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You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / #Flailing Loser Open Thread: He’ll Be Going Door to Door By September…

#Flailing Loser Open Thread: He’ll Be Going Door to Door By September…

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Daddy needs his attention fix!…

His minions know it’s a bad idea for Dear Leader to emerge from his bunker right now — but the big fella is desperate for that dopamine hit. One of our best weapons, right now, as Democrats & sane people, is Trump’s inability to keep from running his mouth, giving up the game, exposing the shoddy fascists behind the curtain. We need to keep encouraging him to spill the beans, now that the Media Village Idiots have decided he’s certifiably boring, if not just certifiable. The Mad Emperor has no pants!

The *very* hard-right Washington Examiner — “Team Trump split over big rallies as president itches for showtime” :

President Trump is eager to press on with plans to reschedule his postponed appearance in New Hampshire, possibly by the end of next week, even as aides wonder whether they should scale back rallies to better focus media attention on Joe Biden.

Advisers are divided on whether smaller-scale events, such as factory visits and mini town halls, would help avoid questions about COVID-19 and the president’s performance as he dominates coverage.

“He loves the rally. I get it,” said a source close to the campaign and familiar with the internal debate. “They are fun, and he gets things off his chest, but at the end of the day, the negatives for now outweigh the positives, at least until after the conventions.”

For weeks, advisers have been warning Trump that, if he is to win, he must make November’s election all about Biden and his long record in Washington. But that has been undermined by a president inclined to react to every attack or slight and by his approach, focused on raucous rallies…

One former White House official said the next event would be under intense scrutiny.

“It has to go off flawlessly,” said the former official.

And that comes with other problems, according to the source close to the campaign.

“Strategically, I don’t know that it’s a good idea,” he said. “If we announce we are doing rallies, it is going to dominate the coverage, it is going to dominate the media. But it might not be the right type of coverage.”…

.

The Daily Beast, “Team Trump Frantically Plots New Ways to Make Him Feel Good About Himself”:

… As Trump’s re-election campaign has struggled to tear down former Vice President Joe Biden with less than four months until Election Day, the president’s staff has devoted considerable resources to finding novel ways to make him feel better about the crumbling world around him.

They tell him tales of his sagging poll numbers being fake. They’ve concocted ways of convincing him that the adoring crowds he loves on the campaign trail are still there and ready. They’ve pledged that the social, racial, and economic crises ravaging the nation are ephemeral. And they’ve carried his water as he seeks to reassert his authority over situations falling beyond his control…

According to two people who’ve been in the room when Trump has fixated on the issue, the president has repeatedly stressed that “boaters”—MAGA fans who join in on pro-Trump flotillas, with ships adorned with Trump and Mike Pence banners and gear—are a shining exemplar of the enthusiasm gap he enjoys over Biden. He has delighted in advisers showing him boater photos and videos that have bubbled up on social media. And during strategy sessions in the past two months, he’s told officials to keep bringing him more and to push out the content on their own accounts, as well.

“I think we have really good poll numbers,” Trump declared at a press conference Tuesday when asked about his position in the election. “They’re not suppression polls; they’re real polls. You look at the Intracoastal in Florida. You look at the lakes. You see thousands of boats with Trump signs.”…

John McLaughlin, a top Trump pollster whom the president values in part for providing internal data that give Trump significantly better odds than most of the public polling does, told The Daily Beast that though “there’s not enough boaters” to buoy the president to a November victory, “we also do well with bikers, NASCAR fans, NFL, college and high school tailgaters, golfers, aviators, RV people, campers, [and] homeowners,” for instance.

It is not common—and, indeed, may be strategically unsound—for a president’s political apparatus to be fixated on a sliver of the U.S. population its own pollster says is statistically and demographically insignificant. But such are the machinations of the Trump campaign, where manpower, time, and money are directed toward the goal of ameliorating the boss’ wounded emotions in the face of increasingly stiff electoral competition.

“There are probably things that the campaign and the White House do to mollify Trump, and if those things result in a net benefit for the president and his campaign, then they are worth doing,” a former White House official tersely noted…

We just wanna keep him from publicly demanding that Delaware be nuked for the crime of harboring Joe Biden. Not that he’s actually got access to the nuclear codes any more, but the just the announcement would be bad for the stock market.

…In their official efforts to soothe the president’s feelings, Trump’s campaign has also resorted to wasting a ton of money. In June, The Daily Beast reported that Team Trump had dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on cable-news ads in the Washington, D.C., area, purchasing time largely on the president’s preferred network, Fox News. The ad buys had no real chance of making a positive electoral difference, given that they were reaching solidly Democratic turf in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. But knowledgeable sources said at the time that the real purpose was to get the pro-Trump ads in front of the president, a voracious TV watcher, to set him at ease that his campaign was defending him strongly on television…

One of the primary reasons aides wanted to get Trump back on the trail was they kept noticing his deteriorating mood as he remained mostly confined to the White House, as the nation entered months of coronavirus lockdowns and isolation. During a Tuesday morning press call organized by Trump 2020, Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) claimed that these coronavirus-era Trump rallies, despite the public-health fears, are “good for everybody.”…

Reader Interactions

174Comments

  1. 1.

    debbie

    Actually, I think our biggest weapon is mockery, endless mockery. It kills him to be mocked.

  2. 2.

    Gin & Tonic

    Team Trump Frantically Plots New Ways to Make Him Feel Good About Himself

    Fuck his feelings.

  3. 3.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Well, today’s my birthday. Sure am glad I got to wake up to news of Pinochet-style goon squads kidnapping people off the streets

    However, despite how scary this is, I have to believe that this will blow up in the Trump admin’s collective faces. You can’t give into despair, because if you do, they’ve already won. They may want chaos as pretext to clampdown, but Trump, Barr, Wolf, et al will settle for despair to

    People see through his bullshit and I don’t think his shit will be tolerated. These DHS goons have been compared to Ukraine’s “little green men”, but like Ukraine, I think the US will come out of this stronger. The George Floyd protests give me hope

  5. 5.

    Jinchi

    “What we want is Joe Biden to get a bit more of the national spotlight.”

    These guys are delusional. Trump needs to be the center of attention at all times. The moment the media starts paying more attention to Joe Biden, he’ll have a meltdown, make some imbecilic move (like firing on peaceful protesters) and pull the press back to 24 hour coverage of the mad king.

  6. 6.

    frosty

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Happy Birthday! It’s good to hear from you in all these posts.

    This and Adam’s post are giving me whiplash. Here, it’s “he can’t do anything he needs to do to win the election.” There it’s “the election will be RF’d and violent and he can’t possibly lose.”

    I think I’ll go take a nap.

  11. 11.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @frosty:

    Happy Birthday! It’s good to hear from you in all these posts.

    This and Adam’s post are giving me whiplash. Here, it’s “he can’t do anything he needs to do to win the election.” There it’s “the election will be RF’d and violent and he can’t possibly lose.”

    Thanks!

    I think it’s important to take this seriously and respond forcefully to get them to back down. It is scary. But, as Baud noted earlier today, we can’t also act like Trump and GOP have god-like power to destroy us all either. It’s not particularly useful (note: I’m not saying this was Adam’s take. He basically said what I just said) and will just depress people

  14. 14.

    Ksmiami

    Trump and his supporters are fat, stupid and just trashy people all around. Don’t be afraid of them- they are scared bullies who will runaway when punched literally and figuratively. I hope we grind them into powder.

  15. 15.

    Steeplejack

    “The Mad Emperor has no pants!”

    Okay, I think we’re crossing a line here.

  16. 16.

    sherparick

    I would like to note that both the reporters (writing what I call a the theater critic/sports writer style of political journalism) or his & her sources among the RW political consultant class when talking about Trump’s rallies and his need get his rally “fix” don’t mention the fundamental immorality of holding events that all medical experts consider “super spreader” events as a epidemic burns its way across the country and how but the very stupid (of which unfortunately there are a lot in America) will not show up. https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/connect-the-dots-tulsa-county-covid-19-cases-soaring-weeks-after-trump-rally-related-large/article_7c6dfef3-230a-5314-94bc-bab491189960.html

    The hacks on team Trump and Team Republican overall appear to have gone in denial mode about the COVID-19 epidemic.

  17. 17.

    Martin

    No wonder he loves Kim Jong Un. Man has it made – reeducation camps for his doubters and summary executions for anyone who tells him something he doesn’t want to hear. Why can’t America have nice things?

  19. 19.

    Kirk Spencer

    @Steeplejack:

    “The Mad Emperor has no pants!”

    Okay, I think we’re crossing a line here.

    Only if you forgot to buy brainbleach. Buckets and buckets of brainbleach.

  20. 20.

    Roger Moore

    @frosty:

    Two points:

    1. Making predictions is difficult, especially about the future.  You should take any post about what’s going to happen with a gigantic grain of salt.
    2. There’s less contradiction between the posts than you think.  This one is saying Trump is flailing and will have a hard time winning the election legitimately.  Adam’s is about the dictatorial tactics Trump might use to try to steal the election.  Those are really complementary positions; Trump’s people are adopting more blatant and desperate tactics precisely because their legitimate chances are looking so bad.
  24. 24.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Roger Moore:

    While true, do you honestly think people are going to stand for this and let Trump steal the election without consequences? During a pandemic that is killing a thousand Americans a day? With the economy in the shitter?

    It’s not going to get any better for them

  27. 27.

    sdhays

    When your campaign needs to spend millions of dollars to reduce the number of your daily tantrums by advertising directly to you on TV, your campaign is probably not going to succeed.

  29. 29.

    Martin

    @frosty:

    This and Adam’s post are giving me whiplash. Here, it’s “he can’t do anything he needs to do to win the election.” There it’s “the election will be RF’d and violent and he can’t possibly lose.”

    The two are reinforcing, and Adam is warning us of that. At some point the happy talk about fake polls stops working and direct action to secure the election for Trump will be needed.

    If you’re willing to pull rando citizens off the street without probable cause, why not just pull poll workers in key districts off the streets the morning of the election? Let the city of Madison stand in line for 12 hours while they scramble to find people trained to run the polling place. What are the courts going to do?

    This is another reason to fight for states like GA and TX. Florida 2000 was a thing because the fight became very precise – it was a couple of counties in FL deciding the race. If we make it multiple states, it gets a lot harder.

  31. 31.

    Anne Laurie

    @debbie: I actually sent poor WaterGirl a message, in case she needed to contact the developers.  But the site was back within 20 minutes, praise Murphy the Trickster God…

  32. 32.

    pat

    Ruth Marcus at WaPo has a good piece about what is going on in Portland.  Good comments too.

    So many  people comparing this to the takeover by the Nazis in Germany.

    I recall when he was first elected, some of my friends were already wondering if this would mirror the Nazis.  Seemed far-fetched at the time….

  33. 33.

    Anne Laurie

    @Steeplejack: What’s perfectly fine for the members of this not-quite-top-10,000 blog, and what we expect from the Oval Office Occupant, are two different things!

  34. 34.

    Zelma

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Happy birthday!

    I hope you are right about this blowing up in their faces.  But it’s not like something like this is unheard of in American history.  In fact, it has been all too common.  It’s just something that we haven’t seen in recent decades.

  35. 35.

    Fleeting Expletive

    @Ksmiami: Yeah, that army of boaters and bikers and whatnot. As someone on twitter said, Trump’s base is all guys whose wives want  them out of the house on the weekends.

  36. 36.

    WaterGirl

    PSA:  Cloudflare is having some global issues, not just with Balloon Juice.  They are working on it, but it won’t be a big shock if the site goes down again.

    edit: the site seems really slow when posting comments, but at least it’s up!

    #Flailing Loser Open Thread: He'll Be Going Door to Door By September...

  38. 38.

    tony in san diego

    “For weeks, advisers have been warning Trump that, if he is to win, he must make November’s election all about Biden and his long record in Washington.”  Yeah, make it about his long record in Washington, where he has kept getting elected and reelected year after year for 40 years or so.

  44. 44.

    Ken

    He has delighted in advisers showing him boater photos and videos that have bubbled up on social media.

    Am I the only one who imagined him clapping his hands and blowing spit bubbles at the pretty boat pictures?

    After all, he was practically at that point when someone parked a tractor-trailer rig at the White House, and that was three years of neurological degeneration ago.

  45. 45.

    Jeffro

    Btw speaking of fucking AWESOME…the Lincoln Project has a new ad up hitting Ivanka for her stupid “find something new!” Campaign and geez does it ever get to the heart of this corrupt and moronic family.

    (and yes it actually includes ‘let them eat cake’ ? )

  46. 46.

    Ken

    @WaterGirl: And here I thought the liberal blogs were all fleeing to a server farm in Canada.

    (Not that it would help if the US goes totally nuts. Trivia: Half of the Canadian population lives south of 46N, which puts them further south than Washington and North Dakota.)

  47. 47.

    Lyrebird

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You can’t give into despair,…

    Go Goku!!!

    Absolutely agreed.

    Needed to read this.

    I think we’ll need all the helpers and coalitions and strange bedfellows (loosely speaking) working together, but yes, I also see signs of hope, and thanks for putting things so clearly.

  49. 49.

    Kay

    A rep for Murdoch did not respond to a request for comment. But The Daily Beast spoke to more than a dozen Fox News insiders, who all suggested that behind the scenes there is a growing despair among employees about the network’s role in demonizing and spreading fear about Black Americans in particular.
    One employee was especially angry, saying, “They created a cell—they created a white supremacist cell inside the top cable network in America, the one that directly influences the president… This is rank racism excused by Murdoch.”

    My only quibble would be I think “cell” implies secret and of course that’s not true- the multi-millionaire Fox News personalities are openly and proudly racist.

  51. 51.

    WaterGirl

    @Ken: No, it’s just that all the liberal blogs are smart enough to use Cloudflare.  (Yeah, I know there is an issue today, but there is no technology that is immune to that.)

  53. 53.

    WaterGirl

    @Ken: My first thought was of scenes you see on TV where an autistic child gets freaked out by something and there is a certain thing or a certain set of things you can do to calm them down.

    Trump is not a functioning adult at this point, and has not been for a very long time.

  54. 54.

    Mike in NC

    Some rich pricks try to create their own reality. We passed a big horse farm in central Virginia one time where they had large McCain and Romney yard signs flanking the front gate. This was about five years ago.

  59. 59.

    WaterGirl

    Update:

    #Flailing Loser Open Thread: He'll Be Going Door to Door By September... 1

    Update – This afternoon we saw an outage across some parts of our network. It was not as a result of an attack. It appears a router on our global backbone announced bad routes and caused some portions of the network to not be available. We believe we have addressed the root cause and are monitoring systems for stability now.
    Jul 17, 22:09 UTC

  62. 62.

    zhena gogolia

    Somebody responded to this ”Tiffany — ‘And Peggy!'”

    Filming has resumed on the Downton Abbey sequel, with non-union actors, a budget of $15 and no Covid protocols. It's called Royal Prom Night and it's being shot in a finished basement in Akron pic.twitter.com/pTi5Gc8pYu— Paul Rudnick (@PaulRudnickNY) July 17, 2020

  64. 64.

    Jeffro

    @zhena gogolia: It’s hysterical.  Future generations will ask, “Did a presidential* administration REALLY let her and her dimwit husband keep foisting their bad/atrocious/murderous ideas on America?”

  65. 65.

    pattonbt

    So why don’t the D’s (or Lincoln project or Bloomberg (has he been keeping his $ promise), just buy all the fox ad time in DC (and OAN?) and barrage it with infantile needling ads about trump. It’s clear the best way to defeat trump is have trump keep kicking own goals. And he can’t help but not respond to needling attacks (drinking water / walking down a ramp).

    No need to advertise anywhere else…goad trump into what he does best, self-immolate (then quit). That will be all the national advertising required.

  67. 67.

    jl

    Hard to imagine Trump messing up worse than advocating power chugging laundry bleach, but who knows with this guy?

    There are some hazards  to WH covid-19 briefings right now. Trump freestyling on how virus will disappear, or it’s just a cold, or we have to buck up and die so giant corporations can export pork to China, won’t look good with insets of video of portable morgues in AZ, TX and FL, and maybe GA and MS.

  69. 69.

    schrodingers_cat

    @frosty: No one can predict the future. We vote like our life depends on it. At all the levels.

    Fear is a mind killer. Rs and their Orange Clown mascot want to scare us into apathy and inaction.

    BTW I am so old that I remember when the consensus was how the noble military men in the cabinet were going to save us.

  70. 70.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ken:

    Trivia: Half of the Canadian population lives south of 46N, which puts them further south than Washington and North Dakota.

    And half of the states in the USA are located in whole or in part north of the southernmost point in Canada.

  71. 71.

    Patricia Kayden

    Outrageous.

    The White House is blocking CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield and other officials at the agency from testifying next week before a House Education and Labor Committee hearing on reopening schools https://t.co/pEiGFZvmUK— CNN (@CNN) July 17, 2020

  74. 74.

    C Stars

    @WaterGirl: Love this ad. Thanks for posting.

     

    @Patricia Kayden: Here’s the thing. We’ve seen this before. Schools will open, and there will be spreading events. It may be primarily among teachers, since kids are less likely to get the virus, but it will happen, and then the schools will shut down again and the panic and disruption will multiply. What is the calculation within the GOP? That the short term benefits of kids going back to school and parents going back to work for the two weeks/month that it takes before the breakouts happen outweighs the continued impression of GOP misanthropy and incompetence? Or that somehow we’ll just get comfy with widespread, life-threatening illness in the schools?

    I don’t get it, I can’t understand it as anything other than lip service, because they know that the majority of districts will not open up for in-person teaching in places where community spread is high.

  76. 76.

    Ken

    @dmsilev: Just the fact that the Trump campaign said it wasn’t about Parscale, means that it’s about Parscale because they always lie. Haberman really should have learned that timesaving trick by now.

  79. 79.

    Ohio Mom

    Goku:
    Happy Birthday!

    My friend’s daughter just turned 25 last week. She finished her undergraduate in elementary ed last December and was just about to start her “real life” when Covid.

    I told her she will always remember this birthday — I have no memory of all of my 25th.

    The same for you, whatever number birthday this is.

    Anyway, here’s wishing you a year of accomplishment, deep satisfactions, and adventures!

  80. 80.

    Roger Moore

    @C Stars:

    What is the calculation within the GOP?

    I think the calculation within the GOP at this point is “but we need to reopen schools” (or whatever else they’re talking about reopening) without a thought to the long-term consequences.  They are not capable of planning beyond their immediate desires.

  85. 85.

    Patricia Kayden

    @C Stars: 

    I don’t understand what Republicans are doing, tbh. Why do they think that parents are okay with sacrificing their children’s lives to help re-elect Trump? That’s what pushing children into unsafe classes boils down to.

  90. 90.

    Elizabelle

    @WaterGirl:   Ivanka and Jared will never repair their reputations.  Never.

    They may be hoping to “find something new” too.

  92. 92.

    Kay

    Bill Grueskin
    @BGrueskin
    ·2h
    The US attorney in Oregon wants an investigation into “constitutionally questionable arrests in Portland” by officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection

    Finally. The fucking lawyers find a spine. Where are the rest of them?
    No entity had been more of a disappointment during this nightmare than the DOJ. They’re all cowards.

  94. 94.

    Patricia Kayden

    @pattonbt: I could be wrong but I don’t see any circumstance where Trump quits. He’s going to have to be defeated at the polls and defeated overwhelmingly. It can’t be a 2000 election where SCOTUS can help him steal it.

  95. 95.

    Ken

    @Patricia Kayden: Why do they think that parents are okay with sacrificing their children’s lives to help re-elect Trump?

    They were okay with sacrificing everyone over 65, weren’t they? And that was just to re-open bars. Surely re-opening schools demands even greater sacrifice, nay, mass sacrifice.

  96. 96.

    Ohio Mom

    I’ve had connection problems for the better part of a week. Nothing works unless the banner ad appears, and sometimes it takes several refreshes to coax it out of wherever it is hiding.

    Re: Adam’s take on the election (which I haven’t read yet). Adam’s professional training is gaming out everything that can possibly go wrong in order to strategize around those things.

    He is the embodiment of tne second part of the phrase, “Hope got the best, plan for the worst.”

  98. 98.

    dmsilev

    @debbie:

    Ivanka Trump is a fashion embarrassment.

    That’s doing her a disservice. She’s an embarrassment on a whole range of subjects, not just fashion.

  101. 101.

    Benw

    The only acceptable combination of Trump and big fella is:

    Donald Trump was surprised when Shaquille O’Neal, the Big Fella, viciously posterized him!

    can we trick Trump into standing under a  hoop somehow?

  102. 102.

    Subsole

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Really? Then I totally misread everyone.

    I took it as we are all hopelessly and irrecoverably fucked unless and until Mitch and/or Bill suffer a lead-based aneurysm. That certainly seemed to be the inevitable conclusion everyone was dancing around.

  104. 104.

    debbie

    @Benw:

    There have been a few videos of Shaq showing up unexpectedly to, for instance, help kids with their jump shots or to change a tire for a stranded motorist. I’d like him to show up in the WH residence and ask Trump to explain himself.

  105. 105.

    Subsole

    @debbie:

    A thought: as devious as Barr is, Trump is not. As in, diametrically opposite

    I’m trying to say if there is a coup plot, the stupid fuck is probably gonna blurt the whole plan out during one of his televised Rose Garden rambleogues…

  106. 106.

    catclub

    @jl: or it’s just a cold, or we have to buck up and die so giant corporations can export pork to China,

     

    I learned about Trump designating chicken processing plants as essential in order to force the workers to work.  Next the processors and grocers said there might be shortages of chicken in the grocery stores.  Finally it comes out that we are exporting ever more chicken at the same time. Billionaires getting extra benefits during the pandemic.

    jane Meyer interview.

  107. 107.

    Falling Diphthong

    He must make November’s election all about Biden and his long record in Washington.

    Leave Biden and Trump specifically out of this–just generically, if the incumbent president’s staff is trying to make this a referendum on his opponent, who hasn’t held national office in the last few years, they ought to be summarily fired over twitter.

  108. 108.

    debbie

    @Subsole:

    I think it’s a possibility that they wouldn’t even tell him. Who cannot possibly know he can’t keep his yap shut?

  109. 109.

    patrick II

    There have been a few videos of Shaq showing up unexpectedly to, for instance, help kids with their jump shots or to change a tire for a stranded motorist

    The last person you want helping your kid with his jump shot is Shaq.

  111. 111.

    Kay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    They did.

    But you shouldn’t have to rely on private lawyers! You’re paying an entire team of public lawyers- elaborate- thousands of employees. You don’t have to pass a hat. They’re supposed to uphold the laws, whether or not they’re frightened of Donald Trump.

    We have people on covid-ridden assembly lines at food processing plants who are braver than these lawyers, and they’re paid 9 dollars an hour. They have gone along with every single thing he has done. They’re supposed to be big, bad prosecutors. No wonder there’s so much white collar crime. No one who is powerful worries about them at all.

  114. 114.

    Redshift

    @C Stars:

    What is the calculation within the GOP? 

    I think the calculation for the GOP is trying to make the pandemic all about Democrats trying to tell you what to do and run your life. Other than a few major-league idiots like Trump, Kemp, and DeSantis, they probably know schools won’t stay open, but they want to cater to their knucklehead supporters and make it the Dems’ fault when it happens. Like Trump’s delusion that if he foists off on the states things that are obviously his responsibility, somehow people won’t blame him, it’s not going to work, but to quote Deep Throat, “these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”

  117. 117.

    Subsole

     

    @C Stars: I think we have reached the point where their tender minds are no longer constrained by Euclidean Geometries.

    Like, I was talking to my rather conservative family this week. They are voting Dem, down the ticket. Every. Single. Office. They have never voted Dem in my life. Ever. Now? I think they loathe Abbott and Trump almost as much as I do. The rank, swivel-eyed idiocy is just too much. I imagine they are not the only ones.

    Imagine what happens when kids start getting sick. How on Earth does that work out for them???  I cannot see it.

    Also, and maybe this is just a Texas thing, but wait until it starts finally dawning on people that football is cancelled this year because the GOP is pants-on-head stupid. The outrage will be UNREAL.

  119. 119.

    Jeffro

    @Patricia Kayden: schools not opening as usual and on time = something’s wrong, someone fucked up, the pandemic has clearly not “disappeared”.

    ie, they sense – correctly – that they will be held accountable (eventually! But oh so frickin’ slowly!) for this unless schools open like usual.

    But they won’t, and for that we really have to thank America’s teachers.  Backs against the wall, they have stood up for themselves and their kids and our communities.

  120. 120.

    Martin

    @dmsilev:

    “We don’t like to see a single dollar fly out of the campaign without knowing where that it’s going back to Trump.”

    Fixd.

  121. 121.

    Subsole

    @Kay: In fairness, Barr has been pretty thoroughly purging our legal departments, correct? It is probably less lack of spine and more lack of soul.

  122. 122.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Kay: Thanks.  Didn’t know that they had filed lawsuits. Agree that Attorneys General should be the ones initiating these lawsuits.

  123. 123.

    C Stars

    @Redshift: Well at least there’s some strategy there. What terrifies me is the idea that the administration is just so full of ignorants at this point that they actually believe Trump is intellectually cogent enough to make a sound judgement call about this, that there’s a possibility that opening up will miraculously cure the economy and the virus will not be an issue.

    Regarding that quote–having seen the movie with parents as a child, I don’t actually remember it, but first came across the quote (actually the whole scene in the garage) in a film class about three years ago and since then I’ve heard that dang quote (either in my head or coming from other people) about a million times.

  124. 124.

    Kent

    @Martin: This is another reason to fight for states like GA and TX. Florida 2000 was a thing because the fight became very precise – it was a couple of counties in FL deciding the race. If we make it multiple states, it gets a lot harder.

    And we don’t even have to win states like GA, FL and TX.  If we can increase the Dem seats in the state legislatures to where the GOP doesn’t have veto-proof majorities it will be a huge accomplishment leading into redistricting after the 2020 census.  Every damn county in every state is worth contesting and fighting for.  Yes, I know spending and effort needs to be prioritized.  But there is more to taking back the country than just 270 electoral votes.

  125. 125.

    Roger Moore

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I don’t understand what Republicans are doing, tbh.

    They understand that parents want to send their kids back to school, but aren’t willing to put in the effort to makes sure the kids are safe when they get there.  These are the same people who refuse to understand that part of the solution to school shootings needs to be reducing the number of guns.

  127. 127.

    Ken

    @C Stars: that there’s a possibility that opening up will miraculously cure the economy and the virus will not be an issue.

    You know what they say, if at first you don’t succeed, kill another hundred thousand people.

  129. 129.

    Kent

    @C Stars:@Redshift: Well at least there’s some strategy there. What terrifies me is the idea that the administration is just so full of ignorants at this point that they actually believe Trump is intellectually cogent enough to make a sound judgement call about this, that there’s a possibility that opening up will miraculously cure the economy and the virus will not be an issue.

    I’m willing to bet that what’s actually happening in the White House and in Federal agencies across the government, is that political appointees are sharpening up their resumes and Linked-In profiles and already scurrying to angle up post-2020 employment.  I doubt many are actually thinking about the pandemic 24/7 or even strategizing how to spin things.

    Of course they are going to try to spin it as a Dem/Liberal failure.  But that is their go-to spin for everything from hurricanes to the stock market.  There is nothing uniquely creative about this effort.  Frankly I think it is more just Trump being Trump and everyone trying to maneuver around whatever stupid thing he does next. I don’t think anyone in the White House wants to get even a mm worth of separation from Trump on anything.  They just react.

  130. 130.

    Roger Moore

    @Subsole:

    I’m trying to say if there is a coup plot, the stupid fuck is probably gonna blurt the whole plan out during one of his televised Rose Garden rambleogues…

    Only if the plotters are dumb enough to tell the boss about it.

  131. 131.

    Matt McIrvin

    @frosty: It’s perfectly consistent though. The reason Trump is behaving like this is that he hasn’t got the votes. He couldn’t win a fair fight but he could maybe mount a violent coup d’état, or fuck things up enough to make the outcome unclear so he wins by default with a rigged Supreme Court, Bush 2000-style.

    Or go down in flames and burn the whole country with him. (Hell, he could do it literally, just order nuclear strikes on all the major cities in the US if he wants to indulge in a final tantrum.)

  132. 132.

    frosty

    @frosty: Thanks for all the responses, they helped to reconcile those two posts in my head. “Hope for the best,  prepare for the worst” sums it up pretty well.

    PS It was a good nap, too. :-)

  133. 133.

    Subsole

    @Roger Moore:

    Ehhh…maybe.

    I am having a very hard time imagining these guys suddenly growing a set of competence glands.

    I mean, these guys really aren’t that slick. They keep getting caught. Literally the only reason they haven’t gotten pulped like a worm in a tank tread is because the GOP  senate keeps letting them slide.

    Mitch os great at stonewalling, but when he tries to go on the offensive it falls apart into an omnishambles worthy of Paul Ryan. Again, he has 51+ so he skates.

    I’m saying a stacked deck doesn’t make one a grandmaster.

  134. 134.

    HRA

    I just got an alert that the photos of Bill Clinton and George W Bush are being moved from the wall in the WH. Will this make the idiot feel better?

  137. 137.

    Ken

    @Matt McIrvin: (Hell, he could do it literally, just order nuclear strikes on all the major cities in the US if he wants to indulge in a final tantrum.)

    He might order it, but I can’t imagine things have deteriorated to the point where it would happen.

    On the other hand, they also probably haven’t deteriorated to the point where, after he gives the order, a Secret Service agent’s weapon accidentally discharges three times.

  138. 138.

    Kent

    There are two kinds of evil.

    There is evil and competent like the New England Patriots who cheat and have a MAGA boss but still win a lot of rings.  Because as evil as Robert Kraft is, he knows how to delegate and hire talent.

    Then there is evil and incompetent like the Washington Red-s**** who cheat and have a MAGA boss and have a 3-13 team that is less popular in its own media market than the nearby Baltimore Ravens.  And they completely suck in every way because Dan Snyder can’t get out of his own way and thought that worn out recycled failed white dude coach Jay Gruden was the top available coaching talent in pro-football.  And he has no one to tell him “no”.

    Which one is more Trump-like?

  139. 139.

    Luciamia

    Maybe they can get him a little pedal powered boat he can toodle around the West Wing in, going toot-toot every so often.

  140. 140.

    hitchhiker

    I think we’re going to start seeing ads about cities in Europe enjoying regular life. They get to do that because they weren’t led by fools.

    At least I hope so. Reading about people who are moving around freely and going to concerts and sports events just fucking enrages me.

    I’m sitting here trying to plan how I might be able to safely visit my first grandchildren — twins expected in January. Do I have to fully quarantine for two weeks ahead of time? Yes. Just to hold them for half an hour, yes.

    But hey, if we lived anywhere in Europe I could show up whenever my daughter needs me.

    And trump wants me to know that we should all be eating Goya products, because he thinks that it’s hilarious to trigger libs. Okay, motherfucker. You’ve succeeded in triggering 2/3 of the USA. I hope you like the result.

  141. 141.

    Quinerly

    @HRA: replaced with Teddy Roosevelt and McKinley. Bush and Clinton moved to a rarely used room. Trump had had to walk by them daily in their original places.

  142. 142.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Martin:

    This is another reason to fight for states like GA and TX. Florida 2000 was a thing because the fight became very precise – it was a couple of counties in FL deciding the race. If we make it multiple states, it gets a lot harder.

    A lot of things have changed between then and now. I didn’t think it was realistic for someone to win the Electoral College when they were down as much in the popular vote as Trump was in 2016–the 2000 margin, sure, but this was extreme. I’m not too sanguine about the impossibility of nullifying a landslide either.

  143. 143.

    different-church-lady

    “His polls were much higher when he was at the podium,”

    Now wait just a second here: the Trump campaign itself told me his polling is excellent because of his masterful handing of the pandemic, and anything else you hear is just the press lying to us. So how can it possibly be his polling was doing much better before?

  144. 144.

    Elizabelle

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I’m not too sanguine about the impossibility of nullifying a landslide either.

    In English?  Lot of negatives in a negative comment.

  148. 148.

    Barbara

    @Morzer: That was remarkably pissy. I used to read the Dish, mostly because, for all his blindness about gender and race, he is a polymath who has a wide range of interests. It drove me crazier as time went on.

  152. 152.

    Roger Moore

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Hell, he could do it literally, just order nuclear strikes on all the major cities in the US if he wants to indulge in a final tantrum.

    None of our nukes are currently pointed at our own cities, so they would have to be retargeted.  Since Trump isn’t going to be doing that himself, he would have to get other people involved.  Trump might be willing to blow up New York out of spite, but I doubt he could get enough people in our military to go along with that plan to get anything accomplished but his own arrest.

  157. 157.

    Amir Khalid

    @Quinerly:

    It says something about Trump’s self-image, don’t it, that he can’t even look George Walker Bush’s portrait in the eye.

  158. 158.

    Lacuna Synechdoche

    “What we want is Joe Biden to get a bit more of the national spotlight.”

    This is the first presidential election I’ve seen where both sides were saying to media: “Nah, we’re good. We don’t really need that much publicity. Why don’t you go talk to the other guy.”

  163. 163.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Lacuna Synechdoche: The Biden campaign IS trying to get more exposure, though. But they’re also not trying to obnoxiously be the only thing on the media like Trump is.

    Trump is basically at the point where he’s squealing “Only cover me when I’m doing well and also lie about Biden all the time!”

  164. 164.

    Quaker in a Basement

    “His polls were much higher when he was at the podium,” she said.

    And then what happened? Something to do with injecting disinfectant, “like a kind of cleaning,” wasn’t it?

  165. 165.

    Ken

    @Lacuna Synechdoche: It’s like one of Raymond Smullyan’s logic puzzles.

    The Biden camp, sane knights in Smullyan’s terms, correctly believes that every time Trump opens his mouth his numbers go down, so they just stays out of the way.

    The Trump camp is a mixture of sane knaves, who correctly believe that Trump is a terrible candidate so lie in order to point the news at Biden; and insane knights, who falsely believe all the Qanonsense about Biden and loudly proclaim what they think is the truth.

  166. 166.

    nasruddin

    Given his current mental state, we should want him to do rallies and public rantings. Lots of them.

  167. 167.

    L85NJGT

    @Martin:

     

    See – that’s the rub. Revenue is ↓↓↓↓ so they start complaining about not kicking enough up. That’s why Trump’s so hot for the tent revivals.

  168. 168.

    L85NJGT

    National media points at Biden slowly rocking on the front porch sipping a lemonade. American public responds; Yes, please!

  172. 172.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Happy birthday, USAn Fool. May your next & all future ones be in a nation that has moved carefully back from the viral and political precipices.

    (Hah! Got that in with 25 minutes to spare.)

  173. 173.

    Morzer

    @Kent: I’d suggest that you are being rather generous to the Washington Whatevers when we consider the latest appalling scandal to hit them.

  174. 174.

    brantl

    If they pull that skin any tighter on Kellyann Conway’s face, a 3 mile an hour wind going past her will shatter all the windows within 6 blocks.

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