No wonder there’s so much economic anxiety out there helping Trump win:
The incomes of typical Americans rose in 2015 by 5.2 percent, the first significant boost to middle-class pay since the end of the Great Recession and the fastest increase ever recorded by the federal government, the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday morning.
In addition, the poverty rate fell by 1.2 percentage points, the steepest decline since 1968. There were 43.1 million Americans in poverty on the year, 3.5 million fewer than in 2014.
It’s almost like Obama has been a successful president.
eric
think of it this way: For a goodly portion of white America, Obama’s presidency is like driving while black. For all the law abiding, he must be doing something wrong.
gus
Jesus tap dancing Christ, it’s 2000 all over again. 8 years of Democratic economic expansion following a Republican recession, and we’re obsessed with stupid bullshit that gives a Republican a good chance of winning the White House. What is wrong with you idiots (not people reading this obviously).
JPL
If you get your news on Fox, you might think that only your family finances have improved.
BTW Trump’s give a ways are adding up to lots of money. If you are a stay at home mom, you can deduct your services. For a married couple earning up to $500,000 you can deduct the cost of childcare.
Droppy
Oh sure, and I suppose the climate is warming up, too. You libs with your fancy-schmancy numbers and facts.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Don’t overlook the fact that Republicans control both houses… That explains the improving economy, I’m sure. Ryan and the boys out there riding range and all….
(Tongue firmly in cheek)
Corner Stone
I know we have a few BJ commenters living in North Carolina. Anyone with thoughts on the NCAA’s decision to pull several championship events due to conflicts with HB2?
catclub
Here is another thing that got a mention at Kevin Drum’s blog:
Those famous private pensions in Chile? Very bad performance due to private management fees (aka stealing).
Instead of 8% average growth – which would be fantastic and what the market was producing over the time period- the privatized pensions earned more like 3% – due to the above mentioned fees and stealing. Bad.
chopper
yeah, but are all those improvements going strictly to white people?
low-tech cyclist
And real median income is back up to where it was in 1998: IOW, household income has finally gained back all it lost between the Bush years themselves, and the Great Recession they dropped in Obama’s lap.
Of course, all those tough years cut into people’s savings, so it’s still not like all is right with the world. We need some more good years just to get people caught up and made whole from the recession.
catclub
@Corner Stone: I am from North Carolina 35 years ago.
A Nelson Muntz “ha ha”
MattF
Unfortunately, this will spur the Fed to take away the punch bowl.
shomi
@gus: Lol…oh just STFU pantswetter. I will just copy past this response each time you wankers post your idiotic nonsense. Why not be useful and fed the “Trump is going to win” trolls. You deserve each other.
SenyorDave
Its a shame that this this stuff just doesn’t interest the American people. It isn’t juicy like e-mails and pneumonia.
catclub
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Also, any increases in the stock market are due to expectations of GOP control in the future. (They said that in 2012, too.)
Major Major Major Major
Thanks, Obama!!
jonas
As lots of folks have been pointing out during this campaign, Trump’s core supporters are by and large pretty well-off financially (IIRC median income north of $70k or something). That’s why his economic “plan” basically amounts to what rich Republicans have always wanted — lower taxes for the rich and screwing the poors. What unites them is an abiding hatred of America’s increasingly multicultural society.
SenyorDave
@shomi: I think he’s making a pretty valid point. In 2000 we had people writing about how Al Gore dressed at the same time GWB was indicating he thought Social Security was a state-run program. Maybe this campaign will be about actual issues in the last two months, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it.
JPL
@jonas: My son and his wife have a nice income, and my son feels that their effective rate is too low. He’s a Hillary supporter. If they choose to have a child, Trump’s child deduction would be a gift from heaven, since they are below the cap. They can afford to pay for childcare.
JPL
For those who haven’t seen this yet, it is explains climate change … link
xkcd should win a pulitzer!
hueyplong
I am thrilled that the NCAA pulled events, especially the sacred birthright first two rounds of NCAA tournament home cooking for UNC and Duke. Nothing better targets NC where it hurts other than maybe a complete shutdown of NASCAR, and even that probably comes in 2nd to the NCAA tournament.
The state GOP meltdown reaction deserves a thread of its own here.
shomi
@SenyorDave: Lol…oh just STFU pantswetter. I will just copy past this response each time you wankers post your idiotic nonsense. Why not be useful and fed the “Trump is going to win” trolls. You deserve each other.
Linnaeus
A caveat:
It’s definitely good news that people’s economic situation has been improving, but there’s more work to be done to share those gains more broadly.
ETA: Another caveat:
nonynony
@JPL: I think folks on the left overvalue what media chatterers did during the 2000 campaign when they’re looking for reasons why Gore lost to W. The easy narrative is that the press with their “both sides” chatter and their love for W pushed him over the top.
But there were other conflating factors that need to be taken into account. Starting with the fact that Gore ran a lousy campaign where he ran away from a popular incumbent and refused to run on his record but fell right into the narrative about how things were bad and we could do better. A narrative that he was comfortable campaigning on from his previous shots at the presidency during Reagan and Bush but really a lousy choice for the 2000 election.
I think his lousy campaign played far more of a factor in his loss than the media mean girls stuff did. It’s what really made it close enough to steal. And for any criticism you want to level at Clinton, she’s running a campaign that is light years beyond what Gore was fumbling around with back in 2000.
Starfish
One exception: Incomes didn’t rise for households living outside of metropolitan areas.
gus
@shomi: I didn’t say he was going to win, but if you don’t think he has a real chance (maybe “good” took it too far) you’re delusional.
ed
47% are probably scared now, they may have recently poor people to talk to.
Major Major Major Major
@shomi: ah, copypasta, great. That will make my chrome extension have to do a lot less work.
Starfish
@nonynony: Why are you blaming Gore or his campaign at all?
Gore won the popular vote, and the Supreme Court took the unprecedented step of deciding the outcome of an election due to some nonsense involving Florida which had GWB’s brother as governor, no?
shomi
@Starfish: BAHAHAHA. Now you have people arguing with people who are bringing up Al fucking Gore.
You people amuse me.
Mike in NC
@Corner Stone: Hopefully the hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs being lost due to HB2 will bring down our rotten Tea Party governor. Reports are that he’s flailing like Elizabeth Dole did as she was losing her Senate seat.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Corner Stone: I posted a link to the NCGOP meltdown in an earlier thread.
The general reaction in my circles was “A shame they couldn’t wait until November to give us a chance to throw McDukePuppet out.”
JPL
@nonynony: Gore sighed. He was prepared to be President, and Bush wasn’t. The sigh repeated ad nauseam boosted Bush. Gore’s made two large mistakes though, not using Clinton and Lieberman for VP.
shomi
This
He is calling you ninnies. I prefer wankers myself. Ninnies is far to polite for such pathentic behavior.
SenyorDave
@shomi: I thought the point of a blog is commentary, including dissenting opinions. Your responses are what I might expect from a small child, although my granddaughter is six and she generally manages to express herself more maturally.
Jibeaux
The NCGOP meltdown is a basket of deplorable. Their insistence on bringing up pedophilia, rape,or both in the same breath as transgender is appalling.
The governor hasn’t said anything yet. I wonder if his campaign is warring between his very strong impulse to fire squarely at his own feet, and some internal polling that may suggest a different response for once. Just speculation, since,you know, irresponsible not to.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Jibeaux: Maybe he’s working on yet another pro-HB2 campaign ad?
ed
@Starfish: trickle down! just keep waiting for it.
Doug!
@Linnaeus:
Yeah, I agree!
JMG
Over on his Times blog, Krugman called out the media (meaning his own paper but without naming names) as being so hostile to Clinton as to be in the tank for Trump. Key quote “it’s not even false equivalence.” I wonder if he is close to walking from the Times. He’s getting less and less subtle about attacking its political coverage.
Shomie
I like eating paste!
hovercraft
Why are you wasting our time showing us these bogus figures? These numbers are from the corrupt Obama administration which is just trying to get Crooked Hillary elected for Obama’s third term. Everyone knows that people feel like they’re worse off than they were when the great turn in America took place on November 4th, 2008. We were a land of hope and opportunity, until that dark, very dark day. The media I’m sure at this very moment is warning democrats not to try to use these statistics to their advantage this election, because no matter what the numbers say, many people ‘feel’ worse off than they were before. Saying that the economy is vastly improved is a sign of elitism and being out of touch.
It’s funny how republicans are allowed to tout bullshit non existent benefits of tax cuts, even when no one can feel those benefits, because they don’t f**king exist, but democrats are told not to tout real progress because it hasn’t spread to every last person in the country yet.
SoupCatcher
@ed:
I believe the Urban Dictionary approved term is “tinkle down economics.”
Please adjust your style guide.
Hal
@JPL: And the sighs weren’t audible to the home audiences. It was the media that reported on and enhanced the sound, and started the sigh count nonsense. Not to mention the whole who you want to have a beer with idiocy.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@shomi:
So what do you believe, chump? What blows up your frilly skirt? You got a prediction for who’ll win prez? You have any prescriptions for what’ll bring genuine productive change to the nation, or do you just get off on making what you perceive to be clever digs at random cyber strangers?
Tittering monkey
In the spring he climbs tree tops
And thinks himself tall
Carolina Dave
@Corner Stone: Yes, I live in one of the affected cities. A completely self-inflicted wound from the rightwing Teabillies to rile their base of mouth breathers to vote on a non-issue.
Hopefully this will bite the governor in the ass as his popularity was already plummeting prior to this. Basketball and barbecue are two things most everybody in NC enjoys here though not the same tastes and teams.
The NCAA has pushed back from a December decision on future championships to give time for NC to correct HB2. So there could be a big gap between NCAA appearances in my state. NC has a great support network of volunteers and logistic services to help host these events it could all be lost
Mike E
@Mike in NC: Yep, time to seal the deal on McCrory & Burr…flipping a house seat is prolly asking too much, but I’ll take whatever we can get out of this flaming shitshow
Cacti
@SenyorDave:
Not bloody likely. But I take comfort in the fact that no matter what the media has done or said about Clinton, they can’t budge Trump above 45% support nationally.
Carolina Dave
@hueyplong: the GOP reaction last nigby deserves mockery and scorn. From the Governor, crickets.
gogol's wife
@Hal:
And the sighs, such as they were, were completely justified by Dubya’s pitiful performance.
Chris
@nonynony:
All true, but I do believe the MSM’s incessant conservative bias accounts for at least a few percentage points of the GOP’s vote in every election. Not enough to guarantee victory, obviously (see 2006, 2008, 2012 and God willing 2016). But enough to slant the field. That can matter if the election is close enough.
FEMA Camp Counselor
@nonynony:
I would mostly agree. There’s blame to go around for 2000, but I’d lay the biggest blame on Gore and his team buying the Village narrative about the Clintons and designed a campaign around what he thought they wanted.
More broadly though, I do think the media chatterers have played a big part in normalizing the increasing extremism of the Republican Party. We’ve reached the nadir of that now, with them doing everything in their power to prop up a neo-fascist in the name of “balance.”
Do I think it will win Trump the election? No, but it will prop up white nationalism as a “legitimate” ideology and set the stage for even more political dysfunction.
The media these days can’t swing presidential elections, but they do play a big role in determining what is and isn’t acceptable in public life. In that regard, they’ve completely shamed themselves.
gene108
@nonynony:
1. Gore had a huge money gap versus Bush. Bush, Jr set records for raising as much as he did. No one thought a candidate could raise that kind of money.
2. Not having as much money on hand means you cannot respond to all the attacks your opponent is able to levy in all the markets your opponent can operate in.
3. Florida. Kathleen Harris, John Ellis Bush. Voter purges. Butterfly ballots. Hanging chads. In short, if Florida was not a clusterfuck of deliberate and unintentional voting shenanigans, Gore would have won Florida.
4. Gore won the popular vote. Again, if not for Florida shenanigans he would have won the Electoral College, too.
Gindy51
@Carolina Dave: And I am sure other states have already been in touch with the NCAA to offer their services…
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Corner Stone:
I’m in a real conundrum. North Carolina has actually managed to get me to do the impossible, in that I’m finding myself appreciating some administrative decision of the NCAA.
I feel dirty.
Seanly
@JPL:
That’s how my wife & I feel. Together we do alright. We’d be better off w/out a few events from the last few years. We could afford to pay more in taxes knowing that we’d have good infrastructure, and more importantly, a well-educated & healthy populace.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Carolina Dave:
Vinegar or mustard based sauces are an abomination unto smoked meats.
Cermet
@shomi: And that road leads to being banned; wise up and act like just a Rump type troll rather than like tRump did as a child.
Percysowner
So last night I gave up on MSNBC after three HOURS of practically non-stop Hillary health coverage (Tweety, Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow) Lawrence O’Donnel’s show taped, because I am, apparently, a masochist, and being said masochist, I started to watch it today, expecting to turn it off in anger. He starts on Hillary’s health “Issue” and says the press lost its mind this weekend. He raked them over the coals for ignoring the fact that Donald Trump said he would start a war if Iran made a rude gesture to U.S. ships and instead focused on the non-issue of Hillary’s health. He went on about how and why it was a non-issue and how the press had lost its mind. Then he had a long segment on Donald’s shenanigans with his charitable foundation. He praised the reporter who has been covering this for doing real journalism and said it was Pulitzer winning work. He chastised the entire press for not doing the same type of reporting.
I have no idea what got him going, but he was actually quite good last night. It probably won’t last, but it was refreshing for one hour.
In other news, Keith Olberman is back and hitting Trump as hard as he can.
piratedan
@West of the Rockies (been a while): well, they’re adding so much to the conversation and are such a pleasure to engage with the post adolescent insulting and goalpost moving. I don’t have an issue with bringing the contrarian position to the show, just show your work versus being a badly contrived Monty Python sketch.
JMG
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: I find I like all regional barbecue sauces. Some more than others, but basically all of them.
catclub
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
Yeah, me too, since you reminded me.
mapaghimagisk
@Percysowner:
Didn’t see tweety, but saw Hayes and Maddow. I had a different take away.
What I saw was “health things are not a big deal, look at the great leaders, and not so great leaders, that have had illnesses. Chill.” With Chris ending his segment on the whole deplorables and prodding the Trumpian pony about “Yes, you have deplorabls, now we’re haggling the price.”
Roger Moore
@gus:
Obama- like Bill Clinton- raised taxes on the ultra-rich, and that must not stand. It doesn’t matter that economic growth is finally lifting all boats and giving more real benefit to the 0.01% than big tax cuts ever would; they want their tax cuts, especially on estate taxes.
Kay
It sounds to me like the Trumpsters don’t want to release health records. I don’t think he’s sick. I think he’s too vain to release his health records- we’d know his physical condition.
It should be amusing though when Clinton provides records along with sworn affidavits and everything else they demand and Trump tells them to fuck off. Again.
p.a.
Those positive economic numbers are because of
Republican 2014 midterm gains
or
Value of expensive government smartphones gifted to the takers
or
Census Bureau= numbers= liberals
or
Shut Up. BENGHAZZZZEEEEMAILS
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: You know what you did.
Cacti
@Kay:
I don’t know about not sick. He looks like hell. Puffy, bloated, terrible complexion, dusky around the edges. Wouldn’t be surprised at all if he had heart/hypertensive issues.
Kay
@Cacti:
He’s telling them to fuck off. Again. How many times will they fall for this? 5? 10? 20?
He’ll release records after Melania’s press conference on her immigration status. There will only be one candidate who complies: Clinton.
jl
@Kay: It’s very important to not be unfair to Trump. And you are very very unfair, very not nice to Trump. Trump said he would release some ‘numbers’ on his health. Top numbers, terrific numbers on his top health.
Hey, he knows they are terrific, the best, numbers, otherwise he wouldn’t be talking about them.
One of the signs of the coming national apocalypse, that I now understand that legend foretold and must come soon, any day, is listening to a news piece where idiot pundits were criticizing HRC for being manipulative and denying open access, and pointing out that Trump was releasing health information, and then played a clip in which Trump said that he wouldn’t be talking about releasing his health info if he didn’t already know it would be good. We have to listen to this kind of drooling inanity put out by the media and I guess to be civil have to pretend it makes sense. the End Times are nigh. The Anti-Christ will not be Satan, it is a new corrupt and idiotic NYT public editor driving each and every human being insane with suborned incoherent nattering, and this new Anti-Christ will win. This apocalypse will be worse that we liberals ever imagined.
Logan Brown
@Corner Stone: The rural rubes and True Believers are dug in and screaming about the NCAA and how corrupt they are (though no mention on the major pass which UNC basketball has been given…). If the Democrats here were vaguely competent (HA!), they would have tallied up the cost of losing these events and combine that with all of the $$ spent defending unconstitutional laws and have those numbers in the media and on the airways 24/7. Since they aren’t… crickets….
Logan Brown
@Jibeaux: Won’t do us a damn bit of good if we can’t get the General Assembly under veto proof margins. I hope that can happen but I don’t trust Hillary to win with a wide enough margin to do it.
nonynony
@Starfish: Because it shouldn’t have been close enough for W to steal it. Gore should have, with the economy where it was and with a popular incumbent at his back, been able to take it without it being close. But he blew it. And yes, I blame him.
@gene108: None of these void the fact that Gore ran a lousy campaign. In fact they explain why his lousy campaign that focused too much on a) running away from the President and b) ad buys in expensive media markets and not on fundraising (which Clinton would have been able to help with) and GOTV were giant mistakes for him to make.
And despite the shitshow of a campaign, Gore still won the popular vote. With a decent campaign it wouldn’t have even been close enough to steal.
Kay
@jl:
They didn’t get the taxes or the Melania press conference! Why would they believe they get the health records? They were never getting shit from him. Period. Nothing. They have nothing and they will get nothing.
Roger Moore
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
That shows you haven’t paid enough attention to their policy on using Native American names for teams: if a school wants to use an tribal name for their teams, they have to get the tribe’s permission. It isn’t a blanket ban, so that tribes like the Seminoles that are fine with the school using their name- possibly in exchange for concessions from the school- they’re free to do so. The Native Americans are actually in charge of things, with NCAA only serving as an enforcer. It’s a rare case of NCAA having a genuinely exemplary policy.
germy
gogol's wife
@germy:
Oh, God, now you’re giving me something else to worry about!
germy
@gogol’s wife: One of the tv newsreaders last night mentioned off-handedly that several of HRC’s campaign staff are also suffering from the virus.
Roger Moore
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
Delete your account.
jl
Anyway, I was cheered by the economic news. I think this is at least as important for HRC and Democratic victory as the horse race stuff.
Also interesting that I heard, of all people, Neil Kashkari (who was the TARPmeister during the financial panic, and now president of the Minneapolis Fed) arguing against increasing interest rates. He even asked the interest rate raisers what model they were working from that was consistent with any economic evidence. I guess Kthug must of gotten to him.
I was disgusted when this Kashkari guy got the job to head the Minneapolis Fed. But he went full Berner on breaking up the large banks and now is talking sense on interest rates. Interesting. Yellen is getting good backup on sensible interest rate policy. (Sensible in the context of inadequate fiscal policy, at least).
germy
@jl: Trump said that Yellen is improving the economy for political reasons.
jl
@Kay: I guess if Trump gets a good DBP reading one of these days, he will release that ‘top, terrific’ number. or maybe his temp? That is all he ever promised.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
More times than Charlie Brown fell for Lucy’s football.
Patricia Kayden
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/12/barack-obamas-soaring-approval-numbers-are-very-good-news-for-hillary-clinton/
Actually, President Obama’s approval rating is soaring right now. I’m dying to see him go out there and stump for Secretary Clinton.
Corner Stone
@Patricia Kayden: Ask and receive. Obama is going to be speaking at a rally for HRC in Philly any minute now. Or at least today sometime.
Mike E
@Logan Brown: the old NC Dem party had to fertilize the political fields with its rotten carcass before a new, fresher party can step up, sadly…but, yeah, it’s time to hammer the GOTea/Pope/Koch syndicate into the newly enriched soil
germy
@Corner Stone: Michelle Obama will be campaigning for HRC as well.
My favorite first lady since Eleanor R.
Patricia Kayden
@Percysowner:
Caught this video at the end of Rachel Maddow’s show. Wish she had focused on this for her entire show.
Actually, I’m referring to the hidden video about racist Trump supporters caught praising Trump for putting their racism into the mainstream.
jl
@germy:I was surprised that a GOPerr from finance like Kashkari would betray his finance industry buddies by taking his new job seriously. It’s not like the split between the interest rate raisers versus the sensible people is partisan, or ideological, or business interest group based. Not that it would mean anything to the likes of Trump. And I doubt the big media news divas know enough to ever bring it up.
Though, the goofballs at places like CNBC might discuss it, just as they have people like Shiller, Stiglitz, DeLong, Galbraith, and Krugman on, liberal economists who apparently are banned from network and big cable policy discussion, unless another financial meltdown is happening and they are desperate to book experts.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
The long awaited pivot! He’ll turn into Mr. Transparency any day now. He’s been sued so many times he’s an expert at this. The other day they asked him if he had discussed his donation with the FL AG. He said he never discussed “that”.
I knew he would say he meant “did we discuss the Trump University investigation” by “that” and it’s exactly what he did.
germy
Oz will make a mockery of medicine and Trump will make a mockery of democracy later this week.
Chris
@Kay:
There’s something really pathetic about the MSM’s continued attempts to gain the approval of conservatives who continually flaunt their contempt for them. Like the middle school wannabe who keeps trying to be part of the clique no matter how badly it treats him.
And it didn’t start with Drumpf.
Kay
But Fox News just goes on as before. We’re all supposed to pretend this sewer is a legit news agency. For all I know Ailes is still threatening them. I have no idea what goes on in there.
Patricia Kayden
@Corner Stone: That’s great news. Not trying to draw Shomi’s ire but I’m starting to feel a little panicky about the polls but hope that Secretary Clinton will rebound in the polls ASAP.
jl
@Chris: IMHO, they are cowardly sniveling corporate hacks. Their bosses have that plutocrat mindset, and they fall in line every time, even though they get kicked in the face over and over again.
Basically their thinking, such as it s, works like this” ‘looks like me’ + $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ + boos likes = Wheeeeeeeeeeee!!!!! :-) :-) :-)
germy
@Kay: Even if fox disappeared tomorrow, there’s still an ugly ton of hate talk radio, local and national, blasting on morning and evening commutes. Last year, I heard lush rimbaugh playing on a utility truck. (Guy came to check a gas leak.) These people are everywhere.
Percysowner
@Patricia Kayden: I will admit that I did bail on a few of the MSNBC shows last night. They all seemed to wend their way around to “but if Clinton were just more transparent, this wouldn’t be an issue”. I should go back and watch the whole show, because apparently they backed off of that?
Kay
@Chris:
Trump isn’t a conservative. They must like him for the alpha male thing, although I cannot imagine thinking he’s some great specimen of manhood. I personally think he’s repulsive. Yuck. He’s always bellowing, he has no sense of humor, and he must spend so much time on his hair. I can’t stand the way he talks either- it reminds me of Newt Gingrich. They’re so clearly listening to themselves talk and loving how it sounds.
jacy
I honestly think that pointing out the racism of white supremacists and those that enable them is going to be a good thing — and we’re just seeing it start to seep into popular discourse. I watch the drama Major Crimes on TNT (don’t judge me, I’m old) — the three-part summer finale is all about the white supremacy movement, and the first episode started off with a neo-Nazi killing one of the main characters. It was unexpected and pretty dramatic. In reading about the episode, the show-runner said this:
I think Hillary is right to use the “deplorable” theme. After the shock that she had the temerity to say something authentic wears off, people are going to keep talking about it. And the Trumpists are dumb enough that they’re going to not be able to extricate themselves.
bystander
@Cermet: I think shomi has a lot of leisure time since his show was canceled.
Corner Stone
@Percysowner: I completely bailed on MSNBC yesterday. It was just too much to keep hearing them say she was doomed for her “deplorable” remark and it was a self-inflicted wound that would haunt her campaign. And then that fucking fuck Steve Kornacki brought out numbers on the big board how, yes, some of Trump’s supporters hold deplorable views BUT, BUT – here you also see some much smaller number of HRC’s supporters ALSO think bad thoughts! SO! As you can see! BOTH SIDES!
jl
@jacy: I hope you are right. The news and pundit divas could nonchalantly horse race and kibbitz in an amused way over the various and manifold bigotry coming out the Trump campaign, but were shocked, and indignant at HRC stating the obvious (even if ‘half’ is a very rough approximation that she maybe should have left out). Anyway, what HRC said was treated as a Big Fucking Deal.
I found the contrast repellent.
Corner Stone
“Let’s listen in to the President campaigning for HRC in Philidelphia.”
And awwaaaayyyyy weeee gooo!!
Kay
Mark Halperin:
Why is he still employed? It’s bad for children to see that he gets paid so much. They won’t believe in meritocracy. They won’t try hard and persevere, because it doesn’t matter :)
SenyorDave
@jacy: I think Hillary is right to use the “deplorable” theme
I thinks she was right to use the theme, but I wish she had used it directly against Trump, Bannon, Kid Trump (I see he’s retweeting stuff directly from alt right these days), and others they can identify. Now Pence has refused to condemn David Duke (he won’t call him deplorable because he’s not in the business of calling people names, certainly Trump never called anyone names!). I really would like to see her specifically call these people out as bigots. Let her call a press conference and go through Trump’s history of racism, starting with excluding blacks from rental properties. Make that the conversation, because it will definitely help the GOTV effort. Force his campaign manager to explain or excuse his past racist actions/comments.
Percysowner
@Corner Stone: That was actually part of the fun of Lawrence O’D. He kept using the term deplorable over and over and made it quite clear that she was right to use it! He didn’t call it a mistake, he didn’t say it would haunt the campaign. He called it part of of the media losing their minds because she was right and then he said they really went insane over the pneumonia storyline. I mean, thank goodness he wrote an episode of West Wing about how President Bartlett handled an attack of MS and that while he wrote the episode he became convinced that Presidents and Presidential nominees have a right to decide how much medical information they want to reveal. He was actually fun to watch last night.
Chris
@Kay:
::spit-take::
Villago Delenda Est
Near.Sheriff.
Game.Over.
Kay
In shocking news, Donald Trump, who has turned over nothing to media over 20 months, will not respond to questions on his foundation.
They thought they’d get a detailed accounting.
jacy
@jl:
I’ve been a little obsessive about following coverage — which happens every election season, even when I tell myself I know better — and I’ve been tracking the sort of arc of coverage on various talking points. Now that they’ve beaten the whole health scare into the ground, they’ve glommed onto the racism angle. Most of the coverage I saw last night and today bemoaned how uncouth Hillary was for a moment, and then went on to say, “But, she had a point….” Pence certainly didn’t do himself any favors with the David Duke thing.
Shiny object coverage is terrible — until it’s a shiny object they should be picking at. With the fast news cycle, there’s a huge shiny object turnover. So some of the shiny objects are going to be worthwhile, and if enough of them stack up, you start to see some traction on things that SHOULD be covered and dissected and endlessly discussed. The more they keep discussing how many racists it takes to dance on the head of Donald’s Trumps pin, the more “racist” and “Donald Trump” get mentioned in the same breath. This is a good thing. Sure, it would be great if there was logical, factual discourse, but at this point we just have to depend on a few words bursting out of the white noise and sticking.
Kay
@Chris:
He isn’t though. They don’t have to ass-kiss the reality tv star. It’s not like he’s Dick Cheney. They respect large, loud, rude and stupid people, apparently. Oh, and “rich”. Rich-appearing.
jl
@jacy: I’m encouraged by your impressions from watching and listening. I’ve become so repelled by what I’ve heard on the major cable and network outlets, I’ve been avoiding it recently. So I have to admit I don’t get a representative sample over the last week or so.
And did you mean to type: “The more they keep discussing how many racists it takes to dance on the pin of Donald’s Trumps head,”?
Frankensteinbeck
@jacy:
You may be right. It may be the only way to force the Beltway Media to discuss racism, and once they’re actually discussing an issue they’ve lost control over what the public’s opinion will be.
jacy
@SenyorDave:
I appreciate that viewpoint and think you’re right to a great degree. But I have no quibble with her calling out voters. We have to not be afraid to point at people and say, “No, dude. You ARE a racist.” First of all, those people aren’t going to vote for her anyway, so she’s not alienating them any more than they were already alienated. Second, it’s just right to stand up and say it. It needs to be not cool to have those attitudes. People like that need to be marginalized. Third, she’s giving some cover to the people who are reachable. They may not come out and say it. They may get a little prickly and pissy. But in the end, as the real dregs show their true colors, the more reasonable people are going to want to distance themselves. In the end, I think to some degree Trump supports are going to self-segregrate. The white nationalist people are going to feel both emboldened and picked upon. They’re going to act out. The people who are on some level disgusted with those people are going to move away. Maybe slowly at first, but they will move away. It just takes a few fractures, but you’ve got to whack the structure pretty hard to get that started.
jl
@Kay: I agree with you that Trump is not a conservative in some ways that are very important to many big GOP (and to be fair, many more conservative and moderate Dem) funders, which is fiscal policy and social insurance.
Though what Trump really believes and thinks (if he believes and thinks anything at all in the way normal people understand those terms) seems to be unknowable, since he is so inconsistent. But the big money boys who want to destroy social insurance and have a fiscal and economic policy devoted solely to the welfare of the plutocrats demand complete loyalty, and Trump has certainly not shown that.
Corner Stone
And now we’ve reached the Get At ‘Em part of the rally where Obama starts nailing Trump.
Kay
Obama looks good. Everyone is curious what Obama will do after President, but I want to know what Michelle will do. Her kids are growing up. She’ll do something. I’m dying to see what it is.
Helen
Obama asking for permission to “vent” at rally. Permission granted, sir!!
Cermet
Great news! Keith Olbermann will be back. He has a great piece in GQ.
http://www.gq.com/story/176-reasons-donald-trump-shouldnt-be-president-olbermann
Brachiator
I love Obama and think that he has been a great president. But:
I don’t think this is accurate. It certainly does not match the measurable and observable surge in homelessness in California, for example.
Cermet
Moderation!? Did the NSA finally flag me, BJ?
Cain
@Chris:
Nothing mysterious about it.. the conservatives are mostly older baby boomer types and they tend to like to sit in front of the tv and watch the news or read the paper etc. So they are the paying customer more than anybody else.
It’s like why 80s music is so rampant everywhere.
Miss Bianca
@Cain:
Nothing adequately explains that phenomenon. Particularly since the older Boomers of whom you speak would have been in their 40s at the time – they weren’t the prime taste-making demographic on the music scene.
? Martin
@Brachiator: Well, that’s a product of significant increase in housing prices here that isn’t happening elsewhere, and specific budget decisions that have been made in CA that have caused homeless support to remain flat or go down.
CA used to be average in terms of the % of population which is homeless. Now we’re top – by a lot, and we’re lagging the nation in terms of shelters.
Consider that in more than half the populated portion of CA, minimum income to afford a home is in the 6 figures, and there’s a number of regions where it’s near $200K/year. Incomes have gone up by 5%, but housing prices have gone up by 30%. You get homelessness from a lot of new communities when that’s happening.
Cain
If this was an Obama election, we’d have the “Chill the fuck out, I got this” Meme out like the bat signal. :(
MomSense
@Kay:
He really does look good which makes it all the more ridiculous that Trump’s doctor said agent orange would be the healthiest president ever. I mean C’mon.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@shomi: Honey, a really good PUA puts more thought into their negs. Are you coming down with something? Maybe a touch of pneumonia?
Steeplejack (phone)
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Haiku diss-fu! Excellent.
Villago Delenda Est
@Miss Bianca: MTV. When it actually was all about playing the videos.
Botsplainer
@Roger Moore:
Speaking of Seminoles, ESPN Game Day is coming to visit us here in the People’s Democratic Socialist Republic of Louisville. I think I’ll be cracking my first beer at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium around 9 am….
Chris
@jacy:
I consume a lot of TV both “classic” and contemporary, and I have to say that in the last half century and change, there’s always been room for neo-Nazi or white supremacist villains in some shape or form, and often with a warning about how maybe it can happen here, if we let it.
What seems more important to me now isn’t that white supremacists are being portrayed as villains but that nonwhite, non-male characters are being portrayed as heroes much more than before. Mad Max gets a sequel that’s feminist as hell, Ghostbusters gets a remake with an all-female cast, Star Wars gets a new trilogy where none of the three main characters conform to the “male, white, American” standard. Thor, Captain America and Miss Marvel’s mantles are picked up by a woman, a black man, and a nonwhite Muslim girl, respectively, while TNC writes Black Panther comics. And most of the above are being really well received.
@Kay:
Gotta run, but I just can’t agree. Half the voters in the conservative party picked him to be their president, and just about all of them will vote for him in November, so obviously they recognize him on some level as one of their own. His main shtick has been racism in the specifically Islamophobic and anti-Mexican immigrant-hating veins, and while he’s been louder about it than most (and put it front and center), that’s been a very widespread conservative position for years, if not a universally held one. Most of his economics is standard conservative – he talks populist but neither his career nor what plans he’s put out back that up, there are no New Deals or Share Our Wealth Movements being cooked up in the Trump campaign. Foreign policy might be the area with the most divergence, but even then his attitude often reads like an extreme, next-level version of George Bush’s – fuck our allies, fuck the multilateral institutions, it’s our way or the highway and if you won’t behave like an obedient vassal we don’t want to be your friends anymore.
Trump’s shuffled the conservative deck a little, put some things front and center, let others recede into the background, and taken others to new extremes. But most of what he’s doing is perfectly recognizable in the conservative movement of the last few decades.
Chris T.
@hovercraft:
Some might even call it
blackAfrican-Americanwell, you know what I mean…West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Steeplejack (phone): thank you, but I’m not the author… Just repurposed something from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Shomi, still waiting to show me what you got.
Chris T.
@jacy:
I think this calls for a cartoon (though I can’t draw) with White Dude pointing to Hillary saying: “That n****r-lovin’ bitch just called me racist!”
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Brachiator: Anecdote that is not data but meaningful: I’ve lived in San Diego most of my life. After the “Gaslamp” area was redeveloped, there always used to be a couple hundred homeless in the area, and that was pretty steady. San Diego doesn’t have the massive homeless issue that SF has (the other place I’ve lived), largely because of our out-of-control and mean as shit police force.
Went down there last week and shit done has changed. There’s not a couple hundred homeless down there. There’s a couple of thousand. Unemployment is supposedly down and salaries are supposedly up, and California has always been better off than most of the other states in this country. So, what’s going on? These people didn’t drive down from the Bay Area! So where’d they come from if everything’s better?
I’ll give Obama credit where credit is due, and there’s a lot due to the man, but let’s not bullshit ourselves; the American economy is in awful shape and getting nothing but worse.
If could tell Hillary Clinton one thing, it’d be this: get that sign “it’s the economy, stupid” that used to hang in your husband’s – soon to be yours – office and look at it every damn day and act accordingly.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Cermet:
Naked hyperlink.
Hal
Deplorables is not going to hurt Hillary when more than half the country thinks Trumps supporters are racist, sexist etc. When Trump himself is massively unpopular outside of the GOP (Yes, Hillary has her own issues) and when so many Trump supports in poll after poll express racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic views. Not to mention the misfire in trying to turn deplorables into a beneficial meme.
catclub
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Except compared to all the others.
for instance: is it worse than it was in 2008-9? nope. 2010? 2011? 2012?
Is it worse than The Greek, Italian, or Spanish economy in any year from 2008 to today?
getting nothing but worse: oy.
Hence the report out just today that median household income is up over 5% over last year.
catclub
@Steeplejack (phone): band name?