Archives for September 2016

Trump has to win Florida or it’s all over. He has a shot here; this is a state that elected certified crook and possible alien life form from Planet Reptar Rick Scott as governor twice (albeit with less than 50% of the vote both times).

So given the stakes, if there’s anywhere in the country where the Trump campaign should be staffed with the “best people,” flush with supplies and chugging along on all cylinders, it’s Florida, right? Nope:

A Florida Trump aide resigned Monday because she said she’s uncomfortable with the lack of progress in the campaign. “It is clear the campaign is now going in a direction I am no longer comfortable with and I have decided to move on,” said Healy Baumgardner, who had established herself early on as a public face of the campaign on TV, then saw her role shift to Florida following several campaign shake-ups.

Baumgardner, a 20-year political operative who has worked on four presidential campaigns, said she looks forward “to honorably casting my vote for Mr. Trump on Election Day.”

Clinton is 4 percentage points ahead of Trump in Florida, according to a Mason-Dixon Polling & Research survey taken after the debate.

The campaign’s Trump Talk phone banking system is experiencing technical difficulties, said Florida campaign workers who requested anonymity out of fear of getting fired for speaking publicly. The lack of basic campaign staples such as yard signs and bumper stickers forces staff to repeatedly turn away excited Trump backers who want to show their support. There’s disagreement about spending $40,000 to wrap an RV in campaign advertising for a women’s bus tour in Florida.

Healy Baumgardner doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “honor;” she is a rat deserting a sinking ship in a cowardly bid to preserve her employability in future contests. She has an inside view of what’s happening to the campaign, and she doesn’t want to be associated with it.

I have a feeling we’re going to see that pattern repeated many times in the coming weeks. Other party hacks who’ve fastened themselves to Trump like remoras on a bloated orange shark will detach their lips from that foul carcass and suddenly rediscover their “principles.”

They’ll probably get away with it too, given this country’s short attention span and endless capacity to tolerate fools and knaves. Hell, the Republican Party recovered from the Bush 2.0 debacle in just a couple of years.

But those of us who understand the magnitude of what these fuckers have done — their attempt to hook an unhinged demagogue up with the nuclear codes — should never, ever forget it. Not just the party hacks, the voters who support Trump. They’ve shown us who they are. We can’t unsee it. Ever.

ETA: Link to live stream of Hillary Clinton speaking in Florida. She coughed. We’re doomed, DOOMED, I say!

Rats Ahoy!Post + Comments (250)

This fucking guy:

Good morning. Your Republican nominee has been up all night rage-tweeting. pic.twitter.com/mL1ovBY1bm

— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) September 30, 2016

Well, Trump would know from a con. But in this scenario, he is the mark. The D-list political operatives in the Trump organization who are capable of comprehending voter demographics must have been begging their asshole boss to zip it about Machado. But he just can’t shut the fuck up about her. He waited until his handlers fell asleep and then went on a rage-tweet tear.

I think on some level, Trump realizes Clinton outfoxed him during the debate. She laid a rake in his path, and he stepped right on it. But his Hindenburg-sized yet fragile ego is unable to process such a scenario, so he’s desperately trying to alter reality by stepping on the rake over and over, just as he did in his inexcusable feud with the Khans.

It’s difficult to imagine a framing more perfectly suited to alienate the suburban moms whose votes Trump desperately needs than clips of the candidate fat-shaming Miss Universe, rating women’s bodies like the leering creep he is and cruelly bullying female employees. Maybe Clinton can set him up to denounce infants, puppies and kittens next.

The beauty of this scenario is that Trump seems determined to flail around and make things worse for the next week and a half. Then he’ll stomp into the October 9th debate loaded for bear, a serial adulterer and documented sexist itching to tear into Clinton for her husband’s behavior.

And it is a town hall-style debate with questions coming directly from voters, so chances are he broaches that subject with maximum ham-handedness. Popcorn futures are sky-high.

ETA: Also, kudos to CNN for finally mentioning the fact that Trump’s “brain trust” comprises gross old sexist pigs who have no standing to criticize Bill Clinton, let alone Hillary:

An excerpt:

Days after patting himself on the back for not invoking them on a debate stage, Donald Trump and his campaign are attempting to use Bill Clinton’s sex scandals to cast a shadow on Hillary Clinton.

For any candidate trailing by around 20 points with women in most national polling, this plan of action might seem, at best, curiously wrongheaded. But Trump is a special case — the twice-divorced nominee, who carried on a long affair that disintegrated his first marriage in a howling tabloid spectacle, is uniquely unsuited to finger-wagging.

Still, the irony does not seem to have resonated with his campaign brain trust. On Wednesday, they put out talking points encouraging surrogates to chat about Monica Lewinsky, Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones. A day earlier, Trump (who is overweight himself) hit back at claims he’d body-shamed a former Miss Universe by noting to Fox News that “she gained a massive amount of weight.”

Odd, but not surprising. Especially when you consider the rogues gallery of advisers Trump has drafted in over the past few months — a pasty collection of older males, mostly media executives and politicians, with a long rap sheet of marital infidelities, sex scandals and worse.

I’ve been astonished at how the Trump camp got away with bringing revolting sexual predator Roger Ailes into the inner circle without much blow-back. Glad to see some coverage of this.

Trump on a Wee-Hours Twitter Tear (Updated)Post + Comments (331)