Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

“But what about the lurkers?”

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Second rate reporter says what?

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

The lights are all blinking red.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

You are here: Home / Elections / Biden-Harris 2020 / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Squatter-in-Chief Losing His Meager Moiety of Marbles (& Also the Debate)

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Squatter-in-Chief Losing His Meager Moiety of Marbles (& Also the Debate)

by | 393 Comments

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I try to keep the first post of the morning upbeat, but let’s be honest: There’s only one topic this morning, and there’s no way to make it other than unpleasant.

(Incidentally, ‘losing his meager moiety of marbles’ comes from a Pogo strip — sanctimonious grifter Deacon Mushrat‘s diagnosis of his fellow grifter Mole, addressed to grifter colleague Seminole Sam, we replies ‘Years ago’. I would be grateful to the google-fu genius who could find me a link to that strip, cuz I think it’ll be handy to have on hand over the next six weeks.)

Extremely thin silver lining — in probably the most horrifying segment of a horrifying event, Trump didn’t come up with the Proud Boys out of his own addled memory; Chris Wallace fed him their name. Which makes it only slightly less disturbing, since that happy band of violent white supremacists considered it an affirmative shout-out:

Remember when Bill Kristol was reliably wrong about everything? Trump’s reverse-Midas touch is even more infallible!

Reader Interactions

393Comments

  3. 3.

    VeniceRiley

    Draw the short straw this moning, Anne?
    What a shitshow that was. Trump is going to lose women by a historic margin.

  5. 5.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    In tonight’s presidential debate the President said the “Portland Sheriff” supports him. As the Multnomah County Sheriff I have never supported Donald Trump and will never support him.

    — Mike Reese (@SheriffReese) September 30, 2020

  6. 6.

    TS (the original)

    I’m no John Meacham fan – but he is ripping trump apart on MJ. His reaction:

    This election is not about Joe Biden – it is about us.

    Are people with America or are people with what trump put on display last night?

  7. 7.

    trnc

    Fairly early in the first debate thread, I was a bit concerned that DT was going to be seen as strong rather than as a bully, a la Reagan’s mic moment during the Carter debate. Part of that concern was Biden’s snickering at almost everything that DT was saying. That concern went away pretty quickly when it became clear that this was going to be DT’s tactic for the entire debate. In hindsight, Joe was probably taking a bit of time to figure out how to counter it. Being Joe Biden, I imagine he struggled with the idea of calling POTUS a clown and telling him to shut up, but he seemed a lot more sure-footed once he settled on that and DT really did look like a clown as he kept going like he did.

  9. 9.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Republican pollster Frank Luntz convened a focus group of 16 purportedly undecided voters from swing states, and in general they had kinder things to say about Biden’s performance than Trump’s.

    Asked to describe Trump in one word or phrase, the responses were: “horrid,” “chaotic,” “unpolished,” “crackhead,” “ehh,” “puzzling,” “un-American,” “unhinged,” “an ass, but a confident ass,” “classic Trump,” “forceful,” “unhinged,” “bully,” “arrogant,” arrogant,” “typical.”

    Then, asked to describe Biden, the responses were: “I was surprised at how well he did,” “better than expected,” “definitely more professional than Trump and I think he’s more a people person,” “competent,” “politician,” “showed restraint and compassion,” “politician,” “predictable,” “nice guy but lacking vision,” “coherent,” “leader,” “attentive and rehearsed,” “somewhat evasive,” “humanity and integrity,” “predictable,” “presidential.”

    Luntz stacked the deck with 15 Whites and only 1 Black and they still shit on Dump

  10. 10.

    trnc

    @TS (the original): Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised to see him talking about that last week, too. I couldn’t help but notice he still managed to work in a St Ronnie reference, but it did help illustrate his point.

  11. 11.

    MJS

    I didn’t watch, but from what the Twitterverse is telling me, Joe may need to reel it in a little bit for the next two debates, but Trump made an even bigger ass of himself than he normally does, so shitshow or not, this goes in the “W” column.

  14. 14.

    trnc

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Good. I saw a different focus group where one idiot tried to both sides the interruptions, but it wasn’t good overall for DT in that group from the bit I saw. One of the guys voted for DT in 2016 and sounded pretty disgusted with him, and not just from the debate.

  16. 16.

    TS (the original)

    @trnc:

    Like MJ who always works in a “good” republican or a dig at the Clintons. None of them, however, are  saying anything negative about Biden.

  17. 17.

    mrmoshpotato

    Trump is literally discrediting our election system in front of the American people. This is what dictators do.

    Well, we are talking about a fascist piece of shit who’s probably had orgies with Putin, Kim and MBS.

  21. 21.

    trnc

    @MJS: Joe may need to reel it in a little bit for the next two debates,

    I watched the whole thing, and I’m not sure what that means. If it’s about calling DT a clown and telling him to shut up, I can see how that would seem over the top, but anyone who watched DT literally not shut the hell up for 5 seconds and hurl all sorts of insults would understand.

    Watch the clips.

  22. 22.

    Baud

    Seeing some of the clips this morning, Joe had a lot of more tweetable one liners than I noticed watching the thing live.

  23. 23.

    TS (the original)

    @MJS:

    Nope – Trump showed who he was and the political media can no longer try and show him as something else. Joe did just fine.

    Trump showed that the only way he will win is to have bully boys intimidate voters & the SCOTUS invalidate the voting.

    Lots of talk on the late night thread about states that will never turn democratic – I think that number should be reducing  every day from now until November 3.

  27. 27.

    trnc

    @mrmoshpotato: Well, we are talking about a fascist piece of shit who’s probably had orgies with Putin, Kim and MBS.

    You know, if a story like that came out, Laura Ingraham would probably say “He’s so cosmopolitan.”

  28. 28.

    Betty Cracker

    What a disgraceful shit-show. It was pretty obvious what Trump’s strategy was: he tried to deny Biden an opportunity to utter a complete sentence, probably to maintain the fiction that Biden is incapable of doing so. He damn near succeeded, but in the process, Trump came off as a rude, self-important, lying shithead sore loser. In other words, he displayed his true personality.

    Biden called Trump a clown, a racist and the worst president America has ever had. He also told him to shut up. Huzzah. It’s about time someone told that motherfucker to shut up. Somewhat baffled to learn from this post that Biden’s people have already affirmed they’ll do the rest of the debates. They should have held out for conditions, such as a shock collar.

  29. 29.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @trnc: Yeah the phrases themselves are insulting, but in context they came off as about the most restrained response a normal person would use under the circumstances. Biden did not come off as the guy being rude and uncouth in the moments when he said those things.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    Seeing how Trump’s strategy was to shout Biden down, the media would have portrayed Biden’s decision not to do more debates as him being afraid.

    And early indications are that this hurt Trump.  And the next debate is a town hall.

  31. 31.

    MJS

    @trnc:  Yes, I was referring to the “clown” and “shut up” comments, but I’m not saying they weren’t needed in the moment, just saying it might not be necessary going forward. He made the point when he needed to make it.

  33. 33.

    mrmoshpotato

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: When does Luntz finally have his Lee-Atwater-deathbed moment and just go off on these “undecided” morons?

    “You’re undecided? We’ve spent the past 40 years telling you idiots that the government is the problem so we can bilk you for tax cuts and destroy your kids’ futures!”

  34. 34.

    trnc

    @Betty Cracker: It was pretty obvious what Trump’s strategy was: he tried to deny Biden an opportunity to utter a complete sentence, probably to maintain the fiction that Biden is incapable of doing so. He damn near succeeded,

    The first 20 minutes or so were pretty nerve wracking on that point, but it became clear that Joe was trying to decide how to respond and that it was literally DT’s only strategy. When Joe started to come out swinging, I felt a lot better. I think DT recognized it when he started falling back to conspiracy crap that almost no one was familiar with, like the Delaware State Uni thing.

  35. 35.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: And the next debate is a town hall.

    I eagerly await the moment a questioner demands trump’s mic be turned off so they can hear Biden’s answer to their question.

  37. 37.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Biden’s people think Biden won, and they’re not wrong looking at all the polling. That’s why they want more debates. I appreciate the simplicity of Joe Biden’s approach to this election- it’s “win more votes”.

  39. 39.

    debbie

    @MJS:

    I don’t think Biden will have a problem reeling anything in. It would be great if he apologized to the country for not begin able to rein in Trump. Trump certainly never will.

  40. 40.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I eagerly await the moment a questioner demands trump’s mic be turned off says “Shut the fuck up, Donnie” so they can hear Biden’s answer to their question.

     
    Fixed.

  41. 41.

    dave319

    Calls for Dump’s resignation to come from every major news outlet in 5…4…3…wait. I’ll come in again. Fascism does not risr to the level of blue dresses and Hur Emailz, obviously.

  45. 45.

    trnc

    @OzarkHillbilly: It occurred to me that DT also probably thought that talking over Wallace incessantly would be a great way to look like he was battling the media. That might have played for him if Wallace had been fact checking constantly, but he didn’t and said so in advance. So, DT winds up just lashing out at the guy who was literally just trying to do the bare minimum of his job – ask a question and set the parameters. DT couldn’t adjust to the actual circumstances.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    It baffles me that Trump is portrayed as “confident”. He’s the least confident person I’ve ever seen. He started out hoping only to eke out a win in the electoral college- just an amazingly low goal. His whole strategy since then has been to somehow reduce Joe Biden’s vote instead of increasing his own. His preparation for this debate was to run around telling people that Biden is senile- again, really low goal for himself and no confidence at all that he could win it on merit. We’re a month out from the election and all he talks about is suppressing votes. It’s all loss avoidance. There was never a plan or effort to win.

  49. 49.

    debbie

    Was it really Chris Wallace who fed the Proud Boys line to Trump? It seems more like it came from Stephen Miller’s debate prep playbook.

    ETA: NPR just replayed the clip and Wallace only mentioned white supremacists. So yeah, Miller.

  50. 50.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    He’s a deeply troubled person, but I’ll give them “confident” in the sense of he’s immune to being thrown off his ugly game.

  51. 51.

    trnc

    @debbie: It would be great if he apologized to the country for not begin able to rein in Trump.

    I would not advise Biden to do that because it doesn’t sound particularly strong. I would focus instead on the tremendous restraint Biden showed in not decking the motherfucker, especially when he started talking shit about his family.

  52. 52.

    hueyplong

    Reelection campaigns are almost always a referendum on the incumbent.  Last night Trump was a half step shy of defecating on the podium.   Had you described that scenario as an option beforehand, I would have chosen it happily.

    He’s an ugly human who has done nothing but ugly things.  Demonstrating that on TV was never going to be pretty.

    It was what it was because Trump is what he is.

    And he’ll do that two more times.

  54. 54.

    JAFD

    Good morning, jackals !

    ‘Thirty days hath September.
    Month of paler cooler suns,
    And if it didn’t, who’d remember
    The totals for the other ones ?

    Thirty days hath September.
    Thirty shining golden beads,
    Thirty days hath September.
    Actually, that’s all it needs.’

    Peg Bracken

    My eye surgeon’s office entered my phone number into their system with a wrong digit.  I shall endeavor again, today, to get that corrected, set up an appointment for further tests, and eventually get cataracts removed.  Wish me luck.

    Regardless, keep your masks and your hopes high, and have a great October !

  56. 56.

    mrmoshpotato

    @trnc:

    You know, if a story like that came out, Laura Ingraham would probably say “He’s so cosmopolitan.” 

    And Nazi-salute him again because well…. they’re fascist piles of shit at FOX.

  58. 58.

    debbie

    Meanwhile, the government is hunting protesters to prosecute. So much for states rights. Also, how better to suppress the vote of non-supporters?

  59. 59.

    MomSense

    Trump was completely unhinged last night and I still wasn’t sure if it would register with people or not.  That’s how low my expectations are for the media and for about half of the country.  Let’s see if it lasts.  It has been disconcerting to see how quickly the media and that half of the country constantly try to normalize and forget how terrible trump is.

  64. 64.

    Kay

    If I was running the debate my first act would have been insisting the Trump children wear masks, because that was the rule in the hall.

    You can’t let them take an inch. You saw what happened – bedlam.

  65. 65.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Baud: Where’re the chyrons asking “Sorry Hillary voters. How can we atone for sucking Dump’s fat, orange, fascist ass for 5 years?”

  66. 66.

    MJS

    @debbie: Biden said, “Proud Boys”. Which Trump immediately picked up on and ran with. Which means he is very familiar with the group (otherwise, he would have asked Biden to repeat the name, and then said he doesn’t know anything about them). So yes, Stephen Miller has certainly been talking up this group to Trump.

  68. 68.

    Frank Wilhoit

    Go back and look at anything Reagan ever said.  The affect may have been a little more ingratiating, but the content was the same, the subtexts were the same, the audience was the same, the purpose was the same.  And Reagan also had the sense to employ deniable surrogates to deliver the real raw red meat, and it was still possible in those days to speak “behind closed doors”.  But nothing has gotten any worse since 1980.  If you think it has, then you are succumbing to misdirection.

  69. 69.

    TS (the original)

    @debbie:

    Was it really Chris Wallace who fed the Proud Boys line to Trump?

    I thought it was Biden who very quietly mentioned them after Wallace asked the question (or after trump started the answer). I could be wrong, would have to go back and check

  71. 71.

    trnc

    If I were writing an SNL skit for this, it would include Wallace starting out by saying, “Mr President, feel free to voice every conspiracy theory in the right wing fever swamp. Your time will be unlimited. VP Biden, you will theoretically have 2 minutes to respond, but most of your time will be allocated to the president.”

  73. 73.

    raven

    I saw an interview with a woman and the said banning abortion was so important and they’ve tried for so long that it does not matter how they get there.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Politely but firmly! Or they get ejected. What’s the point of rules if we make exceptions for the Trumps?

    That was the moment Chris Wallace lost the election…debate.

  75. 75.

    trnc

    @mrmoshpotato:

    If there’s anyone less self aware than DT, it would be most of the pundits. Regardless of that, I do think they have been taking the race more seriously this year and not trying to turn it into a horse race at every turn.

  82. 82.

    Morzer

    I wonder whether Trump might try and duck the next two debates by claiming that since the evil, biased left-wing media (like Chris Wallace) are in the tank for Biden, there’s no way he can get a fair shake of the dice. It’s hard to see how he can repeat his demented performance in the first debate with any expectation of success and he doesn’t have a prayer of winning a “normal” debate that deals with his record.

  83. 83.

    TS (the original)

    @Kay:

    If I was running the debate my first act would have been insisting the Trump children wear masks,

    At some stage it was requested and they refused. I think the debate should have been stopped until they

    1. left or
    2. put on the masks.

    Trump would utterly love it if they were removed by force, but stopping the debate would give him little to be outraged about.

  84. 84.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Mike Gonidakis, the guy who runs Ohio’s Right to Life, said last night that he hoped there would be no more debates. He’s been loyal to Trump until now.

  85. 85.

    TS (the original)

    Anyone know about Katty Kay on MSNBC. She has been the only speaker this morning I have heard who has tried to “both sides” the disaster of the debate.

  88. 88.

    trnc

    @Frank Wilhoit: I think the “behind closed doors” vs “out in the open” is the difference and does make it worse because the latter is what makes it possible for DT and his minions to be more violent. You can absolutely draw a straight line from Reagan to DT, but it is a slanted line precisely because of the calls to violence.

    Reagan was a racist and his demonization of poor single mothers as “welfare queens” was disgusting, but I don’t know that he was a white supremacist. I’m sure he supported gerrymandering that would benefit republicans, but I don’t know if he ever called for election sites to be besieged by violent lunatics. It’s possible I missed these things, though.

  90. 90.

    Kay

    Maggie Haberman
    @maggieNYT
    ·11m
    That Trump advisers and allies are pushing so hard to vote before the election is a sign of how many of them believe he’s likely to lose, and therefore the votes won’t be there post election day.

    They know the public is going to reject their elected officials so the elected officials are frantically jamming a lifetime appointment in, to subvert and deny voters a chance to run their own country.
    And this judge, who I’m told over and over is just an extremely ethical and honorable person, is 100% onboard with this plan. She’s responsible for her own actions and this is what SHE is doing. It should reflect on her character and dismissive and disrespectful view of the public as much as Trumps and McConnells.
    I’m only glad she probably won’t get a chance to hand the election to her President. Based on her “any means to an end” actions so far she’d do it. But I don’t think the public will give her a chance.

  91. 91.

    Princess

    The plural of anecdote is not data but so far I’ve seen one conservative-but-decent type saying the debate convinced him that instead of voting third party, he would vote for Biden and one leftier-than-thou type who said that the debate convinced him to vote for Biden instead of not voting at all. These are the kinds of people who can be moved, and some of them are being moved.

  92. 92.

    trnc

    @Steeplejack (phone): Sounds like both Biden and Wallace say, “Proud Boys.”

    I hope that a lot of people FINALLY tuning in to the race are looking up Proud Boys and beginning to understand what DT is trying to do in this country.

  94. 94.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    Oh, well. I know these people think they’re exempt from the rules that govern others but they aren’t allowed to end the debates when their candidate takes a shit on stage. No one is giving Trump an excused absence.

    Biden’s running for President. He’s going to run the whole race. Trump can do whatever.

  95. 95.

    TS (the original)

    @Baud:

    On MJ – Only the one. We haven’t even had Joe ranting about the Clintons or “when I was in congress we were perfect”

    Nancy Pelosi to be on MJ – don’t think I missed it.

  97. 97.

    PST

    @JAFD: Good luck with the cataracts. It was one of the easiest procedures I’ve ever had, and lots of friends say the same thing. It’s one of the reasons this is the best time in history to get old.

  99. 99.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Trump really is dumb though. Biden denounces violence all the time and he always, always makes sure to add that he supports law enforcement. It was the easiest question he got all night and Trump thought it would be devastating. He doesn’t listen to other people. This is not a difficult thing for Biden to do. He does it all the time. Chris Christie really thought Joe Biden would refuse to denounce violence? They’re idiots.

  101. 101.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    They want Biden to denounce “antifa.” And of he does that, they’ll demand he denounce “BLM.” Whatever Biden does will never be good enough.  It’s a pretty well worn strategy against Dems.

  102. 102.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Geminid: I watched Reuters 2.5 minute clip up above, and I don’t know how any of you sat through over an hour of this orangutan-flinging-poo shitshow.

  105. 105.

    Betty Cracker

    @Frank Wilhoit: Reagan was a horrible president who lied a lot, copiously employed bigoted dog-whistles and immiserated millions of people with awful policies and malicious neglect. But Trump is an order of magnitude worse.

    I don’t recall Reagan openly encouraging armed civilian goons to menace lawmakers and physically intimidate voters. Reagan didn’t undermine American democracy and court civil unrest by preemptively declaring an election fraudulent. AFAIK, Reagan didn’t funnel hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into his personal business and corruptly accept funds through his corporation from domestic and foreign groups seeking political favors. I don’t think he refused or threatened to refuse disaster aid to states unless their governors kissed his ass.

    Reagan was the rotten seed from whence the current lunacy and lawlessness sprang. But to claim that there is no difference between Reagan and Trump is to ignore the downward spiral of his party over the past three decades. Yes, it has gotten worse.

  106. 106.

    Kay

    @A Ghost to Most:

    They’re really stupid people. What people who watch domestic terrorism are afraid of is not 12 Proud Boys fighting with 30 Lefties. They’re afraid of a mass event- an Oklahoma City. They’re afraid of it because the Right has done it before. McVeigh was radicalized by the Right wing. He was the 1% who listen to this stuff an act on it. They’re not actually expecting masses of Trump voters taking to the street in numbers that matter. They’re worried about ONE blowing something up.

  109. 109.

    Betty Cracker

    I don’t rag on the so-called dirtbag left here much because I think we pay too much attention to them, but JFC:

    Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Squatter-in-Chief Losing His Meager Moiety of Marbles (& Also the Debate)

    We’re going to need a massive cult-deprogramming infrastructure in this country. Seriously. I don’t see how a nation can remain a going concern when somewhere around 45% of its citizens are whiny cultists.

  111. 111.

    trnc

    @Kay: Chris Christie really thought Joe Biden would refuse to denounce violence? They’re idiots.

    Trying to remember where Christie falls in the line of dignity wraiths. I know he was an early adopter.

  112. 112.

    bemused

    At the end of trump haranguing tantrum when Melania went on stage to stand by him, I noticed he held her hand and did that right arm jerk thing I’ve seen before. Physical problem or a telling tic he has when in rage mode?

  114. 114.

    trnc

    @Baud: I liked that Biden showed he knows what Antifa is and is not while DT just blathered his usual nonsense. Mighta been nice for Biden to say, “So you’re clearly pro-fascist, then,” but that’s nitpicky.

  116. 116.

    Kay

    @raven:

    The program the Democrats are using to report info from polling places into the Biden boiler room in Ohio is called “LBJ”. It’s Lawyers Boosting Justice” or something, but I thought of you :)

    It’s just all LBJ on the training calls. One of the trainers made the connection between LBJ and the VRA, so it may have been deliberate.

  122. 122.

    JPL

    Chris Wallace has lost his right to ever host another debate.

    The republican party created this monster and I’m scared to death about what he will do between now and January.

  123. 123.

    Kathleen

    @trnc: It takes a wise person with years of experience to navigate  thoughts and feelings in a pressure filled public forum. Democrats have the deepest bench in that regard. Bravo to Biden.

  126. 126.

    trnc

    @Betty Cracker:

    1 – Klion desperately wanted to tweet that

    2 – I’m not convinced that 2 whiny, shouty old men would have made the debate better.

    I was a Warren supporter and I truly believe that she would have left DT unable to walk away from the stage under his own power, but we don’t just have debates. We have an entire candidacy. Based on what I’ve seen from Biden since the primaries, I can’t argue with his nomination.

  131. 131.

    trnc

    @Baud: I know, and that was great. I meant as a direct response to the antifa comment. But like I said, that’s nitpicky and saying “are you pro-fascist” would probably contribute a little more to the circus, so maybe it’s good that he didn’t say it.

  133. 133.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Baud: “I like his racist, fascist policies.  I just wish he’d be quieter about being a racist, fascistic pile of shit.”

  135. 135.

    trnc

    @Morzer: I wouldn’t put it past Rudy Giuliani to demand that Biden denounce BLT and all similar radical leftist groups.

    The would never denounce anything related to mayonnaise, but I take your point.

  136. 136.

    Steeplejack

    @TS (the original):

    She seems to fill the “savvy foreign observer” role, but (IMO) she seems to have little insight to offer. She lifts her finger in the wind and then tries to say something marginally different from that, in the savviest but least offensive way possible.

  137. 137.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Kay:

    You can’t let them take an inch. You saw what happened – bedlam.

    That is correct. In fact, you should view such bad behavior as an opportunity to very clearly correct that bad behavior and so set the tone and establish who is in charge — the moderator. That was Wallace’s big mistake. Of course, it comes from his having no fucking clue what we’s doing. Who the fuck ever thought that a talking head, who has everything done for him in his day job, would ever, ever understand what it means to be in charge?

  142. 142.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @trnc: The point is that you have your idea of what was said behind those closed doors, and I have mine — both of which are subsets of what was actually said.  What I know is that my neighbor’s knife has been at my throat for forty years, and it was Reagan[‘s Republican Party] who incited him to put it there.

  145. 145.

    Immanentize

    @trnc:
    I think Trump has heavily gendered instincts. If Bernie had been there, it would have been just a slap fight in the gutter. And in the gutter, Trump is the champ.

    But Biden did not go for the male dominance play. He let Trump rage on in the gutter and Biden (mostly) stayed on the curb above, shaking his head in sorrow and amusement more than anger. I think he did the best he could have.

    Meanwhile, the Trump/Warren debate would have been wholly gender different. Trump would have assumed a posture of male dominence but Warren is both good at that pose (see puddle of poo formerly called Bloomberg) AND she is good at the Oklahoma/Texas velvet shiv.

    I think she might have been able to pull off a better debate than Biden, but there wouldn’t have been much room for a really good showing by anyone.

  146. 146.

    Sab

    @Baud: My stepson was, unbeknownst to himself, antifa. He was an angry punk with black friends, who didn’t like his black friends getting hassled at punk music events. So he literally fought back. It wasn’t particularly political and it wasn’t at all complicated.

    My brother, who wants to be an oligarch, and is well on the way to amassing the requisite fortune, is terrified of some sort of organized mass proletarian uprising. Nope. It’s just very angry young people.

    My brother needs to get out more. But that is what he has worked his whole life to avoid.

  147. 147.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @Betty Cracker: No, it hasn’t.  Every word out of Reagan’s mouth was incitement to domestic genocide.  I grant that Reagan did not personally enrich himself, but the Republican Party went full Maoist in 1980 and nothing has moved a hair since then.

  148. 148.

    artem1s

    @Betty Cracker:

    They should have held out for conditions, such as a shock collar.

    narcissists don’t negotiate, they live to break the rules once they have lied about where the next line in the sand will be drawn. So yes, outside of a shock collar, I’m not sure there is any point to trying out some magical cure to solve Dump’s inability to debate.  And at this point, I’m not sure that the Dems or Joe want to. The American people are getting an up close and personal taste of what Dump is really all about.  What it must be like to work for him, sit in meetings with him, be a foreign dignitary trying to have a substantive discussion with him.  The usual deplorables may always think he is presidential and this behavior makes someone a strong leader, but even with the moderator trying to shield him, he still came off as unhinged to the not-27%.  If it takes 180 more minutes of living in that chaotic shitstorm to make it clearer to whoever hasn’t gotten the message yet, I’m quite sure Joe is willing to take that bullet.

  149. 149.

    Kay

    Just my opinion, but it is insane to allow Donald Trump’s behavior to mean there can be no debates.

    I don’t even like debates and I don’t think they matter but I DO think it matters to STOP allowing these peoples atrocious behavior to get them what they want.

    Wallace should have checked Trump in the first ten minutes. He failed. Find someone who won’t fail. We’re going to have and election whether the Trump Family and their low quality hires like it or not and we’re going to have the election the way we always have, because THEY don’t make new rules to suit their shitty candidate. He sucked in the debate. Guess what? He has to do more of them.

    No more passes for Donald Trump. 50 years of people being cowed by him is enough. The country will survive him taking another shit on a debate stage. What it won’t survive is another incident where we give way to his low standards and lower our own. Hold it up. He has to meet our standards- we don’t have to meet his.

  152. 152.

    germy

    stop saying this debate is a national embarrassment because it tars Joe Biden. He's done nothing wrong. Wallace and Trump are a fucking embarrassment

    — John Cole (@Johngcole) September 30, 2020

  155. 155.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker: the two conditions I wish they would insist on:

    1) Moderator must be able to shut off microphones

    2) Audience members must wear masks (as previously agreed to) or the debate stops right then and there.

  156. 156.

    Kathleen

    @raven: Yup. Reagan was speaking Atwater Code. That’s when at least some Republicans pretended to care about how voters perceived them.

  159. 159.

    Betty Cracker

    @Immanentize: I started out thinking Biden looked old and tired and worried that it would play into Trump’s smears. But Trump blew up any chance that would happen.

  165. 165.

    Jeffro

    @hueyplong: And [trumpov]’ll do that two more times.

    So true.

    The next one in particular, the town hall debate, has the potential for being an epic, epic fail for the orange moron.  I think it’s quite likely that he’ll get into it with audience members and vice versa.  Great – another first!

    I just wish Uncle Joe would call trumpov a poo-flinging monkey or a escaped mental patient (your choice, Joe ;)

  166. 166.

    germy

    Missed the claim that Trump has gotten insulin prices so low, it’s “like water.”

    Facts from Stat: “In reality, insulin still retails for roughly $300 a vial. Most patients with diabetes need two to three vials per month, and some can require much more.” https://t.co/BaW85njv4R

    — Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 30, 2020

  168. 168.

    Geminid

    The proud boys exchange got widespread attention in U.S. media. And today’s Jerusalem Post has an article titled,”Are the Proud Boys Anti-Semitic?” Spoiler alert: they are.

  170. 170.

    frosty

    @Baud: Another great comment from our future president! I haven’t tracked but you probably get more chuckles from me than any other commenters.

  171. 171.

    trnc

    @JPL: You’re clearly not alone in that, but I don’t think he was completely useless. I do believe he was way late out of the gate reminding DT that he is violating the hard negotiated rules that his campaign agreed to, so he absolutely should have shut DT down earlier.

    However, I think the decision not to fact check was the right call. He would have been constantly drawn into that with DT, and DT was clearly trying to look like he was taking on the MSM as well as Biden. When Wallace didn’t fact check him, DT went ahead and attacked him anyway, which looked really weird since Wallace was doing the bare minimum of his job. DT couldn’t adjust his strategy to deal with the reality that the moderator was not commenting on DT’s spew other than trying be the timekeeper, so it looked like he was battling Wallace for no reason.

  172. 172.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: Agree.  And Biden is committed to doing all the debates — good.

    There are ways to control people (witnesses) like Trump, but the moderators don’t have that skill set, and the TV format doesn’t allow the time needed to do it effectively.

  175. 175.

    germy

    Wallace’s question about “race” was all about “Sir, how are you going to deal with teh blacks?”

    “Deal with” the issue of race.

    The subject of race is always tied to law and order and cops.

    As if people of color are an ant infestation, and the candidates are supposed to be competing brands of pesticide.

    Biden talks about inequality and opportunity.  But when asked about “race” Trump veers right back into “The cops support me.”

    The segment revealed a lot about Wallace and Trump.

  176. 176.

    Jeffro

    @germy: exactly right.

    I’ve been correcting folks on this kind of thing for, oh, four years now.  Trumpov’s not a national embarrassment – Democrats have nothing to be embarrassed about.  Republicans, however, should be throwing themselves off the nearest cliff in shame.

  177. 177.

    trnc

    @mrmoshpotato:

    @Baud: “I like his racist, fascist policies.  I just wish he’d be quieter about being a racist, fascistic pile of shit.”

    Yeah, I saw that (one, at least). Pretty obviously not an undecided voter – she struck me as one of those people who would find some excuse to vote for DT, like maybe not liking the color of Joe’s tie.

  180. 180.

    Immanentize

    @germy: Some Black folk I follow on Twitter were very upset that there were three old white men discussing “the race problem.” As one put it, “No, let’s discuss the racism problem.”

  183. 183.

    Betty Cracker

    Biden did something important last night toward the end of the debate: he assured Americans that their votes would determine the outcome of the election. Not Trump and his goons and toadies — voters.

  184. 184.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Immanentize:

    It was like any day in Family Court with an obnoxious pro se litigant or boundary-pressing lawyer (ahem). My Family Court Judge friends were all chattering on Facebook about how easy it is to shut that shit down, a few of them making some sideways glances my direction, haha.

  186. 186.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    We’re going to have debates and we’re going to vote and we’re going to have normal polling places where people follow rules – if they want to be pollwatchers, and if they don’t follow the rules, like Trump’s low quality hire didn’t yesterday, they can’t enter the polling place. I follow the rules when I observe- the low quality hires can too.

    They will not succeed in taking elections from us. They’ve already taken enough. Onward.

  188. 188.

    hueyplong

    @Kay: Agree that it’s insane to stop having debates when Trump has proved that he’ll melt down at each of them and alienate any viewer not wearing a tshirt depicting an image of the Confederate battle flag.

    But I’m glad Chris Wallace was the moderator, and I’m glad he failed to check Trump when checking him probably would have helped Trump’s image by sparing the nation some of the worst of what went down last night.  I’m glad the guy who let him go on like that was from FoxNews, and glad it was a male.

    The reactions of those Luntz people show that this could not have gone better for those of us who want more Americans to see Trump drop the Mussolini “Stong Fascist Leader” mask and look like the angry, stupid, evil person he is.  He couldn’t be bothered to so much as suggest a solution to the pandemic, but he had plenty of time to interrupt Biden speaking about his dead son so as to get in some cheap shots at Biden’s only surviving child.

    The best answer is for everyone who isn’t a racist asshole to wake up this morning angry and motivated to end this long national shitshow embarrassment.

    Two  more just like this, please, with heaping helpings of “Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

    That’s the “sir” story I want to hear.

  189. 189.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Jeffro: I think shut-off mics should be the default state. They’re turned on when the candidate is supposed to speak. At the end of the allotted time, the speaker gets a 10 second warning and then the mic goes dead again. That way the moderator doesn’t have to decide to shut someone down.

  190. 190.

    mrmoshpotato

    Nope… unless we can somehow see things mixed and matched, so that Kamala Harris gets a shot at Trump. I’d pay to watch that verbal K.O. https://t.co/okgDMuxrOd— Jay Thomas (@RemainsOfTheJay) September 30, 2020

    Senator Harris gets debate two, and just for fun, NFLTG Hillary gets to roundhouse Dump over and over in the third.

  191. 191.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jeffro: People who voted for Clinton aren’t at fault, but Trump is a national embarrassment. That clown is the president of our country, and I am ashamed of that fact, even though I did everything in my power to prevent it.

  192. 192.

    germy

    I may pull a Perseus and watch Twitter watch the debate rather than gazing myself directly on the orange monster.

    — Benjamin Dreyer (@BCDreyer) September 29, 2020

    No more trump debates for me. I’ll watch Harris/Pence, but I will NOT watch any more Trump/Biden debates.

    I feel bad because my wife didn’t want to watch last night, and I was all “Let’s tune in, I want to see Biden make a fool of Trump!” And as the debate became more of a Trump shitfest, she got more miserable, and I got more miserable.

    I’ll read about the next two debates, but there’s no way we’ll watch.

  193. 193.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Biden’s voter protection effort is huge. It’s as big as Obama’s was in Ohio and Ohio isn’t even a top tier state for Biden. We had 150 people on the voter protection zoom Monday night. The litigation effort is different, they’re the people who will file to keep polling places open, enforce the rules about counting ballots, go to court if they have to, but I assume that’s staffing up too.

  195. 195.

    narya

    @JAFD: I think they typically only do one eye at a time–and I highly recommend that strategy. I know it’s an extremely safe procedure with very few issues . . . it’s just that my dad is one of the people who had Issues and lost an eye. NOT trying to scare you! good luck!!

  196. 196.

    Jeffro

    Three quick updates from the WaPo’s ‘breaking news’ section:

    – Pence is going to Georgia – Georgia! – to campaign

    – trumpov is going to Wisconsin for yet another super-spreader rally (low-hanging fruit there, Biden & Co)

    – Chris Christie himself is saying that trumpov “needs to clarify his views on white supremacy”

    27% here we come!

  197. 197.

    Chyron HR

    @Immanentize:

    That’s funny, because I seem to remember being told that Black voters had selected the oldest, whitest guy available as the nominee and that continuing to support any other Democratic parimary candidate was racist.

  199. 199.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker: I can feel badly (and do!) about the state of our country and that this clown is our president*.  But I can’t feel shame for something I didn’t do.  He’s there due to the actions of others – some duped, some corrupt, some just plain evil – but not me.  I’m not even embarrassed anymore.  Let his supporters be embarrassed.

  200. 200.

    trnc

    @Jeffro:

    @Betty Cracker: the two conditions I wish they would insist on:

    1) Moderator must be able to shut off microphones

    If the moderator cuts DT’s mic, he gets to be the martyr who was silenced by the media. DT’s performance appears to be almost universally loathed by non-wingnuts, so I think his refusal to stop shitting all over the debate did not work in his favor. Why should we take away our greatest weapon – DT’s combination of ego and stupidity?

    What I do think the next moderator should do is make it clear from the outset that the rules were negotiated by both parties, and ask them both directly if they will abide by those rules before they start (yes, I know Biden did nothing wrong, but the mod has to ask both or he’ll be called biased right out of the gate). If DT still won’t shut his mouth, it will look even worse than it did last night.

  204. 204.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jeffro:

    Chris Christie himself is saying that trumpov “needs to clarify his views on white supremacy” 

    Oh.  How?  By tweeting the groups he’d like to see murdered?

    Fuck off, Chris.

  205. 205.

    different-church-lady

    @Jeffro:

    – Chris Christie himself is saying that trumpov “needs to clarify his views on white supremacy”

    He kinda already does that on a daily basis, no?

  207. 207.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: That’s good to hear. Trump’s counter-effort will be disorganized and stupid, as we’ve already seen. I worry about states where Trump’s toadies hold the levers of power (like Florida), but maybe we can count on the low-quality hires and suck-ups’ incompetence to save us one more time.

  208. 208.

    germy

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Chris Christie was backstage prepping Trump for the debate. And then he joined the panel at ABC to discuss his client’s performance.

    Corporate news executives believe this is appropriate.

  209. 209.

    Jeffro

    Biden & Co already have a GREAT ad up from last night’s debate: trumpov ranting and raving, with a crying/whining emoji over his face, while Chris Wallace tries to get him to shut up.

    Biden tweet over top of the ad: “Had enough?”

    LOL

  210. 210.

    trnc

    @Immanentize: Some Black folk I follow on Twitter were very upset that there were three old white men discussing “the race problem.” As one put it, “No, let’s discuss the racism problem.”

    One of them clearly was discussing the racism problem. JFC!

  212. 212.

    Eunicecycle

    @trnc: I think the most frightening thing Trump said all night was during that moment when he added “Somebody should do something.” A call for stochastic terrorism if I ever heard one.

  213. 213.

    hueyplong

    @different-church-lady: Yes, the entirety of the point is that he just did clarify his stand on white supremacy.  He’s for it, strongly, and always has been.

    Christie’s whine is something along the lines of “Can’t he just lie a little bit on this point?  He does it about everything else.”

    When someone tells you he’s racist, he is.

  214. 214.

    Jeffro

    @mrmoshpotato:

     

    @different-church-lady: I took it to mean “Chris Christie desperately wishes trumpov wouldn’t say things like ‘stand down and stand by’ to violent white gangs in front of a national audience”

    Chris Christie might also want to wish for a unicorn – he’ll get that sooner.

  215. 215.

    different-church-lady

    @Immanentize: I do hope they realize one of those white guys is  perfectly okay with letting cops stomp black people into the ground, and another of them wants to stop it.

  216. 216.

    trnc

    @germy: And as the debate became more of a Trump shitfest, she got more miserable, and I got more miserable.

    That’s how I felt the first 20 minutes or so, but I felt better when I realized DT was jumping the shark. I’m also planning for the VP debate and not sure I care about the other 2 prez debates, but I’m glad I didn’t stop watching.

  219. 219.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    Not today, but it will either get lost in the fire hose of news or they will forget how bad it was and talk about it like it wasn’t a shitshow.

  222. 222.

    trnc

    @Jeffro: – Chris Christie himself is saying that trumpov “needs to clarify his views on white supremacy”

    Hate to tell ya, CC, but DT has been PERFECTLY clear about his support for white supremacy. Quit beshitting yourself. To paraphrase, “You continue to fill a much needed void.”

  225. 225.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Kay: I’m so glad there’s so much cash flowing into races up and down the ballot every time Orange Asshole does something even worse. Because it means they can staff up for the legal battles around the country. We all know the RNC is going to overthrow the election in the courts.

  227. 227.

    Jay Black

    Greetings,

    You can find the Pogo strip you are looking for as well as commentary on the strip in Walt Kelly and Pogo: The Art of the Political Swamp by James Eric Black and published by McFarland.

  228. 228.

    trnc

    @Eunicecycle: Yes, but I’m hoping that his clumsiness and explicit call for the Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by” will backfire as sane people start to realize what he’s doing.

  232. 232.

    Aleta

    @JAFD:  My partner just finished those surgeries yesterday.  He was incredibly anxious (always nervous about his extremely nearsighted eyes anyway) and he put it off.  Then covid came … Now he’s amazed and happy at the clarity and colors, and at better focus than he’s ever had.  He got the mono lenses.   Chose to still wear glasses for any distance beyond the computer, but they are much thinner.

  233. 233.

    TS (the original)

    Other than a pundit talking about the Governor of Alaska,  the rest of the WaPo front page has articles like this one

    Donald Trump came to heckle. He came to interrupt and to pontificate and to flail his arms, batting away questions and facts in a chaotic fury. He was a boor and a troll, holding up his stubby mitts in an angry pantomime as he tried to halt the words coming from former vice president Joe Biden’s mouth. Trump seemed to believe that with a single rude hand gesture, one that he regularly uses to assert his dominance, he could hold back the truth so he could be free to spin and hype and vent.

    It was an exhausting mess that spun beyond moderator Chris Wallace’s control and outside the bounds of anything that could reasonably be called a debate. It was a 90-minute display of a president’s testosterone-fueled, unmanaged rage and insecurity.

    Biden came to debate, God bless him. Trump arrived seemingly hopped up on grievance and indignation, determined to just bellow his way through the evening without ever having to answer a question or speak with clarity and sincerity to the home audience. He raised issues with Biden about his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings and then refused to let his political rival answer. He yammered about fake news and Hillary Clinton. He talked over both Biden and Wallace. He talked so much that it became impossible to even understand what he was talking about. He talked ceaselessly, and yet he said very little. He talked so much it was as though he was trying to pummel the viewer into submission with his words.

  234. 234.

    JPL

    @trnc: The viewers at home with just see his lips moving..
    Every republican Senator should be asked about Proud Boys. Ask the democratic Senators also.

  235. 235.

    TS (the original)

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    We all know the RNC is going to overthrow the election in the courts.

    I sure don’t know that. Trump may try, but I even doubt that will happen.

    McConnell has his judges, he doesn’t need trump any more.

  236. 236.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Jeffro:

    Chris Christie himself is saying that trumpov “needs to clarify his views on white supremacy”

    They seem pretty clear already, dontcha think?

  239. 239.

    Matt McIrvin

    @germy: Sam was the one who turned it on last night, not me. And just a few minutes in, when Trump was just interrupting with stupid taunts every few seconds and Biden still seemed visibly at sea about how to handle this, she just turned it off. Said her knowledge of how much was riding on this and how Biden couldn’t even seem to finish a sentence was just giving her too much anxiety.

    It sounds like Biden recovered not long after that and started hitting back, but I wasn’t inclined to tune in again.

  240. 240.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jeffro: Michael Steele: “America, this president has shown his ass tonight.”

    Tell us more about the Republican candidate, former chair of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele!

  242. 242.

    Amir Khalid

    @Steeplejack:

    Everything in the Before Time feels like it was 50 years ago. But it’s only been seven years:  Wikipedia saith, the lanes were closed for no apparent reason during the Monday morning rush hour on 9th September, 2013, and only reopened on the Friday.

  243. 243.

    Anne Laurie

    @Jay Black: I have the Kelly collection with the original strip, thank you.  (Got the paperback when it came out.)  What I want is an online version I can link to!

  245. 245.

    TS (the original)

    @hueyplong:  No worries, she has been well in the background –  Heard nothing about her during the Obama years (smart family) but she has had a small media presence this time around.

  248. 248.

    Sloane Ranger

    Just listened to an American Purity Progressive resident in the UK being interviewed by the BBC about the debate. She’s unhappy. Biden didn’t embrace the Green New Deal and give it a big slobbery kiss, he didn’t condemn violence against African Americans by cops (or, if he did, he didn’t do it strongly enough). She’s not voting this election. She claims to be African American and ended by saying that if America expects black women to save the US from itself, they can think again.

    I presume she is not representative of her demographic.

    These people really get my goat. They would take the slice of bread out of a starving child’s hands and throw it away because, in an ideal world, the child should have the whole loaf and a bowl of soup to dunk it in.

  249. 249.

    danielx

    And of course….

    I’ve never seen Biden seem so old or so weak. He can’t land a strong blow. He’s being successfully heckled. I want to look away.
    — Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) September 30, 2020

    As always, Andrew Sullivan sees things differently, and not in a good way.

  250. 250.

    Eunicecycle

    I predict Joe Biden is going to be winning handily on election night. It is going to be Donald Trump who will insist on all the absentee/mail-in ballots being counted well beyond November 3rd.

  257. 257.

    Steeplejack

    Bit of flotsam from the news torrent:

    Thinking about how often I've heard Republicans say they hate illegal immigrants because "they don't pay taxes."

    — Jennifer Wright (@JenAshleyWright) September 29, 2020

  258. 258.

    Steeplejack

    @hueyplong:

    But I’m glad Chris Wallace was the moderator, and I’m glad he failed to check Trump when checking him probably would have helped Trump’s image by sparing the nation some of the worst of what went down last night. I’m glad the guy who let him go on like that was from FoxNews, and glad it was a male.

    Gotta say I think you’re right about this.

  259. 259.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @TS (the original): The words “try to” got lost in that post as I kept editing it before sending.

    They’re trying to litigate drop off boxes, mail in deadlines, everything about the process. The DNC will need an army of lawyers.

  264. 264.

    Sab

    I was just watching Chris Jansing on MSNBC following up with her pack of undecided white women voters from the suburbs of northern Ohio.

    First of all, all week Chris has never taken her mask off. Yay!

    Yesterday they claimed to be in Lorain (steel town on Lake Erie.) My husband walked by, looked and then laughed. “I’m impressed with Jansing. I have been to Lorain a lot and I have never seen anything there that looks like that nice little green suburban park.”

    Today, same women, still undecided, same park. Now it’s labelled Avon. That makes more sense.

  266. 266.

    Haroldo

    @Sloane Ranger:

    ust listened to an American Purity Progressive resident in the UK being interviewed by the BBC about the debate. She’s unhappy. Biden didn’t embrace the Green New Deal and give it a big slobbery kiss, he didn’t condemn violence against African Americans by cops (or, if he did, he didn’t do it strongly enough). She’s not voting this election. She claims to be African American and ended by saying that if America expects black women to save the US from itself, they can think again.

    This seems to be the new norm for the BBC with respect to US politics (and likewise they’re pretty servile these days when it comes to the Tories).

  268. 268.

    Aleta

    I  intended to watch last night but after 30 min or so I just couldn’t take it.  I slept.  Miracle cure.  I expect it will last until I watch the recording.

    My niece has her PhD thesis defense today.  Zoom, so I’ll be watching.  She’s persevered through a lot of prejudice all the way.   Hard time from grade school through high school, intensely cruel bullying from classmates and fake  “friends” who’d turn on her.  Her parent’s severe bouts of mental  illness.  As a teen, the only person home for one of their suicide attempts (after insurance co. kept forcing them out of the hospital.  The ACA has made all the difference for this family.)

    Anyway a few years ago she chose to focus her study on predatory mechanisms  of viruses, and she’s also been volunteering in the covid research lab lately.  Advisors leaving for other jobs and then Covid disrupted her research and then access to her subjects the last two years.

    I’m a bit nervous about whether anyone in her committee will have internal prejudice against her.

    Her defense starts at 10 am today,  if anyone feels inclined to send positive vibes or calm for her, toward NY state.   A courageous kid.

  269. 269.

    Betty Cracker

    @Sloane Ranger:

    They would take the slice of bread out of a starving child’s hands and throw it away because, in an ideal world, the child should have the whole loaf and a bowl of soup to dunk it in.

    Very well put. I’ll keep that analogy in mind for tortured conversations with certain yoots of my acquaintance who occasionally say dumb things when they don’t get their way. :)

  270. 270.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: I was wondering if it could help Trump just through vote discouragement–marginal potential voters just deciding politics was too gross to take this year and tuning out.

    But what I’m seeing this morning is “both sides are gross” takes coming from some professional pundits and “Trump is an asshole” coming from J. Random Viewer.

  271. 271.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro:  Bearing Drift has good coverage of Virginia republican infighting. They are on the losing side of the intra-party fight that brought us Bob Good as republican congressional candidate in the VA 5th. Are you still going up on Skyline Drive tomorrow evening? Or was it the Parkway? Should be a pretty moon.

  273. 273.

    TS (the original)

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    OK – it sounded so definite without those words. I keep hoping the win will be so large there is nothing Trump can do. I have my heart set on Texas. I think it will be the late votes that swing to Biden as Trump self immolates & they will be voted on election day.

    You read it here first ….  Texas 38EV

  274. 274.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @SFAW: Remember that trump has a reverse Midas touch.  And remember simple math.  What happens if you multiply two negatives?

  276. 276.

    Keith P.

    Who wants to place a futures bet that some tidbit will trickle out within a month that post-debate, Trump asked/demanded that Hunter Biden’s discharge from the Navy be retroactively made dishonorable (so he can say he was right at the debate and out of spite)?

  277. 277.

    Steeplejack

    Unsolicited opinion from a black man: everything that's wrong with race in America is three white men starting a conversation "about race" and having it immediately degenerate into an argument about "law and order."

    — Elliot Williams (@elliotcwilliams) September 30, 2020

  278. 278.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    “Trump is an asshole” coming from J. Random Viewer.

    It’s so strange seeing so many people come to a conclusion that we all realized four years ago.

  279. 279.

    Baud

    @Steeplejack: I don’t know.  I heard Biden talk about race separate from the “law and order” issue.  It may not have been enough to satisfy our highest ideals, but it was there.

  282. 282.

    Quiltingfool

    @Betty Cracker:  I was an 8th grade teacher.  I dealt with misbehaving students by sending them into the hall for a “come to Jesus” talk – a nice way of informing them and all the other kids that shit was about to get real.  I also had a way of looking at hot mess students that I heard was kinda scary and tended to shut things down without saying anything.  Trump REALLY needed a come to Jesus talk, but it probably wouldn’t have done any good.  Really, that talk needed to be done about 70 years ago.

  285. 285.

    TS (the original)

     

    From WaPO 

    Vice President Pence plans Wednesday to head to Georgia, as the Republican ticket seeks to shore up support in a state that recent polls have shown to be surprisingly competitive.

    A poll released Tuesday showed a virtual dead heat between Biden and Trump in the Peach State.

    Biden drew the support of 50 percent of likely voters, while Trump drew the support of 47 percent, according to the Quinnipiac University poll.

    Since when does 50:47 represent a dead heat? When Trump’s opponent is the 50.

    And from the actual Poll – which included a senate poll

    Republican incumbent Senator David Perdue, who is seeking a second term, is essentially tied with Democrat Jon Ossoff, as 49 percent of likely voters go to Ossoff and 48 percent go to Perdue

    Another tied poll with the democrat just ahead.

    1,125 likely Georgia voters were surveyed from September 23 – 27 with a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percentage points.

    Perhaps I should assume that the voter suppression in Georgia makes these into tied races.

  286. 286.

    SFAW

    @Eunicecycle:

    Maybe Bill will finally break his curse of always being wrong.

    It would be nice if that happened — although it would probably put many of us here at risk for stroke or heart attack — but please also remember that he said Hillary would win. With approximately the same amount of confidence.

    My earlier comment was a joke, but there’s always his unbroken string of wrongness in the back of my mind.

  288. 288.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    It’s so strange seeing so many people come to a conclusion that we all realized four years ago.

    Oh, sure, lord it over them, you and your big brain.

  290. 290.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Steeplejack:  Speaking of law and (dis) order, maybe the moderator at the debate should have asked about the Cleveland Clinics own private police force, that has a disturbing history of harassing black employees and drivers:

    The Startling Reach and Disparate Impact of Cleveland Clinic’s Private Police Force

    “These hospital cops don’t just handle disturbances in hospital corridors or emergency rooms. In look and practice almost indistinguishable from Cleveland police, the clinic’s 153 officers are armed, make arrests and stop motorists on city streets, including major commuter routes. Along with smaller private police departments operated by University Hospitals and the nonprofit University Circle economic development group, they patrol the city’s medical zone, an island of prosperity and promise that cuts through one of the poorest sections of Cleveland.”

    But that would have required the moderator to do some actual research instead of living in his bubble.

  291. 291.

    SFAW

    @Ken:

    Went with the Glenlivet over the Glenfiddich, then?

    Considering how much alcohol would be needed to deal with the Traitor-in-Chief’s insanity, one would think Old Overshoe would be a better choice. I mean, you don’t want to throw down the good stuff, just to get shit-faced.

    And, of course, there was Morzer’s (I think) suggestion last night of a supertanker-worth of whisky/rotgut.

  293. 293.

    Jeffro

    @TS (the original): Totally awesome!  And again, this is Georgia – a state trumpov absolutely has to win.  Oops!  Looks like he’s going to be challenging the blessed results in more states than he thinks.

  294. 294.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Remember that trump has a reverse Midas touch.  And remember simple math.  What happens if you multiply two negatives?

    It’s still Bloody Bill. And Trump had the same reverse-Midas in 2016 (just not as apparent that it was all-encompassing, as we later found out).

  296. 296.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    I don’t think Biden caused the degeneration, or even contributed to it, but it happened, and it happens a lot in general.

  297. 297.

    Matt McIrvin

    @TS (the original): Reporters usually use “statistical tie” to mean a difference within the sampling margin of error, which is probably a bad usage for a number of reasons (it both overstates and understates matters in different ways) but it’s stuck. The MoE on these polls is usually around 3 points or so, more if the sample is on the small side.

  298. 298.

    Nicole

    @TS (the original): 
    Thank you for posting that excerpt. I have 50 postcards to write and mail out by Friday for postcardstovoters and I’m on the Ossoff postcard campaign. This is very inspiring!

  299. 299.

    Barbara

    @TS (the original): The latest Georgia polls are a bit outlier, but let me say, I have been eagerly awaiting the next Southern state entrant to the red to purple to blue sweepstakes that started with Virginia.  it looks like it’s a contest between North Carolina and Georgia, with NC just a tad ahead.

    It looks like pollsters were waiting for the debate to drop their next round of polls.  Almost nothing new today.

  300. 300.

    catclub

    @TS (the original): Lots of talk on the late night thread about states that will never turn democratic – I think that number should be reducing every day from now until November 3.

    yeah, in Mississippi, if 17% of white voters go for the Democrat in 2008, he wins.  he got 11% of white voters in MISS. I consider MISS actually possible.

  303. 303.

    cain

    @Kay:

    They won because they got 3.8 million dollars in one hour. That’s a pretty good haul for an hour. How much did Trump make?

  304. 304.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Barbara: The situation after RBG’s death and the Supreme Court becoming the big story seems to have shifted the regional picture a little bit: Florida and Arizona got closer or tied, with some polls showing Trump ahead, but Biden started doing better in the upper Midwest for some reason, maybe leading in Ohio. On the whole it seemed like a barely perceptible fractional move toward Trump. But there’s been a dearth of state polling after the tax story broke and nothing yet after the debate, of course.

    (I wonder if some of it was regional variations in COVID: FL and AZ’s big summer outbreaks were on the downslope, but things are getting worse in the Midwest. But DeSantis deciding to just blow the doors wide open in Florida might change that.)

  305. 305.

    Ruckus

    @Morzer:

    trump is, as has been said a bazillion times, a totally self involved, narcissistic, asswipe. His expectations are that his incredible personality is better than everyone, anyone else’s on the planet, now or at anytime in history, that no one else can compare to his magnificence. It is obviously a delusion. But it has been his total personality for all of his adulthood and it isn’t changing now, no matter what happens or what anyone says. He is a deeply broken human being that so either pisses off everyone who is paying any attention and isn’t on a similar wavelength or who makes the people on/along the same wavelength revel in their possible elevation into humanity that he is going to have very few people with in between concepts of him. And he elevated himself to a position of importance such that every flaw is on view and a negative rather than a positive for his disgusting person. And last night was the proof that he is a massively broken person to any/every one who isn’t on that wavelength. He will have backers to his last day. But he’s removed any and all excuses to everyone else about how broken and disgusting he is.

  306. 306.

    Immanentize

    @Steeplejack: Here is Biden on race last night.  Not terrible, but clearly talking about race in a white-centric, white-soothing way. Bad apples. And look how he works so hard to condemn protests. Etc.

    Vice President Joe Biden: (30:59)
    Yes, there is. There’s systemic injustice in this country, in education and work and in law enforcement and the way in which it’s enforced. But look, the vast majority of police officers are good, decent, honorable men and women. They risk their lives every day to take care of us, but there are some bad apples. And when they occur, when they find them, they have to be sorted out. They have to be held accountable. They have to be held accountable. And what I’m going to do as President of the United States is call together an entire group of people at the White House, everything from the civil rights groups, to the police officers, to the police chiefs, and we’re going to work this out.

    Vice President Joe Biden: (31:38)
    We’re going to work this out. So we changed the way in which we have more transparency, in when these things happen. These cops aren’t happy to see what happened to George Floyd. These cops aren’t happy to see what happened to Breonna Taylor. Most don’t like it, but we have to have a system where people are held accountable when… And by the way, violence in response is never appropriate, never appropriate. Peaceful protest is, violence is never appropriate.

  307. 307.

    Barbara

    @Morzer: I followed on twitter while my son actually watched.  It sounds to me that Trump’s handlers or whatever you call them impressed upon him the need to “dominate” Biden, and that he currently lacks anything like the acumen to implement that strategy without shouting and heckling, and, basically, being a loud mouthed, obnoxious bully.  His cognitive decline is noticeable.

  309. 309.

    A Ghost to Most

    @Betty Cracker: No matter who prevails, these assholes will remain, now with their own lost cause to rally around. Trunt is a symptom, not the disease

    For some color, my family is now very angry with me for calling my brother a  “christian fascist, a nazi, a bigot.” I probably wrote myself out of my step-mother’s will. I’m good with that.

  312. 312.

    randy khan

    @artem1s:

    So yes, outside of a shock collar, I’m not sure there is any point to trying out some magical cure to solve Dump’s inability to debate.  And at this point, I’m not sure that the Dems or Joe want to. The American people are getting an up close and personal taste of what Dump is really all about.  What it must be like to work for him, sit in meetings with him, be a foreign dignitary trying to have a substantive discussion with him.

    Like the COVID-19 press conferences.  The more he talks the worse he looks to normal people.

    Again, I didn’t watch but I get the impression that Biden actually picked his spots fairly well, so that people could tell that he wasn’t putting up with Trump but he didn’t sound like he was whining. (I have watched the “Will you shut up, man?” clip, and I may watch it 20 more times to savor the moment.  It was a great example of what Biden did, as the tone was more exasperation than anything else, which is what a lot of people probably were feeling.)

  314. 314.

    Steeplejack

    @Betty Cracker:

    I like the “voting as marriage vs. voting as catching a bus” one that has been going around. You’re not looking for the candidate to be perfect in every way, you’re looking for the available candidate who gets you closer to where you want to go.

  318. 318.

    randy khan

    @Immanentize:

    Some Black folk I follow on Twitter were very upset that there were three old white men discussing “the race problem.” As one put it, “No, let’s discuss the racism problem.”

    Unfortunately, it was the wrong moderator to get it put that way.

    Although I avoid the debates, I would have paid money to see Wallace put it that way and to see Trump’s response.  (I know what Biden would have said, more or less.)

  319. 319.

    Barbara

    @Matt McIrvin: Florida has been tight for a while.  The picture in Arizona is baffling because the results are so wildly differential.  I assume that likely voter screen differences might be in play.   But Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are looking increasingly solid for Biden. I think North Carolina and Arizona are also likely to go for Biden, and I hope it’s not as tight as the race between Synema and McSally was.  I think McSally is toast, and I hate to say it, but I assume that Mark Kelly has an advantage that Synema lacked, i.e., the subset of voters who will always pick any credible man over any credible woman.  Don’t get me wrong, Kelly is light years better than McSally but part of me knows that the race is further apart because of gender bias and it still rankles.  Makes it harder to predict the top of the ticket outcome as well.

  320. 320.

    bluefoot

    @germy: Yeah, exactly.  “The race problem” isn’t that POC don’t have equality, it’s that we’re a bunch of uppity n******* that need to be put in our place – subordinate and less than.

    America doesn’t have a race problem, it has a racism problem.

  322. 322.

    Humanities Prof

    @Aleta: Ph.D. dissertation defenses are always stressful.  And bad things can happen during defenses (happened to one of my good friends in graduate school when he defended).

    But that’s NOT the norm.  In most Ph.D. defenses, the student has been working with the committee members for years.  That means they’ve developed a good working relationship with their committee members (now this might vary somewhat from school to school; my not-at-all-scientific guess is that this sort of relationship is more common in smaller programs, where faculty members aren’t overwhelmed by having to supervise large numbers of students).

    In a lot of dissertation defenses, the defense itself is pretty much pro forma.  If a committee member has serious questions about the quality of the dissertation work, then that project shouldn’t be allowed to get as far as the actual defense until those issues get addressed.  Faculty members who take part in dissertation committees have a vested interest in seeing their students succeed (it doesn’t reflect well on you if people you’re advising and working with don’t pass their defenses).

    Again, nothing is ever guaranteed.  Some faculty members are assholes.  But they’re not the majority.  It sounds like your niece has had to overcome a hell of a lot to get where she has.  But she HAS triumphed over all of that.  She’s already cleared far more formidable barriers than this one is likely to be.

  323. 323.

    catclub

    @Baud: I hope Sam feels better this morning, because while the debate was ugly, it didn’t help Trump and probably helped Biden.

     

    yeah, very hard to imagine undecided voters looking at that and saying they want 4 more years of it. trump was just riling up is base with the same hits as usual.

  325. 325.

    Chris Johnson

    @oldgold: He said what he expected them to do.

    He said, stand back and stand by. And then, seconds later, while Biden was talking, he said ‘they’re coming for you’. He said out loud what he expects them to do and what they should ‘stand by’ to do (and even that is bullshit: like hell he wants them to stand back).

    This is not complicated.

  326. 326.

    Ken

    @debbie: Who could have possibly controlled him last night?

    “Mr. Trump, President Putin is on the line….”

    Outside of that, the only people who come to mind are Professor Xavier and Jean Grey.

  329. 329.

    Gin & Tonic

    I’m acquainted with some people who very closely follow social media disruptions, bot/troll activity and the like, especially from eastern Europe and Russia, and the consensus seems to be there’s notably less of that this time around. I’m speculating, but that’s either a) they’ve already damaged the discourse in the US to such an extent that the law of diminishing returns has set in, or b) they know Trump is a loser and no sense throwing good money after bad.

  330. 330.

    catclub

    @Morzer: I wouldn’t put it past Rudy Giuliani to demand that Biden denounce BLT and all similar radical leftist groups.

     

    also any indicted ham sandwiches.

  333. 333.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Barbara: A lot of what scrambled the picture was one set of, I think, ABC/WaPo likely voter polls that showed Trump ahead in Arizona and considerably ahead in Florida. They seemed like outliers, didn’t agree with any other polls taken around the same time, but, on the other hand, that’s considered a really high-quality outfit so nobody is willing to dismiss the results out of hand.

  335. 335.

    catclub

    @artem1s: The American people are getting an up close and personal taste of what Dump is really all about. What it must be like to work for him, sit in meetings with him, be a foreign dignitary trying to have a substantive discussion with him.

     

    This is actually why these ‘debates’ are great.  I bet Biden will have ads asking if you (the voter) really wants another 4 years of this. Actually, Lincoln Project is more likely.

  336. 336.

    Barbara

    @germy: There are “old” insulin products and there are “new” insulin products that are a lot more effective for Type 1 diabetes.  The issue of affordability affects people whose diabetes is serious enough to require the more expensive products.  People have died when they stick to the older, cheaper products because they can’t afford the newer ones.  At least read up on the differences between them.

  339. 339.

    TS (the original)

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Polls in general have a + or – to them of five percent

    This one’s margin of error is only  +/- 2.9  which makes the take that  50:47 is a dead heat even more egregious.

    Other recent polls  Biden:Trump are  50:47 (same numbers 2 polls) 46:47, 46:46 and 45:50 and 46:48.

    Nate’s average Biden:Trump 46.8:47 which I am happy to call a tie. One more poll with Biden leading & he will be leading with Nate.

  340. 340.

    Chris Johnson

    @Gin & Tonic: They have to also work actually in Russia and occupied/fought-over territories. As much as we’d like to think we are the center of the universe and all, the Russia troll armies have to work in other places too. Like the UK, for instance.

  341. 341.

    Immanentize

    @Gin & Tonic: I do think there is a third truth too, although both of your ideas are sound — our counter cyber folks have actually taken some effective actions to disrupt the type of activities we saw 4 years ago.  They claim they did, anyway.  And there are not any “honest brokers” like Wikileaks, c. 2016, that are able to catapult the propaganda in the same fashion.

  342. 342.

    TS (the original)

    @Barbara:

    The latest Georgia polls are a bit outlier,

    If you check Nate’s polls Georgia has been trending towards Biden for most of September. I don’t think these are outliers, I think it is the few undecides coming home to Biden

  344. 344.

    Ken

    @Eunicecycle: It is going to be Donald Trump who will insist on all the absentee/mail-in ballots being counted well beyond November 3rd.

    Only in those states where he’s losing.  His campaign will simultaneously file suits to block counting in states where he’s ahead.

  346. 346.

    TS (the original)

    @catclub: There doesn’t seem to be any polling for Miss since the end of August when Trump was up by 12. So not one of my favorites to swap to Biden.

  347. 347.

    gene108

    In the next debate, I want an ice breaker question to start with: “Tell us something you enjoy or enjoyed doing with your sons?”

    I do not think Trump could easily answer that, while Biden would happily answer it.

  348. 348.

    MisterForkbeard

    @trnc: My father-in-law has specifically told me that Trump is saving the United States and is our only hope, but his ‘bedside manner’ isn’t so good.

    He thinks anything criticizing Trump’s actions are illegitimate and anyone criticizing Trump’s behavior is missing the point of all the wonderful racist stuff that he’s doing.

    Really sad, because my FIL is actually a smart dude, just been marinating in this stuff for 30 years. And he’s the best they have to offer – their idiots don’t get any better than him. So they really do think like this.

  349. 349.

    Kropacetic

    @gene108: In the next debate, I want an ice breaker question to start with: “Tell us something you enjoy or enjoyed doing with your sons?”

    I do not think Trump could easily answer that, while Biden would happily answer it.

    Does tax evasion count?

  351. 351.

    topclimber

    @Gin & Tonic: I like to think that with a huge democratic movement in nearby Belarus, unrest in his own Eastern provinces, a collapse in energy prices thanks to Trump prolonging the pandemic recession and the specter of a world without nuclear arms deals, Putin has had second thoughts about his idiot tool being in the White House.

    Who could have predicted that screwing up the world’s biggest economy would cause blowback on Russia? Or that unexpected developments like a pandemic might make even a mob boss dictator yearn for the days when the US could provide indispensable global leadership?

    I see Enhanced Voting Techniques beat me to this great insight.

  352. 352.

    Kropacetic

    @MisterForkbeard: Really sad, because my FIL is actually a smart dude, just been marinating in this stuff for 30 years. And he’s the best they have to offer – their idiots don’t get any better than him. So they really do think like this.

    It is remarkable how many people with a proven capacity for critical thinking and professionalism just sort of forego these virtues in matters surrounding politics.

  353. 353.

    catclub

    @Betty Cracker: I don’t recall Reagan openly encouraging armed civilian goons to menace lawmakers and physically intimidate voters.

     

    althought the restraining order on GOP poll watchers came from a case in either 80 or 82. part of that was having offduty cops in uniform doing the menacing

  354. 354.

    Ken

    @Aleta: My niece has her PhD thesis defense today. Zoom, so I’ll be watching.

    Whoa, that’s a possibility I hadn’t thought of.  I don’t think I’d have wanted parents and relatives watching my defense, I’ll have to think about it.  Sending favorable vibes her way (though it might be done by now).

  355. 355.

    germy

    @Barbara:  At least read up on the differences between them.

    I should have put quotation marks around my comment.

    I was quoting Trump’s statement, the one he made during the debate, about insulin being as cheap as water

    It was a direct quote!

  357. 357.

    Kropacetic

    @catclub:

    @Betty Cracker: I don’t recall Reagan openly encouraging armed civilian goons to menace lawmakers and physically intimidate voters.

    althought the restraining order on GOP poll watchers came from a case in either 80 or 82. part of that was having offduty cops in uniform doing the menacing

    Sounds like they traded in a dog whistle that facilitated quiet institutional support for a bullhorn that’s putting everyone on guard.

  358. 358.

    SFAW

    @Morzer:

    Guilty of the supertanker, not of the rotgut!

    Well, you said “whisky.” And the idea of drinking (for example) a good single-malt in supertanker quantities (during the debate; over a lifetime is a different story) is bordering on a crime against humanity. Thus, rotgut.

  359. 359.

    Kropacetic

    @germy: I was quoting Trump’s statement, the one he made during the debate, about insulin being as cheap as water

    It was a direct quote!

    Easy, of course, for someone pretending to be a billionaire to say.  Also, insulin being comparatively cheap when looking at other possible therapies still doesn’t make it actually affordable for much of the population that needs it.

  360. 360.

    The Moar You Know

    No, it hasn’t. Every word out of Reagan’s mouth was incitement to domestic genocide. I grant that Reagan did not personally enrich himself, but the Republican Party went full Maoist in 1980 and nothing has moved a hair since then.

    @Frank Wilhoit:  Kind of agree with you on this. Plus, he was willing to kill off the entire human race to spare us from socializm. That the media chose not to report him saying a lot of what he is on record as saying does not make him less of a monster.

  361. 361.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kropacetic: Yeah, Reagan would do dogwhistle things like kicking off his campaign with a paean to states’ rights near Philadelphia, Mississippi, or visiting the Bitburg cemetery, that you could semi-plausibly describe as actions with some basically innocent motivation but which said different things if you were a white supremacist. Trump can’t be that subtle.

  363. 363.

    Citizen Alan

    @catclub:

    Tell me about it. I genuinely thought Obama had a chance to win MS in 2012 because of the visceral hatred Southern Baptists seem to have for Mormons (I once watched a minister interrupt his Mother’s Day sermon to announce, completely unrelated to what he’d said up until that point, that “Mormonism is a Cult!”). But it turns out that Southern whites, if given the choice between having a black president and a president who they suspect might be the Antichrist, they most took the Mark of the Beast.

  364. 364.

    cain

    @trnc: What I do think the next moderator should do is make it clear from the outset that the rules were negotiated by both parties, and ask them both directly if they will abide by those rules before they start (yes, I know Biden did nothing wrong, but the mod has to ask both or he’ll be called biased right out of the gate). If DT still won’t shut his mouth, it will look even worse than it did last night.

    You think DT will even agree? More likely as soon as that question will ask he will not answer the question but immediately go on the attack – and attack fake news media and everything else.

  365. 365.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    One the things that amazes me about Trump is there are always new ways to despise him. It wasn’t just his nacassim was on full display, it was his speed addiction last night. Is that why the orange make up, to hide the nose powder?

  367. 367.

    Citizen Alan

    @bluefoot:

    I am absolutely convinced that the Republicans who call us Socialists, Communists, Marxists or whatever, have absolutely no idea what those terms mean but have decided that they are socially acceptable placeholder terms for n****r-lover.

  368. 368.

    J R in WV

    @debbie:

    Who could have possibly controlled him last night? I don’t think anyone would have been able.

    That’s why you use microphones that won’t pick up sound more than 36 inches away, and turn them way down or  OFF when it isn’t that person’s turn to talk.

    I like to imagine the expression of Trump’s face when he saw the video later that night and realized that no one but Trump, Biden and the moderator heard Trump’s interruptions and rants.

    I don’t think Trump would be able to tell his mic was inaudible from the stage — if he could, the expression on his face would be glorious, and he would ORDER them to turn it back up… Loudly!

  370. 370.

    The Moar You Know

    I am absolutely convinced that the Republicans who call us Socialists, Communists, Marxists or whatever, have absolutely no idea what those terms mean but have decided that they are socially acceptable placeholder terms for n****r-lover.

    @Citizen Alan: For an interesting exercise for the lulz, define a hypothetical form of government for any conservative that is socialism, but without using the term.  Every one of them I’ve done this to enthusiastically supports it.  So yeah, you’re right.  N****r lover is what they mean.

  372. 372.

    Ken

    @cain: Wow, they must have pulled an all nighter to get that ad up.

    I expect they had the concept and “Had enough?” ready to go, and just needed the footage of Trump performing as expected.  Which he did.

  373. 373.

    evodevo

    @bemused:  I’d say..stroke damage. Looks like involuntary movement or trying to keep his balance by hanging on Melamine for dear life ….something physical is DEFINITELY wrong…

  376. 376.

    J R in WV

    @narya:

    I think they typically only do one eye at a time–and I highly recommend that strategy.

    My dad had terrible vision all his life, and had both eyes corrected for cataracts in one 90 minute procedure. He had 20/15 distance vision after that, bought his first pair of non-prescription Ray-Bans a couple of days later, was delighted. He used a $19.95 pair of reading glasses for close-up work.

    He did spend the better part of all day at the ophthalmologist-surgeon office being examined to determine the proper replacement lenses for his eyes, which must have worked out well.

  377. 377.

    Barbara

    @germy: That’s unbelievable. I mean, seriously, one of his most recent executive orders is focused on how to make insulin cheaper for people.  Well, okay, it’s not unbelievable, it’s just more evidence of something both my husband and I have noticed: Trump’s world view, his understanding of facts and the ordinary ground rules of life, stopped somewhere around 1975.  I bet insulin was really cheap in 1975.  Just as suburbs were mostly white, and “suburban housewives” were actually kind of a critical mass of white women.  (My mom returned to work for the first time after almost 20 years in early 1977 . . .)

  380. 380.

    Kathleen

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: When the execrable Matt Bevin wanted recount when he ran for reelection in Kentucky State GOP hated him so much they politely declined to support it. By election day we may see more and more Rethugs at least locally refuse to indulge Trump.

  381. 381.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud:

    I don’t think the pre-1960s red scares were a dog whistle for race.  That was real opposition to socialism.

    They were, though. At least, that was part of it, because the CPUSA was outspokenly pro-civil-rights (more so than either major party) and that the US was a hellhole of racism was a central element of Soviet propaganda.

  382. 382.

    zhena gogolia

    @Immanentize:

    Gee, it’s almost like he’s a politician trying to appeal to a broad swath of voters.

    He is the only one of those old white men who chose a Black woman as his running mate.

  385. 385.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Sure, but I don’t think that was the primary motivation for the opposition back then. At least I haven’t seen much evidence of that.

    Today, I think the dog whistle is the primary motivation.

  386. 386.

    Kent

    @Baud: That’s true nowadays.  I don’t think the pre-1960s red scares were a dog whistle for race.  That was real opposition to socialism.

    No, it’s always been about race on some level.

    There were two separate phenomena at the time.  There was true and legitimate fear of encroaching Soviet-block communist dictatorships.   But there was also a separate track in the US that tried to dismiss as “communist” every legitimate progressive idea from union rights to desegregation.   The former was foreign policy.  The latter was red baiting, which has always been about race.

  389. 389.

    ballerat

    @Kay:  Absolutely. Wallace lost control before it even began.

    I saw twitter comments noting the Trump contingent’s refusal just before the debate began, and I thought that willful disregard was a harbinger. It was.

    Rules for everyone else but not the Trumps. And no consequences.

    They really are like children, children with oppositional behavior issues, always pushing boundaries and pushing buttons, and if you give an inch they grab a mile. If there’s no consequences they do it again next time and stick to it even longer.

    Fred Trump’s solution was to pack Donald off to a military school. You’d think after 5 years of this oppositional behavior they could come up with some kind of response.

  390. 390.

    StringOnAStick

    @MisterForkbeard: Are you and I mysteriously related?  Because your FIL sounds exactly like my dad.  The very same dad who used the N word twice the last time I talked to him; the first time he said it I thought it I thought my hearing issue was messing with me, but the second was clear as day.

  391. 391.

    Aleta

    @sanjeevs:  @Steeplejack:  @Humanities Prof: @raven: @Ken:  @Kathleen:  + all,

    ❤️ Hey thanks so much.   She did great on the public part  !  A really organized clear presentation.  I thought we might be able to hear her answer some questions before they went private but there were only two q’s before they cut us out.  I’ve seen candidates get a bit tormented by  tough questions intended to make them think on their feet, once or twice by faculty who were performing a little … and I’ve seen her melt down at times or posturing (like a nerd w/o substance) so I was over worried.  (Just b/c of knowing her kid side, and not giving enough credit to her professional side.! )     Her 1st advisor and her most recent one both gave kind, glowing introductions, even included her early volunteer work and showed some pics of her art,  incl. one she did of her recently departed dog and a photo of her new one ….  it was sweet.

    Hum Prof and Raven, you were right —  they were warm and supportive.

    Zoom wise,  it was novel to be able to  view  her profs,  her proud parents , her other aunt/uncle,  and her speaking from her apartment while showing her slide presentation.   All went smoothly.  !!

  392. 392.

    sgrAstar

    @Aleta: that is such a strenuous process! Please congratulate her for me, an encouraging stranger. Women in STEM face a lot of resistance…but we still manage to succeed. Bravo to her.

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