Watching the daily Trump meltdowns, each worse than the last, reminds me of watching a late toilet trainer. You know the kid – he or she is the one who suddenly disappears into the corner to cop a squat, usually accompanied by a devilish look. The kid knows damn well that it’s far more comfortable to sit on the pot than to fill up a diaper, but he or she is just scared of the next step in life. Being a big kid is just no fun, and they need a few more shits in their Huggies before they’re ready to move on.
I always thought that Trump would finally put on his big boy pants, crack a briefing book, and hire a couple of adults to run his campaign. I figured it would have happened before now, but the election is still months away. He could do it any day of the week, and McConnell, Ryan and the rest of those assholes who only want to win would forgive him in an instant. The bar is so fucking low: shut up for a day after 49 people are slaughtered; don’t call Obama an ISIL collaborator, and keep your racist hate away from sitting Federal judges. For bonus points: hire a couple of fundraisers, open a campaign headquarters, and plan your events more than a day in advance.
For someone in Trump’s position, these few acts are no more difficult than mounting a toilet to defecate. Yet he seems simply unable to do it. Josh Marshall, who has been one of the most level-headed observers of Trump during this cycle, thinks that Trump will never change. Marshall has a good track record, but I’m still left with the simple observation that we all stop loading up our pants one day. My question is whether that day, if it comes, will be far enough away from the election to make a difference.
Downpuppy
Then one day, you pass 70, and soon you need Depends.
opiejeanne
Dear God, I hope not.
agrippa
I am of the opinion that this will not stop.
he will continue to do this.
it may very well go on until November.
And, it is possible that he can win.
geg6
Dude, the guy is the age when Depends are often needed. He’s been squatting in the corner for at least forty years that I remember. You think he’s gonna stop at 70?
opiejeanne
@Downpuppy: It can happen sooner if you’re unlucky and are found to have a particularly aggressive form of prostate cancer when you’re in your 50s. Pray you are luckier than this or that they finally know how to fix it surgically without screwing up everything else around it.
geg6
@Downpuppy:
Ha! Great minds and all that rot.
JPL
Earlier I read that there is a survey asking who would you vote for if Trump were not the nominee. I feel confident that the democrats are not paying for that particular survey. Of course, it could be Kristol but I doubt it.
glory b
Well, it’s been working for Palin, after a fashion.
SRW1
Humans are creatures of habits. 70 years of age is a lot of deeply ingrained habits to overcome and the capacity to learn unfortunately tends to suffer with age, even if the motivation were there, which Donald Trump doesn’t appear the type for.
Wag
I agree that Josh has been completely on track with Trump throughout this election season. I’ve enjoyed reading his thoughtful take on trump and its larger meaning.
Wag
@SRW1:
This
redshirt
Poopies.
Redshift
The big difference is that the toddler is just afraid to make the next big step. Trump, by contrast, is absolutely certain that he knows more than any of those guys who want him to do things differently.
It’s an extreme case of what’s been (to some degree) saving us from the billionaires buying or government – our society fetishizes wealth so much that everyone who’s rich believes that means they’re smart, and that therefore they’re smart about everything. No matter how much he fails, he’ll believe that it’s because Republican honchos didn’t support him unquestioningly, or the media was “unfair,” or whatever, not that the people who run campaigns for a living could possibly know more about it than Donald Trump, soooper-genius.
Poopyman
@redshirt: Did someone send up the poop signal?
Downpuppy
@geg6: I’m old enough to know the feel of the downside of the learning curve. You either take more & more care to make not too many strange mistakes, or you just say to hell with it all & let others pay the price.
Not hard to guess who will go which way.
BretH
I watched parts of the Greensboro rally and read the live tweets. I am not afraid of Trump becoming President. What I am afraid of is the anger I see him stirring up. So much anger. I wonder what is going to happen when Hillary Clinton, a woman, becomes President. Where will all that anger go?
JPL
@BretH: That’s what I think. They are not going to disappear into the hell hole, that they climbed out of.
Schlemazel Khan
@BretH:
I was pretty sure we would witness multiple assassination attempts after 08. Thanks Pasta I was wrong about that. Apparently these people are big talkers but small doers. I think Drumpf has turned them up to 11 which is really scary but I sure hope they stay true to form after Hillary wins
redshirt
@Poopyman: We need you now more than ever!
Poopyman
@redshirt: To the Poopmobile!
NotMax
The whole “the candidate has to change once the primaries are over” has always been troublesome.
Suddenly voters are supposed to either ignore, dismiss or scratch out as non-operative everything that’s been put on record? And accept that “pivoting” is a one-time only occurrence?
redshirt
@BretH: The last 8 years should assuage your fears. A black man with an Arabic name has been President of the USA and here we all are, still here.
Let the mouthbreathers and racists and bigots expose themselves. They will be defeated in time.
RSA
This analogy is pure gold.
Omnes Omnibus
@Schlemazel Khan: At their core, most of these bullies are cowards. OTOH, I could see them going in for mob violence.
Smiling Mortician
OT but the Senate Dems filibuster on guns is pretty cool. Josh is streaming it live at TPM.
debbie
I’ve been watching a South Park DVD. Trump is Eric Cartman.
redshirt
@Poopyman: You’re our only hope.
Chip Daniels
Trump is like that comedian who observed after his DUI- “I had the right to remain silent, but not the ability.”
cokane
he is the right wing talk radio candidate
really illustrates that’s where the power center in Republican politics sits
Kropadope
@Schlemazel Khan:
Hopefully what this really means is that it has become very, VERY difficult to get near the President with a weapon.
p.a.
Josh may be right. This is the same prick that inveighed against the ‘Central Park 5’ settlement. 40 years combined in prison, innocent, and he still smeared them decades later.
Matt McIrvin
@Schlemazel Khan: Plenty of people have tried to kill Obama. The Secret Service just managed to stop all of them.
Keith P.
I think I’ve settled on the opinion that Trump’s trying to get the GOP to replace him so that he can still claim a victory without the risk of running by saying he would have won but not for a rigged system.
geg6
@redshirt:
I tend to agree. In the short run, this all give me fits. But I’m, surprisingly, more optimistic than I normally am. I think in the longer term, the good guys (or really, gal) will win and they will have revealed who they truly are and lost. I know I’ll be working to make my optimism justified.
Adam L Silverman
@SRW1: I think its beyond that. I think he’s decompensating publicly. I think we’re watching a breakdown in real time, campaign rally to campaign rally and phone in TV and radio interview to phone in TV and radio interview.
MJS
If there’s no one with authority to tell the toddler to stop crapping his pants, and if the toddler has never had to clean up his own mess, there’s no reason to believe the pants-crapping will stop. I expect the 70 year old toddler in question to continue crapping his pants until his last day.
Omnes Omnibus
When I was in the army, we had a guy in my battery (approx. 90 people) who was writing with shit on the barracks’s latrine walls. A couple of my fellow lieutenants and I were talking with our 1ST SGT (senior enlisted soldier in the battery) and he said “Every battery always has one mad shitter. They just take different forms.”
Schlemazel Khan
@Matt McIrvin:
Do you have evidence of that? I suspect word would have gotten out on one or two at least, there would have been trials. Not that I would be surprised but I would expect to have heard something
dmsilev
@NotMax: Remember some Romney apparatchik talking about the campaign “Etch-a-Sketch” after the primaries? Didn’t go over so well…
Smiling Mortician
@Keith P.: Nah. Trump isn’t capable of even three-dimensional chess at this point. He’s not a good enough actor to be performing. He’s gone ’round the bend.
Poopyman
@Schlemazel Khan: Nah. Barry just sent them to have a “talk” with Hillary and … problem solved!
Adam L Silverman
@BretH: Three possibilities. 1) Those holding that anger will find a way to devalue it. They’ll rant and rave a bit on social media and to their friends and calling in to talk radio and then go on. 2) They’ll redirect the anger inward and harm themselves. 3) They’ll redirect the anger outward and harm others.
In a group dynamic the last possibility is what gives birth to terrorism, rebellion, and insurgency, as well as hate crimes. At that point the group begins to generate justifications to override the societal norms (definitions neutralizing) that retard this type of behavior and once the actions begin they will be imitated and every subsequent successful action will reinforce the definitions neutralizing and begin to generate new norms (definitions favorable) that further justify engaging in these behaviors. And often you wind up with an overlap where the targeting is such to ensure you get the hate crime component.
(You have just gotten the two paragraph version of my doctoral dissertation).
Adam L Silverman
@Poopyman: Got your upholstery done in Tijuana, did you?
dmsilev
@Omnes Omnibus:
Iambic pentameter vs. free verse?
Poopyman
@Smiling Mortician: Technically it’s only two dimensional, and you’re still right.
@Adam L Silverman: And who intervenes? And when?
Adam L Silverman
@p.a.: His positions on nuclear proliferation and NATO are also decades old. He’s been spouting the same nonsense for over 20 years – and he takes out full page advertisements in major newspapers and magazines to do so.
Poopyman
@Adam L Silverman: Twice!
Matt McIrvin
@Schlemazel Khan: Here’s the Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_threats_against_Barack_Obama
A lot of these were just not-very-credible threats, but some of them went to some effort.
Omnes Omnibus
@dmsilev: Seriously, some shit in weird places. Some draw or write with it. And so on…
trollhattan
@cokane:
Yup. You know how Obama only won because McCain wasn’t conservative enough? Trump is who they imagine would have won in ’08. What they won’t accept is he might have lost all fifty states.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
They don’t know how, yet. Better but not yet good.
Schlemazel Khan
@Poopyman:
I would have thought he would have sent a couple of guys with an ax to straighten the guy out. Isn’t that the Lenin approved method?
Or as a Kenyan maybe pins in a doll?
sunny raines
that’s projection.
If nothing else, the modern wingnut movement has demonstrated that there are a fair number of people that live in such a different reality then what others consider rational existence, that they defy prediction.
Adam L Silverman
@Poopyman: Next time he’s in Florida someone can try to have him Baker Acted (96 hour involuntary evaluative hold). But I doubt it would happen. The answer is no one is likely to do so. What we would like to think of as the institutional GOP has no ability to do so. And no one who he’s surrounded himself with will say no to him. The only thing that Manafort and Lewandowski agree with is “let Trump be Trump”.
Poopyman
@Poopyman: It would be fascinating if one of his sons has medical power of attorney and decided his dad needed help.
Given how reluctant everyone who has been when our parents were even more obviously incapable (and older), it’s never going to happen, but something to muse on.
Schlemazel Khan
@Poopyman:
Time is a dimension so we’ll allow “3 dimensional”
Poopyman
I’m off to bed, ’cause it’s been a long day and I’m – dare I say it? Pooped.
Carry on.
Mnemosyne
Totally off topic, but I bought myself an iPhone SE as a birthday present. It took FOREVER for Virgin Mobile to get the 64GB model in stock, so I had to buy the pink one. Doesn’t really matter since I’m going to keep it in a case anyway, but I feel like such a cliche right now.
/First World Bragging
redshirt
@Poopyman: How can you not be? The hero we need, not deserve.
Schlemazel Khan
@efgoldman:
I think fewer people paid attention back then also. Plus nobody was recording the political events. That Rmoney “47%” thing is the sort of thing all pols did when it was just a small group of like-minded folks. Once the convention past the slate really was clean. It is going to be much harder for the Drumpfenstein monster to pull this trick because he is a one-man megaphone based shit sprinkler. Too many people are too aware of his ‘thoughts’
joel hanes
@BretH:
Where will all that anger go?
Domestic violence, wife and girlfriend beating mostly.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Yes, but they often do a lot of damage first.
redshirt
@efgoldman: Oh, there’ll be some violence. We all know it. But these dead-enders are the last gasp of an old order that is being swept away.
Ruckus
@redshirt:
I’d bet they won’t. They don’t want to change, they have kids and teach them to hate. It infiltrates our entire culture. Sure there may be fewer and fewer as time goes on but they will not go away. There will always be people who hate people who are different in some way, even if that way is obscure and irrelevant to anything. There will always be people who are small or close minded. These people may be marginalized with their hate but they will still be there. Education won’t fix it, exposure won’t fix it, although both can minimalize it. Hate is too easy. If you doubt me, more than one of the worlds major religions has as it’s base, to not hate and to accommodate those who are different and that has been twisted by humans who claim to follow them explicitly. Some people like hate, it feeds them something they are missing in their development, life, experience.
Peale
Yeah. What disturbs me is that the job he’s running for actually doesn’t get much easier after one wins it. I’m thinking that he really is going to have to create that novel coo position and promise not to actually run the government directly to come close to winning in the fall.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Trump is acting as if this country didn’t tell Father Coughlin where to stuff his act and then spend the next eighty years ridiculing the notion of fascism every chance it had.
redshirt
@Ruckus: I agree they’ll never disappear. Their numbers and their influence will be greatly reduced however. It already has, and that will continue.
schrodinger's cat
@Ruckus: It can be marginalized and sent back to the fringes where it belongs.
Mike in NC
@Omnes Omnibus: Reminds me of how — 30 years ago at Navy OCS — there was talk about a ‘phantom shitter’ who would strike in various places in the middle of the night. They never did catch the nut.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Okay, that too.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I get what you’re saying, but I don’t see him doing anything new. I don’t think he can do anything else. This is the guy he’s been, his whole life, and he’s gotten pretty much everything he’s always wanted by bullying, threatening people, beating up on those weaker than he is, whining about how unfair all the meanies are when things go against him, and listening to the asslickers he keeps near him tell him how amazing and tremendous and wonderful he is. He’s going to be 70 sometime this summer, too. How often do people who are 65 or 70 drastically shift the paths of their lives in a few weeks? He’s been this guy all his life, and he’s bought so deeply into it that I don’t think he can change even if he wants to. But more than that, I don’t think he can ever even want to change. That would ask more introspection and careful thought than I think he has in him. This is the guy we’re stuck with, and God help us if he wins, which is why it’s such a big deal to beat him. We cannot let a guy like this anywhere near any high office. The fact that he got as far as he’s gotten already should scare the shit out of anybody with any sense, whatever their politics might be.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
And let’s not even get into scat singing.
:)
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Groan.
pseudonymous in nc
It won’t stop while the rallies stay the way they are: Sixty Minutes’ Hate with tailgating and rapturous cheers and protestors to scream at. It’s the ultimate reality show adrenaline rush.
It might stop if someone gets killed at a rally, and I think the chance of someone dying violently at a rally (or in the vicinity of one) is non-zero. Then again, it may get worse.
redshirt
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): He turned 70 on Monday I think.
dmsilev
So, taking this analogy and pulling it farther than probably advisable, a toddler has a parent or other caregiver who tells them that it’s time to stop pooping their pants and instead use the toilet. Who is the parent-like figure that can communicate that to Trump?
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
We had, in my boot camp company of 80, one man who refused to shower. When 80 people live in a relatively small area, march and stand in line right up behind the person in front of you all day long, a shower is the least you can do for your fellow sufferer. He couldn’t be bothered. That was when we discovered what the stiff bristle brushes and lye soap in the restroom was for. We had been cleaning the place for a couple of weeks and we never used them. They were instrumental in teaching this person that a shower was essential to his health and well being. He was our mad shitter.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: Did you see the birth certificate? I didn’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: Like I said, it is different everywhere. But 1:100 is the norm.
RaflW
Now we start to see why he has such a track record of bankruptcies. He’s a con artist, not a business man. Never was willing to do the work, and just made money the old fashioned way – by taking it.
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: Now that you mention it….
dr. bloor
@Adam L Silverman: @Poopyman:
You’d have an exceedingly difficult time convincing a judge to commit a guy based on beliefs that won him the nomination for POTUS of one of the two major political parties
Tom Q
@efgoldman: Completely agree. In the old days, you could do such a reset because all the nasty remarks were made at obscure rural dinners in winter, not captured on camera. Nowadays, one ten-second clip can turn George Allen from alleged presidential prospect to ousted Senator.
Pundits who talk about candidates making such a “pivot” are showing their age, the same way an old baseball hand does when he tells you relief pitchers tend to have a bad year after a good year. It was true long ago, but no one under 65 remembers it.
Jeffro
@Schlemazel Khan: so true…it’s a different world now…one that trump clearly does not get
Jeffro
@Tom Q: Well put, great example. If there was going to be an upside to our always-on news cycle and eighty gazillion cellphone cameras, this would be it
redshirt
@efgoldman: For The Donald it was strangely low key. You’d think there be rallies and crying women and many, many proclamations of fealty.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@efgoldman: Dangerous would imply that he’s a threat. The only threat he is is to the GOP’s immediate future.
dmsilev
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s actually been released, accompanied by this I-swear-I’m-not-making-this-up statement from Trump’s lawyer that this was “demonstrating that he is the son of Fred Trump, not an orangutan’.
NotMax
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-
The country didn’t tell Coughlin “where to go,” the FDR administration did (his audience was as large as ever when he was booted off the air). His megaphone on radio was shut off but he continued on, albeit with an ever smaller rabble of followers. The Vatican wanted him off the air, the administration applied pressure and then the National Association of Broadcasters instituted a new rule requiring scripts of “controversial” material to be submitted in advance, leading to cancellation of his program. The administration also made illegal his use of the Post Office for newsletters.
Coughlin remained in the pulpit for decades beyond, and died in 1979.
@
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
His 70th birthday was yesterday. (If his birth certificate is to be believed. ;) )
Kay
I got a polling call earlier tonight. Strongly disagree with Donald Trump, in case you’re interested :)
redshirt
@efgoldman: A lot of them are former starters. It’s tough to be a pitcher as a reliever in high school/college.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
This.
He is an asshole. He’s always been an asshole, he was raised that way. By an asshole who was also raised that way. And so it goes.
The republican party has been for at least the last 50 yrs (and in my book, much longer) building this house of assholes. Raising their children as it were. The current day republican party is hateful and fucked up because they decided to go down that road a long time ago. By people who were and are assholes. It may not have even been a conscious decision, it’s just the way they were and are. Like drumpf that’s what they see as right and correct, to hate others. He’s just had enough money to be public about it.
Adam L Silverman
@dr. bloor: I am aware.
dmsilev
@dr. bloor: Well, there’s this certain Federal judge of Mexican heritage who might for a moment be tempted to look a bit more kindly on such requests…
Brent
Its always possible that Trump at least tries to make the turn. The problem, for him, is that he could never sustain it. He could tell himself that he is going to stay on message but he has to deal with his opponents that want him to behave like the buffoon that he is, and really, Its child’s play to set him off. His skin is so thin, its remarkable that we can’t see his viscera.
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: It doesn’t say live birth. Clearly that’s been done in photoshop.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@efgoldman:
I know. Taylor Swift could accept my invite to a date. The sun could go super nova. SOMETHING COULD HAPPEN!!!!
Or we could realize that Trump’s literally DOA even before his own convention and work from there.
Ruckus
@Brent:
The orange may be to make that thin skin at least a bit more difficult to see through. Doesn’t seem to help.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Because of the particular cluster of the one-third of senate seats this year, the Senate was predicted to flip regardless (barring a tidal wave election).
The one-third in play in 2018, sad to say, greatly favor Republicans.
redshirt
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: While your words are true, there’s magnitudes of difference. Trump even right now has at least a 40% electorate baked in nationally. 60/40 odds aren’t that great as compared to Taylor Swift not even answering you.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: Conservatism cannot fail. It can only be failed by “conservatives” who are NOT CONSERVATIVE ENOUGH!
Kropadope
@redshirt:
His portion of the vote doesn’t reflect odds. This isn’t done at random. If the numbers on election day are actually 60/40, he’s toast in a way we haven’t seen for a Presidential candidate in a LONG time.
RaflW
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
And that, my dear, is what is so utterly disqualifying about 98% (or is it 99%) of current GOP politicians. They have said they will vote for him.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Not that I’m aware of.
cokane
@redshirt: that isn’t how odds work
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
Believe it or not, that seems to be the one piece of fan art they don’t have. I can buy the nail polish, though.
BretH
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: @Adam L Silverman: Sounds like a concise description of the anti-abortion terrorist movement to me.
NotMax
@Menmosyne
What, no thundermugs?
;)
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@NotMax:
Yeah, 2018 is going to be a tough year. 2020, though, thanks to last time’s walloping we took, looks to be a good one. I don’t know how long this is going to go on, the Democrats racking up big wins in presidential years, and then the Republicans taking all or a good chunk back in off years. When I was growing up, it was the other way around. We had a long run of Republican presidential wins, often big ones, starting about when I was born, but the Democrats always kicked ass in off years. Republicans won the Senate in 1980, with Reagan, and then lost a shitload of those same seats in 1986.
It’s amazing to think that when I was a kid, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, Illinois and Michigan, among others, were reliably Republican states in presidential years. Maryland was a swing state…
amygdala
Senator Murphy still at it, with support from his fellow Senate Democrats. At 12+ hours, this is now the 10th longest filibuster in history. It’s still being broadcast live on CSPAN, and you can find transcripts of prior segments there, too. Oregon Senator Merkley speaking now.
Cat48
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Rachel said Trump was 70 today. He would b our oldest prez ever. Reagan was 69 when sworn in.
The Lodger
@Adam L Silverman: Holy Moses, that was one dense paragraph.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
He’s a 70 year old spoiled, self indulgent man-child. Why would he change now.
patrick II
I saw a acrobat on “America has Talent” last year who’s act was to climb to the top of tall free-standing latter, stay balanced and do a trick at the top and then slide down. It was pretty breath-taking and the judges passed him through. The next week he came back with a taller, higher ladder, climbed to the top, did a trick and slid down. It was the only act he could do, but it was pretty amazing and the judges passed him through again. But he could do nothing else, he had no other talent, so the next week he came back and did the same thing with another even taller ladder, and this time he could not control the ladder and it fell over, with him on it.
That’s Donald Trump, racism is his trick, but he’s climbed too high and he’s losing his balance, but it is the only trick he knows.
pseudonymous in nc
@redshirt:
Mondale got 41% in 1984, so Trump just has to improve 1% to reach that threshold, except he won’t win his home state.
NotMax
@Cat48
As would be HRC (69, that is) at inauguration.
redshirt
@cokane: Never tell me the odds!
redshirt
@pseudonymous in nc: He’ll win a bunch of states though. The South. The upper West.
Adam L Silverman
@BretH: A good chunk of my doctoral dissertation as on the violent, extremist portion within the anti-abortion movement. At the time I did it, it was very hard to get data for quantitative analysis of terrorism. The then Rand/St. Andrews chronology wasn’t available in spreadsheet form. The commercial ones all had huge issues, were proprietary, and expensive to access. But The Guttmacher Institute had a proper, spreadsheeted, data chronology on their site. So that’s what I use. After the quantitative section I did a number of case studies of specific actors like Eric Rudolph and Shelley Shannon to qualify and flesh out the findings.
Adam L Silverman
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Turnout. Until someone can get all the components of the current Democratic coalition to understand they need to turn out in off presidential year elections and for state and local elections this will keep happening.
Villago Delenda Est
This Drumpf leopard cannot change his stripes. Manafart is a idiot, and probably a Russian agent, to boot.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: GOTV in “off year” elections is crucial.
The Dangerman
You would think that a rational person running for President would WANT to be President; I’m sure it’s been said well before me in the 120’s but Trump doesn’t want to be President. Going to the NRA today to argue for a ban is not that act of a man that wants to be President.
ETA: OK, make that 130’s.
Adam L Silverman
@The Lodger: You just got the lit review and theory chapters condensed into two paragraphs. You’re lucky they’re just dense!
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: Maybe the Democratic President can run a Presidential-like campaign in off years, solely designed to increase turnout. Rallies, town halls, commercials, voter registration campaigns, etc.
burnspbesq
I’ve been busy all day. What bill is serving as the pretext for the filibuster?
burnspbesq
@Adam L Silverman:
You can’t even start that conversation with the Berniacs without them melting down.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Does it have a ‘raised seal’? If not, it’s a fake.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: couldn’t hurt. unfortunately a lot of democrats ran away from President Obama.
Adam L Silverman
@burnspbesq: true.
Adam L Silverman
@BillinGlendaleCA: It definitely had pixels.
Kropadope
@burnspbesq: Except the Sanders campaign hit on that theme regularly, so false.
burnspbesq
@Kropadope:
Message not received. In fact, message actively rejected. So thou hast nary a clue.
FlyingToaster
@Adam L Silverman: And most of those are out of office now.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@agrippa: He could open his jaw, break apart the seventh seal, and sing the song that summons Zalgo. How come nobody ever worries about that? Huh? Huh?
redshirt
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: I seriously worry about asteroids as a very real threat to all of us. It is known a big asteroid will hit the Earth again. The only question is when. Will it be next year? Or another thousand? We can’t confidently say, but it will happen. And we will either be ready or not.
Cat48
@burnspbesq:
Well, Bernie hasnt conceded yet. He said he’s still running??
so maybe he will help in 2018.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@redshirt: The meteor still has better odds than Il Douche.
Kropadope
@burnspbesq: It’s amazing how you can just make provably false assertions then, when confronted with the truth, can simply reject it. How can you say that millions of people rejected a message without a single data point to prove it, there has been no polling suggesting they rejected the message. Oh, I know, it’s all those midterm elections we’ve had since the presidential primary started.
Jesus Christ, it’s almost like some people want Democrats to become a left-wing corollary to the Republicans; rejecting inconvenient facts, making false assertions that “everybody knows,” demanding pledges of loyalty. Dude, you’re pathetic.
redshirt
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: 1 in 6,000?
redshirt
@efgoldman: Hamilton string cheese.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
None of the above. But they exist, I’m sure.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Oh, good. This precis will make it ever so much easier for me to make sense of one of those papers you wrote…
Miss Bianca
@The Lodger: All his writing is like that. It’s calorie-rich. Sometimes you have to limit yourself to one or two paragraphs at a time.
Aqualad08
@Cat48:
Yeah, maybe by then he’ll finally rack up enough delegates to overtake Hillary…
redshirt
@Miss Bianca: Heh. I was recently able to watch cable tv and so I watched a Cartoon Network show featuring Mike Tyson solving mysteries, and in this episode he solved the mystery of Cormac McCarthy’s ending for his next book. It was all so wonderfully surreal and they made fun of McCarthy’s lack of punctuation.
? Martin
Trump will never change. He was doing exactly this same shit 30 years ago. It’s not age or maturity, it’s how the guy is wired. He really, truly is a narcissist. His self-image is the most important thing on earth – more important than winning votes. He’s certain that if he defends his self-image, the votes will come, because he is obviously the most awesome person on earth. Every poll drop is therefore evidence that people have the wrong impression about him, which if he can only take that next step will repair and win the public over. That there’s no repairing this, no NBC to come along and give him a TV show, will ultimately break him mentally. Whether it’s before Nov 8 or after is anyone’s guess, but I’m expecting at some point he’ll go completely over the rail – and my guess is it’ll be during a debate when he knows he has 50 million people watching, thinking that’s his big moment to win everyone over by calling Obama a nigger or Clinton a c#nt or some damn thing.
Bottom line, Trump cannot self-correct. The only way out of this is to deny him the nomination, let him go nuclear off in his own little corner where the GOP can fully denounce him. They’ve got about 4 ½ weeks to organize the coup. After that, they are truly fucked.
The upside to all of this is what we’re seeing tonight – Republican Congressmen being open to compromise on guns. Trump made their old position indefensible and unbearably unpopular. They have to compromise if only to retain some credibility with voters. If Trump makes it through this and is hammered in the election, Hillary should have an easier time than Obama getting things done. The GOP brand will be so wrecked that doing things will be their only way out. They’ll have to accede losing Trump’s base or else they’ll just nominate him (or someone like him) again. They’ll fight that of course, but some progress will be made. Self-preservation is the ultimate essence of a politician.
? Martin
@redshirt: Pikers. My Hamilton radial tires play ‘My Shot’ while I drive down the road.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
I keep telling all y’all, I’m a piker when it comes to “Hamilton” fans. Motorized cake, anyone?
redshirt
@? Martin: I’m dropping Hamilton branded road spikes.
NR
@redshirt:
The Democratic president has to be popular for that to work, and that means working for the people instead of the big donors. It could happen I suppose, but the last eight years haven’t made me optimistic.
Anne Laurie
@Poopyman:
His sons (Uday & Qusay) would just use the old man’s incapacity to raid the coffers a little faster.
But I’ve actually wondered if Ivanka (or her husband) might be considering medical intervention, if the RNC doesn’t find a “graceful” way to ease the old man out before the convention.
Anne Laurie
@redshirt:
Narcissists hate the thought of aging. In my experience, even (relatively) normal guys start to get depressed about “sliding downhill” at some point. I’m sure Trump forced everyone around him to make a BFD out of his birthdays until he hit, say, 50 — at which point, even mentioning that he had another one due probably got some minions fired until word got around.
Wouldn’t surprise me if part of Trump’s motivation for running is the hope that he can get his election declared a public holiday… without any inconvenient figures about the 1940s attached!
Chyron HR
@NR:
Whereas Obama’s so unpopular that your God only lost by a 40% margin in state primaries where he tried campaigning against him.
nellie
@efgoldman: You are exactly right, especially about the “Nixon Rubber Chicken Tour”. Nixon went to Lakeview, OR in 1966. A place that is Nowhere USA even for us Eastern Oregonians. Even my 20 year old brain realized, “My God, he’s going for it, AGAIN”. In the end I think it’s a Bi-polar disorder. Trump is a clever narcissist. He doesn’t want to be POTUS, as in actually doing the job. He wants to be POTUS because it comes with the biggest spotlight on the planet. In the end he wants to be King of the World.
Ruckus
@nellie:
Just a little correction. In his mind he is King of the World. What he really wants is for the rest of the world to think it. Ain’t gunna happen. King of the Morons or King of the Assholes, maybe. King of Self Deluded Losers, for sure.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@efgoldman: Kansas is divided between True Believers, who are fewer in number every week as Brownback steers them deeper and deeper into the sewage lagoon (no one can afford proper sewage treatment any more in Kansas; because TAXES /snark) and the people who are ready for the nightmare to end. Hillary seems competent, therefore she is attracting people who might not otherwise vote for a Democrat. Because boy, has conservatism failed Kansas.
Hunter
Everyone keeps expecting Trump to grow up now that the primaries are over. Why? He hasn’t managed it in how many years?
fuckwit
He’s a TROLL.
That’s all there is. Trolls gonna troll.
There’s a full-fledged, dyed-in-the-wool, living-under-a-bridge TROLL running for Preznit.
He loves trolling. He lives to troll. Trolling is his whole schtick.
Everything he does and says is perfectly explained by: he’s trolling.
Trolling an entire country. Simply trolling.
He loves the attention, and making people outraged.
A fucking troll.