New polling results released by Bloomberg today look good for Clinton:
An excerpt from the accompanying analysis:
Democrat Hillary Clinton leads Trump by 9 percentage points in the survey of likely voters, taken after a leaked video prompted a series of women to come forward alleging the Republican made unwanted sexual advances.
Support for Trump among critical groups of voters, including men and the less educated, has weakened in the campaign’s closing days, a trajectory that could translate into a landslide loss for Republicans in the Electoral College and setbacks in down-ballot races that will determine control of the House and Senate.
“This poll shows movement toward Clinton with all the right groups it takes to win—including men and those without a college degree,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, who oversaw the survey ahead of the final debate Wednesday. “Their alignment with Clinton is a formidable change in the algebra.”
And to think I used to hate algebra!
In other good news from an unexpected quarter, Lil’ Marco is apparently immune to the Assange fanboi fever that has gripped the rest of the GOP:
Sen. Marco Rubio tells ABC News Republicans are making a mistake by jumping on allegedly hacked emails released by Wikileaks to criticize Hillary Clinton. In fact, he says he won’t talk about the hacked emails at all.
“As our intelligence agencies have said, these leaks are an effort by a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process and I will not indulge it,” Rubio tells ABC news. “Further, I want to warn my fellow Republicans who may want to capitalize politically on these leaks: Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow it could be us.”
Now, we know Lil’ Marco lacks the courage of any conviction except his belief that he should be reelected to the no-show senate job he is on record disdaining. He has endorsed the presidential candidate he once rightly called out as a dangerous, unqualified conman in a transparent attempt to save his own bacon.
So why is he willing to indulge in truth-telling about WikiLeaks and its role as Putin’s cat’s paw as Russia attempts to interfere with a U.S. election? My guess is he’s seen polling that scares the bejeebus out of him and is attempting to micro-target specific groups in Florida.
Rubio is walking a tightrope over twin vats of boiling acid — the Trumpenproletariet in the Florida interior and panhandle on one side and reflexive Cold Warriors in South Florida on the other. He dares not offend the former by repudiating Trump and is attempting to curry favor with the latter by taking a shot at the revanchist Putin.
Lil’ Marco might also be optimistically calculating that when he runs against President Hillary Clinton in 2020, Putin might prefer to continue to deal with the incumbent rather than a callow, empty suit who built his political identity around a phony “Cuban exile” story. Ironically, Rubio may be the rare case where WikiLeaks apologists like Greenwald and Billmon, who like to tar fellow Democrats with the “red baiter” brush, might actually have a point.
But however he arrived at it, Rubio is correct to reject attempts by a foreign power to screw with our election. So is the nation of Ecuador, which has done us the favor of putting the proper name to that exercise while our own Beltway press mostly ignores Putin’s brazen power play in favor of hunting bits of salacious political gossip.
Frankensteinbeck
My phone won’t copy it. Someone please, please put up a link to a video of Trump trying to kiss a prepubescent girl on the mouth last night.
Davebo
IMO there’s absolutely no way Johnson gets 8% or Stein gets 3%. At best I’d say half that. So where does that 5 or 6 percent go?
bystander
I’m loving Trump’s new Crayola Yellow hair color. Contrasts nicely with the ochre foundation he’s having troweled on. Should attract the Pokemon voters.
prufrock
Judging by the stuff Trumpenproletariet wingnuts in my Facebook feed post, they already hate Lil Marco. Whether they hate him enough not to vote for him when actually confronted with an actual ballot is not something I can judge accurately.
Edited to add: They mostly hate him because they perceive him as being weak. He’s not the strong daddy that they crave, which is why they love the short-fingered vulgarian so much.
Davebo
@Frankensteinbeck:
This one?
bystander
It strikes me that if Trump loses and starts Trump TV, it could be a boon to us all. The networks will be hesitant to cram Trump down our throats once he’s a competitor and not a no-cost buffoon. With Trump sequestered in one place, he will be so much easier to avoid.
This would be perfect if Kelly Anne gets her own show with Boris Epshteyn as her Ed McMahon.
msdc
“..and also, all the groups Clinton was already winning without.”
FFS, Selzer.
PST
This is a little off the topic of the thread, but I would like to share this. I had a terrific evening at a fundraiser for Tammy Duckworth, and not just because I missed watching the Cubs lose. I did not know what a warm, funny, and inspiring speaker she is. In a small group, about a hundred or maybe a few more, she has the knack of making you feel like you are conversing with her. Al Franken, whom she met while recovering at Walter Reed, has become a friend and sent an introductory tape. Duckworth described how, when she was still an inpatient and was told that she could meet Don Rumsfeld, she asked “Is that an order?” But when Franken (who was not yet in politics) came to Walter Reed it was “pleasepleaseplease.” The highlight of the evening was a long talk by David Letterman, who met Duckworth through Franken and is a huge fan. I actually met him beforehand while getting a drink when I found him bellied up to the bar next to me. He was charming – in the practiced way of people who know how to give you a minute of full attention and then move on – and expressed pleasure that I have a kid at Ball State. He was as wry and funny as you would expect, very self-deprecating about his post-television life, and was effusive in his praise of our candidate. This is still a somewhat close contest here, although it is looking good, so consider contributing if you’re not tapped out yet. There are some Senate candidates this year that I find hard to swallow (cough! Evan Bayh, cough!) except that they are great improvements over their republican opponents. But Duckworth isn’t just part of the road to a Senate majority. She’s going to be a solid supporter of the democratic agenda and a remarkable inspiration.
Frankensteinbeck
@Davebo:
Jesus. Fucking. Christ. He has his mouth an inch from hers when she figures out where he’s aiming and pulls away. That is horrifying.
Kay
Finally- a “think piece” that serves a practical purpose:
I agree with the shunning idea. They deserve any and all career hits. Pile on.
When they roll these people out on Morning Joe after this is over they should be jeered at. Accountability is key to a functioning democracy.
msdc
Also, this:
…assumes at least one fact not in evidence.
WereBear
@PST: We have donated to Tammy before: somehow, we felt she could go far.
Elizabelle
@Frankensteinbeck: Not gonna watch.
Is the child small and blonde?
Frankensteinbeck
@Elizabelle:
No, she’s black and he invites her on stage because she’s so ‘beautiful.’
Betty Cracker
@msdc: Good point.
Betty Cracker
@PST: Great story — thanks for sharing it. From what I’ve seen from afar, Duckworth seems like the real deal.
catclub
No, Rubio in this case is right for the right reasons, but since he is the enemy, you make up something.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Really incomplete list.
NBC and particularly its odious employees like Morning Joke and Meeka belong in the top ten. Jeff Zucker, NBC emeritus.
Even more than the Trump children, because NBC and MSNBC gave Trump crucial oxygen when he needed it. Jeff Zucker should be on the list (and yeah, he’s at CNN now, but he was instrumental in Trump’s rise, and he’s made millions dumbing down news content — the Today show, which just lost Billy Bush as its 9:00 am host? Puh-leeze.)
And I think it’s a chickenshit list. Who doesn’t think Sean Hannity is an idiot?
Maybe the problem is, you need 50 slots on the list, or 75 and above.
hovercraft
Marco is still the darling of the Neocons, and they have been tearing their hair out over the GOP’s sudden embrace of Putin, even though the wikileaks leaks have targeted Clinton, they are up in arms about Putin trying to influence the American election. Weird I know. Since Lil Marco wants to be their golden boy again in 2020 he wants to stay on their good side, and they want him to retain his seat, by then he will be more seasoned, have learned to not repeat himself and by then the contrast of Hillary with standard presidential aging, but as a woman, will be huge with Marco. Also too, I’m sure embracing a Putin acolyte would not endear him to the republican part of the Cuban American community.
Gin & Tonic
I whined about this quote downstairs – it’s not fucking algebra, it is simple arithmetic.
PPCLI
It could be that he’s actually sincere – that he is appalled by a foreign government trying to influence the election. But it is also true that any discussions of Wikileaks are discussions of the presidential election, which he is desperate to avoid, so this stance is in his interest.
Betty Cracker
@catclub: You might trust that smarmy, shape-shifting prick to act on principle. As a constituent who has observed his entire political career, I don’t.
Anonymous At Work
The old school Cuban voters in Florida are all Communist refugees, in various ways and for various reasons including some legitimate ones. They see a party backing Russia and its former KGB President and they’d vote against that party.
PPCLI
When your whole campaign is based on projecting the idea “Vote for me, since for reasons I won’t document or go into, I’m a winner and I’ll win for you too”, you are in trouble if you start thrashing around and looking like a loser.
Gin & Tonic
@Anonymous At Work: There’s also a pretty good number of Northeastern and Midwestern retirees of Eastern European origin who are strongly anti-Putin.
Barbara
@PPCLI: It could be that Rubio’s most natural constituency, over 45 year old Cuban-Americans, do not see Russian interference in American elections with the nonchalance that the media and other Republicans apparently do. It is safe to say that for many years, Cuba’s continued existence as a sustainable state under Fidel Castro was made possible by Russia. Whether opportunistic or sincere, it’s a good thing that Rubio will not let himself be the Cuban apologist for a Russian enabled Trump. Would that Ivanka Trump and her husband could say something similar with regard to the shameless misogyny and anti-semitism that permeates the Trump campaign.
El Caganer
While it’s right that everybody should be concerned about the Russians’ screwing with our election (assuming that’s what is actually happening), it’s a bit much to react with jowl-quivering outrage. The good old US of A is the country that raised screwing with other countries’ elections to an art form. To me, the bigger problem is with Our Liberal Media, who show no inclination to do any actual journalism by doing things like investigating where these leaks come from, whether anything in them is credible, why are they being released, etc., etc. Instead, all OLM does is assume that everything released is true and then immediately proceed to blather about the effects such “information” might have on their beloved horse race.
Betty Cracker
@Anonymous At Work: Exactly right. But I have some prime swampland to sell anyone who doubts for a second that Rubio would sing a different tune if WikiLeaks had published anything truly damaging.
Hoodie
@PPCLI: My impression is that Marco generally knows what the right thing is, he’s just too lazy, ambitious and/or gutless to do it. It’s relatively safe for him to go after Russian hacking because no one other than Trump would defend Putin. Marco’s biggest problem is that he rose in GOP politics as a “promising hispanic” at time when they decided to go full stormfront. He probably wouldn’t have gotten anywhere in Dem politics because he’s nothing special. I’ve seen several republicans whom I suspect really don’t buy into the whole Herrenvolk program, but they chose to engage in GOP politics because it was the easier career path, whether because the GOP is dominant in their regions or because there was too much competition on the Dem side.
WereBear
Agreed.
I did wonder just what it would take. Turns out, it takes their Presidential nominee to be a man without a single redeeming quality. Now, that is very difficult. John Wayne Gacy, the famous serial killer, did paint clowns, after all.
But Trump would be rejected by an action movie screenplay. “You have to humanize the villain more. This isn’t realistic!”
hovercraft
@Kay:
I think Morning Joe and Roger Ailes should also be on that list.
Barbara
@El Caganer: I am not saying you are wrong, but one strong recent example would go a long way to making your assertion more credible. The U.S. has wrongly interfered in the internal affairs of countries — Chile, Iran, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua come to mind immediately — but these were 20 years ago, and there is recognition across a lot of the political spectrum that such interference was at a minimum counterproductive, and mostly wrong.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: He leaves out Patrick Healey and Maggie Haberman at NYT and Judy Woodruff at PBS and other respected members of the MSM. Its these MSM types that gave him the cover of legitimacy.
The Moar You Know
Integrity born of selfish interests is the only kind of integrity I trust.
And once this election is over, I’d sure like to see our #1 foreign policy priority be exacting some payback from the fucking Russians for this.
hovercraft
@Davebo:
Fortunately I can’t watch the video. The man is a pig and a predator.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@hovercraft: I haven’t paid much attention to David Brooks this cycle so I don’t know what he’s said about Trump, but I’d put him on the list regardless.
John McCain, Kelly Ayotte as well.
Brachiator
Who knows whether Putin will be around in 2020. But apart from that, if he likes Trump, he is clearly partial to empty suits.
schrodinger's cat
@bystander: He is not going to form his own network, its too much work.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: Trump is more of a fat suit than an empty suit in my opinion.
Betty Cracker
@Barbara: I don’t think we’re out of the elections-rigging business by any means, though we’re more subtle and less Machiavellian about it these days. But it’s possible to find all tampering incidents outrageous. Condemning Russian meddling does not equal condoning US misdeeds, and it’s kinda weird that some folks automatically make that assumption.
Ruckus
@Barbara:
OK you are right, for the last 20 yrs. Except for those 8 between 2000 and 2008. We interfered a lot in a couple of countries during that time. A whole fucking lot. Elections may have been the least of the interference though.
sparrow
I have not been here in a long time (not since there was a general clamor to primary Sanders from the right, fer fucks sake), but color me SO fucking unsurprised that you all buy the line that the leaked emails are “Putin interfering” with the election. Jesus H. Christ you’re as bad as my yokel right-wing relatives you think 9/11 was an inside job. As long as your tribal leaders tell you it’s so, it’s so. Apparently what the emails actually show is of no importance, since Hillary could eat babies on live TV and you would still sing the “most progressive EVER” song.
Any of you around here with actual progressive values are going to find it really hard to stomach president Hillary. The emails show what those of us paying attention have known for some time: she’s no fucking progressive. She’s a neocon who doesn’t want to stick a wand up your vagina. That’s about it. The fact that I have to vote for this piece of shit is something I will be pissed about for the rest of my life.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
This.
@PPCLI:
I’m not a constituent, but from everything I’ve seen and heard, Rubio would sellout his own mother to get ahead. You don’t need to take it from me, this man railed against Trump, promising ti drive across the country on his own to stop him because he was too dangerous and ignorant, and a con man, then turned around and kissed his ass. Is there a mentor or friend he hasn’t stabbed in the back in his quest of his next big goal? It’s one thing to attack your enemies, but if your friends can’t count on you, who can?
Walker
@Kay:
Tweety is not on that list. Lame.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@sparrow: Glad to have you on board!
Jeffro
I’d be shocked if half of Johnson’s support didn’t fizzle out and show up, roughly evenly, back in Trump’s and Clinton’s columns. 4% for him seems about right.
Would also be shocked to see Stein clear 2%, period. Not sure where that 1%-1.5% goes, but I can see half drifting back to Clinton and half not showing up at all.
This has been another exciting episode of “Jeffro Unskews the Polls For Ya”, lol
Barbara
@Ruckus: I would like to know in what countries’ elections we interfered between 2000 and 2008 not because I am trying to be an apologist but because I want to know. Of course we interfered in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know that we would like to have interfered in Palestine, did not, and then refused to accept the results of an election that we advocated that they hold. A greater example of diplomatic and policy incompetence on the part of Rice and Bush would be hard to find. Seriously, I would like to know.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Kelly O’Donnell arguing that inviting Obama’s brother makes sense because Trump sees Clinton as a continuation of the Obama administration.
ETA: Now she’s solemnly intoning that it is astonishing that there will not be a handshake between Bill Clinton and Melania Trump, as is long-standing tradition between candidates’ spouses at these debates. Yes, I’m sure everyone remembers Michelle and The Lady Ann shaking hand in 2012. It was a decisive moment in the campaign, and an important moment in the History of Our Republic.
Matt McIrvin
@Davebo: There have been surveys; Stein’s voters mostly break toward Clinton as a second choice and Johnson’s are about fifty-fifty. But they could also just not vote.
Jeffro
@Kay: This piece is excellent, although a) it’s not fair that the Trump kids + Kushner take up 4 whole spots when there is so much blame to go around, and b) really, McConnell deserves a much higher ranking. The Turtle, more than anyone, enabled this sheer rage-fueled unleashed-id nonsense by setting the #1 goal as ‘making Obama a 1-term president’ and then acting accordingly, up to and including the Garland blockade.
schrodinger's cat
@sparrow: You are back, we have been awaiting your return to enlighten us about Hitlery. I must congratulate you on your powers of persuasion.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good. Choke on that rage, dipshit.
Elizabelle
@schrodinger’s cat: Yup. It’s a really chickenshit list.
Incomplete.
Jeffro
@Matt McIrvin: That’s….uncanny (see #45)…I must have been reading the same things you’ve been seeing. Great minds and all that.
amk
@sparrow: The sacrifices that the ‘progressives’ have to make for plain old common sense and self-preservation. It’s just horrible.
nonynony
@Davebo:
Some split off and vote for Clinton or Trump. Many of them probably stay home – it’s hard to get the gumption up to vote for a protest candidate unless you’re a habitual voter who shows up at every election and always casts a ballot.
Looking at the polling averages rather than a single poll, Stein is averaging 2.4% at RCP while Johnson is averaging 6.7% (I use RCP because it gives me the most pessimistic model that I’ve found for my personal preferred outcomes). I suspect that Stein will do little better than her run in 2012 – she got less than 1% in ’12 and I suspect she won’t even cross the milk threshold and hit 2% this cycle. Johnson did just under 1% in 2012 and I’d assume that as the real protest candidate this cycle he should overperform his 2012 performance – but I still have a real problem seeing him do more than triple his ’12 performance – I suspect he’ll get 3%. Maybe 4%.
MazeDancer
Arizona! (Sorry if everyone has already celebrated this, but just heard) Hillary ahead 5 points in Arizona!
Arizona Republic/Morrison/Cronkite News Poll:
HRC: 39
DJT: 34
Stein: 6 (May Bernie’s visit reduce that)
Johnson: 1 (possibly because they border NM and, thus, know better?)
Guess that “internal polling” thing is real and McCain knew this last week. As did Hillary’s campaign sending in all the surrogates.
May all the long lines for early voting in Georgia produce similar welcome results.
Betty Cracker
@sparrow: Hilarious that you think WE sound like 9/11 truthers; you should hear yourself. And BTW, I don’t think anyone here expects HRC to be the most progressive president EVAR, so you can tuck that line of bullshit back in your colon (from whence it came). I expect she’ll be a bog standard Democrat on policy in the mold of Obama. Who is a goddamn top 5 president, in case you didn’t notice.
nonynony
@sparrow: Do you have any actual examples of “neoconservative” policy being pushed in the hacked e-mails you’re discussing? All of the reporting I’ve seen around them appears to be about the politics revealed in the e-mails rather than policy, so a pointer to anything revealing neoconservative policies that she’s secretly pushing while publicly running on one of the most progressive platforms we’ve seen in a Democratic candidate since I’ve been following politics would be appreciated.
schrodinger's cat
@Elizabelle: He is afraid of naming and shaming his colleagues.
amk
@Kay: And he puts “Republican primary voters” aka da base in the last? Nonsense.
Jeffro
@Hoodie:
His Hispanic background isn’t at issue, even with the GOP being so anti-immigration – you’re allowed to be different as long as you tow the party line completely. His mistake (also known as a rare moment of responsibility) was when he tried to get immigration reform through…totally anathema to the GOP base, plus it meant semi-working-with Obama. Unh uh. It’s the same thing with Carson and Fiorina – their race and gender, respectively, didn’t DQ them from consideration in the GOP because they were pretty well in line with the party’s “thinking”, such as it is, and because both see Obama & Clinton as history’s greatest monsters.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: clearly you haven’t read Glenn Greenwald 7,000 word evisceration of Clinton that shows how that email from where Neera Tanden tells Pedesta she hates Lessig is a clear demonstration that she can’t wait to go to war with Iran. Maybe I’ll cut and paste of a few of his longer updates and then maybe the scales will fall from your fucking eyes, Sheople.
Gin & Tonic
@sparrow:
Neither John Podesta’s nor the DNC’s e-mails were “leaked” – they were stolen (for obscure historical reasons I don’t like to use the word “hacked.”) Who stole them and how did Assange get them? That is an interesting question, no?
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I like Lessig’s response. What a sell-out!
hovercraft
@sparrow:
Perhaps you should continue your exile, we wouldn’t want you to sully your superior intellect with the naive musings of us yokels.
Move along now.
Nom de Plume
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Glad to hear he’s cut down on the length of his columns somewhat.
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
True, what I’m rooting for now is for Clinton to get over 50%. The media is already preparing the no mandate because she beat a weak candidate, and even the it was only be a plurality bs. If she gets a majority then she can at least throw that back at them.
geg6
@sparrow:
Then don’t. I have read the emails out so far. I see nothing alarming about them. Pray tell, what, exactly, has you so exercised over them?
Kay
@amk:
I agree with that. Voters are individuals. They have as much responsibility as power which as a practical matter is “not that much” as individuals. Paul Ryan represents + 600k people. He has more power so has more responsibility. There’s responsibility that goes along with influence. That’s why the media figures have more, too.
It’s not all fun and games being a bigshot! They have more responsibility :)
hovercraft
New Clinton Fundraising Tool Auto-Donates Every Time Trump Tweets
GregB
I have it on authority that John Podesta gets his recipes from Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith and Bill Kristol.
Suck on it libs.
nonynony
I mean, it is an issue. In that none of the three of them actually had a chance of winning the primary race.
The GOP is made up of factions. Those factions have become more and more consolidated in the post-W GOP. One of the things that many of us thought for a long time was that the apparently largest faction – the Real True Christian faction – was more divided than it was united. Turns out we were right – a sizable chunk of the Real True Christian faction is actually the Racist And Misogynist White Guys Using Their Religion To Disguise Their Bigotry faction. And they have more in common with the Openly White Nationalist faction than they do with the rest of the Real True Christian faction when push comes to shove.
It’s not that a non-white guy couldn’t win the primary, it’s just that they’re going to need to be really exceptional. The kind of person who can get 2/3rds of the GOP base to rally behind them and ignore the rest of the gaggle of candidates that Citizen’s United money and grifting potential bring to the race. And right now the GOP bench is really shallow when it comes to politics – their national politicians are actually really bad at the whole “politics” thing in ways that surprise me. Mitch McConnell is probably the most effective politician the GOP has and his only skill appears to be the ability to say no to anything and raise a lot of money.
Jesse
@sparrow: Hmm, what’s the appropriate response here?
Oh, wait, I know.
Fuck you.
Before you start singing your little song about how Hillary Clinton is Satan, show me something real from the emails, not just you sputtering about how she’s a “neocon” because she, like every fucking president ever, is aware that our country has a military.
If you honestly think there’s no difference between Hillary Clinton and the people who lied their asses off to topple Saddam and keep the permanent shit-show going, go ahead and vote Stein. She’s just about on your intellectual level, after all.
You’re still butthurt about Bernie Sanders, but everyone else is being “tribal”. Got it.
trollhattan
@sparrow:
A long time for a 14Y.O. to be choking on bile, don’t ya think?
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Kelly O is very much an apologist for the GOP, she is always justifying their behavior, especially Ryan and Pence, they are such good men who are serious about their religions and policy, put in an impossible position.
low-tech cyclist
Stuff that benefits Republicans is just ‘politics,’ as far as the media is concerned, even when it involves lawbreaking. (See Libby, Scooter.) But stuff that might possibly benefit Dems is examined microscopically for possible flaws in the Optics that might Raise Questions, even if it’s well within the law, and not even particularly unethical.
amk
@Kay: Nope, the voters brought out this shitstain on to the world politics on their own, despite multiple warnings, some of them from their own party. They own this and deserve the first prize.
Hal
Meh. Bill Clinton had less than 50% popular vote his first win and went on to do pretty well for himself. I’m not buying Stein or Johnson getting what they are polling at right now. IIRC, Stein ended up with .5 last time around after polling 1 to 1.5. Johnson, given this election year, might do better, though.
Another Scott
@Davebo: Agreed. I would assume that the Johnson/Stein vote will be X% HRC, Y% Donnie, Z% NoVote rather than them getting those numbers. I’d like to think that X >>Y > Z, but who knows.
Nader got 0.56% of the vote in 2008, Johnson got 0.99% of the vote in 2012. Those strike me as more likely numbers (rather than, say, Perot’s 1992 18.9%).
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
Fair Economist
@El Caganer:
Au contraire. It’s having a HUGE fit about this that could get opponents the moral authority and public acknowledgement to stop the US from doing it as well.
danielx
Kinda OT, but – HRC, unlike Obama, is not and will not be under any illusions about “bipartisanship” and “reaching out” to the opposition. Obama wasted the better part of his first term in efforts to work with Republicans under the assumption that there were at least some Republicans who were interested in actually getting shit done that would be in the best interests of the country. Exhibit #1 being the ACA, most of which was lifted wholesale from Heritage Foundation proposals. Hillary will be more realistic, knowing from day one that most of her opponents would prefer to see her in a hole in the ground or failing that in a prison cell.
On the other hand, assuming she is elected (knock on wood), look for her inaugural speech to include Lincolnesque platitudes about binding up political wounds and so forth, for all the good it will do.
liberal
@hovercraft: Funny how they didn’t say that when whatshisface actually lost the popular vote in 2000.
catclub
@The Moar You Know:
No, no, no. That is taking Trump’s approach to policy. How many innocent people would you like to have die so we can exact some payback against Russia?
If it is good for the US do it. Otherwise, no.
We need Russian support for of the Iran deal. We need Russian cooperation over Syria.
liberal
@danielx:
You might exaggerate a little, but AFAICT Obama did appear to believe that there’d be at least some good-faith efforts by some Republicans.
Such thoughts were strangely out of touch. ISTM that that was pretty much all over by 1994.
lamh36
Ugh…i am so ready to get this thing over with…this election season seems like the LONGEST IN FUQN HISTORY
Anyway here’s something to get ya through the day…it’s both Fabulous and Sad…Don’t leave us Michelle!!!
Michelle Obama WERQs a STUNNING Atelier Versace at her final state dinner like a diva making a curtain call | Tom Lorenzo
liberal
@catclub: Why is supporting jihadists in Syria good for the US? Or helping S.A. bomb the living shit out of Yemen?
oldgold
Historically, as election day approaches, third party candidate’s numbers shrink. I do not think that is a given this year.
Stein and Johnson’s numbers might actually improve, if on the very eve of the election it is clear Hillary is going to win. Then, it is a cost free protest vote. That is very appealing to a lot of voters this year.
On the other hand, if for some reason the race tightens, Stein and Johnson’s numbers will collapse. numbers will collapse.
There is a new PRRI poll published this morning that shows Hillary up 15 points in a two way race.
http://www.prri.org/research/prri-brookings-october-19-2016-presidential-election-horserace-clinton-trump/
trollhattan
@catclub:
OTOH how many more hunks of Ukraine would President Trump be sanguine about Vlad gobbling up?
liberal
@Fair Economist: Would be nice to think so, but seems unlikely. Hypocrisy re foreign policy knows no bounds.
liberal
@trollhattan: OTOH why is it in the US’s interest to care?
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
This is the first comment on the page, it resembles me.
trollhattan
@lamh36:
Friend’s older daughter, George Washington University student, got to have lunch at the White House yesterday with the president and Italian PM. Lucky girl!
trollhattan
@liberal:
If you have to ask….
low-tech cyclist
@WereBear:
You may be familiar with what Terry Pratchett’s character Granny Weatherwax once said: “Sin, young man, is when you treat people like things.”
Well, Trump treats other people like things. Always. Without exception. I’m not sure he knows any other way. By Granny Weatherwax’ definition, Donald Trump is the epitome, the perfection, of sin.
Maybe he’s the Antichrist.
danielx
@sparrow:
If you haven’t yet learned that life in general and politics in particular includes a whole series of choices of the lesser evil, the rest of your life is going to be one long series of disappointments and a lot harder than it needs to be. There aren’t enough drugs in the western hemisphere to assuage my disappointment with many of the policies of every president we’ve had since I was old enough to know who they were, but I accept small victories when and where I can find them.
Shorter: grow the fuck up.
catclub
@liberal: I don’t think I said either of those things in my post.
Chyron HR
@sparrow:
The good news is you don’t “have to vote for” her, because she’s winning in a landslide without you.
The bad news is that this disproves all the Bernie Baby nonsense about being “the base” and “the future” of the party, and you won’t get to come back in 2024 and demand that your primary votes should count for more than a bunch of dumb n-words in red states. Sorry!
catclub
@low-tech cyclist:
And all along the wacko far right were insisting it was Obama. Ironic.
Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck
@danielx:
Utterly false. It took one thing from the Heritage Foundation proposal: The mandate. You think they included two thousand pages of insurance regulations? Nosiree bob.
catclub
another item on polling – the overall case in 2012 and 2016. Compare and contrast. It looks better for Clinton in 2016 than it did for Obama in 2012.
catclub
@low-tech cyclist: Trump is another aspect of the GOP problems with consent and empathy.
Matt McIrvin
@Davebo: Also, I think the numbers for both Johnson and Stein there are a little high as current polling goes. Johnson usually gets about 6-7% and Stein about 1-2%.
The rule that third-party candidates always underperform their polling isn’t always true. There seems to be a threshold of success and media coverage beyond which the polling is actually accurate. Perot actually slightly outperformed his Gallup numbers, if I recall correctly. The polling on John Anderson was about right in the end, too, though he had faded in the home stretch. Even Nader in 2000 polled more or less accurately, and he was down around 3%.
My wild-ass guess is that Jill Stein will not break 1%, but we may be seeing good numbers for Gary Johnson.
nonynony
@danielx:
This is actually not true on the ACA part. Not just because as pointed out above that the Heritage Foundation plan is very different in everything but the mandate, but also because he wasn’t trying to make Republicans happy. He was trying to make Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman happy along with a few other Dems from conservative areas. He was hoping to get some bi-partisan buy-in on the plan, but even if he acknowledged that that was impossible he STILL needed his own Democratic coalition on board for it and had to make concessions and changes to bring them on. And IIRC it was mostly Baucus who kept thinking that he could get Susan Collins and/or Olympia Snow on board if they could just make this tweak or that tweak – when it became obvious that they would say no no matter what he eventually gave in.
It’s true that Obama reached out to Republicans and gave them every opportunity to smack his hand away, but the reason why things moved slowly was on the Democrats in Congress – mostly in the Senate. It’s the problem of having an “big tent” with a narrow margin of vote for victory – you have to accommodate everyone in the tent before you can make any progress.
bystander
Just heard on MSNBC that Breitbart has a woman who claims Bill Clinton did something to her in 1980. She’s never come forward before. I’m still waiting for a man HRC groped or a recording of her boasting about how men are begging her to touch them, otherwise I just don’t get why BC’s behavior is transferred to her. I also don’t get how HRC is responsible for emails between a State Dept. employee and an FBI person.
Redshift
@liberal:
Right, because nothing bad for the US has ever come from allowing strongmen in Europe to seize territory of other countries unchellenged…
Peale
@nonynony: Yep. It wasn’t actually Obama saying that he would only sign onto a bill that had some Republican support. Unfortunately, I think what he learned is that once you leave the senate for the executive branch, your influence over Senators diminishes quite a lot.
nonynony
@Matt McIrvin:
As always, look to the averages, not the polls themselves.
Johnson is getting 6.7% at RCP in their polling averages. Stein is getting 2.4%. Johnson’s average has been slowly trending downward since the beginning of September. Stein’s has been meandering downward since August. This is to be expected as individuals who were upset by the nominations of Trump or Clinton migrate back to their home party as they realize just how bad a Clinton or Trump presidency would be for them.
I’m still surprised to see Johnson that high up – I’m still thinking he doesn’t break the 4% barrier when the final results are tallied, but he’s got a ways to drop to get there.
Joel
@catclub: Yeah… I’m going to give Rubio the benefit of the doubt here. There’s not a whole lot of immediate benefit for him to take this stance. (Long term is a different story).
Amaranthine RBG
Why in the world would anyone care about a nationwide poll?
hovercraft
@bystander:
So he wants to have a face off about how many women he and Bill Clinton have abused? He does realize that for the vast majority of the electorate this is a binary choice, right? Chose me fewer women have accused me of sexual misconduct than have accused her husband, oh and the ones who accused me are lying and they are ugly. You can’t chose her because she enabled her husband by attacking the women, never mind my wife was just on TV attacking my accusers as lying attention seekers who are part of a vast left wing conspiracy against me. You must vote for me because her husband is scum, and there is no proof that I am, believe me.
This is an excellent strategy.
EDIT: State was trying to retroactively cover her ass because she used to run the place. I’m sure Chaffetz will be hauling the parties before congress any day now.
Gindy51
@Frankensteinbeck: Not just that but when she pulls away he continued use to try and kiss her lips. I had flash backs to something similar that happened to me at age 7 and some creepy old fuck friend of my parents. They thought it was cute but I was disgusted. Poor child and fuck her idiot parents or putting her in such a horrendous position.
Redshift
@catclub:
I don’t think it should be our #1 priority, but I don’t think we can just let it go in hopes of getting more cooperation from Russia. It’s not worth starting a war over (which is what the actual Trump approach to policy would be; either that or a series of angry tweets), but we shouldn’t allow it to be accepted as normal behavior either. Some kind of brushback, with an implication that we don’t want to escalate, but will if they don’t cut it out. (I’m just handwaving here, because I know I don’t know enough to say anything specific about what would be effective.)
I’m reminded of a criticism I read of Reagan many years ago when he was in office. Reagan used to like to make hay out of publicly accusing the Soviets of nuclear arms treaty violations. Experts noted that this kind of this was real, but the Soviets had a history of backing down if a formal complaint was made. That is, they were testing us, and Reagan tended to use that for political gain instead of making an actual effective response. I see possible similarities here — if we make firm demands that they stop, it won’t necessarily hurt cooperation on other issues, because they know what they’re doing is out of line, and will respect a firm response more than us letting it go just to be cooperative.
Jeffro
@hovercraft:
Yeah but even with a majority, that’s what they’ll say – a “singularly weak, corrupt, and incendiary candidate” in Trump. Never mind that he was also one a) with about $2B in free advertising on top of b) decades worth of public exposure, including over a decade as a TV star (blech), and perhaps most importantly one c) WHO HAD THE REPUBLICANS’ – both their base voters and an overwhelming number of top GOP officials – CHOICE FOR PRESIDENT!! He won the nom fair and square, he also held onto Ryan’s and McConnell’s and Christie’s and Carson’s and many many others’ endorsements right up until…well, at least as of 11:41 on Tues Oct 19!
Joel
@The Moar You Know: What’s to say that we aren’t already doing this?
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: I look at those charts and I think “uncertainty is not your friend”. The national polling was consistently off in Romney’s favor in 2012–I think Gallup’s likely-voter screen alone was a large part of that. Gallup isn’t in it this year, and it’s entirely possible that the systematic error is in the opposite direction this time.
That said, aggregated state polling pretty much nailed it in 2012 while the pundits were getting excited about the horse race, just as it did in 2008 and 2004. The one state they really couldn’t call in ’12 was Florida, so there was this uncertainty between 303 and 332 EV for Obama. Right now, Florida is trending blue, Iowa is red, but Ohio and AZ and some other places are up in the air; the probable EV range seems higher than 2012 but not as high as 2008.
(People have been crowing about crazy realignments, but I think in the end the map we see is not going to be tremendously weird compared to the last few election cycles. A bunch of Southern states might be closer than we’re used to seeing.)
Jeffro
@nonynony: respectfully disagree…Carson was fine until he was revealed to be too dumb and too sleepy to carry the torch…Fiorina was just unlikeable and even in that crowd had some loser-stink about her…and Rubio of course killed himself with immigration reform.
MomSense
@nonynony:
Oddly, it was Snowe who was trying to keep a complicated version of the public option alive in the Senate Finance Committee and she did vote to move the bill out of the finance committee. She didn’t vote for it when it was before the full Senate. Collins was on the Senate HELP committee and not finance.
catclub
@bystander:
I think those emails were in 2014 or 2015 – so obviously Clinton was responsible.
Peale
@Jeffro: Yep. No one ever said “Bush was weak, because he beat nothingburgers Kerry and Gore.” They spent a lot of time creating the narrative that Kerry and Gore were nothingburgers. But that didn’t translate into “Bush had no mandate.”
catclub
@Matt McIrvin:
yes, the one unconscious bias in the article was along the lines of “If the polling is off by 3% then Clinton’s margin will be even bigger” …
unless it is wrong the other way.
I am concerned, but hope that Clinton having better ground game is not accounted for by the present polling.
Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck
@Jeffro:
I respectfully disagree with both of you. It is a well established trend in American politics that many people want to pretend they have different leanings than their actual voting shows. The fundies are very big on trying to pretend they’re not racists, when racism is actually their #1 issue. Carson got exactly the support I expected: Lots of Christianists voted for him in the primaries right up until he got enough support to look like a contender. The moment that happened they dropped him like a hot rock, because fuck no, they’re not going to actually vote for a black man for president. Cain had a similar arc. They love their Token Black Guy, and he gets the same respect all Token Black Guys get.
Applejinx
@sparrow: Ah, I thought maybe I wasn’t the person who believed in Clinton least ;)
I don’t buy it. You’re talking crap. What I see (and people have plenty of trouble with that, believe me!) is that Clinton’s aware and taking pains to learn from both her previous primary loss, and the current state of politics out there. She’s doing a better job at it than most people around here: but she’s smart, and she has to.
She doesn’t get another chance. This is not a lady who is going to sit back and rely on her old stereotypes and assumptions. I honestly admire that.
It MATTERS because for a long time there, she at least leaned in the direction you decry. Hard to tell how much is her and how much is Bill: they’re a team, and I’m convinced she’s the smarter one and has always had a profound influence.
I saw her talking about ‘basement dwellers’ and her talk about how she’s now rich and doesn’t have to pay attention to the little poor people like those she grew up with, differently than apparently you do. You have got to understand that for the REAL rich, the real elites, this doesn’t even come up because they unthinkingly assume privilege. Hillary had to fight for it, sometimes tolerating things we may never fully know: you don’t come from her background and get as powerful as she and Bill without stepping on some toes and blurring lines. That is easy for you, Sparrow, to believe.
But she’s smarter than the average neoliberal bear and understands what she’s seeing when she looks at the electorate.
People are flipping out when I even suggest that she’s ruled by her head and not her heart. I’m not sure it matters, when the results are the same. Anyone who’s listening to the right people and keeping up to speed (and I’m thinking Mark Blyth, Douglas Rushkoff, Elon Musk: not O’Keefe and Breitbart) has figured out that it’s time for a leftist, populist swing. Not because that’s morally right but because that is actually the center and we’re in Right Freakistan without properly acknowledging that fact, and if we don’t we will go down in big ugly flames.
I hear ya, Sparrow, but you’re wrong. Hillary Clinton has every reason to keep faith with us this time, and no reason to pull a face/heel turn like you’re expecting. And the thing about Clintons is if you keep faith with THEM they don’t forget lightly.
I’m voting for Clinton and will tell anybody why that is, and I believe what I’m saying is true. I have seen NO sign that she’s actually going to prove a catastrophic mistake, and many signs she’ll keep faith with us, and it’s in our power to help her do that: the less that remains of the Republicans, the freer hand she’ll have.
Please do vote for her, and what’s more, vote for every Dem you can, and get others to do likewise even if you have to spin it as ‘this ONE LAST CHANCE’. I don’t think it’s much of a gamble, but even if it was, imagine what we’d stand to gain if you were pleasantly surprised, and Hillary turned out to be determinedly progressive for whatever reason!
Anoniminous
@Amaranthine RBG:
National polls drive the media narrative.
catclub
@Applejinx:
This. Clinton will have a chance to pleasantly surprise lots of people who expected very little from her. We live in hope.
Eta: I did not even read to the end of your post. You got that in. Cheers!
Amir Khalid
I just caught this ad on YouTube. It’s only been up a few hours. Is there even one person Donald Trump ever connected with like this that would or could vouch for the man and the nominee?
Applejinx
@catclub: I’m a diehard Bernie fan longing to see him head the Budget Committee, and I believe in Hillary Clinton like, I think, Bernie does. Not because I have to: because she has earned it.
And not with ‘a lifelong legacy of unwavering liberalism’: a lot that meant in the nineties!
With how sharp she’s being NOW. And we need her NOW. If she lives up to what we need… and she may… then I’ll ‘coronate’ her myself, dammit. We need results and can’t derp around with idealistic vaguely political goofballs. Stein never impressed me one bit. We need Hillary for this.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker:
FYI, if I remember my blogosphere history correctly, Tammy Duckworth’s original run for Congress was one of the first betrayals of True Progressives and Fifty States Of Strategy accomplished by evil mastermind Rahm Emmanuel.
Kay
If only. We’re stuck with these people for life. He’ll probably run in 2020.
The Moar You Know
@sparrow: So don’t. You’re just an insignificant bastard anyway, and we can do without you voting. The nation, quite frankly, is much better off when people like you don’t vote.
Peale
@Barbara: I think its rather naive to think that the US abroad stopped interfering with internal politics of states 20 years ago. Especially in states where the U.S. relationship is in doubt. But it is a lot softer than it was, unless you wish to follow the left and basically interpret any pro-US politician as a CIA puppet and any anti-US politician as representing the true voice of the people. I do expect though that the interference will increase. I don’t think we are going to sit back an allow Russia to fund and organize anti-EU nationalist groups.
Kay
Poor Kellyanne. The career panic is setting in just about now. Not to worry. Morning Joe will hire anyone. They got the smart career move wrong too.
catclub
@Kay: But I still want to hear questions on how the Trump transition team, headed by Christie, is doing.
Just for laughs.
Peale
@catclub: My guess is that Christie has come up with a short list of at least 2 dozen jobs that he’d be the best candidate for.
Barbara
@Peale: What is amazing to me is that the larger or more prosperous EU countries are not doing more to prevent this from happening within their own borders.
Calouste
@Kay: Running for President is a way to make money for Republicans who’s career has come to an end. At a minimum you get free meals out of it, and you can put your spouse and your kids on the campaign payroll. And after you bail out, you can sell your list of suckers to the other candidates, like Cruz does.
hovercraft
@Amir Khalid:
Great Ad, I actually teared up.
hovercraft
@Kay:
All I can say as a constituent, he is dead to me and many of my fellow New Jerseyans. His behavior the last week or so may have pissed off the Orange one, so I’m not even sure there will be a place for him there.
JPL
@Amir Khalid: What an amazing story!
Fair Economist
@Applejinx:
This time? The Clintons NEVER do heel turns. All the things lefties complain about with Bill’s administration, like NAFTA and criminal sentencing, were things he’d actively and loudly campaigned for before election. There was no turn at all. Hillary will be exactly the same; she’ll fulfill her platform to the best of her ability.
bemused
@Kay:
I’m just wondering if Trump will renege on paying full amount of the salaries due Conway and rest of his campaign team as he is famous for.
Major Major Major Major
@sparrow: I try to avoid the fundamental attribution error, but I think I can safely say that you’re an idiot who apparently doesn’t know what ‘neocon’ means.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jesus. I’ve tried to be tactful when this stupid fucking bullshit keeps coming up, as it does seemingly about once a week but let me try one more fucking time:
To the extent he negotiated with Republicans, it was the Stimulus, not the ACA, and that was because “we” didn’t have sixty votes. “We” needed Republican votes, and it was just as much work, maybe more, to get Claire McCaskill and Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh and Jim Webb on board as it was Collins, Snowe and then Republican Spector. “We” had sixty votes for about six weeks, and “our” sixty votes included not just the aforementioned Blue Dogs, but also Blanche Lincoln, Mark Pryor, Tim Johnson, Mary Landrieu and spite-monster Joe Lieberman. to say nothing of the bipartisan obsession of people like Max Baucus, and he was not alone in that. And that’s without getting into the granularity of the House (have you ever heard of Bart Stupak? Daniel Lipinski? Ike Skelton?). So could we just let this infantile, whiny, fire bagger bullshit about Obama’s alleged naivete die already? or just go watch a fucking school house rock video if you’re still confused about how a bill becomes a law
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Honestly getting the R’s on board for the stimulus was easier than getting fucking Nelson to give us the time of day, from the accounts I’ve read.
trollhattan
@Jeffro:
I’m counting on Hillary to carry forth Carson’s plan for a national strategic grain pyramid storage reserve.
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This is where I can see die hard Bernie voters turning to Trump, he like Bernie is just going to do these things, he’ll just get things done. I on the other hand remember shit like the Stupak amendment that was tacked on to get pro-life democrats on board even though the f**king Hyde Amendment already prohibits the use of Federal funds for abortion.
Betty Cracker
@Fair Economist: Shhh! Applejinx is the Bernie Baby whisperer. Whatever nonsense they need to tell themselves to prevent them from voting 3rd party should be A-OK with those of us who want to avoid the Trumpocalypse.
hovercraft
@trollhattan:
The construction of which will be a stimulus program, she can have them built across Ohio in order to bank the state for her re-election. Oh wait that may not work out so well as evidenced by Elkhart IN, which voted for Obama in 08, acknowledged that the stimulus and the auto rescue rescued the city from the brink, but then turned around and voted for Mitt because it was time for a change.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@hovercraft: The rumor was (so FWIW) that some American Cardinals promised Stupak some kind of papal knighthood or decoration (that included an audience) if he would toss a redundant wrench in the works even though, as you say, the Hyde amendment had already pacified most ‘pro-life’ Dems.
hovercraft
Clinton maintains double-digit (51% vs. 36%) lead over Trump | PRRI/Brookings Survey
That is 15 points.
Another Scott
@Amir Khalid: She’s such a horrible monster.
;-)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
GregB
@FlipYrWhig:
If I recall that was one of the purity pony harbingers at Fire Dog Lake which set me casting about and ending up at this blog run by the accident prone Cole.
hovercraft
Speaking pf Little Marco*
The Miami Herald endorsement of Patrick Murphy it not kind to him.
* will he ever shake the name?
SAD!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@GregB: I remember in Emmanuel’s first Chicago primary, I got a fundraising email from a group run by Hamsher and IIRC Greenwald. The message was “STOP RAHM!” that barely got around to mentioning, much less make a case for, his primary opponent. Kind of summed up the whole FireBagger movement to me.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Amir Khalid:
Awesome. Really touching.
ruckus
@Barbara:
We interfered by trying to destroy their countries. We destroyed the crappy system they had and left them with less. We didn’t so much mess with an election as we did trying to destroy a country.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Jeebus gawd, thanks for hauling that raft of facts out from under the porch again – it should be a macro. So sick of the Obama sold us out/was naive/was slow to understand arguments about the results Obama wrestled out of that shitshow. Berniacs and the new to politics knowitalls with bropinions have no memory of that time, and how difficult it was to get anything done because every single one of the people you mentioned took full advantage of every opportunity presented to be the preening shitbag of the day – almost all of whom had imagined themselves as President one day, and none of whom were inclined to help or was invested in, an Obama legislative victory. I’ve just fucking had it with purity ponies and their idiocy.
Jeffro
@Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck:
Ok, I hear you. That moment, though, coincided with most people getting their first exposure to Carson of any kind, not just how he looks, but the things he had to say in his own unique, confusing, sleep-inducing way. That may have been a contributing factor in addition to what you’re saying.
It seems like Perry got the same treatment once he started to get more press and then subsequently demonstrating he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
MomSense
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
We also got some of those assholes to vote to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and let people serve w/out fear.
Peale
@ruckus: Honestly, I’d prefer interfering in elections rather than, say, joining Saudi Arabia in their attempt to “influence” who is in charge of Yemen.
Jeffro
@hovercraft:
Catch a wave and you’re sittin’ on top of the wor-rrrrld…
Applejinx
@Betty Cracker: Thank you, Betty.
Sheesh, how hard is it to comprehend that when you face someone who’s like ‘yagggh, Hillary always eats babies!’ the functional move there is to go ‘I hear you: now watch closely, and I bet you that NOW Hillary doesn’t eat any babies. So vote for her plz kthxbai’.
I mean, sure truth, sure justice, but this is real and we need all the votes ever, both for Hils and downticket, and you have to admit if you look closely at Hillary now you can see she’s not eating any babies. You can even establish she’s way better off if she doesn’t eat babies, and claim she’s real smart and therefore you can be certain she isn’t going to be eating them in the future. And none of it is lying.
It’s called giving people an out so they can save face. Leave the loyalty oaths to Donald Trump. We need all the votes.
chopper
@sparrow:
jesus, your tears taste even better than i thought they would.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Also, add Steve Schmidt to the list of people who I’d never believe I’d be heartily agreeing with along with Jennifer Rubin and Bill Kristol. That bomb he dropped in useless Brian Wiliams lap yesterday comparing the GOP to the Titanic, but not about the deck chairs, about how the initial contact with the iceberg barely made a shudder and then the physics of the event took over, was a thing of epic and poetic beauty. He did an ode to the sanctity of the peaceful transference of power as conferring legitimacy, as the highest duty, and his duty really is to country.
hovercraft
I missed this on Morning Joke this morning.
Steve Schmidt: ‘The Panic Is Beginning’
Watch
Rohorohoo
Jeffro
Serious Question: when does the predictions (EV and % of the vote) thread go up? What about the Senate races – perhaps those should get their own ‘predictions’ thread?
Another Scott
BooMan at WaMo: Here Comes the Landslide:
OpleaseOpleaseOplease… :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Jeffro
@hovercraft: he must be seeing some polls and info that I’m not seeing, ’cause getting to 400 would mean Trump losing UT, TX, and AZ and…hey, never mind, that’s actually do-able…wow…
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@hovercraft:
Also too from Steve Schmidt: It’s Over
hovercraft
And speaking of taking back the house, I saw my first anti Scott Garrett Ad this morning, hitting him for not voting for the Violence Against Women, and calling him a Tea Party Republican, not right for Jersey.
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
He’s been talking about the internal polls, remember they’ll only show those if they are good. Charlie Cook said on MTP Daily last week, that in the last few wave elections, you don’t see the wave coming till the last 3 to 2 weeks. That would be right now. So fingers crossed.
chopper
@nonynony:
johnson is going to do reasonably well in the end, i think, maybe 5% or so. lots of disaffected goopers are gonna pull the lever for him because they just can’t stand trump.
if the race was closer and that 3% or so felt that they could make enough of a difference they might swallow their pride and help put the republican in the WH, but if trump is down by 10 then what’s the point? might as well make sure he loses bigger if you think maybe the party will decide to change in the aftermath of a historic loss.
stein tho, she ain’t getting shit.
Barbara
@ruckus: I’m not an idiot. I know where the U.S. has overtly intervened in the world. I was asking a narrower question. It doesn’t mean I am ignorant of, let alone endorse or approve of other kinds of intervention.
hovercraft
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Yes
I saw that the other night. Still we have to keep the peddle to the metal and take back the house. Bring Nancy back to get things done.
chopper
@hovercraft:
15 points? clearly the worst major party candidate in modern history.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@chopper:
ikr? Can’t help but trying to imagine shouty finger wagging old white Bernie up against shouty short fingered old white Trump, advocating his huge tax increase to vastly expand the role of government in the financial, educational and energy sectors, while also hiding his tax returns and sending out Cornel West and crazy Nina Turner as his surrogates to the Democratic base. Bernie also has some sketchy 70s woo sex stuff that wouldn’t match up well either. We dodged a bullet.
liberal
@FlipYrWhig: Americans for Democratic Action gave her 85% last year, which is mediocre.
liberal
@The Moar You Know: Really? We’re better off when people farther to the left don’t vote for Democrats?
LOL.
sukabi
@Frankensteinbeck: are you kiddig? That is sooooo inappropriate, but so drumpf…
Turgidson
@FlipYrWhig:
I remember some battles about her on GOS back in 2006. The premise wasn’t entirely absurd, if I’m remembering things right. There was a liberal candidate who ran in 2004 and lost a respectably close race to eleventy-billion-term-incumbent Hyde, and she was running again. She, and her fans at GOS, felt betrayed that the DCCC, run by Rahm, supported Duckworth over her. Duckworth didn’t live in the District, if I remember right. And she barely lost the general, which the rabble blamed on Rahm despite it being a fairly strong GOP district.
Rahm is an insufferable POS and all, but discovering Duckworth and helping her launch her political career was hardly one of his worst moves.
sukabi
@Kay: Morning Joke should be cancelled.
hovercraft
@chopper:
Why isn’t she leading by more, Trump is collapsing she should already have this in the bag! I guess that’s why she’s expanding into red states, and why Priorites USA is now spending in downballot races, not just the presidential.
waysel
@Applejinx: My sympathies to you regarding your good friend who has gone from rational to irrational. Seriously. I was shaken internally for a whole day at least after discovering recently that a dear to me couple was voting Trump. Appearently gun law based, mostly, but whatever the reason, it was much easier when I saw Trump voters as dumb, or racist, or abhorrent ingenerous people. And kudos for keeping up the good fight.
sukabi
@Kay: can you run for office from prison?
hovercraft
@sukabi:
Yes, back in 2012 40 % of democrats in the Kentucky or West Virginia primary voted for some asshole who was in prison rather than vote for their parties nominee, the sitting president of the United States!
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@waysel:
They’re white nationalists/white supremacists. That’s all Trump has consistently offered and is a reliable proponent of, since he’s been completely unable to articulate any other coherent or consistent policy. He’s been a useful sorting hat to ferret out what we already suspected about our fellow white folk. By this I mean that most white people harbor racist attitudes and thoughts occasionally or often, but don’t actually believe in white supremacy as an ideology or white nationalism as an organizing principle. Trump supporters – the avid ones – do. It’s all they know and care about him. They’ll say it’s about taxes or guns, but again, that’s just caping for what they really want, which is to have those people kept down, and kicked out.
sukabi
@hovercraft: I know Trafficante from Ohio ran for congress from his prison cell…I guess it comes down to “better the crooks you know, than the ones you don’t”
Stupid people being stupid.
sukabi
@hovercraft: and that’s something else that needs to be fixed…if you can have your voting rights stripped for being a felon, then you also should be banned from holding public office… also, if you’re convicted of crimes while in office you should lose any pension associated with that office.
stinger
@nonynony: Great comment — it’s good to see clear explanations of how consensus law-making actually works. Some people seem to think if only Obama had wanted it badly enough, had tried hard enough, was pure and progressive enough, we’d have single payer now.
stinger
@lamh36: Wow — she looks like a statue of Venus, all those shining curves and long fluid lines — thanks for the link!
Ruckus
@Barbara:
Didn’t call you an idiot.
I actually thought I was pretty clear in my first post and was just expanding on that, per your inquiry.
SWMBO
I don’t know if this is Pence or Rubio. It’s really a toss-up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS6lNDrCi88
different-church-lady
@Kay:
Abso-godammed-lutely correct.
Ian
@Barbara:
More recent examples include Venezuela, Mexico, Honduras, Haiti,Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan.
JR in WV
@Betty Cracker:
I contributed to her first House campaign, and twice again to this campaign. I thought she was the real deal from the beginning, I’m glad to hear from someone who met with her that this is probably the case.