Best comment of the evening, from our own dmsilev:
Soon, the purges will begin. History will remember it as the Night of the Long Sporks.
Tomorrow, we buckle down to the vital task of keeping the White House in sane hands. But tonight…
Trump’s speech was “presidential” but only because he didn’t mention his penis
— Taegan Goddard (@politicalwire) May 4, 2016
"Show me Reince's tweet again" pic.twitter.com/QRwJQ1f4f7
— Jason Sparks (@sparksjls) May 4, 2016
It's going to be hilarious watching the entire #NeverTrump consultant class fall in line behind Trump come summer
— Micheál Keane (@aexia) May 4, 2016
There's a lot about Donald Trump that I don't like, but I'll vote for Trump over Hillary any day.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) May 4, 2016
What happened between Wisconsin and today is a reminder that democracy can, at certain times, be fundamentally mysterious.
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) May 3, 2016
A major American political party has been trolled.
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) May 4, 2016
Tomorrow, Obama national security team will begin debating plan to arm moderate Republican rebels.
— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) May 4, 2016
Has anyone ever done a worse job at anything than the Republican Party has done in their efforts to stop Trump?
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) May 4, 2016
Basically every Trump rival went after him too late to change his image, just in time to add to highlight reel of Republicans denouncing him
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) May 3, 2016
Is Dennis Hastert part of #NeverTrump or did he endorse Trump?
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) May 3, 2016
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they briefly consider endorsing Ted Cruz, then you win.
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) May 4, 2016
Trump/Jack Ruby 16
— Timothy Johnson (@timothywjohnson) May 4, 2016
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD Wednesday Mornin' from YOUR @NYDailyNews:pic.twitter.com/DnExwuky26
— Kevin Grüssing (@KevDGrussing) May 4, 2016
Hey Democrats/progressives/liberals, what say we all get together and make sure Donald Trump isn't the next president of the United States?
— Jesse Berney (@jesseberney) May 4, 2016
Soylent Green
They will fall in line. They always do.
Marcion
So, who wants to bet on Trump’s running mate? Pure crony, humiliated Establishment token, or ambitious but controllable backbencher?
lollipopguild
@Marcion: Trump/Asshole to be named later/2016
Soylent Green
My pick for Trump’s running mate is 2007’s Miss Teen USA contestant from South Carolina.
akryan
@Marcion: It’ll be a tea party back bencher. I wouldn’t take Trump lightly. He’s going to make this the ugliest campaign we’ve seen since the 1800’s. He doesn’t have to stay consistent or even rational on any issue. All he has to do is attack.
gf120581
@Marcion: Big question is who is desperate enough to take it.
JordanRules
We live in interesting times.
Good round up. Totally agree with what Benjy Sarlin said.
My one observation about Drumpf is that instead of being some handsome interpretation of this nutter fantasy come to life, we have this screw-faced, snarling fucker. It’s all even more odd than I would have imagined the last gasps would be.
xyzxyzxyz
Was watching MSNBC, and was taken by the diatribe of Chuck Todd on how we were in “uncharted waters” with two candidates of unprecedented unfavorables. Unpack that for a moment. Trump is a recent train wreck. Hillary had been under various investigations for 20+ years, with every spurious detail reported as fact by folks like….Chuck Todd. Yet, both sides suffer from the same affliction. Some fucking self awareness on the part the press would be really useful about now. I know….silly rabbit. They have a horse race to cover. Can we have a post category entitled “Chuck Todd sucks”? Could come in useful over the next six months.
Amir Khalid
@Soylent Green:
Unless she’s over 35, which seems unlikely for a Miss Teen USA contestant, she might not be eligible.
aarrgghh
“Tomorrow, Obama national security team will begin debating plan to arm moderate Republican rebels.”
the next six months will be decisive.
starscream
@Soylent Green: this is correct. If these monsters had any decency they would have left the party long ago. The temptation of undoing Obama’s legacy will be too great.
trollhattan
Apparently, Govs Jerry and Voldemort are scrapping.
? Martin
I’m going with Michele Fiori today for VP.
starscream
@Marcion: I bet on Ben Carson. Also an outsider nutjob who endorsed early. Lets him say “Look how much I love the blacks!”
Amir Khalid
@efgoldman:
Alas, my health does not permit.
Marcion
@gf120581: Whoever is VP will take the job knowing Trump is going to be the one wearing the pants…
Eric
@Marcion: Has Oliver North criticized Trump? If not, him.
Radio One
if there is human being that is a direct antithesis to my own personality, I’m pretty sure it’s Ari Fleischer.
Prescott Cactus
@gf120581:
Rafael Cruz ?
Brachiator
Right now, it would not surprise me if the next three Democratic primaries go for Sanders. Kentucky, West Virginia, Kentucky. Not only do I expect the GOP to fall in behind Trump, I expect to see a lot of hatred towards Clinton unleashed.
I didn’t realize that the Cruz meltdown over attacks on his father came from old National Inquirer stories. And apparently Trump is good friends with the owner of the paper. I expect more garbage to be aimed at the Democrats and Trump will not care that it will be nonsense as long as it will furnish him with juicy one liners.
Meanwhile in an interview with the UK Daily Mail Trump spoke in favor of Israel expanding settlements. This contradicts past US policy. But Trump is now free to expand his general election focus. And he clearly will be going after both Obama and Hillary as being weak and feckless.
Funny thing about that newspaper front page. Trump’s supporters are happy to see the old GOP burnt to the ground. Everything that any pundit wrote about the possibility of a contested GOP convention is effectively irrelevant. And the GOP Establishment has no choice but to court Trump and seek his favor.
What an amazing turn of events. Trump did not melt down. Instead he methodically broke all those who opposed him, and made Christie his jester, and possibly VP pick.
Damn.
Betty Cracker
Random rhetorical question: How does Michelle Barnard keep landing TV panel gigs? She’s as dumb as a bag of toenail clippings.
? Martin
@trollhattan: Well, seems a bit one-sided:
and
Appealing to workers by promoting your $8.05 minimum wage over CAs proposed $15 doesn’t seem like a very good approach.
Soylent Green
This recent comment left by “zzbroncos” on Redstate: wingnuttiest wingnut, or brilliant ratfucker?
? Martin
@Brachiator:
Kentucky twice. Lucky state.
Clinton has effectively stopped the primary campaign and is focusing on the general. I don’t mind Sanders staying in until the convention, but it’s time for Clinton to get on with this and she can’t really do that while Sanders keeps suggesting to his supporters that there is still a path to victory because it will make it even harder for those supporters to go over to Clinton. Sanders needs to get on board now, tell his supporters that Clinton will be the nominee and that they need to back her, but he can keep pushing for his agenda. It’s probably already too late for this, but a graceful pivot might get him something at the convention. If he continues, he’ll get nothing – the party will completely shut him out for screwing over Dems chances in the fall.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: I’m bitterly disappointed about the prospect of a peaceful Republican convention. Now all the drama will be on the Dem side, which will consist of the Sanders campaign death watch, even as he wracks up additional victories (I agree that he will — he might go out on a winning streak).
IIRC, HRC had a bit of a winning streak at the end of her 2008 campaign, but everyone knew it was all over but the shouting. The dragged-out primary didn’t end up hurting the Democrats; on the contrary, it kept the focus on them.
Let’s hope we get lucky again. The alternative is unthinkable.
? Martin
@Soylent Green: Based on his history, wingnut. Seems right in the Ayn Rand orc age range as well – maybe 25.
We didn’t get a ‘Wolverines!’ tossed in that one because the movie was made before he was born.
Mike J
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Soylent Green: Whew. That’s some true-believer Kool-aid induced ranting there, that is. Just short of advocating violence. It will help get too many unbalanced people even more upset. It’s not a good sign to see stuff like that, but fortunately, it’s only a tiny subset of the population who takes things like that seriously…
Cheers,
Scott.
seaboogie
Thanks for that quote Ari Fleisher….the state of the GOP right now, in it’s shambles…via Dennis Leary.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@? Martin: So you don’t think much of the argument that Bernie needs to keep fighting to keep up interest in the down-ballot races in California’s primary?
I didn’t see more than a minute or so of Bernie’s pre-victory speech tonight. I noticed he said something about the Republicans being wrong, then started up about where he and Hillary disagree. It seemed to be mostly the same-old same-old. He seems to be doing very little pivoting yet, but I’m not sure that it matters. The convention is a long way off and I don’t think his rhetoric against her is doing much additional damage now.
Is there going to be another debate/town hall before CA votes? That might be interesting…
Cheers,
Scott.
? Martin
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
No, I’m fine with that, and I’m fine with him staying in. But he needs to set the stage for his supporters to not be offended when Clinton ignores the primary race and starts going after Trump. She doesn’t need to be in California, she needs to be in Colorado and Ohio, and Sanders can free her to do that while focusing on his policies and helping down-ballot races.
I don’t see why Clinton would agree to another debate. She doesn’t need it, and she doesn’t need to be seen getting beaten up by Sanders now. Trump in the nominee, time to move forward.
Brachiator
@? Martin: West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon.
I think that Trump will step up attacks more directed at Clinton than at Sanders, and this may influence some of the remaining primaries. Meanwhile, the hostility directed at Clinton in West Virginia surprised me a bit. Maybe it should not have. It is extra stuff that Clinton must neutralize.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker: Good point about Clinton’s late primary wins. And Sanders seemed to be running out of gas, with reports of staff layoffs.
But these final primary campaigns may be tougher. The West Virginia hostility is troubling. And I expect lots of nasty, childish and openly sexist attacks from Trump. His base loves that stuff. They eat it up.
Anne Laurie
@Prescott Cactus: I’m sure Cruz wants it — because his God would absolutely take Trump down within 48 hours of his inauguration if not sooner, and then Ted could initiate his anointed God-King reign as is spoken of in the Good Book (Cruz’s autobiography).
And that’s why I’m fairly sure The Donald will not offer Ted the job, because he’s semi-literate and not very bright, but he can sniff out a murderous competitor with the skill born of life-long experience.
Suzan
I can’t help think Trump could win. People hate Hillary and Trump’s childish lies about her might bloody her. A big portion of the population think she is evil and corrupt. He’s too much of a wild card. We didn’t think he could get this far. Yes, in a vapid party, but still. Could he pull this off?
Mike J
@Suzan: Your concern is duly noted.
Soylent Green
In Oregon we got our mail-in ballots a week ago. Bernie will win big here. Some Sanders fans are emboldened by his win in Indiana, but are forgetting the obvious: it’s over. Many Clinton voters would have reasoned, hey she has it in the bag, why take time from work to vote? Ergo, Bernie beats the pollsters’ expectations. I wish these meaningless victories weren’t still going to his head.
Soylent Green
@Suzan: “People hate Hillary.” You say that so blithely. Sure, the wingnuts do, and the Berniebros. But to most Americans, Hillary is likable enough.
Anne Laurie
@Suzan: If it helps, remember the old joke about two hikers being chased by a bear. Hillary doesn’t have to rebut every “some people say” perception — she just has to be less dangerously obnoxious / patently unfit for the Oval Office than the Yammering Yam. It’ll be a tiring job for her, but nothing she hasn’t faced every day during the last quarter-century or so.
Origuy
For our Canadian neighbors: How to Properly Complete the 2016 Canadian Census
Applejinx
@? Martin:
If Hillary wanted the party to do that, she could have spent even a tiny amount of money and attention on Indiana, won it, and denied Bernie the ‘come from behind victory’. Politically, the way to shut Bernie out and ignore his people is to stop him getting more wins in the primaries, and it wouldn’t have been hard to do. She could have started the ‘routed bernie continues decline as support flees’ YESTERDAY and she chose not to feed that narrative.
I don’t buy it. Not with 30%-40% of the Dem electorate at stake. The party is not going to shut out Bernie and his voters, something else is going on.
burnspbesq
This popped up in my FB feed overnight.
yellowdog
@akryan: Gowdy?
Eric
@Origuy: Without clicking the link, does it include instructions to not crash the site?
PaulWartenberg2016
While the likelihood of the Republican faithful to fall in line is there, this time – with such an obvious mistake like Trump – there may be enough of them refusing to support him that may give Democrats a bigger lead.
Mitt Romney garnered 93 percent Republican support in 2012… and he still lost. Trump is currently looking at a 10 percent dropoff around 83 percent, meaning he’s going to need a ton of Non-Party voters to buy in. But Romney got 50 percent (to Obama’s 45 percent) of the Non-Party voters, and Trump’s current numbers with “Independents” is between 33 to 40 percent support, which isn’t going to cut it.
It all comes down to Hillary (or Bernie’s) polling: can they pull enough support to them to make Trump incapable of wrangling any of it to himself?
Chris
@Suzan:
Of course he could win. Any Republican nominated starts with an absolute FLOOR of 45% of the vote. It doesn’t take much to turn that into a win.
But that would be true no matter who the Democratic nominee was, and no matter who the Republican nominee was, and any other Republican nominee would’ve been as disastrous as Trump or close to it.
Robert Sneddon
@Applejinx: You don’t really get it, do you? The nomination battle is over. It was over after the first Super Tuesday.
SoS Clinton spent valuable time in Ohio shoring up the Democratic machine there in preparation for the general election rather than spend that time in Indiana gaining a couple more delegates or even a pointless percentage “win”. She’s working on winning the election in November while Senator Sanders and his supporters (and yourself) are focussed laser-like on the nomination battle which is already lost. Your financial contributions will be welcome though as the Sanders campaign charges towards the convention and glorious inevitable defeat.
Shantanu Saha
@Marcion:
“Let me have men about me that are fat, sleek-headed men and, such as sleep o’nights. Yond Christie has a fat and hungry look. He shouts too much, such men are ridiculous.”
–
CaesarTrumpsherparick
@xyzxyzxyz: I vote for that. I can’t give you the full Driftglass, but no one does it better about our “failed media experiment.” http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2016/05/sunday-morning-comin-down.html
“….See? It’s really not that fucking hard to remember how we got to where we are, unless, of course, you are being paid not to remember. Like you are, Chuck. Like Ron Fournier is. Which is [why] approved and obedient go-along-to-get-along members of the Beltway are ever within shouting distance of circle jerks like this:
…
CHUCK TODD: We all wondered, what if they [Obama and Boehner] golfed together all the time?
KRISTEN WELKER: Right.
CHUCK TODD: What if they did share a smoke, when the president was smoking? What would their relationship be?
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: They started drinking at 10:00 in the morning.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: To be a fly on the wall for that video I would have–
CHUCK TODD: Just the taping.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Exactly.
But here’s the funny part. We out here in flyover country who watch in bemused horror as these professional hustlers, hoaxers and humbuggers make a mockery of honest journalism often play a little game of “Stupid or Liar” without ourselves to try suss out the reason why they just keep telling the same transparently ridiculous lies over and over again. Are clowns like Todd and Fournier so fucking obtuse and cut off from the rest of the world that they’re actually unaware of how ludicrous they sound to the average thinking man or woman outside of their cloistered little pocket Universe?
Nope.
It turns out that they are quite aware of what we think of them. But, as should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone, all incoming criticism of the shitty job they do as “journalists” is simply pulverized in the same Both Siderist wood-chipper into which every other fact which inconveniently contradicts their bullshit Beltway narrative is fed:
RON FOURNIER: But that kind of comment gets mocked on the partisans on both sides.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I know it does.
CHUCK TODD: Oh, we’re going to get mocked right now. “Oh, there you go. Fournier, Todd, Friedman, all you guys.”
RON FOURNIER: But the fact of the matter, that’s what leaders do is you set an example and you set a tone. The idea of two leaders showing that you can be friendly rivals, that’s a good model for the rest of the country. (blah, blah, blah, de blah…..)”
I watched a little bit of Todd and he seemed peeved that the whole narrative he had in his mind a year ago about young, fresh Marco Rubio beating the old hag Hillary as the perfect 2016 campaign had been blown-up and it was of course, ‘both sides” fault.
When Jane Saunders and the Sanders campaign say stuff like this, they forget Hispanics, Asian, single women, and Blacks are listening. When they say stuff that Trump is better on Hillary then trade, they hear that Sanders and his folks don’t care that Trump is running a campaign on promises to crush them like bugs to restore White Male Supremacy. I expect Sanders to win West Virginia and Kentucky, but it will be really interesting when he gets asked questions about coal and global warming and how he will try to be pro-coal and anti-warming at the same time.
Jinchi
@gf120581:
Bobby Jindal?
Shantanu Saha
@Applejinx:
Your estimate of the number of Democrats willing to walk out with Bernie if he doesn’t get to win for losing is a bit…generous.
Jinchi
@Soylent Green:
I don’t know that it’s forgetting the obvious. If she has already won it, her base doesn’t need to come out. There is no urgency to vote for her. Sanders fans are emboldened because they continue to have a voice as long as he is in it.
Robert Paehlke
Trump’s running mate will be someone from a swing state like Mississippi.
Paul in KY
@gf120581: Christie would.
Paul in KY
@starscream: Ben Carson would be a sorta nutty pick. Could see it, though. Donald will do his own attacking. Ben would just have to stay awake & praise The Donald & talk about jeebus.
David Fud
@Soylent Green: Way too articulate for a end-of-times sort of screed. This is brilliant rat-f-ing. But they should consider toning down the educational level a few notches as well as throwing in several grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes to make it more realistic.
If you happen to know them. (or is it DougJ!?) I thought DougJ! focused on the moderates as the true enemies, so this doesn’t have his typical M.O. obviously written on it.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Mike J:
Here’s the thing: back in September, how many of us sincerely believed Trump would wind up with the nomination? Be honest, now. I said, more than once, that Trump wouldn’t last to Super Tuesday, and that the Republican nominee would be one of Bush, Cruz, or Rubio.
And yet, here we are.
This is a weird enough year that I am not at all confident that Hillary will win the general.
Brachiator
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
I am definitely on record as predicting that Trump would flame out, that he would do something to disqualify himself.
But I also noted that Trump was benefiting from the same politico-celebrity aura that helped Governor Arnold, and that Trump should not be seen as an easy mark, that he would not be easily taken down by the same tactics that work against establishment politicians.
But I never, never, ever would have predicted the ease by which he ultimately dominated the other GOP candidates.
Never.
And right now, I give him a fair chance against Clinton. We can see how his polling rises from now until the GOP convention.
Seanly
@Soylent Green:
I’m going to go with actual wingnut – too long to be a parody. Also, a parody would have to explain WTF the Samson Contingency is.
Trump won’t name Carson or a woman as his running mate as he is a sexist, racist pig.
jonas
@? Martin: Yup. This was the stupidest thing ever. Businesses that pay minimum wage are generally ones that have to be where they are — a restaurant, hair salon, farm, e.g. — and can’t just pull up stakes and move across the country like a Fortune 500 can.
jonas
@Soylent Green: That is one hell of a squidcloud of butthurt.
J R in WV
@Soylent Green:
Can’t be – VP has to be 35 by inauguration day, you do the math on last time she was Miss Teen anything… about 16 years ago, right?