussing it. I think other whites are too. I have seen it on mainstream news sites for several days. Of course my parents were never going to vote for Trump anyway but my conservative cousin has been hysterical about him even running since last summer. I am terrible at calculating a percent of people who will act a certain way but I know a lot of people to whom working hard at your job, doing a good job, is a point of pride and self esteem. Trumps attitude really doesn’t go with what gets called the protestant work ethic. People seem to notice even if the media isn’t really pushing it.
And if you are media how do you decide which horrible aspect of Trump you want to write about? He has so many things wrong no one is keeping up and they certainly aren’t repeating the same story to drive the point home.
I had a compulsive liar boss once around 30 years ago. He was hard for normal people to process. We reported him to the owner eventually who sat at the table and laughed and laughed. I thought he didn’t believe us, but he did. 15 out of 17 total employees at a location saying the same stories means something, however it sounded crazy because there were so many things we had to tell about. I still think we were lucky that owner believed it. It would have sounded more convincing if there hadn’t been so many different stories.
People expect a scandal to be repeated and followed up by the press but Trump is so wild, they never have time to.
Miss Bianca
@schrodinger’s cat: Kittehs just came back from vet, clean bill of health – all those weeks of squirting ringworm meds down their resisting little gullets must have worked! Plus, Lefty Kitty has climbed all over me, purring like a tiny mad vacuum cleaner, and has fallen asleep clinging to me with her little paws. I don’t think I have ever ever, been so besotted with a cat before in my life.
ETA: I hear you about the appeal of Indian music. I love it, myself, from Bollywood soundtracks to classical, tho’ I feel so ignorant about most of it.
Frankensteinbeck
@Major Major Major Major:
It coordinates itself, because they’re a social group with similar attitudes. It’s the exact same process that might coordinate them through greed.
trnc
So the republican nominee wants to collect a $33,000 monthly check to do no work and live in a mansion, all on the taxpayers’ dime (cross posted at TPM).
SiubhanDuinne
@Trentrunner:
I heard the name as McGyver before I read it, and my first thought was “cobbling together a speech out of bits and pieces.”
dmsilev
@Trentrunner:
Do we have any independent evidence that this woman actually exists and isn’t just another example of a Trump pretending to be their own publicist?
MCA1
@JPL: Which is why it’s so fucking infuriating to see Rasmussen included in all of the aggregates. Everyone who pays attention knows it’s got a significant R bias, why the hell are they giving it any credibility at all?
Clinton’s up right now by more than Obama was on Romney at this point in 2012 – take out Razz and it’s significantly more. The “state of the race” going into August, after the larger convention bounce for Hillary than Drumpf, will be a steady 6 points, with 80+% Clinton win predictions and a most likely EV count for Clinton of around 325, and all we’ll keep hearing about is how close this is.
schrodinger's cat
@Frankensteinbeck: PBS Snooze Hour is much worse with the Giggle Sisters at helm than under Jim Lehrer. They were neocon central while covering the nuclear deal with Iran. BBC was far tougher while questioning Israeli ministers and such.
schrodinger's cat
@Miss Bianca: They sound adorable. More photos please.
catclub
@MCA1: If you want to live in fear, vote Trump.
If you want to live in the future, vote Clinton.
Matt McIrvin
@MCA1:
People keep saying that about the EV map, but as far as I can tell, it’s not actually true–the EV map looks better for Clinton just because she’s ahead nationally, not for any other reason.
Trump is the one who gets a small benefit from the Electoral College. Against a normal Republican this cycle, you’d be right, but Trump is stronger relative to a normal Republican in swing states than he is in deep-red states, so he could win with a slight popular-vote deficit. It’s probably not more than about a 1% effect, though.
? Martin
@celticdragonchick: “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!”
British writers were always closer to the threat, and wrote about it with more clarity. I think most Americans believe we are immune to it. I’ll grant that we have a system that makes is much harder for that kind of thing to take hold, but apparently not hard enough.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: stupidity has a conservative bias, yes.
Uncle Cosmo
@rikyrah: Pace Godwin, someone could the saner parts of the electorate a favor by going through Mein Kampf (1924) & noting (for those of us with weaker stomachs) everything that Hitler said he would do & eventually did once he had the chance.* Which no one at the time took seriously. It was posturing, rhetoric, playing to his followers…
That experience should have taught us all to take even (maybe “especially”) the most obviously unhinged at their word. Their every word. And make sure they never get a chance to carry it out.
*NB A classic example of Heinlein’s best way to lie: Tell the truth & tell all of it, but in a manner that convinces listeners you’re lying. Versus the second best way: Tell the truth, but not all of it.
Emma
@JPL: And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Great views over San Francisco. If it were true, hat’s the first answer they should have given, not the fifth or sixth. Some poor idiot is taking the fall.
Miss Bianca
@schrodinger’s cat: I may have to set up a Flickr account or something, just for dog and cat photos!
dmsilev
@Emma: And they can’t even do the scapegoat thing competently. Now the campaign is on record saying that Mrs. Trump admires and is inspired by Michelle Obama. That’ll play well with the slavering hordes of their base.
Major Major Major Major
@Frankensteinbeck: yes, but you posited a “universal attempt by the national news/pundit class to tip the election to Republicans”, but what we’re all in agreement on is that they’re just idiots.
As for greed, it can certainly be self-organizing, but I’d be willing to go as far as saying they sit down and ask themselves, consciously, what will generate the most clicks. The headline writers certainly do. Why wouldn’t the journalists?
Again, a difference in kind to them sitting down and saying, Ok, how can we help get republicans elected today? That’s the realm of Fox, not “the media”.
Aleta
Samantha B and Full Frontal have leaked the RC speaker schedule for today. (Link is a photo on twitter.)
Shell
So familiar but had to Google that to get the right novel. So much for a middle-school education.
terry chay
@Fair Economist: “overestimates modeling error”… “underestimates modeling error” “truth is somewhere in between.” You realize this makes no sense right? You can’t apply a statistical or probablistic model to encompass non-statistical behavior (like systemic error, “black swans” or this so called “modeling error”), I think Nate Silver needs to go back to school and pay more attention in his statistics and econometrics classes.
The truth of the matter is Nate Silver got burned by ignoring his models and saying Trump wouldn’t win the nomination and now he’s adding fudge factors to his state polling instead of being honest that his models say what NYT and Princeton do. This in turn makes it so that the model is less predictive because it throws in large error bars.
Major Major Major Major
@terry chay: isn’t the entirety of the theory behind why poll averages work that some pollsters have modeling error in different directions and the truth is somewhere in between?
celticdragonchick
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes. When you resort to Mugabe strongman tactics in an election, you get Mugabe strongman violence and dictatorship as a result.
dmsilev
So, various campaign finance folks and like are pointing out that the Trump speechwriter’s confessional is written on Trump Organization stationary, implying that she’s an employee of his business not his campaign. Which means that work she did would count as an in-kind donation from the Trump Organization to the Trump Campaign. Assuming of course that the Trump entities are competent enough to get the legalities right….
Frankensteinbeck
@Major Major Major Major:
And I think that for 2014, they sat down and thought about what would push the election to Republicans. I usually resist that kind of explanation, but the behavior was so blatant, especially since it stopped dead after the election, that I see no other viable explanation.
celticdragonchick
@Shell:
I figured it was Lord of the Flies but I wasn’t quite sure. I checked and…yep.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Exactly. The fact that a President Trump is not going to do anything but walk around and run his mouth, shouldn’t be shocking to anyone who has been paying attention to his campaign. It’s going to be President Pence in charge just like it was President Cheney in charge during Bush the 43rd’s administration. While Trump may not care about actually governing, VP Pence will make sure that all of the odious Christianist agenda will be enshrined in law. We have been warned.
Uncle Cosmo
@JPL: They start by fabricating a “turnout module” (I can’t call it a “model” with a straight face) that skews GOP enough that their “shocking!” results amount to actively campaigning for the Rethugs. They “refine” that “module” by gradually bending it back into line with reality for the last pre-election poll. Then they point to those last results, which are usually fairly close to the outcome, to justify their standing as a “serious” survey operation that will be taken seriously the next time they pull the same con.
Rasmussen deserves to be found floating face down in a septic tank. He gives the whole discipline of inferential statistics a shitty name.
celticdragonchick
@? Martin:
I don’t know if any system is completely proof unless you back to hunter/gatherer levels of complexity and social stratification.
Aleta
@Percysowner: @JPL: Named portrait photos of murky blood spots
Gin & Tonic
@dmsilev: Basic incompetence is par for the course.
Peale
@rikyrah: I found that just odd. Of course the president now Delegates. Like Delegation hasn’t been part of the job description for 200 years. But they didn’t mean Delegate. They meant “Shirk” and knowing Trump its Shirk in ways so that I don’t get blamed but I get credit.
Major Major Major Major
@Frankensteinbeck: and that strikes me as implausible. Too many perfectly good explanations that don’t require escalating conspiracies. Not that it couldn’t be true, my razor just falls elsewhere.
JPL
@Aleta: Pollock is a fine name.
Jim Parish
The one thing that worries me about relying on Sam Wang’s predictions is the memory that, all through the summer of 2014, he was predicting that the Democrats would hold the Senate. It was only in the last month or so that he swung the other way.
Arclite
So Trump is a figurehead while Pence runs the country?
That’s basically a retread of Bush/Cheney.
Shell
Rewatching the movie, “Game Change”. Another GE contender that by the end, was more concerned with her Twitter feed than campaigning.
celticdragonchick
@Arclite: Except that Bush actually did make policy decisions and wasn’t an overt fascist.
Splitting Image
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s not what the person I was responding to was saying though. You can’t argue that the electorate will migrate towards the “Daddy party” in a crisis and also argue that the electorate will migrate towards the challenging party (whichever that is) because the fallout from the crisis will stick to the incumbents.
In 2008, the relevant statistic was George W. Bush’s historic unpopularity from 2006 through 2008. Obama appears set to leave office with support similar to Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton. That makes this election closer to 1988 or 2000 than 2008.
Peale
@Patricia Kayden: Seriously though, he’s had to delegate the task of delegating in order to be a credible president. Remember, he’s gonna surround himself with good people. But so far, he’s had to fire one high level campaign worker who was responsible for hiring a ground team and fundraising who couldn’t do either. Whomever he gave the speechwriting task for his wife to, muffed up by clearly cribbing a life story from the sitting first lady from the other party. His choice of chief delgator is an unpopular administrator in a state that should be very receptive to god-bothering leadership. IfThe only competent people he hires are lawyers to write NDAs and sue people.
SiubhanDuinne
@Emma:
@dmsilev:
Not only that, but this Meredith McIver is apparently on the staff of the Trump Organization. Isn’t it a violation of FEC regs for her to be also working for the campaign? (Asking the question without having any idea of the answer, I genuinely don’t know. There may be legal firewalls between her paid job and volunteer services to Trump’s presidential aspirations.)
Edit: I should have read down to dmsilev’s #214, which asked the same question.
terry chay
@Frankensteinbeck: And your argument falls short in that Democratic candidates won more votes nationwide than Republican ones. Gerrymandering and incumbency were why they won seats in the House; it being six years after a Democratic wave being why the Republicans regained control the Senate. 2014 was not a Republican wave, 2010 was.
So what I read is that despite the press going 24/7 on pro-Republican talking points, it being a mid-term year that favors the Republicans, and the environment favoring the Republicans, the Republican Party STILL couldn’t pull a majority of voters in 2014.
The question being asked right now is are there a huge number of right wing voters out there (non-college educated white males) who didn’t vote, or voted Democratic in 2014 and 2012 and yet will vote this time and will Hillary be a significantly weaker candidate than Obama? Both must be true for Trump to win which is why models aren’t favoring him.
celticdragonchick
@Shell: There is an intrinsic authoritarian mean streak to the GOP and conservatism that makes it vulnerable to Palin and Trump figures.
We have our own problem with sparkle pony rainbow brite wish fulfillment(Nader, Sanders et al), but that is not a threat to the republic. Trump and Palin types absolutely are.
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: If you’re talking about the U.S. media Ebola freak-out, there’s definitely a non-conspiracy explanation for that: The epidemic peaked in West Africa just before the election, then tapered off sharply. The coverage was largely stupid, of course, but it was in reaction to actual events rather than the U.S. election calendar, IMO.
celticdragonchick
@SiubhanDuinne: Great gig for a former ballet dancer. Sure this isn’t a pseudonym for SE Cupp?
terry chay
@celticdragonchick: Over a decade of things like purple bandaids and this will seem like a small step. We haven’t been in their bubble so it doesn’t make sense to us.
@GregB: But the polls HAVE tightened. Polling does that from time to time. Around the convention four years ago, Mitt was ahead in aggregate polling.
I’ve come to realize that Rasmussen isn’t necessarily a Republican outfit, but rather has a Republican effect in their models that is quite large the further it is from the election. If they’re cheating, they’re just taking advantage of the fact that election day is the only time we can test for house effects.
Aimai
@rikyrah: funerals for fetuses? So the VP job is perfect for him. He should be busier than the ordinary VP if he adds fetus funerals to the job. I wonder if he will do international ones? Or just domestic?
BR
A couple of days ago this was all just schadenfreude about Trump’s campaign. The goofs, the bumbling, the disorganization.
This is no longer a joke. I was reminded yesterday at how much the media wants to keep this a horserace, and that will put Trump, no matter his campaign’s missteps, within reach of winning.
I think it’s election mobilization time. Here and everywhere. Let’s see it. Let’s bring it. Who’s with me?
I want to see us crush him in the polls, not just a little, but so conclusively that no matter what the media does, no matter what October surprise may come, we’re ready.
Emma
@SiubhanDuinne: I think her work might count as a donation? Maybe legal folks would know more.
Brachiator
@Jim Parish:
People, including too many Balloon Juicers, confuse polling with fortune telling. You will inevitably end up being disappointed.
SiubhanDuinne
@celticdragonchick:
Well, she may be a former ballet dancer, but she was an English major so it’s all good.
Villago Delenda Est
So, it seems Teh Donald wants to be the Head of State (like the Queen of Great Britain) and not the head of government, he’d make his veep the PM, basically.
Well, that’s not really a bad idea, but the problem is it’s not the way the Constitution envisions the role of the President, which is modeled more or less on the Monarch’s role in the UK in the 18th Century.
terry chay
@dmsilev: Yes, she’s a well known Trump ghost-writer and has been on their organization’s payroll for a while. If you read the resignation she actually implies strongly that the plagiarized quotes came from Melania, not her and doesn’t say that Melania actually told her that they were direct quotes when they were given to her to use.
It actually confirms “Trump’s Razor.” Melania was the one who lifted the quotes, passed them off as her own to the speechwriter, and the Trump organization didn’t bother to check it for plagiarism. The damage this will do to fundraising is immense, because Republican’s don’t raise money the way Democrats do. In the meantime, the people on social media don’t care if Meredith McIver is fired or whatnot. Damage done. Asking for her to write a resignation letter like this doesn’t serve the campaign at all and reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Republican Party establishment is asking of the Trump campaign (the central assumption in their call was that it was an operative/Hillary plant who committed the act of plagiarism, and Melania was unwittingly duped by that person).
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: I am suddenly reminded of Garrison Keillor’s Professional Organization of English Majors.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
GMTA, I was thinking of the identical organization!
Jeffro
I DON’T CARE about the stupid plagiarism…there is a Trump staffer calling for Hillary Clinton to be shot for treason. He even says Trump agrees.
This is insanity. We’re so far beyond normal at this point, it has to stop. Petition, donation, call Congress, take out an ad – what are we doing here, people???
catclub
anything on the FEC monthly reports for June that are supposed to come out today?
Is Trump’s fundraising real?
JPL
@Jeffro: I can remember watching conventions with my mother and father. Love of country, patriotism and democracy is dead.
terry chay
@MCA1: The reason why is if you take out Rasmussen, you start down the path of “unskewed polls.” Are you going to find the possibly fraudulent Democratic-leaning pollsters and eliminate them with the same verve? This is why aggregate polling is used in the first place, and if there were MORE pollsters, not less, then the modelers would have the luxury of using a different form of aggregating (like median instead of mean) that would be even more resistant to these nudges. As it is, the aggregate models seem to be highly resistant as it is, possibly better than betting markets even.
Look at it this way, four known republican-biased swing state polls came out the same day that shifted the median sharply towards Trump last week. There were a lot of calls to eliminate them. And it turned out after more polling the median shifted back to Clinton a bit, but not entirely back. So while the polls have a Republican bias, they did correctly predict the race tightening. You can’t throw them out without throwing out the Democratic biased ones at which point you are worse off than looking at single polls because you don’t have aggregation helping you.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: For an English major, she’s awfully careless about punctuation.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: The media kept giving W a pass until Katrina happened, while they turned on Obama within the first few months of his Presidency. Need I remind you of their love affair with McCain?
Brachiator
@BR:
So, what you want headlines like this?
I’m not seeing the advantage to the Democrats. And polling is not an unclouded reading of the future.
What ultimately matters is not polling or railing against the media, but registration and helping to get out the vote come November.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Inter alia.
Jeffro
@JPL:
Only
On
One
Side…don’t write the whole thing off just because one party has lost its mind and principles!
? Martin
@MCA1: I think you are confused as to what polls are. They are measurements. They are not action. A poll that says Trump is +1 doesn’t confer the election to him. It’s just a measurement. You could suggest that the poll results will be taken in a way that would be actionable, but it cuts both ways. Are Clinton supporters sitting on a large polling lead likely to get complacent? That’s just as good of an argument that a Trump lead would be demoralizing. Polls can’t answer that. They’re just measurements.
Now, what should be in the model is a weighting based on a polls historical accuracy since we can also measure that. If Ras is commonly wrong, then discount it accordingly.
Eric U.
@JPL: my wife had a couple of early miscarriages. One was when she was at work, a little bit of tissue in the toilet, then she went to the hospital for a D&C, i.e. an abortion. This infuriates me more than I can say. Would she have had to scoop that stuff out of the toilet? We lived in Utah then, they probably would have enforced such a law
Applejinx
@MattF:
That’s easily done. Everybody start treating him like he’ll be the real President and talking only to him and about him etc etc, ignoring Trump as the useless puppet he is.
Rinse (reince?) and repeat. Goodbye, potential Veep.
Dadadadadadada
@Major Major Major Major: Well played, sir.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Gin & Tonic: Why would Putin and he people pefer some wild card like Trump over someone they know they can work with like Hilary? All those US missiles with their nuclear warheads are still pointed at their offices.
Cain
@eric:
Maybe. My nigerian friend is thinking of voting trump because he doesn’t trust Hillary and because Trump is a successful businessmen. Of course, he’s been doing false equivalence. The man has two degrees, he needs to be smarter than that. I’ve been arguing with him but it’s been a back and forth. I’ve been using the very words coming out of his mouth. At least, Trump is honest enough to tell you what he’s going to do. If he is going to just let his VP do all the work, and he’s just going to yuk it up in the White House like a 4 year vacation, I think he’s going to be in for a rude awakening in case something like a terrorist attack occurs or some other hazard that requires him to actually do something.
That’s when the Republican brand is going to fall, and the house of cards completely falls apart.
Anyways, I’m still working on him.. he’s not particularly liberal or conservative. He’s truly a nice individual but you know, Africans are conservative people.
Gin & Tonic
@Enhanced Voting Techinques: Because Trump will say “Article 5? Shmarticle 5!” as Russian tanks roll into the Baltics. Nukes are irrelevant. Nobody in Washington or Moscow will use them, and everybody knows it. It’s undermining NATO to return Imperial Russia to its former glory that he’s after.
Dadadadadadada
@Punchy: Thing is, the veep can’t sign bills or issue orders to anyone. That all falls on the president. Any abuse of power by the veep is ultimately the president’s responsibility.
BR
@Brachiator:
Um, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t care about the headlines, and that’s not what I mean. I mean we need to do whatever we can to elect Hillary — I mean Obama ’08 levels of grassroots campaigning. Forget the polls — I’m talking about action.
JPL
@Eric U.: It’s such a violation of privacy and I can’t imagine being such an asshole that you don’t realize what the emotional cost would be. The idea that Pence would run domestic policy, is horrifying.
Trentrunner
@Brachiator: The 2012 headlines going into November about the close race (or even Romney advantage) absolutely drove Dem turnout.
So I’m fine with mis- and over-reporting of how “close” this 2016 race is, so long as it results in GOTV and Dem turnout that will make the actual polling a reality, that Hillary was always ahead and then ended up winning.
Shell
Heck, I can remember, as a little kid, getting up around 1 AM to see my Mom still up watching the convention. This was the early 60s and there still may have been some last minute decidings going on. (smoke-filled rooms). But at the time, I thought that grownups were weird.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
The way people are acting is not funny BUT humor and mockery is often the best way to combat them. They like knowing that other people see them as powerful and scary, so it’s better to mock them and let them know that we find them ridiculous and petty, not powerful.
We can take their power away by using humor. In fact, it’s the best possible way to do it. Not using humor to ignore or dismiss them, but using it to confront them.
Dadadadadadada
@Brachiator: I don’t want to sound complacent, but you sound a little alarmist. The Obama coalition clearly defeated the Romney coalition, and Trump does worse with every subset of the Romney coalition than Romney did. As long as the Obama coalition doesn’t completely fall apart, Trump is toast.
Cain
@Matt McIrvin:
This really bugs me.. which republican president has helped in any disaster? 911? The guy went missing for a couple of days, Katrina? Slow response.. I’m trying to figure out which event wasn’t handled incompetently? Even the goddam Iraq war was done incompetently.
It scares me that our republic can turn into Nazi Germany…
dmsilev
Reminder: Sometime this afternoon or evening, we get the official FEC report on Trump’s campaign finances from June. Given how furiously they were scrambling in late June after the debacle of the May report, should be …interesting to see cash-on-hand and fund-raising numbers, not to mention figuring out which Trump shell companies and properties are being used to soak back the funds.
Oh, and see if he actually made good on that promise to write off all those loans and turn them into contributions.
Dadadadadadada
@p.a.: I fully agree, but -1000 for quoting a Star Wars prequel.
dmsilev
Today’s moment of awesome:
patroclus
I’m not buying this theory. Pence is an idiot and a non-detail guy. I see no way that Trump, being the control freak that he is, would let him run much of anything. If Trump did want to delegate the details to someone, I see him using some unelected guy that we don’t know about now or perhaps doing like Reagan with his “troika” of Baker/Deaver/Meese who each had areas of responsibility. And even that could shift over time, with a lot of palace intrigue about who had Trump’s ear on what subject at what time. I think he’d use his family a lot, regardless of whether they had a formal role. Ouday and Kusay would definitely be influential and would have their own orbits of power, like they did in Iraq. Sorry, but Pence is a conservative nincompoop, who would be used to put a good face (to conservatives) on whatever lunacy Trump was pursuing at any given time.
On the polls, I’m kind of glad that Rasmussen is queering the pitch because it over-states Trump’s strength and keeps us non-complacent. On the Dem convention, surrogates can attack Trump, but Hillary needs to build a very positive case, emphasizing the policy goals that will benefit Americans. She needs to be sunny and optimistic and present a hopeful vision (like Obama did).
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I was surprised to be talking to my lifelong Republican aunt this weekend and discover that she woke up about the police when the white guy in her city (Long Beach) was shot and killed by the cops a few years ago for squirting them with a garden hose. She is now suspicious of ALL police shootings.
There are still people who can be woken up out there. She ain’t voting for Trump.
catclub
@Cain:
1. All the Hurricanes in Florida in 2004 got great response. Completely unrelated to President’s brother was governor and Florida a swing state.
2. 1927 flood. Herbert Hoover – not yet President, but was elected President partly based on how he organized the response.
D58826
OT
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/07/20/texas-voter-id-law-struck-down.html?via=desktop&source=copyurl
rikyrah
@dmsilev:
I can’t wait to see the report.
Dadadadadadada
@celticdragonchick: One precedent comes to mind (so there are probably others): after defeating him in 1800, Thomas Jefferson (yes, that Thomas Jefferson, of “Jeffersonian democracy” fame) repeatedly–repeatedly!–prosecuted Aaron Burr on trumped-up charges of treason. Burr stayed out of jail only on the minor technicality of being totally innocent.
If it’s not too underhanded for Jefferson, why would it be too underhanded for today’s GOP?
terry chay
@Major Major Major Major: Aggregation is itself a form of modeling so how is supposed to overcome modeling errors? If that wasn’t the case, then NYT, Nate Silver, and Princeton would report the same numbers if using the same data set. Instead variance happens because they model out different ways of choosing which polls to use, “timing out” older polls, adding in national polling, and such.
The reason aggregation works is mostly due to more sampling than assuming some mean of pollster modeling errors. Pollsters poll differently, ask different questions, and certainly poll different people! If you go in and try to figure out what their “modeling error” is to correct for it, you get into the weeds — the point that there’s just not enough samples in the breakouts justify a correction (as much as I enjoy Trump getting 0% of the African American vote in polling, that’s not going to happen in real life, it’s just that he’s polling so low among that 13.2% of the electorate that you end up with zero often). History has shown that people can’t do this impartially (the “unskewed polls” in 2012 or Nate Silver’s predictions that the “Party Decides” against Trump’s nomination in 2016).
If the aggregators actually thought modeling bias was the issue and not sampling error, then they’d use aggregation models that take the median instead of the average to throw out the “bad” models.
In the case of Nate Silver in particular, people make the mistake of thinking the models he used in 2008 or 2012 are the same as the ones he’s using in 2016. Even in his “polls-only” model now weights his aggregation based on pollster reliability and other recently added things that haven’t been shown to make predictions better. He used to (still does?) run monte carlo simulations on models where simple math can yield the direct number — the equivalent of computing pi by throwing darts at the dartboard when you already can directly compute it. Somehow, there seems to be weird fudge factors that are adding a great deal of uncertainty in his model (either they’re non-statisical, or, more likely, due to adding variables like weights on pollster “reliability” and “bias” that introduce massive error bars that drown out the model) which is strange because basic probability theory already has sizable error bars (even a state with Clinton +20% and a pollster error of +/- of 4% will still have a non-zero probability of Trump winning it).
Sam Wang ends up with over a 98% chance of predicting a Hillary Clinton win if the election were held today. This number is deceptive to most people, because, obviously, the election is not being held today, so he models out the possibility of drift between now and November. The interesting thing is that doing it this way, his aggregate model will converge toward certainty whereas it is unlikely that Silver’s current model will ever allow a candidate to have over ~80% chance of winning. Personally, I find the former helpful, and the latter obfuscates things.
For instance, there has been a clear tightening of the polls in the last two weeks. Sam’s model shows this in two ways (a percent shift in the “election held today” prediction, and the fact that model hasn’t budged upward for Hillary even though half a month has passed), whereas Nate Silver shows the same thing differently and leads to the conclusion that this shift, before the convention, somehow more than doubled Trump’s chance of winning! The former implies it’s a setback for Hillary, but Trump still needs this trend to continue to have a chance of winning, the latter implies that the sky has fallen and Trump could easily win.
YMMV, perhaps you need the sky falling to make yourself panic’d enough to go vote and prefer Nate’s model. That’s cool, but don’t make the claim that he somehow figured out how to model modeling error.
gvg
Trump can’t actually delegate the responsibilities of President. The constitution says what is Presidents and in fact the VP isn’t much. Now he can tell the VP to do certain things for him, but he still has to sign off on them and be held responsible for them. Clinton started using his VP as a surragate and Bush II and Obama have too. I think myself that it’s pretty necessary in the modern complicated world but it’s not the law. If Pence did the work, he would still have to get’s Donald’s signature on most important things and Donald would be legally responsible even if he really stayed uninvolved which I don’t think he could. I think he would randomly get interested and screw things up until he tried to fire the VP.
If the VP did anything illegal and Congress decided to impeach, it would be Donald too.
that would be if he was really going to be elected which he isn’t. Man this guy and his kids don’t know anything about the job.
terry chay
@terry chay: “a chance” means “an even chance”, of course, even if held today he has a chance of winning.
What I’m trying to imply is that most people will take Nate Silver’s model today about Clinton-Trump 2016 and compare it to Obama-Romney 2012. Nate’s current model won’t ever converge in the same way implying that Clinton-Trump 2016 will be closer than Obama-Romney 2012, Obama-McCain 2008, or Bush-Kerry 2004, even if it’s a landslide. It’s the safe thing to do because recriminations only happen when the model predicts the opposite of what happens (Brexit and betting markets until the day of for instance), but it is the intellectually dishonest thing to do (you have no incentive to learn from or improve the model, and you are no different than a pundit/both-sides-do-itism).
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
I think you’re underestimating the “six year olds with a soccer ball” effect. It only takes one or two respectable outlets pushing a “blockbuster” story for all the rest of them to come running to see if they can get in on the action. Hell, that’s why all of the anti-Clinton shit got traction in the 1990s — once the NYT gave Whitewater et al the imprimatur of respectability, we were off to the races even though there was no there there.
Soylent Green
Personally I would like the polls to be calling the race so close on election day that every Democratic voter or potential anti-Trump voter thinks Jesus Fracking Christ on an Everything Bagel I’ve got to get my ass to my polling place today. Even if we have it in the bag.
Fair Economist
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m not combining different polls, but different models. Properly I should do Bayesian math but for unlikely events a geometric mean will be close.
gvg
@Mnemosyne:
I expected this. It is not possible that a police force(or any group) that is allowed to get away with harrassing and murdering a certain group for a long time would not drift into the same behavior with everyone else. It’s self interest as well as altruism to me to need to fight back police corruption. I am sure it is happening more often than reported so far and the cell phones will show it eventually too. It is less blatant and not as obvious in cause but human nature being what it is and as widespread as the targeting of blacks has been shown, it’s going on.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m not saying the Beltway press doesn’t suck…just that there’s no organized conspiracy to throw specific elections to Republicans. IMO.
Aleta
@JPL: What I think is missing from the press articles so far is that it’s more likely that Trump, not Melania, looked over the original speech, shredded it and turned to the ghostwriter of his own books to redo it the way he wanted it.
One pattern I’ve noticed (may or may not be real) is that when Trump gets bad press about something serious (fraud, say, or Kelly’s question about respect for women) he leaps in with some words that are so beyond the pale that they divert attention. It seems to us that he’s blundered, but the actual effect is reduced air time to the other issues.
The press are on to worse stories, the extremely serious problems in his dysfunctional campaign that keep it on the verge of tanking. It’s like he keeps sending his staff back to the basement to shore up the basic organization, and they are way behind schedule with work on his image and ideas. He wastes the work of his professionals by overturning their decisions, and wastes their time in meetings by rambling and then listening to family members afterward. I think he has a compulsion to undercut anyone like Manafort who is trying to take charge and reframe his campaign. He’s afraid that anyone who appears stronger than he will make him look weak, which is quite a Catch-22 to work with.
So I think the plagiarism story is working for him. And I personally think that, in his mind, Melania is just another object to position.
terry chay
@Jim Parish: Because that’s when the polls did. It’s actually a good thing when a model is wrong or off. In the case of 2014, it says that aggregate models are poor predictors when turnout is low. That’s why, even though Sam’s models are predicting congress has a better than even shot of flipping, betting markets haven’t reflected that.
I think people make the mistake of thinking that Sam is trying to “win” at modeling instead of just trying to learn more about politics (a hobby for him) through aggregate models.
Brachiator
@Trentrunner:
Did the Democrats lose?
And are you suggesting that Dem turnout would have been unaffected had headlines screamed “Obama’s Got This. Why Bother Voting?”
The Lodger
@Major Major Major Major: Don’t underestimate pack journalism. A lot of media outlets cover stories only because other outlets did the same.
Aleta
@Percysowner: same
The Lodger
@Punchy: I think you just won the Gabby Johnson Award for Authentic Frontier Gibberish.
Brachiator
@Dadadadadadada:
Uh, no. I’m not a cheerleader. What matters is getting out the vote.
States matter. And the demographics of those states.
Romney is history. What matters for 2016 is voter turnout. An enthusiastic Democratic turnout favors Hillary Clinton, without a doubt. But in swing states, the white vote matters. And the young white vote matters. This ain’t alarmist. It’s mathematics. White males, right now, appear to dislike Hillary even more than they disliked Obama. And Hillary is also being affected by the residual racism directed at Obama.
Are these insurmountable problems? No. Absolutely not. But this is where Hillary needs to work to change voters minds, if possible.
The better news is that Hillary appears to be doing better with white women than Obama in 2012. This could help in swing states.
The unfortunate thing is that terrorist acts overseas and the killings of cops and civilians here at home is resulting in a strong counter-reaction of white fear and racism. No one can clearly predict how this will affect the election in November, especially if there is more violence.
rikyrah
@BR:
Tell that truth.
Old Broad In California
I miss the days when HRC was Secretary of State and there were all those memes about her looking cool in sunglasses checking her phone. Remember those? She was widely admired as a competent badass.
I wonder what happened (other than the line of thinking, now that she’s running for President, that it is unseemly and unfeminine for a woman to actually be ambitious and seek power).
Brachiator
@Old Broad In California:
Theresa May, Nicola Sturgeon and Angela Merkel would like to have a little chat with you.
I hear what you are saying, but there are multiple streams at play here, progress and reactionary sentiments. In some ways, the US is playing catch-up to other areas of the world with respect to women in power.
Old Broad In California
@Brachiator: Oh, I agree, the US is way behind other countries in that regard. I’m just trying to figure out why the once-cool and competent Secretary Clinton is now supposedly so hated. Makes no sense to me.
Marc McKenzie
And that should scare the living piss out of us. “Scare” isn’t the right word, actually. Try “terrify.” With Trumpismo as the public face of the United States and a theocratic, misogynist, bigoted incompetent administrator with zero effective knowledge/experience of the world beyond our borders in charge of domestic and foreign policy?….
It should scare the living Jesus out of us. But never forget that there will be those like Cornell West, Chris Hedges, and other purists–who will look at this and go, “So what? Hillary would have been the same or worse.”
Marc McKenzie
@rikyrah: Well said, rikyah.
There is a lot at stake in this election, and I have no patience for the privileged purists who think that a) Hillary is just as bad or b) so what if Trump wins? Revolution in 2020!
Marc McKenzie
@Old Broad In California:
I wonder what happened (other than the line of thinking, now that she’s running for President, that it is unseemly and unfeminine for a woman to actually be ambitious and seek power).
Close. It’s just unseemly and unfeminine for that woman (Hillary) to actually be ambitious and seek power.
Brachiator
@Old Broad In California:
The idiots who hate Secretary have always hated her. The GOP, and recently Trump, have condemned her as a failure and a disaster. The worse Secretary of State in history. It’s all a pack of self-reinforcing lies. Politics and a carryover of old animosities. And a specific targeting of Hillary. Ambition in her is especially despised.
But these fools loved a lightweight like Sarah Palin. And I expect endless drivel about how Ivanka Trump looks presidential after she gives her speech praising her father.