The New Yorker published a fascinating piece about Tony Schwartz, the man who actually wrote “The Art of the Deal,” Donald Trump’s 1987 bestseller. Schwartz is sorry about that. An excerpt from The New Yorker piece:
“I put lipstick on a pig,” he said. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.” He went on, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
Hoocoodanode, amirite? The whole thing is worth a read. It pretty much confirms that Trump is and always has been who we think he is, and it underscores the importance of stopping him.
Donate. Volunteer. Register people to vote. It has never been more important.
Open thread!
trollhattan
I understand all the action verbs are yooooge!
So now he tells us. Awfully big genie to stuff back into the gilded bottle.
Trentrunner
I’m a broken record, but: Imagine the splash this would make if the exact same story came out about Hillary.
Schwartz spent a year and a half with Trump, following him around, listening in on his phone conversations, spending time at his homes.
His conclusion?: Trump is a sociopath. A bullying, thin-skinned, lying, self-aggrandizing, manipulative, small-minded, no-attention-span sociopath.
Remember how much airtime/ink was expended on Reverend Wright in 2008?…
dedc79
I wish I knew some persuadable Trump supporters to send this to, but the (thankfully) few Trump supporters I know aren’t going to budge for anything.
LAO
What makes me insane, is how little this will matter to Republicans, who are motivated by Never Hillary. I hope, it matters to so-called Independents.
slag
I’d love to believe that losing this election will not only deflate Trump but also deflate the underlying fiction of bootstrap meritocracy that gives books like ‘The Art of the Deal’ their influence in the first place.
RaflW
I have most certainly never read the book, but I have the impression that ghostwriters often have to deal with idiots and a-hokes as the putative authors. In 1987 I don’t think any such literary aperient would have thought Trump in any way a credible presidendtial pretender, so I am cutting this gentleman some slack
Robin G.
I wish he’d come forward much sooner, but I doubt that would have done anything except possibly make Ted Cruz the nominee. Which I’m still not convinced would be better.
Matt McIrvin
@Robin G.: If Ted Cruz were the nominee, he could probably be beaten using a conventional counter-Republican strategy. With Trump you’re never sure: there’s always the possibility that some chunk of people who would otherwise be Democratic voters are going to randomly decide he’s the true left candidate or the way to “shake up the system” or that electing him would be funny.
Mary Jo
Jane Mayer is a national treasure.
Major Major Major Major
For whatever raisin, my jam today is Masher by The Mountain Goats. Feels very Monday. Also quite pleasing to play on the ol guitar.
Also Song for the Julian Calendar, same album.
Keith P.
@Trentrunner: Not to mention that the book Trump claims to have written was not written by him. Remember when Obama supposedly had Bill Ayers write “Dreams of my Father”?
The other tidbit that sticks in my mind was the article about what kind of boss Trump is (a child). He showed the chef how he should make a Caesar salad – throwing lettuce and tomatoes into a bowl and saying “This is how we do it where I’m from.”
Question: What part of the country typically puts tomatoes in a Caesar salad? I know people mod the recipe, but that is a very specific dish with a very particular history. Kind of like Larry David’s version of the Cobb salad.
MomSense
I hope the programming people at NPR read this because the way they have covered the RNC convention so far this morning has been a horror show.
Cokie and Tucker Carlson? Really?
karen marie
After I read the Schwartz piece, I read this. It’s about Schwartz writing the book, with additional details.
Corner Stone
Speaking of pigs…err, hogs, does anyone else sense a massive amount of foreboding in just how awful Huh Huh Ernst’s speech will be tonight?
trollhattan
If you have your vanity bio ghost-written and then stiff the author, is it therefore no longer ghost-written?
Trying to figure out Trumpnomics.
Kropadope
Eh, I don’t feel like Schwartz should be taking the blame for Trump. If he refused to write the book the way Trump and the publisher wanted, someone else would have. He’s better off with the money.
Besides which, this is nothing new. It’s the latest version of “It’s better to be strong and wrong than weak and right.”
slag
@MomSense:
Ha! Reminds me of this line from The Blues Brothers. Such a breadth of perspective on display at NPR.
Lizzy L
Love Jane Mayer, though I admit I have not read “Dark Money,” because I know it will both depress and enrage me. The New Yorker article is thoroughly disturbing — but only confirms me in my view of Trump.
Unfortunately, I agree with others who have said that most of Trump’s supporters wouldn’t change their votes even if they were to read it, because they are voting against Hillary Clinton, who they have decided is as dangerous to the Republic as I believe that Donald Trump is.
I am also and again confirmed in my utter loathing and contempt for the Republican politicians who publicly support Trump, and for many of the members of the traditional media (including, dammit, NPR!!) who treat him as a spectacle instead of the danger he is. They put their own desire for power, money, and influence over the welfare of the country. I don’t believe in hell, but their betrayal of the rest of us makes me (almost) wish that Dante’s ninth circle were a reality they might look forward to.
Mayer’s article underscores how vital our GOTV effort is.
Corner Stone
@RaflW:
I read it many years ago, when it went to paperback I think. It’s a good read, the ghostwriter did a good job. But reading the book it was presented quite clearly what a fraud Trump was at the time. The way the bankruptcy outcome was celebrated didn’t exactly list all the little people who had gotten screwed, but it didn’t exactly hide that people lost out so that Trump could restructure and live to flail again.
karen marie
After I read the Schwartz piece, I read this. Before edit, I got my articles confused. The “this” is McKay Coppins, which I read first.
Corner Stone
@Robin G.:
A much more conventional battle. And what would the media do in that case? Cruz likes to flap his gums but he’s no carnival barker the way Trump is. As hard as the media is working to horserace us right now, what in the world could they be pushing to keep it looking like a close contest with Cruz in? I am assuming 24/7 email/server gate and a few more Benghazi documentaries?
Matt McIrvin
@Keith P.: Ghostwriters on celebrity and politician memoirs are such a common practice that if I’d heard Obama had a ghostwriter on “Dreams From My Father,” I would not have been so surprised. But the claim that it was specifically Bill Ayers always seemed completely cuckoo-bananas, a transparent attempt to make up more connections between Obama and this guy who they could identify as a terrorist. If Obama needed a ghostwriter wouldn’t he hire someone who was primarily a professional writer? Ayers has written a lot of books, but he’s not a hack-for-hire.
dmsilev
@Corner Stone:
Surely Trump’s skilled and professional campaign team will do a thorough and complete job of vetting and editing her speech.
dmsilev
@Matt McIrvin: Bill Ayers apparently has been trolling random wingnuts etc. for the last several years by “admitting” his role in writing the book, etc. Everyone needs a hobby I suppose.
NorthLeft12
Thanks for the link. That was a great read. I feel for Mr. Schwartz, although he is an intelligent adult and he knew exactly what he was doing at the time. Sounds like he did his job too well.
In the end though, I agree with a few others above, this and other critical articles of the Donald don’t matter to his supporters as they seem to be completely in thrall to him. Sad.
Punchy
So my question becomes….when Trump supporters hear this, are they “It’s all lies!” or are they “we want a crazy person in the WH!”? IOWs, are these articles reinforcing Trump’s brand of insanity, or creating opps for them to claim a “rigged system!”?
Clearly, these anecdotes aren’t going to sway any GOPers….shit’s too tribal, Cleek’s Law too powerful, but I wonder how these stories play to the base.
raven
Look, the mooslim is handing out a Medal of Honor!
eta Pretty cool, not only is Obama giving Col Kettles the MOH, there are guys there who were among the 44 he saved.
BR
The only way to make Trump’s supporters abandon him is for him to lose a round of dominance politics — for him to be humiliated, have to apologize, etc.
MattF
A never-Trump conservative tries to explain.
Corner Stone
@dmsilev:
Exactly right! Steve Schmidt lost no air time this past weekend by lamenting the lack of any competent or professional staff in the Trump campaign. There is simply no truly professional speechwriter on staff, and with the sparseness of other actual staff who has the time to coordinate message between speakers? Will we see a couple dozen “Me Me Me” speeches ala Christie in 2012?
pseudonymous in nc
@Matt McIrvin:
…apart from knowing that he wrote it in 1995 when he was not even an Illinois state senator. The pretzel logic of the Ayers thing involved time-travel as well as the assumption of politicians using ghostwriters.
Feebog
I have meetings scheduled Tuesday and Thursday nights, so I just have to figure out what I’m going to do tonight and Wednesday. I can’t let the missus watch any of it for fear she will have a stroke while yelling at the TV. I wonder what’s playing at the movies…
dmsilev
@Corner Stone: In fairness, how many staffers does it really take to coordinate a message of SCCCCRRREEEEEEEEEEECCCCHHHHHH?
Face
That’s assuming an equitable consummation of a deal inconsistent with how Trump does biz, so not necessarily the case here.
MomSense
@slag:
Ha. That’s perfect.
pseudonymous in nc
@BR:
And the media can’t allow that until… mid-November.
cmorenc
On MSNBC this morning, Morning Schmoe was opining about the stark contrast between the deeply flawed persona Trump has projected since he began is campaign to run for President, and the charming, nice guy Schmoe was personally familiar with for years in New York – which he followed up by asking to what extent it was still possible for Trump to convincingly show the “good” Donald Trump he was familiar with to voters, given what he’s done so far during the campaign. ARRGH!
Also, I don’t know how MSNBC selected (or gathered) the considerable audience in the background behind the MSNBC set this morning (they appeared to be in some kind of large restaurant setting) – but when Mika asked the probably couple hundred people sitting at tables and chairs in the background how many were enthusiastically for Donald Trump. only one guy piped up, whereas when she asked the same question about Hillary Clinton, around two or three dozen voices piped up, though those voices sounded predominately (though not exclusively) women to my ear. Mika commented that at previous conventions, when a similar question was asked of a host city gathering for the particular party holding it, the response had been much broader and more enthusiastic. Dominant theme of today’s commentary by the MSNBC bobbleheads on “Morning Schmoe”: the predominate share of voters hate BOTH candidates, and the choice is more about which they’d rather see lose than which they’d rather see win.
Major Major Major Major
@dmsilev: better than some of his prior hobbies.
gene108
@Lizzy L:
I don’t think anyone works at NPR to get rich…
But the media is faced with a vexing problem. Trump is clearly not qualified, in any traditional sense, to become President. He has never held elected office before. But here he is the nominee of one of the two major parties.
They really do not want to discuss how utterly unqualified he is, so they stick their heads in the sand and pretend he’s actually just as capable as Hillary.
I’m not even talking about his temperament, just the fact he’s never held office before and has had an up-and-down business career.
peach flavored shampoo
So Freddie Gray died and not a single cop was found guilty of a single damn thing. Other than one hung jury, everyone skated. Despite the fact that a live man was put in a van and came out a dead guy, not a single officer was found at fault for anything anywhere.
Got shades of Rodney King in that sense.
nonynony
Eh – Schwartz shouldn’t sweat it. He ghostwrote a book in 1987 (that I’ve never read but I recall other folks saying that if Trump thought it made him look good that told you a lot about Trump) and the narcissistic sociopath decides to run for president 30 years later. That’s not his fault – the book didn’t make Trump, the reason the book sold was because people were already fascinated with Trump. I wouldn’t blame him anymore than the guy who made the Trump board game for cashing the checks.
OTOH – the idea that electing Trump would lead to an end of civilization is pretty out there. I suspect that, if Trump actually tries to use the nuclear codes, it ends in a constitutional crisis and possibly a “soft” military coup as the guys at the top tell him where he can stick his orders. (Our balance between the military and civilian leadership is better than a lot of countries, but it relies on the civilians at the top giving reasonable orders arrived at by democratic process and the advice of the military leadershp. Violate that and who knows what kind of response the military would have to it, but I suspect these days it would be a “no fuck YOU Mr. Trump” reaction rather than a “okay boss” one – especially if Trump is telling them to drop nukes on ISIS or some other war crime that the folks at the top know would not only be something they have to live with for the rest of their lives but also would be stupid).
Waldo
@MomSense:
I can just as easily imagine these two objectively discussing the momentousness and majesty of a Nuremberg Rally.
hovercraft
So in addition to some surprise convention speakers, the campaign announced that Melania’s speech will be brief, less than 10 minutes, and Donald will be introducing her in a show of support. You knew he couldn’t resist having more time center stage. Given that he will have family members speaking each night, he may be able to fulfill his desire to speak every night. Just to make sure that no forgets that this is his show. All Trump forever.
EDIT How long is his introduction ? 5, 10, 15, 20, 30……minutes?
MomSense
@peach flavored shampoo:
Yeah, somehow Freddie Gray managed to break his own spine.
I’m thoroughly disgusted.
hitchhiker
@Matt McIrvin:
I’ve heard actual humans saying this, and meaning it. Yes, they were young.
SiubhanDuinne
@karen marie:
Interesting to see this line in an article published almost 2-1/2 years ago:
“Whether or not you liked Saddam Hussein,” he inexplicably told the crowd at one point, “he used to kill terrorists.”
Matt McIrvin
@nonynony:
On the other hand, this is sure as hell not the kind of governmental mechanism you want to be falling back on.
Kropadope
@Face:
While this is true, I think it’s safe to say he at least got his half of the advance which is still mucho dinero from my standpoint. Also, I would hope that the publisher would be the one responsible for seeing the contract through. From the looks of things, Schwartz went on to found a ssful company, so if he was screwed they at least lubricated.
LAO
@nonynony:
Not a theory, I’d like to test.
MomSense
@Waldo:
And will that rally successfully “reintroduce” hair furor to voters? Will his message appeal to working class voters in key states?
cmorenc
@Corner Stone:
And if there was a professional speechwriter on staff, it’s doubtful they could more than intermittently and partially hold Trump to following it rather than going off on the sort of extemporaneous riffs that Trump has both won many of his hard-core follows with, and gone off the rails into offensive territory with many other members of the electorate and media. Bill Clinton was also notorious for extemporaneously departing from written speeches, but while campaigning for and governing as President, he rarely dug himself into any holes with his riffs, because he had a brilliantly disciplined mind (at least then) and keen steel-trap grasp of facts, as opposed to his indisciplined “little head” that did get him in serious trouble. Yes, post-Presidency while attempting to campaign for Hillary in 08 and again in 16, he has said things and done things that dug holes for the both of them – I’m thinking of some of the convention speeches he’s given at the Democratic Convention as shining examples of his better extemporaneous speaking talents (though he was in part working off a prewritten speech).
Corner Stone
Looks like Kasie Hunt is breaking the law at the NAACP convention in Cincy. Because she is openly displaying the guns!
Matt McIrvin
@hitchhiker: I heard the same thing from people who voted for Ross Perot. There’s always a fraction of voters who vote for Vermin Supreme or Dick Tuck or whoever for a laugh because politics is boring. Every so often, somebody who’s a walking joke actually gets a significant base of support, and it seems to be in these situations where there are a lot of “disgruntled with the system” types.
Davis X. Machina
Not Politico’s biggest fan, but a good piece there today by Michael Grunwald on Florida, and the election as a choice between Obama’s America, and Trump’s America.
Contained the following paragraph:
dmsilev
@hovercraft: Presumably it will be like the Mike Pence introduction on Saturday: 20 minutes of Trump talking about himself, with occasional pauses when he briefly remembers that he’s supposed to be introducing himself, followed by 2 minutes of the actual speaker.
MattF
@SiubhanDuinne: That ‘whether or not’ is interesting.
Kropadope
@Matt McIrvin:
True, it would be awful if it got to the point where we had to rely on this, but there are a lot of dystopian futures I doubt will come to pass thanks to American values and military professionalism.
Major Major Major Major
@SiubhanDuinne: say what you will about Hitler… you gotta admit… he did kill Hitler.
The Ancient Randonneur
@nonynony:
This is actually my single greatest fear of a Trump presidency. The precedent it would set is unsettling. Imagine a time when the military once again believes it necessary to disregard the orders of the Commander in Chief. What happens when the President starts firing military leadership until that President finds someone willing to carry out the order? The chaos of such an event would crash the world’s economy and send the US into some very dark and most likely violent times.
rikyrah
He is EXACTLY who we thought he was.
Yep.
Shell
A Trump presidency really would be a real life enactment of King’s novel “The Dead Zone.”
Kropadope
@Major Major Major Major: I probably laughed a little too hard at this.
hovercraft
@cmorenc:
The media needs a horse race, so every positive for Hillary is ignored or if it must be acknowledged downplayed, Donald’s f**k-ups are minimized and any good news amplified. He’s losing, but not that badly, so obviously there is something wrong with her. Last time I checked when a candidate withstood weeks and months of the media calling them a weak, dishonest person culminating in the last two weeks of constant hammering, and was still leading, that candidate would be considered a strong resilient candidate. But hey it’s Hillary, and since no one likes or trusts her, she ‘could’ lose, and so that’s the story. I never realized that other candidates were guaranteed winners from the beginning.
Major Major Major Major
@Kropadope: ?
germy
@Trentrunner:
I’ve actually been a broken record on the same subject.
This New Yorker story. New Yorker readers will see it. It’ll be passed around on some progressive websites. And that’ll be the end of it.
I won’t see it on the ABC, CBS or NBC evening news. I won’t see it linked on my local newspaper online. Instead they feature this: Trump’s convention to feature less glitz, more family
Now, as you said, if a ghostwriter for HRC said the things this guy is saying, it’d be wall-to-wall coverage.
Emma
@raven: Good God, that man has one hell of a bio! If anyone deserves it, is him.
germy
hovercraft
@peach flavored shampoo:
The police in this country have been given such autonomy and discretion when it comes to maintaining ‘law and order’, that it is virtually impossible to convict them of excessive force. Their ‘feelings’ are often the most important factor in whether on not their actions are justified. So in most cases short of having an officer say he or she is going out to brutalize someone, all they have to say is that they were in fear for their life or safety, they are immune.
Humdog
Why should we have any faith that “American values and military professionalism” will result in what we consider good for the country? Our current police forces consider themselves military professionals and they just, once again, got off Scott free for killing Freddie Gray. “American values” include confederate values today, and majorities in many states see extending healthcare to poverty line citizens the opposite of freedom. Over 60% of white Americans are backing Trump. I have no faith that officers will disobey orders to save the world from Trump. White men still run most things and most white men support Trump and Trumpism. No matter the outcome of the election, this American sickness has been exposed and we need to remember, it is a majority of white people. I am sickened and ashamed.
rikyrah
@The Ancient Randonneur:
Yes, you are absolutely right as to how chilling that would be.
rikyrah
The One Poll Number that Spells Doom for Trump and the GOP
by David Atkins
July 18, 2016 2:58 AM
I wrote earlier today about Trump’s apparent 42% ceiling in public polling, which is a bad sign for him. But it’s Trump’s numbers among Hispanics that spell doom not only for him, but also the future of the Republican Party:
Keep in mind that in order to win the presidency, Trump will likely need at least 30% of the Hispanic vote–and maybe even closer to 40%. It’s Trump’s bet that he can maximize the white vote and reduce his need for minority voters, but the problem is that Trump trails among white college-educated voters and that is not likely to change. His direct appeals to racism, his rejection of basic science on issues like vaccines and climate change, and his anti-elitist common-man shtick make him an anathema to educated people of all races. There’s a cap on how many white votes Trump can win.
gene108
@nonynony:
It’s usually the civilian leadership telling the military not to go in guns blazing.
Sometimes that scenario gets reversed, like with Bush, Jr.’s invasion of Iraq, when some in the military top brass were trying to get through to the Admin that invading without a larger force was foolish.
But I cannot recall, when the military flat out refused to follow civilian leadership’s orders.
hovercraft
@Davis X. Machina:
See it’s people like this who make me question my values, one man one vote, forced sterilization. Okay not really, but Jesus H Christ, what the hell is wrong with people. I’m gonna go say a prayer to the god of sanity that this idiot is part of a large group of people who can fit in a phone booth.
Gin & Tonic
@The Ancient Randonneur: What about the opposite scenario, of Trump failing to give guidance, let alone orders? Say Putin’s tanks roll into Estonia, and Trump doesn’t know what Article 5 is, or doesn’t care?
sukabi
@pseudonymous in nc: aAaaaannnnnnd? Time travel is a piece of cake for Obama’s family, they did it for his birth announcement placement. Geeze, get with the program.
Matt McIrvin
@germy: I can only hope the Clinton campaign has a lot of budget set aside for their own poll-watchers. Though it might be too late to do much if something really bad goes down…
Matt McIrvin
@hovercraft: For what it’s worth, I do think the people with that kind of attitude also have a relatively low propensity to vote. They tend to be relatively young, also not so willing to go out of their way to do anything political when other distractions are available.
Major Major Major Major
@germy: Republicans are an existential threat to American democracy.
I mean, and the world, but that first sentence was all I shared on Facebook.
rikyrah
@slag:
The only self-made men to be nominees since 1990 have been:
Bill Clinton
Bob Dole
Barack Obama
Everybody else was born on 3rd. Now, some knew it, while others pretended that they hit the triple.
Ben Cisco
@Davis X. Machina: What. A. Moron.
Lizzy L
Just want to say — this place and the people who visit it are helping to keep me stable and sane. I’m not given to depression or despair, but the current state of affairs has me as anxious for the country as I have been in decades. And yes, George W. Bush worried me quite a bit. But Donald Trump is a whole ‘nother level of crazy. Thank you, John. Thank you Adam, Betty, everyone. Thank you all.
Kropadope
@Humdog: First let me just point out that police officers aren’t, for the most part, military professionals. To the matter at hand, it just seems like a major stretch of the imagination to think that attempts at policies like pre-emptive nuclear war, martial law, termination of our various freedoms enumerated by the bill of rights, etc. could be successfully implemented. People say and do some fucked up things sometimes, but the level of acquiescence you need to obtain from your military and society at large for the excesses people fear the most looks from my perspective like a pretty damn formidable barrier.
For the most part, we seem to be moving the other way, toward more inclusion and more freedom of expression, and skepticism toward war as the primary tool of foreign policy. On the occasion we do relapse to a degree, usually due to a fear stimulus (think 9-11 and the USA PATRIOT Act), people come to grips with why these policies are bad and there is pushback. Obama helped espouse that pushback and while he didn’t get the reforms he wanted on these types of programs, reform is still part of the current discourse.
catclub
@NorthLeft12:
Exactly. He says that if he did it again the title would be ‘Sociopath’
catclub
@Lizzy L: Go read Kevin Drum if you are worried. Very level headed.
Gelfling 545
@LAO: or a precedent one would care to set.
gene108
Maybe for Presidential elections, but there still many states that are 90%+ white, so the Republicans have a built in cushion by just pandering to whites, at all other levels.
burnspbesq
@MattF:
From the linked article:
Except that the racism is subconscious rather then bitter, Bernie served up pretty much the same platter.
Jeffro
@Mary Jo:
Amen and amen. If HRC really wants to put forth a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, all she needs to do is put a copy of Mayer’s “Dark Money” in the hands of every voting household in this country. Poof – 99-to-1 vote and we’re done here.
catclub
@rikyrah: Also, PLum line was pointing out that although the race looks close, the difference is the huge numbers of people (about 70%) who DO think Hillary is qualified for the job, even if they would not vote for her, versus the huge numbers (also about 70%) who think Trump is actually unqualified for the job.
Kropadope
@gene108:
Three such states are to my north and they aren’t exactly the strongest Republican territory either.
Summer
@MomSense: I had to turn off the radio and write a letter protesting.
Humdog
@Kropadope: I suppose my imagination simply stretches further than yours. Boykin was a military professional declaring Americas God is greater than others. Who do you think the 65% plus of white men who are supporting Trump are? Do you really believe they are not in the armed services? I have been to an Air Force Acadamy graduation, they were ready and cheering for a holy war. it feels like elites in all areas have really let us down in the past decades, why would you think military leaders are immune? They followed Shrub’s make believe case for war in Iraq. What has changed since then?
gene108
@germy:
If someone admitted to being a ghostwriter for Hillary in the first place, whether or not the person said anything good or bad about her, she would be pilloried for dishonestly claiming to write her own material and is a crook for not giving attribution to the ghostwriter.
J.
So back in 1988, I wrote an article about ghostwriters/ghostwriting for AVENUE Magazine, a tony New York publication aimed at the 1%. And for the article I interviewed Tony Schwartz. At the time, Mr. Schwartz said he immediately accepted Trump’s invitation to collaborate (no second guessing) and said of the collaboration, it was “very enjoyable and very successful.” (The article was fact checked, with an editor calling Schwartz to verify all information with him.)
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: I’d seen some earlier polls that actually gave Trump a Mitt-Romney-like fraction of the national Hispanic vote, about 20-30%. (And some of the Republican polls showing Trump winning Florida actually give him a majority of Florida Hispanics, as if it were 1988. I do not believe these; I suspect their sample skews old.)
gene108
@Kropadope:
Guessing you live in Massachusetts?
Wyoming, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Utah, Kansas, Kentucky, are all around 90% white. That’s 14 Senators that can be safely elected by appealing solely to whites and ignoring the Obama coalition.
Just sayin’ the demographic wave will not break evenly across the country, so there will be many places where conservatives can and will prosper.
Robert Sneddon
@Matt McIrvin: There was a talking-head interviewer who spoke rather condescendingly to someone who had admitted for voting for a candidate in the Official Monster Raving Loony Party here in the UK once. The interviewee explained quite clearly that the OMRLP’s manifesto included road safety, pedestrianisation of shopping streets, support for local libraries, a Public Lending Right for authors (something that came into existence in later years) and a number of otherwise sensible proposals the major parties would have nothing to do with hence their choice of candidate to vote for.
Kropadope
@Humdog: The difference between the Iraq War and a prospective nuclear war is not a difference of degrees, but rather orders of magnitude. We’ve also, since then, seen the prospects for a war in Syria founder on the shores of public opinion.
Kropadope
@gene108:
True, and I’m just saying demographics don’t tell the whole story.
Lizzy L
@catclub: I do read Drum, and I read Nate Silver. My rational mind appreciates their perspective and is — soothed. My monkey mind screeches, We’re Doomed! I tell monkey to shut up, but she often doesn’t listen. It helps to be able to come here and hang around with other monkeys.
Gin & Tonic
@gene108:
Only four, actually. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and West Virginia.
catclub
@The Ancient Randonneur:
This is the point where Rimmer ( the Hologram in Red Dwarf) would say: ” A plan with no downside!”
SiubhanDuinne
@MattF:
@Major Major Major Major:
It was the timing I found interesting. He has said the same thing at least a couple of times during this campaign, most recently (and which got by far the most attention) barely two weeks ago. But I hadn’t realised that he’s been saying it for years. (MattF, I do agree the “whether or not” construction is interesting. The people who analyze speech in order to winkle out nuggets of deep psychological insight would have a lot of fun with that.)
hovercraft
@Matt McIrvin:
In Florida the hispanic sample can easily be skewed in either direction by simply focusing your sample to a certain part of the state, southern Florida tends to be more Cuban, which in the past was heavily republican, but the younger generation is trending more democratic, central Florida is much more Puerto Rican and other hispanic and is much more democratic. The cross tabs are very important when looking at these polls, but the thought that he can equal RMoney’s 27 % is ridiculous, you have elected gop officials publicly refusing to endorse him and saying they will not vote for him. Spanish language media has been merciless and unrelenting in highlighting every Trump utterance that is anti-hispanic. He will be lucky to get half of what Mitt got.
Stan
@Matt McIrvin:
Actually it’s a pretty good mechanism. Military personnel are bound to follow all lawful orders. They are also bound NOT to follow unlawful orders. I hope we never find out….But I suspect what would happen if President Trump ordered a nuclear launch is, the senior officers (Chief of Staff level) would refuse and, if pressed, resign. A normal president would stop as soon as the offer to resign was given. Trump won’t. But seeing that example, I think every officer on down the line would do the same – resign rather than launch.
nonynony
@gene108:
Of course not. Because the civilian leadership arrives at those orders via democratic processes and with the counseling of military leadership. It’s baked into the system that that is the precedent – the military follows orders and the civilian leadership doesn’t give stupid orders that the military has no input on (now stupid orders that military leadership comes up with and gets civilian leadership to buy into, on the other hand, is one of the big reasons that Vietnam was a cluster. But nobody dropped nukes on Vietnam either.)
@Matt McIrvin:
Oh no – it would be horrible. And it would likely destroy the US as we know it in a lot of ways – that interaction between military and civilian leadership is actually not really the norm through history, it’s a modern norm, even if it is one that the US has always followed. If Trump disrupts that modern norm and provokes a coup – even a “soft” one that pushes him out of the way rather than toppling everything – it pretty much ends this phase of the American experiment and we move into something far less stable than we’ve been enjoying in the post-WWII era of professional, permanent military that is responsible to elected, civilian leadership.
But it wouldn’t lead to “end of civilization, nukes are dropping from the sky, the cockroaches inherit the Earth” civilization ending scenarios. It “just” moves the US closer to being like the tinpot Central American dictatorships we kept putting into place and propping up throughout the 20th century. Possibly a LOT closer. And that would have a lot of knock-on effects for generations to follow and it might be irreparable.
Major Major Major Major
@Lizzy L: Nate Silver has gotten quite impressed with Nate Silver over the years. I must say I prefer Sam Wang at Princeton. Plus he isn’t selling clicks.
hovercraft
@Lizzy L:
Add Princeton’s Sam Wang, he has a stellar record, and skews to reality. They have all the bells and whistles, and some peanuts to bribe your monkey with.
Edit MajorMajorMajor, you beat me to it.
Aleta
@SiubhanDuinne: I had been thinking he is saying that for votes, to imply that ‘whether or not you like everything about me, I’m the tough one who’ll protect you.’ If he’s been saying it for years to imply that maximum aggression is needed against suspects, doesn’t that contradict his ‘invading Iraq was a mistake’ line.
SiubhanDuinne
@Aleta:
Sure, but he’s renowned for his many self-contradictory statements, without Whitman’s poetry to make it desirable or even palatable.
Aleta
The convention will be a good time for the Rs to explain that they support the originalist interpretation of the 2nd amendment, as it was intended at the time. The right to bear Arms and open carry is only for white guys.
gene108
@Jeffro:
One thing I learned from the public’s reaction to the shenanigans in Florida, during the 2000 election, is conservatives do not give a damn about process, dark money or any other form of corruption in the system, as long as their side can win.
To them liberals are an enemy that must be vanquished and not fellow Americans to talk to and come to a middle ground solution.
gene108
@Gin & Tonic:
Off in my off-the-top of my head estimation of demographics. I think some of those I listed are close to 90% white. I think Kentucky or Kansas is 88% white. Technically not 90%+, but I think my assertion that you can win elections in those states by appealing to only white voters still holds.
NorthLeft12
@hovercraft: I would like to believe that bozos like this one do not really mean what they say………….hey……who else does that apply to?
jonas
@Corner Stone: The lack of polish, the complete amateurishness and chaos of it all will probably strike his supporters as “authentic” — not like those “elites” on the other side who “know” stuff, and can talk with all them big words.
Gin & Tonic
@gene108: Kansas is the surprising one – only 78% non-Hispanic white.
NorthLeft12
@rikyrah:
How do you answer that question wrt Hilary Clinton?
Bex
@Matt McIrvin: “Dreams From My Father” was originally published in 1995. Barack Obama wasn’t a celebrity politician at the time. It was reissued in 2004 when he was a candidate for junior senator from Illinois.
jonas
@germy:
There’s an unspoken narrative framework already baked into MSM coverage of this elections and it’s that, yes, Trump is an ignorant, belligerent lunatic and his whole campaign is a complete farce. So there’s no need to pursue further evidence of said lunacy and you just cover the “normal” stuff, which is what is newsworthy because it’s not insane. OTOH, Hillary Clinton is a conventional politician for whom the traditional “gotcha” rules of coverage continue to apply in which you try to catch the candidate making a gaffe, or uncover some embarrassing information about them, etc. You can’t “catch” Trump out on anything, because his entire persona and campaign is a dadaist work of art. You can’t critique it because it isn’t even art, right? Our political media is utterly unequipped to deal with a campaign whose primary currency is a level of chutzpah you can’t even comprehend.
NorthLeft12
@gene108:
This is the key fact of politics in your country. From an outsider’s view, all pretenses have been cast off, the cons don’t care a whit about the good of the country at large. It is all about getting their stuff and punishing the losers on the other side. The fact that some of the punishment lands on people that call themselves and actually vote Republican is just collateral damage that they [including the voters themselves] are willing to live with.
These are just odious people who deserve every iota of bad karma that they accumulate.
pseudonymous in nc
@Gin & Tonic:
Not that surprising. You don’t get nutjob ideologues like Kris Kobach elected in states where there are no black or brown voters to suppress.
MomSense
@NorthLeft12:
Self made. Am I the only one here who thinks she made Bill?
J R in WV
@MomSense:
Ever since I saw the two cops carrying him to the van, I suspected his injury may well have been when the bike-riding cops tackled him violently to the ground.
He was pretty limp looking in the grasp of the big cops hustling him into their prisoner transport van. Maybe that was him being passive, maybe that was a patient with a broken neck. Mr Gray didn’t look robust and strong at any time, so he may have been quite vulnerable to a violent arrest.
None of what I’m saying exonerates any of those cops for the brutal treatment which led to Mr Gray’s death, it just moves the time and nature of the cause of his injury a tiny bit.
I think every cop who participated in his “take-down” arrest for being black in public, his transport to jail, all of them should be fired for total incompetence, AND
sentencedtried for Federal Civil Rights violations, if Baltimore juries and judges can’t being themselves to convict someone for that disabled young man’s death.If you can’t manage to arrest someone without killing them, you are NOT qualified to be a policeman anywhere.
sukabi
@J R in WV: agree, he looked severely injured BEFORE being transported. And yes every one of those cops involved in hos arrest should be fired at the minimum.
catclub
@NorthLeft12: Yes, which is Hillary?
I would argue that Ross Perot was self-made, not knowing details.
But going a little further back, the selection is for lack of dynasties, and that is the norm.
Mike Dukakis and Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter would all be considered self-made.
So would Ronald Reagan and Dick Nixon and George McGovern and Lyndon Johnson.
But not John Kennedy, not sure about Goldwater and Humphrey.
The last few decades with lots of Bushes and Romney is atypical
MomSense
@J R in WV:
Like you I suspected that his legs were not working before they put him in the van. IIRC the police tackled him quite violently off of his bicycle.
Especially someone who was unarmed and who hadn’t taken any aggressive action in that whole encounter. They caused Gray’s death and will just get away with it.
agorabum
@RaflW: Agreed; an author in 1987 meeting a NY Real Estate mogul who was a buffoon, but generally not involved in politics, would not think there would be any impact in 29 years.
Shana
@Robin G.: I think it’s better coming out later rather than earlier. I remember back in ’09 when Creigh Deeds (D) was running against Bob McDonnell (R) for governor of Virginia. The story about McDonnell’s college thesis about governing from a fundamentalist Christian perspective broke. It was the end of August and McDonnell had plenty of time to push the crap excuse that it was nothing more than an academic exercise and got elected. Of course he ended up governing from a fundamentalist Christian perspective.
Shana
@Matt McIrvin: Here in Virginia we usually solicit attorneys a month or more before Election Day who go through a training session and are then farmed out to various precincts that have been chosen by the Powers That Be with clear instructions about how to handle any problems. There’s also a couple of phone numbers, one to the County D headquarters one to the State D headquarters to help resolve any problems. The financing is usually State, County parties and campaigns combined.
J R in WV
@Shana:
I’ve been voting for over 40 years and never seen an observer at a polling place. Now, here in WV there are “official” Democrats and “official” Republicans working at the polls, that is, registered in both parties. And they do get paid a little.
It would be good to see a formal observer at the polls, there are a lot of crooked politicians here.
dianne
If Trump were to win, I think his white house would be like a Potemkin Village. The staffers would read a daily briefing, pretend to listen to his opinion, pretend to do as he said and then do as they pleased. Trump has ADHD – it;s obvious from the article. His attention span is less than a fruitfly’s. All they would have to do is remind him that he ok’d whatever they wanted him to do and he would go along since he would not even remember what was said. Scary!