This is a source from INSIDE THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN making the Downfall joke. Contemplate that shit. https://t.co/zPHsgrFPBm pic.twitter.com/VkMBUIvDxA
— 'He Zedd, Ominously' (@ZeddRebel) October 29, 2016
As part of his services to the Republican party, John Comey’s Friday dump helped obscure attention to Gabriel “Thorn in Roger Ailes’ Side” Sherman’s astonishing portrayal of the rats/fvckers exiting the S.S. Trump as the iceberg looms into view. From NYMag:
… [Trump] is ending the race much as he got into it: not worrying too much about the future and not listening to any of the advisers around him. In recent weeks, I spoke with more than two dozen current and former Trump advisers, friends, and senior Republican officials, many of whom would speak only off the record given that the campaign is not yet over. What they described was an unmanageable candidate who still does not fully understand the power of the movement he has tapped into, who can’t see that it is larger than himself.
“I got really mad at him the other day,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told me. “He said, ‘I think we’ll win, and if not, that’s okay too. And I said, ‘It’s not okay! You can’t say that! Your dry-cleaning bill is like the annual salaries of the people who came to your rallies, and they believe in you!’ ”
Trump may not be all that focused on what happens to the masses of white, nativist, working-class voters who have coalesced around him, but there are people in the campaign who recognize how valuable those Trump believers could be long after the election is over. As Bloomberg Businessweek recently reported, Trump’s son-in-law–cum–de facto campaign manager Jared Kushner is building a proprietary database of some 14 million email addresses and credit-card numbers of Trump supporters. That list could form the foundation of a new Trump media company. According to one Republican briefed on the talks, Kushner has approached Wall Street bankers and pitched ideas for media start-ups. “How do we monetize this?” he’s asked. (Through a spokesperson, Kushner denied having such meetings.)
https://t.co/pH4jcmKZqm pic.twitter.com/r3BZN2IU5F
— Katherine Miller (@katherinemiller) October 29, 2016
Campaign CEO Stephen Bannon, who is taking a leave of absence from his role as executive chairman of Breitbart News to work with the Trump team, has an even bigger ambition for all those voters: reshaping the GOP and future elections. “The main goal for Steve was dealing a devastating blow to the permanent political class,” Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow told me. “It’s pretty clear he’s upended the Republican Establishment, so it’s a huge win for Steve’s ideas and for Breitbart’s ideas.” If the Republican Party of the past was full of rich fiscal conservatives who benefited from free trade, low taxes, low regulation, and low-wage immigrant labor, Bannon envisions a new party that is home to working-class whites, grassroots conservatives, libertarians, populists, and disaffected millennials who had gravitated toward the Bernie Sanders campaign — in other words, Trump supporters…
The paradox is that Trump’s political brand and his commercial brand are very much at odds. “The people who are passionate about his brand can’t afford it right now,” a real-estate executive who knows Trump told me. And those who can afford it are less likely to want to be associated with his name. “He might have to go into multifamily rentals. Maybe he could put gold fixtures in a trailer park,” said the executive.
In the end, whether he figures out how to change his business model and capitalize on his followers hardly matters. “Trump is the vehicle,” Marlow said. Now there is momentum, with or without him.When Paul Manafort, a veteran Republican lobbyist and operative cut from Establishment cloth — he’d worked on Gerald Ford’s, George H.W. Bush’s, and Bob Dole’s presidential campaigns — came onboard to serve as campaign chairman at the beginning of the general-election season, he suggested a strategy that was the exact opposite of the one Trump pursued in the primaries. He wanted Trump to lower his profile, which would force the media to focus on Clinton — a flawed opponent with historic unfavorable ratings who couldn’t erase the stain of scandal, real or invented. “The best thing we can do is to have you move into a cave for the next four months,” Manafort told Trump during a meeting. “If you’re not on the campaign trail, the focus is on her, and we win. Whoever the focus is on will lose.”…
But asking Trump to not be the center of attention is like asking him not to breathe. “His ego couldn’t handle it,” said one Republican close to the campaign. “Hillary understood that Trump needed to be the focus.” As his poll numbers climbed, Trump felt he didn’t need to listen to Manafort. “The worst part about Trump is when he was ahead,” the prominent Republican said. “He’d get into the lead and then he would veer off and start defending his interests and his honor and it had nothing to do with what people actually care about. He’s not disciplined.”…
To hear Kellyanne Conway talk about managing her boss is to listen to a mother of four who has had ample experience with unruly toddlers. Instead of criticizing Trump’s angry tweets, for instance, she suggested that he also include a few positive ones. “You had these people saying, ‘Delete the app! Stop tweeting!’ ” she recalled. “I would say, ‘Here are a couple of cool things we should tweet today.’ It’s like saying to someone, ‘How about having two brownies and not six?’ ”
Conway had grown close to the Trumps, especially Ivanka, through a connection to the Mercer family. During the primaries, Conway had run a pro–Ted Cruz super-pac, which the Mercers had funded; after Cruz dropped out, she started advising Trump. The key to managing Trump, she told me, is to let him feel like he is in control — always. “It all has to be his decision in the end,” she said. A Trump donor explained it this way: “Trump has the following personality: NIH-NFW, meaning ‘If it’s not invented here, not invented behind these eyes, then it’s no fucking way.’ ”…
A shaggy-haired former Navy officer and Goldman Sachs banker, Bannon had, through his role at Breitbart, become a leader of the conservative movement’s new power center. From his desk in the 14th-floor war room at Trump Tower, Bannon developed a plan for Trump to go full-on Breitbart. He ratcheted up Trump’s already-paranoid speeches, casting the candidate — and his followers — as the victims of a worldwide conspiracy of the elite. “It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities,” Trump told a crowd in West Palm Beach. “This is a struggle for the survival of our nation, believe me.”….
Another way Ivanka has tried to exert influence on the campaign is by positioning Kushner to all but run it. “You have to remember something: Jared is the final decision-maker,” a senior adviser said — except, he noted, when Trump is. Trump and his son-in-law are by all appearances close. “Jared is a brilliant young man,” Trump told me. Kushner, a lifelong Democrat, declined to comment, but a Republican close to the campaign said of his feelings: “Jared doesn’t look at supporting the campaign as taking a philosophical position. He’s opportunistic.”…
All the piranhas agree: This fat aging buffalo staggered into our tank. What were we supposed to do, if not strip him to the bones?
Mike in dc
I expect a reprieve from the email bullshit by tomorrow. Some new shiny item to obsess over.
Bostondreams
How? How could these be Trump supporters, unless they are pure grade purity pony ‘heighten the contradictions’ fools?
Villago Delenda Est
Why do I have this bizarre notion that Ivanka is going to handle this as well as Magda Goebbels did?
rk
The campaign is haphazard, the candidate is a sexist, ignorant semiliterate monster. But he is closing the gap and seems to getting close and the race is yet again in nail biter territory. Says something about the voters of this country.
Citizen Alan
It’s just astonishing to me that the same people who would brazenly shout “Jew-S-A!” at a reporter while on camera would be perfectly content over (or perhaps just completely oblivious to) Jared Kushner being their God-King’s go-to adviser.
Hildebrand
Good god – that this crowd is within shouting distance of the Presidency makes my heart break. I really don’t get the people willing to vote for such a wretched human being. I especially don’t get the people across the street from us – married couple: Hispanic dad – works out of the home, White Mom – professional, very successful, raising their wee one bi-lingual, and they have Trump signs all over their bloody lawn. How do they vote for this knave?
Patricia Kayden
@Mike in dc: Like more emails? LOL. But seriously, nothing has been found in the emails which would imply that Secretary Clinton has broken any laws. Talk about a nothingburger.
A lifelong Democrat now pushing the Presidency of a bigot. Wow.
Corner Stone
@rk:
No it doesn’t. It says R’s are coming from upper 70%’s into about 90% for their nominee. They had 12 women come out and accuse their candidate as a sexual predator. Those allegations went into the media spin cycle and now the R’s get to go back to voting for a man who is scheduled to show up in trial for allegedly raping a 13 year old girl.
That’s not anywhere near as bad as having an aide’s estranged husband share a laptop and email but I mean, at some point…right?
Villago Delenda Est
His interests I can understand.
He has no honor to defend. He’s a craven, draftdodging sack of shit.
FlipYrWhig
@Patricia Kayden: Isn’t this “lifelong Democrat,” like, 32 or something?
Patricia Kayden
@rk: Not just within nail biting territory — Trump is ahead in several key polls. Huge Sigh.
Sad that someone as qualified and dignified as Secretary Clinton is running neck and neck with a loony tunes candidate. **shakes head from side to side**
clay
Can this election just please end?
If not, can someone put me into a coma for exactly one week?
I’ve been voting presidentially since 1996, and this election is causing me the most anxiety out of any of them. I thought I was getting apathetic in my old age, but I care SO DEEPLY about this that I’m getting exhausted by it all.
All this latest shit does is reinforce that:
a) the major media outlets are deeply anti-policy, pro-scandal (or pro-“scandal”), pro-horserace, and are hard-wired for Republicans to take advantage of them,
b) facts matter even less to a significant portion of the electorate than they do to the Blitzers and Matthews of the world, which, wow,
c) Republicans who put country over party and/or ideology are not extinct, exactly, but very rare among elected officials.
It’s literally making me sick to my stomach that we have to slog through one more week.
Patricia Kayden
@FlipYrWhig: 32 is old enough to know better than to support such an unqualified, unhinged candidate even if it’s your FIL.
The Moar You Know
Pathetic. By the time Breitbart-come-lately was on board, Trump had already done all the work on that front.
Villago Delenda Est
@Patricia Kayden: Kushner is a motherfucking kapo. To think he has ancestors who survived the Holocaust, only to see him get in bed with a guy who gleefully accepts the support of outright Nazis to his candidacy.
Geoduck
@Patricia Kayden: He is not ahead in “key polls”. Clinton has held a small but steady lead throughout the entire election. She’s going to win. The question is how many senators she’ll pull across the line with her.
Immanentize
@Villago Delenda Est: I was thinking Goneril and Regan. With no balancing Cordelia unless that’s Tiffany.
Villago Delenda Est
@Geoduck: THIS. The only thing that isn’t going swimmingly our way is a tsunami that flips the House.
The Moar You Know
@Patricia Kayden: It’s money, of course. At least he thinks there’s money to be had. Maybe he’s right. Doubt it, though.
FlipYrWhig
@Patricia Kayden: What I mean is that it’s a bit of a stretch to call anything about him “lifelong” when the first time he voted for President was probably 2004.
James E Powell
@Patricia Kayden:
Clearly, you don’t understand the Clinton Rules. The fact that nothing has been found only means that more investigations are required.
And keeping a story on the front pages and cable shows for four straight days is not a nothingburger.
gogol's wife
My ex-husband told me he doesn’t think Trump is going to carry a single state.
He has no television and doesn’t read the paper. I wish I could join him in la-la land.
Patricia Kayden
@Corner Stone: I thought there were more Democrats than Republicans so I don’t understand how Republicans coming home equates to Trump now leading in polls. It should never be this close.
FlipYrWhig
@Patricia Kayden: Here are the final Obama-Romney polls in 2012. RCP Average: Obama +0.7. Final result: Obama +3.9%.
Corner Stone
@Patricia Kayden: Just as expected, this has been a very stable election platform for results. If Trump can win all 7 “battleground states” then we as a nation will get what we deserve.
But he is not going to. HRC is going to win NV, NC, and PA. FL would be icing on the cake.
msdc
@Bostondreams: Funny you should ask that. I just had my first-ever case of campaign-related road rage, and it came from a car covered in Bernie stickers and filled with douchebros.
Some of them (only some, I know) were never progressives. They’re misogynists looking to hold on to their self-image as righteous radicals.
Patricia Kayden
@Villago Delenda Est: Yep. Supporters who shout “Jew SA” at reporters and who send anti-Semitic threats to Jewish reporters/journalists. His parents must be proud.
Baud
@gogol’s wife: Oh, he’s going to be in for a shock.
Patricia Kayden
@FlipYrWhig: @Corner Stone: @Geoduck: Got it. Sorry for all the belly aching. Next Tuesday better hurry up and get here.
mai naem mobile
Kushner is a disgusting man and I hope his while synagogue shuns him and his family. Going along with all this anti semitic stuff is unforgivable.
Botsplainer
My baseline attitude, for those honest, hardworking salt of the earth Americans who say
:
If they’re successful at this, I want them to lose their savings and livelihoods. I want their elders to lose their Medicare and breathe rotten air while drinking foul water. I want their sons to be the ones wounded in war, their daughters sexually harassed by good Christian businessmen in the workplace.
I want them to puzzle over the wreckage of their lives due to their perverted policy desires.
Baud
@Patricia Kayden: It’s a stressful time for everyone.
Redshift
@Bostondreams: The “disaffected Bernie supporters” who support Trump are mostly Paulites who were never going to support any other Democrat.
Corner Stone
@Patricia Kayden: It’s the difference between Likely Voters and Registered Voters.
R’s went from “eh” voters to, “shit, I guess I am going to vote for our nominee after all since we have now forgot about all those women he groped”. They had previously been somewhere around 75% to 78% of hardcore, “HA! I FUCKING HATE HRC AND DEMOCRATS AND LIFE AND THINGS THAT LIVE AND WHY WON’T JANIE LET ME TOUCH HER BOOBS AND FUCK THAT BITCH AND ALL THE JEW BANKERS AND…AND…”
To now about 90% “I FUCKING HATE HRC AND WOMEN SHOULD SHUT UP AND…AND…”
So, that explains the polls changing a little bit to try and fool people.
different-church-lady
@Botsplainer: uh, yeah, but what about the rest of us?
Baud
@Botsplainer: I wish I could say I felt differently, but if they are successful, my only concern will lie with the innocent victims.
JPL
@Citizen Alan: Maybe you haven’t heard. He was pronouncing the U, the same way the Hispanic do. He was just supporting fellow attendees who are Hispanic. easy peasy..
trollhattan
@Geoduck:
Sam Wang had nudged the senate to 51-49 last week but now back to 50-50. That said, his Dem control probability is 73%.
I’d love to take an eight-day nap right now, or at least to 8:01 p.m. pst Tuesday, when the networks declare for Hillary. Except for Fox, who’ll be trying to throw a net over Rove who’s chasing Megyn all around the damn studio.
gogol's wife
@Botsplainer:
They’ll never put two and two together, and a lot of innocent people will suffer.
Botsplainer
@different-church-lady:
I know, I know…
It tortures me.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: Also a goodly number of Johnson voters concluding, “damn it, Trump sucks, but I’ll be damned if I let that bitch win, and if all of us went for Trump instead, that’d be like 5 points out of the 7-8 she’s leading by, and then it’s anybody’s game.”
gogol's wife
@trollhattan:
Rove too? I thought that was Ailes.
Redshift
@Patricia Kayden: Leading in some polls. Sam Wang explained it – there are more polls as we get closer to election day, and that makes the range of results tend to get wider. The outliers are unusual, so they become news. Poll averages are a much better predictor, and they haven’t shifted.
geg6
@Patricia Kayden:
Unless you are looking at the polling internals, it’s hard to know how seriously to take the polling result of one particular poll. Is it online or phone? How many landlines versus cells? What are they projecting as minority likely voters? How many Dems versus Republicans? How many respondents? It’s just crazy to try to make the time to figure it out. I watch Sam Wang. He seems the least likely to play around with the numbers and the least influenced by campaign noise. I’ve pinned my hopes on him and am taking his advice to worry about the down ticket more than Hilz. He says she’s got this and I trust him.
Baud
@Redshift: Assuming Wang’s model holds up again, he also deserves a place on the Wall of Heroes of 2016.
bluehill
Hearing some repubs already talking about obstruction if Hillary wins makes me think that it will continue to get worse. The repubs won’t seem to have learned their lesson and will try to hug Trump even more tightly.
trollhattan
@Patricia Kayden:
To know him is to fear and loathe him, not pass him off on nearly four-hundred million potential grift victims.
Botsplainer
@gogol’s wife:
Maybe those of us who survive the conflagration to sit around cooking fires underneath ruined overpasses can ask travelers if any voted for Trump, and then just smoke and eat the ones who say “yes”.
Baud
@bluehill: To be fair, even if Trump loses, the GOP will have learned their lesson. And that is that they need to appease their base and that their base will let them get away with anything. It’s everyone else who really needs to learn their lesson about supporting Democrats.
geg6
@Botsplainer:
The tire rims, anthrax and sparrows roasted on curtain rods sound more appetizing than eating a Trumpster.
trollhattan
@gogol’s wife:
Was having fond memories of Rove unhinging at an Obama win projection for Ohio(?) four years ago, demanding Megyn go to the brain room and straighten them out. The camera obligingly followed her walk. He had better numbers, see. “You betcha’ Karl.”
piratedan
well, you have to admit… that pervasive spin machine and character assassination really works. It’s all in those unctuous tones and hanging lingering words of doubt for the last 30 years… Think about it… we’re political junkies here, so we have a pretty good idea on what the score is… but just list these things below and think about what the media has said and presented each of the topics below:
whitewater
vince foster
lewinsky
clinton foundation
wall street speeches
private e-mail
benghazi
if we break each of those down to the essentials… what do we really know?
whitewater – how many people know, much less understand that the Clinton’s LOST money and were the victims?
Vince Foster – committed suicide, alone and its a fucking tragedy that the GOP gleefully politicized
Lewinsky – an adult made her desires known to another adult. sex followed. He was married, she was not. She’s admitted that she pursued him.
Clinton Foundation – takes money from a wide array of donors (some good, some trying to be less than skeezy) and put it to good use helping charities and people. No pay for play has been found (and yes, it was looked for)
Wall Street speeches – she’s a national figure. Once she left office, she was paid to give speeches, from agencies that paid top dollar for her time.
Private e-mail – people are more upset with her “lie” that she didn’t handle classified information on her private e-mail server. Didn’t stop people from sending her classified data and not have it marked as such. That’s her “lie”. Context apparently is completely lost in the wash here.
Benghazi – not her fault, plain and simple and fuck all she could have done. 11 Congressional investigations reached the same fucking conclusion.
and in these conclusions, has anyone ever stated plainly and calmly that this is the case? No, someone ALWAYS has to couch in all of the other crap that she’s on the hook for, be it her IRAQ War vote or her failure as 1st lady to help drive health care reform.
If you try and tell people this stuff they look at you like you’re from Mars and when you tell that that this is true and because its true, this is why she’s walking free amongst us all, they reiterate that she should be locked up.
Almost wish she had the stones to take the media to court for defamation and libel.
Death Panel Truck
@Botsplainer:
They won’t puzzle. They’ll just blame liberals. It’s what they do.
Iowa Old Lady
@bluehill: Then there are the citizens who nod approvingly over divided government because checks and balances and then complain that nothing gets done.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady: Funny how I never hear that argument when Republicans are in control.
James E Powell
@bluehill:
Other than obstruction and countless continuous “scandals,” what do the Republicans have?
hovercraft
@Mike in dc:
I suspect that Mika will still be intent on voicing her displeasure at Hillary for the private server. She really has no patience for anyone trying to blame Comey and the FBI, because this is all her own fault, and democrats said nice things about him, so they should STFU. That will set the tone for msnbc for the day. Unless something happens tonight it will be e-ghazi. If anything they may digress to Wiki-mail, but it will still be all bullshit all day.
But I hope I’m wrong.
FlipYrWhig
@piratedan:
Yup — that’s in one of the Trump commercials. Hillary says she didn’t send classified data. Then the voiceover says “Oh really?” And then, with graphics about how HILLARY LIED, cut to Martha Raddatz talking about the Comey findings about 110 email chains… NONE OF WHICH INVOLVED HILLARY SENDING CLASSIFIED MATERIAL! Was there email traffic containing classified material on the server? Looks like it. Did Hillary do it? Looks like not. It could still be a mistake to have had the server in place — fine. But it’s not a case of _lies_. I really don’t think this is that hard to explain, but the news makes no effort to do it.
FlipYrWhig
@hovercraft: When was there this groundswell of Democrats praising the Comey press conference in July anyway? All the talking heads allude to it. I don’t remember it.
AliceBlue
@geg6:
Wang is so confident of a Clinton victory that he said giving her campaign more money is a waste–donate to down ticket races instead.
NotMax
Cruise to BJ and what’s up top?
Unprecidented.
Oy vey.
Bannon probably already planting seeds in Carrot Flop’s morass that passes for a mind about holding a yooge counter-programming rally on Jan. 20.
Peale
@Iowa Old Lady: Oh those politicians promise the moon but never get anything passed for the little guy. Which is why I voted for one candidate who was in favor of what I wanted and another who was against it.
FlipYrWhig
@NotMax: Like Pope and Anti-Pope? President and Un-pre(s|c)ident?
debbie
@Baud:
No they won’t. The lesson is that they created that angry base that has turned on them. The GOP will never admit to their own error; they’ll always blame on something else like the DNC, Progressives, or Woodrow Wilson (take your pick).
Villago Delenda Est
As I understand it, the entire issue of the “private server” was so that she could use an interface she was familiar with for her personal emails, instead of having to ditch her blackberry for some horrendous State IT “solution” that was kludged out the ass. Now, kludged out the ass is the normal state of anything involving classified traffic. You learn to live with it, and you attempt to avoid dealing with classified electronically transmitted shit as a result. Hell, the entire SCIF concept is one of “let those Signal Corps monkeys deal with all the endless minutia and just hand me a fucking hard copy.”
Here she gets advice from such know-nothings about being Secretary of State Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice that for her personal stuff, not her official stuff, a private email server was the way to go.
debbie
Obama’s about a half-block from my apartment. Why can’t these guys just fly in on helicopters and stop screwing up the traffic?
Botsplainer
@geg6:
Two Words:
Well marbled.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: It’s kind of a problem because there are soundbites of a number of elected D’s saying what a man of integrity Comey was, and he did an “exhaustive” investigation so we should understand that the outcome was legitimate.
It’s not like they could have said anything else at that point. But fuck me if it doesn’t strongly, strongly, underline why you should never put a fucking Republican in a position to scorpion your ass in the middle of a river. Obama let this come into play by nominating this fucking putz. None of them are worth the skin sacks they are wearing around in polite society.
bemused
@debbie:
The GOP, party of responsibility, has never taken responsibility for their own fuckups. Their inside joke is that responsibility is on everybody else but them.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer: That takes time.
FlipYrWhig
@Peale: I’ve never understood how it’s supposed to work, even in the Thomas Frank version of the theory, that when Democrats don’t do enough for the salt-of-the-earth everyday working person, it makes him very upset and he withholds his vote as a punishment… but when Republicans do diddly-shit for the salt-of-the-earth everyday working person, meh, whatever, he votes for them anyway. Why isn’t he demanding that _Republicans_ do something for him? Kinda seems like the salt-of-the-earth everyday working person is just an asshole you can’t win over no matter what. So, fuck that guy, find someone else to vote for you instead.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: The way I remember it, though, most people reacted to Comey in July by saying, What the fuck is up with that asshole, and why is he flapping his gums like that? But it seems like that’s being disappeared from the Official Story.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
Fuck Thomas Frank. Fuck him up his stupid ass.
Iowa Old Lady
@debbie: I wish he were half a block from where I am, but that would put him a corn field or on the street of a development.
Gin & Tonic
@Villago Delenda Est: And the fact remains that while the FBI and the Congressional committees have been leaking like sieves, and countless Federal departments and agencies (fucking OPM, anyone?) have been penetrated, HRC’s e-mail server has not (as far as we can see) divulged anything
Hildebrand
My son filled out his absentee ballot today – this is his first presidential election. He admits that having President Obama as the first President of which he was fully aware has rather spoiled him, but he was very happy about voting for Hillary.
My daughter, 14, has been bitterly complaining about not being able to vote. She has also been muttering darkly about just exactly which taekwondo move would be most satisfactorily used on Trump.
D58826
@The Moar You Know: Danger is that they take this base and put a better candidate on the ticket. By 2020 after 4 more years of total GOOPER obstruction and little to campaign on, Hillary might have a real hard time getting re-elected.
debbie
@Villago Delenda Est:
I am at this very moment fighting on FB with my nephew who is extremely observant (in yeshiva), supports Trump, and has started quoting that alt-right clown, Milos something. The world has definitely lost its mind.
Iowa Old Lady
@FlipYrWhig: My reaction was horror. I thought it served Comey right when the Rs instantly hauled him in front of their committee and he wound up having to defend Clinton.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: It is being disappeared. Absolutely. Normal D’s were all like, “WTF? Why is this guy giving his personal op-ed about what he thinks maybe happened and what HRC should maybe have done in some world that doesn’t actually exist? Why is he speaking out like this?”
But elected D’s, oth, all had to try and stay in line with actual government shit and the way things are “supposed” to work because they aren’t fucking anarchists like ALL OF THE FUCKING ELECTED REPUBLICANS ARE.
Instead, we now get to the point where Harry Reid is whipping out his switchblade and sticking it into Comey, at long last, because fuck that fucking guy. And Harry is in NFLTG mode for the last bit of his 6 year term.
Iowa Old Lady
@debbie: He’s the one coming for Thanksgiving, right? Maybe you need to cook a ham or something.
hovercraft
@Patricia Kayden:
A lifelong democrat because New Jersey is a democratic state, and as a member of real estate family that needs politicians to facilitate many of their business interests. Yes they were big democratic donors and fundraisers but like the Donald they gave to both sides. Given that it was his FIL running he was already linked to the campaign, but he chose to go all in, and has now burned all of his bridges. The harshest criticism has come from Jewish publications.
debbie
@Iowa Old Lady:
Aside from all the snarled rush-hour traffic, there are a surprising number of cars parked on nearby side streets. I look forward to the late night news about the enthusiasm and size of the crowd. My neighborhood is very, very blue (56 Clinton signs vs. 3 Trump), but there is also an awful lot of support for Trump in Ohio.
Corner Stone
“83% of voters think it was inappropriate for HRC to use her own private server”
WHY? FUCKING WHY WAS IT INAPPROPRIATE? TELL ME ONE FUCKING REASON YOU LUMPEN FUCKS.
debbie
@Iowa Old Lady:
I’d rather throw it at him.
hovercraft
@FlipYrWhig:
Jared Kushner Born: January 10, 1981 (age 35), Livingston, NJ
bluehill
@James E Powell: Scapegoats, fear, anger and willingness to break the rules. Mix in some opportunists and well, I think we’ve seen throughout history where that can end up.
JPL
Another day, another Russian Connection. Nothing to see here because it appears to be legal.
Financial Times
Sorry if it has been posted before, but it’s an important read.
debbie
@hovercraft:
This is good to know. It didn’t make it out to Ohio. I know Bibi’s still agitating for Trump.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: I would really like to challenge people to explain what exactly the problem is supposed to have been. I think a small percentage would struggle their way to saying something about hackers and national security. Which, you know, didn’t happen. And the media has made such a mess of things that I am quite sure people think the Wikileaks stuff came from Hillary Clinton’s private email server, thereby proving that hackers something something national security.
FlipYrWhig
@hovercraft: So as a “lifelong Democrat” he voted for, who, Gore and Kerry? I doubt Obama. Still seems like a loosey-goosey use of the word “lifelong.”
Gin & Tonic
@JPL: Paywalled, unfortunately.
Baud
@debbie: I wouldn’t have thought Israel would benefit from a pro-Russian president.
debbie
@Baud:
Not only Israelis act against their own self-interests, as we’ve seen.
JJ
@debbie: Heart-breaking, isn’t it. I’ve done the same with my nephew in CO (Johnson). He’s passively absorbed ‘she’s a crook’ bs his entire life. The vast right wing machine is really paying off. And it’s a rare person, isn’t it, who will consider that they’re being played.
Botsplainer
@Baud:
Lots of VERY racist Russian Jews made their way to Israel.
Orly Taitz isn’t a one-off. You can’t erase the Russia from them.
piratedan
@Corner Stone: because the media implied that she should have used what the government offered. Never mind what she wanted, never mind what her predecessors did. The Media decides what is in the country’s best interest, as soon as the GOP gets done telling them what that is.
debbie
@JJ:
Especially when the punk is being so condescending.
Brachiator
You know you want it. You know you need it. You know it was inevitable.
A Bad Day at Trump Bunker
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Corner Stone:
A lot of them look well marbled on the hoof now.
D58826
@FlipYrWhig: I would say that the public’s business should be transacted on government systems for accountability and historical purposes. While it looks like Hillary’s server was the only one in the government that wasn’t hacked I think it would be better to have modern secure systems that government employees find easy to use. That being said I think the whole thing has been a politically driven tempest in a very small teapot.
But if it hadn’t been the e-mails it would have been something else. After all the Clintons are career crime family law breakers. We just haven’t found what that law they are supposed top have broken is!!.
Schlemazel
@Patricia Kayden:
He was probably a Dem because his folks understood the suffering of antisemitism and the deep ties the GOP has to that strain of hate. Young Jared has never suffered because of his faith & assumes nothing bad could happen to a person as blessed as he is. Money changes everything, power even more so.
geg6
@Botsplainer:
But too gamey. Like bear meat gone bad.
The Lodger
@hovercraft: They don’t burn bridges in New Jersey, they set out traffic cones. Try to keep up.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack (tablet): Not all marbling is good marbling.
debbie
@Schlemazel:
Also why they sympathized with MLK’s fight for civil rights. But try explaining that to young Jewish conservatives today.
JJ
@debbie: Same here. Pffftt
bluehill
@JJ: The irony is that they then embrace Trump who embodies everything and more that they hate about Hillary. It is amazing what propaganda can do. Hillary who has spent her life trying to improve people’s lives vs. Trump who even lies about his charitable donations.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: IMHO if not for “something something email,” which is actually pretty hard to explain as a terrible problem, we would have had “something something Benghazi” all the way to Election Day. And I’m pretty sure that would have been worse, because, you know, it involved dead white people and a despondent mother.
Corner Stone
Mike Pence is the best surrogate for the Trump campaign to get women out in Philly suburbs?
WTF did you just report Katie Tur?
JPL
@Gin & Tonic: It has to do with financial dealings with Russia. I saw it on a tweet and I could link to it. I’m looking through my history now. Of course, Trump has no dealing with Russia, or he said.
Schlemazel
@trollhattan:
I think many people who knew Hitler probably thought he was an OK guy, fun at parties. I’m sure Mao was a loving family man at home, Lenin amiable to his friends. Al Capone’s neighbors said he was a great neighbor and they couldn’t believe what they read about him in the papers. Evil never sees itself as evil and is almost never so evil that it does not fool a few.
Patricia Kayden
@trollhattan: Actually Rove has smartened up this time around and has already acknowledged that Trump won’t win so we won’t have that fun meltdown that he does every four years. Dang it!
FlipYrWhig
@bluehill: I think Trump, to his supporters, has some of the appeal of that Pick Up Artist type. Like they know he’s a bullshit artist and a manipulator, but they think it’s funny to watch some poor sap fall victim to the scam, because they’re definitely not that sap!
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
I thought that was Melanoma, isn’t she giving a speech there tomorrow? Mike Pence will motivate women as well as Trent Franks will in the Philly suburbs.
Patricia Kayden
@Botsplainer: LOL!!! We have some Trump supporters here that we can invite to the barbeque.
bluehill
You all will be relieved to know that according to this this guy Trump is not a fascist. He wrote this in January. I wonder how he feels now.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@JPL:
Behind a paywall. You can get to the article by Googling:
site:ft.com "The shadowy Russian émigré touting Trump"
hovercraft
@The Lodger:
We also can’t turn left :-(
JJ
@The Lodger: They don’t burn bridges in New Jersey, they set out traffic cones. Try to keep up.
Ha
Patricia Kayden
@Hildebrand: Giving a high five to your daughter. I wish one of the women who Trump kissed or groped without permission had karate chopped him in his nuts. He has gotten away with way too much.
D58826
@JPL: If it turns out that mystery server in Trump Tower is just for hotel spam there still is the question – if you don’t have any business dealings with Russia why do you need the spam server connected to a Russian bank’? Obviously not as big as the server was being used so Donald could talk to his pen pal Vlad.
Corner Stone
@hovercraft: She is giving a speech there on Thursday but i just rewound that segment and no, Katie Tur absolutely said the Trump campaign felt that “who is better to get the Republican women in Philly suburbs out than Gov Mike Pence”.
No bullshit.
NotMax
@Schlemazel
Mentioned before, but what the hey.
Adolf and Eva’s personal photo albums are in the collection of the National Archives. Was privileged to be with a group which had permission to thumb through them.
Unsettling experience and an instant education in the banality of evil.
Patricia Kayden
@Corner Stone: Especially given that prior Secretaries of State did the exact same thing. Secretary Clinton is being held to a different standard than her predecessors.
Schlemazel
@bluehill:
I am not so sure of that given the mood of a large minority of Americans and a GOP more interested in power and control than in democracy or governing. Perhaps not exactly these things but modern equivalents. He has already promised to make libel more easily charged, and to ‘protect’ public officials and to limit the press while dictating what is fit for them to report. Add morans willing to bring guns to take over a wildlife sanctuary and a fascist streak appearing in the FBI and I am not so sure.
JPL
@Gin & Tonic: I was able to go to google and copy and paste the title into the browser bar and it brought me to the article
link
I dragged The shadowy russian emigre touting Trump
El Caganer
Gold fixtures in a trailer park? Didn’t David Allen Coe write that?
hovercraft
The GOP is just filled with charmers. Maybe they should send this charmer into the Philly suburbs.
SFAW
@Botsplainer:
Good one! Or were you serious? Because they have, time and again, shown a remarkable inability for self-examination, for understanding reality, for doing anything other than kicking down.
Schlemazel
@NotMax:
I didn’t see that before, thanks for sharing. I have seen some home movies and can only imagine. I would be both fascinated and revolted by the opportunity to see them. I am sure they paint a tranquil picture of domestic bliss. Banality of evil indeed.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
Well good luck with that strategery. I did hear Chuckles and Chris Cillizza say that the joint Philly event today is the best event he has staged this entire election cycle.
Patricia Kayden
@hovercraft: And a Republican Senatorial Candidate in North Carolina jokes about shooting Secretary Clinton. Keep it moving. Nothing to see here folks. Just another day for Republican politics.
Baud
@Patricia Kayden: I couldn’t meet the Clinton Standard.
hovercraft
Tweety wants to know why she is prosecuting the low down dirty stuff he has said and done. Why is she in the dirt with him, didn’t they say when they go low we go high. By invoking his record she is just as bad as him calling her a criminal, and evil. Same thing right.
JJ
@hovercraft: Can someone please amend The Clinton Rules. Something along the lines of “we’re small men because we’re threatened by strong women”. Thanks
Seriously, WTF
JPL
@Steeplejack (tablet): Thanks! I originally saw it on a twitter feed and was able to link to it. I’m not sure why that works, but it did.
Did you see my comment at 127 where I was able to drag the title to the browser bar? I saved your response because it’s a lot easier. The Don has been busy with his friends considering he has no connection to Russia.
Gator90
@Corner Stone:”It’s not like they could have said anything else at that point.”
I respectfully disagree. When Comey made his announcement a few months ago, leading Democrats could and should have said that OF COURSE there would be no criminal charges because there was simply no evidence of a crime, without giving Comey any credit at all. Then they could and should have savaged Comey as a partisan scumbag who abused his position and the public trust to gratuitously express personal opinions that were obviously calculated to damage HRC’s reputation and tip the election toward Trump.
That’s how Republicans would have handled it had the circumstances been reversed. And it would have worked out a lot better for them.
sinnedbackwards
@Patricia Kayden: Watch the averages. Hillary is ahead 6.2% in the HuffPost average, which underestimated Obama’s victory by 2.4% four years ago. She has solid leads in almost all competitive states. The Advertising driven media has an incentive to pretend it’s close. It isn’t.
Watch the numbers, not the headlines. Sam Wang (Princeton Election Consortium) and PollyVote deserve your attention, not CNN or MoneySpeaksNBC.
Baud
@Gator90: I tend to agree.
Corner Stone
@Gator90: Come the fuck on.
Let me know when that happens so I can duct tape phone books to my chest like Jon Lithgow did in the movie Ricochet with Denzel Washington.
Corner Stone
@Baud: You get elected D officials coming out against a major figure of governmental stature and you let me know.
I want to burn Comey to the ground. I wanted anyone in power to put a hold on his nomination and vote. Fuck that fucking fuck. Elected D officials are never going to do that. They can’t
Davis X. Machina
@Schlemazel:
Lenin loved himself some pooties:
Lenin and pootie #1
Lenin and pootie #2
Lenin and pootie #3
Baud
@Corner Stone: People aren’t sufficiently afraid of us. I hope that changes soon.
The Lodger
@hovercraft: I did 10 years in New Jersey. Making a left turn was the local equivalent of the death penalty, only quicker.
PsiFighter37
Cannot wait for these next 7 days to pass, in large part because I can’t focus at work with crazy shit coming out in the news and poll numbers to drive me insane.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@sinnedbackwards: also
I’m an inveterate pessimist, a worry-wart, a crepe-hanger and a trouble-borrower, but I’m worried about FL and the Senate, not the GE overall.
ETA: I think some of what the MSM is interpreting as Clinton campaign panic– surrogates in swing states and increased spending– is more about two things: 1) Running up the score, because they want to minimize “no mandate” talk and 2) they can do it because they are flush with cash.
smintheus
Donald Trump neglected to think something through?
hovercraft
@The Lodger:
I’ve been here since 2003, so don’t I know it.
Baud
@PsiFighter37: Same here.
NotMax
@The Lodger
Ah, driving in New Jersey. The
GardenTraffic Circle State.Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Corner Stone: Sheldon Whitehouse sounded pretty agitated last night. If the Dems take the Senate, I wouldn’t be surprised to see hearings about the FBI
JMG
There’s no doubt the race is closer. I wish I could be as optimistic as some of you, but I’m not. I’m phoning for Clinton from home tomorrow. Maybe that’ll make me feel better, but my anxiety is off the charts. I love this country, and the thought it has let hate and ignorance grab such a foothold in our politics is beyond disheartening. There’s no way the lives of Trump voters will get any better economically under whatever the hell economic plan he gives them (probably Ryan’s), so to satisfy them, he must persecute their hate objects. He will, too. We’d have civil strife that’d make the 60s seem like the Era of Good Feelings.
I mean, never before have I assessed a candidate and said, “well, MAYBE he won’t start a nuclear war.”
debbie
@hovercraft:
Pity Molly Ivan’s no longer with us.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s quite a spread.
hovercraft
@NotMax:
Between the Jersey barriers and the jug handles, driving here is so much fun.
Botsplainer
@smintheus:
I know, right? He’s like every brilliant white businessman from about 1962 forward. Take the short term profit and hollow it out.
WarMunchkin
@sinnedbackwards:
Man. Ok – so Huffpo got it wrong by 2.4% last time… why does that mean I should unskew polls for our benefit? Are polls supposed to be exactly right?
debbie
@JMG:
You must be a young. People questioned Reagan’s trigger finger.
hovercraft
@JJ: @debbie:
Remember the GOP is the party that respects and reveres women, while the democrats just use them. They provide more proof of their respect every day.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Election night 2012, I was confident of an Obama win, and I was surprised it took so long. This time most polls are better, but watching the deplorables at the Trump rally has caused many a sleepless night.
GrandJury
@Patricia Kayden:Not even going to bother asking where you are getting your poll info. Out of an orifice maybe?
You defeatists (or trolls) are not worth the time. This is a replay of 2012 with all the skewed polls bullshit and Fox news saying Romney was on his way to a landslide win because of some Rasmussen poll or whatever. Lol.
Kay
Well, I canvassed. It was fine except for one door where I asked for the young man on my list and his (mother?) told me he’s in the army and he’s not voting “for HER” and slammed the door.
My canvassing partner was a nice older man- he’s on like “arts councils” and things like that here and we were on a library committee together years ago- but he’s having a nervous breakdown about the polls and his fretting was driving me crazy. The whole thing with canvassing is confidence- you can’t go out there all shattered and needy before you even start :)
Baud
@JPL: Why do you believe polls are better this time?
Gator90
@Corner Stone: I didn’t say my scenario was realistic. As a matter of practical reality, the Dems had neither the guts nor the brains to cut Comey off at the knees from the get-go. But they could have done it, and they should have done it. It would have been a lot better than publicly fellating him so he could later ratfuck their candidate even harder at an even more inopportune time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
.
you might wanna be careful which comments you read here
Baud
@Kay: That’s great, Kay. I find you persuasive, so I’m sure you did great.
Patricia Kayden
@sinnedbackwards: Good advice. After Secretary Clinton is declared the winner next Tuesday, we will look back and take a deep breath and even laugh about some of the foolishness we witnessed on the R side.
JPL
@hovercraft: yup.. C.u.n.t is a word of endearment for them. Hey honey, you c.un.t come on over and sit on my lap..
NotMax
@hovercraft
As well as a full sensory experience. There’s a reason there’s no cologne named Eau de Bayonne.
Patricia Kayden
@GrandJury: shomi? Is that you? LOL. Oh dear.
GrandJury
@WarMunchkin: I think Sam Wang nailed the EC votes in 2008 and 2012. I think maybe he missed by one EC in 2008 but got 2012 exactly…or maybe the other way around.
Jeffro
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yup. All one has to do is ask oneself, “Which position would I rather be in?” (And that’s not even talking about the policies & morals of each of the candidates, obviously – just the sheer numbers).
Let’s GOTV and turn the Senate blue!
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: Nobody can meet them. That’s why they’re only applied to one person.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Beyond exactly how does Bannon expect to do politics without elected officials that’s quite the active fantasy life. Both the working class whites and the grassroots conservatives want lots of government, the libertarians don’t.
JMG
@Kay: Kay, as a practical pol, do you have any tips for a first time phone banker? I used to be a reporter, so I have or had decent telephone skills, and I know better than to transmit my inner feelings of impending doom. What’s the best approach?
Trentrunner
@Patricia Kayden: No one will be laughing. If you think the GOP was crazy under Obama, it will be exponentially worse under with Clinton. They’re already calling her a criminal c*nt whore should be jailed/hung/shot, and we haven’t counted a single vote. They’re already planning to leave the SCOTUS spot vacant until at least 2020. They’re already prepping for impeachment. And this is if the good gal WINS.
Our choices this time are unprecedented catastrophe vs. enraging obfuscation by blowing through all governing norms.
So, no, we won’t be laughing. If Hillary wins, we’ll have a collective 30-second sigh of huge relief, and then we’ll have to brace ourselves for incoming for the next 4-8 years.
Lizzy L
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks for this.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jeffro: and it’s not an idle hope that the GOP house might blow up next year in fighting and leave the Democrats in control.
Comrade Scrutinizer
I’m not sure why all of you who are hoping for next Tuesday to get here think that all this will stop. The GOP won’t learn a lesson, the White Supremacists have been legitimized in the GOP, if HRC wins the election we’re going to be facing a permanent round of House investigations, and if we don’t win the Senate, the SCOTUS bench is going to dwindle down to 6 or 7 members. If HRC doesn’t win, we’re well and truly fucked. The election and its results are not a reset switch.
Joel
@WarMunchkin: The relevant polling margin in Sam Wang’s meta-margin. It won’t get the popular vote tally but it’s your best bet for calling states.
Right now, Clinton is at 317 EV median. Assuming a (relatively large) margin error of 2% she will win 288-340 EVs.
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
One step at a time.
GrandJury
@Trentrunner: 100% grade A cynical bullshit.
It will be more of the same. Probably more toned down even. They can’t get racists as frothy over a white woman as they can over a black man called Obama.
Also, it’s nothing she and Bill haven’t already seen for the last 25 + years.
hovercraft
@NotMax:
It’s always funny when you’re driving people from out of town away from Newark Airport, you see them make a face as we drive by the cogeneration plant on 95. I always say welcome to New Jersey.
Joel
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: NV, PA, NC, IN, WI, and MO are critical senate races. The Democrats need to win three of those, minimum. (Right now, they lead three).
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Baud: Sure. But my point is this shit isn’t going to go away, we aren’t going to have harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding, much less no more falsehoods or derisions. Maybe if the nation had voted for you, Baud, we’d’ve had unicorns, but since we fucked up, it’s going to be SSDD.
Walker
@Joel:
My understanding was they needed to win 4. What I am missing? It is three without NV because NV was Harry’s original seat.
GrandJury
@Joel: He will get it much closer than that. Maybe exactly right. It will change between now and election day though. There will be higher volume of polls between now and then. Whatever his site says on election morning is pretty much what it will be though. I think that is when he gets the last dump of polls.
hovercraft
Tweety has a SAD :-( the campaign is just so negative, apparently we are now Syria/Aleppo after the Russian bombs have been through. Both candidates have been bombs away, and now we have to sift through the rubble to rebuild come Wednesday.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@GrandJury: That you, Shomi? Fuck off.
Trentrunner
@GrandJury: If you think, from our MSM’s p.o.v., that Obama 2008 = Clinton 2016, you’re simply not paying attention.
The media has already made this race 5-15 points closer than it should have been.
That same media will give all the usual oxygen to any GOP insanity that comes down the puke funnel. It will be NOTHING like what happened to Obama. The anti-Clinton forces have metastasized and been institutionalized in the past 30 years.
Kay
@JMG:
Just be really brisk and to the point. Make sure to tell them you’re a volunteer. I use my full name and where I’m calling from because for some reason they’re nicer if you’re local. Find out where they got the lists because states have different ways of listing Party affliations- in Ohio you’re listed as the Party in whose primary you last voted. That can be meaningless so if you get people who don’t seem to be supporters don’t get rattled. It’s just a bad list.
GrandJury
@hovercraft: Amazes me that people still watch Tweety, much less care what he thinks.
raven
Arite, let’s get that baseball thread up.
PsiFighter37
@Joel: They win WI and IN with relative ease, I think. PA should also be a win.
The other 3 – flip a coin. Kander in MO is the strongest candidate out of the rest (I don’t think Ross will win, although Burr is not helping himself by being a complete idiot the past couple of days; as for Cortez Masto, I think we are going to see Harry Reid’s machine fail again).
dmsilev
@hovercraft: Tweety can take that sad and shove it up his ass; him and his cohorts are a big part of the problem.
Kay
@GrandJury:
Did he? I always put him at “ridiculously optimistic”. I didn’t know he was a good predictor. I never look when it’s over because…. I don’t care :)
Walker
@PsiFighter37:
Polling aggregates have been far more favorable in NC than MO. MO has been looking like a long shot for a while.
Also, we are forgetting Ayotte in NH. That is tighter than any of these. I think that is the best chance for a 4th right now.
Iowa Old Lady
I’m listening to Hamilton, taking refuge in another era’s political drama. At least Biden hasn’t shot a prominent member of the other party.
sinnedbackwards
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The Democratic campaign seems highly confident to me. They are now working for the Congress.
Out here in San Diego, we are putting our energy into helping Doug Applegate defeat carthief Darrell Issa. We may pick up three or four House seats in CA. The republicans are severely depressed with no senate candidate. Also marijuana legalisation is highly motivating some progressive voters.
GrandJury
@Trentrunner:
So calling Obama the N word and all the birther bullshit and burning him in effigy and hanging cardboard cutouts of him from buildings with a noose and riots in Mississippi wasn’t over the top enough for ya? Admittedly I may be mixing up events between 2008-2012 and all points in between. It’s all just a blur now.
Anyways, got no time for you defeatists. Maybe take a page from the wingnuts because they always think they are totally winning including now. You people are just the opposite.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady:maybe that’s the problem.
sukabi
@Patricia Kayden: sociopaths come in all flavors.
Kay
I didn’t have a single registered R on my list and it’s a GOTV list so they’ve been identified as likely Clinton voters.
I have a feeling the “principled Republican switchers” vote is teeny-tiny. Not many of them here, anyway.
Glennis
Trump just figured out it was easier to con poor white working class folks than rich folks. While it’s true they have less money, they are more gullible and don’t demand as much actual, tangible benefits that rich folks do.
MomSense
@Hildebrand:
Thank your son for me and tell your daughter she is a badass! I’d pay to see her use her chosen Taekwondo move on der Trump.
Baud
@Kay: Who knew their elites were better people than their base?
JMG
@Kay: That’s very helpful, thank you.
debbie
@MomSense:
And my nephew while she’s at it.
DCrefugee
@Corner Stone:
What is this “phone book” of which you speak?
debbie
@Kay:
The “principled” Republicans I know are all going third party.
Poopyman
@Hildebrand: Tell your kids that some random guy on the internet is proud of the way they were raised.
I voted tonight. Straight Dem, of course. No Trumpistas in the area. Just a busy, busy, not real big office suite in the county services building. It’s the only early voting polling place in this rural county. Glad to see so many folks out. Mrs. P went last night and said it was the same, which is odd for Halloween, I’m thinking.
Schlemazel
@Davis X. Machina:
SEE! Nobody who loves cats can be a bad guy!
Very few people are cartoon 1-dimensional characters. Thats easy to forget when they push that one dimension to the fore so hard.
Anoniminous
@Iowa Old Lady:
I KNEW there was something about him I didn’t like.
GrandJury
@Glennis: He didn’t figure out a damn thing.
You people think far too highly of him for some reason. His intelligence is as overrated as his net worth.
He’s a glorified slum lord with morals to match.
redshirt
@Trentrunner:
I hear ya, but it’s waaaaay better than the alternative.
different-church-lady
@Comrade Scrutinizer: I’d much rather be defending the title than playing for it.
And I take your point that it’s going to require a metric fuck-ton of defending.
NotMax
@sinnedbackwards
Strictly for the record, states with marijuana decriminalization or legalization on the ballot:
AZ
CA
MA
ME
NV
States with approval (in varying degrees) for medical marijuana on the ballot:
AR
FL
ND
MT
redshirt
@Schlemazel: Hitler loved dogs, the outdoors, art, and was a vegetarian.
redshirt
@NotMax: I’d love to see a correlation between this list and higher than expected Clinton votes. But who knows.
While we in Maine are voting for full legalization, there’s also a gun background check vote on the ballot which has the rubes in a lather. Probably cancels out. Or some of the rubes will vote yes for weed, no on additional background checks.
Kay
@Baud:
It feels jangly and nutty out there to me.
I bought Christmas presents online today in a very determined way – earlier than I ever do- and I realized I’m preparing for some horrible event where I might not be able to…shop ? :)
I have to get a grip. We all can’t lose our shit like the FBI agents are.
Karen
@Patricia Kayden:
No. I’m not looking forward to election day.
Glaukopis in Ohio
@debbie: I was at that rally, & yes pretty painful getting out of Bexley, but it’s amazing – 8 years in office & still a rock star to those there.
Baud
@Kay:
In here too!
Schlemazel
@Trentrunner:
Thanks. I have been saying much the same for months. And that is just the government side of things. Out in the streets I expect a lot more ‘Bundy Bunch’ actions and seriously worry about another Oklahoma City disaster. Those bastards are crazy & completely enraged by a clown who happily whips them into a frenzy. They really are ‘The Drumpfenstein Monster’. I just hope it is their party they destroy
hovercraft
@GrandJury:
Fuck off shomi, I watch and I bitch about it, get over it, it’s my thing. If you don’t like my bitching then ignore me, plenty of others do.
redshirt
@Kay: I got my passport renewed on purpose. I’ve got it now. I don’t expect to have to use it except for cool vacations, but better safe than sorry.
Baud
@redshirt: Canada is close for you.
Schlemazel
@Kay:
REALLY, Kay? I am surprised because I know you are politically very active & aware. Yeah, Sam is that good & if you paid attention to him you could have saved yourself a lot of worry.
gwangung
@Kay: Accuracy counts with me. That’s why I go there.
Schlemazel
@GrandJury:
please feel free to fuck off, you obviously hate it here so fucking off is your best option.
Kay
@redshirt:
I’ll never leave. I have as much right to this place as they do.
There should be term limits for former pols, though:
Will there be a time in my adult life I won’t be seeing and hearing about this Ed Rendell person?
Schlemazel
@redshirt:
“While it is true, what they say about Boss Grissom, he was a murderer and fiend. On the other hand he had a lovely singing voice.” – The Joker
redshirt
@Baud: True, but we’re all fairly close to an airport.
Kay
@Schlemazel:
I never checked it out. I thought “oh, that’s that guy Democrats always use when they’re nervous”. I’m thrilled he’s accurate. I had no idea.
redshirt
@Kay: All I remember about Ed Rendell now is Obama failing to hand out “walking around money”. Good bye, old Democratic Party.
I’m not going anywhere either. But even the prospect of Trump got me motivated to renew the passport while Bams was still in office.
Hillary will win. It’s just a question now of how successful she can be – I.E. with a Republican Senate, not very.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@JPL:
There are some paywalled sites—The Wall Street Journal is another—that allow incursions via Google, presumably for the exposure and SEO (“search engine optimization,” i.e., ranking higher on future searches).
redshirt
@Schlemazel: I doubt much good can be said about The Joker, on the other hand.
hueyplong
If given the option of issuing The Directive to either shomi or Ed Rendell, it’s Rendell who can go fuck himself.
JMG
@Kay: All you need to know about Ed is that his career after being Governor was sports talk radio host.
NotMax
@Kay
Wang and Cook are the traditional go-to places.
Although Charlie Cook seems flummoxed by this very, very odd year.
Schlemazel
@Kay:
Nate Silver used to be that good & his numbers may still be close but he is now just another whore working the streets for a little click action. He had a doom and gloom attention grabbing headline the other day and nothing in the story underneath came even close to hinting at the headline.
Corner Stone
@DCrefugee:
And that is why you fail.
/Yoda
Lizzy L
I have an expired passport. Fuck these knuckleheads, if they think they can drive me out of my own country they better think again. Not leaving.
Peale
@Kay: think so, too. I also don’t think Democrats spent nearly as much time courting them. Its like they’ve known all along that there were very few. She gave a few speeches about how they should vote for her if they didn’t want to be “deplorable” and then went about her merry way courting her own voters. Trump wasn’t the only candidate who didn’t “pivot” for the general.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@JPL:
Yeah. Google is usually quicker, especially if you specify the site to search and put the article headline in quotes so that Google looks for exactly that phrase, not just the individual words.
hovercraft
@Kay:
He’s a favorite on Morning Joe, if Harold Ford is not available to represent the DLC, he is a guaranteed critical voice for democrats being to accommodating to the base. He’s all for infrastructure, but also for “reforming”, entitlements, cutting the deficits, and reaching out to republicans. Democrats are always making a mistake when they support liberal policies. He is also not a fan of Elizabeth Warren, she is too far left.
Schlemazel
@Corner Stone:
And that is why you fail.And this is why fail you will
/Yoda
FTFY
tobie
Don’t know if it will help calm frayed nerves here, but I did two hours of phone banking for Hillary’s campaign in Wisconsin this evening and was impressed that most of the households listed as pro-Hillary were in fact pro-Hillary. This is sign of a good operation. As is usually the case with phone banking, most of the people listed were not at home (I’d estimate 80% of the people I called didn’t pick up). But I spoke to some delightful 80 and 90 year olds (!!) who were thrilled to have voted early for the first female candidate for President. The only disappointment was a 24-year-old Latina who told me she voted for Feingold but as a Bernie supporter couldn’t bring herself to vote for HRC. Other than that, all conversations were surprisingly positive.
P.S. I was calling from out of state.
Baud
@Peale: Agree. That’s why I hope she wins easily. To validate that strategy.
debbie
@Glaukopis in Ohio:
Good to know. It was scheduled for 4:30, but I didn’t hear helicopters overhead until 7:30. I assume the president was the final speaker. Did they really run that late?
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: The poll averages have shifted, but not by as much.
JPL
@Steeplejack (tablet): Thanks. . mine was obviously accidental.
JPL
@Kay: I think it’s the NY office and they are following Rudy’s orders. Comey has to get his shit together, because it’s not up to us.
redshirt
I do hope there’s one more bomb for Clinton to drop, ideally this Friday.
It seems the NY Times and the FBI have already decided there’s nothing to this Russia thing (except all the evidence).
JMG
@Schlemazel: Nate had his summary today saying Trump had some good polls, true, then going on a long involved essay boiling down to “if Trump gets closer, he’ll have a much better chance to win.”
I think three things have happened to Nate. 1. He is still smarting from having dismissed Trump in the primaries. 2. He is as terrified as anyone else about a President Trump and has put a negative spin on things out of his anxiety as a “wake up, Democrats” kind of rant. 3. He has built a lot more responsiveness to day-to-day polling into his model and allowed for a high degree of uncertainty. Even when Clinton was at her highest point in his models, he was below similar models by others.
Thing is, he could be right. He’s not being dishonest.
Corner Stone
@Schlemazel: That is why you fail
Omnes Omnibus
@JMG:
Many of us are already awake and don’t really find panicky exhortations to be unhelpful.
glaukopis
@debbie: Other speakers started around 4:15, I think – a number of them, including Ted Strickland, and others I’m too new here to know. He started around 5:30 and spoke for almost an hour, I think.
Death Panel Truck
@Iowa Old Lady:
…Yet. ;-)
JMG
@Omnes Omnibus: He’s allowed to have his feelings. You could always skip hitting his site. PS: Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics, a Republican but a straight shooter on data, had a good tweetstorm on how the dramatic decrease in polls, less than half as many as in 2012, makes ALL the models less accurate.
Kay
@JPL:
They’re horrible and they won’t shut up:
.
The FBI is keeping this story alive. Seriously? They’re planning on leaking on it every day?
I resent paying the people who are doing this. They should get on Sheldon Adelson’s payroll.
Trentrunner
@GrandJury: Who are you calling “you people”?
Omnes Omnibus
@JMG: And I am allowed to have mine. I don’t go to his site. I do see it quoted all the time though.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Kay:
My sentiments exactly.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: The FBI is keeping this story alive. Seriously? They’re planning on leaking on it every day?
I thought this might be a bit of a climbdown, they had at one point said (or leaked? Can’t remember anymore) that they would have something to say by Friday, maybe they’re just kicking it till after ED
JMG
@Kay: This is the future of the entire government if Trump wins. Every agency will devolve into feuding factions and they’ll be fighting with the other agencies. Look at his campaign. The big business executive class that staffs most Republican administrations and at least knows how to get things done, the Romney types, would be loath to serve Trump. They’ve seen how he treats subordinates. We’d have government of equal parts grifters and fanatics and God help us, we’d all be rooting for the grifters.
LAC
@Geoduck: can you post that over and over? The pants wetting that is going on here could fill the Great Lakes in pee. And always the same people.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Iowa Old Lady:
I wish a Biden would!
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s ludicrous. They’re reviewing emails to see if Clinton violated any laws or procedures by using the private server. That’s the only issue involving Hillary Clinton and it’s narrow. They have blown this up into this huge fucking deal and now they’re pretending they have to conduct a national manhunt or something, which will take months or years.
It’s not complicated- the issue was the server. It isn’t “anything we can possibly find that might be hinky involving anyone who received, sent or forwarded an email in Hillary Clinton’s orbit”. They never even asked these people for their devices when they did the original investigation. They didn’t know people store work emails on their own devices? Why stop with Abedin? Do they now have to get every email off every device where it landed or was transferred? That will take years. They will still be investigating Hillary Clinton’s emails 5 years from now.
Baud
@Kay: Everyone who received a fundraising email from Clinton now is under investigation.
Schlemazel
@Corner Stone:
I can’t help it if the writers cannot maintain consistency in a character.
redshirt
@Baud: Damn it!
*Burns laptops, and all former companies.
Baud
Ugh. Tom Browkow on Rachel.
Schlemazel
@JMG:
That may be but the razor of one Fr. Occam suggests his panicky headlines followed by unrelated content is much more interested in driving clicks by generating heat than in providing light.
Shana
@Hildebrand: Because they’re “the good ones” and it’s all those others who are the undeserving. But you’re right, the cognitive dissonance is stunning.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s a clusterfuck. The FBI were hinting that they were investigating the Clinton Foundation yesterday. Except that’s not what the letter from the DOJ to the Senators says. That letter says they’re still investigating the server because they just discovered people send work emails to their own devices. Where did they think they were going? To some central computer everyone used, just taking turns? They stand around and wait for their turn on The Computer?
Baud
@Schlemazel: He’s probably right about the economics.
I wish we could figure out a way to change our attitude about these things.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
So we should be hearing all about how the greatest generation would not have had this problem? Thanks but no thanks
Matt McIrvin
@Patricia Kayden: That interview was from October 23. Trump-mentum and the Emails of Doom have gotten a lot of coverage since then. I bet that by Election Day Rove is insisting that he has the math and Trump’s gonna go all the way again, if he isn’t saying it already.
JMG
@Schlemazel: I disagree. I can smell the panic in the prose. Also, he’s REALLY pissed at the other modelers who show Clinton with a much higher chance of winning. There’s a certain amount of “Trump will win and that’ll show who’s right” mixed in.
Baud
@Kay: it’s ridiculous.
@Schlemazel: He’s so awful.
OGLiberal
@Schlemazel: His old man was a big McGreevey guy. McGreevey better than Christie but way corrupt. So dad was down with the slimy Dems and if Trump could have run as a Dem he would have…he doesn’t care what party massages his ego. He just can’t control himself from saying stupid stuff about blacks, Hispanics, women, Muslims, Jews…heck, anybody not a white, Xtian dude…so he went with the party that hates blacks, Hispanics, women, Muslims, and Jews.
Matt McIrvin
@JMG: Christie’s already broached un-doing the 19th century civil service reforms and giving Trump the ability to purge the whole civil service of Obama appointees. He probably wouldn’t stop there. Before too long the executive branch would look like the crew running post-invasion Iraq, this motley collection of fanatics and grifters.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Schlemazel: The Reasonable Brodeorist talking point du jour is, I gather, that email management and sexual assault are both sides of a most unfortunate coin.
Tom
@Trentrunner: In terms of bracing ourselves for incoming for the next 4-8 years, I want to reference Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of the Wilderness. During the first three years of the Civil War Grant fought out west, and beat every Confederate general who came up against him silly. At the same time, Lee had been doing much the same to the Union generals sent against him in the east. So in the spring of 1864 President Lincoln brings Grant back east to win the war once and for all. Grant advances into northern Virginia and Lee attacks him in the flank. At the end of the first day the casualties on both sides are horrific and the outcome is very much in doubt. That evening Grant calls in his generals. One after another they express their fear that Lee will annihilate them, while Grant just sits there, whittling and not saying a word. Finally they run out of steam, at which point Grant stands up and says “For the rest of this war I will not hear one more word from any of you about what Lee might do to us. The only thing I will hear is what we are going to do to him!” I don’t want to hear one more thing about what the Republicans and their stooges might try. All I want to hear is what we are going to do to move this country forward for everyone.
Seth Owen
@debbie: They forget the wisdom of their forebears: It doesn’t matter who the ‘out’ group is, blacks, Chinese, Japanese, Hispanics, Irish, Catholics, Mormons, socialists, whatever. Sooner or later they always come for the Jews.
Baud
@Tom: Thank you.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think I understand some of the chatter here about how awful the OH Democratic Party is
I would’ve thought the “Kasich legacy” would be voter suppression and union busting
?BillinGlendaleCA
@redshirt: He was also a tweeker.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Nuts.
redshirt
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Also a genocidal maniac.
Joe Miller
@PsiFighter37: Fail again? When did they fail before? Reid re-elected in 2010 despite being behind in polls. Obama carries Nevada in 2008 55-43, carries it again in 2012 52-46.
hovercraft
@OGLiberal:
Wasn’t there a story about McGreevey’s sketchy Israeli boyfriend /lover had a connection to Kushner? I think they had some shady dealings.
hovercraft
@Joe Miller:
I think he’s probably referring to Dean Heller winning in 2012.
Peale
@Kay: Yep. Basically they want the e-mails. Any e-mail she ever sent.And yes, they plan to make it last years. What they want is the e-mail, sent at any time in the past 5 years to anyone. They want her to hand over her private e-mails for public examination, even when she was for all intents and purposes, a private citizen. So that she can be vetted properly. And that might as well be the new standard. If you’re a public official and running for office as a Democrat, you are not allowed to have any private correspondence at any time.
Peale
@hovercraft: LOL. I look forward to him leading us all in a round of “jacob’s ladder” as we come together in one big happy round of applause for ourselves.
schrodinger's cat
@Tom: I agree, preemptive panic is not helpful in anyway.
Schlemazel
@OGLiberal:
I didn’t know that, it kind sad. But the Dems are not that far away from their racist roots in many places so in one way it is not surprising. We needed New England Republican votes to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Right acts but those people are not welcome in todays GOP and you can see the difference in the two parties from 1968 till now.
philadelphialawyer
@JMG: He’s a piece of shit. Pretends to be all about the stats, but, really, his pseudo specific “probabilities” are pulled right out of his asshole. “Polls plus” indeed! “Plus” what? What he had for breakfast? Or, as you say, his shame at getting the GOP primary wrong? Or his desire to whip up the Dem base through fear mongering? Fuck him. His phony, down the decimal point, three headed monster (polls, polls “plus” and “now cast,” doncha know?) account of the “probabilities” remind of the original Star Trek, when Kirk and Spock would be locked up on some alien planet, Kirk would come up with some crazy escape plan, and Spock, even though there were literally hundreds of unknown and unknowable factors, impossible to even estimate with any degree of accuracy, would instantly and authoritatively “calculate” the odds against the plan’s success to be….”14,387 POINT 8 to one,” or some such shit.
ETA…really all these geniuses do no better than anyone who simply took an old fashioned, completely unsophisticated, average of the real polls for the swing States, and just assigned the other States to the usual winner. How smart did you have to be to know that, duh, the real polls were NOT “skewed” against Romney, and that he was going to lose most of the swing States plus all the Blue States?
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
They live in the moment. Kasich announced he’d voted and had written in McCain for president.
chopper
@bluehill:
of course. hilz’s honeymoon is gonna be like a day long. these fuckers are gonna double down. you think the shit fit they threw at obama was big, just wait.
JMG
@chopper: Oh, it will get worse. But if Trump wins, that worse would be the paradise we’d dream of.
Matt McIrvin
@philadelphialawyer: What you’re describing is basically what electoral-vote.com (Andrew Tanenbaum) does. He’s never tried to assign probabilities. But his Election Eve map is usually not too different from what any of the other guys compute, because why would it be?
Trentrunner
@Tom: Feel free to scroll past my posts. :)
Anyone who thinks the GOP won’t exponentially harder on Clinton than they did on Obama is not paying attention.
Being prepared for that is prudent. YMMV.
philadelphialawyer
@Matt McIrvin: Exactly, the whole fixation on “probability” is stupid. Who’s gonna win? That’s all anybody wants to know. Beyond that, who’s gonna win which States? Not some meaningless “percentage” chance of winning. And there is ample polling, by the real pollsters, not the partisan hacks and amateurs, to get a good handle on that, without being able to do anything more than say…..”Hmmmm, a clear consensus of all the real polls show that Obama is gonna win nationally, and is gonna win Such and Such States, so, yeah, he’s gonna win those States and win the election.” You don’t need a degree in statistics, or to be a Prof at Princeton, to figure that out.
SFAW
Meanwhile, the FBI-led ratfucking continues. It may not be Comey’s direct handiwork, but his incompetence is on display, brightly lit.
If the Clinton team has some serious oppo that we keep hearing whispers/murmurs about, they might want to get it out there pretty fucking soon.
If Hillary survives this, she might suggest to BHO that he stage a public (figurative) execution of Comey, as well as finding a number of the Hillary-haters in the ranks.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: She should still win. The Senate is still in play. Comey is a first class, copper-plated shit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SFAW: @Omnes Omnibus:
It is not clear if Sean Hannity would be called as fact witness in the investigation
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
You know that I’m a worrier, as we’ve discussed often. But what concerns me THIS time is: in the past, when Hillary had lost significant ground, there was always some event (or series of events) which gave people the opportunity to look at Trump and Hillary together, say “WTF?” about Trump and “I like” re: Hillary, and then she would get a major boost. The first event(s) were the Conventions, the second series was the Debates. In the run-up to both of those, Hillary was shit on for awhile, and the moron vote bought it, because they’re just as bad re: shiny objects.
But outside of some major oppo dump, what significant event will there be where people can look at Hillary and say “Fuck Comey, Trump, and Putin — Hillary is the obvious choice.” ? If I thought the electorate were rational, I would be a lot less concerned. But rationality seems to be in short supply this year.
ETA: And, to be clear: I’m not in panic mode, but the vote-bleeding needs to stop soon.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: What vote bleeding?
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That may be the first time Hannity has ever been referred to in that way.
rikyrah
@trollhattan:
That is a YouTube classic ???
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Various tracking polls, including ABC, IBD. Some “enthusiasm” figures (which are not exactly value-filled, I realize).
And, despite the Nate-hate that seems to be popular here, he’s not a moron. He may not be as good as Sam Wang — we’ll have to see how they do this year — but he ain’t gehackte Leber.
MCA1
@D58826: That is a cogent, concise, and well-reasoned argument, which I find compelling and agree with whole-heartedly. I think on a Political Sin scale of 1-20 Clinton’s private e-mail server was MAYBE a 2. Big. Fucking. Deal.
The sad thing is that you can guess how many times I’ve heard that argument articulated by a single person outside of boards like this, much less by anyone in the media who is theoretically paid to explain and contextualize things like this. This entire campaign should have been nothing more than your 20 second explanation of e-mailgate in one column, side-by-side with a column of the shit Donald Trump said or did today that immediately disqualifies him for President, updated daily.
MCA1
@SFAW: Well, 20 million votes were banked before this, and 3/4 of people polled have indicated this had done nothing to change their vote. Of the remaining 25%, I’ll bet a sizeable minority were of the mind of “Fuck these bastards, I was probably going to vote Clinton but this pisses me off so I’ll answer ‘more likely’ to vote one way or the other to this pollster.” The rest were/are embarrassed Republicans looking for any excuse to come home, and they would have found it one way or another in the last 10 days before Election Day.
SFAW
@MCA1:
I agree re: chickenshit Rethugs who were looking for any excuse not to pull the lever for Hillary. (In this case, “chickenshit” translates to “assholes who don’t like Trump, but are either in the ‘Party-before country’ crowd, or are too a-skeered to admit in public that they’re voting for Trump.”)
But speculating on the mindset of voters is probably not a productive path.
All I want (outside of President-elect Clinton) is for someone to drop an info bomb re: Deadbeat Donnie, so that the MSM morons will get the e-mails bullshit off the front page.
Matt McIrvin
@philadelphialawyer: I am actually kind of fond of Sam Wang’s attempt at a predictive model–but it’s really simple, compared to Nate Silver’s. It basically models the race as some kind of random process that’s biased to wander in a zone predicted by past behavior, and aside from the lumpiness provided by EV counts, that’s basically it. And he also makes it pretty clear in his commentary that his probabilities don’t mean a lot other then establishing sort of an 80-20 range where it could go either way, and the tails where it probably won’t.
And he’s still well into “it probably won’t”. But the Senate is “it could go either way”. And that’s that. It’s not rocket science; you could get the same information just from eyeballing his charts. (He didn’t even have the predictive model before, I think, 2012; he was just doing a slightly fancier version of what Tanenbaum was doing, calculating the likelihood of various maps “if the election were held today”.)
kimp
What I fear is the same “predictors” that got Brexit so wrong.
SFAW
@kimp:
On the other hand, if it leads to the Trumputinistas seceding to become Dumbfuckistan, that might be a net positive.
Matt McIrvin
@kimp: The thing about Brexit is, Leave was actually ahead of Remain in poll aggregates as late as a week before the election. Even at the end, there was a big enough spread that nobody really modeled it as anything other than too close to call.
What Brexit reminds me of is more the 2004 election, where in the endgame, Bush was a little ahead, Kerry was trying desperately to come from behind and almost made it, but the national polls really couldn’t call it at all and some had him ahead (though Tanenbaum’s final state map was actually damn close to nailing it, and Wang’s would have been too except that his model had an extra adjustment motivated by bad theory).
I think the last few days of Brexit polling might have been disrupted by the assassination of Jo Cox making pro-Leave people temporarily shy. But they voted Leave anyway.
Uncle Cosmo
@Baud:
They’re not. They only seem that way because they can afford it.
The complaints of the elite mostly have to do with convenience, e.g., “Regulations are keeping me from stealing, uh, I mean making, my next $10 million.” They’ll have a comfortable home & plenty of food & a top-end Mercedes & their kids will end up at pricey universities no matter what. And maybe most significantly, they’re in no danger of losing their lofty status as “leading members of the community.” Their “American Dream” has mostly come true; they’re only quibbling about the details.
Contrast that with their base, who’ve seen their version of the Dream turn into a nightmare. They want what their grandparents had, can’t have it, & want to know why. What they (think they) see are laws favoring Those People over them (nem’mahn that those laws have only leveled the playing field; “when you’ve gotten used to privilege, equality feels like oppression”), & only two ways to redress the balance: win at Powerball, or take back everything that’s been “given” to Those People for themselves. Trump promises them the latter. The Democrats promise them a fair chance in a rising economy, but in return they have to give up that unearned “free, white & 21+” privilege; & when you’re convinced these are the same politicians who are trying to take away your privilege anyway, how can you trust them?
(I wish to hell I knew how to solve this…)