I don’t know if there is a word for something that is both hilarious and horrifying, but were there such a word, I would use it to describe this:
Donald Trump’s cabinet-in-waiting is taking shape in the final days of the race, as aides eye a number of Trump loyalists for major posts should he win on Tuesday.
Among the names being considered, according to conversations with three campaign advisers who requested anonymity to speak freely: Rudy Giuliani for attorney general, Newt Gingrich for secretary of state, retired Lt. Gen Michael Flynn for defense secretary or national security adviser, Trump finance chairman Steve Mnuchin for Treasury secretary, and Republican National Committee finance chair Lew Eisenberg for commerce secretary.
Trump himself has not taken an active part in transition efforts, in part out of superstition: He fears too much planning before a victory might jinx the campaign. In 2012, he was shocked to read detailed stories on Mitt Romney’s preparations for the White House long before election day.
But wait, it gets better:
Reince Priebus, the current RNC chairman, is under consideration as Trump’s chief of staff. Priebus earned Trump’s trust over the course of the campaign by steadfastly defending him while other top Republicans denounced Trump or shied away from brand.
“They’re thinking, ‘We need to find that balance between someone who knows how Washington works and someone who shakes things up,'” the senior campaign adviser said.
***If Priebus leaves the RNC, two close Trump allies could be considered to take his position. Trump’s team is talking about former campaign manager and current CNN contributor Corey Lewandowski or current deputy campaign manager David Bossie as possible options.
But sure, kids. Vote third party. Because principles.
Patricia Kayden
Sarah Palin, Secretary of Education.
Scott Baio, Press Secretary
Alex Jones, SCOTUS Justice
gene108
So Trump would stack his Cabinet full of Yes Men. If my existence is not at stake, I would be sort of curious how this plays out.
schrodinger's cat
I don’t think its the kids that are voting 3rd party. According to my anecdata the most diehard Berners were of boomer age.
Edward G. Talbot
Not that I want to have a Trump presidency to make it happen, but I would pay money for the entertainment value that Corey Lewandowski as RNC head would provide.
gene108
@Patricia Kayden:
I would be entertained by Alex Jones as a Supreme Court Justice.
I can see legal opinions flowing from whatever far reaches of his imagination he generates his drivel.
Why, we cannot allow early voting because Satan has plotted with Ancient Aliens to use early voting to suck out our vital essences. And so forth.
schrodinger's cat
@Edward G. Talbot: He could still be the head of RNC if Trump loses, Republican party is the party of out and proud racists.
Jerzy Russian
For English speakers, I suggest hilarifying or horrilarious. If these won’t work, perhaps there is a good German words for this purpose?
amk
so, fat christie loses out even in this bizarre fantasy scene?
Patricia Kayden
@gene108: It would be … interesting.
OT Kind of humorous that Trump thinks that the Redskins name is a winning issue for him.
Patricia Kayden
@amk: Bridge Gate = Christie may be in jail soon (HOPEFULLY).
Poopyman
“Domestic Terrorists” indeed
p.a.
@amk: Christie: Transportation. The jokes write themselves.
Felonius Monk
@efgoldman:
Oh that it were so.
Good morning, efg. And, Good Morning everyone.
VOR
There is a right-wing meme floating around Facebook with the following suggestions:
SecState: Newt Gingrich
Att.General: Trey Gowdy
SurgeonGen: Ben Carson
HomelandSec: Rudy Giuliani
Defense: Allen West
Supreme Court: Jeanine Pirro
Commission on Law Enforcement: David Clarke, Milwaukee Co. (WIS) Sheriff
I’ve seen this meme go by several times so it seems to be circulating which means it has favor with a considerable group. Interesting Christ Christie is not their pick for Attorney General at this time.
Betty Cracker
Exhibit Z [x infinity] of Trump’s manifest unfitness for the office. For starters, the federal government is an extraordinarily large organization with millions of employees. It’s straight-up malpractice not to make preparations to assume leadership of it. You’d think someone who built a “terrific company” with “thousands of employees” would comprehend that.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
My personal fantasy is Trump loses and just goes threw pretending he won anyway, appoints a cabinet and even hold meetings in the Trump Tower.
SenyorDave
Would be funny if not for the fact that there is a nonzero chance of this thing being elected president. In light of that it is horrifying. If he wins, would hope that the Dems go the mat on everything, including full court presses on the past of people like Newt Gingrich, how he was one step away from jail on his scams when he was Speaker of the House.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Patricia Kayden: Everything you need to know about the Washington Racial Slurs and their execrable owner is here. It’s a funny article.
And the only people who want to keep the name are the deplorables team fans who live in Virginia.
albertZ
Awfulsome
amk
@SenyorDave: Lot of things political (vendetta, skulduggery, beating down the media and so on) the dems could learn from the rethugs. It’s high time they started playing offence for a ‘change’.
Chet
Whatever happened to hiring “the best people?”
Rasputin's Evil Twin
I don’t know if there is a word for something that is both hilarious and horrifying.
Try “Trump”. I works for me.
hovercraft
Hillary used the term deplorables prematurely.
As despicable as HALF Trump’s supporters are, this cabinet would be deplorable.
A racist AG
A narcissist and a buffoon as Sec of State
A Russia sympathizer as Sec of Defense
A sycophant as Chief of Staff
A moron as head of the RNC
And those are the ones we know so far, I’m sure it gets worse.
Okay I’m wrong about the deplorables, they are all deplorable, irredeemable.
Peale
I believe that is the basket, full of deplorables.
Woodrowfan
the ones who are still happy they voted for McCarthy instead of Humphrey in November 1968…
Rasputin's Evil Twin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I want him to retire to Mar- a- Logo/ Xanadu with a disabled Twitter account.
Chris
Amon Bundy for Homeland Security?
karen marie
@schrodinger’s cat: Early onset Alzheimer’s is a bitch.
different-church-lady
You know what’s really horrifying? NBC just reports this mater-of-factly, as though everything is normal, this is ordinary behavior, there’s no rhinoceros taking a crap in the corner…
Roger Moore
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I’ve said before that I like the idea of a shadow cabinet, but usually they’re something you put together long before the election to show how much better you’d run things than the other party and so you have a cabinet ready if you win. I’ve never heard of one put together out of a mixture of spite and delusion.
different-church-lady
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: There might be a high chance of that. I doubt anyone on his staff is going to have the guts to tell him he lost.
karen marie
@amk: No, thank you.
Eric U.
@gene108: too bad you can’t branch an alternate universe and watch the disaster. If you thought the Bush white house was a disaster, that would make him look like a statesman
Barbara
@VOR: Chris Christie, who apparently never lets go of any slight but holds grudges forever, seems to think that the rest of humanity is comprised of all-forgiving saints. As I have come to understand the state of play, the man whose father he sent to prison has more sway over Donald Trump than nearly anyone else except for that man’s wife, Ivanka Trump. So I would imagine that Christie’s elevation to any position of importance by Trump would be over Jared Kushner’s dead body. I mean, seriously, how could Christie be so situationally unaware of this? He had more chance being appointed to something by Clinton than Trump.
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore:
Not to mention one with zero involvement from the candidate.
Aleta
Another cool part is that taxpayers must pay the salaries of Trump’s transition team for their brainwork, because of some law that was passed awhile ago. I suppose the team is housed at a certain conveniently located DC hotel.
karen marie
@Chris: Secretary of the Interior.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@different-church-lady: That’s because NBC is failed institution as a new organization but a successful revenue generator for Comcast.
Punchy
@amk: Gunna be hard to be Cabinet-ting from the pokie.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
He doesn’t believe in your planning, he has the best mind, and the best words, he will trust his guts the day after the election and pull names out of his ass. With good old Corey back at his side he’ll name a full cabinet and heads of all the agencies in an hour. He knows people, and he puts people in the right jobs.
Evidence to the contrary not withstanding.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Somebody who built a terrific company with thousands of employees would comprehend that, but Trump is not that person..
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: I meant to say “successful entertainment revenue generator.”
different-church-lady
@Eric U.:
NATE SILVER RAN 500 SIMULATIONS, AND EXACTLY HALF OF THEM HAD THAT VERY CABINET!!!!
Dork
And you know it’s Dr. Harold Bornstein as Surgeon General.
...now I try to be amused
@efgoldman: I can see a TV series being made of this, like an evil bizzarro West Wing.
different-church-lady
@Aleta:
Assumes work not in evidence.
Patricia Kayden
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: If that meant that Trump and his sycophants spent all of their time “governing” from Trump Towers and only made appearances on Fox News, I’d be all for it. Sounds like a great plan.
TS
Hahahaha – On MSNBC – showing NC GOTV group, according to the reporter, working for Trump – 6 or 7 old guys in a room with a big sign for McCrory – no signs for Trump
different-church-lady
@Dork: But Ben Carson is an actual surgeon!
bystander
I hope we have a President Clinton who can call on Senate Majority Leader Schumer and Speaker of the House Pelosi to meet her in the WH to discuss an investigation into the extent of Putin’s infiltration of the FBI and Guiliani and Chaffetz’s contact with them. Better than working on my Christmas wish list.
Keith P.
@different-church-lady: I wonder how Silver got past all the DivideByZero errors.
Nina
On the other hand, I have the feeling that Hillary’s staff has a full list of contingencies for each Cabinet position, each sub-Cabinet position, each agency, all the courts. Plus they have some sort of super Gantt chart plan with dates to roll out each announcement, with contingencies for delays or BS manufactured scandals.
Eric S.
@VOR:
I briefly read that as Adam West. Comic relief Batman sends fitting.
different-church-lady
@Nina: I’m sure they do.
What they don’t have is a bunch of people babbling to the press about it.
Barbara
@Nina: They might even know which current appointees would be willing to stay on for a while.
catclub
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Approval, Cut of jib, newsletter interest, et cetera…
Major Major Major Major
HRC’s party doesn’t seem very fun to play with. Lots of lawful good. Low-energy, sad!
–HRC: Lawful good paladin
–Kaine: Lawful good cleric
–Podesta: Chaotic good ranger
–Huma: Lawful good fighter
–Barack: Lawful good paladin
Secondary characters:
–Bernie: Lawful good sorcerer; foil
–Bill: Chaotic good rogue that shows up from time to time as a DMPC to shake the story up
OzarkHillbilly
@different-church-lady: Proof that you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to be a brain surgeon.
hovercraft
@Eric S.:
Allen West is a grotesque human being.
Face
Real question: Can Las Hillerino appoint Bill for a Cabinet position, or that that disallowed? Alternatively, can she appoint him as a diplomat or something sub-Cabinet? Yeah, he’s looking a bit frail, but damn does he have the experience and the ability to jaw-wag. At least in the beginning, having him smooth relations with allies would be extremely helpful.
Aleta
Dr. Hannibal Lecter will be needed for White House Chef
catclub
Dos the article even mention that the guy Trump appointed to be chief of transition is Christie. Or is that down the memory hole?
Major Major Major Major
@Keith P.: Whenever his program has any sort of error he just calls it a Trump victory rather than debugging it. That might explain it.
TS
@different-church-lady: They just had a great surrogate for Hillary on MSNBC – no matter how much they tried to bring in the emails, the FBI and Comey – she said Hillary was focused on the election & wasn’t thinking about such things.
WereBear
A Confederacy of Dunces, indeed.
Felonius Monk
Hopefully, Election Night coverage on NBC will segue into an episode of The Biggest Loser starring Donald Trump. They can call it The Yu-u-u-u-gest Loser. And it won’t be about losing weight, although the Donald would be a good candidate for that.
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
Nice. I’m sending that to my kids. They’ve had discussions about this.
BruceJ
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: And ends up in 15 years holed up in his penthouse suite paranoid and alone, saving his urine in bottles and with fingernails 6″ long…
O. Felix Culpa
Sheriff Joe Arpaio: FBI?
ETA: Comey is clearly too much in the tank for Hillary, since the Trump-promised indictment failed to materialize. So both sides agree – he has to go.
Waldo
@different-church-lady:
They’ll be too busy racing to the bank to cash their checks.
albertZ
@Eric S.: Don’t laugh. Adam West is Mayor of Quahog after all.
The Moar You Know
We’ve seen plenty of examples of what happens when a government goes down this path:
North Korea
Zimbabwe
Uganda
Iran
and of course 1930s Germany, although I hesitate to slander the Nazis by comparison because at least they had a plan that involved a bit more than “stealing everything that isn’t nailed down”.
Chris
@O. Felix Culpa:
ICE.
And Comey for the Internal Affairs equivalent of some government department or other.
Major Major Major Major
I just watched the video that AL posted downstairs and for the first time it really hit me–holy shit, we’re about to do this!
@MomSense: I mean they don’t even have a wizard! Robby Mook, maybe, with a focus on divination spells?
Eric U.
@Keith P.: divide by zero is basically why the LA Times poll is so flaky. There was an article about one AA Trump supporter that radically changed their numbers. He dropped out of the sample one time and they fell in line with everyone else.
@Waldo: I’m reminded of rMoney’s campaign staff finding out their campaign credit cards were cancelled on the way home that night
burnspbesq
@Rasputin’s Evil Twin:
Surprising that it hasn’t happened already. Because of the state’s unlimited homestead exemption, establishing Florida residence is a standard part of pre-bankruptcy planning for high net worth individuals.
OzarkHillbilly
@O. Felix Culpa: ICE.
OzarkHillbilly
@Chris: I figured somebody would beat me to it.
billcoop4
@Major Major Major Major:
HRC is more chaotic good, I think. Deontology is overrated.
BC
peach flavored shampoo
@TS: I’m still stunned they’ve all but forgotten to bring up Hillghazi. A slight majority of sentient Americans understand the complete nothingburger that it is, but the other ~45% do not, and nothing rallies the base more than such bullshit.
Seriously, has Hillghazi even come up at all, in any stump speeches by DT?
bystander
For those who missed it, the NYTimes featured a front page article about how Clinton’s appointees will all have baggage. Luckily, each of Trump’s appointees appears to be stellar and unsullied.
burnspbesq
@Face:
I dont think it’s likely to happen, but U.S. Trade Representative might be a good spot to stash Bill. Or there are five ABA-accredited law schools in DC, any one of which might be quietly prevailed upon to create a Distinguished Visiting Professor slot for him.
My guess is that Trump would pardon Wesley Snipes in order to appoint him as Commissioner of the IRS.
The Moar You Know
It’s been fun watching my local vile congresscritter, car alarm hawker Darrel Issa, run away from Trump and the GOP as hard as he can. Our mayor – a Republican who will no longer admit she is one – actually sent out a flyer comparing her Dem opponent to Trump. And that’s not the only example I’ve seen from my local Republicans in this election.
The guy is radioactive in California.
schrodinger's cat
@O. Felix Culpa: No he will head ICE.
Major Major Major Major
@billcoop4: Could spin it either way really.
Punchy
Haven’t checked Teh Twittarz, but can I assume the RWNJs have gone the full 360 on Comey? Hated him ferociously in July, loved the shit outta him a week ago, and now, I’m presuming, they passionately hate him again?
It’s got to be great being a GOP polly in this MSM era, where any feelings or sentiment you have can be switched on a dime and not one pundit will call such bullshit out.
gogol's wife
@bystander:
I hate the New York Times with the fire of a thousand suns. I can’t even read the Arts pages any more. This morning it’s about how the concert with Beyonce “reeked of political desperation.”
Patricia Kayden
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
Yuck!!
GregB
Has Trump propsed a cabinet level position for Secretsry of Ratf*cking?
I nominate Roger Stone.
Patricia Kayden
@gogol’s wife: What about Ted Nugent’s pro-Trump concert last night? Was that a sign that Trump is desperate?
Beyoncé’s concert was a brilliant outreach to voters.
WaterGirl
Hopefully there will be some politics free threads today.
In college I would study hard for an exam, but at some point more studying would not help anymore, it would actually do the opposite. That’s where I am today. Reading the threads this morning is making me more wound up. Time for me to walk away. See you guys tomorrow. Stay cool.
I’ll check in periodically today, hoping for the occasional thread unrelated to the election.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@The Moar You Know: A very big part of NSDAP governance revolved explicitly around stealing everything that wasn’t tied down, particularly from non-Aryans.
jeffreyw
@Patricia Kayden:
I does most efficiently shorten the “drink a beer —> gotta pee” cycle.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodinger’s cat:
Of course! More coffee is needed to think as clearly as you, Chris, and OzarkH. Thanks all for your superior HR deployment. :)
hovercraft
@TS:
The surrogate was Christina Schockey, whose sister Beth Schokey is a big GOP strategist/fundraiser who is supporting Hillary this year because she is sane.
Christina is very well spoken and always remains calm, keeps a smile on, and does not deviate from her talking points.
Dork
@schrodinger’s cat: what if we had Vanilla Ice head ICE? Or Ice Cube? Ice-T? Branding opps are yuuuuge.
#ICELivesMatter
Patricia Kayden
@The Moar You Know:
California has really done a good job of shutting Repubs completely out of their politics at the state level. Bravo!!
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: Trump must have something on Sulzberger, NYT has been the worst MSM outfit covering the election.
peach flavored shampoo
I’d like to marry that sentence fragment. Maaaahvelous.
gogol's wife
@Patricia Kayden:
It’s as if no political candidate ever held a pop/rock concert on the eve of an election before! If it’s Hillary, it must be a sign of desperation!
OzarkHillbilly
Kevin Drum gets a dig in at the Donald’s expense: A Final Pre-Election Report on the Economy
Check out the last graph.
gogol's wife
@WaterGirl:
I find that alternating Shirley Temple videos with the “Holy s–t” video on a constant loop is helping my blood pressure.
MisterForkbeard
@gogol’s wife: Oh. Did they forget to mention that the appearances were wildly successful and that previous candidates had also appeared with well-known celebrities? :)
Major Major Major Major
@WaterGirl: I pretty much have felt like this for a day or so, maybe two. Let’s all roll dungeons and dragons characters! Dibs on Podesta. Some sort of politically inspired play-by-post game with y’all would be fun I’ll bet.
Punchy
@gogol’s wife: Incredibly (and inexplicably), the NYT has a “Percent to win” graphic that was at 84% for HRC before yesterday. And yet today, after Comey’s mea culpa, it hasn’t changed by a single digit, despite all other quantifiable metrics (like my go-to, the current offshore betting lines) skyrocketing in HRC’s direction.
Either they’re slow to update it, or it’s complete bullshit. No way could yesterday’s pronouncement not shift the race at least a few percentage points. It’s now clear to me to ignore the NYT going forward. Credibility, it has none.
different-church-lady
@Barbara: Cormey’s a lock to stay on for… HEY, WHY DID YOU SLAP ME?
schrodinger's cat
@WaterGirl: Drama Queen, catchy beat, hot Sid. MTV meets Bollywood meets Grease, in this number.
Major Major Major Major
@Punchy: uh, their analysis is based on polls
Iowa Old Lady
That list of potential cabinet members is so outlandish that I’m having trouble believing someone isn’t playing a joke.
D58826
@Patricia Kayden: And Putin as National Security advisor/CIA director. I’m sure he is up to doing both jobs
different-church-lady
@Felonius Monk: They’re going to pivot directly into UNFAITHFUL ELECTORS!!! mode. Bank it, libtards!
Amir Khalid
I can very easily imagine some 22nd century historian writing a book about President Trump’s Cabinet line-up: Team of Wackadoodles.
different-church-lady
@Waldo: Oh you kidder — Trump isn’t going to give them any more checks.
Mike J
Jason Sparks @sparksjls 24 minutes ago Orlando, FL
Whoa, Florida: “36 percent of the 907,000 Latinos who have voted this year didn’t vote at all in 2012.”
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: those two fuckers in Washington state. I don’t know how a reporter can interview them without punching them.
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: The NYT has hated hated hated the Clintons since the early 90s. Why, I don’t know, but it’s pretty thoroughly embedded in their culture, without any need for an assist from Trump.
different-church-lady
@Eric U.:
The irony here being that article was by… (wait for it…) Nate Silver.
Punchy
@Major Major Major Major: So do I assume there’s no movement due to no new polls this close to the election? Or that polls themselves didnt move? The former is reasonable, the latter is impossible to believe.
And yes, I do find myself asking myself, “Self, why do you fucking care if it reads 84% or 88%?”. This election has messed with me.
Sigh.
sunny raines
try “republican”
also works for the locus of ignorant, hypocrite, bigot, misogynist, violent, authoritarian, clown.
different-church-lady
@Mike J: [does quick math…] Yeah, 325k is quite plausibly plenty to tip Florida.
Dork
@Mike J: Doesn’t “Latinos” in FL cover “Cubans”, which historically vote GOP? So I’m not sure this uptick in Latino voters can be assumed to greatly help the Hillbot. Of course, I cannot see why Cubans would be so arsed to suddenly vote for the first time for the Mango Mussolini.
dmsilev
@Punchy: That’s their poll-driven analysis. The polls haven’t changed much in the last few days, so neither has the prediction.
At this point, though, what those probabilities are really saying is what chance that particular model has of there being a systematic error in all the polling. If all the polls are more or less correct, Clinton wins. If the polls are (for instance) missing a substantial increase in the Hispanic vote, Clinton wins big. If the polls are missing the “missing white votes”, well then maybe Trump wins. Sam Wang and HuffPo are confident that the polls are correct, the Upshot (NYT) is fairly confident that they’re correct, and Nate Silver thinks that the uncertainties dominate over everything else.
hovercraft
Steve Schale’s Final Recap of Florida
So as long as everyone gets out to vote tomorrow, we look to be in good shape. GOTV
bystander
@gogol’s wife: Wel, you have to admit that Trump didn’t resort to bringing in major stars to campaign with him. Tonight’s appearance with Springsteen may cause some real butthurt at the Times. Let’s hope.
Major Major Major Major
@Punchy: at this point any model worth its salt (so basically not 538) is going to essentially disregard last-day polling fluctuations because of various weightings and averages. One day of polls shouldn’t change a projection much at all in the first place; doubly so when a significant portion of people have already voted.
catclub
@The Moar You Know:
It really is amazing how different California is from the rest of the country on this. something like 66-23 in favor of Hillary.
The rest of the country is closer to 55-45.
dmsilev
@different-church-lady: No, that came from Nate Cohn at the NYT.
D58826
@MisterForkbeard: But But, according to a Trump surrogate Jay-z has a video where protester throw a mozel tov cocktail at the police. Ovey. That one almost makes up for all the rest of this horrible political season.
J R in WV
@Patricia Kayden:
Who would buy beer in the bathroom? Yuck!! Even in an emergency of losing NO !
Barbara
@gogol’s wife: His editorializing on the concert for Hillary (which was, OMFG, a brilliant strategic move on the part of her campaign poobahs) felt perfunctory and out of place and marred what was actually a pretty interesting view of Beyonce’s performance at the CMA with the Dixie Chicks. How each of them was a subversive presence at the CMA in their own way. I am guessing that being from Texas has made Beyonce highly familiar with country music. Any demonstration of that kind of familiarity seems to shock a lot of whites. Gasp! We live in the same society! When, in fact, it is totally understandable that Beyonce (or Bon Jovi) can easily slot herself into a country music performance. It raises the possibility that white people don’t actually “own” country music.
different-church-lady
@peach flavored shampoo: OT, but one of my favorite Goon Show exchanges goes like this:
SEAGOON: Where is the piano?
MORIARTY: It’s in the Louvre.
SEAGOON: [pause…] Strange tastes you have…
scott (the other one)
@schrodinger’s cat: Yup. Younger voters have already learned that, generally speaking, they’re not getting their first choice in life, so they make the best of what they can get. (Anecdotal evidence, yadda.)
liberal
@Punchy:
You’re wrong. The consensus among people who really study these things is that that announcement would have at most a small effect, definitely not “a few percentage points”.
hovercraft
Louie Gohmert Is Livid That Hillary Clinton Won’t Face Charges
He could be brought in as the new Director of the FBI, to clean house, as he says there is precedent for firing Comey, and Louie knows what needs to be done.
different-church-lady
@dmsilev: I plead insanity. Can I go to my room now?
The Moar You Know
@Punchy: Have you ever even met a Republican?
Comey’s chickenshit Sunday announcement isn’t going to change one goddamn thing.
Major Major Major Major
@J R in WV: I am now of the opinion that “an emergency” is the plural noun for “losing”. A covey of quail, an emergency of losing…
@liberal: well that doesn’t sound very entertaining.
Lizzy L
I’m signed up to do two hours of phone calls for Hilz today, one late morning hour, one mid-afternoon hour. I’m pretty confident in the win, except for that small knot of nerves that keeps freaking out. It pops up like The Joker and screams Trump Wins! at me, and I throw rocks at it and yell “Back in your cave, troll!” I spent the weekend doing Other Stuff, which was very restorative and reminded me that the world keeps turning w/o my hand on the crank.
Roger Moore
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
They also stole a lot of stuff that was tied down, like Austria and the Sudetenland.
Face
Unfuckinbelievable. So the guy who ostensibly owns his rep based on rigorous statistical analysis and proprietary 11-dimensional ANOVA and whisker-box plots is now going The Full Sergeant Schultz? What a f’in cowardly shitbag. Nothing says “mathematical modeling” like “uncertainties, bitch”.
Somebody get Mr. Silver a nice bag of salted dicks to devour.
Calouste
@Barbara: Good musicians can play any kind of music, they just don’t always choose to. Heck, I’m just listening to the Clash doing gospel. And of course country is in general not one of the most technically challenging kinds of music.
Major Major Major Major
@Face: the entire internet has been emailing him salted dicks all weekend so we’re already on that.
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
Jess is the wizard with her text message spells that cause all of us to jump into action and send all our money!
Punchy
@The Moar You Know: It doesn’t have to turn Rs into Ds. It just needs to turn “unlikely to vote” Ds into “likely to vote” Ds. Isn’t that really the biggest issue with Comey’s first letter, in that it made the less enthusiastic voters less likely to cast votes for HRC?
amk
Calouste
@Face: A poster at Sam Wang’s side mentioned that s/he has gone through all of Silver predictions for Senate and President in 2012 and 2014 where the favorite had less than 90% chance to win. The average chance to win Silver gave them was 75%, but 89% of them actually won. It’s pretty clear that Silver is overestimating the uncertainties. No way Trump has a 13% chance to win Delaware.
Btw, both HuffPo and DKos have predictions, and they are both more certain (i.e. higher percentages for the predicted winners) than Sam Wang.
Matt McIrvin
@Punchy: There’s a huge storm of polls landing right now. But most of them have survey periods that go back at least three or four days, ending yesterday. Most of the polling would have been before Comey’s “never mind”, which hit the news yesterday. We’re going to run out of time before most of them can fully accommodate the effect of that news; we’ll see it in the election returns if there’s anything.
And I think the NYT model mostly uses state polls, which for any given state are less frequent than national ones, so there’s a greater lag in state aggregates.
Major Major Major Major
@Punchy: Comey’s letter didn’t do shit to Hillary’s vote share. Might have a minor impact down-ballot. He should still be strung up by his fingernails though.
@MomSense: I hope Trump rolls a 1 on his voter intimidation check
(THIS IS A HUMOROUS REFERENCE)
Eric U.
@Punchy: one thing I learned when I was dabbling in day trading is that investors are really bad at predicting the future and almost always overreact. I made quite a bit of money from that understanding, in combination with my ability to figure out what stupid people were going to do with their money. But I don’t put much weight on markets or gamblers when it comes to their reaction to political news. I think the markets reacting so strongly is funny though.
Anoniminous
@Punchy:
The only known affect of Comey’s letter was to give Clinton her biggest funding day since the convention. Everything else is speculation.
catclub
@Calouste:
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
Major Major Major Major
@Anoniminous:
Null hypothesis is looking pretty good actually.
imonlylurking
@Major Major Major Major: Who would be the DM? I bet my roommate still has her Dice.
catclub
@Anoniminous: ahem.
Google finance headline:
karen marie
@Major Major Major Major: I am not understanding all the Silver/538 hate. I have appreciated that he’s been cautious in analyzing the numbers. This election needs super turnout. Excessive optimism depresses the vote. People shrug and say “I don’t need to vote.” As we all know, elections are often won by small margins.
Punchy
@Matt McIrvin: Damn good point. I forgot to realize that polls released today would have closed likely prior to yesterday’s announcement. Thanks for that tip.
catclub
@Mike J: That sounds like a big Biden deal.
catclub
@karen marie:
It is probably the opposite. Everybody wants to be on the bandwagon when its winning.
Ruckus
@Iowa Old Lady:
It isn’t like the top of their ticket isn’t a big joke either. At least it would be if it was funny in the least.
Poopyman
Musical accompaniment to whatever posts pop up late afternoon/early evening.
Major Major Major Major
@karen marie: Wang actually had a post this weekend about how thinking you’re winning increases turnout. At any rate, for me it’s because Silver’s model is opaque (ALWAYS a red flag when there are open-source alternatives that are better), seems pretty shitty, his website is clearly a clickbait factory, and people cite him like he’s, one, the only person doing this, and two, the most accurate, when neither are true.
@imonlylurking: y’all can borrow my dice if you need, I bought two pounds. No really you can just buy pounds of dice.
Doug would probably be a pretty fun DM. AL could do drawings. I’ll bet Tom would be good too.
Tractarian
Christie will become super-irate at being left off the leaked cabinet list and will retaliate by leaking something damaging about the campaign today…
dmsilev
@karen marie: I think ‘cautious’ is the wrong word to use for 538’s analysis. Cautious implies doing as little as possible to the raw data and hedging your bets. Instead, the 538 model explicitly adjusts the raw polling numbers that they use, both for “house effects” (some polling companies tend to produce results that lean D, others that lean R) and a “trend” adjustment. The latter especially is an issue, because it tends to amplify swings in the polls which could just be random fluctuations. He also assumes a large amount of correlation between “similar” states, and also weights for national polls. Basically, he’s taking a kitchen-sink approach to building his model, and it’s difficult to tell from the outside whether the plumber accidentally crossed the hot-water supply and drain lines.
Anoniminous
@Major Major Major Major:
Yup. When the history of this election is written one of the topics will be just how little influence the Infotainment Mediums had on the outcome.
@catclub:
See. Told ya! :-)
Bill_D
@Woodrowfan: That would be a very small slice of Boomers. The voting age was still 21, so you would have had to been born by November 5, 1947 to have voted in that election.
JMG
@Bill_D: Correct. I was born in 1949, and the 1970 midterms were my first vote.
Major Major Major Major
@dmsilev: whereas Wang does, like, three things, with a public codebase. Audits are good.
@Anoniminous: comPLETELY agree. With the exception of one week after phlegmgazi I haven’t even been particularly worried.
Anoniminous
@Woodrowfan:
In 1968 the favorite candidate of males under the age of 30 was George Wallace.
The Moar You Know
@Punchy: Comey’s first letter didn’t change any of the essential polling. Why would the second?
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major: My suspicion is people are mixing up feeling like you’re ahead with feeling like it’s a blowout. If you’ve got the edge in a race that’s contested, you get pumped. If you think, “Yeah, this is in the bag,” you slack off.
different-church-lady
@Anoniminous: I think the flaw in your theory would be that Trump probably doesn’t get the nomination without infotainment media.
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: I think the marginal voters in the Hillary coalition (Latinos, millennials, etc.) are plenty motivated to kick Trump in the shins and double-tap his campaign just to make sure.
Ruckus
@catclub:
It shouldn’t be all that amazing.
First, we are a very diverse population.
Second, we saw what the repubs could do to a state a long time ago and have managed to throw most of them out. And the state is better off for it and it’s obvious to any that want to see it, not so much to anyone with their heads in the rear orifice. Even some of the olds notice that CA is better off, much, much less smog (visibility used to get down below 4-5 miles more days than not decades ago. Now it’s a rare day when I can even see any and there are a shit ton more people living here now.) We see the effects of better living through real democracy every day.
trollhattan
@Patricia Kayden:
We’re all set to keep sending the equally toxic Tom McClintock east, so it’s not all puppies, bud and cabernet from the sunshine state. But if Issa gets more time to spend with his millions I’m all in for hosting the reunion party.
Larkspur
@Lizzy L: Nicely put, Lizzy L. Thx.
Lizzy L
@trollhattan: If Issa gets kicked to the curb I’m drinking TWO beers Tuesday night!
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
How can you string him up by his fingernails if you’ve already pulled them out, one by one? And there are other body parts that stringing up by may be more effective.
trollhattan
@Tractarian:
Christie never had a chance because there was that time he hugged Obama and Kenya cooties are forever.
Roger Moore
@Punchy:
It’s not clear that it did anything more than make less enthusiastic Democrats less likely to respond to pollsters. There was a very good article on this at Yougov, where they argue that a lot of the big swings in the polls are phantoms based on recent news making people less prone to respond. They claim that when they correct by weighting their polls according to reported presidential preference in the previous election, most of those big swings disappear.
Terry chay
@karen marie: as i’ve been saying for weeks now: there is no evidence that optimism depresses the vote, and if it does, it is more likely to depress vote for the on running behind.
Roger Moore
@karen marie:
[Citation needed]
JDM
@amk: Christie was just there to fetch fast food.
Patricia Kayden
@Calouste:
I’m intrigued. I didn’t know The Clash had a lot of reggae influences and songs until just this year. Interesting group.
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know:
I don’t think we know that definitively at all.
amk
hueyplong
These picks give off a Hitler-and-Speer’s-Berlin-building-designs vibe. Nate Silver placed the chances of their winning via superweapons at 32.2%
MuckJagger
Patricia Kayden’s comment at #1 reminded me of this: I wrote about ten of these last year and posted them on Facebook. Even though I was having fun with it, I gave it up because no matter how absurd I got, it seemed like they paled in comparison to what was going on with the *real* campaign.
********************
July 13, 2015
The Honorable Donald Trump
New York City, New York
Dear Mr. Trump:
As one of your most fervent supporters since Day One, I note with awe your recent rise to the top of some Presidential polls. You alone are the one candidate who can restore this country to the ideals that exist in my head.
I suppose some days you must look back and think how easy it would have been to quit after your first, second, third or fourth bankruptcies. But you didn’t! Likewise, how easy it would have been to quit after your first or second marriages. But you didn’t! You got right back on that horse! (Please don’t think I am comparing the lovely Mrs. Trump III to a horse! I’m just kidding!! When you take the Oath of Office in 2017, maybe she will become known as the “First Babe”!)
I have a plan that you may be very interested in. I propose an “Avengers of the Republican Party,” with YOU as Captain America! If we can convince the other candidates to sit out the nominating process and make this amazing display of unity, we have a much better chance of avoiding a H-I-double-hockey-sticks-e-r-y presidency, if you get my drift.
I will admit I haven’t figured out places for everyone, but I’m sure you’ll agree that this list takes our candidates’ respective strengths (“the good guys”) and shoves them mercilessly in our opponents’ faces (“the bad guys”).
The President: Donald Trump
The Vice-President: Sarah Palin
Secretary of State: Ted Cruz
Attorney General: Joe Arpaio
Secretary of the Treasury: Rick Scott
Secretary of Education: Mike Huckabee
Secretary of Defense: Ted Nugent (ROCK N ROLLYEAH!!!!)
Secretary of Transportation: Chris Christie
Secretary of the Interior: Mark Sanford
Secretary of Commerce: Carly Fiorina
Health and Human Services: Ben Carson
Secretary of Agriculture: Cliven Bundy
Department of Labor: Rand Paul
Of course, when you have a bench as deep as ours, even if one candidate can’t serve there’s a mirth of candidates who can take his place. For example, the young Italian boy, Mario Rubio, or any of the twenty or thirty ex-Governors who are running. Or even Chuck Norris!
In some, I hope you’ll give this proposal serious consideration, for it is only through you and you alone that we can truly finish America.
Very truly yours,
Mike Perry
P.S. I just thought up the following slogan, you don’t have to pay me for it. How about a couple of passes to one of your golf courses? Or letting me say “Your Fired” when your show comes back on the air?
Anyway, the slogan is this: “Vote Donald, and think V-D!” Pretty good, huh?
Larkspur
@MomSense: Huh. I thought Jess was my friend, you know, like the person specially assigned to me for updates and money-giving. Now you tell me Jess texts to everybody? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve ignored Jess’s most recent texts cause I’ve given all I can at the moment.
Anoniminous
@different-church-lady:
H’mmm. Point.
My guess is Trump is the culmination of the decades of RW propaganda coupled with the knowledge in the RW this is their last shot because the Reagan Revolution has ended. Trump is the GOP without the Lee Atwater camouflage. Trump is what the GOP always believed and wanted, deep in their gnarly little souls, and were unable to say in public. If this is anywhere near accurate Trump’s media coverage only confirmed existing trends.
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major: It’s really weird, isn’t it? Treat a group of people like they’re sub-humans who should be exiled and they turn on you!
Patricia Kayden
@Tractarian: Like how his subordinates leaked that he was deeply involved in Bridge Gate? Hmmmm. If I were Christie, I’d find other ways to spend my time than leaking info about Trump. Trump will be perfectly fine after November 8th. Christie not so much.
Major Major Major Major
OT: From the radio (they have little listener stories every morning):
Punchy
@Roger Moore: I completely agree, and have been wondering a lot about this. That “swings” are nothing more then likely Dems unwilling to answer their phone and talk to a pollster, while energized Repubs are excited to proclaim their loyalty. And vice-versa when Trump does something stupid. However, I had a feeling that the younger people, who only know Clinton as a SoS, and perhaps as a fierce Obama opponent in ’07/08, might have thrown in the towel upon hearing more ostensibly shitty Clinton news. If that’s an incorrect assumption, I’m happy to find this out.
Emerald
@burnspbesq: n@gogol’s wife: k@The Moar You Know:
Howdy neighbor!
BruceFromOhio
@SenyorDave: Those who have been snorting the fumes of the dumpster fire for the last six months DO. NOT. CARE.
It’s like Agent Smith from the matrix films – the interesting is not in building, it’s in destroying. Everything.
Patricia Kayden
@MuckJagger: Do you have a Facebook friend named John Miller or John Barron? Trump may have read your list as a recommendation rather than as mockery.
Major Major Major Major
I can’t even figure out Trump’s character class, just that he’s chaotic evil.
ETA: fighter? Barbarian maybe, they’re illiterate as a class feature (though they can learn to read).
karen marie
@dmsilev: All I know is he’s been more often right than wrong, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Major Major Major Major:
You play Arms Law you say? Moar dice!
Peale
Yeah. Nothing says “maintaining peaceful, working relationships with our allies; building bridges with our adversaries” like “Newt Gingrich”.
Barbara
@Patricia Kayden: Christie’s subordinates did not leak anything. They testified under oath. Indeed, they would probably have done a lot better for themselves if they had leaked, and certainly if they had cooperated with the Department of Justice.
Major Major Major Major
@karen marie:
So have many coins.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: I think the narrowing we saw did have some contribution from the Comey letter making CLINTON SCANDAL the overwhelming focus of the news again–but most of it was probably the other side of the coin, that Trump was once again doing fewer publicly embarrassing things than usual.
And if that NYT article can be believed, part of that was that Kellyanne Conway finally yanked his Twitter access. And she may have gotten the leverage to do that by telling Trump that the Comey letter meant he’d win if he just behaved for a week and a half. But I think the slide actually started a few days before that, which suggests to me that a lot of it was just there were no more debates and no opportunities for Trump to act stupid in front of a TV audience of millions.
hovercraft
I’m not sure if this was posted, DNRT.
Cokie Roberts: Only ‘Birth Control’ Could Control Latino Vote For GOP (AUDIO)
Roberts responded to backlash about her comment, saying that she was just pointing out how many “wonderful Latinos” are in America.
Jeffro
Off to do a little work, take Fro Jr to DOCTOR STRANGE, then circle back for the Kaine/Biden rally with the whole family! Fired Up! Ready To Go!
G
O
T
V!!!
Just One More Canuck
@MuckJagger: “a mirth of candidates”? I like it!
“A prison of candidates”?
“A Klan of candidates’?
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: yeah, even if all you do is squint at the graphs it’s obvious the ‘slide’ (really reversion to the mean) started before Comey.
BruceFromOhio
@Lizzy L: I admire your fortitude! Thank you for you effort, all will be well.
GrandJury
@Matt McIrvin: But he is still acting stupid at every rally.
The twitter thing was definitely hurting him. Sad to see them finally wise up.
Terry chay
@Major Major Major Major: but Donald Trump is DM! @dungeonsdonald on twitter
Peale
@hovercraft: what was she even on about? What a foolish “joke” to make.
karen marie
@Roger Moore: my language was imprecise. I should have said “overconfidence” or “complacency.”
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Mike J:
@hovercraft:
Our new troll GrandJury says that hispanics won’t vote any more than other elections, and that even if they do, it won’t matter because reasons.
catclub
@catclub: Google finance headline now:
Terry chay
@Patricia Kayden: we didn’t do anything, the CAGOP did it to themselves. national party GOP earlier and in microcosm.
different-church-lady
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
It would be nice if, going forward, Zander could piss off some smarter people…
Villago Delenda Est
Greatest collection of scum and villainy since Berlin in ’33.
karen marie
@Betty Cracker: There have been anecdata reports on twitter of wavering Clinton supporters casting early ballots for Trump after the first Comey letter.
catclub
@hovercraft: She should not have to apologize. her point was that illegal immigration is not what is boosting Latino populations. It is people who are already citizens.
Lurker Extraordinaire
@hovercraft: WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK.
MCA1
@different-church-lady: Good point. Not to mention that with an actual press that does something other than chase the hot takes and beat the horserace to death, we would have had a public vetting of Drumpf. I don’t care if he loses by 20 points nationally – he would have lost by more had there been enough attention span in the media to cover the fact that HE HASN’T RELEASED HIS FUCKING TAX RETURNS; or that his businesses inevitably and invariably, every one of them, end in either bankruptcy or lawsuits; or that he’s a thrice married self-admitted philandering pig, at best, and a Humperdink-like pervert, at worst; that he was the chosen protégé of Roy f’ing Cohn, one of the most despicable actors of late 20th century America; or that his last two campaign managers have been closely tied to Russian interference in Ukraine and the head of a xenophobic, nationalist and racist internet hotbed; or any number of other things.
In any other campaign, every one of those things above would have led to an intense spotlight and a feeding frenzy that stretched out for weeks and irreparably damaged the politician in question, leaving them as a zombie candidate. Kurt Eichenwald’s article about Trump’s international business ties alone would, in any responsible media environment, destroyed him. Not to mention that a functioning press would have squeezed Ryan and McConnell and whoever else relentlessly about their mealy-mouthed fake repudiations and bullshit half-evasions and re-un-non-endorsement garbage until they got a straight answer.
Here, whether it was from the dizzying array of choices on the giant menu, or the twitter-fu that Trump used to get everyone talking about something else every five minutes, or that the both-sides virus has spread so far it’s infected the entire body, or numerous other possibilities, he STILL has not been vetted in the public domain. Whatever the cause, though, it’s a complete and utter failure of the media, which has helped this most manifestly unqualified candidate of all time shore up at least 35-40% of the vote. There is no question in my mind that whatever result we see tomorrow night will be significantly better for Trump than it ever should have been, and that will be so because of our media, who have normalized his despicable behavior in such a way that millions of people who normally would have self-shamed themselves into not pulling the lever for him will instead be able to vote for him.
BruceFromOhio
@karen marie: … balanced with anecdata of housefuls of Dem voters mailing in early ballots FOR Clinton … there 3 in mine alone!!
Major Major Major Major
@Terry chay: you know what the problem with Eberron–which is a disaster by the way–is? We’re getting undercut by goblin labor pouring in over the lightning rails, it seems like there’s a new terrorist attack every time we get together. People are being murdered in the streets. And–and there’s this group of people who are very smart, very international, these elves, they control the media, they control the gold supply…
Matt McIrvin
@GrandJury: Stupid at a rally is much more contained, in terms of exposure, than stupid in the national TV debate. The worst moments get some national coverage, but everyone in the country isn’t watching them live.
hovercraft
@Peale:
She was on NPR with Tucker Carlson I think, and he was saying we need to shut down the borders to keep hispanics out, and that was response Cookie’s. “The call is coming from inside the house”, so to speak.
Latino J
I can’t imagine that group of egos working together. First, you know none of them respect Trump. They’ll be there to run their own fiefdoms however the heck they see fit.
The prospect of Rudy as AG is terrifying. What’s he going to do, he can’t run off all the “undesirables” out of the United States like did he NYC? Are we going to start shipping off the people of Appalachia and the Deep South to Central America to make room in those areas to build trendy housing for young professionals who can’t afford New England and the West coast?
And I wonder how stop and frisk will work to bring down the crime rate in Meth-headland and Opiod-ville? Those folks have NRA protected rights, you know.
BruceFromOhio
@Lurker Extraordinaire: It’s Cokie Roberts, that should be explanation enough. Why anyone, anywhere, pays any attention to what she writes, says, or does is a mystery.
@hovercraft: Why NPR pleas for donations go in the recycle box for $100, Alex.
bemused senior
@…now I try to be amused: worst wing.
Peale
@Latino J: What’s the equivalent of 145th street for the USA. No rednecks allowed below 145th street.
Terry chay
@different-church-lady: nate COHN, not nate silver. stop giving credit for good reporting in statistics to a fraud. kthxbai
MisterForkbeard
@Larkspur: Jess texts everyone, but she’s everyone’s friend. Jess Loves Us All. :)
MaxUtil
Could we set up some sort of “Truman Show” arrangement and drop Trump into it, telling he actually did win? Let the Trump presidency play out safely to serve as amusement and warning. You know all the other world leaders would be willing to drop in and play themselves just for laughs.
different-church-lady
@MCA1: My point was even simpler than that: without the three-ring circus atmosphere of cable news, Trump does not have a stage in the first place. They didn’t merely fail to vet him, they turned him into the star of their hot new breakout reality TV show.
MomSense
@Larkspur:
See how magical Jess is. She makes us each feel like she is our bff.
Latino J
@hovercraft:
I’m not kidding. The GOP is about to figure out that ?? Puerto Rico is an island of 100 by 30 miles with a mountainous center that has 3.5 million inhabitants with a constantly growing population that it can’t really support. And every person born there is automatically a US citizen.
And every time Trump said Mexican, we heard “Puerto Rican.” Cause we know – Mexican, Dominican, Puerto Rican – we’re all just Cans to people with his beliefs.
japa21
A ray of sunshine. Clinton has this in the bag and I think that the Senate is in good shape. More House seats will be won than expected, though I do doubt enough to take control.
The old maxim is the more people who vote, the more the Dems win. There are two big factors that determine the number of people who vote.
1. GOTV. There is little doubt the Dems have a major advantage in that regard. It has shown up in early voting and it will show up tomorrow.
2. Weather. Tomorrow is supposed to have great weather through most of the country so that will not be a deterrent to voting. People keep bringing up Brexit. Well everything points to weather being a major factor which depressed the vote in the London area, where the strongest “stay” voters were.
So everybody cheer up, do what needs to be done, GOTV and then relax.
Betty Cracker
@catclub: I’m sure that’s what she meant, if only because it’s the only explanation that makes sense in the context (there’s audio at TPM). But it wouldn’t be a bad idea to apologize for the awkward and offensive phrasing. She’s a dolt who is bad at her job. Maybe she could apologize for that as well.
MisterForkbeard
@Major Major Major Major: I think Trump is a good example of Neutral Evil. He believes in Law to the extent that it benefits him, and disregards it as he likes otherwise.
MomSense
@MaxUtil:
I love that idea. Trump would be so pleased with the attention he’d never ever leave the dome.
dmsilev
@MaxUtil: He could sequester himself in Trump Tower and pretend to be President there. That could work.
Major Major Major Major
@MisterForkbeard: Fair point. But we still need a class. Bard, perhaps?
hovercraft
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
It should explain to us why all of a sudden GOP are all over my TV saying that there is a real possibility that the last 18 months have indeed been a wasted effort by the Orange Shitgibbon. He actually lost the election on the day he slid down the escalator and called Mexicans murderers and rapists.
But I guess it wants to wait and see the final results. Just keep denying reality for another 30 hours and then we can all just continue to ignore @shomi.
hovercraft
@catclub:
Her point is valid, her delivery, not so much.
Matt McIrvin
@Latino J: Several weeks ago he did a rally in New Hampshire at which he was talking about Latinos in the Southwest as if they were some kind of anthropological mystery: “Hispanics, or Latinos as they like to be called in that area.”
And I remember thinking that at that moment he was a 40-minute drive from Lawrence, Mass. which is 74% Latino (Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, mostly). It might as well have been another planet.
Matt McIrvin
@hovercraft:
He couldn’t have gotten anywhere without that, though. It was also the day he won the nomination and came within shouting distance of the presidency.
And this is the trap that the Republican Party finds itself in.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@hovercraft:
Moanin Joe had a two representatives on this morning from America’s Voices (I think) – a Latino organizing group – who said that Florida is where the huge Latino turnout has blown even them away – there’s a degree of motivation they’ve never seen before from previously inactive voters, and from new voters – ie., the Puerto Ricans who are highly motivated Dem voters. I guess sensing someone is an existential threat to you and your family will do that.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: Well-stated and I completely agree.
Patricia Kayden
@hovercraft: I had tuned into listen to NPR this morning on my drive in to work but immediately turned the station when I heard that Tucker Carlson was going to comment on the Elections. When did NPR start catering to the likes of Carlson? Not one minute of my time will be spent listening to that racist.
Peale
@hovercraft: I guess that’s fine. Sort of. No. Not really. Still, I’m glad she called Tucker out on his big bad border concern. At the heart of that concern is the knowledge that they blew it big time with the Hispanics. They had 50 years to make nice. But seriously, can we actually have a discussion about what the immigration levels should be without interjecting whether it helps the GOP or the Democrats more?
Villago Delenda Est
@hovercraft: With Tucker Carlson? She caught the derp from him, or intensified her already preexisting derp condition.
MisterForkbeard
@Major Major Major Major: I’d prefer Warlock from 4th Edition. He’s clearly made a pact with some kind of infernal power. It also has a primary stat of Charisma, which I guess works.
I mean, I keep hearing that Trump is really charismatic, but he’s always seemed transparently smarmy and manipulative to me. But I suppose this fits. Maybe he’s just a BAD warlock with a good PR team.
SRW1
So, Boris Johnson foreign secretary in the UK and Newt Gingrich SoS in the US.
Maybe Marine Le Pen should let it quietly be known that she’s considering her father for the role of chief diplomat should she become president of France and Putin could be persuaded to elevate Zhirinovsky to the post in Russia.
Would probably end in tears, but the ratings for the ensuing reality show would be spectacular.
gwangung
@Betty Cracker: I’ve had more than my fill of people who mean well but still step on my feet through their own clumsiness. I still appreciate the apology—it helps to nail it in their heads, they need to do better.
burnspbesq
Talk about playing a long game.
The now-increasingly-likely Clinton win in Florida is being driven to a noticeable extent by first-time voting by immigrants from Puerto Rico, fleeing the collapse of PR’s economy.
The collapse of PR’s economy was driven to a significant extent by the out-migration of pharmaceutical manufacturing jobs after the tax incentives given to US Big Pharma under Internal Revenue Code Section 936 expired in 2006.
Guess who signed the legislation repealing Section 936?
Bill Clinton.
If Big Dawg had a handlebar mustache, he’d be twirling it like Snidely Whiplash right about now .
ETA: of course I’m just playin.’
amk
@Matt McIrvin: A less than 20% probability was never a shouting distance. Not even close.
Trentrunner
@MaxUtil: I would watch the hell out of this.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if some version of this (much cheaper) isn’t precisely what Trump does post-election.
Gin & Tonic
@SRW1:
There’d be nobody left to watch the show.
Brachiator
The only thing I know for certain is that Chris Christie heads up the Trump transition team. But Halloween is over and I not going to get scared over this weird speculation about Trump’s cabinet.
Right now, I don’t expect Trump to be elected (please oh please oh please). Ask me again about this Nightmare Dream Team on Wednesday.
Slappy Kincaid
@VOR: I think he should name Adam West as secretary of defense. He could even appoint him a sidekick!
Peale
@Matt McIrvin: Honestly, I think he lost the election during the first or second GOP debate when he brought up his cock size. He may have won the GOP nomination with his “Too many immigrants and we don’t know who they are. Disaster Diaster Everywhere” tirade. But he put a ceiling on himself with his own cock. No way was a candidate who couldn’t filter himself in public going to win more votes than Romney.
Major Major Major Major
@MisterForkbeard: I was thinking 4e warlock too, actually. I think an evil bard might be a better fit, though–he puts on performances that make people act differently than they otherwise would. Sort of. Some are just deplorable. Work with me, here.
“Almost(-ish) winning the American presidency”–coming about as close as he did–is the level of competence and success you want in a BBEG, though. Enough to scare the players, probably not going to win but at least a somewhat plausible chance, still makes it feel like a real victory, etc.
gvg
@different-church-lady:
I am going to disagree. I think it’s OK to report it matter of factly, because I am relieved they actually report it. This is something that should be reported, voters should have these indications, and the media has been very bad about reporting the facts. However, I do think they should be reporting a lot more facts plus what they mean, but I am not going to object to actual reporting.
I don’t know if it would be helpful to scream like their hair was on fire. I find that very off putting, and its part of why I never watch FOX.
Supposedly many of the new voter Hispanics in Florida are Puerto Ricans who have immigrated recently because of the Islands bad economy. I haven’t seen stats for new voters who moved from elsewhere.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Turned on MSNBC for quick hit to feed my addiction, hoping maybe Andrea Mitchell had locked herself in the bathroom and Hugh Hewitt had melted in the sun, got a pleasant couple of minutes of Obama bringing it in MI, reminding people of that whole “I saved the fucking auto industry you dumb fucks”, that last part was implied. He’s as good as I’ve ever seen him.
And now Andrea Mitchell is asking Ruth Marcus (a Harvard Law grad? really? I wonder when the cinderblock fell on her head) about…. emails.
Timurid
@Chris:
The Ministry of Love needs good people.
SenyorDave
I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this about a person involved in an election, but I hope Trump is miserable for the rest of his life after he loses. He is almost as close to a worthless human as possible.
hovercraft
There must be pigs in the sky, locusts, frogs.
Goodbye fellow Juicers it’s the end of the world.
Glenn Beck: ‘Obama Made Me A Better Man’
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This surprises me
Shana
@MaxUtil: re: Truman Show for Trump: only if the cameras aren’t actually on.
BTW, purely anecdotal, and I know I’ve talked about this before but, I worked for the local Dems this spring handing out welcome letters from our committee (headed by a naturalized citizen) at several naturalization ceremonies. Without exception, people were thrilled to learn about us and volunteered that they were thrilled to be able to vote against Trump and it was a part of why they wanted to become citizens this year.
dmsilev
@hovercraft: Considering the low baseline starting point, it wouldn’t take much to make Beck ‘a better man’.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Poopyman
@hovercraft:
Umma just leave that there.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Trentrunner: It was pointed out to me that board room set for The Apprentice is set up to resemble the president’s briefing room down to Trump sitting in a oversize chair in the middle of the table. Easy to see the next Trump reality show being “The Executive” with Trump playing fantasy president.
Peale
@SenyorDave: Look at his life? And remember, the chances of him not being miserable even when he was wealthy were slim to none. His outlook on life, finding disasters everywhere, going into histrionics over the existence of PEOPLE. Plus he hangs out with unhappy people, which limits the chances of finding bliss tremendously. it is not possible that he will ever be happy for more than a fleeting moment.
Tazj
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Of course they discussed emails!, because the emails! are the most important topic in the history of forever!
I’m taking it as good news that I haven’t heard as much from Jess lately. I don’t know if it means anything but I’m choosing to be believe it’s good news.
pamelabrown53
@hovercraft: #267
Seriously, hovercraft, reading the TPM link to Glenn Beck felt like an out of body experience.
Also, too. someone waaay up thread was questioning the early Latino vote in Fl because of the preponderance of Cuban republicans. The fact is that as the older Cubans die, they are being replaced by dem leaning Cubanos. Plus, the stats are emphasizing first time and low propensity voters.
trollhattan
@hovercraft:
It’s too easy to beat up on NPR but for fvck’s sake, why do they have to “balance” centrist-on-a-good day Cokie with a string of neocon blowhards like Jonah Goldberg and today’s Tucker the bowtie Carlson? Do they understand they’re legitimizing those dudes with no regard to their vile histories? Do they understand Cokie ain’t a Democrat?
sukabi
@Waldo: checks? There haven’t been any checks for the last 6 weeks.k
Rommie
If we are talking D&D – Pathfinder is what I currently play – Trump had his brains sucked out by an Intellect Devourer somewhere along the line. It’s similar to the idea that his hair is actually a brain-controlling alien, but, in the end, his body is just a puppet for some evil entity.
If that cabinet became reality – would NATO have grounds to kick out the US as a clear and present danger? A country, with more than enough nukes to End It All, run by crazy people, and it’s NOT Russia?
pamelabrown53
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: #270
Re the NYC panhandler: ” Give me a dollar or I’ll vote for Trump”. Wouldn’t be surprised if he has a record haul that will sustain him for months!
Bill E Pilgrim
Rudy: “Lock her up! Lock her up! Everyone, altogether! Lock her up! Lock her up!”
Excuse me Mr Guiliani? You’ve been appointed Attorney General.
I wonder if he’d even pause the chanting while he got sworn in.
Roger Moore
@karen marie:
The problem is that those kinds of problems are hard to diagnose except in retrospect. If your results trail expectations, you got overconfident or complacent; if you exceeded expectations, your supporters were energized by the prospect of victory. Unless somebody can show me a way of telling in advance when we’re moving from one to the other, I think they’re just narrative tools to explain events post hoc.
dedc79
Michael Tracey is sprinting past Fournier, Cillizza, Halperin, Mitchell, Noonan, Brooks into first place for my World’s Worst “Journalist” award:
And yes, this supposed liberal BernieBro is now writing for The American Conservative and his twitter feed has become a favored stomping ground for deplorables.
Major Major Major Major
@Rommie: I did not know there was such a creature in the bestiary. That would work. There would still have to be something to explain how he got this far though. I maintain that he’s a bard.
Roger Moore
@Terry chay:
I think you’re underestimating the CA Democrats. Yeah, the Republicans did a lot to self-destruct, but the Democrats denied them a chance to recover. We kept our promises to minority voters and showed people what good government looks like. That isn’t as sexy as some people like, but those kinds of things are the main way a party builds for the long term.
GrandJury
@hovercraft: No. His right wing grift ran out of steam is all.
Maybe he’s gonna try grift the left now. Don’t think there is as much money in it though.
Speaking of left wing grifters, where has Cole’s dreamy favorite Greenwald been lately?
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
I thought it was the Gnomes of Zurich who controlled the gold supply.
germy
@GrandJury: shomi the way to go home.
Matt McIrvin
@hovercraft: I just heard Penn Jillette voted for Clinton. (After getting guarantees from a bunch of fans in deep-blue states that they’d vote for Gary Johnson to give him his precious 5%.)
Bill E Pilgrim
@dedc79: I have one or two friends who I always saw as extreme left wing, and when I asked recently why they remained so anti-Hillary, while everyone from Chomsky to Michael Moore has now said look, with Trump the only alternative, Clinton simply has to be elected — the answer I got wasn’t based on anything about policy or war but basically the extreme right wing Alex Jones fever swamp standards.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
This. People keep acting as if it’s a total coincidence that the person who did the best job of representing the Republican id was a bigoted knownothing, when it’s precisely his bigotry and braying ignorance that were so attractive to the Republican base.
Major Major Major Major
@Bill E Pilgrim: Some things in politics wrap all the way around from far right to far left.
sukabi
@J R in WV: why is the beer warm & salty…tastes like piss.
Tazj
@dedc79: For a while, I just thought he was a conservative troll. I never heard of him before and just saw his obnoxious tweets showing up everywhere. It took me some time to find out who he was because I didn’t care to know.
dedc79
@Bill E Pilgrim: I guess we have more of a political circle than a spectrum.
hovercraft
FFS what the f**k is wrong with these people. Hallie Jackson just asked Jean Shaheen if Obama stumping in NH today means that Hillary is lacking support among Bernie voters, if she had the support she needs she wouldn’t need to send her big surrogates out to excite her base. Earlier they were saying that she is desperate/scared and that is why she is campaigning in Pittsburgh and Ann Arbor, now she’s desperate for deploying her assets? What the hell is she supposed to do, sit in Brooklyn or Chappaqua and wait for the returns to come in? If she campaigns they criticize, if she doesn’t she is overconfident, she can’t win for losing with these f**kwads!!
Bill E Pilgrim
@hovercraft:
When you look at it now that moment already looks different with the perspective of time.
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/795414203960061952
different-church-lady
@GrandJury:
Oh, here.
daveNYC
At least Newt is a semi-borderline-competent choice for SoS. Not good by any stretch, but not likely to lead to the end of civilization.
Fuck the fact that there’s around a 25% of any of this happening.
different-church-lady
@hovercraft:
Jackson is aware there’s a tight senate race in NH, yes?
Bill E Pilgrim
@Major Major Major Major:
@dedc79:
I was pondering what concluding line to add to what I wrote but decided to leave it off, but both of those are about what I was thinking.
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: DeBoer is the fucking worst.
catclub
@pamelabrown53: That interview seemed very incomplete. The only relevant point was saying that Michelle Obama’s speech was excellent. Not mentioned was much in the way of how he is a better person for it.
It could be because that is hard to express, or just bad interview technique.
catclub
@GrandJury:
There is a funny quote from GG over at LGM. LGM is mocking him. Now you know.
Unknown known (formerly known as Ecks, former formerly completely unknown)
@Peale:
Basket of deplorables is his followers
Basket case is his cabinet.
hovercraft
Trump Makes Play For ‘Amazing’ Latino Community On Election Eve
Via TPM
Can you all please join me in prayer to the FSM Pasta Goddess and ask her to place someone with a camera next to this Shittgibbon tomorrow night to record him as he watches the election returns. Please FSM, please.
catclub
@trollhattan: 1. I got no idea. Best guess is laziness. 2. No 3. No
Jesse
@Face: You don’t know shit about mathematical models, do you?
“The uncertainty is small because… I want it to be small!”
David ?▶️?Blue Wall?▶️? Koch
Charles Manson for HHS
Jack da Ripper for the Fed
Matt McIrvin
@Bill E Pilgrim: There was a chunk of the anti-Bush coalition that was never actually left or liberal in any coherent sense, but got classed as left because they were antiwar or anti-national-security-state, and they were useful allies. Those people had mostly left the Obama coalition by 2012, for a combination of legitimate and silly reasons, and a bunch of them basically got sucked into the alt-right swamp.
Similarly, there was a chunk of the economy/finance radical left who were always basically nursing fantasies out of 1930s antisemitic propaganda, and things like Trump’s last ad are like catnip to them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@hovercraft: the one thing Conway and Ivanka can’t teach him is how to talk about minorities in terms of us/them
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Who knows?
There will be loads of fun going over the exit polls and who voted etc after the election. There might be a few shocks to conventional wisdom.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@hovercraft: Clinton Rules !
Peale
@dedc79: Yes. When Putin runs an election based on HE’s the STRONG MAN WHO is keeping the US at bay, he’s just stating the truth. But oh my! A US candidate who does that is leading us to a spiraling doom!
Chrsit, there is nothing in Trump’s campaign that makes one think that he could form some kind of durable relationship with another man who wants to whip out his dick and have a pissing contest with him. Yet, Hillary just simply will let everything spiral out of control and BOOM BOOM BOOM MUSHROOM CLOUD.
pamelabrown53
@catclub: 302
No doubt you’re correct. Still it did my heart good to hear one of the most certifiable wingnuts admit that Michelle Obama touhed his black, frozen heart.
Unknown known (formerly known as Ecks, former formerly completely unknown)
@The Moar You Know:
No, that was pretty much a big part of their plan too.
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major: It’s inevitable he will eventually reach his “liberals turned me into a conservative” moment.
GrandJury
@Brachiator: Only if you want to call horse race journalism the ‘conventional wisdom’. So bullshit like PA being in play but never is. Latinos showing up but never happens. It being a close race but it’s not really. Nevada being a surprise but it’s not because it’s the same under reported voting by the left every time.
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: Good call.
Peale
@catclub: That has to be the most goddamned nonsensical whackaloon analysis of the state of our polity that I can imagine. How do you even arrive at that opinion? Yea, he lives in Brazil. DeBeor, though? Does he live under the sea somewhere?
hovercraft
The NC GOP is very excited about the results of the just ended early voting.
Per their press release:
You’ve got to love a party that truly has no shame. They are bragging about the success of their voter suppression efforts. The memo was an invite to the press to review the fine work they did this election.
Major Major Major Major
@Peale: DeBoer is a complete fucking idiot who went to grad school, so he can articulately express his nonsensical bullshit, so people keep quoting him as some sort of articulate iconoclast contrarian liberal. He’s like how when they need an articulate iconoclast contrarian conservative they go for Andrew Sullivan, but much much worse.
different-church-lady
@GrandJury:
Holy fuckin’ GOD, dude, there is actual evidence on the ground they’ve already turned out in numbers higher than 2012. Is ignoring it part of the jollies you get from getting under people’s skin?
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
I think there are other kinds of bigots on the economic left- racists, sexists, etc.- who have made common cause with the rest of the Democratic party but see electing a minority, woman, LGBTQ person, etc. as unacceptable. I think most of the people in that category have been squeezed out over time- they either got on board with the whole Democratic diversity platform or crossed over to the Republicans and started accepting their economic stupidity- but there are enough of them left to make a big stink and seem more important than they actually are.
hovercraft
Memo from the NC GOP.
ETA: This is the GOP in 2016, celebrating the success of their voter suppression efforts. They must be so proud.
The gray adder
@Face: If Henry Kissinger can be Secretary of State, and Bobby Kennedy the AG, qhy not? I think the only office Bill would be ineligible for would be Vice President.
Attorney General Bill Clinton has a nice ring to it.
GrandJury
@different-church-lady: Sign….
Which means what exactly? Nothing…at this point….other than more Latinos voting early.
I don’t even know why I am wasting keystrokes on your people. Every pollster bakes it into their models. Go argue with them about it and tell them they are all wrong…lol.
Jeffro
HOLY COW: even Glenn Beck is seeing the light
(geez, Mrs. Obama, if you can do this for the country, can we just sign you up for 2024 right now?)
Choice quote:
Jeffro
@daveNYC:
1-5% chance, c’mon man! ;)
Amir Khalid
Trump’s list of proposed Cabinet secretaries, if it is indeed his list, is the most mental, facepalm-inducing such thing I have ever seen.
By the way, I’d been repeatedly updating this thread for hours when a question suddenly occurred to me: how many Es are there in “tabletop”? (I’m not nitpicking anyone’s spelling, honest.)
CarolDuhart2
@pamelabrown53: Also, a lot of non-Cuban Hispanics have immigrated to Florida in the last years. Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Venezuelans, et al. And Cubans, the further away from the Revolution, the more concern about local issues.
Barbara
@burnspbesq: Yes, but who refused to change the bankruptcy code to allow Puerto Rico to deal more rationally with its debts and avoid a long-term but slow motion catastrophe? That would be the current Congress. That is what is driving the recent, heavy, emigration to Florida. One of the reasons the pharma provision was repealed was that it did not really provide that many jobs and its cost was enormous. It would have been better for the Treasury to keep the money and give it to Puerto Rico.
Jesse
@hovercraft: It’ll be funny if HRC manages to take NC anyway.
“African American Early Voting is down 8.5% from this time in 2012.” And there’s no systemic reason for that, amirite? Pricks.
different-church-lady
@GrandJury:
Neither do we.
Elizabelle
@hovercraft: a lot of Raleigh voters tried to vote early last week, and encountered hours-long lines.
On the positive side, splendid weather. Clear, sunny and gorgeous. With fall foliage out.
My fingers are crossed. We had so many canvass volunteers this weekend that we ran short on walk packets. A young British woman showed up to walk doors today. And I have yet to see a Republican out canvassing the turf. Just signs and bumper stickers. None of which breathe or vote.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
He’s got my vote.
geg6
@SenyorDave:
That was my fervent wish when voting against Reagan and W. But I didn’t really mean it as much as I thought I did at the time. With Trump? I not only wish it, but I’m willing to do my part to make it happen.
Jesse
@Jeffro: FLOTUS has awesome powers. And, actually, I have to say good on Glenn Beck (!) for paying attention. Still too into Skousen, though.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: What’s the nickname for the WV football team?
Roger Moore
@GrandJury:
Feel free to stop any time.
? Martin
@dmsilev: Nate points to two things:
1) There weren’t nearly as many people being polled that still said they were uncertain who to vote for. For instance, CBC shows C+4, but at 45% with 9% undecided. That was through yesterday. ABC C+4, 47%, 6% undecided. If that undecided is Rs yet to come home, she loses. If that undecided is millennials uncertain if they want to throw a vote away on Stein and come to Clinton, she wins. If they break evenly, she wins. Q is the only poll that I see that has her at 50%. Obama had a number of polls at or above 50% the day before the election. His gap was small, but the electorate was certain.
2) Nate has also said that some pollsters include early vote data in their models, but not all do. So that just means that the public polls are pretty noisy.
The party internals are likely better, and everything we’re hearing is that both campaigns show Clinton up more than the public polls show.
gogol's wife
@MCA1:
I hope you mean Humbert Humbert, not Humperdinck! I never heard anything of the kind about Engelbert Humperdinck, either one of them!
gogol's wife
@MCA1:
Other than that, I agree with you completely.
Patricia Kayden
@hovercraft:
Ha! So Trump thinks the majority of Haitians hate the Clintons so much that they’ll vote for him over Secretary Clinton. He should ask my in-laws about that. They would laugh in his Orange bigoted face.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
Which is entirely self made and which they enjoy being in. Because they don’t think it’s a trap and that they agree with it in it’s entirety.
chopper
i’m gonna build my own white house, with blackjack and hookers! in fact, forget the white house!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@hovercraft: Ben White writes for Politico, the most Establishment, I believe, media outlet ever made, in no small part because they have hoovered half the Village into its bowels
Did Politico, which i admit I rarely look at, do a big deep dive into voter suppression schemes that Left Blogosphere ignored? The Washington Post? CBS? I know MSNBC sometimes brings it up on weekend mornings, or when Chris Hayes is done talking to AJ Delgado, Michael Steele and Ben fucking Shapiro.
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle:
O-o. There goes those pesky foreigners interfering with our elections again. /s
Peale
@GrandJury: I’m still willing to bet that the Latino turnout % will be up vs. 2012. +3.5%. Take it or leave it.
J R in WV
@sukabi:
My grandmother (a Baptist) always said that beer tasted like they needed to run it through the horse one more time… which got her point across without any cuss words.
Brachiator
@The gray adder:
I don’t know. Bill looks old and tired now and almost ready to be put out to pasture.
I know that some people are swooning over the idea of “Bill and Hillary together again in the White House,” but I am not all that excited about the idea. I think that we may see more situations in which the spouse of a president is a former president or other high ranking government official, but there can be problems keeping these people in formal positions of power and authority, including the obvious nepotism and potential conflicts of interest,
GrandJury
@Peale: Probably because there are 3.5% more eligible latino voters. It won’t be up 3.5% as a percentage of eligible latino voters. Will be around the same give or take. Dismal as usual.
That is why ALL polsters bake that in. Go argue with them and tell them they are all wrong…lol.
Ruckus
@SenyorDave:
I’d bet there are a number of people on this earth that would say this is way too high of praise for tRump. He is less than worthless, he is costly in every way. Ethics, success, prosperity, morals……..
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
What a nasty woman.
Roger Moore
@Face:
I think the ideal role for Bill would be a sort of roving goodwill ambassador. He wouldn’t have a formal role in the government beyond First Dude, but he’d be perfect to send anywhere Hillary can’t go in person. As former president and spouse of the current president, he’d have some gravitas, but he couldn’t commit her to anything.
Lizzy L
@Brachiator: Agree. I think he will be her chief adviser, just as she was his. But a formal position is a bad idea, and he does, indeed, look pretty worn out.
Re phone banking: I signed up to do an hour of calls to support the Senate candidates, but the call tool is not providing me with any names/number to call! Maybe they’ve simply got it covered — more than enough volunteers. I’ll keep checking in, but damn, if that’s the case, the D ground game is fantastic. I’m proud to be a part of it.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, meh but one of the guys I’m talking about for example was just your run of the mill liberal, in his sixties, been standard issue left wing liberal artist since the 1960s, so neither of the things you’re describing. He was left wing long before it had anything to do with Bush. And he’s Jewish.
He’s just drifted into la la land in the last few years, the first thing I noticed was that he was a 9/11 truther, so I think conspiracy theorizing came first, specifically right-wing conspiracy theory consuming came later. It really seems mostly like just Hillary derangement syndrome, in someone who’d already weakened his critical thinking skills by swallowing conspiracy theories that weren’t particularly right wing.
Patricia Kayden
@hovercraft: Nice that the GOP is celebrating the closures of multiple offices in Black majority communities. Then they wonder why Blacks don’t vote for them.
Hope they lose NC despite the obvious attempt to depress Black votes.
Tripod
Where does Felix Steiner slot in his cabinet?
jimmiraybob
I believe that it’s fuckenshittendoomenspiel. As in, “Holy fuckenshittendoomenspiel I need a Mazel Tov cocktail – make it a triple.”
Chyron HR
@GrandJury:
Thanks 4 sharing.
Gravenstone
@Mike J: That’s 325k votes in a state that Obama took by barely 70k in 2012. Amazeballs!
Face
Speaking of poll numbers and methodology, TPM claims to use an aggregate of polls to get its numbers. Yet it currently shows NM as a toss up (HRC +0.7 or some such BS) despite these poll numbers. I dont get it….if none of the polls they use show the race any closer than 2-3 pts, how can the aggregate value be less than 1?
Joel
@karen marie: there is no proof that excessive optimism depresses the vote. and honestly, it doesn’t make much sense as a hypothesis. I think a bandwagon effect is much more likely than a “tortoise and hare” effect.
anecdotally, i would argue that excess optimism seems to dampen fundraising. my justification for this is the scare-tactic emails (usually relying on the least-favorable set of polling) that democrats love to resort to when asking for money.
? Martin
@GrandJury: Are you unaware of the ~20% increase in latino voter registration going into this election? We saw these same trends starting in the 1996 election when latino turnout started started to climb rapidly. Are you aware of the significance of 1996?
Keith G
@Nina:
A difference, and a big one, between the future and current POTUS is that Obama valued excellence over loyalty. He hired the best and won their absolute loyalty. It seems that the Clinton’s tend to hire the most loyal, with excellence and common sense being secondary. That leads to trouble.
SiubhanDuinne
@Roger Moore:
I’ve thought for a while now that this kind of “Minister Without Portfolio” role would be tailor-made for Bill. I’d really hate to see his experience and talents go unused out of an irrational fear of his unique ability to attract a certain amount of mayhem. Put him to work and let him do what he enjoys and what he’s good at. Win for him, win for Hillary, win for the country.
Calouste
@Brachiator: Bill can take over part of the funeral duties of the VP. He knows most of those people anyway. Leaves Kaine some more time to learn the ropes and prepare for Kaine 2024.
Ruckus
@hovercraft:
A question for the ages. I’d pull out the old tag, racists, and that’s probably good enough but I think it doesn’t actually go far enough to describe them. Conservatives want a life they think was better at some point in time. 1950, 1850….. They didn’t have to be alive then to think it was better and if they were alive they didn’t have to actually have it better. In their minds eye things were/are better when conservatives run the place. We of course know better, that even liberals that we think stunk up the place in some way did a better job. LBJ is a prime example. The legislation he championed/signed was way over due, didn’t go far enough, was ground breathtakingly positive. But he also got us way too deep into Vietnam. (for raven, and myself, and I’m sure others – Fuck LBJ)
Lots and lots of humans are low information beings. Their minds are made up and facts or reality can’t change that. They want things a certain way, no matter the cost, no matter that it doesn’t help or even hurts them personally. I just checked out FB and a friend posted a question, describe Trump in 2 words. The majority are along the lines we here at BJ central would give, but some fall into the vein of Mr. President. I looked to see if there was anyone I needed to unfriend.
Bill E Pilgrim
@catclub: Yeah it’s odd how people are downplaying the effect this is going to have. It’s not going to reverse the damage Comey caused entirely, there’s no way, I mean people already voted. However I think people are overlooking how many undecideds were susceptible to thinking “Oh great, we’re going to elect someone about to be indicted”, I mean look at how her polls went down. Hearing that this was all bullshit and is over is going to have at least some effect in the other direction on the vote, and the markets are reacting to knowing that.
I keep hearing pundits too clever for their own good saying that the Clinton campaign didn’t want this news because it makes the subject emails again — oy. No the campaign doesn’t want to dwell on the subject themselves these last two days, but you can be certain they thought it was great news, at least given the hideous news a week earlier.
The Lodger
@MuckJagger: If you run for President in 2020 with the same name as you used to sign the letter, please pick Reggie White as your running mate. I may not vote for you, but I’d definitely buy a couple of bumper stickers.
The Lodger
@Major Major Major Major: Two pounds of dice? That could make for an interesting game. Do you have a trebuchet?
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
How many do you want? We can fly them right on over to you. For the low, low price of $500 ea., freight and taxes not included.
Major Major Major Major
@The Lodger: A pound of dice is actually surprisingly small. You can only cast a couple fireballs at once.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Maybe we just need to show him the exit sign. Maybe the bouncer could throw his ass
outthrough the door.notoriousJRT
@Chris:
Interior
Peale
@Keith G: Because Leon Panetta was the best man to head the CIA? And lord knows everybody loved Tim Geithner?
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
How about we let him retire and relax? I think he’s earned it and it’s not like he’s 22 any more.
Roger Moore
@Keith G:
Two points:
1) I think Clinton’s 2016 campaign machine should put some of your worries to rest. She ditched a lot of the old faithful retainers- or at least pushed them into less important roles- and hired the best people from the Obama machine. She is capable of learning, and she’s spent the past 8 years learning from Obama.
2) Valuing excellence over loyalty has its own set of pitfalls. See Comey, James.
No One You Know
@…now I try to be amused: House of Cards.
John D.
@Face: That has to be a bug of some kind — it shows Trump at 45.2% with literally NO poll having him at 45% or higher. Removing ZiaPoll from the dataset seems to fix it, but that leaves very few polls. I suspect that there is a typo in the underlying data somewhere.
Brachiator
@GrandJury:
It’s only horse race journalism for people who love the fact that the polls are pointing to a Clinton victory, but who would be bawling like babies if the polling went against her. I absolutely support Clinton, but I tire of people using polls as a security blanket and then bashing the media.
Would you prefer to see this every day in the media: “Hillary”s got it. Why bother showing up to vote?”
But you missed my larger point. People who want to blow off resistant BernieBros as being mainly tired (mainly male) baby boomers are making a big mistake.
If PA was never in play, why would either candidate spend time there?
catclub
@? Martin: Are you aware of the significance of 1996?
catclub
@Brachiator:
The senate.
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
No, no, no. You can’t just let Bill run around loose doing what he enjoys. ‘Cause he would be chasing ladies all day long.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator: That would be Minister Without Chaperone.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
On the positive side, I think that Bill will take to being First Gentleman with humor and grace.
It’ is obviously heavily fictionalized, but the Netflix series “The Crown” deals with how Prince Phillip had to take on a formal, very public and publicly secondary role to Queen Elizabeth.
However they arrange ceremonial, ornamental and substantial duties, I think it will be fun to watch Bill as First NonLady, and at best, the country might even learn something from a new dynamic in female/male relationships.
MCA1
@gogol’s wife: Ha! Yeah, must have been thinking of that guy in the PRincess Bride instead of Nabokov’s character.
J R in WV
@Gin & Tonic:
The West Virginia Mountaineers !!!
What did you think?