.
The racism, the sexism, the xenophobia, the raw ignorance — none of that bothered the Big Men of the GOP. But Trump’s starting to smell like a loser, and these guys don’t hang with no losers.
Rick Wilson, per Politico, is “a national Republican message and media strategist”. If he walked in soaking wet and said it was raining, I’d look out the window to see if that were objectively true, or just another sales tactic. But he’s a professional, and Trump threatens his profession. Thus, his much-forwarded latest piece in the NY Daily News:
Beat him like a drum: Donald Trump must not just lose in November; to correct the institutions he’s broken, he must suffer a humiliating defeat
… The single worst major party nominee in modern history — a man who has no political core, lies practically every time he speaks and is patently unstable — reached this point because every leader and institution in my party, the Republican Party, has failed again and again to grapple with the grim realities of Trump’s impact on the election, the conservative movement and the character of our nation.
And so, now, here we are: As revealed by poll after poll, Americans feel worn down by the dirty, ugly character of the dirty, ugly candidate at the top of the GOP ticket.
It’s not just that, in the wake of the Democratic Convention, Hillary Clinton has surged ahead in national polls by seven, nine, 15 points. She is far ahead in every state poll that matters. A Friday poll put her up slightly in Georgia, which has been reliable Republican territory in the last five elections.
Trump’s entire path to victory has been predicated on winning white men, particularly less educated white men, in droves. Yet he is right now underperforming Mitt Romney’s 2012 showing among whites, men, white evangelicals and whites without a college degree, while hemorrhaging every other demographic.
A growing number of Americans are coming to the realization that Trump is more than just a political train wreck; he’s a real threat to the nation, what with the fear of nuclear weapons and the sweeping power of the federal government in his tiny paws…
Trumpkins don’t deserve a participation trophy for wrecking the party and saddling the nation with Hillary. They made the crazy the enemy of the good, and centered an entire campaign on rage, fear and an eternally shrinking spiral of cult-worship and fanaticism. They dragged one of America’s great political parties from the back of a truck.
To begin to repair the damage done, they need to see not that their way almost succeeded, if only one or two states had broken differently. They must absorb the painful reality that their way cannot, will not, ever work again…
I want to be clear here. As a principled conservative, I loathe the high likelihood that Hillary Clinton will — barring a bear attack or some other unforeseen externality — win this election.
She’ll nominate liberal Supreme Court justices. We’ll lose religious liberty. We’ll have our Second Amendment freedoms compromised. Chuck Schumer’s immigration bill is going to be so bad it will make many of us beg for the Gang of Eight.
However, Trump would be far worse. He’d be more dangerous to our safety and our republic. And since I know his loss is coming, I pray to God that it is total. You should, too.
Not gonna press these latter-day #NeverTrumps to my bosom or anything, but I’m more than willing to have them help us give Hillary the landslide she deserves. It won’t “purge Trumpism”, but hopefully it’ll send the worst of the Trumplodytes scurrying back to their native fever swamps.
***********
Apart from all that, what’s on the agenda as we start another week?
sm*t cl*de
That’s pretty explicit, isn’t it? “Trump would be an absolute disaster as President but I would be perfectly happy to support him him if only he had a chance of winning”.
Aimai
“Dragged from the back of a truck?” A rather infelicitous phrase coming from the party of racial resentment.–also, my stress fracture is back! Back in the boot I go!
Schlemazel
@sm*t cl*de:
That was my thought. He really is only complaining that Trump has been open about the hate and as a result going to get his ass kicked.
@Aimai:
Sorry to hear that, hope it gets better soon
Aimai
@sm*t cl*de: hi sm*t! Yeah–i also am enraged that these guys can get away with bemoaning all trumps obvious racism, sexism, violence etc..and not praise Hillary Clinton and the Dems for offering the exact opposite. Sure second amendment bad horrible gun grabbers whatever but, in reality, this guy has slready implied that she eould be very, very, good for (and to) the voters, pic, women, etc..etc..etc..,
amk
Grow up, rick, Your ‘conservative’ party is the very embodiment of donnie dreck, not the other way around.
rikyrah
Good Morning ?, Everyone ?
rikyrah
@Aimai:
Sorry about that. I hope that you feel better.
OzarkHillbilly
Oh horseshit. There is no conservative movement in America. There hasn’t been one since Goldwater. You assholes hitched your wagon to the racist underbelly of America and it took you quite a ways towards your oligarchical goal. But the jig is up now. You’ve been teasing that beast with a taste here and there but it’s not going to take table scraps anymore. No, it want’s the meat and potatoes, it wants it now and it doesn’t care where it gets it from. If it can’t eat from the left side of the table, it will be just as happy to eat from the right side.
Aimai
@rikyrah: im not feeling pain so much as rage! Im starting school in the fall, and work in a k-8 school, and throwing a birthday party for my 84 year old mother that will be @ 40 people in my house, all in the next month and i will have to do it limping around in my boot.
Ben Cisco
@Aimai:
From this sentence alone, it is clear that Wilson’s objections are more about the foghorn vs. dogwhistle than anything else. Trump is EXACTLY who they are, and that is why they deserve to lose.
ETA: Aimai got there first.
OzarkHillbilly
@Aimai: Oooofff. That sucks.
Amir Khalid
@Aimai:
Given that that was the method of killing in a notorious racist murder from a few decades back, i would go further and describe the reference as obscene.
Rick Wilson’s concern seems to be that the Republican party is in for a hiding with nominee Trump. Not so much that Trump lacks the intellect, temperament, work ethic, character and decorum required of POTUS; or that Trump plans to have his VP do all the presidenting work while he struts about Making America Great Again.
Patricia Kayden
What does Mr. Wilson mean by this though? Why would the election of Secretary Clinton lead to the United States losing religious liberty? Mrs. Clinton is herself a Christian, even if she is a liberal one. This is the kind if hyperbole which makes me refuse to embrace Never Trumpers like Wilson.
Ryan
“to correct the institutions he’s broken”
I’m going to quibble with this. The GOP has destroyed the legitimacy of many of the institutions that would have served as checks on the Trumpkins for decades now. It’s not enough for Trump to lose badly, GOP leaders have to dump their insurgent tactics and their ideologically extreme wing of the party.
OzarkHillbilly
@Patricia Kayden: They will lose the liberty to shove their religion down everyone else’s throats.
Amir Khalid
@Patricia Kayden: @Patricia Kayden:
He means Republican-style religious liberty: businesses’ right to refuse service to LGBT people, to discriminate against LGBT staff, or to refuse to pay for contraception, that kind of thing.
p.a.
(popular quote among commenters!)
The party hitched itself to the back of a truck decades ago and then was shocked- SHOCKED!- when the truck finally sped off down the dirt road.
also too, this violent racist image goes back at least to Achilles dragging Hector behind his chariot.
m0nty
I don’t see why Trump can’t continue to own the GOP even after a heavy loss. He is already setting up for it. Why loosen the jaws and disengage from a host with a lot of blood still left to give?
Perhaps Trump thinks that being the vampire squid on the side of the Republican Establishment will keep him permanently youthful, like Peter Thiel.
rikyrah
Delta Airlines -system wide computer outage. Nobody is flying anywhere on Delta right now.
Aimai
@p.a.: thats a good point. It reminded me immiediatly of the horrific racist murder in texas but you are right that it goes back to Homer. With one significant difference–achillles drags Hector’s dead body behind the chariot. The man in texas was murdered. I don’t think wilson is admitting that the republican party is, to all intents and purposes, already a corpse.
The Ancient Randonneur
Rick Wilson wants his dog whistle back. Sad!
Tom
@Ryan: Ryan – the ideological extreme wing of the Republican party IS the party. Trump is nothing more or less than Paul Ryan without any political smarts or the patina of Laffler to endear him to the villagers.
Baud
@m0nty: Pretty much. And if not Trump, someone else. I don’t see Trump’s voters taking a back seat in the GOP anymore.
Mr. Mack
Aimai: That sucks. Sorry you have to deal with that.
Ozark Hillbilly, LOVED THIS:
Cat48
Yes, Rick will have to bake cakes for gay weddings & pee with who knows who might be in the bathroom with him?
Baud
@Aimai: Sorry to hear that.
amk
what a kindhearted thug.
Keith G
Definitely not, but I hope someone comforts Rick Wilson telling him that he will be just as free to carry out his religion** after a Clinton landslide as before.
**All the standard Free Exercise Clause caveats apply.
Michael Bersin
It’s their party and they’ll cry if they want to.
m0nty
@Baud: There really isn’t another Trump though. Politicians like Cruz may try but you can’t fake that level of sociopathy. That is why I think Trump surveys the field after a rout and sees no one who can match him to rule the rubble. The racist rump will still love him, not to mention he will still be useful to Putin.
Baud
@m0nty: There’s always another Trump.
hellslittlestangel
I was all ready to jump to defend Rick Wilson as a fairly reasonable (and very witty) Republican — then I read the excerpt. Yeah, loser-stink seems to be the main thing he dislikes about Little Gloves.
Patricia Kayden
@Aimai: Sorry to hear this, Aimai.
@Michael Bersin: If all they did was cry, that would be alright with me. My fear is that they’ll stoke up talk of “rigged elections” and delegitimize Secretary Clinton’s victory as well as stir up violence from Trump’s thug supporters. Sigh.
Baud
@hellslittlestangel: Odius Republicans who oppose Trump are still odius Republicans. I still hope Rick convinces Republicans to at least stay home.
Mustang Bobby
I have been watching this karma build up for nigh on fifty years and now it is coming home with a vengeance. I look forward to seeing them blame this all on Jimmy Carter, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and, for good measure, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Anybody but themselves.
Baud
What’s with all the airline computer problems lately?
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
republicans like Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens and Nicole Wallace loved Trump when he was whipping up the Archie Bunker vote with his birtherism back in 2011/2012.
they loved when Karl Rove demonized gay marriage.
they loved when Lee Atwater and Jesse Helms ran racist commercials.
Now they’re in shock! shock! over Trump.
Gimme a break.
U built that.
Baud
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch: Republicans are an image party. That’s why it was so critical for their survival that they won the midterms after Bill Clinton’s and Obama’s historic wins. We’ll probably see the same thing on 2018. Until we can break the midterm problem, they won’t change.
m0nty
@Baud: There’s always another arsehole, but I don’t think there is another billionaire (allegedly) who has that profile and that history, and is willing to burn all those bridges to polite society, and has an aching desire in his gut to flamethrower the whole place down. Cotton is just like Cruz, no match for Trump. Who else is anywhere close to the Trump package?
Well, maybe Thiel himself. Imagine that.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
@Baud: Skynet?
Schlemazel
The more interesting link is the first one posted, the one after describing him as a GOP strategist. It goes to a Politiho story he wrote about how Republicans should attack Trump in the primary debate. Sure, some of it is useless but the key points are items I dearly hope the Clinton campaign is taking to heart. Make fun of his assertions of great wealth. SHow how when he dealt with the Chinese they screwed him over. Belittle his bluster & remind him there are serious issues to discuss & his schoolyard taunts are not the way to solve anything. I don’t know how successful that would have been in the GOP primary (though it is interesting nobody tried it) But Hillary could pull it off easily – she does not count on mouth-breathing morans for support.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
They are cheap and not spending money on maintenance & development.
Chaz
What scares me is, the Republican operators foul up every thing that they touch. Now that they’re on our side, are we doomed to fail?
Baud
@Schlemazel: She going to get medieval on his ass after Labor Day.
Waldo
Conservatives like Wilson imagine they’ll pick up the pieces and rebuild after Trumpty Drumpfty’s great fall in November. They’ll get back to their core values — small government, trickle-down economy, bridging the gap between church and state — despite having been shown by Trump himself that none of these things matter to the Republican base. He thinks a landslide defeat will kill the cancer in the party, not realizing that the cancer is the party.
evodevo
@Patricia Kayden: Obviously you have not been paying attention to the latest rightwing evangelical dog whistle ….. that a loss of Xtian privilege (and enforcement of the 1st Amendment) amounts to a loss of “freedom”. It’s a recurring meme over the last few years, and the basis of all those “religious freedom” bills passed in states like…. Indiana (lol), wherein your precious right to deny someone birth control, or a marriage license, or a wedding cake, or get tax breaks for your Ark Park is preserved and protected.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Russia is looking for Hillary’s e-mails.
JMG
You will all be happy to learn that multiple cable news outlets on their 7 a.m. broadcasts have informed me there is a new Trump who’s going to discuss economic policy which will of course turn the tide for him since Hillary is so unpopular. My favorite quote was from Bloomberg, “Donald has behaved himself for the past 96 hours.” It’s like the sign in nuclear power plant in the Simpsons, “Three Days without an Accident.”
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
That’s right – we bad (photo)
debbie
@Baud:
It’s only Delta and apparently they’re starting to let flights start up again.
ETA: A nickel says they were hacked.
sm*t cl*de
@Patricia Kayden:
If you can’t force everyone else to follow your religious laws, your religion isn’t free
.@Amir Khalid:
I imagine that the first draft of Wilson’s piece had something about the Stormtrumpfers “lynching one of America’s great parties” but he decided that it was an excessively subtle way of foisting all the racism and fascism on those other people, over there, nothing to do with us.
liberal
@Schlemazel: yep. Those are “cost centers,” after all.
debbie
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch:
My FB page is in an uproar because of this headline.
Apparently it’s her wifehood, not her athletic abilities, that distinguishes Corey Cogdell.
Steve in the ATL
@debbie: I’m scheduled to get on a delta flight in a couple of hours. Do you think that Russian hackers might have stolen my sky miles? Going to be mad if that keeps me from getting upgraded!
OzarkHillbilly
@Chaz: They will never be on our side.
Princess
@Patricia Kayden: “Religious liberty” is code for”places like Hobby Lobby and Notre Dame will have to follow all the provisions of the Affordable Care Act.”
satby
@Aimai: Sorry to hear that Aimai! I hope it gets better soon.
Baud
@debbie: I think the original headline didn’t even mention her name.
Mustang Bobby
@debbie: No bet.
debbie
@debbie:
Hmm. No correction note at the bottom either. At least the NYT would have owned up to their error.
satby
@Baud: @debbie: I think they might have been hacked or DDSed too, they were in the news the other day about throwing a Muslim couple off one of their planes. Because Muslim ooga booga.
Iowa Old Lady
These guys talk about the R party or conservative movement as if they existed in some Platonic space somewhere apart from the people constituting them. Donald Trump is the Republican nominee because Republicans chose him. He is thus a Republican representative.
Frankensteinbeck
@evodevo:
To be honest, it’s not even the latest. They just had a multi-decade period where they got a lot more sympathy for it. I would argue that their religion is being oppressed, because modern American evangelism, the version of Christianity practiced by conservatives, is primarily about oppressing others and everything else is window dressing. Some other Christians argue that this makes them not Christian at all, but that’s a separate issue.
Matt McIrvin
@Patricia Kayden: “There will be civil rights protections for gay people”.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Baud: Good morning. I’m at Detroit Metro trying to get to San Jose on Delta. Media says Delta’s shut down but Delta says they’re not. We’ll see. Everything seems to be normal Monday morning here. Chaos, but moving along.
Gonna read my internets and chill and see what happens. I’m on the clock and I have a day of slack in my schedule this week.
ETA: now they say ‘system-wide outage’. Yawn. Glad I have sandwiches.
Baud
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Good luck.
Applejinx
@Aimai: Hope you feel better, if you must stomp around then stomp around vehemently like ya mean it :)
scav
@satby: Disruption will be an industry standard if that’s what gets the effort going. They all seem to pulling dumb-mean stunts: reading a book about the arts in Syria! Horrors! Existential Danger!
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch:
That’s right – we bad (photo) Take II
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
Just think what you guys will be missing – you won’t have ARod to kick around, anymore.
Central Planning
@debbie: I have no idea who she is, nor do I have any idea who her husband is. That headline is total BS though.
rikyrah
The problem for Wilson is that Ferret Head was CHOSEN by their voters. Not in a backroom, but by the VOTERS. They have to get past THAT problem.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: He’s gonna need it.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@OzarkHillbilly:
You know, I’m so glad we live in an era where our greatest concern is where emails are stored. /snark
I swear if the media doesn’t quit trying to reanimate that dead, buried and rotted issue I’m going to boycott the lot of them. Even Pierce mentioned it the other day. Never mind the existential threat to our democracy in the person of a megalomaniac in a fright wig. Let’s count how many emails were possibly deemed sensitive weeks after they were sent.
Frankensteinbeck
@debbie:
I don’t know how to feel about that one. On the one hand, the reason the story exists is because this specific winner has a publicly visible tie to Chicago, making her different from other winners. There is no story without her husband. On the other hand, women being described (and treated) as adjuncts to their husbands, and ignored otherwise, is one of the most pervasive ‘polite’ sexisms in our culture, a huge and poisonous problem. I guess if the article doesn’t exist without her husband, then the article shouldn’t exist. Not snark. A compliment mixed with an insult is not a compliment.
@Iowa Old Lady:
Hell, they talk about conservative values as if those values weren’t racism. Gutting the safety net doesn’t even serve the rich. Extreme gun rights caters almost entirely to whites terrified of blacks. Even catering to the rich is a small subset of ‘true conservatism.’ It’s a philosophy based on indirect racism.
Ryan
@Tom: Exactly. This is the point I’m making. They can no longer pretend otherwise.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
US Swim team — Car Pool Karaoke.
Missy Franklin is really funny at it (clip)
Kay
Part of this is the result of their own “voter fraud” strategy. The base never had to recognize that they lost 2008 and 2012, so why change?
It will be delicious to watch the voter fraud scam come back and bite them in the ass. Republicans made a tactical political decision to explain away losses by accusing millions of ordinary people of committing a felony. It’s a malicious and horrible thing to do. Everyone talks about the damage to “democracy” or “institutions” but no one ever talks about the damage to the millions of AA voters who are accused of what amounts to a mass crime every cycle. These are people. Whole communities.
It’s outrageous to promote this lie about a huge group of voters. There are also hundreds of local election officials and poll workers in these places- are they all felons too?
What godammned nerve they have, smearing millions of people without a shred of proof and burdening them with that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Frankensteinbeck:
I want to see them try that with Serena Williams.
Baud
Saw an extended Trump ad on the Today show this morning (aka reporting) about Trump’s economic policy speech today. They highlighted some of the proposals he was going to talk about, but I don’t remember trade being among them. Hmmmm.
But there will be a 15% corporate tax rate.
Immanentize
@Aimai: sorry about your foot. I am hoping it is not more stress fracture but, hum, tendinitis??? Just for your skae (and your Mom’s and the students’). I hope my fantasy reasoning works.
Meanwhile, the truck image for me immediately suggested Nazis pulling Jews off trucks and trains at the camps. Which is one of the ultimate victim images. And the GOP does nothing well if not victim. But my ymmv.
PS. I saw yesterday you work in Somerville? I live in Medford, the gateway to Somerville!!
Baud
Also saw an actual ad about Team USA that could have been a Hillary ad because it was all about the diversity of the athletes.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
They’re blaming the computer outage on a power failure in Atlanta. We had storms last night, true, but wouldn’t you think a big company like Delta would insist on having their electricity provided by underground power lines — and also have a redundant computer system as backup?
Immanentize
@Baud: Cotton is a cleaned-up Trump.
satby
@SiubhanDuinne: they would normally have their own backup generators.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I have to give the GOP credit for one thing: they have managed to make the ‘untrustworthy Hillary’ thing stick. It’s malicious nonsense of course, but lots of people are believing it. Or at least not doubting it as they should. The decades the right wing and their media accomplices have spent portraying the Clintons as crooked are paying off. I see otherwise rational people who should know better being influenced to distrust her. And that’s unfortunate.
ETA; still sitting at DTW. If I miss my connection in SLC it’s not a biggie. I have slack in my schedule. If this was international I’d be hosed.
Steve in the ATL
@Immanentize: as awful as trump is, he’s way more likeable than tom cotton
Baud
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Sanders helped, sorry to say.
Aimai
@Immanentize: yeah. There are more ma baloon juicers than you would think!
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: So, we lieberals have stolen America’s Olympic valor too.
Aimai
@Baud: yup.
Mr Rogers
@Mustang Bobby: they already are – I provide you with a link proving Paul Krugman is responsible for Trump.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/05/how-paul-krugman-made-donald-trump-possible.html?utm_content=buffer97449&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
satby
@Ultraviolet Thunder: And I think that’s why supporters have to push back openly. It can give doubters something to consider if their friends support Clinton.
Johannes
Hope your recovery is swift, Aimai–and that it is for good. (Sorry; last version was well intended but came out odd.)
satby
Akihito of Japan wants to abdicate, and there’s no mechanism in Japanese law for him to do so. Poor old guy.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: Yeah, that’s malpractice if it’s true.
Immanentize
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I thought I was one of only twenty humans left — all from rural Upstate NY or Penn. who used the term “fright wig.” Nice to meet a 21st.
Baud
@satby: Can’t he go out for a pack of cigarettes and then disappear?
scav
@satby: But isn’t the presumptive SOP that all that’s needed is an excuse is a surface plausibility that resonates — oh! I once forgot to put the battereies in my remote — ruined my entire day! Poooor Delta, such a cute little oops.Whereas redundant systems are expensive and easy to slice during the annual 10% fat-curring.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Baud:
Helped with the most recent issues. But the GOP has been after her for many years. I think they saw a vulnerability, and maybe the only way they could beat the Clintons.
Bernie definitely carried some of their water, or at least filled the buckets.
MattF
Given what Trump has already said and then unsaid about minimum wage, regulation, taxes, budgeting, etc– one more economic policy speech is just more turd to add to the pile.
Kay
Just to reassure our own side about election process. I saw the Obama campaign voter protection organization in Ohio. I went to meetings of volunteer lawyers and heard the people who were running it- the lead lawyers who are not volunteers. It was as good as it could be. Clinton will be prepared.
In 2012, watching returns, pundits kept talking about how Mitt Romney had GOP election lawyers “bags packed, ready to go to Ohio and contest results”. Obama wouldn’t have had to send lawyers from out of state parachuting into Ohio. He already had thousands on the ground.
Real election process work isn’t fantastic tales of the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia hyped by Fox News or True the Vote grifters arriving in Ohio from Texas 2 weeks before the election and holding press conferences and show hearings.
Real election process work is exhaustive preparation and local people forcing compliance with existing laws and rules. It’s boring and nit-picky and rule-bound- it’s not run by cable personalities, it’s run by lawyers. Not at all dramatic. It’s protecting one vote at a time.
Immanentize
@Kay: Truth.
amk
@Immanentize: cotton is actually a real thug while donnie is only a pretend bully.
Baud
@Kay: Can you sum that all up in a hashtag?
jamesjhare
@Aimai: Well in his defense most of his readers won’t catch the reference. Names like Emmett Till don’t resonate in that party.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Delta update:They’re going to turn it off and turn it on again. Sometimes that works.
I have a 70 minute layover when I get to SLC, but who knows.
amk
@satby: 85% of japanese approve the poor guy’s wish to retire. Guess which 15% are against it.
Iowa Old Lady
@Kay: Kay, reading your posts always makes me feel like I’m getting a glimpse of real people in action on the ground. It gives me hope.
Immanentize
@Steve in the ATL: when you put it that way…. 2020 will be a horror movie — Cotton vs Cruz. Like Godzilla vs Mothra without the cute caged singing twins.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Forgive me if I withhold my sympathies from a guy who was born on home plate.
SiubhanDuinne
@satby:
You’d think.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Kay:
This is good news. Voter protection is the last thing I would expect Trump and the GOP to be prepared for. They’re underfunded and disorganized. This gives us an advantage. The real work of winning an election.
Patricia Kayden
@Chaz:
I don’t believe Mr. Wilson and his ilk are on “our side” at all. They are running away from Trump because he is losing. If the polls showed that he was doing well, they would be cheering him on and deriding Secretary Clinton for her “scandals”. I don’t consider anyone on “our side” who doesn’t support LGBT rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, sensible gun control, immigration reform, etc.
Mr. Wilson is on the “I’m not going to stand with a loser” side. His claim that under President Clinton, the United States will lose religious liberty is a dead giveaway as to what side he is on.
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
@SiubhanDuinne:
Clearly, the executive bonus levels have been inadequate to inspire them to think about redundancy.
Immanentize
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Republicans generally do not need to worry about voter protection. They spend all their talent on voter suppression.
MattF
@Kay: Note this morning’s WaPo article about Marc Elias– who’s been the mainstay of the recent successes in voting rights cases. Apparently… he’s an active Democrat. Most of the article is devoted to citing reasons why some people are, y’know, possibly, unhappy about that.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: That’s a huge problem because in 2020, the same voters who supported Trump will be looking for someone in his mold. There is no way they will go for someone as milquetoast as Kasich (or any of the other boring ex-Governers). I see a problem for the GOP as their voters double down on bigotry and thus continue to push the party away from attracting minority voters. It’s a conundrum for them for the forseeable future.
MattF
@Ultraviolet Thunder: “We’re gonna hit the big red button and hope for the best.”
Immanentize
@MattF: whale or geraniums?
Patricia Kayden
@Kay:
Amen! Then they have the nerve to speak about minority outreach. They must think that minorities aren’t aware of their voter suppression tactics.
MattF
@Immanentize: Improbable!
Peale
@Patricia Kayden: frankly, religious liberty means the ability to harass the homosexuals who moved next door and aren’t even hiding in shame. I’ve not seen religious liberty used outside of an lgbt context for years. It might have once also meant forcing kids to pray in public schools, but now it’s really about one single issue.
satby
@Patricia Kayden: Well, they have no problems smearing entire religious or ethnic groups either. Anyone not them.
bemused
Trump voters love Trump trashing groups of people supposedly not them and ripping the Republican party to shreds. They don’t care if he is crooked or unworthy. They just want anarchy.
Kay
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Sadly, like everything else, it mostly comes down to hard work :)
They start in June. They use Ohio sunshine laws to collect information from each of 88 county election boards on whether they’re complying with existing law and process. There’s a form with specific questions. Here, I call Stephanie at the Board of Elections and ask her these questions and note her responses. It’s not at all angry or hostile. This is her job. The responses could then be compared to what actually happened if there were litigation or they could be used to get an emergency order to keep a polling place open. Here, I would have to go to the Common Pleas judge’s house (we only have two and they assign one to take after-hours petitions) because he quits at 4:30 but I would do that and he would either issue an order or not issue an order. That wouldn’t be angry or dramatic either- we would both be elaborately polite, probably. That’s his job.
Chaz
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s a fair point.
What specifically scares me is that at some point Bill Cristol will declare Trump dead in the water, at which point he will somehow snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
OzarkHillbilly
Steve in the ATL
@jamesjhare:
I have family in Sumner, Mississippi, where the Emmett Till trial took place. One of my cousins is married to the guy who runs the Emmett Till historical center. That has to be a super depressing job, but I’m not sure what else you do with a masters degree in southern studies from ole miss.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
I wonder how much of this “GOP bigwig says Trump is horrible” stuff is mis-direction. It seems clear that Trump is going to lose bigly. His lead is even shrinking among white men, IIRC. But while the national press and Democratic activists are concentrating on beating up on Trump, the Teabaggers and the GOP continues to dump money and resources into House and Senate races beyond the view of the national political press and pundits. If they limit their losses in the Senate and keep the House, then Hillary and sensible policies will be just as hamstrung as Obama has been. And with a 4:4 SCOTUS, they can continue to keep their boot on the neck of progress through their control of state houses and governorships, and continue to strip voting rights, etc., to strengthen their control.
There’s been talk of retaking Mosul in Iraq, and in the last few days there are reports of rebels breaking the siege in eastern Aleppo in Syria. Things may be coming to a head with respect to Daesh, which means that they and Assad are more likely to lash out. And Erdogan is continuing is crackdown on his enemies and critics, meaning that the Kurds in Turkey, and in Iraq and Syria, should expect more attacks from him in the coming months as well.
The fall might be very, very messy over there. We can’t get distracted by the latest outrage and misdirection by Trump and the GOP. We need to do everything we can to flip the Senate and the House so that some “OMG they’re going to kill us in our beds!” event in October doesn’t cause voters to create a House and Senate that will do nothing but block Hillary.
How? Dunno. But it needs to be a team effort.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jeffro
@evodevo:
Fortunately, it’s not a hard argument to make…their “liberty” ends where it infringes upon others’ equal protection under the law and rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Most everyone other than Trumpkins should get it.
Jeffro
@JMG:
Oh good, yes, let’s discuss Trump’s economic policy: tax cuts for the wealthy over 2x as big as W’s…anti-free trade…wahoo!
Iowa Old Lady
@Patricia Kayden: That’s right because while Trump may go away, his voters won’t.
Jeffro
@Immanentize:
Cleaned-up + fully on board with the Koch agenda
bystander
Moanin’ Joe is advertising that there will be an announcement this morning of a new third-party candidate. He’s former CIA but named Mullen. BYU grad. This guy will supposedly make repubs feel better about watching Clinton kick Trump to the curb.
The level of denial of what Trump really represents is astonishing. The word “racism” never gets mentioned.
PS. If Clinton wasn’t polling at 92% we’d be hearing “disarray” at eve turn.
ETA. Evan McMullin. AKA Egg McMuffin.
Iowa Old Lady
@Jeffro: Isn’t he the one who organized the letter to the Iranians saying that the terms of the deal didn’t matter because Congress would renege on them first chance they got?
I don’t recall Tom Cotton becoming President, ie, the person constitutionally empowered to conduct foreign policy, so where does he get off doing that?
NotMax
Looking forward, the day after the election, to poster sized pictures of redheaded step-children pointing at Trump while giving the Nelson Muntz laugh in unison.
MattF
@bystander: Evan McMullin. From Utah, I assume Mormon. CIA clandestine-> Investment banking -> House of Representatives according to Wikipedia.
ETA: In the Laundry Files universe, that bio would suggest occult powers.
Tripod
Im gonna go with some ancient mainframe that never got upgraded to current hw & sw specs, and as a result has no support contracts.
The airlines were among the high transaction volume processors who drove the early mainframe business. Now that jet age legacy stuff costs a lot of money to drag into the 21st century.
MattF
@MattF: Actually, from WA. And not a House member, apparently. I’ll get it right, eventually.
rikyrah
Lowlife, rotten no-good muthaphuckas.
THIS is who you all are Wilson:
After court restored early voting NC GOP trying to cut half of early voting sites in Greensboro, where sit-ins began
— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) August 8, 2016
NotMax
@bystander
And which 3rd party might that be?
Unless it’s one which already has ballot access in states where deadlines have passed (or soon will pass), the whole shebang is pointless, an exercise in futility.
Morning Joe (among a myriad of other faults and foibles) has grasped at enough straws over the years to build a haystack to the Moon.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Tripod:
I have 200k miles and 240 flights on Delta over the last 4 years. They really ate it this time but I still pick them for overall reliability.
Delayed another 30 minutes. I may have to go investigate a coffee here.
ETA: here we go boarding. Have a good day.
D58826
Well Jeb’s son has endorsed Trump. so it’s not all bad news for ‘old little hands’
NotMax
@Tripod
The hamster died.
;)
gratuitous
I posted this at Democratic Underground in response to Wilson’s self-pitying whinefest of an op-ed:
What’s with this idea that it’s Trump who is inflicting deep wounds on the country? Wasn’t it your party – the party of Lincoln and personal responsibility – that handed him the Republican nomination? The nomination didn’t just fall out of the sky and land in Trump’s pocket; no, it was millions and millions of your fellow principled conservatives* who attended caucuses, cheered at rallies, and went into voting booths at primaries all across our country and selected this short-fingered vulgarian to be your party’s one and only nominee for the presidency of these here United States. Surely you’re aware of this? It was in all the papers, and even on Fox!
So, no, you don’t get to whine now about what a complete and total disaster this man is. The entire Republican party has been grooming itself for a candidate like Trump to emerge for 40 years. When he arrived in a field crowded with hopefuls, the party pooh-bahs were exultant about the deep bench and high interest the race for the nomination was going to generate. And look who your party’s faithful selected out of all comers: The demented kid with a box of matches standing in a gasoline refinery. Own it.
Trump’s all yours, the epitome of what Republicans want in 2016, the culmination of 40 years of Republican government by misgovernance. What did you and your principled friends think was going to be the result of tearing down government, denying its place in society, and dismantling the forms and policies of good governance? Some kind of unrestricted meritocracy where the best and brightest naturally rose to prominence? Grow up, you starry-eyed naif! Liberals have been warning you for decades that without government correctives (promulgated, enforced, and refined by voter mandates), the inequities in the system would become calcified and would worsen over time.
That suited you just fine, because you thought your elevated status deserved to be set in stone, that you had earned every perk and benefit that inured to you simply because you had been born into a privileged slot. Now, it looks like you might not be able to hang onto that high caste, so it’s time for a do-over. Not this time. You and every other one of your principled conservative cohort needs to do some public soul-searching (good luck finding it), repentance, penance, and dial back the extreme partisanship, fear-mongering, bigotry, hatred, and divisiveness that have been the Republican product line since the Bicentennial.
You’re scared, but that’s only because you’re seeing the million pound shithammer is finally going to take a swing at you. Welcome to Republican America, where a lot of people have been taking its whacks for decades. It’s your turn, Mr. Wilson. And I’m set to enjoy it.
*Me first and fuck you is so a principle!
MattF
@D58826: Demonstrating that, yeah, there’s a multi-generational Bush ‘daddy’ problem.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Jesus Christ, these fucking assholes… They built this shit. They spent 50 fucking years stoking a bunch of ignorant, racist assholes every two years, only to turn around and shaft them when every time they won. The racist assholes got tired of getting shafted, and patiently, methodically, they took over the party from the bottom up, and now the bigoted assholes own and run the party. I’m glad this guy is scared of Trump, but even if Trump loses hard, it won’t do any good if the leaders [sic] of the party–McConnell, Ryan, McCain, Romney, random & variegated Bushes, David Brooks, Kristol, the tool quoted above, et al.–turn right around and go back to stoking the racist assholes.
There’s a fucking reason Trump won the nomination this year. He didn’t “steal” it. He didn’t come storming in and hoodwink all the decent Republican voters. He won because the voters Republicans have groomed for 50 years bought what Trump was selling.
This was inevitable. Not this specific this, not the specific this of Donald Trump in 2016; but some this like this was inevitable. It could have happened in 2012, if there had been 37 candidates all running, and some Trump-like dickwad had come storming in before the party could make its fucking mind up which tool to get behind. If it hadn’t happened this year, it might have happened in 2020 instead, or 2024. But this was going to happen sooner or later. Until Republican leaders [sic] wake up and deal with this fact, that they are the ones who brought this on themselves, and they have nobody else to blame for this, and then drive these racist, fundamentalist sickos out of the party, then nothing is going to get any better.
I’ve said before that it couldn’t happen to a more deserving party. And, yeah, I’ll be cheering along with everybody else when Trump goes down hard and, with luck, takes the party down with him. But in the long run, we need two parties to run this country. That’s how the system we have works. It won’t work any other way. We can’t make it when one party is built on people like Trump voters, and stocked with Cruzes, Cottons, Göehmerts, Ernsts, Steve Kings and other assorted shitbags like them. We’ll never make it if the Republicans go on this way. Either they have to clean all the shit out of their barn, or the party has to die so some other party can rise up and take its place.
MattF
@MattF: Or maybe not. Born in Utah. Oh, go read the Wikipedia article.
Punchy
@Steve in the ATL: I dont know what you do with any degree from Ole Miss…
rikyrah
@Baud:
So…same old, GOP nonsense.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@gratuitous:
Damn, you, you beat me to it!
rikyrah
@SiubhanDuinne:
I remember some years ago, a nut got into a transformer station, and took out O’Hare airport. So, yes, it is sort of frightening to see the vulnerability of the systems.
NotMax
Republican post-election drubbing wound licking always boils down to “We didn’t nominate someone conservative enough.”
Now perhaps we can look ahead to the corollary, “We didn’t nominate someone batsh&*t crazy enough.”
rikyrah
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
They’ve been working on it for 25 phucking years.
Patricia Kayden
@D58826: I recall Trump insulting Jeb’s wife at one of the debates so this is an interesting development.
http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2015/09/16/gop-debate-cnn-debate-8p-11.cnn
rikyrah
@satby:
He has children. Male children. He just can’t pass it along to them?
bystander
@NotMax: McMullin’s nomination is seen as a means to the goal Rick Wilson set out: to defeat Trump as humiliatingly as possible.
Still there’s no addressing the fact that the repub party base is essentially devoted to racism and xenophobia and not Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek.
OzarkHillbilly
@Punchy: Work at the KKK Museum?
Barbara
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Yes, they built it, and they are in a state of denial and panic. I try to imagine the alternative reality if, over the last 50 years the Republican Party had held the line on racial resentment. Instead, they crossed the line again and again while pretending not to. They are still pretending, as if these people who are Trump voters are aliens who touched down and all of a sudden began showing up at the polls. By the reaction of Paul Ryan, I don’t see things changing. I believe that Ryan is telegraphing that they are going to go back to dog whistles at the first opportunity and hope for the best. The real question is, will Trump voters still be there?
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: NC voters really have to vote that Racist Governor out of office the next chance they get and give the new Democratic Governor a Democratic House and Senate to work with. Sick of this obvious voter oppression nonsense in a so-called civililzed, developed country.
rikyrah
@satby:
If the POPE can chuck it in and throw up Deuces..surely the Emperor can.
Xenos
Does Canister usually draw GOP elephants as, effectively, dickfaces? I am a bit surprised that this would be published in the papers.
NotMax
@bystanbder
Still doesn’t answer the primary (no pun intended) question. Nomination by whom? The Spit and Bailing Wire party?
Still pie in the sky.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Patricia Kayden: It’s less bigotry and more they want Shock Jocks as their candidate.
Patricia Kayden
@bystander:
A third party candidate can’t gain enough steam with only three months to go before the election to make any difference. Joe is quite amusing now that he has reached the desperation stage. What next? The heavens will open and suck Trump up?
NotMax
@NotMax
Argh. 3 a.m., cursory proofreading suffers. No edit function.
Baling Wire, not Bailing Wire.
scav
@rikyrah: Yes and no — it’s largely a ceremonial role / power and they do seem to like their rules. He had to find a way to elaborately hint about it (the first hint went very wrong if my vague headline memory still functions). There’s certainly a tradition of Emperors retiring (but those are neurons going back to Tale of Genji and there was that thunderstorm in Atlanta to make me not trust them) but that’s got little to do with the laws they put into place post WW-II. They’ll find a way.
ETA: Japan’s public broadcaster says Emperor Akihito ready to abdicate from July
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: After 2012 they said, “We need more minority outreach.” BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA….. gasp…. wheeze….
Peale
@Patricia Kayden: if heaven does that, a lot of us are going to question exactly what God has been telling us to do these past 6,000 years.
rikyrah
The Racial-Generational Conflict Behind Trump’s Rise
Old versus young; white versus brown. The divergent visions of the Trump and Clinton campaigns are based on equally valid realities about Americans’ prospects – depending on who and how old you are.
by Mike Males
August 8, 2016 7:00 AM
Los Angeles is a sprawling megalopolis of 10 million people whose violent youth culture has been legendary in pop culture, myth and media. In the past, this reputation was for good cause. In 1990 alone, nearly 500 L.A. teenagers died from gunfire and 730 were arrested for murder.
Today, L.A. is again at the forefront of a youth revolution – this time a positive one.
In 2015 – in stark contrast to 1990 – teen gun-related deaths totaled 57, while teen murder arrests numbered 65. Overall in California, the crime rate among teenagers has dropped by 80 percent since 1980 – at the same time immigration has fueled a growing, more racially diverse young population, now 72 percent of color. The school dropout rate has also nosedived, as have births by teen and young-adult mothers. College enrollment and graduation rates have soared. These trends, moreover, are not unique to California. They’re happening nationally.
The flip side of America’s youth astonishing behavioral turnaround is an equivalently dramatic decline among older Whites. In California, for example, the number of arrests among people over 40 in 2015 was nearly double the number of arrests among Black and Hispanic teens. Nationally, in a shocking reversal of past patterns, a middle-aged White is at greater risk today of violent death (by suicide, accident, or murder, and especially from guns or illicit drugs) than an African American teenager or young adult.
These stunning reversals of fortune among the generations could help explain one of the central mysteries of this year’s election cycle: why two such starkly divergent views of America – Republican Donald Trump’s grim vision of an apocalyptically degenerated America and Democrat Hillary Clinton’s sunny affirmation of a diversifying country’s bright future – are finding equal resonance. The short answer is that both portraits reflect equally valid truths about Americans’ experience today – depending on who and how old you are. While Democrats’ younger, more diverse constituencies are experiencing dramatic improvements in their personal security and behavioral well-being, Trump’s older White demographic is suffering rising drug abuse, crime, incarceration, suicide, gun fatality, and disarray.
scav
@scav: This one at least confirms there was a “categorical” denial of the last attempt at a hint. Japan’s monarchy in confusion as Emperor Akihito reported to be planning to abdicate
rikyrah
Donald Trump’s economic plan:
1. Lower wages
2. Fewer jobs
3. More debt
4. Tax breaks for the 0.1%
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 8, 2016
Matt McIrvin
@scav: I recall hearing somewhere that, while there’s a mechanism for the monarch of the United Kingdom to abdicate, there actually is no such mechanism for Canada (the current Canadian constitutional structure dates from after the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936). So if, say, Prince Charles were to decline the British throne, there would have to be some special action to keep him from remaining King of Canada against his will.
I think they’d just have to pass a law, though (they did that for Edward VIII even though it wasn’t strictly necessary at the time).
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
This one is a multimillion dollar outage which wrecked today’s travel experience of 10s of thousands of customers, wrecked business plans, vacations, family plans, funeral plans, etc.
The head bean counters at the DAL mothership in ATL will need a couple of scalps, likely a few lowly techs in ATL that didn’t fix the outage that would have been preventable via some real redundancy. The C suite boys and girls will congratulate themselves for their decisiveness, and the DAL Twitter team will grunt some pathetic “we’re really sorry” tweets.
cmorenc
@Patricia Kayden:
He’s referring to using “religious freedom” as the legal backdoor exemption for people to discriminate against others in disapproved categories of people or activities (e.g. contraception) which have themselves been designated constitutional or statutory protected classes or activities. County clerks refusing to issue marriage licences to same-sex couples. Pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for contraception. Bakeries refusing to sell wedding cakes to gay couples. And so on. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the purportedly more genteel, learned (e.g. lawyers) segregationists fervently alleged that civil rights laws forbidding racial discrimination in commercial establishments violated the constitutional rights of the owners to “free association” – except a half-century+ later, the logic is similar with “religious liberty” creating a broad constitutional exemption to nondiscrimination laws.
The most keenly specific loss the “religious liberty” RWers face under President Clinton is that her nominations for the federal courts (and SCOTUS specifically) won’t likely go along with the trend the Roberts RW five were incrementally building (e.g. HObby Lobby, Sisters) toward constitutional support for the “religious liberty” exception.
Uncle Cosmo
@debbie: Jeebus cripes, the headline is from the Chicago Tribune, & it’s all about the local angle.
Unrein has been with the Chicago Bears for less than a year. He was born in Colorado, attended the University of Wyoming, & played for Houston, Denver & San Diego before joining the Bears less than a year ago. Corey Cogdell (his wife) is from Alaska.
Bronze medalist Corey Cogdell’s only connection to Chicago is being married to a Chicago Bears player. That’s the local angle. Thus, for no better (or worse) reason, the Trib headline. Sheesh.
Maybe we need a permutation of Hanlon’s razor here:
Mike E
@Patricia Kayden: Only one out of three of those goals is doable, sadly…the Repubs have been rotating a generic “We raised teachers pay!” ad with different NC state house peeps during the Olympics, and I have yet to see a response from NC Dems (that hike took NC teachers from 48th to 42nd nationally, heh)
scav
@Matt McIrvin: Given the number of former colonies (with variably dated rules), imagine if they manage to have an abdication means abdication (x2?) at the same time Brexit means Brexit. The UK & Commonwealth would have to import all the negotiators and possibly borrow a few using time travel.
JGabriel
Rick Wilson @ DailyNews :
Which tells you everything you need to know about the modern GOP and its voters.
No, Rick, the Trumpkins didn’t do that; you did. You and the rest of the Republican leadership that’s been feeding the rage, fear, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and religious bigotry in the GOP for the last 55 years, ever since Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan.
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
@Kay: Thanks for laying the groundwork Kay. It is meticulous and undramatic work. I was part of Ohio voter protection in 2008 as an outside poll watcher. After we got our Ohio training, out of state attorneys like me were expected to phone bank and canvass. We covered our poll site for almost 15 hours on election day. We answered a lot of questions and sent a few folks to the board of elections when needed. We had instate attorneys standing by ready to help us and we called in results relayed by our inside poll watcher every few hours. That thing was well organized.
Li'l Innocent
@Mustang Bobby: You forgot Jimmy Carter.
cmorenc
@OzarkHillbilly:
Too many of them misunderstood that pronouncement to say “we need more minority ostrich” – and they stuck their heads down toward the sand as they ran forward toward the swamps of racial and ethnic resentment.
OzarkHillbilly
@Li’l Innocent: Heh. He said:
He forgot Kennedy and LBJ (FUCK!!! LBJ).
p.a.
@OzarkHillbilly: they did do minority outreach: to actual kkk members (a true minority), not just the post-civil-rights-laws unaffiliated racists. and they have been successful.
p.a.
@rikyrah: she forgot
5. declare success
6. blame media for suppressing news of success
The Ancient Randonneur
@OzarkHillbilly:
Alas. No love for Harry Truman.
scav
@cmorenc: I rather thought the only thing they could manage toward minorities with outreached arms involved closed fists (either grabbing everything whining “mineminemineminemine” or the more energetic outreach).
Chris
@Mustang Bobby:
This is key, and it’s why my contempt for the #NeverTrump conservatives remains just about as high as it was for the Trump conservatives. It’s nice that they don’t like Trump, but I have yet to meet a single one who’s willing to acknowledge that Trump’s nomination reflects in any way on the movement and ideology they’ve been a part of for fifty years. Either they treat him and his followers as some magical event that appeared out of thin air like “poof!” or they claim that he’s a reaction to mean liberal elitists who were so elitist and liberal and MEAN that… that somehow, that caused the Republican voter base to channel-surf past sixteen “real conservatives?” They never quite get around to explaining what the missing step is between “liberals are mean to conservatives” and “conservatives reject conservative candidates.”
Which makes their rejection of Trump basically empty and meaningless. It would be nice if I believed that the #NeverTrump types were going to do the same thing liberal Democrats did beginning with Truman in 1947, and lead the charge to confront and beat back the racists in their party and redefine what that party stood for. But I don’t believe that: to them, everything about the GOP and modern conservatism is fine, nothing about it is racist, and Trump is the only exception (and really he’s not a real conservative anyway so he doesn’t count). They have learned nothing and they will change nothing.
Which is why as so many have said, the party so richly deserves what Trump is doing to it.
OzarkHillbilly
@The Ancient Randonneur: Well Eisenhower was the last sane Republican to sit in the Oval office, after him the Dems just pushed the Repubs further and further over the edge.
AnotherBruce
@debbie: I’m a Bears fan, and I haven’t ever heard of Mitch Unrein, husband of Corey Cogdell. But it is the Chicago Tribune.
Just One More Canuck
@NotMax: batshit crazy cannot fail – batshit crazy can only be failed
JGabriel
OzarkHillbilly:
We really didn’t. The Republicans did that to themselves by following NIxon, Buckley, Goldwater, the Birchers, Reagan and their revanchist lead over the cliff edge like a bunch of really angry lemmings.
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
@OzarkHillbilly:
Raven thanks you for your pre-emptive “fuck LBJ”.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
Gutting the safety net doesn’t even serve the rich, but I’m perfectly willing to believe that it’s something the rich are willing to do just on general principle as a lesson to The Plebes that they should stay In Their Proper Place. Independently of racism, I mean, just as class prejudice. Rich people are just as prone to this kind of irrational, sociopathic, “it’s for your own good” sadism as anyone else.
Of course, the natural constituency for this kind of class prejudice is tiny. You need the racial and gender and other prejudices to make a winning coalition, and really there’s plenty of overlap in any case. But I think this is what the elites that make up the Republican establishment tell themselves – that it’s not about race prejudice, just class prejudice (or “meritocracy,” in their own mentality).
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly: Hoover wasn’t so bad. Just out of his depth.
OzarkHillbilly
@JGabriel: Not to hear them tell it.
@one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer: He is usually busy at this point in the day so I’m just making sure.
Miss Bianca
Let’s see..agenda items for the week:
1.Recovering from taking a dirt-flop off the back of a bolting horse yesterday;
2. Attending the Democratic Central Committee meeting this evening and then, if I’m feeling frisky, head over to the next town to hear a debate on Amendment 69, the “Colorado Care” initiative – our version of state-based single-payer health care;
3. ???
Chris
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Yes, true.
Part of me’s already worrying about 2020 even if she does make it in 2016. With both of them polling historically negative approval ratings with the public, I can just imagine what happens if the GOP runs someone who can actually chew with his mouth full and use an indoor voice four years from now, especially when combined with voter fatigue. Hopefully, 1) she wins this year and 2) the next four years go well enough that more people reassess their view of her.
OzarkHillbilly
@MattF: Hoover was sane too, but Eisenhower came after, hence the last sane GOP in the White House.
Chris
@bemused:
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
With the collapse of faith in the Bush administration, McCain’s electoral loss, Sarah Palin’s status as the party’s new star, and the rise of the teabaggers, over the 2008/2009 period, my comment at the time was that Lex Luthor’s GOP was out, and the Joker’s GOP was in.
And boy howdy, was I right.
Amir Khalid
@Chris:
If President Hillary has built up a record of liberal successes by then, and I think she will, I rather fancy her chances of reelection.
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly: How did I misunderstand that? Hmm.
SFAW
@jamesjhare:
I call bullshit. “His readers”? That’s like “conservative intellectuals,” or “jumbo shrimp-y hands,” or “billionaire Donald Trump.”
randy khan
@Chris:
Clinton has this strange history of polling well on favorability when she’s in a job and then not polling well when she’s running for something. We’ll see, but actually being in the job may be a big advantage for her.
Chris
@The Ancient Randonneur:
Harry Truman, along with John F. Kennedy, is one of the liberal presidents of the past that conservatives like to claim as one of their own or who would totally be one of their own if he were alive today.
Of course it’s horseshit. As is amply demonstrated by the fact that there were conservatives then too, and that they attacked Truman and Kennedy in exactly the same terms with which they now attack Obama and Clinton. Truman was the man who lost China and wouldn’t let us win in Korea, Kennedy was the man who lost Cuba and was too weak to retake it at the Bay of Pigs. Truman was performing social engineering with our military instead of defeating our foes. Kennedy was a Catholic who didn’t even have the right to be president. And both of them were socialists and one-worlders, of course.
SFAW
@AnotherBruce:
Well, as Omnes could tell you, with a name like that, he has to be on the Bears. If Omnes spoke German, that is.
I am such a dweeb. (I would have added “sometimes,” but I try to be truthful at all times.)
OzarkHillbilly
@MattF: Brain fart?
Barbara
@Chris: It’s not that most wealthy people are out to gut the safety net on principle, more like, if it’s a choice between maintaining the safety net and lower taxes, lower taxes win. The principles for doing so are after the fact justifications for why a low tax rate for wealthy people benefits everyone. That is the whole trickle down philosophy.
germy
@Chris: They attacked MLK as a “communist” and a “socialist” yet nowadays they say he was a republican who would disapprove of BLM.
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly: Monday. Cerebral cortex in idle.
Chris
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well… IIRC Hoover was well-meaning, which is more than you can say for any Republican since Nixon (except maybe Ford?) but I’m not sure he was entirely sane.
I remember reading that at some point in the Great Depression, when he was shown the unemployment numbers, he thought they were so high that they just had to be wrong and simply proclaimed them to be half of what the experts were showing him. Thus becoming the original “unskewed polls” Republican.
Ian
Yes they do.
dedc79
Other arms reach out to me
Other eyes smile tenderly
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you
I said Georgia, oh Georgia
Barbara
@Chris: They want anarchy for themselves and law and order imposed on everyone else. It has been this way for a long time, it’s just that they now feel free to demand it in the most obvious terms they can think of.
germy
@Chris:
Is it possible gutting the safety net does benefit the rich? Because a frightened, desperate populace will be less likely to walk away from the shit, low-salary jobs they provide?
randy khan
So the official leaks for today’s big Trump economics speech indicate that he’s going all in on tax cuts – middle class, rich people, estate tax, corporate tax, the whole deal. How we’ll pay for anything apparently is not being revealed.
OzarkHillbilly
@randy khan: Incumbents have a tendency to get reelected even if things are just not getting any worse.
Capri
@Baud: I’d like to see Hilary spring the really damning stuff on Donald live at the debate. That would be fun.
Barbara
@Ian: The participation trophy you get is called, before the general election, the nominee, and after the election, the president. That’s the whole point. If enough of you participate you all get the trophy you collectively voted for. What is his alternative plan, exactly?
Chris
@Barbara:
True, that too – although I do maintain that there is still a lot of “on general principle” as well.
Trentrunner
Wake me up when Repubs on this November’s ballot start abandoning Trump.
Trump represents 30-60% (depending on district) of Republican voters. That’s too many to piss away.
Trump is the Republican party, and they are him. The ones squawking now, like Wilson, have been the head varnishers trying to shellac a coat of respectability over the racist-misogynist-homophobic core of the party.
They are…less than convincing.
Ruckus
@OzarkHillbilly:
Perfect.
OzarkHillbilly
@Chris:
Well Hell’s bells, I’m not sure I’m entirely sane anymore either. I keep seeing a short fingered serially bankrupt vulgarian with a ferret on his head talking about YOOOOOOOGE walls and how he wins all the time. It’s enuf to make me think I’m still suffering the aftereffects of that drug I took Friday.
Patricia Kayden
@Trentrunner:
Which is exactly why the GOP will face the exact problem they have now with their nominee for years to come. The problem is their base, not their nominee. There is no way that Democrats would have voted for an ignoramus similar to Trump on our side of the aisle.
philadelphialawyer
@Aimai: Sorry to hear that aimai.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ruckus: I thought it was pretty good. Have I told you how humble I am lately? I am very humble.
Chris
@germy:
I think yes and no, depending on your definition of the word “benefit.” It depends on if you’d rather be a feudal lord in all but name, ruling a population of disenfranchised serfs, or if you’d rather be like a mid-20th century Rockefeller type, who’s even richer and still very powerful but whose middle and working class fellow citizens are no longer subject to his every whim – not to the same extent, at least.
Of course, I’ve also been known to speculate that above a certain level of income, money becomes just an abstraction, so the question of whether something “benefits” you has no real meaning.
Blueskies
@The Ancient Randonneur: Succinct. Pithy.
You win.
Seanly
F’ck this asshat. We’re not going to lose religious liberty, nor the precious 2nd amendment, nor will we be invaded by dusky hordes of funny-talking immigrants. If Clinton wins, and if we make some strides in taking back the Senate & House, I hope that we have a country that is closer to our national mythology. I hope we have a fairer and more just society. One where more than just white men can achieve their full potential.
catclub
@amk:
They are not yet cheering loudly for a gigantic terrorist attack. But they are hoping quietly for just that.
Bruce K
@MattF: The only question is whether he’d be working with the approval of the Black Chamber. They’re even less fond of loose cannons than the Laundry, and tend to be more abrupt in dealing with them…
Gin & Tonic
@Trentrunner: Varnish and shellac are different substances.
/pedant
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
They want to get back to where the back room boys pick not only the candidate but mold the winner. Nixon cracked that mold, they thought they got it back with Reagan. But they didn’t. The bigots took over deciding who would be in power, culminating in Trump winning the primary based upon being openly racist. It’s who their party has become, the southern strategy worked. Till Trump blew off the decorum, that wafer thin layer of respectability they’d tried to paint on it. It is who they are, that’s why it worked.
catclub
@randy khan: The NPR report said ‘ he did not say how all that would be paid for, except they think the economy will grow so much that will do it’
They did not add, ‘They always claim that and it has never happened yet’ instead they weaseled with:
‘ although some economists might disagree with this approach’.
different-church-lady
@OzarkHillbilly: Ever since Palin I’ve been using the Frankenstein analogy. But now I’m thinking Audrey, Jr. might be more accurate.
Major Major Major Major
Late to the party here, but just wanted to say that when I saw “dragged from the back of a truck” my mind went to Matthew Shepard. Don’t these people have editors?
MattF
@Major Major Major Major: In fact, probably not. Editors today are management. Editors as people who actually read and edit written work are the old way of doing things.
Major Major Major Major
@MattF: but like friends? Colleagues? Even I have editors and I’m an amateur as a writer. I’m a programmer and my *code* has editors.
He’s a message and media strategist!
different-church-lady
@OzarkHillbilly: Perhaps you’re sane and everyone else is crazy.
Ruckus
@Seanly:
That would be nice. But that is exactly what republicans don’t want. Trump isn’t their real problem, he is the symptom of the disease that is the republican party. We read Wilson and are supposed to think, “Where is the true conservative any more?” But that’s the problem, they have been trying to ride the bigoted beast to power and the bigoted beast is more powerful than they are. Because there are no “true conservatives”, this is who they have always been. This is what conservatives are all about, preserving the past, preserving the bigotry, preserving a way of life that is in direct odds with the goals stated in the founding documents of our country. And even then many didn’t really want those goals for all, they wanted freedom to continue to be bigots. It isn’t that Trump has failed conservatism it is that conservatism has failed to be a valid concept of governance.
Ruckus
@OzarkHillbilly:
Hugely Humble!
Miss Bianca
@Immanentize: Hey, no, proud “fright wig” user here! (the term, I mean. I insist on non-fright wigs for my own use.)
scav
@Major Major Major Major: code has rather more obvious consequences (and even then they cut back). If Brooks is still employed and all that counts are the clicks and retweets, there’s strong evidence that no one really seems to care if the article flies off the water-slide or strands readers mid-paragraph for hours.
HL Guy
“Dragged from the back of a truck?” Good God. James Byrd’s family might not appreciate that formulation.
Mnemosyne
You guys. My retired cop cousin announced on Facebook this morning that he’s voting for Johnson in IL, but his friends in purple states should hold their noses and vote for Hillary.
This shit is real.
Major Major Major Major
@scav: yeah, I guess my particular malady is caring.
The other possibility is he meant to say that, though to what end is beyond me. “The Trumpists treated our party like we treat n—–s and faggots!”
Aimai
@Major Major Major Major: Not Matthew Shephard. James Byrd, JR. In Texas.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@rikyrah:
This is really fascinating, and apart from this clear-eyed analysis, is completely unremarked upon or acknowledged at all in mainstream media. Propane Jane has done an outstanding storify on twitter looking at this phenomenon. She, I have come to appreciate, has a unified field theory on the connection between the media, their horse race approach to politics, the polling our disgraceful media relies on which doesn’t fully or honestly incorporate new demographic realities (deliberately or unwittingly), and the boom in white dysfunction and pathologies because of their delusional thinking, fed by white punditry and the corporate media. Guess what lies at the root of all of this? RACISM, and the failure of our media to report how much and how quickly the country is changing. IOW, there is no possibility of white people taking their country back, and everyone needs to stop pretending that it’s even a thing that can happen.
MattF
@Mnemosyne: There does seem to be a slow leakage of Trump support among Republican voters. It’s a puzzle to me that anyone needs to think very much about it– but if they end up in the right place after thinking it over for a while, I’ll take it.
Applejinx
@germy: Yes, obviously, to the extent that the rich are sociopathic monsters.
The thing to understand about that is, the rich can be corporations, composite ‘people’ with personalities set by legal documents. These legal documents have pressured corporations to be monstrous ‘people’ for many many years, so it’s less important even whether the rich people helming the corporations have some kind of soul: if their corporation’s duties require them to act monstrously then somebody will be found to do so (or, more simply, people who don’t like it won’t rise to control the corporation).
So it’s starkly obvious that the rich do benefit strongly from gutting any and all safety nets, and producing the maximally cowed, desperate, and powerless populace. This is well under way here as in the UK, and has nothing to do with individual rich people being monstrous (though it’s a strong reason for them to deny this reality and fantasize about, for instance, space travel). Corporate people count as ‘the rich’ too, and act as people in many ways, but are literally sociopathic or not based on the rules written in their heads, like golems.
Bernie Sanders never had one single answer to this, but BOY did he see the problem with it and the results it’s produced. I hope Hillary Clinton has better luck figuring it out: the advantage there is that her husband, in his Presidency, already pursued a strategy of enforcing discipline on just such corporate ‘people’ plus human rich people, demanding money from them in order to make the larger country grow better. Since this worked, I’m pretty sure they’ll try it again. It may even have been Hillary behind it the first time: we’ll see when we make her President.
Major Major Major Major
@Aimai: could’ve sworn Shepard was dragged too, but the Google says he was just tied to the fence.
Gelfling 545
@Immanentize: Well, he doesn’t wear an opossum on his head…….yet.
Applejinx
When Trump talks about cutting taxes for everybody, we/they should say ‘Bill Clinton balanced the budget, and ran surpluses’. It’s true.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
It’s a not uncommon, though crude, verbal expression in at least certain parts of the country.
scav
@MattF: They need the flock of other believers about them en masse to feel safe about any actions, thoughts or beliefs. See also why visibly happy gay people in committed long-term relationships freak them out (as do advertisements about multi-racial families eating breakfast) and why visible atheism or muslims greeting each other at holidays is cultural Armageddon.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Trump isn’t the problem; Trump was never the problem.
The people who voted for Trump are the problem.
That’s the reality the GOP needs to come to grips with, and they won’t.
The disaster that is Trump cannot last another 90 days. It’s just not physically possible. It’d be one thing if he were tanking this badly in late October, but now? We’re just a week into August, and Hillary’s up in Georgia. This cannot last.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
Even later to the party, to me it reminds me of James Bird. who was dragged to death by some yahoos. I remember the news footage, where you could see the yellow markers on the road where they found pieces of him on the road where he was dragged, it was horrific.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
From our old BJ pal dengre.
Chris
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Well, I wouldn’t go that far. There is no possibility of white people “taking” “their” country “back,” within the civic norms accepted by the modern United States. The reason the Trump phenomenon terrifies so many people is that it gives a hint of just how many whites would be willing to step outside those norms to maintain white dominance of the country.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: Actually it does. Without a safety net to fall back on and well paying jobs being hard to come by, the reserve army of the unemployed is easier to manipulate. Marx may have been wrong about the solution to class struggle but he was right about the reasons behind its existence.
Chyron HR
@Mnemosyne:
More proof that Hillary is a right-winger and thus all true progressives must vote for Dr. Jill.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: Actually it does help the oligarchy. Without a safety net to fall back on and well paying jobs being hard to come by, the reserve army of the unemployed is easier to manipulate. Marx may have been wrong about the solution to class struggle but he was right about the reasons behind its existence.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: make sure he votes for Tammy!
Chris
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Also –
You wouldn’t happen to have a link, would you? I’d like to read this.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Chris:
That’s part of their delusion. Look what happened to the last person who “took up arms” against the State – they got blown up by a robot. I guess there could be full fledged insurrection by a bunch of fat assed Bundy type cosplaying idiots, but without the military taking their side and installing a right wing dictatorship of white insurrectionists, they’re vastly outnumbered. I think we’re witnessing in the Trump phenomenon the dawning realization of that impotence and irrelevancy, but the media refuses to do their civic duty by naming it what it is.
catclub
@Chris:
One advantage to having Trump saying that ‘everything is a disaster’ is that if in three years everything is NOT a disaster, people can see that as improvement.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Chris:
2016 Most Diverse Electorate in History
The Great White Hype
Chris
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Yes, but that’s why the Trump phenomenon is scary – because it means you’re no longer talking about a bunch of idiots in Confederate cosplay. Now you’re talking about a man just as crazy as them potentially ending up in the White House and ending up Commander-In-Chief of the military, among his many other powers, and ready to use his office the same way the crazies use their AR-15. (And the possibility of his winning, while remote, still exists: give him an economic collapse or a major terrorist attack and he just might pull it off).
The militia movement is the American right wing version of the Baader-Meinhoff/Red Brigade crazies that were running around Europe thirty years ago. Yes, they’re bad people, but in the big picture sense it doesn’t really mean anything other than “boy, some people are just psycho” – Europe wasn’t going to go communist because of a few idiots running around with submachine guns. If a person who basically shared their beliefs had somehow gotten enough popular support to be in the running for President of France or Chancellor of Germany, though, that would have been terrifying on a whole other level. Which is what Teh Donald represents.
He’s got a remote chance, but it’s still a chance.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@catclub:
Hasn’t worked for Obama, what makes you think it will work for Hillary?
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
Good point.
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Thanks!
catclub
@Grumpy Code Monkey: There were high expectations for Obama to make everything better. Given zero expectations for Hillary to do anything but lie and be corrupt, people could be favorably disappointed when that does not happen.
The 2008 GOP was NOT saying that everything is a disaster. Even though they were.
I am still not terribly optimistic it will be much better.
randy khan
@catclub:
So you’re saying the the reporting was better than usual?
Brachiator
This makes Jill Stein unhappy. A Trump victory would bring us closer to progressive paradise.
Brachiator
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
People said this when Trump announced his candidacy. They said it when he entered the debates. They said it when he won primaries. They said it when he won the GOP nomination.
Keep saying it.
And work to defeat him.
Matt McIrvin
@scav: Well, I think the UK has zero power over what all those other “Commonwealth Realms” do; if they want to consider the British monarch to be their monarch too, or not, that’s their own business at this point.
(The way Canadians have explained it to me is that, at least under the post-1982 arrangement, they don’t consider the Queen of the UK to be their queen; it’s just that the Queen of Canada happens incidentally to be the same person as the Queen of the UK at the present time.)
gwangung
@Chris: docrocket has LOTs of great storified tweets….Go to Storify and look by twitter handles…. @docrocktex26
In fact, just follow her on Twiter….
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I think it’s funny that the principled conservatives think they still have something sans the Trump voters. Without racial resentment they have a paltry handful of folks who believe in a Randian “utopia” of extreme deregulation, low taxes, and near zero government services, with liberal gun laws and pro life tacked on for good measure. The folks really interested in that policy agenda are a vast minority of voters. They can abandon Trump and his voters but they’ll basically be left with the Libertarian vote. That vote is not large. They can’t seem to get it through their pea brains that their principled conservative movement isn’t a movement with lots of people behind it…it’s got a few very wealthy backers, so there’s lots of money behind it, but money isn’t people.
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: India is a part of the Commonwealth but is a Republic, the British monarch stopped being the head of state since independence. Good riddance, I say.
Chris
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Your nym provides a clue as to the kind of conversations that must be going on in #NeverTrump, establishment GOP circles.
“What have the racists ever done for us?”
“The 2010 midterms?”
“Sorry?”
“The 2010 midterms!”
“Oh, right, they did give us that…”
“And the 2004 election! And the 2002 midterms!”
“Yeah yeah, all right, fair enough…”
“And the 1994 midterms! First time in Congress since the fifties! If the South hadn’t finally gone Republican, we still wouldn’t have it!”
“Right, I’ll grant you, the 2010 and 2004 and 2002 and 1994 elections are four things the racists HAVE done for us…”
“And 1980 and 1984 and 1988…”
“Well obviously Reagan! I mean, Reagan goes without saying, doesn’t he?”
“And 1972 and 1968…”
“Right, but APART from the 2010 and 2004 and 2002 and 1994 and 1988 and 1984 and 1980 and 1972 and 1968 elections, WHAT HAVE THE RACISTS EVER DONE FOR US!”
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Funny story — it turns out that Prince William is part-Indian on his mother’s side (about 6 or 7 generations back, granted).
J R in WV
@debbie:
Power dropped at 0230 this morning. I guess the generator sets hadn’t been tested regularly, or the diesel went bad, or something…
J R in WV
@satby: Pretty sure that was American Airlines, because AMERICA, Fuq Yeah!!
J R in WV
@satby:
Even if the computers are up on generators, the communications links nearby could also be down. It’s a system and if any of the parts are down so is the whole thing.
J R in WV
@Peale:
LGBTQ and contraception, and women’s rights. They don’t have any, you know? None. The rights are all the husband’s, and the house work is all the wife’s. It IS in the bible. Just ask them.
akryan
Every time I see these “we must destroy Trump,” articles, I think about the fact that if Clinton beats him in a 54-40-5-1 landslide, it will still mean that 2 out of 5 people in this nation, when faced with all the possible candidates for the most powerful job in the world, thought Trump was the one most qualified. That isn’t a total repudiation and his brand of politics isn’t going anywhere.
debbie
@Mike E:
Really? Then why not a headline like “Chicago’s Corey Cogdell Wins Bronze” and then mention her husband in the opening paragraph? Guess that would be too politically correct for you?
debbie
@debbie:
Dammit, I picked up the wrong commenter. I meant to address my response to Uncle Cosmo @ 177.
J R in WV
@Miss Bianca:
Ow! I did that once, back before I turned into an elderly old fart.
I hope there was no real damage, take care and be careful both!
J R in WV
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes, this!
I have always despised the royalty of Europe since the first world history book I read which detailed the number of meaningless wars they fought over the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin, and the countless (because no one cared enough to count them) serfs that died when their food was stolen for an army passing by.
It would be hard to round up a more despicable group of people outside a super-max prison. And now they hold the Olympics in their grasp in order to pillage it for money and sex.
Chris
@J R in WV:
I’ve been to the French royal palace at Versailles a few times. Shocking and irreverent as it is to say, my takeaway was that if Donald Trump was born 300 years earlier in France, that palace is what he would have had built.
SO. MUCH. BLING. SO. MUCH. FUCKING. BLING. MY. GOD.