Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

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

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

We still have time to mess this up!

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Saturday Afternoon Open Thread: ‘But Our Horse Race!…

Saturday Afternoon Open Thread: ‘But Our Horse Race!…

by | 189 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

We need to GOTV and run up Clinton’s totals, because the hierophants of the Conventional Wisdom are pushing as hard as the Republicans for a Donald Trump win.

Possibly harder, given how dispirited Reince & Ryan seem at the moment.

What’s on the agenda for the afternoon?

Reader Interactions

189Comments

  2. 2.

    germy

    What happened to Jeff Greenfield? I remember when he had hair down to his shoulders and wrote for Nat Lampoon. Is he really “genuinely puzzled” now, or just being an asshole?

  4. 4.

    dmsilev

    + (possibly) more disciplined Trump.

    The Trump campaign has one of those number signs, “47 days hours since our candidate’s last offensive gaffe”. I’m not sure it’s ever made it to 100.

  5. 5.

    Mike J

    When Republicans are behind they lie and say they are ahead because they think voters like winners. When Democrats are ahead they fret about how they might really be behind because they think voters like losers.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    It’s not over until the fat lady sings.

    Why do you think Hillary has gained 100 lbs recently?

  7. 7.

    shomi

    WTF was the weasel headed shitheel handing out in Lousiana? What a phony photo op. That was definitely more phony and desperate than that Hurricane Sandy Romney stunt.

  8. 8.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mike J:

    Given how many ostensible liberals complain that Obama actually got an imperfect healthcare plan through Congress instead of losing while honorably clinging to the ideal plan they have in their heads, I’m not surprised that Democrats get nervous that their voters won’t show up because they got a My Little Pony doll instead of a racehorse.

  9. 9.

    ruemara

    Up too late texting with my unboyfriend, because we’re both idiots, so I’m late to do some laundry or eat breakfast. So laundry. And Think Geek is selling a lot of cool stuff and I kinda really want the hoodie that has LEDs in it so you can cast spells. Or I could buy that new lens & body I’ve been wanting. But spell caster hoodie, tho.

  11. 11.

    patrick II

    The Republican running for president is a racist, misogynist, ignorant, in-debt-to-to-Russians, inexperienced, billionaire-tax-deducing, inarticulate, lying job exporter. And while Mr. Greenfield wonders why the race isn’t over, I’m amazed it is this close.

  13. 13.

    Amir Khalid

    @dmsilev:

    The Trump campaign has one of those number signs, “47 days hours since our candidate’s last offensive gaffe”. I’m not sure it’s ever made it to 100.

    Since the convention, I’m pretty sure the number hasn’t gone above 5.

  14. 14.

    Brachiator

    Yawn. Conservatives have been whining about the unreliability and volatility of polls, but the media has been full of stories about how Hillary is ahead in almost every swing state.

    There is no horse race conventional wisdom. None.

    But polling is not prophecy. GOTV efforts are what matters.

  18. 18.

    germy

    @Brachiator:

    Conservatives have been whining about the unreliability and volatility of polls…

    Until they find one outlier that shows them ahead. Then their rooster crows are deafening.

  19. 19.

    Ken

    Greenfield needs to play around with those electoral map tools. Most of them now start showing “Clinton has 1285 ways to win, Trump has 1 way to win”. Then when you dig down, you find that one way requires holding on to Georgia and Arizona, and flipping eight “Leans Clinton” states.

  20. 20.

    Brachiator

    @shomi:

    . WTF was the weasel headed shitheel handing out in Lousiana? What a phony photo op.

    Totally phony, but it appeals to Trump’s core supporters in the area and provides the conservatives with a talking point, also phony, about an aloof Obama continuing to vacation while Louisiana suffers.

    Total BS, but why would anyone expect the GOP to fight fair. It will get uglier and more nasty as Trump’s new team gets up to full speed.

    I hope the Democrats keep Hillary above the fray, while getting savvy surrogates to go after Trump with everything they’ve got. Bring out the Gimp, if necessary.

  21. 21.

    Josie

    Party strategists are mapping out blueprints for down-ballot candidates, in TV ads and on the campaign trail, to present themselves as checks on a Hillary Clinton presidency. It’s an approach that would essentially admit a Trump loss. In interviews, nearly one dozen Republican operatives said they had begun poll-testing the idea – which one labeled a “break glass in case of emergency” strategy – to gauge how the public would react to it.

    This is from an article in Politico. It looks like there are some Republican strategists who think it is getting out of reach. I hope they are right.

  22. 22.

    Keith G

    Greenfield is not vermin, but he is too dedicated to simple narratives at the expense if simple truths.

    Hillary is certainly capable of being injured by harm that is both Clinton generated and Clinton nurtured, but that window is closing. Trump is in a hole which he would have to climb out of before competing from the solid ground where he would still be significantly trailing Hillary.

    Many GOP leaders know that this is likely a goner. They are convinced that the Clintons, being the Clintons, will give them wave elections in 2018 and 2020 – with 2020 being a key election to win state legislatures and lock in GOP redistricting advantages for another decade.

  24. 24.

    germy

    to present themselves as checks on a Hillary Clinton presidency.

    “Block that kick! Block that kick!”

  25. 25.

    Josie

    @Josie: For some reason the block quote attached to the wrong paragraph, and FYWP won’t let me change it. Oh well, you get the general idea……..

  27. 27.

    Hal

    @shomi: I mentioned this in a thread below. Trump in LA is purely political, but it gives the press a Trump look Presidential storyline. You can’t just spend the next 80- days covering how terrible he’s doing because that’s terrible for ratings.

    My question to Greenfield is what Trump can do to change the minds of voters who have concluded that Trump is unfit to be President. Hillary has large negatives? Trump’s are larger and on multiple levels.

    Also disappointing:

    http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/did-race-play-role-larry-wilmore-s-downfall-n634336

    I get that not everyone liked Wilmore’s show, but I thought he gave voice to issues that just don’t receive the attention they deserve in this country. Especially from many white people who have completely different experiences with race than people of color.

    While black comics like Dave Chappelle and Key & Peele have scored huge hits with more sketch-oriented variety programs, audiences don’t seem to be as comfortable with African-Americans behind a desk in a more traditional late night format.

    One huge obstacle may be demographics. The audience for these kinds or programs has skewed older in recent years, even though the current crop of hosts is decidedly younger and more fresh-faced (Wilmore had been the oldest of the bunch at 54).

    Still, according to Elsa Waithe, a four-year veteran African-American stand-up comic, “The Nightly Show” was appointment television for her and plenty of her black peers, if for no other reason because it was one of the few comedy shows of its kind on air currently featuring a predominately black perspective

    .

  29. 29.

    Brachiator

    @germy:

    . Until they find one outlier that shows them ahead. Then their rooster crows are deafening.

    In this past hell week for Trump, there was not any reliable poll anywhere which showed that Trump was ahead.

    And the mainstream media which supposedly loves Trump and hates Hillary was very clear on two points.

    Hillary was ahead everywhere it counted.

    Trump was losing ground.

    A third point was that Trump was campaigning ineffectively, spending time in areas where he was not winning new votes or changing minds.

    Obviously, the right wing media lied and tried to spin, but the reporting on Trump’s flailing was clear and accurate.

  30. 30.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Keith G: They are sadly deluded. Hillary is not Bill. But the real danger for the Rethugs is that not only is the Senate in play, the House is moving in that direction. Their carefully, artfully constructed gerrymanders with just enough +R in them are vulnerable to a wave election, and Drumpf is taking the entire rotting ship down with him.

    The Rethugs should have stopped this shit back in January. Of course, they have only themselves to blame for the id of their vile racist, greedhead party emerging from the lab and wreaking havoc. They built Drumpf, he…and his base…are all theirs.

  33. 33.

    dmsilev

    @Porco Rosso:

    Worried about those sweet sweet ad dollars drying up?

    I saw a story somewhere noting that Presidential ad spending was down something like 40 or 50 percent compared to 2012 because this time round, only one of the campaigns is doing any nontrivial amount of advertising. Where the Trump dollars are going is a bit of a mystery; he’s claimed to have raised a fair amount of money in the last couple of months, but hasn’t been visibly spending it. FEC report for July becomes public sometime in the next couple of days, so we should get some answers. My guess is that a lot of his small-dollar fundraising is being done through those direct-mail rent-a-list companies that skim off a large fraction in “fundraising overhead”. I.e. another grifting operation.

  34. 34.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Brachiator: I disagree. There is a horse race in play here. However, it’s Secretariat lapping the entire field in the Belmont Stakes.

    Frankly, the most exciting horse race I’ve ever seen.

  35. 35.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @dmsilev: The entire Trump organization is built around the Art of the Grift. Of course he’s skimming off lots of bucks. Plenty of marks to be fleeced out there.

  36. 36.

    bystander

    @germy:

    Many people still recall Greenfield’s homophobic writings in the Village Voice and have a difficult time not wanting to punch him when they saw him on the subway. Or so I’m told.

  38. 38.

    Shell

    was campaigning ineffectively, spending time in areas where he was not winning new votes or changing minds.

    Well, if the guy still thinks he can turn NY or CT red…

  39. 39.

    Lyrebird

    we need to GOTV like mad to get the Senate out of the madhouse!

    Harry Reid’s seat is still rated as a toss-up, McGinty has a chance to unseat Toomey (R-Club for Growth), and please can we get Maggie Hassan in NH?

  41. 41.

    dmsilev

    @Shell: His laziness and insistence on flying home to New York every evening is a wonderful asset. For Hillary Clinton.

  44. 44.

    JDM

    Yeah, but if Trump simply gets NY and California, they’ve be almost even!

    Remember the election night shock and confusion on the Romneys’ faces when Mitt was defeated, deeply shocked despite all the pre-election polls showing just that about to happen? Well, the Romneys are infinitely smarter and more reality-based than Trump is.*

    * very low bar, like those cattle bars they just paint on the road.

  46. 46.

    Brachiator

    @germy:

    . I was talking about Trump fans and operatives, not the media.

    The past couple of weeks, even sober conservative analysts were acknowledging Trump’s floundering. This was more significant than the prattle of the Trump true believers, which was clearly grasping at straws.

  47. 47.

    Citizen_X

    (possibly) more disciplined Trump.

    Yeah, don’t hold your breath waiting for that, Greenfield. You’re better off waiting for the (possible) appearance of the Great Pumpkin.

  49. 49.

    Brachiator

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    . There is a horse race in play here. However, it’s Secretariat lapping the entire field in the Belmont Stakes.

    . Fair point.

    We just have to help Hillary keep that lead.

  50. 50.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @JDM: Peggy Noonan, who saw all those lawn signs, was certain that the election was in the bag for Mittens.

    Oops, cat got out of the bag. So sad.

  51. 51.

    Brachiator

    @JDM:

    . Remember the election night shock and confusion on the Romneys’ faces when Mitt was defeated,

    I remember the shock and confusion on the faces of Fox News reporters. Still some great YouTube clips of this stuff.

    ETA. Can’t easily link to those clips with this mobile browser.

  53. 53.

    Baud

    About damn time

    The feds are cracking down on Deez Nuts and other fake presidential candidates. Even though Deez Nuts was once polling at 9 percent, only to fall behind to Captain Crunch, somehow the Federal Election Commission thinks deez candidates are invalid.

    The FEC issued a statement on Thursday announcing they will try to cut down on the number of fake candidates in the race.

  54. 54.

    Tripod

    Watching Olympics. Golf Channel guy asked Inbee Park if she was going to go make babies now.

  57. 57.

    ThresherK

    Watching womens’ gold-medal game. Officiating has been…inconsistent. (And I watch a lot of low-stakes womens’ hoops, so I know whereof I speak.)

  58. 58.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    .The FEC issued a statement on Thursday announcing they will try to cut down on the number of fake candidates in the race.

    Can they do something about Trump?

  59. 59.

    Oldgold

    Hiring a Russian Agent as your campaign manager should objectively disqualify any presidential candidate.

    This not an error that is by degree worse than Trump’ other blunders; rather, it is of a different kind that in and of itself should absolutely end any consideration of his candidacy.

  61. 61.

    Feebog

    This is a very strange election cycle. I think the early conventions took the “nobody pays attention until after Labor Day” meme and turned it on its head. We are now into late August and I don’t see how these polls even tighten, much less turn around. Clinton looks to have stable double digit leads in CO, PA, and VA. Close to that in WI, MI, and NH. FL may soon be out of reach. The only swing states still in doubt are NV, IA and OH. Oh yeah, NC, where it looks like Clinton is ahead as well. Trump is polling below 40% in several national polls, and it looks like he has not hit the bottom yet.

  62. 62.

    PsiFighter37

    Got my big test on Tuesday. Already barreled through 3 hours of studying today, probably have another 4 to go. Tomorrow will be similar or longer.

  65. 65.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @PsiFighter37: Keep that nose to the grindstone, and here’s hoping that the one thing you didn’t spend that much time on is not the thing that comes up in the exam!

    (Warm water ports? How the hell did that come up in a Russian History exam?)

  66. 66.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Porco Rosso: National level advertising is down, because Drumpf believes in freeloading off the news cycle. I’m sure that revenues will start inching up come Labor Day, as state and local elections enter the public consciousness. In Oregon, it happens early, because ballots will be mailed out early October and the airwaves will be awash with ads.

    The mission of the GOTV people becomes “please pick up that ballot on the kitchen table, fill it out (it only takes five minutes, tops!) and get it mailed in!”. At least in Oregon, it does!

  67. 67.

    Zinsky

    Der Trumpenfuhrer is in for a real ass-kickin’ in November and the dumbass is too freaking stupid to see it coming…he should quit now and avoid a Mondale-type whopping!

  69. 69.

    Ruckus

    @Citizen_X:
    You were right without the added possible. The actual Great Pumpkin is far more likely. People who don’t pay attention until about the end of October are talking about how much of a loser he is. And he isn’t going to turn that around in 70 days, especially as he hasn’t been trying to before now. His gigantic, inflated ego will never let him admit that his direction was wrong in the first place which is what has to happen before he can change. And with the latest firing/hiring binge of his it should be obvious that his pivot will be to the darker side, not to better lying.

  71. 71.

    Amir Khalid

    @JDM:

    Yeah, but if Trump simply gets NY and California, they’ve be almost even!

    Not so long ago, the Bernistas were saying the same thing about their candidate. Trump’s wasting his time campaigning on the wrong states, that’s pretty obvious. But if he were campaigning in the easier-to-get states where the smart money says he should, would he really be doing any better in the polls? From what I can see, it appears that the best he can do is reduce his margin of defeat.

  72. 72.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @dmsilev: My joke was too subtle. My Russian history prof (a guy who specialized in Muscovy and earlier) got hoarse telling us about warm water ports. It’s a gimme.

  73. 73.

    Old Broad in California

    @dmsilev: The L.A. Times helpfully pointed out today that Trump’s speech in Charlotte “marked the third outing in a row where he stuck with the script”. Like it was a huge accomplishment.

  75. 75.

    JPL

    Greenfield is correct, that Trump can win. A top aide poisons Trump in early October and they blame the Clinton camp. Congress starts conducting hearings, to see if Clinton herself, committed the crime. Of course, because Trump is the healthiest candidate to run for office in years, he recovers.

  76. 76.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Ruckus: He’s been treating the general just as he did the primaries, and the rule is, run right in the primaries to attract the mouthbreathers (mission accomplished!), run back toward the center to pick up the undecideds/mushy middle types. Drumpf’s idea of an etch-a-sketch is to unveil the camps for the Mezkins to be gathered in before they’re shipped “down south” for resettlement.

  78. 78.

    dmsilev

    @Villago Delenda Est: You had me worried there for a bit.

    Can you imagine being the poor bastard who has to try to explain to Trump basic historical (but still relevant) facts like that?

  79. 79.

    Lizzy L

    @Zinsky: He is not going to quit. I don’t want him to quit. I want him to LOSE, bigly, and to take the Republican party as far down that rabbit hole as he can. No complacency here — GOTV GOTV GOTV!

  80. 80.

    dmsilev

    @JPL: If Trump is found poisoned, it will turn out to be a remake of Murder On The Orient Expresd, where the killer turns out to be All of Them.

  81. 81.

    Mike in NC

    Awaiting the rollout of Trump TV in mid 2017. Shows will include ‘This Week with Rudy Giuliani’ and ‘The Chris Christie Hour’.

  82. 82.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @dmsilev:

    The Trump campaign has one of those number signs, “47 days hours since our candidate’s last offensive gaffe”. I’m not sure it’s ever made it to 100.

    I flipped the paper open yesterday and didn’t see a front-pager on a new Trump gaffe so I counted the sections to make sure one wasn’t missing. Weird. Did they have a shock collar on him or something?

  85. 85.

    waspuppet

    Geuinely puzzled by the “it’s over!” tone of coverage, with this much time left + HRC’s unpopularity + (possibly) more disciplined Trump.

    Geuinely puzzled by “you’re a loser!” tone from my friends + family, with me only in my 50s + some people half my age also living w parents + (possibly) my white-hot affair with Salma Hayek.

  86. 86.

    MattF

    Repeating a post from the previous thread:

    Kevin Drum has a little post about liberals vs. conservatives. He goes on to ask what, exactly is the difference between pro-Trump and anti-Trump conservatives? And I don’t have a good answer.

  87. 87.

    Ruckus

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    I think he really does (or did when this started) believe that whites will overwhelmingly elect him because they are all racists like himself. And I don’t think that maths is his best subject because numbers seem to elude him easily so I don’t think he’s going to make the connection, except that he does understand the phrase, “You are losing.” It’s one he has to have heard many, many times in his life. He may fire the person who utters it but he’s had to have heard it on many occasions. Things like the small hands debacle from decades ago or the statues from this week get under his thin skin way, way too easy, so he notices his short comings and his failures. He tries to bullshit his way through them, but he notices.

  88. 88.

    Zinsky

    Anybody hear about the new Trump sandwich? It’s made on extreme white bread, full of baloney – with a touch of Russian dressing and a small pickle!

  92. 92.

    Percysowner

    @Mnemosyne: Well having the Supreme Court steal the election from Al Gore and watching John Kerry go down, possibly due to voting shenanigans has also made us antsy .

  94. 94.

    Shell

    Well having the Supreme Court steal the election from Al Gore and watching John Kerry go down, possibly due to voting shenanigans

    So what went right with Obama? Twice

  98. 98.

    Dadadadadadada

    @Shell: He was a better candidate whose speeches did not bore his supporters to tears, a trick neither Gore nor Kerry quite managed. He was running against 8 years of disastrous mismanagement, rather than for a continuation of good times that no one could imagine ending (Gore) or against 4 years of controversy that wasn’t yet clearly disastrous to very many people (Kerry).
    For starters.

  104. 104.

    jayboat

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    May I suggest an ultra wide angle instead? You will use a fisheye twice and then it will live in your camera bag for the rest of its lonely life.
    Tokina 11-16 2.8 was some of the best $$$ I ever spent on hardware.

  105. 105.

    Gerald

    It is only reasonable NOT to stop doing everything in our power to elect Senator Cintion to the POTUS!

    The GOP/Republican is relentless in its quest to govern the USA.

    GeraldP Aug 20 · 12:18:59 PM
    Let US (America) not forget the example of GOP/ Republican governance in 21st century America!

    Bush/Cheney 2000-2008 set the standard and tone.

    Wars, invasions, loss of civil liberties, torture, mismanagement of government services, little or no government oversight/regulations on businesses, Bankers and Wall Street, huge job loses, high unemployment, squandered surpluses, tax cuts for the wealthy, near economic collapse, bluster and faux bravado when faced with any real or precieved threat!

    Please note that the FIVE worst States are under GOP/Republican governce. Except for LA which only rcently replaced former (R) Gov Bobby Jendal. Who frist drove the State into a ditch and then began digging deeper!

    Their governance in 21st Century American has been nothing short of dismal, disasterous, dark, draconian and deadly to American Citizens!

    And now they want to elect a wannabe despot dictator with a vision of a dsyopican America!

    Damn …WE can do better than this!

  106. 106.

    JMG

    I haven’t thought about Greenfield in years, but I’d bet anything he was one of those pundits who said/wrote there was no way Trump would ever be the GOP nominee until he was. So he’s now gun shy. He lacks the courage of his conventional wisdom.

  109. 109.

    Wapiti

    @Zinsky:

    Anybody hear about the new Trump sandwich? It’s made on extreme white bread, full of baloney – with a touch of Russian dressing and a small pickle!

    Or how about the KFC Trump Special? It’s 99% Chicken Asshole.

  112. 112.

    Keith P.

    I’m having a chuckle at Redstate’s expense. They’ve got this headline about the Washington Examiner “reporting” that Trump’s business owes hundreds of millions to foreign interests. Then all the Examiner quotes start with “The New York Times is reporting that…”

  113. 113.

    Brachiator

    @Feebog:

    This is a very strange election cycle. I think the early conventions took the “nobody pays attention until after Labor Day” meme and turned it on its head.

    Yeah, I guess that there is a slightly longer chunk of campaign season time between now and November. Fortunately, Trump has to play catch up because he doesn’t know what he is doing, to a large degree.

    We are now into late August and I don’t see how these polls even tighten, much less turn around. Clinton looks to have stable double digit leads in CO, PA, and VA. Close to that in WI, MI, and NH.

    No such thing as a stable lead. Polls are simply snapshots in time, based on the question, “given what you know right now, how would you vote?”

    You still have to get out the vote, maybe try to win over reluctant voters. In the 1988 election, Mike Dukakis had a comfortable lead over George Bush, and then crashed in September.

    Initially Democrat Michael Dukakis was able to open a huge lead in the polls. However, Vice President Bush’s campaign successfully portrayed Dukakis as soft on crime and also used the good economy, Reagan’s popularity, and his no new taxes pledge to close the gap with Dukakis in the polls and eventually open up a huge lead over Dukakis. Bush ended up winning the general election by a landslide.

    Trump is still falling, but it looks like his new team is going to double down on dirty tricks and negative campaigning. It’s who they are, and what Trump likes. They also seem determined to make sure that Trump looks and acts “more presidential.” I don’t think this will work, but I’m just a poster on a blog, not a Nostradamus.

  114. 114.

    Mnemosyne

    Argh. I’m feeling like a crappy wife right now. I told G that we would have a staycation weekend after he gets done with his tutoring refresher a 4:00, and all of these once in a blue moon things keep happening, like my BFF’s sister being at Disneyland today only and my favorite author speaking at tomorrow’s monthly writer’s group.

    And, of course, G keeps making me feel worse by telling me to go ahead and do this stuff. So guilty. So, so guilty.

  115. 115.

    CaseyL

    @germy:

    I remember when he had hair down to his shoulders and wrote for Nat Lampoon.

    @bystander:

    Many people still recall Greenfield’s homophobic writings in the Village Voice and have a difficult time not wanting to punch him when they saw him on the subway.

    He worked for Bobby in 1968, too. But somewhere along the line he became hooked on conventional wisdom, status quo, and stability.

    I liked Greenfield, a lot, until the 2000 election. When SCOTUS handed the Presidency to Bush the Lesser, Greenfield said hey, it’s better than having tanks in the streets. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Hey, at least they stole the election politely? Or at least we were accepting it politely?

    Haven’t had much use for the guy since then.

  116. 116.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    If it’s Michael Feinstein (who I didn’t at first realize is THE Michael Feinstein), at least he knows how to read off cue cards without sounding wooden. Turns out that’s a more difficult skill than I realized.

  117. 117.

    different-church-lady

    Geuinely puzzled by the “it’s over!” tone of coverage, with this much time left + HRC’s unpopularity + (possibly) more disciplined Trump Sun crashing into the Earth.

    Equally likely.

  118. 118.

    Gin & Tonic

    The Sam Adams “seasonal” on tap at Logan is Oktoberfest. It’s fucking August.

    See you on the other side.

  120. 120.

    different-church-lady

    @Gin & Tonic:

    The Sam Adams “seasonal” on tap at Logan is Oktoberfest. It’s fucking August.

    Have you experienced the delays at Logan?

  121. 121.

    Tripod

    OK… so the US Women’s team won 101-72, but they could of lost.

    I hadn’t given Greenfield a thought in a decade or more. What a useless, inane, fart in the wind.

  125. 125.

    hugely

    @Hal: huh IAMAWD and loved Larry Wilmore and the Nightly show moreso than the Daily Show. I only get to see it when traveling but thats too bad, that show was good especially for having a PoC PoV. I loved how he rode Cosby HARD

  126. 126.

    Brachiator

    @efgoldman:

    Everything he does/they do appeals to the base of mouth breather troglodytes and no-one else.

    I don’t know that this is entirely true. I talk to people all the time who are Trump supporters and who are not stupid dimwits. I don’t know how many undecided voters or “never Hillary” voters remain out there.

    However, I think it’s pretty clear that no matter what Trump himself says, his campaign strategists are going to whip up a frenzy among the bigots and jingoists.

    I guess they really, truly believe their own bullshit about hordes of hidden white voters who are going to swarm the polls.

    Yeah, I think they do.

  129. 129.

    sigaba

    Presently in a 2 hour layover in Phoenix (in the celebrated and strangely prison-like Barry Goldwater terminal). Mulling why my dad asked me on a recent visit if I was gay, considering that he knows I’ve had girlfriends and speak of women often.

    I am 37 and not in a relationship and this is the reason he gave. Feel disrespected and alien. Great mood for an airport!

  132. 132.

    The Sheriff's A Ni-

    @Brachiator:

    Yawn. Conservatives have been whining about the unreliability and volatility of polls, but the media has been full of stories about how Hillary is ahead in almost every swing state.

    There is no horse race conventional wisdom. None.

    This.

    But polling is not prophecy. GOTV efforts are what matters.

    And that.

    Being confident of victory doesn’t mean taking the foot off the accelerator. That’s Patton 101.

  134. 134.

    different-church-lady

    @efgoldman:

    BTW if you think Logan is bad, and it is, Dulles is Logan x 10 on steroids.

    That’s why the bars at Dulles currently have eggnog.

  138. 138.

    Captain C

    @Brachiator: I was watching the returns that night on MSNBC, and then decided to switch to Fox for a little schadenfreude. About a minute after I did so, Karl Rove had his epic meltdown.

  141. 141.

    divF

    @sigaba:

    Feel disrespected and alien. Great mood for an airport!

    Indeed, in a airport, we are all disrespected and alien. It is one of the great equalizing experiences.

  142. 142.

    divF

    @efgoldman:

    BTW if you think Logan is bad, and it is, Dulles is Logan x 10 on steroids.

    If you’re traveling to/from the west coast, the only thing that matters is whether you’re on a nonstop flight. Making stops in between is asking for trouble.

    So I suck it up, and fly SFO-IAD (which I am now having to do once a month).

  143. 143.

    WaterGirl

    @ruemara:

    I could buy that new lens & body I’ve been wanting.

    How much is a new body at Think Geek? Because I could be in the market for an upgrade. :-)

  144. 144.

    Keith P.

    My kitty is nagging me to go to the store to get her food, but I suspect it’s for the feral living out back. She’s eaten thrice today, and he’s hanging out by my bedroom window whining for her. Dutiful cat…she nags me harder when the food is for him than when it’s for her.

  145. 145.

    Kay

    Bravo. Finally. This is what newspapers are for:

    On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has sold himself as a businessman who has made billions of dollars and is beholden to no one.
    But an investigation by The New York Times into the financial maze of Mr. Trump’s real estate holdings in the United States reveals that companies he owns have at least $650 million in debt — twice the amount that can be gleaned from public filings he has made as part of his bid for the White House. The Times’s inquiry also found that Mr. Trump’s fortunes depend deeply on a wide array of financial backers, including one he has cited in attacks during his campaign.

    Keep looking.

    If the GOP wasn’t riddled with a motley collection of grifters and self-serving con men he wouldn’t have gotten this far with these lies and scams. His opponents in the primary would have found this out.

  146. 146.

    Brachiator

    @efgoldman: RE: his new team is going to double down on dirty tricks and negative campaigning. It’s who they are, and what Trump likes. They also seem determined to make sure that Trump looks and acts “more presidential.”

    Aren’t those kind of mutually exclusive?

    No, not really.

    What do you make of the obvious attempts to have Trump apologize, tone it down, do the photo-op in Louisiana?

    On the other hand, Rachel Maddow and others have noted the connections between Trump’s people and white supremacist and extreme fringe thinking. And Breitbart has been known for dirty tricks and negative campaigning. They are trying, for example, to swiftboat Hillary on spurious health issues.

    Also you have to take into account the fact that even the most seasoned RWNJ operatives (and Bannon isn’t one) are stuck in their epistemic closure feedback loop, from which they can’t even see reality on the radar. Add to that Hair Furor’s ultra-thin skin and lack of self-control…..

    Here is the difference. The new team is trying to craft a more consistent image of Trump as a leader and to focus their message that Hillary is bad and the wrong choice. They hope to be able to get this message across in the next few months, even if Trump blows up now and again.

    The previous team could not control Trump, and Trump himself trampled his own message. The crooked Hillary and Hillary lies stuff was just a rehash of his primary nonsense. He could not build on it, or come up with anything new. His new team plan on using political ads and other tactics that go beyond a stump speech.

    This is clearly part of the new strategy. Whether it works remains to be seen,

    It appears Senator Professor Warren is taking a little time off. For some reason she gets under his skin more than anyone else. I doubt that she’s given up twitting for the duration.

    The Democrats may need some new tricks to go along with the old reliable.

    These new dopes know what gets Trump rattled. Do you think that they are just going to sit back and just let things happen as before?

    And here is a thing about Trump. He is obviously thin skinned and hates to be made to look a fool. He strikes out at the slightest attack. He cannot let anything go.

    But Trump really hates to lose. He’s got no time for losers (not even war hero losers like McCain) and does not want to be lumped in with them.

    His new team intend to flatter the shit out of “hates to lose Trump” in order to get him to suppress the rage spewing man child that is thin skinned “can’t let it go” Trump.

  148. 148.

    Ceci n'est pas mon nym

    I want ‘splodey heads ‘splodin’. I want the Rove 2012 meltdown repeated 1000 times. I want every idiot pundit to be completely convinced on the morning of Nov. 8 that Trump has 400+ electoral votes in the bag and then on the evening of Nov. 8 see Hillary sweep 50 states. I want to see Fox “News” anchors all wearing black armbands of mourning until the network closes its doors for good a few months later.

    This is all I want, oh great FSM. It’s not too much to ask, is it? Would it spoil some vast eternal plan?

  150. 150.

    Brachiator

    @Kay:

    Bravo. Finally. This is what newspapers are for

    I like the part where it turns out that Trump owes hundreds of millions to the Chinese.

  151. 151.

    Robert Sneddon

    @dmsilev: Oh dear, ice-free ports, the Russian dream. Hey, the 1930s called and want your Navy back.

    About a year ago Russian Aviation flew a pair of Tu-160 supersonic bombers (NATO codename Blackjack) from Murmansk which is definitely not ice-free in the winter down the Atlantic off the west coast of Britain and Ireland, east through the straits of Gibraltar, along the Mediterranean, up into the Black Sea and back into Russian territory again in a non-stop flight that didn’t even require inflight refuelling (at least during the extraterritorial part of the trip). They have an effective air force with reach across Europe, northern Africa and Asia to exert power at need without a surface navy.

    The most effective part of the Russian naval forces are their submarine fleet which doesn’t require ice-free ports to operate from; indeed one of their SSBN bases is on the Kola Peninsula which is certainly not ice-free in the winter. The other is on the Pacific on the Kamchatka Peninsula which is ice-free. The days when a battleship-led fleet sailed out of open ports to engage in gunfire battles at visual range are long gone.

    Even if ports were iced-in so what? The Russians are the masters of ice-breaker operations with several large nuclear-powered breakers as well as several other conventionally-powered ships for keeping estuaries and ports open for business.

  152. 152.

    Shell

    There is no horse race conventional wisdom. None.

    Rather silly that the media s still acting surprised that this campaign not only is unlike any before but totally screwy.

  153. 153.

    Amir Khalid

    @Brachiator:
    But he’s Donald Trump. He knows how to negotiate with them and make them settle for pennies on the dollar. Just like he’s going to do with the US national debt.

  154. 154.

    BR

    Why? Because he wants protests. Just like George Wallace, he uses them to convince his fans they need him. https://t.co/RoVDUZkvHu— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) August 20, 2016

    If Trump is looking for protests, maybe you all Austin residents can organize a city-wide day of volunteering that is counter-scheduling for Trump’s visit? Basically get all the nonprofits in the city to hold a day of volunteering to snub him instead of dignifying his visit with protests.

  156. 156.

    CaseyL

    @efgoldman:

    You can buy a new body?
    From Think Geek?
    Man, why didn’t anybody tell me before this old one went to shit.

    You can buy a new body from Think Geek, but it’s a SmartBody.

    That means it’s wired into everything else containing a chip.

    Your blood pressure will be hacked, your spleen will be spammed, and your brain won’t work unless you agree to automatic software updates.

  157. 157.

    WaterGirl

    @hugely: I am bummed, too. This middle-aged white girl really ed liked The Nightly Show. Sure, it could be lame sometimes, and if I never see Grace Parr again I will definitely not be sorry, but they talked about stuff that no one else touched. “Several minutes would go by sometimes without a joke” – so what? I thought that show was more about conversation, with some humor, of course.

    With the exception of the above-noted Grace Parr, I thought all the correspondents were great, even though I found some of the Hillary-hate annoying. And what other show regularly features 4 women and 4 men besides the host?

    Idiots. They think they can just reproduce Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert? I think they set their standards a little high! I am fairly certain that this decision was made my some older white guys in a room somewhere, and they are totally out of touch. I did wonder, though, if the “my Nigga” comment at the WHCD sealed his fate.

  158. 158.

    Ceci n'est pas mon nym

    @efgoldman: IT professionals recommend you do a full backup to the cloud before switching. This takes about 950 years on most home internet connections.

  161. 161.

    Keith P.

    @Ceci n’est pas mon nym: This is why I believe in home networks. I don’t have a private cloud (or what I occasionally still call a farm), just a single physical server running a domain (and 5 different virtual servers). I’ve got 10 terabytes, 4 of which is dedicated to backups.
    I only use the cloud for file transfers (plus Microsoft automatically puts my music purchases there)
    On the downside, it’s like an airplane taxiing in my office. There’s the server fans (quiet), the RAID fan (loud), and the rack fan (VERY loud)…I can get rid of the latter two when I move over to SSDs.

  162. 162.

    Kay

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    had been at Trump magazine for only four months when my first paycheck bounced.
    We’d heard rumors of the company’s financial troubles, but I had no idea how bad it really was until my landlord called me one afternoon to tell me that my rent check hadn’t cleared. I logged into my online banking account and saw, to my amazement, that the magazine I worked for—the one with the billionaire’s name on the cover—had stiffed me. Although it was a stressful moment, the irony was not lost on me. It felt like I was living in an Onion article: “Luxury Lifestyle Magazine Can’t Pay Its Own Employees.”

    The magazine covers are hilarious.

    Sad story though. The employee had cancer and management lied about health insurance.

  163. 163.

    Tom Q

    @Brachiator: Dukakis/Bush isn’t any kind of analogy to what might happen in 2016. Dukakis’ lead over Bush occurred during the time after the Dem convention but prior to the GOP one — historically, the most misleading time in any campaign. Bush assumed a polling lead after the Republicans met in New Orleans, and never trailed thereafter. Which the fundamentals always thought was likely, given that Reagan’s popularity numbers were high, the economy was in fairly good shape, and Bush’s easy win in the primaries led to a united party. Dukakis takes a beating from all sorts of people who think he “blew” an election he had in the bag, but, actually, it was the early-summer lead that was a polling anomaly: the election always favored the GOP holding the White House.

    This time around, Obama’s popularity and good job numbers put Clinton closer to the Bush position rather than the Dukakis one. Trump’s utter unacceptability stretches out the margin further than it might otherwise have gone (the number of GOP-administration folk coming out against Trump, many even to the point of endorsing Clinton, is unprecedented in my longish lifetime), but there was a Dem lean to the year even without it. Sure, GOTV, don’t let up, harvest every voter…but don’t pretend this election is still a jump-ball/”could go either way” affair. Hillary’s numbers are where they are for a reason.

  164. 164.

    catclub

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    My heart pumps buttermilk for Villager vermin

    I had a math teacher whose reputation was as tough on us, but who was actually pretty sweet. Nonetheless, her expression of limited concern was “My heart bleeds peanut butter for you.”
    Or just “my heart bleeds peanut butter.”

  165. 165.

    Brachiator

    @efgoldman:

    You are giving much too much credit (a) to the new crack team’s ability to control the Tangerine Shitweasel and (b) the Shitweasel’s ability/willingness to be controlled.

    Not at all. I am noting what I think the new strategy might be. I am not guaranteeing that it will be successful. Obviously, I hope it fails.

    And here’s a simple test. Let’s see if Trump can behave as something other than a total out-of-control fool for 30 days.

    Yeah, they’ll keep throwing crap at the HRC wall. The only people that works on, any more are people who were never going to vote for her anyway.

    This implies that the people who will vote for Hillary are and the people who will vote against her are immutably fixed, known quantities. This is just wrongheaded. And do you really think that there are no undecided voters, just people who lie or who are unwilling to make their choices known?

    As has been said many times, 30 years of being dumped on by the RWNJ noise machine have created (as they must) a Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario. It’s not like Kerry or Dukakis who were unknown to the national electorate.

    Kerry was unknown to the national electorate? I don’t think so, nor do I think that this was the main reason that he or Dukakis failed.

  166. 166.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Keith P.: I put my server (an older dual-Xeon box which I use for compute-intensive stuff like graphics and video batch processing, 3D modelling etc.) in the workshop and RDP into it to do anything. I’ve got a gigabit network connection to the workshop from my desk machine so file transfers don’t take that long and the noise happens somewhere else. I have vague plans to hushkit it with an enclosure but it hasn’t happened yet.

    My backups go on to a couple of USB3 external hard drives (4TB and 5TB) which get offsited (somewhat irregularly), as well as last-ditch backups of high-priority stuff on bare SATA drives (300GB and up) that get updated in a dock and then offsited like the bigger external drives. I still have a box or two of DVD backups I created fifteen years ago when 4.7GB was a lot of data…

    I have some cloud storage space which I’ve mainly used to store things like pictures but 15GB is a bit limiting these days.

  167. 167.

    catclub

    @Robert Sneddon:

    The most effective part of the Russian naval forces are their submarine fleet which doesn’t require ice-free ports to operate from; indeed one of their SSBN bases is on the Kola Peninsula

    But how effective? I thought that many of those subs never left port.
    Anybody know how much they deploy compared to US or French Sub navies?

  168. 168.

    Brachiator

    @Tom Q:

    Dukakis’ lead over Bush occurred during the time after the Dem convention but prior to the GOP one — historically, the most misleading time in any campaign.

    Dukakis lead in the polls from May through August. The Democratic Convention didn’t take place until July.

    Again. Polls do not represent some kind of fundamentals. They are not prophecy. They are not reliable trends.

    Nor am I saying that what happened in 1988 is a direct analogy to what might happen in 2016. That would be super triple speculation with a pike twist.

    But you cannot use polling information as though it were fortune telling.

  171. 171.

    Tom Q

    @Brachiator: And the GOP convention was in August, following which time Bush never trailed. Is your point that we can’t believe every poll all year long? If so, the answer is clearly yes. But this doesn’t translate to “every poll could be bullshit, right up till Election Day”.

    When, after two weeks subsequent to the second convention, all polls show one candidate leading, particularly by a substantial (5%+) margin, that candidate has always gone on to win. To say, Well, anything can happen from here on out, is just as ahistorical as citing a June poll as perfect predictor.

  172. 172.

    Robert Sneddon

    @catclub: Their SSBNs don’t deploy nearly as often as they used to but they are revamping their fleet with new hulls and new missiles. They seem to keep two boats on patrol at any given time, one in the north and one in the Western Pacific. The new Boriy-class boats are smaller than the big Typhoons but larger than the smaller Deltas they’re replacing. They’re 21st century designs with pump-jet propulsion although they still use steam turbines, apparently (new Western SSN and SSBN designs use electric drive). All of the Russian SSBNs are designed to operate under and through ice cover with a strengthened sail.

    The few reports I’ve seen on their operations plans indicate the Russians have moved to a “floating silo” deployment pattern similar to the French and British boomers, staying close to home port under the umbrella of local naval support and airborne resources rather than going deep and far to avoid detection. Any hostiles (attack subs are the main threat) would have to come within an extended defensive array to get at them but their missiles have the range (about 11,000 km) to strike deep into enemy territory even if launched from close to home.

  173. 173.

    eyelessgame

    Trump would need to run all the lean-Dem, plus either PA or VA, to win the election.

    Of those two, VA would be easier.

    Except that we have Kaine. And Kaine delivers the single most vital state on that map.

    Well played, Madame President.

  174. 174.

    TriassicSands

    Does anyone have a good idea of how real a threat Assange poses? He really hates HRC, apparently enough that he’s willing to do what he can to tip the election to Trump (though I imagine he would characterize it simply as preventing Clinton from becoming president).

  176. 176.

    Jeffro

    @germy:

    But.. but.. look at all that land mass in Montana and Wyoming! They can’t lose!

    You saw my comment last night, right? There are actually wing nuts who consider “Red acres” to mean something.

  177. 177.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: Leveraged to the hilt, going for broke in an attempt to try and pass something – anything – on to his various kids…

    …I think the media calls that a “narrative” on their occasional ‘effort’ days.

  178. 178.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @jayboat: I already have a 12mm f/2.0 Rokinon, the thing is that you can’t use all the camera’s features with non-Samsung lens. The widest prime they have is a 16mm f/2.4, they do have a 12-24 f/4.0. I like to use fisheye on occasion(I have an adapter now that’s not that great).

  179. 179.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Feebog: The shift in the 2008 race that happened after Wall Street melted down and Sarah Palin was revealed to be a complete idiot moved the numbers about the same amount that Trump would need to eke out a squeaker win today (though in the opposite direction). That basically started happening in September, after the conventions, so it’s barely possible.

    But what crisis would cause that big a move toward Trump now, I don’t know. I think a massive terrorist attack by Muslim radicals might actually not do it, though that was the obvious scenario earlier in the campaign. But Trump would have to behave in a manner we simply haven’t seen up to now in order to capitalize on it; he’d have to not sound like a fool, and after Orlando he sounded like a fool. Clinton can just come out in any crisis and ask who you’d rather have in charge when the next one hits.

  180. 180.

    Matt McIrvin

    @TriassicSands: I am less worried about Assange than I was. He said early on that he’d be leaking incredibly damaging, incriminating information about Clinton all through the campaign season–and his first dump did embarrass the DNC and contribute to friction on the first night of the convention, but the ones after that have been complete wastes of time, revealing nothing of significance except Assange’s lack of scruples about leaking identifying personal info, and the possibility that Russian state-supported hackers might be trying to get Trump elected.

    It’s possible that he’s sitting on some genuine bombshell and is trying to lull Democrats into a false sense of complacency, but it seems unlikely that he’d deliberately damage his own credibility that way.

  181. 181.

    Matt McIrvin

    @efgoldman: We’ll go to some length to fly out of Manchester if it’s at all possible, since Manchester is both far more pleasant than Logan, cheaper to park at and much easier to get to (it’s about the same distance from our house as the crow flies, but Boston traffic makes a huge difference).

    Usually, that means flying Southwest Airlines, and going to whatever airport Southwest decided to use as their local hub. Southwest’s fares are pretty competitive, but it does mean that if we’re visiting my folks in Virginia we have a longer rental-car drive out of BWI. BWI is probably the most pleasant of the major DC-area airports, though.

  182. 182.

    Cleos

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    My Russian history prof (a guy who specialized in Muscovy and earlier) got hoarse telling us about warm water ports. It’s a gimme.

    Don’t know if anybody has looked into this in detail, but I’m guessing that historically, a very high percentage of wars (a/k/a “conflicts”) have water and access to water as the root cause. And that’s likely to be true on steroids over the next century or two.

  183. 183.

    Cleos

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Oh no, does that make me a privileged, elitist asshole?

    Here’s a simple, non-scientific test:

    (1) When one of the lotteries has a huge jackpot and lines form to buy tickets, do you ever wonder aloud why The Poors would spend $$s on gambling when they could just put aside $100 a week and invest it?

    (2) When told that $100 a week could literally take food off the table for some people, do you respond that they should just get better jobs?

    Both rich entitled equine fundaments and Our Esteemed Clergy highly disapprove of such antics among the untermenschen, and are oddly baffled when someone suggests that they have reason to think a lucky number is the most realistic chance they have of getting ahead.

  184. 184.

    Cleos

    @Ceci n’est pas mon nym:

    I want ‘splodey heads ‘splodin’. I want the Rove 2012 meltdown repeated 1000 times. I want every idiot pundit to be completely convinced on the morning of Nov. 8 that Trump has 400+ electoral votes in the bag and then on the evening of Nov. 8 see Hillary sweep 50 states. I want to see Fox “News” anchors all wearing black armbands of mourning until the network closes its doors for good a few months later.

    What I want is to see all the people who have said — since, say, February — that they’ll leave if “Hillary” is elected actually leave. Including (or even especially) the “independents” and the chronically “undecided.”

  185. 185.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Matt McIrvin: As a Baltimore resident I’m not sure about the cost of car rental at BWI relative to off-airport locations, but let me note that for weekday arrivals & departures there is a shuttle to the nearby Amtrak station from which fares are $7 one-way via MARC commuter rail to Union Station in DC ($5 to Penn Station in Baltimore for that matter).

    Internationally there is a nightly BWI-LHR flight on BA.

  186. 186.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Uncle Cosmo: The main thing to remember about car rental at BWI is that the car rental facility is some distance from the main terminal, which is going to put an extra 10-15 minute shuttle-bus ride into your schedule either way, and also means that GPS directions to the terminal will not reliably take you to rental return. And some of the rental companies still have insanely short windows before they declare you a no-show on your reservation.

    The main thing to remember about car rental at DCA is that there are no gas stations within any reasonable distance of the terminal; your last chance to fill up the tank if you haven’t prepaid is way, way earlier than you think it is.

  187. 187.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Geuinely puzzled by the “it’s over!” tone of coverage, with this much time left + HRC’s unpopularity + (possibly) more disciplined Trump

    Selling us out to Russians that hard to understand for you Greenfield?

  188. 188.

    gorram

    @Brachiator:

    In the 1988 election, Mike Dukakis had a comfortable lead over George Bush, and then crashed in September.

    I don’t want us to get too complacent either, but it’s worth noting that the switch began in late August, after the RNC that year was held from August 15th to August 18th. Given the timing of the convention, it feels a bit strange to present that sort of a drift in the polls as completely plausible in this year when we basically already had it in relation to the second convention to be held, just like that one. Basically, what makes you so sure Dukakis is Clinton and not Trump in this scenario?

Comments are closed.