The Khans, the Gold Star parents who created a sensation at the Democratic National Convention, deserve our notice, and I’m glad the party gave them a platform to address Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim bigotry. But given the frenetic pace of our news cycle, they would have quickly faded from the headlines if not for Donald Trump’s overweening self-regard and inability to let a perceived slight go.
Thanks to his attacks on Mrs. Khan, who said nothing publicly against Trump at the DNC, the story carried through the weekend, with both Khans appearing on TV and Mrs. Khan penning a guest op-ed in the Washington Post. Good — any roadblock to the election of the dangerous demagogue Trump is a good thing. But surely Trump’s advisers will pry his phone out of his tiny hands and let this story fade?
Nope. Trump kept it up over the weekend via Twitter, ensuring that more and more Republicans would be called upon to denounce him. A group of Gold Star families has also issued a statement demanding an apology from Trump. Then today, the Khans were on the CNN morning show and Trump responded via Twitter in real time:
Mr. Khan, who does not know me, viciously attacked me from the stage of the DNC and is now all over T.V. doing the same – Nice!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2016
Un-fucking-real.
Trump’s fired goon Corey Lewandowski, now receiving checks from CNN and the Trump campaign, was asked to respond as part of a CNN panel, and his answers made it crystal clear why he was such a good fit for the Trump organization, even past the day when his boss pointed a stumpy digit at him and dismissed him from the campaign.
While Lewandowski was filibustering the panel with Trump talking points, a woman affiliated with NY Democrats who was sitting next to him attempted a counterpoint, gently touching his arm as a signal that she’d like to get a word in edge-wise. Lewandowski’s voice rose a few octaves as he shouted “Don’t touch me!”
I noticed something new when the anchor was attempting to talk Lewandowski off the ledge: On that CNN show, at least, they aren’t letting the lie that Trump opposed the Iraq War pass undisputed. And the next segment was going to cover Trump’s seeming unawareness that Putin had already gobbled up a chunk of Ukraine.
I’m not in the business of predicting which outrage will ultimately sink Trump — or if indeed there’s a limit past which he cannot go. The fact that he has made it this far as a credible candidate for president after the things he’s said and done well before we’d ever heard of the Khans is an indelible stain on our national character.
But make no mistake; Trump is having a terrible week — of his own making — and the timing is awful, following as it does a successful Democratic National Convention. Trump couldn’t have demonstrated Hillary Clinton’s point about the unfitness of a leader who can be so easily baited any more effectively if that had been his sole object.
Karen S.
Trump’s really good at getting attention, but he’s really bad at damage control. He’s thoroughly indecent and has attracted a cadre of supporters as indecent as he is.
Tim F.
You should add this. Trump has dug a hole so deep they let Roger Stone off the leash. Stone has no boundaries on a good day, but this is one of the most despicable statements I have ever heard.
MattF
Trump would have to commit some disgusting crime onstage before the leading R party politicians would disavow him.
LosGatosCA
Vile, vicious attacking yam gets destroyed by simple truth told by honest people. Sad!
Gin & Tonic
“a woman affiliated with NY Democrats” was Christine Quinn, former Speaker of the NY City Council and one-time Mayoral candidate. One of the top women in NYC politics.
MattF
@Tim F.: Stone’s a psychopath… so a good fit for the Trump campaign.
Gin & Tonic
And here’s the thing, Donald, Hillary Clinton was “attacked” more “viciously” at the RNC by the mother of the CIA tech Sean Smith killed in Benghazi – the mom directly blamed HRC for his death. HRC did the smart thing and kept her mouth shut, becasue she knows this is an argument you cannot win.
Miss Bianca
Meanwhile, from the Useful Idiots on the Left Dept…
Response from a friend (probably soon to be former friend) on the Khans, and Sharon Belkofer, that amazing lady who introduced PBO: they apparently deserve their grief over their slain sons because, you know, they’re all tools of the war-mongering state. Both Sides Do It!
Major Major Major Major
So, for context, I’m 31.
This election is well outside of what ‘normal bounds’ is supposed to be, at least, of the “what you learn in civics class” variety. But how much of what elections are ‘supposed to be’ is something that only Democrats believe, and how much of that is just made up? Since I’ve been paying attention, we’ve had Ross Perot, impeachment, the Brooks Brothers Riots, Bush v. Gore, Swift Boat, Ohio 2004, Katrina, Rev. Wright, the birth certificate, Obamacare nullification, and I guess I’m drawing a blank on 2012 being weird, but you get the idea. Perot is kinda sorta bizarro world Trump in that he’s a political newbie gajillionaire, but otherwise, sure, this has no precedent, but it’s somewhere between ‘not that far off’ and ‘the logical conclusion’.
Which makes me wonder if there was ever a time where American elections were less that movie Election and more the platonic ideal of ‘an American election’ that the media seems to think existed at some point. Or if this is just another example of the Democrats’ hack gap, where we’re consistently shocked (shocked!) to find ratfucking and insanity going on in this political process, except unlike Captain Renault, we actually are.
Gin & Tonic
@Miss Bianca: We have a clown here on BJ who made the same argument about Humayun Khan the morning after Khizr spoke at the DNC.
gbear
Yesterday evening, the extreme right started a vicious attack campaign to slander the Khans and prove that he’s associated with terrorist groups. If it’s not already part of FOX’s morning ‘news’, it will be by the end of the day. The Khans have already proven themselves to be incredibly brave. I hope they stay safe.
Betty Cracker
@Tim F.: Wow. That deserves its own post — please feel free to step on this one! What a despicable bunch.
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: The most accurate portrayal of modern American Presidential campaigns is Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail, 1972. If you have not read it, you’ll have to take an Incomplete in Civics until you do.
Miss Bianca
@Gin & Tonic: Really? And here I was thinking, “well, at least our hard-core lefties on BJ have *some* sense. Even the troll-iest have enough decency not to go certain places.”
SiubhanDuinne
So lemme get this straight. Lewandowski assaults a female reporter with impunity, but let a woman brush his arm and he acts as though she took a hot branding iron to his flesh.
Tim F.
@Major Major Major Major: This one is different. The closest we ever came was when Republicans tepidly considered running with Charles Lindbergh.
Eric U.
@Major Major Major Major: Dems used to have some people that did dirty tricks, although not as bad as Nixon by any stretch. Seems to me that Trump makes all that unnecessary, you just have to pull his chain.
Soylent Green
I like that this shares an acronym with “Improvised Explosive Device.”
Too late to start the cognitive relaxation therapy?
Brachiator
@Karen S.:
I don’t think that Trump cares about damage control. That’s something that oily weasels like political handlers care about. Trump only cares about fighting and winning.
Also, I find it totally disgusting that Trump, his surrogates and his supporters insist on going after Mr Khan and his family. I just hate it. It has got to add to the family’s pain.
rikyrah
Remember, all the lies about how he helped this veterans group and did that for veterans have also been debunked.
gogol's wife
As I said yesterday, Trump isn’t unaware that the Russians are in Ukraine. He’s repeating the Putin party line — the fight in Ukraine is between patriotic Ukrainian freedom fighters and the evil usurpers. According to the Putin line, there are no Russians fighting in Ukraine. We just got a demonstration that Trump is following Putin talking points, not the line taken by the US/Europe/NATO.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@MattF: He could rape a goat on stage and Paul Ryan would say, “While I don’t condone the rape of farm animals, Hillary Clinton has shown that she lacks the character to be commander in chief,” or some such horseshit.
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: If they’re a good friend, just wait until the election’s over, or you could just remove them from the ‘people you talk politics with’ bin. Although in his(?) defense, Hillary is a neoliberal warmongering whore who enjoys smoothies made from the blood of Palestinian children.
I have a friend-of-a-friend on Facebook who is saying he’ll just leave the president field blank because he hates all the candidates. Here is a story about this friend that will perhaps serve as a useful apologue. One time, we were at a board game afternoon with some other friends, and we were deciding what game to play. My very good friend in the bunch had found a game (Illuminatus!) that he’d been talking up for YEARS but had misplaced, and most of us wanted to play that. This guy, did not. But he was outvoted so we proceeded.
Maybe an hour later, after he’s been complaining the whole time, he gets, and proceeds to play, a rare card that basically wrecks the entire thing. Just grinds the game to a complete halt. The giant mega-corporations with webs of intrigue and player-to-player treaties that we’d been building over the last hour, dashed to pieces. This was not a card that let him win or let him take what others had. All it did was wreck shit. We were all like, WTF? He said, “I said I didn’t want to play Illuminatus!.”
OzarkHillbilly
@SiubhanDuinne: It was the cooties.
OzarkHillbilly
@Eric U.:
We still do, we still do. You don’t go to a gun fight with a water pistol.
Barbara
@Gin & Tonic: It’s not even as if it is hard to find the high ground in responding to a grieving family who calls you out for real or even imagined slights. Clinton was asked directly by Chris Wallace on the claims made by the Benghazi mother — Clinton defended the accuracy of what she said at a meeting of the families of those who died at Benghazi by pointing out that other families who were there agreed with her own memory of what was said, but she went on to say that she would never criticize a mother who has suffered such a terrible loss if she remembers the meeting differently. What this shows is that Trump’s need to maintain his self-regard is his ruling principle and that it overwhelms any other principle, including common decency in responding to the unimaginable grief of the Khans. It’s not just that he cannot control himself, but that his lack of control is combined with such petty, self-serving purposes, that is, his own need for self-regard. He will hurt people in any way in order to make himself feel better. Imagine Trump as Kennedy dealing with Nikita Kruschev. The world would already be in a nuclear winter.
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: Re-read it in March actually. I was sticking to things I’ve observed first-hand.
@Eric U.: So, new theory. During their time in the wilderness, the Democrats were left with high-minded “ivory tower” elites who found electioneering beneath them and ratfucking beneath contempt, and… the Clintons. And we still shudder at the thought of politicians who will try to win by means other than having the right policies.*
*I don’t mean ‘theft’ by this, more ‘populism’, ‘patriotism’, ‘knocking on doors in Reno’-type stuff. The above-mentioned friend-of-a-friend BoB’er is also the one who was Leftsplaining to me how patriotism is inherently bad the other day.
Brachiator
@MattF:
Not even then. He’s their guy and they have to stick with him. Unless somehow his public support dropped precipitously.
GregB
The fact that there is nothing these cretins on the fascist right can say anything that will disqualify them with the modern media is an indictment.
By the way, does Assange have a soft spot for wanna be dictators or is it a rapey kindred spirit that has him in the tank for Trump?
schrodinger's cat
@<a href@gogol’s wife: I want to know what Putin has on Trump.
PaulWartenberg2016
They should have cut Lewandowski’s microphone off if he wasn’t going to let other people speak.
Better still, they should cut him off the network. He is CLEARLY still on Trump’s payroll and cannot be viewed as a reliable, impartial source.
Dammit, CNN: you people threatened to walk off if they kept him on, and now you see how damaging he is to your network. You should follow through on that threat and walk out. At some point your personal dignity demands it.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: Damn. That is an analogy for what I see happening. “I don’t wanna play and I’m gonna root for burning shit down, because America sux!”
I’m just tired of it. And it’s all white people who I see doing this – very, very few POC talking this way, at least in my chain. The way I see it, white “progressives” are going to have to make a choice: they can vote Democrat, or they can vote for White Isolationist America.
completely o/t, but I am enjoying the Fish story very much. You have a Carl Hiassen-like touch!
ETA: “Left-splaining” – LOL! You and I have the same set of friends, evidently!
Mike in DC
I wonder if other veterans groups will pile on now. Could quickly become untenable for Trump and the GOP leadership.
Anya
The most surprising thing I saw on CNN is the headline: Trump’s Bussiness Connection to Putin. I watched a little of CNN yesterday, and to me it seemed like they were pounding on the Putin connection and how that will affect the Vulgarian’s foreign policy. Also, their was this lovely headline in one of the afternoon segments: Did Trump Campaign Intervene to Weaken Anti-Putin Stance GOP platform?
philadelphialawyer
@Major Major Major Major:
“Since I’ve been paying attention, we’ve had Ross Perot, impeachment, the Brooks Brothers Riots, Bush v. Gore, Swift Boat, Ohio 2004, Katrina, Rev. Wright, the birth certificate, Obamacare nullification”
That’s kinda of an odd laundry list. Impeachment, Katrina and Obamacare nullification are not really “election” issues at all. Ross Perot, for all of his popular support, was a third party candidate who carried no States, and most likely did not effect the outcome of either race he ran in. The Rev. Wright kerfuffle, whatever you think of him, was the standard, “you are associated with a bad man” election claim. Swift Boat was the standard “you are inflating your resume” claim. Ohio 2004 involves allegations of cheating that have not really been proven, and thus are not particularly unusual (see Kennedy, Illinois, 1960). The birth certificate thing and Bush v Gore (which includes the BB riot) are really all you’ve got, but they are enough to show that, yeah, the GOP has fairly recently, as in the last 16 years, changed the rules about elections. I do think that in previous years elections, while not conforming to civics class ideals, were fought out under more or less agreed upon norms. Of course, politics has always been a dirty business, and disputed elections, shenanigans of one kind or another, dirty pool, and so on, can be found throughout the nineteenth century (1800, 1824, 1876). By the twentieth century, though, things really did seem to settle down.
Brachiator
@Eric U.:
The Democrats still do. Also, I think that one of the reasons the GOP hated the Clintons is because they knew how the dirty game was played and were willing to fight back. The Republicans love to play at being clean and honorable. But it’s just a shabby front.
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: aw thanks! I haven’t read Carl in ages. I have a couple on my shelf but my shelf is in storage for the next month.
Betty Cracker
@PaulWartenberg2016: Trump reminds me of a creature in an old Star Trek episode: the Crystalline Entity. Only instead of feeding on organic matter, he feeds on the dignity of others. So many echoes of Star Trek in the Trump saga!
SiubhanDuinne
@Barbara:
This. At base (I use the term advisedly) he is all about dominance, and he sees it as a zero-sum game: he can’t be dominant unless everyone else is humiliated and diminished. It’s true of him as an individual, it’s true of him as a businessman, and it’s true of him as a politician. God forbid we ever find out whether it would be true of him as POTUS, because we all know the answer.
Bostonian
@gogol’s wife: Yup, that’s the Putin line: Crimea isn’t really Ukraine, and the terrorists in the eastern Ukraine aren’t really Russian.
If Hair Furor gets elected, the next story will be that Ida-Viru isn’t really part of Estonia, quickly followed by Latgale isn’t really part of Latvia…
Who would have thought that the Domino Effect theory that got us into Vietnam would come around again, but for real this time, and it would be a pro-Russian Republican presidential candidate enabling it?
NotMax
Kind of surprised Don Boorleone hasn’t publicly threatened to sue the Khans for defamation of character yet.
Would fit his usual modus operandi.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Trump is Damien of the Omen series, all grown up.
OzarkHillbilly
Some people can’t stand Olberman, and at his preachiest I can’t either. But here he is administering “The Hare Psychopathy Checklist.” Funny. just funny.
Major Major Major Major
@philadelphialawyer: Impeachment and Obamacare nullification were election issues, they just didn’t happen during elections. They were mad they couldn’t win at the ballot box so they escalated. Like Bush v. Gore.
rikyrah
@schrodinger’s cat:
His buddies the mobster/oligarchs, are funding Trump, keeping his businesses afloat.
Does he need to have anything else?
Betty Cracker
@Mike in DC: Gotta give ol’ Walnuts McCain credit: Unlike the mealy-mouthed Granny Starver and the Senior Senatortoise from KY, McCain denounced Trump’s attacks on the Khans at length and with specificity.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Through all this, I wonder if Obama has decided that since none of the rules seem to apply to Donald, he’ll take advantage of the power he has as the chief executive of the motherfucking USofA and get all the goods on traitor Donald that he can – tax returns, FBI stuff, etc etc. and jigger a way to drip them out. If he can get bin Laden, he’s not going to let this orange anus mouthed moron be a bigger threat to national security than bin Laden. I know that’s what I’d do. If we’re going to have a constitutional crisis, let’s do it while Obama’s holding the constitutional high ground.
Ultraviolet Thunder
It doesn’t matter what Trump does next, short of a felony. He will get 40+% of votes* in the general election and will lose. Then he will go on to the next grift.
*idiots. Sigh…
Punchy
@MattF: Nope, that wouldnt do it. Folks, it’s time to admit that absolutely nothing Trump could say or do will get him any less than 45% of the vote. Nothing. He could kill 3 kittens and a koala on stage with his tiny hands and at least 27% would agree that it was caused by HRC as a false flag operation.
Major Major Major Major
@philadelphialawyer: Also, your pointing out that most of these things are normal kind of gets to my point that… these things are normal, and we live in a fantasy land where we’ve convinced ourselves they’re not.
Not WE, you-and-I we, but the more general media zeitgeist we, and especially a lot of people this year who seem to confuse “Hillary plays to win” with “Reichstag fire”.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Said it before and shall say it again: he’s The Mule from Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.
If you’re going with Star Trek parallels, the hate-feeding energy entity from Beta XII-A in Day of the Dove fits the bill.
Fair Economist
@Major Major Major Major:
Honestly, that sounds like a game design flaw.
philadelphialawyer
@Major Major Major Major: Opposition to a law, like Obamacare, you don’t like is not really an election issue. Unless you are saying that all of politics and policy dispute is an election issue. Impeachment is an explicitly non election way of getting rid of an officeholder, and thus doesn’t really fit your mold either.
Perhaps a better way of looking at it is the GOP has gone off the rails, starting in the 1990’s, in general, and not just with respect to how elections are run. From, say, 1900 to 1992, and particularly in the immediate post WWII era, politics actually was played according to some pretty clear norms. Arguably, the Dems upped the ante somewhat with the removal of Nixon, but then things settled down again, until impeachment, Bush v Gore, and birth certificate. Still, some of what you listed, ie Katrina, Wright, Swift Boat, Ohio, Obamacare, Perot, etc, are not really examples of anything out of the ordinary, even given the existence of rules of how politics is conducted.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: I call bullshit. He says “I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.”
The remarks provably *do* represent the views of the officers and the candidates at the top of the ticket. McCain is lying.
Kay
The one and only question is whether Trump helps Republicans politically or harms them. If he starts to harm them they will dump him, and the hell with all the small-d democracy and the “voice of the people”.
The downside just has to exceed the upside. The minute it does we will find out that the GOP CAN stop Donald Trump, they just didn’t want to enough. They’re completely and utterly self-interested and they will act in their own interest when they believe it is at risk.
NotMax
@the Conster, la Citoyenne
Tremendous difference between breaking the rules and breaking the laws.
Taylor
@philadelphialawyer: I can’t believe you’re giving Watergate a pass. Nixon didn’t want to run against Muskie, so they got rid of Muskie. The 72 election was fixed, despite William Safire’s attempts to trivialize it.
At least people at the time understood what was at stake for the republic, and acted accordingly.
ETA there were allegations about Cook County vote-rigging by Daley in 1960, but I don’t think anyone believes it was enough to actually decide the election.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@NotMax:
The Mule is it. It was amusing when he was only disrupting the Bush Establishment GOP, but the Putin connection has added an extra layer of disequilibrium that is far from amusing.
bemused
@SiubhanDuinne:
What a pathetic man-baby.
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: Good point.
butnspbesq
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Unauthorized disclosure of tax return information is a felony, and in any sane world would be grounds for impeachment.
philadelphialawyer
@Major Major Major Major: What I am saying is that they are “normal” even given the existence of the norms which you questioned existed.
Totally agree that there are Democratic party rules, and even more so, Clinton rules, which don’t seem to apply to the Republicans or any other candidates, respectively.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: That sounds about right to me.
OzarkHillbilly
@OzarkHillbilly: DOH! Forgot the link.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@NotMax:
I know. That’s why Obama probably wouldn’t seriously consider it, and is a better person than me. I bet he’s sorely tempted, however.
Fair Economist
@NotMax: I can’t see him as like the Mule at all. The Mule was subtle and even masqueraded as somebody inoffensive and unimportant. He wasn’t gratuitously rude, and had a lot of self-control (as well as other-control).
philadelphialawyer
@Taylor: Not giving Nixon a pass. He broke the law. But, in all honesty, it seems clear he would have won anyway, even against Muskie. He won forty nine States, and the Dems COULD have merely “censored” him and let him finish out his term. I think that would have been more in keeping with the norms of the day. But, even so, it doesn’t excuse the nuclear level escalation of the GOP since the nineties.
On the Illinois 1960 thing…..yeah, which is what makes it not so different from Ohio 2004.
amk
But his insane tweets are getting more and more rt’s and fav’s. So, there is that.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
And in other news, this happened.
Now, somebody read this and then tell me how both parties are the same, or how we just can’t trust Clinton, so we’d be better off to throw our votes away on Stein or Johnson. I dare you.
rk
It’s amazing that Trump could not think of a simple way to sympathize with the Khans and stick it to Hillary at the same time. Something along the lines of he sympathizes with the Khans and the terrible loss of their son who was a true American hero and it’s sad that Hillary Clinton supported the war which led to their loss.
I’m a Hillary supporter, but this is the easiest line of attack on her. Amazing that Trump could not come up with something this basic.
Kay
Just incredible, how Republicans think they can get the upside of their moronic racist candidate without paying ANY price on the downside.
McCain released a statement where he hopes people know Trump’s views don’t represent the Republican Party.
That is EXACTLY what Trump represents. It’s this crazy idea that something called The Republican Party exists in the abstract, separate and distinct from the leaders and voters of the Republican Party. It doesn’t. “Party” is just a collection of people. The people within it define it because this theoretical Party does not exist.
Major Major Major Major
@Fair Economist: it was largely circumstantial. It’s a hard card to play and if it weren’t for the fact that so much of our particular session of the game rested on oil companies it wouldn’t have been that bad, and if he’d been playing better it still might have been to his benefit.
sherparick
@Major Major Major Major: You forgot that “Benghazi” in 2012 was all “Obama;’s fault” e.g he slept, he blamed a film, he did not call it a terrorist attack (except he did and Candy Crowley pointing this fact out in the 2012 debates may be why she is an an ex-correspondent.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_Crowley
In 1968, Nixon campaign as the “law and order” candidate, and in 1972 portrayed George McGovern, who had flown B-24s over Germany with the 15th Air Force, as the candidate of “Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion.” Nixon and George Wallace infested this prion disease into the about 60% of the white population, with the help over the last 30 years of Hate Radio, Fox News, and the last 15 years by the Hate websites. For that reason, Punchy at #48 has it right. Trump’s 40 to 45% are ready to hang the Khans right next to Hillary.
Keith G
Well, I have full confidence that this injury to Trump give the HRC team a “gift from the gods” type of advantage over the GOP in the key voting demographics that Trump has to do well in in order to win.
As I watched Trump pull the pin on this grenade then instead of tossing it away, proceed to stuff it down his pants, I could not believe how early he went full loco.
Somewhere a darkened dive bar, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Lindsey Graham are buying rounds of shots.
butnspbesq
Nice statement from Grandpa Walnuts. Unlikey to have the desired effect.
Craig
What has happened to Republican voters that George W Bush could leave office with the mythical 27% approval rating after 8 disastrous years as President, and Trump can be polling at a much higher 40%? I can at least rationalize Bush’s remaining supporters. Some may have done well despite the economic downturn. Some may have been satisfied with Bush’s ability to move the Supreme Court to the right. There are plenty of reasons that a Republican could use to continue supporting him. But Trump? I try to understand the views of those different to me, but I literally can not understand why anyone would even consider Trump fit for the Presidency, much less the best choice for it.
WaterGirl
For someone who brags about all the power he has, Trump sure plays the victim. A lot.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
OK. Mild spoiler for Star Trek Beyond
Very minor plot point
Ok. Here we go
A variation on the idea of feeding on organic matter is back in the new film.
Major Major Major Major
@philadelphialawyer: which, again, is what I said. These things are normal. To quote myself, above, “it’s somewhere between ‘not that far off’ and ‘the logical conclusion’.”
I maintain however that the Obamacare stuff and impeachment–not anything else, just those two–are electoral issues, in the same way assassination is (not that I’m really comparing the two). Scorched earth isn’t working so you escalate HARD. Same with judicial vacancies. “We’ll just sit on these until we win an election.” It even has the word election in it!
Edited: I also wrote that before I had coffee. I think you’re generally right about the GOP going off the rails but I also think people especially Dems find any whiff of trying to win distasteful. I’m trying to figure out where this straw man idea of a squeaky clean electoral process comes from.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I hope they get all the downside. If they decide to make a stand AFTER he’s collapsed in the polls or somehow become untenable they will get ALL downside. They will have traded everything for nothing, not out of boldness but out of a refusal to act and cowardice. That’s what they deserve.
Bostondreams
@Brachiator:
As is a giant green space hand :)
kwAwk
I’m beginning to believe that this election starts to make sense if you start to think of the Donald Trump candidacy as the proposal for the third term of George W. Bush. You can make a pretty good argument that George W. Bush’s Presidency went so far off of the rails because of the unwillingness of Republicans to hold him accountable, instead wanting Democrats and the media to do it for them. This pretty much describes Donald Trump. Since nobody on the right was really willing to take a sharp stand against him, or at least not en masse at any time, he pretty much careened from one mess to another.
You could make an equally good argument that in 2008 and 2012, Republicans nominated people who, while you might not have liked them in their entirety, would have been respectful and competent Presidents. Having the respectful and competent guys fail, it seems Republicans have again decided to try the Dubya model.
Demagogue is the word that nobody really had the guts to tag Dubya with circa 2003.
germy
Star Trek comparisons, could drumpf be Charlie X?
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: what downside? They supported Trump so their base will still like them, the House is gerrymandered mostly to hell but also back, and the Senate’s auto-gerrymander means a lot of those seats are safe too.
philadelphialawyer
@Major Major Major Major: They’re normal as compared to previous elections, elections which were run under norms. I don’t think that’s what you originally said. More at, there have either never been norms, or there used to be, maybe, but now there aren’t, and these are examples of why there aren’t.
And, again, it seems like you are shoe horning all hardball politics into an “election” mode. Not sure why, as I agree that the GOP has broken the rules of politics generally, AND those specific to elections.
Trentrunner
@Craig: Another way of looking at the question is to ask: Who voted for Obama in 2012 that will now vote for Trump in 2016? (If everyone voted the same + allowing for demographic changes, Clinton wins by 6-8 points.)
Anecdata: An Ohio friend says a relative (30-something white male) who voted for Obama twice is supporting Trump because “Hillary will definitely take away our guns.”
I know, I know. I’m just reporting. FWIW…
J R in WV
And regarding Trump’s mental health, we are friends with a local PhD psychologist, nearing retirement as many of us are. We met again at another neighbor’s retirement party last month, and mostly chatted about cars – he’s an old Porsche lover, and of course they are beautiful sports cars.
Anyway, back on topic, he made the remark that Trump’s narcissism is obvious, classic, untreatable, and dangerous in any position of political power. He added that other problems are probable as narcissism doesn’t usually occur by itself but with a set of other problems, but that those problems are less obvious and couldn’t be determined with specificity without multiple interviews.
It was interesting to hear a professional who is well-known locally talk about Trump’s issues so frankly. This is a scary election, and it lays the groundwork for more scary elections in the future, especially if Trump does well, as in doesn’t lose by 10% – 15%. Or more.
bemused
I miss Molly Ivins and imagine she would have been a lethal tweeter.
Brachiator
@Craig:
They see this as confirmation that Trump is anti Establishment. That he will not compromise with the Democrats or kowtow to the GOP leadership. They see that he will break old rules, even old treaties, because they only thing he cares about is America and the (white) working man. And even if he is a loose cannon, the fact that he is a fabulously rich and successful businessman is proof that he knows how to pick wise and talented people to work for him.
Bostonian
Harcourt Fenton Mudd.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: Is he fabulously rich, though?
sigaba
@Major Major Major Major: We construct “normal politics” out of idealized history.
sherparick
@philadelphialawyer: The problem with Nixon is he was the first really started dividing up the world and what he did horrified most establishment Republicans. Even Barry Goldwater was going to probably convict him at a trial. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2014/0807/Richard-Nixon-s-resignation-the-day-before-a-moment-of-truth
The 40% would not continue supporting Trump despite what he says and does, but because of it, because they want to see the “Others” suffered and put back in their proper place. And he will be cheered and egged on by them as led by the scoundrels and hags of the Conservative Infotainment Industrial complex.
philadelphialawyer
@Major Major Major Major: Re your edit…again, I agree. Partly it is because Dems are more idealistic and, just better. We really do believe in democracy. The Repubs don’t. Not anymore, anyway. And partly it is because some nominally on the left are really all about oppositional posing. They just want to be punk rockers, or whatever the kids call it today, and think that it is cool to be cynical and “knowing” about everything. Which means that anyone who actually wins an election, as opposed to the Bernies, the Jills, the Ralphs, etc. MUST be a fraud, sell out, cheater etc.
SiubhanDuinne
A commenter, whose name/nym I no longer recall, in a thread I no longer can locate, on a date I no longer remember, asked for someone to rewrite the lyrics of “Born Free” to fit Trump’s “Born Rich.” So I did.
khead
@Punchy:
At this point Hillary would, in fact, have to strangle all of our cats in front of me to not get my vote.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: It’s absolutely what they deserve, and I can already imagine the talking points senate candidates like Patrick Murphy (opposing Marco Rubio) will use in the fall in that scenario. It could be especially effective against someone like Rubio, who rightly called Trump an unqualified con man during the primaries and then endorsed Trump once he (Rubio) was defeated. What a craven worm Rubio is…and how sweet it would be for Trump to be his undoing twice, first as a presidential candidate he couldn’t beat, and then as an albatross he couldn’t untie from around his neck. Ha!
Face
@butnspbesq: Oh FFS, Obama wouldn’t directly be a part of this. Too smart, too cognizant of legacy. But a wink and a nod, and “others” will get those tax returns exposed. I’m 99% sure DT’s taxes will make an appearance in the fall, by hacker or by careless accident. And I suspect it will be the final nail, as it almost certainly will expose him as a < $ billionaire and Tax Avoider Supreme.
bemused
@J R in WV:
Did the psychologist have anything to say about what makes diehard Trump supporters tick?
hilts
@MattF:
Maybe, if it turned out that Trump had sex with Ivanka this revelation might give his supporters a reason to question their support for him.
philadelphialawyer
Also, the media. Bought and paid for by corporations, and cowed by RW working of the refs. And so the double standard.
Chris
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m only a couple years behind you, and this. Honestly, the fact that so many Republicans are flipping out about Trump is as much a surprise to me as anything Trump’s actually done. They certainly had no such problems with Palin and Dubya, the Blowjobgate people, the Birthers, etc.
peach flavored shampoo
@rk: Nope, that’s expressing sympathy/empathy for a Muslim. That shit dont fly with his base.
Major Major Major Major
@philadelphialawyer: my question is, WHICH elections were run under norms? I mentioned the ones I had lived through, which were, respectively, weird because of a strong third party candidate, weird because of a strong third party candidate, stolen, probably ‘normal,’ super racist but mostly ‘normal’, super racist but very ‘normal’, and now. Normal isn’t doing so well, odds-wise.
I’m not shoe horning all hardball politics. What I was trying to say, admittedly without grace, is that there has been a lot of it, it’s almost all by republicans, democrats are constantly surprised by it, and we get the vapors when our side plays hardball. I’m trying to figure out where we got the idea that we aren’t supposed to play hardball.
I still maintain that the Obamacare stuff and impeachment are just attempts to nullify elections they already lost. I didn’t include any other hardball examples in that category on our later clarifications.
sigaba
@Trentrunner:
That’s not the question this time around- what matters is who’s going to vote in 2016 that didn’t in 2012, and who voted in 2012 that won’t come out this year?
low-tech cyclist
Leper outcast unclean!
grandpa john
@Major Major Major Major: I am 79 so I can add a few more that I remember, 1948 Truman Dewey . Truman’s famous whistle stop tour from the back of a train and the famous head line from a NY paper shouting Dewey Wins, because polling showed him the winner.Problem was that the poll was conducted by phone and in 1948 not many average voters that favored Truman had phones.
1952 Ike was courted by both parties since while in the military as a career, he was basically non-political and probably elected as a democrat if he had run that way
1960 of course, the famous Kennedy Nixon matchup which went down to the wire and was not decided until the next day by the final vote count of one state, memory fails me on which one
1964 of course Goldwater and the infamous nuke ad run by Johnson’
Along with ” IN your heart, you know he might”
1968 saw the Chicago demonstrations/riots
1972 saw Watergate
1980 was Reagan and the legality questioned negotiations for Iran to hold the hostages until Reagan was installed as president
So most election years seem to have something that brings a little excitelment
t
OzarkHillbilly
@butnspbesq: So is disclosing the identity of an undercover CIA agent. “It’s not against the law if the President does it.”
I wonder where I’ve heard that before?
NCSteve
@Major Major Major Major: What people think “the normal bounds” are supposed to be: 1920-1964.
You make a point I’ve been thinking about a lot of late as I’ve noticed that our elections keep becoming more and more dire. Harding, Coolidge and Hoover were no prizes, and the Republicans were as dark and mean as ever, and went completely off the rails in ’64, but it’s also the period when we elected our Five Good Presidents who gave us America’s Golden Age, the counterpoint to the Five Good Emperors and Rome’s Golden Age. I think that’s why we define “normal” in terms of those years.
Yeah, the analogy isn’t perfect–Johnson was no Marcus Aurelius. But both were men whose greatness were overshadowed by war and folly and who were succeeded, ultimately, by men who did damage that was never undone.
The closest we’ve come to a “normal” election since then since then were ’84 and ’08. Since ’64, we’ve had five elections with decisive spoilers: Wallace, Anderson, Perot, Perot, and *spits on ground* Nader. We had one where ratfucking played a key role in the selection of the weakest candidate. We had another where a strong primary challenge, a foreign policy crisis and a dirty, evil, borderline treasonous little deal with a hostile foreign power decisively swung the vote, through, truth to tell, the country was ripe for a realignment election. And then there was 2012, where the Insane Klown Kar of Krazy, Krazy Kandidates on the GOP side foreshadowed the collapse of a political party whose moral and intellectual bankruptcy had been undeniable to those with eyes to see since the Schiavo debacle 2005. They papered over the problem by a nominating system that was, to coin a phrase, rigged to force the nomination of the most plausible, least obviously insane and/or mentally deficient candidate on the list. But that same process also resulted in the accelerated the march to victory of the man who is now the embodiment of the GOP’s zombification.
And the thing that’s fueled the ever more extreme deviations from the norm has been the Republican Party’s descent into deviancy. The bitterness and revaunchism of the party insiders over the deposition of Nixon led it into a feedback loop that has ended with the Republican Party ceasing to be a normal political party in the traditional, American sense of the term–i.e. a party that is a good faith participant in the project of governance even in opposition, one that respects the institutional boundaries and norms laboriously constructed over centuries that made our inherently unworkable separation of powers system functional. Increasingly, and starting in particular after Gingrich schemed his way to power, it has become a nihilistic ethnically based hypernationalist movement party, something more familiar to post World War I Europe than America.
And the result is that every election since 2004 has felt like the most important of our lives (fueled by our belated understanding was that 2000 was as well but we failed to realize it until after it was done) and, in each case, we’ve been right. And it’s wearying. We long for an election like the old days, when both parties nominated people who we could trust not to blow up the country or destroy the government even if we didn’t like their policies or them personally–Wilkie, Dewey, Stephenson, and yeah, even Nixon, though we should have known actual power would make him madder than MacBeth.
PaulWartenberg2016
@Bostonian:
Trump needs 500 Stellas nagging him forever.
peach flavored shampoo
@bemused: Cross burnings.
Iowa Old Lady
The man cannot stop himself on any topic:
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
He did, and it’s a fine statement. But at some point (sooner rather than later, please), I want him and others to end their messages with “Therefore, I withdraw my previous endorsement of Donald Trump. I will not be voting for him.”
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
Since picking Palin McCain has surrendered any pretense of having ethics or being a voice for reason or decency. Shut up, Walnuts, you helped start this, wallow in its splendor.
Any chance he loses his seat?
Mike in DC
@J R in WV:
On the one hand, it’s refreshing to see that America is willing to elect a person who clearly has a serious mental illness as president. On the other hand, malignant narcissism with several comorbid illnesses is not the ideal test case…
J R in WV
@GregB:
I’m thinking your SATSQ is “Yes.”
Major Major Major Major
@NCSteve: very helpful, thank you.
Another thing that bothers me about my co-Millenials is that I routinely see “oh, really, ANOTHER most important election of our lives? How CONVENIENT for the imperfect Democrat.” So I guess it hasn’t always felt that way. Good to know.
philadelphialawyer
@Major Major Major Major: Why does a strong third party candidate make an election “weird?” And not even that strong, compared to the Dixiecrats of Wallace and Thurmon, who carried States. We have had them for over a century. Why do claims of stolen, at least as regards 2004, make an election weird, as, again, that was said back in 1960? I agree Bush v Gore and birther are outside the electoral norms.
Legal and constitutional challenges to laws are also quite normal. As is resistance at the State level of implementation of Federal laws. Why do you think otherwise? And why do you see it as primarily “election” related? As with impeachment, it seems like you are trying to cram all oppositional politics into the election basket. Not sure why, as, again, I agree that the Repubs are playing politics outside the norms at all levels, including elections.
As to the surprise factor, well, again, we are nicer, and think others will usually play by the rules. And think that we should.
Also, and this is why I think we are actually in agreement, political, in general, and not just electoral,”hardball,” as you seem to be implying, is somewhat anti democratic, and, again, we believe in democracy. We believe in it as a positive good, in and of itself, and not just as a means to an end. For them, many of them blatantly don’t like it (and thus blather on about “republic” versus “democracy,” or even openly admire aristocracies, monarchies, dictatorships, oligarchies, and all forms of elitism) or, at best, see it as a means to enacting their agenda. When we lose at democracy, we try harder to win at it. When they lose, they seek to go around it, or over it, or whatever.
Trentrunner
@sigaba: Good point. But I would say *both* are valid. The question is which one matters more. Unsure.
japa21
The more this goes on, the more convinced I am that Trump will end up below 40% of the vote and the Dems will take back both the Senate and the House. Currently Trump’s favorable numbers are way below the numbers he is getting in the polls, which means a large part of his support electorally is really anti-Clinton based.
I think Clinton started to sway people with the convention and will continue to do so throughout the campaign, specially after Labor Day when folks are paying more attention. Currently a lot of her support is anti-Trump but that will start to change as her favorable numbers increase. And no, I am not being complacent.
As for other Republicans, they are between a rock and a hard place. They know that Trump has a strong support with the base, so if they try to disavow Trump, they will have that base turn on them and possibly not show up at the polls. However, if they get tied to the Trumpster too much, they will lose the support of some of their voters. Disavowing Trump comments but not Trump is going to hurt them, because any competent Dem candidate will merely say, words are cheap, where are the actions. That was the big message from the Khans and what they are really focusing on now. In a lot of House districts, that could make a major difference.
philadelphialawyer
@NCSteve: Agree with most of what you wrote, but Wallace, Anderson, Perot and
Perot were not decisive spoilers.
Ian
@philadelphialawyer:
What understanding of Watergate do you have? It wasn’t “the Democrats” that made Nixon resign, it was his own party. They agreed, bipartisanly, that he was a CROOK. He broke the law and they were going to punish him for it before he resigned and Ford pardoned him.
Chris
@Brachiator:
My own reaction to that movie was a resounding “meh.” But yeah, small homage there.
As far as “which sci-fi character is Trump?” it seems obvious that he’s Biff Tannen. Not least because Biff Tannen was, IRL, based on Trump.
peach flavored shampoo
@Iowa Old Lady: I guess we could have predicted this, but it really has developed into a situation where, without any hyperbole, one can safely say that everything Trump says is a a lie.
And we have a “media” that simply does not call a liar a liar. Even “Misspoke”, “out of context”, “misunderstood” isn’t used; he just lies about the lie he told previously. And George Snufflapaguss just nods his noggin in response.
J R in WV
@NotMax:
I believe Mr Khan is a highly regarded lawyer in his own right, which would make suing him stupid by definition.
Also, I think Senator McCain of the many crashed fighters is behind in his re-election campaign in Arizona. Wouldn’t that be sweet, tossing the old curmudgeon out of his fancy Senatorial club~?!?
Citizen_X
@Major Major Major Major:
Ah, the Republican Congress card!
FlipYrWhig
@NCSteve: @Major Major Major Major: The 1988 election was the one that popularized the idea of running on smears and bullshit rather than policy. The 1968 election was perhaps the prototype, but the ’88 one was nothing but ginned-up nonsense being flung by Republicans and treated gleefully by the media (Willie Horton, the Pledge of Allegiance, “optics” like Dukakis in a tank or answering a debate question too dipassionately), and Democrats were unable to fight fire with fire. I’m 44 and I think the last “normal” elections (two adults debate actual issues and we see which one prevails) were ’76 (which I don’t remember specifically), ’80, and ’84. Maybe ’96. ’00 was in some ways about actual issues when the candidates clashed directly, but the media didn’t cover the issues, only personalities and horse-race stuff.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: I know nothing whatsoever about Arizona politics.
NotMax
@philadelphialawyer
Well put, that.
Shorter version:
All politics is dirty, Republican politics is filthy.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic: I hear they’re muy caliente.
germy
cmorenc
We can be thankful Trump is so busy repeatedly shooting himself in the foot in such spectacularly repugnant fashion – otherwise, Hillary Clinton’s absolutely bone-headed answer to Chris Wallace in her Fox interview this weekend about her understanding of what FBI Director Jim Comey’s conclusions were about classified info on her email server might be the relentless focus of the MSM right now. Irrespective of the fact that the GOP has conducted a determined, mendacious campaign to magnify molehills into Himalayan-scale mountains in the email server matter – the way she answered did not help her repair the damage to her impression for honesty with many voters beyond just those within the closed universe of Fox-bots. She should have quit with: “I made mistakes, which I won’t repeat”.
Sorry, forgot to include a link to her answers – google the Washington Post article on this (i.e. a non-Fox source).
philadelphialawyer
@Ian: Both houses were overwhelmingly Democratic, and the Democrats drove the bus in the committee hearings in both houses.
I would also point out that I originally mentioned Watergate in passing, and only said that forcing Nixon out for his crimes was “arguably” a case of going outside the then established norms,
FlipYrWhig
@japa21:
I predict that if this happens, it will be concurrent with a high-single-digits vote for Johnson and Stein combined. Hence Hillary won’t break 50%, the media will say she doesn’t have a “mandate,” and Republicans will say, well, the majority of the country still didn’t want her, so don’t expect us to roll over for her. (I don’t think they’ll behave any better if she cracks 50%, but I think the media would be less complicit in the story.)
OzarkHillbilly
@Chris: Hmmm, for some reason the Baron Harkonnen comes to mind even if Trump does not have Christie’s svelte physique.
SiubhanDuinne
@philadelphialawyer:
In the early 1970s, veterans made up something like 75% of the Congress (both chambers). I strongly suspect that the shared wartime experiences of these (almost entirely) men — on the battlefield, on board ship, all fighting a well-defined and common enemy — helped ensure at least a baseline of civility and agreeing to rules, no matter how much they disagreed on policy. Thirty years earlier, they had all fought for the same basic values, and they weren’t about to trash that history by pissing all over the rules.
eclare
@Brachiator: I hate it too, but it seems like Mr. and Mrs. Khan are up for the battle. Trump picked the wrong family to mess with.
BR
@Major Major Major Major:
1996 was pretty normal. The GOP had crazed conspiracies about Clinton, but Dole didn’t stoop to that level.
Betty Cracker
@Iowa Old Lady: Yeah, that bastard has even lured me onto Twitter:
Now he’s highlighting a “four Pinnochio” rating the WaPo’s crappy fact-checker gave Clinton for an interview she did on Fox over the weekend. I watched that interview, and honestly, I didn’t think it was a very good one for Clinton — the email story is complex as hell, and explaining looks like dissembling. But thanks to Trump’s inability to shut his big fat mouth, that story is getting buried.
philadelphialawyer
@SiubhanDuinne: Good point.
grandpa john
@SiubhanDuinne: until he pulls his endorsement the rest of it is typical cover his ass bullshit
geg6
@Gin & Tonic:
This. No more accurate portrayal of American presidential campaigns has ever been written. And definitely not so entertainingly.
Ben Cisco
@butnspbesq: Especially since he didn’t rescind his endorsement of Trump’s candidacy.
MattF
OT. I follow @Internetofshit on Twitter– which posts ‘Internet of Things’ products that, um, aren’t good ideas, to put it mildly. This one takes a prize.
FlipYrWhig
@SiubhanDuinne: I think you’re totally right about the correlation between the waning of WWII as a collective memory and the toxification of Republican politics. Another factor is the similar waning of the Cold War, during which American officialdom felt like it was very important to avow inclusivity and tolerance as American values and during which public racism and xenophobia were considered shameful because they diminished America in the eyes of the nonaligned world. (I hasten to add that the attitudes behind them remained robust–those are also the Jim Crow years–but “elites” in both parties and the media were embarrassed by such things.) I think a sort of civic pride and attendant civic virtue were more widely held both among citizens and in the corridors of power. Some of it was a sham, but at least it was what the nation purported to believe. Without WWII and the Cold War as a check on individualism and intolerance, they’ve metastasized.
nonynony
@philadelphialawyer:
I think you’re not understanding why the Republicans actually pulled out impeachment on Clinton (which they knew was never going to pass the Senate) or why they have opposed Obamacare so fiercely (because, with the exception of the Medicaid expansion, it’s the kind of market-driven plan that their center-right flank claims to love). For them everything is about elections.
Clinton wasn’t impeached to get him out of office – Clinton was impeached to discredit him and prevent him from helping another Democrat win office (they managed half of that – he wasn’t ever discredited, but they did convince Gore to make the dumbest possible campaign misstep of his life and distance himself from Clinton and then make the second-dumbest misstep and embrace Joe Lieberman). It was pure electioneering for the next election.
Likewise Obamacare wasn’t opposed because of a policy dispute – if it was about policy Obama and the center-left/centrist Dems in the Senate were literally begging the GOP to come to the table and cut some bargains. They could have gotten almost anything they wanted in that healthcare deal – hell they might have even been able to cripple the Medicaid support legislatively rather than getting Roberts to do it for them. No, they en masse opposed the ACA because it was an election tactic – a desire to turn out the base and depress Democrats for 2010 and 2012 and to make Obama a “one term president”. And again – they succeeded halfway – they managed to tweak their base a bit higher for 2010 but failed to do anything about 2012.
If you think of the Republicans as being in office to advance policy you are sadly mistaken. They advance policy only when they hold all of the levers of power – if they have to compromise with Dems to get 90% of what they want they won’t do it. Because their entire goal is to win elections and hold power, and they’ve discovered that if they appeal to the dark underbelly of democracy they don’t have to actually have popular policies to win elections, so why bother with policies?
nominus
@SiubhanDuinne: that’s exactly what the problem is – he and Ryan and the rest of them are completely spineless. That’s how people get thrown into gas chambers and ovens. McCain thinks he can stay blissfully ignorant, Ryan thinks it will only happen to the bad ones who had it coming.
We really shouldn’t have devalued the Nazi term all these years, now that we have actual Nazis to fight.
sherparick
@Brachiator: The part of America that is white male, that is. For the non-white males, and the environment, not so much.
hovercraft
The pastor of the New Life mega church in Colorado Springs says that he doesn’t think his congregation is going to vote for Trump en masse, because of immigration, many of his members are illegal and part of the community. They have families, businesses and are law abiding. They probably will not vote Clinton because of abortion and gay marriage, so they may just stay home. He said the fight that Trump is having with the Khans does not change how he thinks of him, asked if attended the rally Trump held on Friday, he responded that he choose to mow his lawn instead. Ouch. If Trump can’t win El Paso County he has no shot at winning Colorado.
ThresherK
@Barbara: “You call that banging a shoe? I’ll show you how to bang a shoe, Nikita!”
tobie
@Major Major Major Major: I think since Reagan (in my view) and definitely since George W Bush, every election has felt like the most important ever because the Republican party has gotten so unhinged. Trump is the culmination of a party that has for years been feeding the idea that the urban elites are against the white working class and that black and brown people are siphoning the money from the state that the white working class has paid in taxes. This is the Republican pitch since Reagan now on display in all its ugliness and cruelty in Trump. What’s new this season is that we had a Democratic candidate running against the Democratic party who received a large share of the vote and whose young supporters to an alarming degree see no difference between the GOP and the Democrats. I don’t know what can be done about this.
nonynony
@FlipYrWhig:
Stein isn’t going to break 3%. I’m giving myself some buffer room, but I’d be shocked if she breaks 1%.
Johnson, OTOH, has a shot at breaking 10% this cycle. Especially because he seems to be moderating some of the looniest bits of the Libertarians to try to drag center-right Republicans over to make a protest vote.
hovercraft
@Mike in DC:
Vote Vets chimed in yesterday calling him despicable. They leans left, but hopefully we’ll see more statements like theirs and the gold star families..
SiubhanDuinne
@butnspbesq:
@butnspbesq:
Very much O/T:
When (and why) did you change your nym? Get caught up in one of those Yatsuno/Yutsano things?
#NoneOfMyBusiness #JustCurious
cain
@Betty Cracker:
No no no.. we’ll only promote the damn thing. Keep it in the comments. It won’t help, it’ll just get more people interested in the story and 24 hour news will have some fucked up panel where crazy right wing guy and moderate guy and gal will battle it out. Basically FAIL. :/
cain
BTW, did anybody get the ratfucking the Donald was doing by describing the Khans attack on them as ‘vicious’. Anybody draw a parallel with ISIS? Assholes.
Major Major Major Major
@nonynony: this is what I was trying to get at, thank you.
NorthLeft12
The other Gold Star families nailed it when they correctly identified the issue as one of common decency, which Trump and his supporters have purposefully misidentified as political correctness.
As VP Biden emphasized in his speech at the DNC, what kind of man seems to take pleasure from firing or degrading a fellow human being? Who is raised that way?
Trump and his followers are odious people who need to be called out wherever they raise their heads.
SuzieC
@tobie:
https://morningconsult.com/2016/07/21/poll-millennials-go-clinton-trump-cant-buy-older-minority-vote/
Actually Clinton holds a huge lead among Millennials. Question is how many will turn out.
Fair Economist
@cmorenc:
The summary on TPM made it sound like she did a good job. She pointed out Comey said she did NOT lie.
Even if you say she could have done better, she handled her email better than any preceding SecState. She *should* stick up for herself more. And since it’s just become a political witchhunt, she probably should start calling it that.
geg6
@Ian:
Yup, Barry Goldwater himself went to the White House to tell Tricky that he was going to vote to convict him. It wasn’t the Dems who pushed him out, it was the GOPers.
Patricia Kayden
@Betty Cracker: Yet McCain has endorsed The Donald.
Quinerly
@sigaba:
@104…I’m always amazed but MSNBC and NPR manage to find at least 2-4 a day and include them in their broadcasts. Especially NPR.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
Yes, and for someone who constantly brags about his great memory, he has a terrible time even remembering whether he’s met someone, like his Art of the Deal ghostwriter, or Vladimir Putin, or even knows who someone is, like David Duke.
scav
@nonynony: I’m not convinced that any actions of the >2 parties really matter in terms of the numbers they’ll end up with. I’m assuming results will be at least in part dominated by noise by people voting random third party with no real knowledge of their actual breathing candidates, let alone their adjustments. Probably will be some bias for or against the name Green or Libertarian based on personal preconceptions, but I’m really unconvinced the average voter will put that much thought into their plague on both your houses vote.
geg6
@germy:
Yeah, well…I know for a fact (I have actual eye witnesses) who know that he sacrificed marriage number one by bonking not-yet-Wife #2 in the pantry of Mara Largo while Wife #1 was hosting a party for one or another of his business ventures.
Jeffro
@gbear:
BIG PICTURE: if the Khans – brown, Muslim, Trump-attackers – are allowed to ‘stand’ with their attacks, then the whole fear-based rationale for Trump’s candidacy crumbles. No wonder the RW media and Trump/Stone/Manafort are going nuts. It cracks their whole stupid, simplistic world view right in half.
D58826
The RWNJ went ballistic when Megan Kelly wore a spaghetti strap dress with bare shoulders on the air. Wonder what they will say with Melania naked on the front page of the NY Post?
geg6
@philadelphialawyer:
It doesn’t matter who ran both houses. It wasn’t the articles of impeachment that convinced him to resign. It was the GOPers of the Senate, led by his old buddy Barry Goldwater himself, that forced him out by telling him they were going to vote to convict.
ThresherK
@geg6: She must have known something was up when Donald kept introducing her to potential investors as “Ivana, my first wife”.
cain
@Kay:
I’m not sure I agree.. they would piss off the base to such an extent that congress and the president will flip and we don’t know how long because they would have truly screwed the pooch. The base will abandon them and I think you’ll see a new party rise from that.. a white nationalist party that is just even more fucking crazy. Between that and the Democratic party, the Republican party won’t have many adherents until they start moving as close to the center as possible.
trollhattan
@nonynony:
Johnson at least interviews as a sane person, while a scan of his party’s platform shows the same commitment to dismantling the federal government as back in the David Koch era, only with fewer corrosive adjectives. So yeah, quite a few never-Trumpsters and more than a few rightist Berners will become Libertarian light.
sherparick
Steve M at “No More Mr. Nice Blog” has been pretty prescient about this election. About the Khan affair, he predicts that “… that this multi-day story won’t push Trump’s numbers down further, and that Trump will narrow the gap several times before November. By November, no voter is going to say, “I would have voted for Trump, but he attacked those Muslim Gold Star parents” — either you were already disgusted by Trump’s hatemongering or you’re incapable of seeing people like the Khans as human. And if you’re in the latter category, you’re in the majority of white Americans — which is the real problem.” http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2016/08/after-his-attacks-on-khans-trump-is-as.html#links
trollhattan
@D58826: “Hubba-hubba”
Chris
@NorthLeft12:
What else has political correctness ever been?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Major Major Major Major: I’ve been asking for years. Almost a decade. No one can give me an answer, but everyone is damn well adamant that we are absolutely not supposed to do so, that losing is far preferable. I don’t understand this mindset. I never will.
TriassicSands
Trump has one terrible week after another and his poll numbers don’t really suffer.
He could strangle the Pope on YouTube and the majority of his supporters would cheer.
Trump is playing by rules that no one else even understands — and how could they, they’re rules designed for sociopaths and complete idiots.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Chris: Politeness and good manners, in addition to common decency. But yeah. A LOT of Americans have a problem with being told that being nice and respectful to others is something they should do.
eric
@CONGRATULATIONS!: because the MSM is in the bag for the right, so the dems have to pay a collective price defending the hardball in a way the GOP does not. The right squawks louder so that any “failure” in the press to “correct” or “balance” coverage unleashes a fleet of shit flinging gibbons
Jeffro
@TriassicSands:
1) Not true – he is back down nationally, Clinton is up, and most importantly, the EV map hasn’t changed for the worse. In fact, there is some evidence that PA is looking good for Clinton, and FL is looking really good.
2) True, unfortunately.
3) Josh Marshall understands – see some of his stuff over at TPM about Trump and ‘dominance rituals’
MattF
@SiubhanDuinne: Not to mention his astronomical IQ. Goes with his 3rd-grade vocabulary.
Face
She could get 88% of the vote, and they’ll pull out the “no mandate” card. The GOP base is beyond reasoning, beyond facts, beyond common sense, and their pols know this. The GOP has mastered the art of the talking point, and they’ll use the “no mandate” card as the excuse for the GOP House (it aint flippin, y’all) will block everything she proposes, regardless of national support. Sigh.
geg6
@ThresherK:
It’s a really sick and disgusting thought to me, this story these people tell me. They were brought in as catering and waitstaff (the chef and his staff, from a Stuart,FL yacht club) because they had won some major award and Trump heard about it and insisted on having them cater for the party. They were serving guests and moving from appetizers to salad course, which necessitated the waitstaff going in and out of the pantry A LOT. They came out and complained to the chef about the spectacle in the pantry and were told to just ignore it and say nothing. He was literally bonking her where the food was stored and the guests at his party were eating that stuff. Ick, ick, ick.
Patricia Kayden
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Thanks for that link. This is how Rethugs desperately attempt to stop minorities from voting. They are disgusting.
Dork
@D58826: I suspect hand lotion and Kleenex sales skyrocketed in the NYC metro area.
bupalos
@japa21:
The problem is his incompetence and bumbling and misanthropy have been on full display for months now and he is where he is. I think the “I could shoot someone in the street” statement may have had more salience than we thought.
Of course, on the other hand, I think we’re already at the point where he could singlehandedly disarm a hoard of berserking terrorists with his bare hands while shielding a basket of crippled kittens and he wouldn’t go up much either.
randy khan
@TriassicSands:
His poll numbers do suffer during some of this bad weeks – he got hurt by the Mexican judge comments, for instance. If I were running the Clinton campaign, I’d try to pick up on some of the things that actually hurt him and figure out how to encourage more of that.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Compared to the vast majority of his supporters, yes.
Compared to Michael Bloomberg, he’s a pauper.
But even if Trump’s net worth was only, say, $2 billion, he would still be wealthier than most people who have ever lived.
ThresherK
@geg6: “Dude, God invented broom closets for a reason.”
SiubhanDuinne
@FlipYrWhig:
Fine observations. Thanks.
hovercraft
Tamron Hall demolished a Trump military advisor, some retired Admiral, got him to admit he does not feel Trump owes an apology. He tried to filibuster her on the rules of engagement back in 2004, trying to blame Hillary, she pointed out that Bush was president, Pence voted for the war and Trump at the time supported it. She was ruthless, she cut him off, said he left her no choice but to assume he didn’t think an apology necessary, he replied his words spoke for themselves. She said yes they do, thank you for your time.
Miss Bianca
@philadelphialawyer:
Yup. I just asked my most hard-core BoBer friend – who is now claiming that it’s his *daughters*, for all love, who have persuaded him to vote against HRC! – Jesus wept – what it means that Bernie Sanders came out and endorsed Clinton. Could not resist asking him if that meant it was possible she wasn’t, in fact, the World’s Greatest Monster. I bet what he’ll come back with – if he bothers to respond, because he’s now pleading exhaustion – is that all it means is that Bernie Sanders is a sell-out, and unworthy of the trust that his True Believers placed in him. You heard it here first.
bupalos
@Jeffro:
Other way around I think. I have a customer that is pretty high in the R-donor ranks that was saying they are pretty much writing off Pennsylvania. Interesting though that this guy, who has been railing about Trump since 7 or 8 months ago is still involved in the election at POTUS level. His passion level is 0, but he’s still playing for the team.
Betty Cracker
@TriassicSands: Didn’t his poll numbers tank pretty badly during the Judge Curiel incident? I think (and hope!) they’ll take an even worse beating for his handling of the Khans. The thing is, these incidents reinforce past incidents also, which deepens the impression that he’s a racist and bully. I don’t think Trump is uniquely immune to people forming a bad opinion of him. Maybe with the hardcore base, but he can’t win just with them.
J R in WV
@bemused:
No, we didn’t get into that. We only talked about Trump for 5 minutes or so, it was a party and everyone was trying (successfully) to have a good time. Music on the front porch, food and discussion in the kitchen, and A/C in there, too.
But there was the professional, experienced psychologist, I had to ask. He was certain too, no waffle speak at all.
Brachiator
@eric:
Which MSM? Funny, the Bernie-naughts insist that the MSM is in the bag for Hillary. And since Hillary is the same as Trump, all right wing, all the time.
And all those formerly conservative papers, like the one in Houston, which have endorsed Clinton. Yep. False flag operation.
It’s just lazy and reductive to talk about a monolithic MSM.
But I know. Some people just can’t give it up. It’s almost like being an anti vaxxer or climate change denier.
raven
@Brachiator: it’s an easy target, like the VA.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@nonynony: OT – Am I correctly recalling that you are in SW OH – Hamilton County? If so, would you like to help with the Prosecutor campaign? I am a coordinator of volunteers for the D candidate. If all of the above are yes, you can get my email from a FPager or shoot me one to flsgreen at the gmail place.
BR
@Brachiator:
I still say you should push the Stein-leaning Berniebros to the left of Stein, so they are attacking her from the left.
SiubhanDuinne
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Political Correctness: It’s “You’re not the boss of me!!” writ large and codified for adults.*
* (“Adults” only in the chronological sense, of course.)
Shana
@Iowa Old Lady: Trump’s tweets on Ukraine and Crimea make even less sense than what he said on TV yesterday. Does he really think this is helping?
Brachiator
@sherparick:
Actually, Trump could have pitched a strong anti-establishment message to everyone and cleared the board. And he perversely claims to want to represent everyone, while feverishly attracting racists, sexists and other vermin.
eric
@Brachiator: any sentient human being that thinks that there is any meaningful portion of the MSM in the bag for Hillary is insane. Bernie got far fr far far less critical coverage across the board. If Hillary Clinton announced she was SYMPATHETIC to atheism and socialism (not even a practitioner), the MSM would collective orgasm at the fury of editorials as to the bankruptcy of her soul.
Gin & Tonic
@bupalos: Given the number of people in PA and OH of Slavic and Eastern European descent, I think the latest series of comments from Trump and his surrogates are drastically reducing the number of white votes he can count on. I, of course, encourage him to continue with this approach.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: this. There is no “the media.” There’s groupthink and selection bias and all that, but there’s no “the media” with a unified agenda.
Except Fox.
Calouste
@philadelphialawyer:
Kennedy would have won in 1960 even if he lost Illinois. He would still have had 276 EVs. Bush would have lost in 2004 without Ohio.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Betty Cracker: Last lawyer I was working for said it very well: “if you’re explaining you’re losing”. And he’s right, at least in court.
Brachiator
@BR:
What’s to the left of Stein? Anarcho-syndacalism?
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Yep. Fox and other Murdoch news and media properties.
Miss Bianca
@hovercraft:
From your mouth to God’s ear. Or, Deity of Choice. I think you’re right tho’ – I think Clinton is going to take the state.
Doug
@PaulWartenberg2016: I have read elsewhere that he is contractually barred from criticizing Trump. He’s useless as a commentator if that is true.
hovercraft
@bupalos:
Here are the current RCP battleground averages.
eric
@Brachiator: I disagree. the amount of true left leaning publications is next to nil from a circulation stand point. Certainly the NYT counts as liberal for most people (not me), but it has NEVER been a friend to the Clintons and to get the press to go left hard, it would take the nomination of a raving bigot, and yet, still not there. all of corporate media takes mostly anti-labor and especially anti-union stands. Obama saved the American auto industry and look how little play that has ever gotten. I am not arguing that the MSM is “conservative,” but it is not liberal and rarely comes out agressively in favor of the left.
Lit3Bolt
Trump won’t apologize, because the only things he apologizes for are himself, white supremacy, and Russia.
hovercraft
@Miss Bianca:
The Clinton camp seems to feel they are in good shape there, they’ve stopped advertising there for the time being, and are going on offense in states that are must win for him. Which is basically everywhere, without Florida where he is leading but no one believes he is going to win, he needs to sweep the rest of the battleground states.
cmorenc
@Fair Economist:
Sometimes we need to be wary of viewing events too much from within our own progressive-minded bubble, even though our overall objectivity isn’t warped to remotely the same extent as those within the epistemologically closed RW/Fox News bubble. TPM bills itself as: “Commentary on political events from a politically left perspective” – a far more honest self-description and much closer-to-objective presentation than the fraudulent “Fair and Balanced” perspective presented by Fox News, but OTOH not necessarily conveying how events are perceived by members of the public who don’t self-identify as progressives.
This is decidedly one of those matters where we need to be wary, when even if undeserved, a strong majority of the public has problems with the honesty of both major-party candidates, including Clinton. The potential perception problems among the broader public with Clinton’s answer to Chris Wallace about the email matter is better seen in this Washington Post article – especially where Clinton appears to attempt to deflect responsibility upon her aides, and the fact that her answers come across as technical and legalistic rather than straightforward to many folks:
(quote from the article).
In short, technically accurate does not necessarily come across as truthful (even though it might to us) – and Clinton would have been far smarter to have focused on the fact that Comey concluded that Clinton did not lie to the FBI and that she takes responsibility for making what in retrospect were mistakes that she is determined never to repeat. Again, Clinton is fortunate to be blessed with an opponent who habitually makes so many egregious, repugnant, unforced errors dominating so many news cycles, demonstrating to everyone outside the closed RW bubble how unfit he is by temperament and judgment to be POTUS.
OzarkHillbilly
@bupalos: Over at OTB Doug Mataconis disagrees: Donald Trump’s Path To Potential Victory Is Already Narrowing
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne:
Stuff like this is why you are one of my Top Ten Favorite Metro Atlanta-based Posters.
SiubhanDuinne
This is relevant to all the comments about McCain, Ryan, and all the other Repubs who want to distance themselves from Trump’s evil/stupidity/craziness, but refuse to withdraw their endorsements.
OzarkHillbilly
@bupalos: I think I misunderstood what you were saying was ‘the other way around’. If so, sorry ’bout that.
Brachiator
@Chris:
I enjoyed this latest installment more than the previous two films. The first was overwrought. The second was insipid and blatant fan wankery. For me, the leads all settled comfortably into their incarnations of the crew of the Enterprise and I liked most of the story. Some rough spots, and as I recall, the first director and writers were fired, but the studio didn’t adjust the release date by much, which put more pressure on everyone to get it done.
But I understand the reservations that many others have. But I almost think that Trek is better suited to TV than to movies, unless you bring some big brass talent to the task.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
I think there are only nine of us altogether, but thanks!
Eric U.
@CONGRATULATIONS!: that’s why they keep bringing up the emails even though there is no news about it. So many people are ignorant about classification matters, even people that have security clearances. At this point, any talk about the emails is republican electioneering, but I don’t know why anyone in the media does it unless they are republican tools. Which far too many of them are.
Dork
@hovercraft: I’m a bit worried about FL; his overt racism seems to play into the ever-increasingly insane state. North FL is probably worse than most of Bama and MS w/r/t white trash redneck bigoted Klan wannabes.
Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill
Lewandowski is not an outlier in his behavior as a Trump surrogate. Guys like Trump hire handlers (lawyers, accountants, managers, spox) that are just like them – preening, screeching howler monkeys that go off at anything perceived as provocation or pushback. That Lewandowski shrieked like a little girl over being touched is a feature, not a bug – he’s a toady for a bully, and a sniveling candy ass, all aggression, no nuggets.
Betty Cracker
@hovercraft: I don’t think Trump will win Florida. I’m going to do everything in my power to prevent it, that’s for damn sure.
piratedan
@hilts: my guess is that they’d be split up in regards to wither “woohoo, he tapped that ass!!!” and others indicating that she probably seduced him… yeah, I think that they are that self delusional because it all boils down to… “well, at least he’d cut MY taxes”….
Miss Bianca
@Steve in the ATL: @SiubhanDuinne: Agreed. You rock, Ms. S-D!
Kay
Nice Ohio poll for Clinton. If Ohio starts to go toward Clinton more solidly (with fewer undecideds) then that has always meant Pennsylvania is already there, so we can just stop worrying about the whole region when she’s ahead in Ohio :)
That’s how I look at it anyway. It’s easier than following 4 different states. W/Ohio you can check off PA, WI, and MI.
OzarkHillbilly
@SiubhanDuinne: It is constant reminders of what a talentless hack i am like that that reminds me of why I hate you so much. ;-)
Chris
@eric:
My impression of the MSM is that it’s chiefly a repository of conventional wisdom, written by people whose main experience over the last fifty years has been to watch conservatives win, and whose POV tends to come from a more wealthy and East Coast background than the average American’s.
Of course, it’s been years since I paid close attention to it, so maybe it’s changing.
Tripod
@Tim F.:
The GOP has become a bunch of rat fucking and race baiting done in rote, without regard to political or policy outcome. It’s now a single issue, white nationalist party.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: Seriously funny.
Kay
The Clinton OR Trump voters in the Ohio poll are also REALLY solid.
90% of Clinton voters “wouldn’t consider” voting for Trump. They’re done. They could vote today and it would be the same as November.
hovercraft
@Dork: @Betty Cracker:
Betty correct me if I’m wrong but my understanding is the the I-30 corridor in the middle of the state, is the most important part of the state, and the Puerto Rican population there has absolutely exploded in part due to the debt crisis. The panhandle of Florida is called the Red Neck Riviera for a reason, but with even the Cuban population turning away from the gop Florida is a very heavy lift despite what the polls are showing right now.
Jeffro
@bupalos:
Yes, interesting. A lot of folks feel quite personally invested in politics (heck, some of us are on political message boards during our lunch hours ;)
I think this ‘still playing for the team’ thing is simple pain avoidance. If a significant number of GOP officials had really tried to rally non-Trump Republicans, they would have split their party this past spring. They’ve been hoping Trump can get it together, or at least together-enough, that they can hold their nose and keep the party through this election (even knowing Trump dims their chances of winning…at least the party survives).
But…he just keeps lobbing shitbombs everywhere, the RNC sucked, the DNC was tremendous, and since then we’ve had the Khans front and center, causing so much cognitive dissonance on the Right that they don’t know what to do. Heck there was one Trump clown on CNN yesterday who got pantsed so badly I had to watch the video three times…said clown continued to try and pivot from the Khans to “this is really about radical Islamic terrorism” (to the point where the host called him out from trying to associate the Khans with that).
Ryan, McConnell, McCain – they’re all trying to thread the needle here, trying to make the calculation as to what will keep their careers and their party alive. Nobody’s going to lead an effort to #DumpTrump, I think. But if they give up on him or pull endorsements, the whole thing starts to crumble, and then Trump (& his supporters) are throwing shitbombs inside the tent, not outside it.
They should have just bitten the bullet, stood on principles (once they found some), and started again from the ashes in Dec. But this bill has been due for about 36 years now. I think they’re going to ride it all the way in…
Brachiator
@cmorenc:
Great point.
I guess that some of Clinton’s supporters would say that she is comprehensive in her answers. But sometimes it comes across as triangulating her response, to cover every base, even when she is absolutely correct about the issue.
Maybe another way of stating this is that coming across as technically accurate is not the same thing as seeming to be honest.
And to be clear, I am not just bashing Clinton. Sometimes, she obviously is connecting deeply with the people she is speaking to. Other times, there is so much wind up and perspective and clarification that the point is almost lost.
For example, she is clearly and consistently pro-choice, but I saw her once answer a question about abortion with a long preamble about how much she has fought for women, etc. All of this is true. But I wanted her to say something simpler, that of course she supported a woman’s right to choose and she would ever let her opponents take that right away. I know that is what she believes. I have seen her do the work. And the choice between her and the Republicans is stark.
And again, it is not just that Bill or Obama are more charismatic. I have heard people say that she often comes across as warmer and more direct in person, even compared to Bill.
And again, she seems to be making her personal style work for her. And that’s what matters.
ETA: I liked how at the end of the latest Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill had suggestions on how Hillary could come out as Notorious HRC. It was actually some good satire.
Chris
@Brachiator:
The first one, I just couldn’t get over the basic premise. You can make a story in which the characters become the senior crew of the Enterprise, or a story about them as newly minted Academy graduates on their first adventure: pick one. The second, what you said. This one I just mostly found bland – it doesn’t help that they got a pretty good actor for the villain, only to bury him under layers of makeup and a weird accent.
It’s not all bad. I liked Spock and McCoy getting stranded together, I liked the actress from Kingsman, and I liked that city-in-space thing.
As for working better on TV, I’m looking forward to that new show next year much more than anything in the rebooted universe. Although, the eighties TOS movies are still my favorite part of Star Trek.
hovercraft
The VFW has now piled on to the Dumpster. I don’t think he understood that for the vast majority of American’s being a fallen soldier and a war hero trumps the fact that he was a muslim. He is thankfully seen as an American Hero, who happens to be a muslim.
So Trump and Roger Stone can go f**k themselves.
FlipYrWhig
@cmorenc: I’m not sure if it could be pulled off, but what I’d like to see is a distinction between the sin of not following policy (you’re not supposed to use a private server, so even if other people had done it, it’s problematic from an internal-policy perspective) and the sin of endangering national security (you’re running the risk of exposing classified information to people who shouldn’t have it). Because there’s no evidence that she did the latter. And I think what the Republicans are trying to do with the Russian DNC hack story is to mush it all together with the email story to say “Look at how much trouble Hillary and her team have keeping foreigners from rooting through private stuff, this is exactly what the FBI warned us about, this is why Hillary’s supposed competence and diligence are such a sham.”
My analogy the other day — were you on that thread? — was to a person who got a second master key to the building when there was only supposed to be one, but used it to get into her own office on the weekend. That may be against policy, but it’s not doing any harm. Using a second master key to rifle through other people’s offices, or giving out the second master key to the babysitter or something, _those_ are much more serious problems. I kind of like the analogy but I’m not sure it’d convince anyone who didn’t want to be convinced already.
Glaukopis
@Miss Bianca: I heard exactly this from my BoB friend yesterday. Bernie somehow got bought off and corrupted so now she’s justified in abandoning the Democratic Party.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Major Major Major Major:
Attacks on the family of vets is way outside even GOP politics.
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
Got a link to the video?
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: Bill C. has never been known for the zip and punch of his answers, though. He likes to talk and explain. Gore is the same way, Kerry is the same way, Obama is the same way, and Hillary is the same way. If it’s a fault it’s a fault possessed by A LOT of contemporary Democrats.
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
Just came to post about this.
philadelphialawyer
@Calouste: But there is no strong evidence that Ohio was stolen. People actually went to jail in Illinois over the vote fraud. So, to me, its a wash. Stolen election claims are not new.
Brachiator
@nonynony:
I don’t think this is entirely the case. The GOP loves to wield powerwhen they have it, and to stymie the Democrats when they don’t have it.
The Democrats scramble to try to win elections, but then don’t seem to know what to do after they have won. So they keep promising, “well, next election, we will really do … something.”
When Obama was elected, the Democrats could not unify and come up with a coherent or comprehensive domestic policy. And at times they seemed to pointlessly oppose Obama. Maybe part of this is the downside of having a big tent. Some factions are closer to the Republicans than to the Democrats.
Betty Cracker
@hovercraft: It’s the I-4 corridor — interstate highway between Tampa and Orlando — but yes, that’s a good summary. It’ll probably be closer than we’d like, but I don’t think Trump will win. I could see it being very close or even a huge wipe-out for Trump if the many older retiree women decide to repudiate that sexist cretin Trump at the polls but don’t like saying so to pollsters with their husbands in the room.
Anoniminous
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Personal dignity is surgically removed from journalism students during their Senior Year.
jonas
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Oh, I’m sure there are plenty of felonies he could commit that wouldn’t shift his support much. He’d probably have come out on repealing the Second Amendment before you saw large numbers of his base starting to bail on him. But insulting some towelhead because his loser son got killed in Iraq? Meh. They really don’t care. The whole subtext of Trump’s attacks is that these people aren’t “real” Americans to begin with, so fuck them.
As usual, about 40% of Americans are basically cool with that.
James E Powell
@SiubhanDuinne:
i agree but would add that for most of the 1950-1970 there was a Cold War consensus on foreign policy – with many arguments under the umbrella of that consensus – and the post-war economy – never seen before, never to be seen again, was mostly about dividing the goodies.
philadelphialawyer
@nonynony: In other word, most of politics is ultimately about getting and using power, and winning elections is a big part of that. I agree. Still, I was responding to the claim that there was something specifically about “elections” these days that has gotten worse. And, I agreed with that too, but felt that some of the examples cited did not really fit the bill. OK, sure, with knee bone connected to the foot bone reasoning, you can make anything that happens in politics be all about winning and losing elections. Whatevs.
Anoniminous
@Punchy:
If Trump only gets 45% of the vote the Democrats will take the presidency, the Senate, and have an inside track to flip the House.
gvg
@hovercraft: I-30 seems to be in Texas. I think you meant I-4.
NorthLeft12
@bupalos:
It is guys like this who I would consider to be more dangerous than Trump. They seem to be intelligent enough to understand the damage that Trump’s election could do, but somehow they are able to put that aside so that their side can be in power. Amoral d–bags, who know that they will be immune from the downside of the Republican agenda. Miserable and pathetic excuses for human beings. Whatever a patriot is, these guys aren’t.
Origuy
@Kay: Seven people in that survey reported that they had never heard of Barack Obama?
Miss Bianca
@Glaukopis: Head. Desk. Head. Desk. Repeat as often as necessary.
philadelphialawyer
@geg6: Well, I think it does matter. The Dems ran both houses, and the whole process, and that’s what led to the articles of impeachment, which in turn led to the question of what the GOP Senators would do. Just looking at the numbers, the Dems needed zero GOP votes in the House, and only a few in the Senate to get impeachment and conviction, respectively. In the only real recorded vote, in the House committee, ten of the seventeen GOPers voted against all the articles of impeachment. All 21 Dems approved at least one article. The Dems took down Nixon.
Looking at it more broadly, it was what passed for “the left” in the USA that drove the bus even before Congress got involved, ie Woodward and Bernstein, Graham, Bradlee, the NY Times, etc.
raven
@Enhanced Voting Techinques: Baloney
nonynony
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Sorry, no – I’m in central Ohio, not SW OH – Columbus not Cincy :)
Fair Economist
@Brachiator:
No almost. Trek is at its best when it’s deeper and more thoughtful, and it’s hard to fit that into the constant explosion and videogame setups of a blockbuster movie.
nonynony
@Origuy:
I think that falls well within the bounds of the “messing with the pollster because are you seriously asking me that question you dumbass” threshold.
The 22 who apparently haven’t heard of John Kasich is more disturbing. Because that suggests at least 15 of them were not screwing around and seriously did not know the name of our governor.
SiubhanDuinne
@Miss Bianca:
Aw, thanks, Miss B!
Ruckus
@Fair Economist:
It’s not a game flaw. It’s a brilliant design feature. Look a real life today. Look at what this post is about. We have a candidate who is willing to destroy pretty much everything he can if he doesn’t get his way. In other places he’d have been a rising dictator, but he isn’t smart enough to pull that off. So he runs for office and plays to the worst fears and desires of the lowest common denominator. That he is part of the group that has the worst fears and desires is beside the point. 4Ms friend is playing the same game as Trump.
The card is brilliant, it gives someone the chance to destroy to get what they want but are too unwilling to take the easy way out, which is the friend could have left, he could have not played but instead he destroyed by wanting to be the controlling player. Tell me that isn’t Trump. The card is a slice of real life, people destroy to control all the time.
hovercraft
@Kay:
Sam Clovis a Trump national co-chair said this morning that all the polls between now and Labor Day are meaningless and therefore should be ignored. They must be seeing something ugly in their internals. For the campaign that was bragging a week ago about their polling ‘surge’ to suddenly turn on a dime and say, nothing to see here move along, something had to have happened.
scav
@Origuy: There really needs to be a study of BSing and trolling in polls. And, if done, it needs to repeated, probably often. (as someone who, when bored enough not to hang up, worked to come up with the most outlier profile possible on polls with leading questions.)
Gin & Tonic
Fuck McCain. Here’s an example of what he could have said: “This election cycle is a test,” Bradshaw said. “As much as I don’t want another four years of (President Barack) Obama’s policies, I can’t look my children in the eye and tell them I voted for Donald Trump. I can’t tell them to love their neighbor and treat others the way they wanted to be treated, and then vote for Donald Trump. I won’t do it.”
Loyal Bush family retainer and confidante Sally Bradshaw, who changed her party registration from R to I and says she’ll vote for Hillz if Florida is close.
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: Just saw that, and I’ve got to say, I am stunned Bradshaw would publicly come out against a Republican candidate. She has been a big shot in Republican politics here in Florida forever. Wow.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
Here you go from RawStory.
Tokyokie
I read the attached link, and it’s not just a group of Gold Star families attacking Trump, it’s the fucking VFW! It’s the most right-wing and jingoistic of all the veterans groups, and they’re calling der Trumpenführer morally unfit to be president? WTF? I never thought it would have been possible to maintain a crypto-fascist presidential campaign in this country without at least the tacit support of the VFW, yet this whining wanker whelp has managed to do so. He’s like a rainbow of stupid.
Mike in DC
At this rate, veterans groups may return what little money Trump donated to them. Seriously, if Gold Star families and the VFW are denouncing you, you’re fucked. Technical term.
hovercraft
@gvg:
Yes, thanks Betty corrected me, my bad.
SiubhanDuinne
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well, I am insanely envious of your talents for building things, although I’m just as happy that writing parody doggerel doesn’t bring the same physical challenges! (Hope the fucked-up back is much better very soon.)
(Also good wishes to your buddy who was injured. Yikes!)
hovercraft
@Origuy:
Well people do wake up from long tern comas and need to be brought up to speed on world events.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Not what I am talking about (and the system keeps eating my responses, so here we go again).
Clinton, and Obama, at their best connect with the people they are speaking to. They give the questioner the feeling, “yes, I hear you.” Or the famously overused “I feel your pain.” And when Clinton explains, or even over explains, you can easily follow what he is saying, and he keeps it focused. At his best, he knows how to simplify and to clarify.
And he and Obama know how to pull a person in. “Here, let me tell you …”
Neither Kerry nor Gore have this talent.
It’s funny. During part of one of her speeches, Hillary slightly adopted the vocal cadence of a black woman preacher. And during one montage of her past experience as first lady of Arkansas, I heard her adopt a bit of a Southern accent when talking to someone. This is a side issue to what I am talking about, but it did seem in both of these instances, she became a little more relaxed and seemed to be talking with a person than abstractly considering and delivering a response.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@nonynony: At least I got the state!
bemused
@FlipYrWhig:
Dems’/liberals’ propensity to try to clearly explain stuff if what rightwhiners bitterly call lecturing. No one is going to tell them “what to think” or even think at all.
James E Powell
@Chris:
And although – as a group – employees in the press/media do not appear to be very learned, they are career smart. If they look to the left, they see a lot of formerly employed crusaders. If they look to their right, they see money. Huge piles of wingnut welfare money. So whatever their private thoughts, their public behavior never offends the Arthur Jensens of the world.
SiubhanDuinne
@James E Powell:
Quite so, and thank you. I didn’t mention the Cold War, but obviously there were many threads and trade offs, in geopolitics, domestic politics, and a fast-shifting society in demographic upheaval.
rikyrah
@Kay:
thanks Kay
MattF
@Betty Cracker: I’m guessing there was a ‘wait until after the conventions’ crowd that sorta hoped it would all still be unclear at this point. However, the lessons from the conventions turned out to be extremely clear.
andy
Back in the Bush era, the Khans would have been praised (at least publicly) as “good ones.” Now I’m seeing people on Facebook claiming to be ex-military running down Capt. Humayun Khan and his sacrifice.
No mawkish bullshit about “supporting the troops” for him!
D58826
@Tokyokie: But Hillary is so much worse so they will line up and vote Trump in November
Chris
@James E Powell:
That’s true. It’s one of the big points of the Professional Wingnut community (media, think tanks, etc) – make becoming a conservative a good career move.
@andy:
I expected it wouldn’t be hard to find wingnut veterans who’d happily trash the Khans. No doubt they’re still trying, but the fact that even VFW came down against Trump says a lot about how many people are pissed off this time.
Betty Cracker
@MattF: That makes sense. She must also be pretty damn sure he’s going to lose and lose badly since she makes a living at Republican politics.
Calouste
Buried at the bottom of an NYT article about Paul Manafort.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I think most people agree that “the MSM”‘ consists of network news, cable news, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. It’s not all news outlets everywhere.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@andy: He kept the bomb-making materials in his Secret Koran, which all Muslims have, right next to an American flag drenched in lighter fluid. Barack “The Islamic Shock” Obama was sworn in on his.
I’m glad Trump has torn the mask off these people. I really am. They are disgusting amoral hypocrites who have been braying about their virtue for all to hear for the last forty fucking years, it was a fraud, I always knew it was a fraud, and now they are finally having the intestinal fortitude to come out in public and yell it loud and proud. If we survive it, we will be a better society for all this being flushed out into the open.
Mr. Mack
Pretty sure Fareed Zacharia just called Trump a bullshit artist on live TV.
Tom65
It’s amazing to watch Team Trump keep this story alive; they just won’t shut up about it. I didn’t think it was possible to top the Dukakis campaign for sheer incompetence.
Dadadadadadada
I, for one, am prepared to call this one: thanks to the Khans, Trump has reached and is rapidly receding from his high-water mark of support. The first post-DNC poll is the best poll performance you’ll see from him from now until Election Day, and he will markedly underperform his polling on Election Day.
A few decades from now, people will talk about Khizr and Ghazala Khan the way we now talk about LBJ’s (yes, Raven, I know) “Daisy” ad.
scav
@andy: The team that booed a gay soldier during a debate in 2011? The depth and quality of their sincerity in supporting troops has been becoming very obvious over time. They support militarism, not the actual messy complicated people with boots.
Chris
@Mr. Mack:
A stand-up philosopher?
MattF
@Tom65: They see that it’s damaging and DT is probably demanding they ‘do something‘.
Dadadadadadada
@Major Major Major Major: 2012 had “skewed polling” and Karl Rove’s meltdown. My theory is that Rove had some black magic ginned up to steal Ohio which Obama’s people were able to anticipate and nullify, and Rove’s televised meltdown was his response to seeing the plan unexpectedly thwarted in real time.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t agree, but even here there is not a consistent bias. No Wall St Journal? No USA Today? No AP? No LA Times? No Chicago Trib? This is just reductive cherry picking.
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
thank you :)
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Not what I am talking about (and the system keeps eating my responses, so here we go again).
Clinton, and Obama, at their best connect with the people they are speaking to. They give the questioner the feeling, “yes, I hear you.” Or the famously overused “I feel your pain.” And when Clinton explains, or even over explains, you can easily follow what he is saying, and he keeps it focused. At his best, he knows how to simplify and to clarify.
And he and Obama know how to pull a person in. “Here, let me tell you …”
Neither Kerry nor Gore have this talent.
Dadadadadadada
@Betty Cracker: He reminds me more of Armus, the creature that killed Tasha Yar: a living reservoir of an entire society’s every negative emotion, mindlessly destructive in a way that benefits no one, not even itself.
Peale
@Tom65: Yep. It’s as if in response to the question “Would you oppose the death penalty, even for your wife’s rapist?” Dukakis had responded by proposing to furlough every rapist in prison.
PaulWartenberg2016
@Anoniminous:
Explains why I ended up a librarian and not a pundit with the Tampa Bay Times.
PaulWartenberg2016
@Brachiator:
The Wall St. Journal is considered too “pro-Business” (and now too pro Wingnut thanks to Rupert) to fall under MSM umbrella. It’s close, though, about as official a paper for conservative Goodthink as possible.
MattF
@Mr. Mack: Saw that. Zakaria is probably well aware of Harry Frankfurt’s famous work.
Dadadadadadada
@Craig: I think a big chunk of the 73% that disapproved of Bush were crazy right-wingers who realized he wasn’t crazy-right-wing enough. Surely he lost a few of those types when, handed a fully compliant Congress and record-high approval ratings, he failed to outlaw abortion. For example.
A whole lot of those people love Trump, and there’s your explanation.
PaulWartenberg2016
@Gin & Tonic:
But what if Florida isn’t close (as of right now it is)? What would Bradshaw do then if Hillary is up by 7-8 percentage points, go ahead and vote for Trump knowing it’ll be a wasted gesture, or will she go ahead and indulge with Libertarian Johnson?
Gin & Tonic
@Calouste: Translated from the Russian, that’s “Yes.”
Dadadadadadada
@hilts: No. It would just make them jealous and further cement their impression of Donald Trump as The Man Who Has Everything Normal People Really Want But Are Too Weak to Obtain.
PaulWartenberg2016
@hovercraft:
I don’t have Michigan or Wisconsin as battleground states: they went pretty heavy for Obama in 2012 didn’t they? I’d campaign often and run ads in those states just to keep voter interest up just to be sure…
No, IMHO the battleground states are going to be Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Arizona (yes, the Hispanic voter turnout is going to be key), Utah (MORMONS HATE TRUMP. It’s like Tribbles hate Klingons), Colorado, Missouri, Kansas (the local Republican gov’t fiasco is ripe for exploiting), and yeah Texas.
bemused
@Dadadadadadada:
Rove’s theory of “creating our own reality” hasn’t worked out so well since he was in the WH.
Dadadadadadada
@sigaba: A whole lot of old Romney 2012 voters won’t vote because they’re now dead.
James E Powell
@Dadadadadadada:
I’ve always wondered if anyone keeps track of that number or event attempts an estimate.
Mr. Mack
@MattF: Ha. This part made me laugh: “Excrement is not designed or crafted at all; it is merely emitted,
or dumped. It may have a more or less coherent shape, or it may
not, but it is in any case certainly not wrought”
Chris
@bemused:
He created his own reality, all right. The problem is, that reality has broken loose and been running around trying to eat him and his friends.
Karl Rove: making John Hammond look good since 2004.
Miss Bianca
OK, so my BoB friend is, as could have been predicted, arguing that Bernie Betrayed the Movement. Also, this:
oh, and then there’s this. Not sure whether to laugh or cry:
I wrote back and told him to give that fascism line to 6 million Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals in Germany. Then I told him that we were done talking politics.
Dadadadadadada
@Miss Bianca: I heard here a few days ago that Clinton was pulling her ads in Colorado; so confident of victory that she’s focusing her money elsewhere.
Chris
@Miss Bianca:
FOR FUCK’S SAKE, DOES THIS BRAIN-DEAD PECKERHEAD NOT REALIZE THAT THIS IS EXACTLY, EXACTLY WHAT THE FAR LEFT WAS SAYING IN GERMANY SEVENTY YEARS AGO?
Rhetorical. I mean, of course he doesn’t.
STUPID GIT!
NCSteve
@philadelphialawyer: @FlipYrWhig: @philadelphialawyer: You are probably right about most of those.
Miss Bianca
@Chris: Oh, but Chris, don’t you realize that drones killing brown people overseas is bad, and Hillary Clinton and Obama are totally responsible for that, and that’s why it’s worth throwing millions of brown people in America under the bus because REASONS THAT’S WHY?
ETA: Yep, I went full Godwin on him for this one.
NorthLeft12
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Where is my effing LIKE button?
Your comment is right on the mark. Our election in Canada, the welcome of +25K Syrian refugees, and the rise of Trump have also had a similar impact up here. Quiet bigots are coming out in full force, and they are being faced with previously quiet liberals who have finally woken up to the danger these awful people are to our society.
As you say, I think we will be better off in the long run for having this out now.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
FWIW, if you add all the groups that were marked for extermination together, 12 million people died, with half of them being Jews.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Maybe the AP and Reuters, but the whole point of the “MSM” is that they’re the inside the beltway types who set the tone for the rest of the media. So, no, the Chicago and LA papers don’t qualify.
The MSM is the small group of trendsetters, not the whole media.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: I’m still in fucking shock. i mean, how blind to your own fucking sense of privilege do you have to be to make a fucking argument like, “too bad if fascism comes to the US, but sometimes that’s what it takes”?
Oh, but I’m the real sexist/racist for telling him that his POV is possibly infected with white privilege and White Man Lefty-splaining. Let’s not forget!
Chris
@Miss Bianca:
No you didn’t, actually. He went full Godwin by flippantly invoking fascism as a perfectly reasonable stepping stone to progressive nirvana. All you did was point out exactly what that actually fucking means in real life.
Be sure to point that out if he accuses you of Godwin or hyperbole or whatever.
Brachiator
@Miss Bianca:
I always want to ask these nutburgers when they think this happened.
Brachiator
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Murdoch infamously went back on his promise to respect the editorial independence of the Journal when he bought it. Often his US and European media properties strongly reflect his own views, eg, on austerity. He doesn’t always care what other conservatives might think.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Miss Bianca: He sounds nice.
One of the things I’ve always found absolutely insufferable about quite a few of my fellow libs is the idea that those who don’t think like you will, if you could just educate them enough. Those stupid Dems! What they need is a dose of FASCISM to get them to see the True Way Of Pre-Clinton Endorsement Bernie!
These so-called libs, smug assholes all, should be fed facefirst into a woodchipper. They’re not helping, quite the opposite. These poor people in such need of “education” know just as much as you and I, they’ve argued with friends and family, and they’ve settled on a course of action and are going to stick to it. A Trump voter is not stupid. They’ve just made a regrettable (by my lights, not theirs) decision.
Conservatives attempt to dominate by beatings, force, promises of hell awaiting. Liberals dominate by hectoring, condescending lectures that bore their recipients into nameless rage. Neither works.
ETA: what your pal is postulating is pretty much how Mao got into power.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne: I agree that there is often a Beltway and Village echo chamber, but this is still not the same thing as a monolithic MSM. And the LA Times was more influential during the Nixon and Reagan eras.
Ben Cisco
@Miss Bianca: You’re a better person than I am; we’d have been done talking PERIOD after that word salad.
Chris
@Miss Bianca:
An interesting lesson from this primary season for me has been that while they’re supposed to be on opposite sides of the Democratic Party, the Brogressives and the professional centrist/Villager/Liebermanesque types actually have plenty in common. They’re both disproportionately made up of privileged white men, they both tend to dismiss women’s rights, nonwhite persons’ rights, LBGT rights et al as “special interests” and distractions from the real issues, tend to be myopically focused on economics as the solution to everything (albeit different brands of economics), and often end up slipping into “Democrats are worse they sold us out!” and Republican-curious tendencies (albeit the Ron Paul kind of Republican in one case, Chris Christie kind in the other).
And really, is it all that surprising? It’s a popular enough cliche: “privileged white kid rebels in high school and college, discovers radical politics and weed and Che Guevara T-shirts, hates the cops and everyone else because They’re Not The Boss Of Him, but eventually that gets old, and he has bills to pay, so he ends up going to work for daddy’s hedge fund or law firm, and by the time he’s forty he’s a solid, Wall Street Journal reading, establishment man.” Maybe it’s a cliche for a reason after all.
Chris
@Brachiator:
I know!
I mean, I suppose you could make an argument that voting Nader threw the election to Dubya and that in turn led to Obama, so the nation “learned its lesson…”
… except Obama is exactly the corrupt establishment man they say is part of the problem, so really, when does it get better?
JosieJ (not Josie)
@Miss Bianca:
Spoken like a man who will never have to suffer the effects.
Shell
Jesus, if this is what he thinks of as a vicious attack, I hate to think what he’d do if a baby drooled on him on a rope line.
aimai
@Miss Bianca: OMG I’m rolling on the floor laughing about this pompous ass and his “expediency has never trumped” his imaginary self image as an honorable, pure, uncompromised, radical. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on. Really. I don’t even know the guy and I despise him.
Miss Bianca
@aimai: IKR? At least part of the reason I posted this was because I just couldn’t believe it. I mean, I knew my friend had an anti-authoritarian streak – but this…justifying fascism because Hillary Clinton and Obama are such betrayals to the Democratic Party, so “let that be a lesson them to them”…Jesus Chicken-Fried Christ. That’s just so full of derp that I just.can’t.even.
It seems like you can scratch an old-line lefty and come up with a full-bore Maoist. Now I know.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mr. Mack: He did.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris: “Nach Hitler, Uns”
We saw it in 2000. We’re seeing it again now.
john fremont
@CONGRATULATIONS!: 1Yep. These Support the Troops guys were outraged earlier this year that the Obama administration got Bowie Bergdahl back from the Taliban. Bergdahl was already a deserter in their minds. So much for Bergdahl’s right to a fair trial from the crowd that loves the Constitution!
Tehanu
@jonas:
It’s the same thing Drumpf said about McCain (not that I hold any brief for America’s Senile Grandpa, but….) — “I like people who weren’t captured.” He didn’t respect a soldier who endured years of torture by the Viet Cong, so why would he respect an even bigger “loser,” a solder who got killed? This is a man who would sneer at the Good Samaritan for not forcing the man he found on the roadside to pay him everything he owned before he’d help him out.
Tehanu
@Miss Bianca:
I know you don’t want to discuss this fatuous remark with your ex-friend again, but I can’t help but point out that it wasn’t the populace waking up that achieved true change in Germany — it was fucking World War Two with invasion and conquest from both directions, not to mention being bombed into rubble and occupied for 40 or 50 years.