Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fight them, without becoming them!

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

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

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / The GOP Yearns for A Strong Daddy, Even If He’s A Russian Autocrat

The GOP Yearns for A Strong Daddy, Even If He’s A Russian Autocrat

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trump backer putin toles

(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
.

So, like good little authoritarians, other Repubs rushed to praise Strong Daddy Vlad, too also…

(Admittedly, if I were asked to pick a Congressman who’d stand in front of a camera and praise Putin, Steve King would be my first choice.)


(You can understand why a life-long grifter like Trump would find that especially attractive… and David Frum knows from political grifters.)

To be fair, there’s at least one holdout…

Reader Interactions

278Comments

  3. 3.

    NorthLeft12

    This may be where a lot of people show their true colours; Are they really loyal to the American Dream which is supposed to include equality, democracy, and justice or do they value their safety, order, and ability to prosper over that?

    If you go back in US history you have been having this argument for generations.

  6. 6.

    JMG

    Americans are safer than at any time in my lifetime. I’m 67. Their ability to prosper is not so hot. But “order”? If by that you mean, return of total social dominance of white men, yeah, that’s the order at the heart of Trump’s appeal. His economic message only proves two things true since the dawn of the Republic. Americans know zip about economics, and are particularly easy victims for con artists due to the role greed plays in our society.

  10. 10.

    JPL

    @JMG: Did you know that Obamacare is responsible for the rise in prescription drugs? I didn’t either, but the internet says it’s so.
    In good news, it appears that the media freaked out over the Putin comments, although they are not new. CBS Morning News cast just interviewed Kellyanne Conway, and really pushed her for answers on Trump’s foreign policy positions. She kept saying Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, but they weren’t buying into her answers.

  11. 11.

    Karmus

    Someone else said it first, but Eric Cartman for prez, with a shouty face as red as his goofy ball cap.

    Apparently the Russians put in the anal probe this time.

  14. 14.

    cokane

    @rikyrah: meh, the odds of a Clinton landslide now seem miniscule. I’m voting and a liberal majority Supreme Court is something, but Congress isn’t swinging into Dem favor. And Trump has shown a total bullshit campaign can be oddly effective, just imagine a candidate with his cynicism but able to avoid his blunders.

  15. 15.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Robots are racist. I am not shitting you:

    Although the group did not build the algorithm to treat light skin as a sign of beauty, the input data effectively led the robot judges to reach that conclusion. “If you have not that many people of color within the dataset, then you might actually have biased results,” said Zhavoronkov, who said he was surprised by the winners. “When you’re training an algorithm to recognize certain patterns … you might not have enough data, or the data might be biased.”

    The simplest explanation for biased algorithms is that the humans who create them have their own deeply entrenched biases. That means that despite perceptions that algorithms are somehow neutral and uniquely objective, they can often reproduce and amplify existing prejudices.

    The Beauty.AI results offer “the perfect illustration of the problem”, said Bernard Harcourt, Columbia University professor of law and political science who has studied “predictive policing”, which has increasingly relied on machines. “The idea that you could come up with a culturally neutral, racially neutral conception of beauty is simply mind-boggling.” The case is a reminder that “humans are really doing the thinking, even when it’s couched as algorithms and we think it’s neutral and scientific,” he said.

    Garbage in, garbage out.

  16. 16.

    donnah

    Putin’s description of Trump as “brilliant” could be an interpretation with a lot of different meanings, language-wise. His word can also be defined as “colorful” or “bold” which is closer to the mark than a sign of genius.

  18. 18.

    JMG

    @cokane: Too early to say. There are three possibilities, in descending order of probability — narrow Clinton win, big Clinton win, narrow Trump win. They’re all still on the table.

  19. 19.

    Derelict

    So, let’s see if I have this right:

    Obama is a tyrant who has destroyed America’s freedoms, BUT . . .
    He’s a weakling who cannot lead because he won’t crush the press or kill his opponents.

  22. 22.

    JMG

    @Joel: You are right. It’s a matter of degree, not kind. Hate plays a bigger role in the success of foreign Trumps, while greed and credulity are an important part of the mix here.

  23. 23.

    Matt McIrvin

    @JMG: Looking at Sam Wang’s model, it appears to me that the big Clinton win (that is to say, anything substantially better than Obama ’08) is about as improbable as the Trump win. They’re both < 10% probabilities in his Bayesian model. That's been the case for a while, though his strike zone has shifted down a little.

  27. 27.

    JMG

    Let’s not kid ourselves. The Steve Kings out there would LOVE to treat their American opponents the same way Putin treats his.

  28. 28.

    gogol's wife

    @donnah:

    I don’t know what Putin’s word was, was it “iarkii”? Could be “vivid.” Doesn’t imply intellectual brilliance at all, imo.

  29. 29.

    JMG

    @Matt McIrvin: I should define my terms. By big win, I mean roughly in the Obama ’08 range. That’s the benchmark now. He had the most favorable fundamentals imaginable, and McCain still got 46 percent.

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @JMG: Not sure of exactly what cokane was saying, but in light of the fact that at least 45% of Americans will more than likely proudly vote for a lying, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, bloviating, bullying, serially bankrupt, ignorant, trust fund baby, and that the party that nominated him is almost certain to retain control of at least one branch of Congress no matter what happens in the Presidential race….

    Well to at least some extent, yes, we are fucked.

  34. 34.

    Betty Cracker

    Rachel Maddow did a segment last night about the Putin comment that Trump so obviously relishes and so frequently invokes. You guys won’t believe this, but Trump’s version of the story isn’t exactly true! Turns out Putin was asked about calling Trump “brilliant” and clarified his compliment — on video — while talking to Fareed Zakaria. A Russian language expert confirmed it. The word Putin used to describe Trump translates into “flamboyant” or “colorful,” not “genius” or “brilliant” in terms of intellectual wattage.

    So to recap: Trump is ready to upend strategic alliances that have endured for decades because he mistakenly believes an autocrat appreciates his “genius,” even though video evidence that this is not in fact the case exists. Makes sense since Trump also bases his entire candidacy on the judgment he displayed in opposing the Iraq War, the post-war withdrawal and the Libyan intervention while there is incontrovertible video evidence that he actually supported all three of those decisions.

    Trump is the post-truth candidate.

  35. 35.

    Hal

    The same people who accuse Hillary Clinton of having people murdered love Putin. You’d think assassinating her enemies would make Clinton more popular.

  36. 36.

    D58826

    @MattF:

    Yeah, wingers just can’t decide– it’s either weak and feckless Obambi or the Muslim-Kenyan-terrorist founder of ISIS.

    who will cancel the election, declare himself dictator (maybe that will get his approval rating up to Putin level) and send his enemies to FEMA camps (sounds like Putin again).

  38. 38.

    sunny raines

    it is criminal that the US has a media establishment and a major political party that would facilitate someone as vile as trump getting to this point.

  40. 40.

    rikyrah

    It always makes me shake my head that every story about Vladimir doesn’t include —-
    HE WAS VERY HIGH UP IN THE KGB.

    For me, that’s Vlad’s entire history that explains EVERYTHING

  42. 42.

    Matt McIrvin

    @JMG: I guess that in a polarized nation the definition of a “big win” has to come down. It’s true that Obama ’08 was a big win (the biggest!) by 21st-century standards.

  43. 43.

    sunny raines

    Americans should be bracing for the effects of trump’s “rigged election” dog-whistle!!!!

    It’s a call to arms for the white supremacist goons to “make America great again” by using their “2nd Amendment solutions” (i.e., displaying guns) at minority polling locations to intimidate certain unAmerican people types from stealing the election from the God-chosen true Americans: the white supremacists.

  44. 44.

    sunny raines

    @amk:

    da kenyan really mindfucked the gopppers, didn’t he?

    no, mindfucked is a prerequisite to be today’s gopper.

  45. 45.

    Kay

    It’s one thing for the reality TV host to admire a dictator- he’s measured by a bar so low it’s nonexistent- but we’ve reached a new level of crazy when the Governor of Indiana endorses Putin.

    People have said this for years about conservatives- that the GOP base goes so far Right they end up at “dictator” but it’s wild to watch it in real time. I’m old enough to remember when Sarah Palin said taxing Big Gulps was totalitarianism.

    What I love is the nervous, unsure subtext of the establishment Republicans- someone will come along and rein in Trump- there will be some intervening outside event, some adult who will step in and restore order. There are two adults in this debate and both of them are Democrats- Obama and Clinton. They’re actually hoping the Democratic Party will save them. Instead of sneering at Clinton, establishment Republicans should be eternally grateful- she’s all that stands between them and Donald Trump.

  48. 48.

    JMG

    @Betty Cracker: He won’t be the last one. If there’s one thing this country never runs short of, it’s ambitious people. Win or lose, and especially lose, Trump’s going to spawn a host of imitators who will run from everything from Register of Deeds to US Senate on the principles of facts don’t matter, truth doesn’t matter, and you don’t need to reveal any personal information to anyone. There’s nobody to stop you. Not the political parties and certainly not the media. They have shown that they can’t do anything but hide from the fact that a large percentage of their audience are 1. Not very nice people and 2. Very dumb.

  49. 49.

    sunny raines

    @Betty Cracker: trump is an extreme Narcissist. He would turn the most disparaging remarks about him into a complement inside of what passes for his mind. He is the true definition of being ‘a legend in ones own mind’.

  50. 50.

    Kay

    Picking Pence is an indicator of whether anyone will “rein in” Trump. Trump picked Pence because Pence is dumb and malleable. He doesn’t outshine Trump. That’s what a Trump Administration will be like. He’ll surround himself with people like Pence. It’ll be worse than “no one reining Trump in”- it’ll be a collection of people who are afraid of him.

  51. 51.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Did you see Paul Ryan’s irritation at being asked to defend Trump’s endorsement of Putin yesterday? Hilarious.

  52. 52.

    germy

    I really like Toles. He has his own style and he knows how to capture the essence of a caricature in a few lines.

    I sort of got bored with most editorial cartoonists because so many of them were doing weak imitations of Olliphant. I like Luckovich as well, sometimes. He reminds me of Mort Drucker. But whenever someone dies he feels compelled to do the corny “being greeted at the pearly gates” tribute.

  53. 53.

    JMG

    @Kay: Agree. In 2000, the Republicans were the biggest believers that the crowd who were in Bush One’s administration would provide stable guidance to admittedly unready Bush 2. That didn’t work so well, but it was a big selling point to the Village Centrist crowd. Trump’s administration would be staffed by the nutbars in the campaign. Qualified people aren’t going to become Cabinet members (imagine a real CEO leaving his zillion dollar job to be a Trump flunky), but third-rank Freedom Caucus House members will be happy to.

  54. 54.

    germy

    Liz Smith remembers Trump.

    Those of us who lived on the east coast in the 1980s remember Trump’s antics, and remember the gossip columnist saying nice things about him. Here’s what she says now:

    As a journalist, Smith never displayed much of a killer instinct; cozy chattiness was her signature. But now that Trump is the Republican nominee for President, her views have taken on a harder edge. “In the old days, Donald reminded me of my brothers in Texas,” she said. “He was attractive and dynamic and took up all the oxygen in the room. When he saw me, he’d give me a big hug and tell me I was the greatest. I never took him seriously. I didn’t even think he would last in New York, because people hated him once they got to know him. He was a horse’s ass. Still is.”

  55. 55.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I didn’t but I did see this. The email story is “out of control”. No shit.

    The admission of error comes so late it doesn’t matter. They can’t get the time back. They spent 16 months on emails in error and that time is gone. They’re now in a position where they have to vet Donald Trump in less than 60 days. Good luck with that. He’s not turning over shit. They’re reduced to searching for statements he made to entertainment outlets- frantic Google searches. That’s the “vetting”.

  57. 57.

    germy

    Never thought I’d live to see the day an old Howard Stern show clip would figure so prominently in a presidential race.

    I’m guessing in ten years, the republican presidential debates will feature each candidate with a big gulp drink in front of him (like America’s Got Talent judges)

  58. 58.

    Jeffro

    @Derelict:

    So, let’s see if I have this right:

    Obama is a tyrant who has destroyed America’s freedoms, BUT . . .
    He’s a weakling who cannot lead because he won’t crush the press or kill his opponents.

    He is whatever the modern GOP needs him to be, in order to justify their insanity as opposition to him, subject to change daily/hourly/moment-to-moment. Perceptions of Obama follow from Cleek’s law, methinks.

  59. 59.

    gvg

    I am not certain how it will go with the post Trump imitators. Assuming Trump loses in humiliating fashion, the press and regular establishment GOP may pile on with lots of stories, which may mean some of the would be imitators get recognized and shot down earlier. It will help if there are lots of clicks on stories about what went wrong meaning there are profits to be made in writing anti fascist candidate takedowns. He might end up souring the chances of others. It will help if lots of other GOP candidates lose too. Not just the nutjobs, but the regulars that didn’t stand up to him. After election is lost reaction of the white supremists will also set the popular narrative.

    I’d like a law that requires release of tax returns before being allowed to file to run. In this context it will help that Bernie didn’t also so its a bipartisan fair law not just aimed at the GOP. Also make it law not custom that they have to put business and charities in a blind trust, etc.

  60. 60.

    germy

    @Jeffro:

    He is whatever the modern GOP needs him to be, in order to justify their insanity as opposition to him, subject to change daily/hourly/moment-to-moment.

    So he’s a shape shifter!

  61. 61.

    PPCLI

    I’ll put this here since the thread below on Trump’s Iraq war lie is no longer very active.

    The “I opposed the Iraq war” lie has become high enough profile that I expect that today talking heads might even (miraculously enough) ask Trump surrogates about it. One thing I will say for these guys is that they have message discipline. Not the kind of iron message discipline that Republicans usually have, but they come armed with some distracting simple lie or at best half truth, that they repeat over and over again, every time they open their mouths. (“Hillary started birtherism!”, “49 attorney-generals decided the Trump U case had no merit* ” …)

    You can get a decently reliable sense of what the non-fact/non-facts of the day are going to be if you look at what the paid Trump-bots are copy-pasting on every posting board that allows these things. In this case, people are posting links to a society page in the Wash Post a few days after the start of the invasion, where Trump is presented gliding with soon-to-be wife #3, into a Vanity Fair Oscar party. He is quoted as saying “If they keep fighting it the way they did today, they’re going to have a real problem.” and “The war’s a mess”. Look for Trumpites to keep relentlessly repeating the “War’s a mess” remark.

    This does not express opposition to the invasion in itself. It says that the military is mis-handling it. That the military is screwing it up because they are fighting “the way they did today”. It does not say the invasion would have been a bad thing if handled in the way that Trump surely imagines he would have handled it.

    *1) I know it’s “attorneys-general”, but they say “attorney-generals”

  62. 62.

    Kay

    I was in the car yesterday afternoon and listening to Michigan public radio. The lead story was framed like this “Hillary Clinton holds press conference to defend against criticism of her performance at the CiC forum”

    Most people didn’t watch the interview. They’ll conclude based on this ridiculous framing that Clinton’s bad performance was the story.

    It’s incredible. They can’t stop. They are incapable of doing this.

  63. 63.

    Jeffro

    @Kay:

    It’ll be worse than “no one reining Trump in”- it’ll be a collection of people who are afraid of him.

    And/or people who tell him what he wants to hear (primarily flattery) – there’s significant overlap w/ “afraid” and “yes-men” of course.

    I still can’t believe no one on the ‘deep bench’ countered his constant “I’m going to hire the best people” with either “no, you’re just going to hire people who stoke your vanity” or “no, hiring the best people requires half a brain, at least”

  64. 64.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @gogol’s wife: Yeah, things like “a group of more than one person protesting together is illegal” kinda puts a damper on things. Oh, did I say more than one? One person protesting will be arrested.

    Kinda nice that the Russian constitution guarantees the right to protest and free expression though. What would it be like if that safety valve wasn’t in place? Some kind of totalitarian state, I’ll bet.

    :-/

    South Sudan has strong leaders too. Of course, the two most powerful men there (President and VP) can’t stand each other and each have heavily armed supporters so the country is being torn apart, but Strong Leaders Yay!

    :-/

    It’s tribalism, and trusting leaders put up by your side. Trump isn’t Clinton so he’ll get 40+% of the vote in the fall. If LBJ (hi raven!) were running against Hillary as a Republican, he’d probably get an enthusiastic GOP turnout and 40+% of the popular vote, too. They don’t care about policy and logic and consistency – it’s tribalism and all about stopping Hillary.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  66. 66.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: I read Pence and King’s repetition of Trump’s Putin love as the final expression of Cleek’s Law. “Liberals really hate Putin and his dictatorial ways — so we will say they are good — it will really piss off Hillary!”

  67. 67.

    Kay

    @gvg:

    I’d like a law that requires release of tax returns before being allowed to file to run.

    Oh, there will be some new federal disclosure law. If they get out of this by the skin of their teeth they’ll be passing some legal mechanism to vet candidates. They belatedly realized last week they don’t know jack shit about Trump and they have no process to compel disclosure.

  68. 68.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @MattF: No, it’s both. Really.

    Hillary is a weak incompetent woman who can’t figure out e-mail, has to have a wire during a public appearance, and simultaneously an evil mastermind scheming hag that’s just as bad as Stalin, who is hiding her real history and motives, who will kill and imprison her enemies, loot the Treasury, while simultaneously cackling while spitting on the little people. The thinking is: She’s bad, therefore she’s bad in all possible ways simultaneously. There’s no contradiction there, in their minds.

    It’s kinda sad the way they think.

    Let’s hope there aren’t enough of them to prevent her from winning and flipping the Senate (and maybe the House!).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    “He has authoritarian tendencies and refuses even ordinary disclosure? Let’s make sure he gets enormous state power. THEN we’ll rein him in!”

    The only part I can’t enjoy is they would happily take the rest of us down with them.

  73. 73.

    Oldgold

    I think more should be made of Trump’s talking about his security briefing. Taken at face value, he has made one hell of a disclosure. That is his ‘claim’ that there is a substantial rift between the President and the our nation’s intelligence community.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    I love to watch Trump “play Presidential”- he has a “face” he uses. It’s so fake it’s comical. I bet he practices in the mirror. I was always turned off by over the top predictions of Manchurian candidates, that sort of thing, but we’re watching this! I have trouble getting my head around it.

    He’s taken to saying that he has a “very good chance of winning”. He can’t believe this bullshit is working himself.

  75. 75.

    Betty Cracker

    @PPCLI: I’d like to see a link to that because Trump gave a phone interview on Fox News a few days after the war started in which he called the war “a tremendous success.” There’s audio and everything. Plus, the war did seem to go well at first — I remember the wingnuts crowing at us libtards on the pre-social media message boards about how wrong we were to oppose it. I’ll believe Trump had the prescience to say otherwise when I see direct evidence of it.

  78. 78.

    Immanentize

    @Oldgold: That is what Gen. Flynn told Trump. That is what Trump wants to believe. Therefore he saw the evidence of his desires with his own eyes.

    Trump’s reality always substitutes for other realities

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @Oldgold:

    It’s just he said/she said without process though. They don’t have any way to prove or disprove what Trump says. They don’t have a process to compel release of information and he has no official public record other than “things he said to media”. With the Bondi story they have state actor interaction- they can’t reach Trump but they can reach Bondi. Any proof with Trump has to come from the person he brushed up against. They can’t reach him directly. It’s a real problem.

  82. 82.

    rikyrah

    @sunny raines:

    It’s a call to arms for the white supremacist goons to “make America great again” by using their “2nd Amendment solutions” (i.e., displaying guns) at minority polling locations to intimidate certain unAmerican people types from stealing the election from the God-chosen true Americans: the white supremacists.

    NOBODY is playing with them.

    Period.

  83. 83.

    nonynony

    @Kay:

    It’s one thing for the reality TV host to admire a dictator- he’s measured by a bar so low it’s nonexistent- but we’ve reached a new level of crazy when the Governor of Indiana endorses Putin.

    I grew up at the tail end of the Cold War – I was a teenager when Reagan left office – and if you had told me that someday a presidential candidate would be praising an autocratic Russian leader as “stronger than our President” I would not have believed you. If you told me that candidate would be a Republican, I would have started walking away. And if you’d told me that the rest of the GOP would rally around the guy praising a Russian tyrant and not just agree with him, but loudly agree that our President was “weak” and the Russian premier was “strong, I would have been looking to call someone to get you some help.

    The fact that Trump is praising Putin is unsurprising[*] – he’s an egotistical nut, he’s done it before and he surrounded himself with guys like Paul Manfort who made their bones from helping Putin’s allies in attempted power grabs in the former Soviet bloc. But the fact that Pence is going along with it and owning that opinion himself? He must have decided that his political career is dead unless Trump wins – it’s the only explanation I’ve got.

    [*] And every time I realize it’s unsurprising I die a little bit inside. I know exactly how bad the GOP is and yet it still amazes me that more people haven’t gotten up and walked away. If you’re weren’t willing to vote for Trump in the primaries but are willing to vote for Trump in the general then you’re willing to vote for literally anyone with an (R) next to their name.)

  84. 84.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: I call Trump’s rally face the “Mussolini jaw-jut.” He’s perfected this self-satisfied scowl with his chin pushed forward to indicate steely resolve while minimizing his jowls. There’s no fucking way he doesn’t practice THAT in front of the mirror…probably for hours.

  85. 85.

    Peale

    @Derelict: that’s because internally we are all a bunch of feminized homo-wussies thanks to Democrat policies and public schools. Externally, Obambi is the number 1 example of homo-wussie treason. Make sense?

  87. 87.

    Kay

    @Oldgold:

    I have some hope for the WaPo reporter who is checking Trump’s charitable donation records. That he can prove. There’s a record. He’s contacting the recipients and asking if the donation that Trump claimed was made. That’s something solid. Trump can’t weasel out with he said/she said.

  88. 88.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    They’re actually hoping the Democratic Party will save them. Instead of sneering at Clinton, establishment Republicans should be eternally grateful- she’s all that stands between them and Donald Trump.

    Tell that truth, Kay.

  89. 89.

    MattF

    Maybe not so widely known, but Putin is extremely wealthy. I suspect Trump is aware of that and it’s one of the reasons he admires Putin so much.

  90. 90.

    PPCLI

    @Betty Cracker:
    Here is a link to the Post society froth article:

    washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2003/03/25/hollywood-partyers-soldiering-on/06327347-83d3-44c4-…

    Trump is actually quoted as saying “The war’s a mess”, which is why, I predict you’ll hear it over and over again. You are also right that he flatly contradicts that assessment on the Cavuto show.

    Here is a timeline from Factcheck.org:

    factcheck.org/2016/02/donald-trump-and-the-iraq-war/

    As they note, the remarks slagging the military’s conduct of the war [NOT, I repeat, opposition to the war as such] — “If they keep fighting it the way they did today, they’re going to have a real problem.” and “The war’s a mess” — came on the day that US forces shot down a British fighter plane.

  91. 91.

    Chris

    @cokane:

    the odds of a Clinton landslide now seem miniscule.

    A few months back when a lot of Republicans were still in full #NeverTrump mode, I and a lot of others said it was all bullshit, and that they’d all fall quietly into line when push comes to shove.

    That may be all there is to the “narrowing” of Hillary Clinton’s lead. A bunch of people who, at the beginning of the summer, were still in shock and swearing to all that’s holy that they’d never vote for That Man, quietly realizing that yes, after all, Liberals Are Worse. The media circus has probably helped this along too, with all the bullshit about emails and the Clinton Foundation providing a paper-thin rationalization for people who were looking for one in the first place.

    (Anecdotally, the one NeverTrumpist in my circle of friends here is right on schedule for her conversion. This winter: “That man is not fit to be president, period!” At the beginning of the summer: “I don’t know… I just don’t know! Who should I vote for?” Last week: “I can’t vote for Hillary. I just can’t do it. Trump or a write-in.” Two months from now, unless I’m very much mistaken: ::votes Trump::)

  92. 92.

    JMG

    I actually disagree with Kay. I think the “establishment” Republicans are thinking now that they can finally gut the safety net and lock in the effective end of progressive taxation and dominate the Supreme Court for a generation under Trump BEFORE his presidency leads to disaster. After that, who cares?

  93. 93.

    tobie

    @Kay:

    Most people didn’t watch the interview. They’ll conclude based on this ridiculous framing that Clinton’s bad performance was the story.

    It’s incredible. They can’t stop. They are incapable of doing this.

    This a thousand times. Was listening to the talking heads on msnbc last night and every single conservative said that clinton’s answers in the forum were too long, too fact-filled. (one surmised that she was out of practice giving pithy answers because she hasn’t done press conferences in eons.) it struck me then in a way it hadn’t before that there is absolutely nothing she can do that’s right. if she gave short answers, they’d say they’re insubstantial and that she’s being condescending to the american public and dismissing their concerns and right to know her policies. if she gives long answers, it shows she has no vision and is using a fusillade of facts to hide her poor judgment. nicole wallace and jerk-face halperin thought she should take notes from trump on how to give pithy statements and relate to the audience. he’s somehow the gold standard she has to measure up to. never, ever are the tables turned.

  94. 94.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Dave Fahrenthold. He’s done good work on this. Hell, the veterans group Trump ostentatiously promised $1 million during the primary would have never got their money if not for Fahrenthold.

  95. 95.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    He has that “awareness” that bad actors have- you can see that they know they are being filmed. I’ve said this before but Clinton doesn’t have this- I find it really endearing. She seems unaware of her physical portrayal. I admire it because she isn’t vain, and that’s rare.

  96. 96.

    Belafon

    @gogol’s wife:

    Do they EVER mention that he’s strong by virtue of killing and/or imprisoning all potential enemies, and by taking over all means of mass communication?

    They’ve tried threatening to keep the blacks and women out of office. They’ve tried voter suppression. They’ve tried lies. Now they’re down to hoping Putin will help them.

  98. 98.

    Corner Stone

    What cokane said at #1.
    NBC News poll shows 63% think Trump came out on top in the CinC Forum.

    We’re fucked. Thanks, media!

  100. 100.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    he has no official public record

    I asked you this before Kay but never saw an answer: What about the bankruptcies?

  101. 101.

    Jeffro

    Meanwhile, Brooksie is convinced that both parties will ‘realign’ after 2016, with minority voters and Bernistas somehow finding common cause with whatever the GOP becomes. Or something. It’s hard to tell through all the false equivalence and hoping-against-hope.

  102. 102.

    shomi

    @Mophene: Really? Such a bold statement. You are really putting yourself out on a limb with those comments. I mean clearly he was on the virge of winning them over.

    What next? Predicting the sun rising from the east?

  103. 103.

    Peale

    @tobie: maybe Clinton should just say that she knows more about ISIS than the generals. Maybe she’ll connect with the media by making an ass of herself. But even then, she’ll lose because somehow, her assinine statements will feel less authentic.

  104. 104.

    PPCLI

    @Betty Cracker: I posted a message with links but it went into moderation. Hopefully it will appear. But a Google search on “factcheck.donald-trump-and-the-iraq-war” turns up the factcheck.org timeline on Trump’s Iraq war comments, and in the timeline it has a link to the washpo society page article.

    Note also that (as noted in the factcheck timeline) Trump had been desperate to sell over $400 million in junk bonds to keep a casino from going under, and he only closed the sale the week before the invasion. The looming war made it harder to sell them, and probably forced the interest rate up to cover perceived extra risk. So Trump need not have been particularly prescient to be unhappy about the prospect of war — the prospect of war was costing him serious money. But even so, he never came out against the invasion as such until over a year later.

  105. 105.

    nonynony

    @Chris:

    That may be all there is to the “narrowing” of Hillary Clinton’s lead.

    Yes. I’m on record as saying that not only will Republicans “come home” to Trump, McCain/Palin 2008 performance is his floor. For any Republicans wobbly about Trump who were willing to justify to themselves that Palin was an acceptable choice for VP – despite how erratic McCain acted through that election cycle – it’s a short hop to justifying to themselves that Trump is an acceptable choice for President.

    This election was never going to be a blowout and I wish people wouldn’t have gotten their hopes up about it. yes get out and do what you can to take Senate seats – the Senate is winnable. Do what you can to win House seats – every seat there helps to make Paul Ryan’s life a little more miserable. But don’t expect a mass desertion of Republicans from the Republican party. If they didn’t leave after W wrecked the place, and they haven’t left over McConnell and Boehner’s efforts to undermine the government, then they’re unlikely to leave now after 8 years of a Democrat in the Oval Office.

  109. 109.

    PPCLI

    @Corner Stone: Look, that was an online poll, which presumably was Freeped. It doesn’t indicate anything except that a bunch of Trump obsessives found a way to vote multiple times. That’s not to say a real survey might not have turned up similar numbers — at this point I’m prepared to accept some very pessimistic conclusions about the voters. But this particular “poll” is worthless.

  110. 110.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I like it about Clinton because everyone says it but so few people dare to do it. She doesn’t care about how she looks onstage. When she’s sitting in a chair, she’s SITTING. She’s not back straight, legs crossed. It’s old fashioned, the idea that focusing on “appearance” is vain and self-centered. It’s almost radical at this point to ignore all that pressure- to treat it like an inconvenience. How funny is it that the male candidate is so obsessed with his appearance and the female candidate is like “tell me what to wear that will shut these assholes up and let’s get on with it”. I adore that.

  111. 111.

    BC in Illinois

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    The thinking is: She’s bad, therefore she’s bad in all possible ways simultaneously.

    The sentence needs to be pondered. And repeated. It is a Great Truth of our time. It explains much of the malice toward both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – – terribly strong; terribly weak; clueless; cunning; (updated continuously).

    The question for a functioning democracy is how to break through simple, reflexive malice. Facts and argument won’t do it.

    I spent 2 1/2 hours working at a phone-bank for Hillary last night. Some positive responses, some negative responses. The negative responses, when articulated, came across as “No WAY I’m voting for Hillary!” (“Well, thank you for your time.”) But it was also fascinating to hear the fellow phone-bankers discuss their pro-Trump relatives. Usually in terms of “we don’t talk about politics when we get together.” This, in a whole room of very articulate people–all of them willing to engage total strangers in conversation. But conversation is not going to break through malice. More facts [“Did you hear what Trump said last night?”] and more arguments [“What would be the effect of doing what he said?”] will not break through.

    My own solution is to combat malice through deflection to “personal reflection on the positive story.” Hillary Clinton is not simply “bad in all possible ways simultaneously.” She is . . . Children’s Defense Fund, legal services for the poor, children, women’s rights, health, hard work, diplomacy, etc. My own recasting of the conversation to “this is what I see.” Now, the reaction is/will be “I don’t believe it.” But at least that gets them to own their own opinion.

    In my mind, their opinion is malice (not fact).
    If I can get them to own their opinion as opinion (not fact), maybe that’s progress.

  112. 112.

    JMG

    Let’s not forget that post-TV appearance polls are subject to change. The day after polls showed that most folks thought Gore “won” his first debate with Bush. A week after the sighing bullshit and the Saturday Night Live skit, they though he’d lost it. This Putin thing has legs.
    Plus, one thing I’ve noticed about American elections is that the incumbent (or incumbent side) gets to bat last. It may not always win, but it tends to be stronger down the stretch than now.

  113. 113.

    PPCLI

    @Betty Cracker: Hi Betty: I’m not ignoring your request. I posted a couple of links, but the message went into moderation. Then I posted a message telling you that the links went into moderation, but that one went into moderation too. Sigh. I’m not sure what keeps setting it off. Trying again: to get a timeline, Google
    f*a*c*t*c*h*e*c*k.o*rg d*onald-tr*ump-an*d-the-ir*aq-w*ar” (omit *). This gives a timeline – look to March 25, 2003.

  114. 114.

    Betty Cracker

    @nonynony:

    I’m on record as saying that not only will Republicans “come home” to Trump, McCain/Palin 2008 performance is his floor.

    I’ll go on record right now saying you’re wrong — Trump will lose by a wider popular vote and electoral college margin. If you’re right and Trump/Pence outperforms McCain/Palin, I’ll send you this priceless My Little Pony Happy Meal toy:

    IMG_0692

    Bookmark it! ;-)

  115. 115.

    Matt McIrvin

    @nonynony:

    I grew up at the tail end of the Cold War – I was a teenager when Reagan left office – and if you had told me that someday a presidential candidate would be praising an autocratic Russian leader as “stronger than our President” I would not have believed you. If you told me that candidate would be a Republican, I would have started walking away. And if you’d told me that the rest of the GOP would rally around the guy praising a Russian tyrant and not just agree with him, but loudly agree that our President was “weak” and the Russian premier was “strong, I would have been looking to call someone to get you some help.

    It’s really only one step away from “there’s a bear in the woods”, though. The Republican line through the Cold War was always that Soviet tyranny was stronger and more dangerous than we knew, certainly stronger than liberals, and that a Democrat in office would give away the store because liberalism made democracy soft and weak. They wrote fantasies about the USSR invading and conquering the United States. They portrayed the Soviets as evil, but there was always a degree of admiration for their imagined superior strength just under the surface. Most Republican hawks actually believed this to an even greater degree than Reagan; they thought he’d gone soft in his second term.

    I remember finding a 1980s book on the subject remaindered at Buck-a-Book after the USSR fell. It described the Soviet Union as having “high morale and a balanced budget”, contrasted with the fragile and divided state of the United States. By the end of the 1980s, I think conservative Republicans in the United States were the only people who sincerely believed in the power of Communism.

  116. 116.

    Betty Cracker

    @PPCLI: Found it — thank you. But as you noted, it doesn’t bolster Trump’s claim that he opposed the war before it began since the comment was made after the war had already started. Not surprised the Trumpenproletariat are trying to use it that way, but it’s just more bullshit. Trump’s views on the war seem to have followed the bog-standard conservative trajectory — support for the invasion followed by disillusionment when the clusterfuck became apparent followed by nit-picking everything Obama did to deal with Bush’s colossal mess.

  117. 117.

    NorthLeft12

    @Kay: I live across the St. Clair River from Michigan, and I never, ever listen to NPR anymore. I used to enjoy some of their programs [even donated to them once], but they have turned insidiously right wing nutty. People still think that Public = liberal/socialist. Not when you put an N and an R around it.

    Is it just Michigan [North Alabama] that is this way or is this the whole of NPR?

  118. 118.

    BruceFromOhio

    @cokane: Nothing wrong with the country, it’s the soulless two-bit ratfuck criminals in the Republican Party and its attendant legion of grifting leeches that are fucked. Oh, and the NYT killed all my unicorns. That’s kinda fucked as well.

  119. 119.

    Chris

    @nonynony:

    Yes. I’m on record as saying that not only will Republicans “come home” to Trump, McCain/Palin 2008 performance is his floor.

    I might not always have agreed with you, but I certainly don’t think it was very far below that. After the last week or two, I agree with you. The media is doing everything it can to sell it as a horserace with no small success, Clinton Derangement Syndrome is in full force, “both sides do it” syndrome is as high as it’s been since 2000… No, this is going to be a regular election.

    I had this conversation with my dad a month or two ago as well, where Trump’s gaffes were so high (and actually being covered) that he was insisting that the blowout would be historic, worse than Mondale or Goldwater or whatever. I didn’t even bother arguing – my side of the conversation was literally “Nope… Nope… Nope… Nope… Not happening. Just not happening.” I haven’t heard any blowout predictions from him lately.

    For any Republicans wobbly about Trump who were willing to justify to themselves that Palin was an acceptable choice for VP – despite how erratic McCain acted through that election cycle – it’s a short hop to justifying to themselves that Trump is an acceptable choice for President.

    Yep. Exactly. Part of the reason I was surprised Trump ever got as much pushback as he did in the primaries was precisely this – if you’ve embraced Sarah Palin as your savior, it’s a little late to suddenly get cold feet about political extremism and lack of qualifications.

    But don’t expect a mass desertion of Republicans from the Republican party.

    The mass desertion of Republicans from the Republican Party has already happened, although it was more of a trickle over the course of the last half-century that was the flip side of the Southern Strategy. While racist Democratic voters in the South and, to a lesser extent, among “ethnic white” ex-New-Dealers flocked to the GOP, voters from the moderate/liberal wing of the GOP have been bleeding over into the Democratic Party to the point where most of them are now solid Democrats – and those that remain in the GOP haven’t got a prayer of changing the course of the party. There’s no significant demographic of persuadables left – what’s in the GOP is all far right, either by conviction or because they sold their soul a long time ago.

  120. 120.

    jonas

    @waysel:

    Can that translate as ‘flamboyant’? Did Putin call Trump gay?

    I think he meant flamboyant or colorful in the same sense Obama meant it when he called wackjob Philippine president Duterte “a colorful guy” the other day.

  121. 121.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker: HIGH STAKES!! lol

    Betty’s going to win this one, fortunately, but only because she said ‘margin’. Clinton likely won’t top Obama’s actual % of the vote or EV numbers, but the margin between her and Trump is likely to be wider because of Johnson drawing off disaffected Rs. I can see Clinton at about 52% tops, Trump at about 41-42%, and most of the rest going to Johnson (sorry Dr. Stein! now go get your shots)

    Btw back to the Brooks column: his vision of the post-2016 Rs is laughable (where are all the older, white, racists supposed to go?) and his vision of the post-2016 Ds overstates various tensions within the Obama coalition. He also seems to think that there will be conflicts in “levels of trust” inside both parties. I’m not seeing that on the D side nearly as much as on the R side.

    It’s a shame – he could talk about a much more likely realignment, where post-2016 we see a Trumpist white nationalist party, a large-majority D party (as a sizable share of Establishment Rs realize that the Clinton D Party is, hey, pretty sensible after all), and Progressives/Greens who start to think about more than just playing spoiler in presidential elections.

  126. 126.

    jonas

    @Corner Stone: Network news audiences skew older, whiter, and conservative and it was an event aimed specifically at military/vets, who skew even whiter and more conservative. They were essentially polling Trump’s base, so take with an asteroid-sized grain of salt.

  128. 128.

    Botsplainer

    It is an AUSPICIOUS fucking morning for a dive. My ears hurt still and the tops of my toes are rubbed raw from my fins Wednesday (divemaster let the little rasta jackass lead the second dive on a site that was fairly new – we promptly got lost and kicked around on boring sandy bottom for 50 minutes, surfacing 200 yards away from the boat). To top it off, I have a case of the shits compounded by a LOT of very hot peppers I ate yesterday, and have the mother of all hangovers due to getting stupid drunk in a destined to fail vainglorious attempt to make time with a couple of hot 20 year olds on the beach yesterday.

    It ain’t pretty….

  129. 129.

    Kay

    Example of Special Rules for the real estate heir Number 546:

    Has the Presidential candidate’s spouse ever completely disappeared during the campaign before? Where the disappearance coincided with questions about the legality of her past actions and her own statements on the central issue of her husband’s campaign?

    Another first. Special rules for the big, rich, white guy. He demands, he gets. Guess it will remain he said/she said.

  130. 130.

    hovercraft

    @Betty Cracker:
    To me it looks like the petulant face of a brat after they’ve been chastised, and it’s his show of defiance. Trump is a spoiled brat who’s always gotten his way by blustering and bulling his way through life, and when he’s lost he is not humbled by his defeat, he just blusters his way through. His fans think of it as strength, but it’s just a person who is too small to ever acknowledge that he got beat. The “it’s just a scratch” bulls**t works for them, because it means that the muslim never actually won, Trump succeeded in forcing him to produce a fake birth certificate, he humiliated him. The humiliation is the reward, even if he is still president.

  132. 132.

    Chris

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Lord, yes.

    This goes double if you look into the science fiction and dystopian fiction and all from much of the 20th century: totalitarian regimes are portrayed as an all-powerful juggernaut which many are terrified might be the wave of the future. (Goes beyond conservatives and beyond America, it’s very widespread in the West).

  133. 133.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @BruceFromOhio:

    Nothing wrong with the country, it’s the soulless two-bit ratfuck criminals in the Republican Party and its attendant legion of grifting leeches that are fucked.

    Uhhhh…. No. As one who lives in a county and state firmly under control of the soulless two-bit ratfuck criminals in the Republican Party and its attendant legion of grifting leeches, I can say unequivocally that I and every one around me are just as fucked whether they vote Dem or GOP. Those assholes don’t care who they take down with them. And you are in this great big boat called the USofA too. While the GOP is not likely to get their hands on the tiller this year, in all likelihood they very much will remain in control the flow of fuel to the engines.

    Nobody is immune to their depredations.

  134. 134.

    shomi

    I see all the doom porn wankers are crawling out of the cracks again. A normal correction of polls after the convention bumps/dips and you annoying lot start up with this shit again as usual. Lol

    Of course posters like MarkyMux and DougJ are more than happy to feed your thirst with their usual cup half empty almost always wrong about the future nonsense.

  135. 135.

    tobie

    @NorthLeft12: “People still think that Public = liberal/socialist. Not when you put an N and an R around it.”

    I sometimes have the suspicion that one of the long-range plans of the GOP was to infiltrate the media with journalists sympathetic to their cause. I’m not talking about the creation of a network like FOX, the domination of talk radio, or even the training of overt right-wing pundits, like Hugh Hewitt. It’s more of an effort to tilt the ideological balance of standard news organizations like AP, NPR, the three big networks, etc. The rise to prominence of people like Ron Fournier, Mara Liasson, Jonathan Karl (a former College Republican), and Terry Moran (a regular speaker at a forum for conservative journalists) suggests to me that the GOP has used college organizations to select and promote people who can forever turn seemingly mainstream outlets into right-leaning news organizations. Obviously there’s been a major assist from the owners of the major news organizations.

    Am I giving the GOP too much capacity for foresight here?

  136. 136.

    Gin & Tonic

    @waysel: Commenter gogol’s wife is better with the literary references and translations, but I don’t think it commonly translates as “flamboyant”. It is most commonly used in the sense that today the sun is bright, or the headlights of the oncoming car are bright. Do a Google image search for яркий человек (bright/brilliant man).

  137. 137.

    hovercraft

    @Corner Stone:
    Trump ‘won’ all of the online polls during the republican primary, expect the same going forward. The respondents are self selecting to participate, so not a real poll. The real test is the reputable polls that come out next week. As I think Charlie Cook said yesterday, the polls are a window into where things stood a week to 10 days ago. And that was at the height of the Hillary is hiding,she is spending all her time with rich people, why won’t she spend time with the little guy bullshit, the Clinton Foundation is corrupt media frenzy, with only minimal push back from the Clinton campaign. So basically when the media got bored with Trump because of the teleprompter, so let’s find some new fodder on Clinton. Since then we’ve had Donald’s excellent adventure in Mexico, and now this fallout from the forum. He has managed to single handedly to force the GOP to embrace Vladamir Putin for godsakes. Normal people do not think he is a strong leader anymore than Hitler was, Putin has a 8% favorable rating here. The CinC forum was the first take for Clnton’s next batch of Ads, all she has to do is cut them up and then we’ll have Trump telling the nation that our soldiers are incapable of serving next to women without raping them and that should have been expected. Our entire military leadership is weak and feckless.
    The polls that come out midweek should tell us if the voters saw what we did.
    Oh and the re-birth of birtherism will have the campaign scrambling to finally give an answer on whether Trump himself believes that the president is an “illegal” or not.

  138. 138.

    Aleta

    @Betty Cracker: That face always brings to my mind the head of an Asian grouper or potato cod. “Food is drawn into their mouths by a powerful suction when they open their overly large mouths and then swallowed whole.” Lying on a plate, eyes glazed, braised in yellow curry.

  139. 139.

    cokane

    @BruceFromOhio: all those culprits comprise a significant chunk of the country. the US really is suffering some unique stupid among high income countries. France has the National Front and the UK has UKIP, but those are tiny parties. Our UKIP is one Democratic scandal from running the damn country

  141. 141.

    shomi

    @hovercraft: Yawn, no shortage of random internet people commenting on Ball Juice who think they know how to run a presidential campaign better than Clinton and her advisors. Same shit as 2012.

    You people are entertaining though. I will give you that.

  143. 143.

    catclub

    @Oldgold:

    I think more should be made of Trump’s talking about his security briefing.

    I think more should be made of Matt Lauer bringing it up. He should not have.

  144. 144.

    Botsplainer

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I’m a sucker for pretty young women even when I’m being ridiculous.

    It is my purpose in life that no pretty young women should ever pay for their own drinks or food, and they’re happy to comply by doing their job of flirting and flattering me, feeding my sad delusion that I have a chance…

  145. 145.

    nonynony

    @Betty Cracker: I hope you’re right. If Trump gets sub-40% of the final popular vote tally it will restore a measure of respect I have for my fellow Americans – and especially for Republicans – that I lost when W won in 2000.

    I would like to believe in people again. But I refuse to get my hopes up by counting on Republican voters to do the obviously right thing when it comes to Trump. Not until I see it with my own eyes.

  148. 148.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Chris:

    This goes double if you look into the science fiction and dystopian fiction and all from much of the 20th century: totalitarian regimes are portrayed as an all-powerful juggernaut which many are terrified might be the wave of the future.

    In many of those dystopias the totalitarian regime is American or derives from current American politics.

  150. 150.

    nonynony

    @shomi: Oh she’s going to win it – make no mistake. My opinion is that she’ll get a popular election result somewhere between McCain/Palin 2008 and Romney/Ryan 2012. Closer to McCain/Palin because I’m still a bit of an optimist at heart.

    But that’s mostly baked in. A better opponent would be gaining ground on Romney/Ryan 2012 but she still would have beaten him. Republican voters will vote for Republicans – they will talk themselves into it by November just like they did in ’08 and ’12. They aren’t going to sit at home, and they aren’t going to vote for Clinton.

  151. 151.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Botsplainer: It was my purpose in life that no pretty young women should ever feel under appreciated, and I usually did it by being ridiculous. I did keep a tight hold on my wallet tho. I wasn’t stupid.

  152. 152.

    hovercraft

    @shomi:
    I have not been critical of Hillary or her campaign, they’ve run an excellent campaign especially compared to ’08. That may change and if it does, I’ll share my views on what’s happening, and you can share yours on my views, it’s called a discussion, if I bore you tough s**t. I’m pretty sure that my post was criticizing the media and their bulls**t narratives. I thought the point of BJ was to provide people with a forum to share information and discuss what’s going on in the world around us and in our lives, should we choose to do so, so if I’m entertaining you with my comments, I guess mission accomplished, if not there are pie filters that will ensure you never have to see my posts again.

  153. 153.

    ruemara

    Stop saying “Americans” are stupid and 45% of “Americans” will vote Trump because, Republican. White people. Just own it. The statistics show minority support for Trump is where it should be, not even 10%. If you know Trump voters and you haven’t told them it is a referendum for you on whether or not they are the sort of people you’d have in your life, you’re making it easy for them to vote for an honest to god white supremacist and teaching the GOP that hatred fear and the promise of domination over minorities is the credible path to power. Yes, you should end relationships over this. It’s not shrug and sigh time. Because minorities never saw Trump as anything less than a dangerous bigot, but enough white people find that enchanting that they’d risk nuclear war, trade wars, unified Russia, rollback of gay rights, women’s rights, environmental efforts, employment laws, free speech and nearly every 20th century social advance, to get it.

  154. 154.

    oldgold

    @catclub:
    I am in the Josh Marshall camp on Lauer’s performance. I think in many ways his tact was successful in exposing Trump. Give Trump lots of rope and stand back.

  156. 156.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    I have some hope for the WaPo reporter who is checking Trump’s charitable donation records. That he can prove. There’s a record. He’s contacting the recipients and asking if the donation that Trump claimed was made. That’s something solid. Trump can’t weasel out with he said/she said.

    OF COURSE, his foundation is a FRAUD. That’s who he is.

    The GOP COULD NOT VET HIM…

    Because, everything that WE say would disqualify him….

    the GOPers have no problem with…

    Him being a Con-Man grifting hustler?

    WHO in the GOP has a problem with that?

  157. 157.

    rikyrah

    @MattF:

    Maybe not so widely known, but Putin is extremely wealthy.

    He worked in the KGB, in Communist Russia.

    HOW did Vlad become so rich?

    BY LOOTING THE COUNTRY!!!!!1

  159. 159.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @hovercraft:

    I thought the point of BJ was to provide people with a forum to share information and discuss what’s going on in the world around us and in our lives,

    No no no, it is a place for shomi to assert his/her intellectual superiority over the lesser minds who divulge their political thoughts here. Get it straight, will you?

  161. 161.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chris: For some time now, Sam Wang’s one-standard-deviation “strike zone” (the area containing 68% of the probability) has been bracketed by a number that is essentially Obama’s 2008 win at the top, and something close to Obama 2012 minus Florida at the bottom (it’s a little lower than that now). When Clinton is doing better, Wang’s “Meta-Margin” shifts upward, but the electoral-vote range of that strike zone just narrows; around 365-370 EV there is a relatively hard barrier, where you start having to crack deep-red states that are very unlikely to go for Democrats under any circumstances. Now, that’s one sigma, and there’s a tail above it–Trump actually seems softer in the South than past Republicans. But a real Hillary landslide is a difficult ask.

  162. 162.

    rikyrah

    @Jeffro:

    Meanwhile, Brooksie is convinced that both parties will ‘realign’ after 2016, with minority voters and Bernistas somehow finding common cause with whatever the GOP becomes.

    Phuck.outta.here.

  165. 165.

    Major Major Major Major

    @rikyrah: the notion i believe is an alignment of the populist right and the socialist left. The problem is that of course in America “populism” starts and ends with white supremacy, not anything that’s actually on the traditional labor axis.

    Edit: complete guess, haven’t read the column

  167. 167.

    rikyrah

    Trump’s Border Wall Is…. Unfair to Ohio!
    by Steven Waldman
    September 9, 2016 6:00 AM

    When questioning Donald Trump proposed border wall, critics tend toward metaphors: we should be “building bridges, not walls.”

    I’d like to suggest that if they want to make headway with voters, they look below the poetry of that phrase and focus instead on the prose. That is, we should be building actual bridges – structures with suspension cables and pavement – rather than walls.

    Trump’s wall would be a massive undertaking. But it would not be, as many critics imagine, unaffordable or un-doable. Estimates put the cost around $25 billion. That’s not a huge amount relative to the federal government’s $4 trillion budget, though a structural engineer writing in the National Memo estimates that it would require three times more concrete than the Hoover dam.

    What people who oppose the wall really find objectionable is its symbolism – it would be a dramatic statement that the nation wants to focus its precious resources on keeping out Mexicans. That’s both offensive and ineffective since 40% of illegal immigrants are people who came in legally and overstayed their visa. That’s true enough. But there are more prosaic arguments against Trump’s idea, which critics seldom make.

    The first is that compared to other public works projects, a wall is insanely wasteful and unproductive. Policy wonks (and wise politicians) support infrastructure spending not just because it provides short-term jobs, but because it often can help with long term economic growth. A light-rail system that makes commuting easier will lift the value of the property for blocks or miles around each station. Wider tunnels along Amtrak’s eastern corridor would allow actual high-speed rail transit from Boston to DC and boost jobs and wealth in every metro area along its route. By contrast, Trump’s wall is literally designed to cut off travel and commerce.

    The second practical argument against the wall is that it is politically unfair. It would be the single biggest public works project in decades, yet almost all of the jobs created would be in four states: Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. What about the other 46 states, whose roads and bridges are falling into disrepair? Yes, among the states being screwed are — to pick an entirely random collection — Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, and Colorado.

  168. 168.

    SenyorDave

    I keep telling myself that Trump can’t possibly win. I look at it statistically, if he get 5% of the black vote, 23% of Hispanics (he seems to be polling in that range, amazingly enough), he needs to get like 60% of the white vote. I know a lot of white males are stupid shits (I am one myself), but how could this POS get 60% of the white people in this country? So he can’t win, right.
    I look at from the way he acts. He just heaped praise on Putin, he basically dissed the whole military leadership, he lied about opposing the Iraq war, he’s pretty openly bigoted, etc. But none of that seems to matter to a large group of people in this country!
    I am amazed how many people say Clinton’s got this with almost complete certainty. I wonder how many people thought that Kerry would win in 2004? He ran against a fairly unpopular president with the country in the midst of two wars not going very well.
    People have glommed onto the “Hillary is dishonest” narrative in the same way that “Kerry was a flip flopper” in 2004. Think about that for a second. Running against Donald effin Trump, Clinton is considered the dishonest one.
    I’m a glass half empty sort of person (something that is not bad when you work as a financial analyst, I have to take people’s can’t miss new ideas that will generate gobs of profit for my company and do some reality checks by saying what if). I think she’ll win, but after this election I hope the DNC does serious studying on how a Trump could do this well when things aren’t bad in this country.
    BTW, I don’t understand the fascination with analyzing Trump’s supposed personality disorders. He’s a bad person who treats people poorly and has been in a position to not have to answer for his actions because of his money and power.

  169. 169.

    Elizabelle

    @rikyrah: it’s Brooks, Jake.

    I’d clicked on the link by accident, and that statement is where I stopped reading. The readers comments will be good, but time is limited.

    Brooks is delusional. At least we can stop thinking he’s an aberration at The New York Times.

  170. 170.

    JPL

    @Kay: Matt Lauer will ask him, when to expect the documentation about his wife’s path to citizenship. Trump will say soon and Matt will thanks.
    Melania is busy taking care of Barron.

  171. 171.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    @Kay:

    It’s one thing for the reality TV host to admire a dictator- he’s measured by a bar so low it’s nonexistent- but we’ve reached a new level of crazy when the Governor of Indiana endorses Putin.

    I’ve been saying for years that the modern GOP is almost indistinguishable from the old-school Soviets – the endless propaganda, the de-personization of anyone who doesn’t toe the exact proper line, the lock-step authoritarianism, the demands that science and history bow to ideology. Of course Putin’s their guy.

  172. 172.

    PPCLI

    @Betty Cracker: A quick follow-up. Four points:
    a) It turns out I was right that this is an officially campaign-flogged talking point. Andrew Kaczynski (Twitter Handle: BuzzfeedAndrew) quotes a bullet point from the Trump campaign’s rapid response email where they cite the “The war’s a mess” remark. I don’t want to try a link, since that seems to keep getting me deep-sixed in moderation, but if you go to the BuzzFeedAndrew twitter feed, it is an entry at 5:22 PM – 8 Sep 2016.

    a1) So if this is the best they’ve got, they’ve got nothing.

    b) The talking point argues that this shows Trump was opposed to the war before it happened because he said it was a mess only seven days after the invasion, and it would be unreasonable for someone to change their mind that quickly. [LOL — no, that is actually what they argue. Trump would never say contradictory things in a short time.]

    c) The talking point does not, of course mention the other remark he is quoted as making at the same time: “If they keep fighting it the way they did today, they’re going to have a real problem.” which shows he is not objecting to the war in principle, but only to the way the military is handling it. [i.e. He was disrespecting our troops!!! OMG!!!] This can’t be emphasized enough: If people bring up the “The war’s a mess” comment, it has to be met with the fact that he said the problem is with “how they are fighting”, not with the idea of going into Iraq in principle.

    d) Just a quick fastidious clarification of what I’m saying in response to “But as you noted, it doesn’t bolster Trump’s claim that he opposed the war before it began since the comment was made after the war had already started.” My point is less about when the remark was made — though of course it was after the invasion, so indicates nothing about his pre-invasion attitudes — but rather that whenever it was made, it doesn’t actually indicate opposition to the invasion in principle. He says that the army has not been fighting well, and that is why he says it has been “a mess”.

    No doubt he believed in his own mind that if he had been in charge the whole thing would have been over in seven days and looted Iraqi oil would already be pumping into Trump Enterprises tankers.

  174. 174.

    rikyrah

    Yes…it is their job.

    Period.

    ……………………….

    Is It the Media’s Job to Challenge Lies?
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    September 8, 2016 4:23 PM

    This week Howard Kurtz interviewed Chris Wallace about being chosen as a presidential debate moderator. At one point Kurtz asked him how he’d handle it if/when a candidate made unfounded accusations or said something that wasn’t true. Here is how Wallace responded:

    “That’s not my job,” Wallace, who hosts Fox News Sunday, said. “I do not believe that it’s my job to be a truth squad. It’s up to the other person to catch them on that.”

    I was reminded of that time when Chuck Todd told us what wasn’t his job.

    MSNBC host Chuck Todd said Wednesday that when it comes to misinformation about the new federal health care law, don’t expect members of the media to correct the record.

    During a segment on “Morning Joe,” former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) speculated that most opponents of the Affordable Care Act have been fed erroneous information about the law. Todd said that Republicans “have successfully messaged against it” but he disagrees with those who argue that the media should educate the public on the law. According to Todd, that’s President Barack Obama’s job.

    A lot of people found both of those statements to be surprising – if not appalling. The idea that it is not the job of journalists to point out lies and/or misinformation seems to go against the very basics of what we should expect from a free press.

  175. 175.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah:

    Phuck.outta.here.

    You can’t make this stuff up, I’m telling you. Brooks really believes that both parties’ elites (or rich folks or whatever) are at odds with their populist (or working-class or whatever) bases. He seems to not understand that on the D side, even the elites/rich/educated/whatever are generally in favor of better education, health care, job training, infrastructure for everyone., even if it takes progressive taxation to do it.

    Maybe he just didn’t play enough “One of These Things Is Not Like The Other” when he was a kid. Or maybe he’s just lazy. Or both.

  176. 176.

    sinnedbackward

    @Kay: Pence said that Drumph’s comparison of Putin to Obama was “inarguable”, one of those wonderful English words that can mean the opposite of itself. I take “unsupportable by any evidence” in this case…

  177. 177.

    Hoodie

    The funniest thing about Trump’s Putin remark is that a hard-bitten New Yorker’s instinct when being called “brilliant” by an adversary is “this guy’s either being sarcastic or trying to blow smoke up my ass.” It’s true comedy when it’s revealed that it wasn’t even a compliment.

  178. 178.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I wasn’t stupid.

    OK, but what happened between those days and now? I mean, you’re a Balloon Juice commenter, right? And as shomi is wont to tell us — in not so few words — we’re all fucking stupid. I was, at one time, halfway-intelligent — or so I thought. Fortunately, “We-fucking-HATES-all-the-FPers-and-the-commenters-here-FOREVER” shomi done showed me how worng I was.

    On the other hand, glad to be in your company.

  179. 179.

    Feathers

    Looks like we have Jeff Bezos to thank for the break the MSM mold coverage of Trump from the Washington Post. This quote is from Bob Woodward, talking to the Harvard Gazette: Link

    Amazon CEO and Post owner] Jeff Bezos has these conferences. Last fall, I gave a talk about Nixon and the latest book I had done, “The Last of the President’s Men,” about thousands of documents from the Nixon White House that aide Alexander Butterfield escaped with and Butterfield’s experience with Nixon, which we didn’t know about. Afterward, Bezos came up and said, “Could we have known about Nixon before he became president?” And I said, “I think we could’ve done a better job.” And he said, “OK, what we need to do is, when it gets down to two candidates, make sure we do the stories in the Post or do a series or do a book or whatever so no one can go into a voting booth in November and be able to say, ‘I couldn’t find out who these people were.’”

    What struck me is that Woodward is giving himself credit here for being hard-hitting, but not seeing the real problem of “balance.”

    Another balance issue, that I’ve mentioned before is how corruption is always framed in terms of being a government problem, not a corporate problem. You can see it in the emails debacle. Clinton’s nothingburger emails are blown into a huge scandal, while Trump’s evil deeds fall by the wayside. Why? Because the press has the flippin’ emails. Because of FOIA treating emails like written memorandum. Trump, as a businessman, has privacy rights over his emails that government officials do not. He benefits from the generally glowing treatment capitalists and other businessmen get from the press. If equal scrutiny were allowed to be placed on government and business, I think government might well come out ahead.

    If we are going to make releasing tax returns required, I also think we need to reconsider government employee emails as publicly accessible documents. They should be stored of course, but normal release should be in the ten to twenty year range that other materials. They should be discoverable in a criminal case of course, but the current situation is ridiculous.

    And to go on a bit too long, I really think the attitude of we have to cover the email story because it is there is wrong in many ways. Are you looking at Trump’s emails? If you are doing a comb through of only people who you have data on, then you really aren’t doing investigative journalism, you are just being lazy. Looking into the Clinton Foundation, without exploring similar foundations (and Trump’s, which seems spectacularly bad) is falling into a useless cynicism. It’s the Sanders trap. Loudly railing against everyone as being corrupt isn’t helpful. When everyone is corrupt, the problem is the system, not the people. This is what Elizabeth Warren gets. She goes after the system and the laws that prop it up. The central question of the Hillary emails is – why didn’t the NSA give her the Blackberry she asked for? But no one seems to even care about that.

  180. 180.

    Chris

    @cokane:

    all those culprits comprise a significant chunk of the country. the US really is suffering some unique stupid among high income countries. France has the National Front and the UK has UKIP, but those are tiny parties. Our UKIP is one Democratic scandal from running the damn country

    In a lot of European countries, the right wing spectrum in modern times has been basically like the Republican Party circa 1960: a dominant center-right supported by elites and moderates, and an insurgent far right supported by bigots and ideologues. Over here, the center-right and far-right fused together a long time ago, with the result of giving the latter a much louder voice in the system than its counterparts in Europe do.

    Sadly, no guarantee that it’ll always stay that way. The far right’s on the way up in a lot of European countries, and center-right parties are sitting up and taking notice.

    @Robert Sneddon:

    True.

    Admittedly, part of the fun of these things is that the imaginary society can be a metaphor for more than one thing. There’s still a debate on whether “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers” is a better allegory for Communism or McCarthyism. And whether the Borg are a metaphor for communist collectivism, or capitalist consumerism.

  181. 181.

    catclub

    @ruemara:

    they’d risk nuclear war, trade wars, unified Russia, rollback of gay rights, women’s rights, environmental efforts, employment laws, free speech and nearly every 20th century social advance, to get it

    Actually, they are risking nuclear war, trade wars, unified Russia, in order to achieve rollback
    of gay rights, and women’s rights, and environmental efforts, and rollback of progressive employment laws, free speech and nearly every 20th century social advance.

  182. 182.

    Patricia Kayden

    @sunny raines:

    it is criminal that the US has a media establishment and a major political party that would facilitate someone as vile as trump getting to this point.

    This a billion times. This simply cannot be repeated enough. The sad thing is how the media has successfully dragged Secretary Clinton’s favorability rating into the dirt in their “both sides do it” mania, which may have a negative impact on her ability to govern. Sigh.

  184. 184.

    Iowa Old Lady

    One of the biggest problems in talking about Trump’s preposterous statements is the they’re so tangled up in crazy assumptions that a single sentence can take forever to refute because you have to chase down each assumption. And if people have already bought the assumptions, they don’t listen to you anyway, and you just make yourself crazy.

    You wander down twisty corridors until you’re eaten by a grue.

  185. 185.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Jeffro:

    Clinton likely won’t top Obama’s actual % of the vote or EV numbers, but the margin between her and Trump is likely to be wider because of Johnson drawing off disaffected Rs. I can see Clinton at about 52% tops, Trump at about 41-42%, and most of the rest going to Johnson (sorry Dr. Stein! now go get your shots)

    Nope. All the stats I’ve seen suggest that Johnson draws almost equally from both parties (he gets the post-partisan-centrist “both sides are equally bad” vote more or less by default), and when you add in Stein taking away a small fraction of liberals, the third-party vote mildly helps Trump. Comparing two-candidate versus four-candidate questions suggests that it cuts Clinton’s popular-vote margin by about 1%.

  186. 186.

    SFAW

    @sinnedbackward:

    Actually, Pence was right. It’s inarguable that a dictator will be a stronger — or at least, more forceful, which is how Corrupt Deadbeat Donnie and Pence meant it — than a democratically-elected leader. Of course, if Lying Corrupt Deadbeat Donnie wanted to give Obama (or Handsome Joe) the same power to deal with the opposition that Putin has, he might not like the result.

  187. 187.

    Jeffro

    @Elizabelle: Speaking of reader comments…most are calling him out for not seeing that the GOP is done, there is no moderate savior to be had, etc. But this was priceless:one lone ‘moderate’ Republican who doesn’t see ALL educated folks going over to the Democrats. Not her, that’s for sure…

    The stereotype is incorrect. There are plenty of college-educated/multi- degreed people who are moderate Republicans. We think gender and abortion should be kept out of politics and we are not right wing. We do not believe in socialism, sanctuary cities, income redistribution, and flooding this country with illegal immigrants who we will be dictated to pay for by the Socialistic Democratic Party of America.

    This is a self-described Republican Moderate. Just keep gender and abortion ‘out of politics’ (the implication being, the Dems are dragging it into politics), ‘sanctuary cities’ are a big issue, “flooding this country with illegal immigrants”…”dictated to pay for”…the whole thing reads like a Bill O rant.

  188. 188.

    Betty Cracker

    @PPCLI: Great points — and yeah, the suggestion that Trump wouldn’t change his mind that fast is hilarious, since he often contradicts himself in the same breath!

    When accosted with the talking point you found, it will be handy to have this audio of a Trump interview on the first day of the invasion, in which he calls it a “tremendous success.” When he or his backers say he opposed the Iraq War before it began, they are lying. Period.

  189. 189.

    PPCLI

    @sinnedbackward: Pence: “Of course Putin is stronger than Obama. Putin would have had Trump and me shipped off to a labour camp years ago. Everyone on Fox News too. Obama can’t even get the FEMA concentration camps operational, and he’s had almost eight years.”

  190. 190.

    SFAW

    @catclub:

    It’s spelled rong. everybody knows that. ur doing it rong.

    Weel, I tole you how stoopid I iz become.

    Showing me how worng rong I am is a debt to shomi that I can never repay.

  191. 191.

    hovercraft

    @Major Major Major Major:
    I just read it, he is still in denial, he is not discarding trickle down and all that other supply side bs. The heart of the democratic party is the young and people of color, and we have never been the beneficiaries of trickle down. The GOP’s fight against voting rights will not be soon forgotten by those of us who have been targeted, people like Brooks still see the “populism” of the last few years as an aberration, they don’t see that every policy he and his ilk have promoted over the last 40 years have brought us here. To him Trump is an aberration, not the direct result of the republicans own behavior, busting up unions and doing everything in their power to destroy the effectiveness of government has brought us to where we are today. This election will not be forgotten and neither will the people and indeed the entire party who stood with Trump. Saying I disagree with him on this or that does not absolve you of your support for his candidacy as a whole. You can’t say that you love cancer except of that whole possibly dying thing, because it helped you lose weight. Cancer is a terrible thing regardless of what benefits you may think you got from it. Your renewed faith, living every day to the fullest, your new appreciation of your friends and family are great, but it’s still f**king cancer, which is what Donald is.
    Some on the right are finally being forced to accept what democrats have been saying for years, the GOP and many of their policies are racist, others like Brooks see the problem as just a tiny racist minority. There can be no realignment until you see what the problem is, the GOP remains the party of corporations and the 1%, most democrats care and unions and the environment and we are socially liberal, on a couple of these like the social issues, the GOP may change, but on doing what’s best for corporations, nothing will change in the near future.

  193. 193.

    Jeffro

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Nope. All the stats I’ve seen suggest that Johnson draws almost equally from both parties, and when you add in Stein taking away a small fraction of liberals, the third-party vote mildly helps Trump.

    Then you should probably check your stats. Johnson’s support is 60-70% Rs, and he seems to be polling nationally just under 10% of voters. Stein is drawing a very, very small fraction of folks, many of whom wouldn’t normally be voting anyway.

    We’ll see how it all shakes out in two months, and right or wrong, I’ll gladly spring for a round either way (two if it’s Trump)

  194. 194.

    Feathers

    @tobie: If someone is going on and on being negative, I ask them what they like, what positive vision of the world do they have.* If they give me a blank stare, I know how much value to place on their negativity. I wish news bookers did the same. But the problem is that crazy plays well on the TV.
    *Actually came up with this rule in terms of movies. There were people who claimed to love movies, but only talked about ones that sucked. This was in a long ago screenwriter’s group. Surprisingly enough, the only folks who went on to any success were those who raved all the time about the movies they loved. Go figure.

  196. 196.

    catclub

    @PPCLI: You are giving too much credit. Trump gets away with saying things that don’t mean anything
    exactly like “The War’s a mess” or “It has been turned into rubble.”

    They are meaningless. Nobody follows up and and gets him to clarify, so later he can say it meant X. It is one of his talents.

  197. 197.

    Stan

    @sunny raines: No, ‘second amendment solutions’ means more than displaying a firearm. It means using it.

    I agree that armed attempts at voter intimidation may be a real issue this time. I hope not but it is incontrovertible that they are stoking this shit up.

  198. 198.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Republicans like Putin because he gives Obama the middle finger. They’re not shy about telling you so. This is nothing but their longing for a white guy to put the uppity black guy in his place.

    @JMG:
    No, they are averagely vulnerable because of greed. They are particularly vulnerable because of racism. The whole conservative scam machine is built on it. Gold, survival tools, and guns are all ‘the race war is coming,’ and they’ll tell you so! Trump’s appeal is racism. The evidence is overwhelming. They’re terrified and hateful of Obama more than they give a flying fuck about a working government.

    @Derelict:
    This dichotomy makes perfect sense of you understand racist tropes. To them, a black man is a dumb, selfish, criminal, violent mental child. So, Obama is a tyrant because he ignores the rules and abuses his power as president to stick it to white people and give whites’ money to other coloreds. He is weak because abusing power that was given to him by affirmative action is easy. He does easy, weak, cowardly stuff like suck up to foreigners, pander to minorities with gifts, and seek peaceful solutions instead of standing up to an inherently evil Islam and beating the shit out of everyone who looks at America funny. Oh, and he resents white people’s superiority, so he’s rooting for Muslim terrorists anyway. See? Tyrant AND coward.

    Seriously, folks. What we’re seeing is the result of eight years of the majority of white America more and more losing their shit that a black man became president.

  199. 199.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Jeffro: what I’ve seen is that while Johnson’s support tilts towards taking votes from “Republicans”, a number of those voters are republicans who in a two-way race would reluctantly vote for Hillary. So he’s providing a non-Hillary “never Trump” outlet for those folks.

  201. 201.

    catclub

    @Feathers:

    If someone is going on and on being negative, I ask them what they like, what positive vision of the world do they have

    great policy. Thanks for the reminder. Luckily we are all sunshine and light here.

  203. 203.

    Chris

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    One of the biggest problems in talking about Trump’s preposterous statements is the they’re so tangled up in crazy assumptions that a single sentence can take forever to refute because you have to chase down each assumption. And if people have already bought the assumptions, they don’t listen to you anyway, and you just make yourself crazy.

    This is largely why I’ve stopped arguing with Republicans altogether. You’ll talk about climate change, and out of the blue they’ll say “but they just disproved global warming!” and then you’ll find out about this random bullshit article that some idiot in the right wing blogosphere just wrote, and you’ll have to find out what it says and then painstakingly refute everything about it, and get your own sources to do so, which they won’t believe anyway, and even if you get them to agree with you, a week later they’ll have forgotten all about it and become convinced again that global warming has been conclusively disproved… etc. It’s just fucking exhausting, especially when you know it’s futile.

    @Jeffro:

    Just keep gender and abortion ‘out of politics’ (the implication being, the Dems are dragging it into politics)

    Yes, this is a point that can’t be made enough. Republican “moderates” and fringe libertarians aren’t in favor of gay rights and women’s rights – they just don’t care about gay rights and women’s rights, and they get bored and irritable when forced to spend any amount of time on the subject (as opposed to What Really Matters, which somehow always ends up coming back to their pocketbook). They’re not allies, they’re just neutrals.

    The whole North Carolina fiasco illustrates it nicely. Yes, the Chamber of Commerce types are willing to come down on the GOP for its more egregious anti-gay actions… now, because those things are actually bad for business. But the reason they’re bad for business is that liberals, not libertarians or moderate Republicans, spent the last several fifty years pushing hard to change cultural norms to the point where homophobia would become bad for business. The “moderates” won’t fight you, too much, but they won’t help you either.

  204. 204.

    hovercraft

    @PPCLI:
    Here are all the things Trump said about the war at the time according to Factcheck.org

    Sept. 11, 2002: Howard Stern asks Trump if he supports invading Iraq. Trump answers hesitantly. “Yeah, I guess so. You know, I wish it was, I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

    Jan. 28, 2003: Trump appears on Fox Business’ “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” on the night of President Bush’s State of the Union address. Trump says he expects to hear “a lot of talk about Iraq and the problems,” and the economy. He urges Bush to make a decision on Iraq. “Either you attack or you don’t attack,” he says. But he offers no opinion on what Bush should do.
    March 19, 2003: President George W. Bush announces in a televised address to the nation that the war with Iraq has started.

    March 21, 2003: Neil Cavuto of Fox Business interviews Trump about the impact of the Iraq war on the stock market. Trump says the war “looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint,” and he predicts the market will “go up like a rocket” after the war. But Cavuto does not ask Trump whether the U.S. should have gone to war with Iraq and Trump doesn’t offer an opinion.
    March 22, 2003: The San Antonio Express-News quotes Trump as saying the “war is depressing.” The article was about the Miss USA pageant, which Trump owned at the time. The pageant was held March 24, 2003 in Alamo City.
    March 25, 2003: The Washington Post quotes Trump, at a post-Oscars Vanity Fair party, as saying the war is “a mess.”
    Trump, July 1, 2003: I never did run [in 2000] and I probably never will run. But we’re having a lot of fun. I think the president is doing a very good job. I would love to see New York City and some of the cities and some of the states get some of the money that`s going toward Iraq and other places, because you know, they really need and it they need it badly.
    Trump, Sept. 11, 2003: It wasn’t a mistake to fight terrorism and fight it hard, and I guess maybe if I had to do it, I would have fought terrorism but not necessarily Iraq.
    Dec. 15, 2003: Neil Cavuto of Fox Business interviews Trump two days after the capture of Iraq President Saddam Hussein. Hussein was captured on Dec. 13, 2003, a Saturday when the markets were closed. Trump says Hussein’s capture was a “great thing” for the country, but he mentions that “a lot of people [are] questioning” the wisdom of going to war with Iraq in the first place.

    He never opposed it, as the war started to go badly he voiced his concerns but did not come right out and say “I oppose it”, like the weasel he is, he left himself an out when he got to the point of realizing it was a mistake, by using his usual ” some people say”.

  206. 206.

    shomi

    @Major Major Major Major: I think you mentioned adding me to your pie filter at least twice.

    I give zero fucks either way so no need to announce it like it’s some sort of accomplishment and then not even do it…lol.

  208. 208.

    TriassicSands

    I think it is “inarguable” that Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler were both stronger leaders in their respective countries that either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush was in the US.

    Brain damage seems to be contagious.

  209. 209.

    Mark B

    @catclub: Lauer shouldn’t have brought it up, but Trump should have replied that he could not talk about it. Full stop. Trump’s answer was very irresponsible. I mean, he does a lot of irresponsible things, but talking about a national security briefing at a public forum is far worse than using your own blackberry for email, in my opinion.

  211. 211.

    SFAW

    @shomi:

    It’s almost like they think I give a fuck.

    And yet, here you are, responding to those comments. Self-awareness must be a recessive gene in your bloodline.

    We’ll try to be careful not to hurt your precious widdle feewings, cupcake.

  214. 214.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mark B:

    talking about a national security briefing at a public forum is far worse than using your own blackberry for email,

    try telling that to our esteemed Fourth Estate.

  216. 216.

    SFAW

    @Major Major Major Major:
    Not surprised (or, technically, “amazed”). He’s like the apparently departed (or was he banned? I haven’t seen his bile in awhile) Reggie M, who’s sole purpose on this blog was to tell us all how fucking much he fucking hated us, especially because Hitlary was Teh Evul, and she wasn’t giving him 23 good reasons to vote for her.

    “shomi” has, from time to time, actually written things that don’t make my eyes roll. But for the most part, his schtick is not very different from Reggie’s, in both content and monomania.

  217. 217.

    Frankensteinbeck

    As for the ‘landslide’ question, I expect Trump to get the same level of white male support as Romney. White females, I honestly don’t know. Republican women who want to vote for Clinton know vividly the Hell they will be put through if anyone finds out. Trump is chopping big, permanent holes in Republican support by non-whites.

    The biggest questions are the unprecedented differences in GOTV organization, and the pollsters’ basing their models off the assumption that the Obama coalition is over and non-white voting will drop sharply.

  219. 219.

    sinnedbackward

    @Frankensteinbeck: Should make me ashamed most of my ancestors froze their butts off in northern Europe and western Asia just so I could be melanin deprived.

    It would be nice if schools could truly explain the gene pool. We are ALL descended from MOST of the people alive several thousand years ago, just in different proportions. Four generations a century, 30 centuries, figure 2 to the 120th. We are multiply descended from almost all of them. Duh.

  221. 221.

    Feebog

    @Jeffro:

    Johnson isn’t going to pull close to 10% come November 8. Cook is correct when he says the polls reflect where the race was 7-10 days ago. Johnson’s gaffe yesterday is going to cost him a lot of support, but we won’t see it until next week. Moreover, it is not unusual for third party candidates to poll higher then their actual vote counts come election day. If I had to make a prediction today it would be Clinton 54%, Trump 43%, Johnson 2%, Stein 1%.

  223. 223.

    catclub

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    The biggest questions are the unprecedented differences in GOTV organization, and the pollsters’ basing their models off the assumption that the Obama coalition is over and non-white voting will drop sharply.

    I think the fact that conventional GOP pols do not have Trump’s back – to support everything the GOP presidential nominee says, as all other
    (even Goldwater) GOP nominees were supported by the party – is a big deal that will have cumulative effects. It also gives anyone wavering permission to not support him. “My senator doesn’t even back the guy, why should I?”

  224. 224.

    Gin & Tonic

    I’m sitting here trying to imagine, in 1972, George McGovern praising the leadership skills and strengths of Leonid Brezhnev and going on Russian state TV to criticize US policy in Vietnam. Or 1976, Jimmy Carter going on Russian state TV and criticizing US policy in Lebanon. The Democratic Party would have been outlawed.

  225. 225.

    Mark B

    @Feebog: I don’t see Johnson getting as many votes as he’s polling, but he’s probably going to do better than a typical third party candidate due to many traditional Republicans being unable to vote for a feckless fool like Trump. Many of them will just stay home on election day, a few of them will vote for Clinton, but enough will vote for the Libertarians to get them in the 5-7% range. In my opinion.

  229. 229.

    catclub

    @SFAW:

    “shomi” has, from time to time, actually written things that don’t make my eyes roll.

    I would be so disappointed if shomi turns out to NOT be from Missouri.

  231. 231.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Jeffro:

    If the Republicans can drop the racial wedges — which admittedly may be a big ask — and become more the party designed to succor those who are disaffected from the globalizing information age, then it might win over some minority voters, and the existing party alignments will unravel in short order.

    And when exactly does Brooks think Republicans will “drop the racial wedges” which led to their base selecting an outspoken Bigot over 16 other candidates during their lengthy primary? How do you drop racial wedges when that is exactly what your base wants and demands? Brooks needs to wake up from his daze and get real.

  233. 233.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Feebog: You’re being very generous to Secretary Clinton. Crossing fingers and toes that your electorate guess is correct. 43% for someone as obviously unqualified as Trump still represents a huuuuge number of our fellow Americans which is very scary.

  234. 234.

    catclub

    @Patricia Kayden: From Brooks

    and become more the party designed to succor those who are disaffected from the globalizing information age

    It took me about 10 seconds to realize this will be labeled the Luddite party. Not a winning association.

  236. 236.

    hovercraft

    @Cacti:
    And now being mocked for getting played by the octogenarian King. “If you can get played by Larry King, who can’t play you?”

  237. 237.

    Mnemosyne

    @ruemara:

    Yep. Very few non-whites are voting for Trump. If he wins, it’s all on white people.

    So, yes, my fellow white people, we have a special responsibility to make sure that Trump does not win, because if he does, it’s our fault. Period.

  239. 239.

    Patricia Kayden

    @shomi: You’re making me laugh out loud which is probably good. Why are you so contrarian? People have a right to feel a bit anxious and will probably feel anxious right up to the announcement that Secretary Clinton has won — which may be as late as midnight November 8th. No need to mock and poke anyone about that.

  240. 240.

    Peale

    @catclub: So basically the party of small town, middle of nowhere, going nowhere, America. Which is the base of the party to begin with. I’m not certain if there is enough incremental votes there for David Brook’s fever dream.

  241. 241.

    Betty Cracker

    @Patricia Kayden: Well, if they get the ass-kicking they deserve this year, maybe the party bosses will finally get it through their noggins that if they want political power at the executive level, they’ll have to find a way to cobble a coalition together without appeals to white supremacists. Even I’m not that optimistic — I think we’ll win but not on a Goldwater or Mondale scale, and that’s usually the kind of butt-kicking required to make a party remake itself.

  244. 244.

    Brachiator

    @Jeffro:

    Clinton likely won’t top Obama’s actual % of the vote or EV numbers, but the margin between her and Trump is likely to be wider because of Johnson drawing off disaffected Rs.

    I think a recent NBC poll suggested that Johnson was drawing more voters who leaned toward Hillary than voters who leaned toward Trump. This was especially true with respect to people who voted for Obama in previous elections.

    Disaffected Republicans appear to be more likely to just skip the president and vote down ticket race or stay home. Some may just bite the bullet and vote Trump, because they always vote Republican out of habit.

    @Feebog:

    Johnson isn’t going to pull close to 10% come November 8.

    Johnson’s immediate goal was to try to rise high enough in the polls to get a place on the debate. That was always a long shot, but he has probably blown all his chances now with his Aleppo remarks.

  245. 245.

    Peale

    @Betty Cracker: Higher actually. If the GOP nominee nationally is Trump and still only 30-40% of eligible latino voters turn out, we’re in trouble even if we win the popular vote.

  246. 246.

    Hob

    @Major Major Major Major: Nah, shomi has no criteria for improving the blog. He’ll complain about people making pessimistic comments one minute, and make exactly that same kind of comment the next minute. He’s posted rants about how Cole or Doug are terrible because they’re saying such-and-such, on posts where they actually said the opposite, proving that he either didn’t read the post or is as dumb as a box of rocks. The only principle he’s got is that he hates this place and the people in it, but he can’t go away, which (based on his earlier incarnation as “derf”) I’m pretty sure goes back to some personal beef with Cole. He’s a troll and a stalker, period.

  248. 248.

    Patricia Kayden

    @catclub: Who the hell are these people disaffected by the “globalizing information age”? What does that even mean? Brooks needs to translate his articles for the little people like me.

  249. 249.

    Lizzy L

    I just read through the post on the North Korea nuclear test, and I’m imagining Donald Trump dealing with the North Koreans. I have a robust imagination.

    F**k.

  251. 251.

    Jeffro

    @Feebog:

    If I had to make a prediction today it would be Clinton 54%, Trump 43%, Johnson 2%, Stein 1%.

    That puts Clinton above Obama’s modern-era high of 53% in 2008. I’m not seeing it.

  252. 252.

    Brachiator

    @Patricia Kayden:

    You’re making me laugh out loud which is probably good. Why are you so contrarian? People have a right to feel a bit anxious and will probably feel anxious right up to the announcement that Secretary Clinton has won — which may be as late as midnight November 8th.

    This reminds me that I should take Nov 8 off and vote early. Last presidential election, I voted in the early evening (in California) and then stopped to get some takeout. I was going to go home and settle in for a longish evening, talking to neighbors about the election while the results rolled in. But it was clear that Obama was racking up states early on.

    Right now, I think that a Clinton victory will be announced as soon as the West Coast polls close, 8 pm Pacific Time. But that’s just right now.

  253. 253.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @germy:

    Liz Smith remembers Trump.

    This is telling:

    During the eighties, Smith enjoyed a good deal of Trump’s hospitality, including visits to his Mar-a-Lago estate, in Palm Beach. “I was left holding the bag, ethically, because I had foolishly appeared to have accepted a lot of favors from him,” she said. “The truth was I thought I could get him to give me money for my charities. He never gave me a dime. And I got the criticism I deserved.”

    This is why he’s mostly persona non grata among the NYC elites: he’s not as rich as he says he is, and he had a habit of showing up at charity events, pledging to donate a uuuuuuuge amount of money, and not doing so. NYC elites understand the social rules: you get to participate in the social calendar by giving to charity (and claiming it back on your tax return). That way you can justify all the galas and openings and other elite fun by saying it’s for a good cause. Trump’s just a chiseller.

  254. 254.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Brachiator: Which is 11:00 pm EST. I doubt Trump will concede so I won’t be able to stay up and watch Secretary Clinton’s victory speech. I had to skip President Obama’s victory speech in 2012 because the Romney-bot refused to give a concession speech until well after it was obvious to anyone sensible that Obama had won. Sigh.

  256. 256.

    Cacti

    @Betty Cracker:

    Why? Do you think Trump will do better among white folks than McCain or Romney?

    I have a hard time seeing Trump bettering Romney’s share of the white vote, considering he’s doing substantially worse with white women than Mittens did.

    Willard won 56% of white women’s votes. Donald has consistently polled in the low to mid 40s with them.

  257. 257.

    cokane

    @Chris: sure, this is well said. but lemme add, say what you want about the tenets of Marie Le Pen or other far righties, at least they represent a coherent ethos, Trump is such an obvious kleptocrat, it’s just stunning “small government” conservatives cannot see it

  258. 258.

    Betty Cracker

    @Cacti: Me too. I think Trump will not only be on the losing end of a historical gender gap among white women, I don’t even think he’ll do as well as McCain or Mittens did with white men. But I’ve been told I’m overly optimistic. We shall see!

  260. 260.

    D58826

    And we have a new Clinton ‘scandal’ and a new description to join optics, smell test, smoke and fire. It is ‘fishy’ and comes to us courtesy of the Denver Post. They have a long story about the ‘fishy’ circumstances in which some techie destroyed Hillary’s e-mail archive. Since I have only a limited number of brain cells I decided to ignore the story past the opening paragraph. But I just wonder since the time line comes from the FBI notes and the FBI interviewed the techie in question and the FBI decided that there was nothing illegal then exactly what is ‘fishy’? (sigh)

  262. 262.

    Brachiator

    @Patricia Kayden:

    43% for someone as obviously unqualified as Trump still represents a huuuuge number of our fellow Americans which is very scary.

    I think that in some ways we have been very lucky as a country. We have had a fairly stable government for decades, and although we have had some serious attacks like the World Trade Center atrocity, we have never been invaded, nor have engaged in a major war which threatened our territory.

    Th economy has not been consistently robust, but we have not had the national economic cataclysm of the Great Depression.

    So I think we have become a little complacent. And we settled for genial mediocrities as president like Reagan and Dubya. And some voters flirted with the idea of electing an idiot like Palin to national office. Our standards declined. We want a president we can have a beer with, which really means someone as stupid as we are. Many Americans think all you need is faith in a deity and a little common sense, and the country will almost run itself.

    Someone like Trump satisfies this low bar. He talks like some average dope in a sports bar, eager to solve every problem with an easy, wall building, ass kicking solution.

    And for some sad white Americans, there is the extra racist fillip that any average white man should be better than a black man for president. This even seems to be one of the special animating forces behind Trump jumping into the presidential ring, a determination to prove that he is Obama’s better. And the goobers that make up his base eat this up, because they desperately need racial vindication.

  263. 263.

    Jeffro

    @Brachiator: I agree with most of this – we have become complacent, generally speaking. I don’t think that the Dems have settled for ‘genial mediocrities’, though. I’m ok/happy/impressed with the quality of most of our D leaders. It is the Rs who have really degenerated, and that’s because they’ve let whatever principles they might have once laid claim to devolve into simply a) Obama hatred and b) furthering the interests of the 1%.

  264. 264.

    Brachiator

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Which is 11:00 pm EST. I doubt Trump will concede so I won’t be able to stay up and watch Secretary Clinton’s victory speech.

    I will be satisfied just to see the electoral map show a Clinton victory. I won’t care then if Trump never concedes. I’ll watch the Clinton speech the next day.

    One thing I will check for is Instagram photos from a certain cemetery.

    Susan B. Anthony’s grave decorated with ‘thank you’ sign celebrating Hillary Clinton’s nomination and

    Why Women Bring Their ‘I Voted’ Stickers to Susan B. Anthony’s Grave

  266. 266.

    1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)

    @Kay: I don’t think it was until mid-20th century that the candidate’s wife was really expected to do more than be a lovely and loving ornament who appeared by his side briefly, and then kept the home fires going, So, Melania staying out of view is not unprecedented, but it’s atypical for more recent candidates’ spouses.

  267. 267.

    Brachiator

    @Betty Cracker:

    I think Trump will not only be on the losing end of a historical gender gap among white women, I don’t even think he’ll do as well as McCain or Mittens did with white men. But I’ve been told I’m overly optimistic.

    A recent NBC poll had the following breakdown with respect to white women:

    Clinton led big time among single white women, 73 percent to 20 percent over Trump (5 percent Johnson, 2 percent Stein for the remainder).

    She was lagging significantly with married white women, 36 percent vs 53 percent for Trump

    The show did not break down support among white men.

    Independents were kinda interesting. 49 percent Trump, 29 percent Clinton, 16 percent Johnson, 6 percent Stein. Previous polls suggested that Johnson in particular was attracting more potential Democratic voters, as opposed to GOP leaning voters.

    One wild card is the supposed enthusiasm gap. Significantly lower than previous presidential cycles
    2016, 46 percent very enthusiastic about voting
    2012, 57 percent
    2008, 60 percent
    2004, 64 percent

  270. 270.

    Brachiator

    @Jeffro:

    I agree with most of this – we have become complacent, generally speaking. I don’t think that the Dems have settled for ‘genial mediocrities’, though.

    Fair point. There is a decided difference between what Republicans are willing to accept and what Democrats are looking for.

    However, although Bernie Sanders was a nice guy, the passion that he ignited in his supporters was out of proportion to his actual political attributes.

  272. 272.

    ruemara

    @Betty Cracker: we’re fine. We’re moving heaven and earth in our communities because we’ve lived the danger. Please stop laying turnout on us. It really does fall on white voters to vote with us in greater numbers. I honestly feel that some of this is an inability to accept that this is not on us.

  273. 273.

    Cacti

    @catclub:

    Those earlier spouses who kept out of view did not give major speeches at the Party Conventions.

    I think one of the Trump sprogs has daggers in their eyes for stripper mom (Ivanka I would guess).

    Somebody on the inside was most likely feeding the media stories about her plagiarized speech and questionable immigration history.

  274. 274.

    Brachiator

    @1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet):

    I don’t think it was until mid-20th century that the candidate’s wife was really expected to do more than be a lovely and loving ornament who appeared by his side briefly, and then kept the home fires going

    Maybe that was the simplistic public role, but even in the early 20th century, there were notable exceptions. Consider Florence Harding, who at times seemed to be de facto chief-of-staff for Warren Harding.

    She married the somewhat-younger Harding when he was a newspaper publisher in Ohio, and she was acknowledged as the brains behind the business. Known as The Duchess, she adapted well to the White House, where she gave notably elegant parties….

    On March 4, 1921, Florence Harding became First Lady, immediately taking an active role in national politics, at times even appearing to dominate the President. She had a strong influence on the selection of cabinet members and, at the inauguration, observers believed that she was prompting her husband with a speech she had written.

    Florence made her views known on everything from the League of Nations to vivisection, racism and women’s suffrage. When Madame Curie visited the White House, Florence praised her as an example of a professional achiever who was also a supportive wife. Florence’s own special agenda was the welfare of war veterans, whose cause she championed wholeheartedly. In all of this, her timing was fortunate, as women’s activism in public affairs was an important theme in 1920’s America….

    She was the first First Lady to vote, the first First Lady to fly in an airplane, the first First Lady to operate a movie camera, the first First Lady to own a radio, and the first First Lady to invite movie stars to the White House

    Edith Wilson took over many routine duties and details of the Executive branch of the government from the time of his stroke until Wilson left office almost a year and a half later, on March 4, 1921.

    And of course, there is the magnificent Eleanor Roosevelt.

  275. 275.

    Betty Cracker

    @ruemara: I can do (simple!) math. We all better turnout, or we’re screwed. That was my point, in response to someone who claimed it’s all on white people. It’s not. It’s on everyone of every hue who isn’t a moron.

  277. 277.

    Chris

    @cokane:

    sure, this is well said. but lemme add, say what you want about the tenets of Marie Le Pen or other far righties, at least they represent a coherent ethos

    I’ve used this exact point as well, right down to the Big Lebowski quote, to argue to a friend that there was a difference between Trump and the Le Pens.

    Still, the Trump support base isn’t going anywhere, and their general mindset is pretty much out-of-the-closet fascist.

    Trump is such an obvious kleptocrat, it’s just stunning “small government” conservatives cannot see it

    On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, why should they? They already have three and a half decades of experience voting for kleptocracy and telling themselves it’s “small government” conservatism.

  278. 278.

    Chris

    @Brachiator:

    I’m not sure that’s how it works.

    I have my own theory that this long-term stability in countries like the United States (and other countries like Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand – helps to have a bunch of water between you and potential hostile invaders, doesn’t it?) is the reason, or at least one of the big ones, why we’ve done as well as we have. Suffering through periodic invasions or conquests or civil wars, with all the breakdown of society that implies, doesn’t make people smarter in their choice of leaders – it just kicks the rally-around-the-authoritarian-savior reflex into overdrive. It’s why autocrats did so well in continental Europe for so long, and why they’re doing so well in the Middle East right now.

    That’s not to say that (relatively) sheltered societies automatically turn into health democratic systems (look at Japan for most of its history, for crying out loud), but it sure does make it a lot easier.

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