Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) "the founder" of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON'T GET SARCASM?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2016
This little dust-up has been putting along on a predictable schedule–let’s call it the Khan calendar. Day 1 (Wednesday): say something stupid and offensive. Day 2 (Thursday), double down. Day 3 (today), right on schedule after he rolled out of his gold-encrusted bed, tweet about it so nobody forgets the stupid and offensive thing, and make a lame attempt to pass it off as a joke.
I’m guessing you all would agree that if the Republican nominee was a little more presentable numbskull, we’d be treated to weekly nontroversies centered around some Clinton email, some minor DNC staffing move, or something Bill said. That’s not happening this year because Trump is feeding information into the election communication system with a goddam firehose. He occupies the entire bandwidth of that system, and then some. And, like any well-engineered communication system, this one is scaling to handle the load by ignoring the fainter signals (namely, everything about the Clinton campaign.) He’s even drowning out the Olympics.
Look at poor James Fallows – the guy must be exhausted. His Trump Time Capsules, which are numbered dispatches about some stupid thing Trump said or did, are in the mid-70s and we’re only halfway through August. You’d think at some point Trump would recycle his material and let the overheated communication system cool down, but I see no end in sight.
Joey Maloney
I don’t know what, exactly, that Trump is feeding us but I know “information” is not the right word for it.
Ceci n'est pas mon nym
@Joey Maloney: It’s not random noise. It looks like signal but contains nonsense. I would call it some kind of spoofing attack. I think the idea might be to burn out all the pundits the way the original Star Trek crew burned out the computer with “information” in that one episode.
MJS
I can’t see Trump keeping this up for almost 3 more months. I thought there was a chance that he was going to take the out offered to him by his “2nd Amendment people” line, i.e., “the unfair press isn’t going to treat me fairly, the election is rigged anyway, so I’m going to quit, and aren’t you sorry now, losers.” Now I don’t know what he’s going to do. He’s certainly not going to debate. Given that he’s already said that he doesn’t really need to make sure people come out to vote, I guess it’s possible that the next thing we’ll see is him cutting back significantly on rallies. Maybe some sort of vacation from campaigning shortly after Labor Day.
Ceci n'est pas mon nym
One thing I’m certain of. He’s figured out a way, probably multiple ways, to make money for himself personally from this campaign. We’ve seen some evidence of that in the number of Trump shell companies that were sucking down consulting fees from his campaign funds without producing measurable product. The guy knows how to grift.
So whatever he does between now and November and afterward, it will be designed to maximize the gravy train.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
Dopey, brain-dead, soon to be out of business CNN can’t take a joke. Sad!
Kay
What I love more than anything is that Trump is a horrible manager:
Obama had 106. The “builder” candidate is, specifically, a bad manager. Uniquely awful at running things. It’s the best.
Laertes
If your sarcasm only works when your audience knows you’re not an idiot, and you’re a known idiot, it’s not going to work.
Jeffro
Even the mainstream media are noticing both the “Khan Calendar”-cycle of Trump’s offensive statements, and that the Clinton campaign is just fine rolling along under the radar, letting him hang himself. There have been multiple articles on both in the past week. It truly is amazing to see.
For them, just like for the rest of us, it’s like watching a slow-motion train wreck, with Clinton I guess continuing to step gently out of the way of the accordion-ing boxcars? (A little metaphor help here please?)
gf120581
@Ceci n’est pas mon nym: I’d say the entire point of his campaign right now is grifting as much as he can from the rubes. He sure as hell isn’t spending anything on actual campaign operations.
Jeffro
@Ceci n’est pas mon nym:
Well his 3 kids have been “senior advisers” the whole way, right? Nickel bet says they each walk away with $10M+ “consulting fees”
Baud
@Jeffro: She’s needling Trump, but I think she’s smartly building up strengths that don’t depend on national media reporting.
Trentrunner
Actually, sarcasm is a particular mode of humor expression where your intonation suggests you mean the OPPOSITE of what you’re saying, e.g., “I LOVE Donald Trump, and how!” /sarcasm. Which means “I HATE Donald Trump.”
So: What Donald must have MEANT with his “sarcasm” is that “Obama is the destroyer of ISIS, and Hillary is the destroyer of ISIS.”
Correct?
Baud
@Kay: The best thing about the grifter angle is that makes him less likely to invest in infrastructure and campaign operations.
Trentrunner
@Kay: I think I heard yesterday that the HRC campaign had 112? Plus or minus a few…
Bob2
The fruits of Andrew Sullivan’s TNR run still won’t leave us alone
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/betsy-mccaughy-trump-team
Guess who’s back?
Eunicecycle
@Trentrunner: I think you are correct! He should have said it was hyperbole, but…he probably doesn’t know what that means, either.
Kay
@Baud:
I’m not even sure I buy the grifter angle. We don’t know what he made off the fake businesses. He could have lost money there too.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
Baud
@Kay: A failed grifter is still a grifter.
Marc Montefusco
From XTC:
Louder than tanks on the highway
Louder than bombers in flight
Louder than noises of hatred
Dancing us from darkest night is the rhythm of love
Powered on by the beating of hearts
Jeffro
Btw did anyone see that video of the Trumpkin (old guy in a striped polo) just Losing. His. Mind. at reporters as he exited a Trump rally yesterday? Whew. That guy has been waiting decades to tell the LIEBRUL MEDIA WHUT HE THINKS!!! Holy cow.
“What’s your name, sir?”
“MY NAME IS AMERICAN PATRIOT AND YOURS IS TRAITOR!!”
(no joke, that was the exchange, along with a half-dozen middle-finger salutes)
Baud
@Jeffro: I’m sure we’ll see lots of columns about the importance of civility as a result of this behavior.
WereBear
@Jeffro: I just hope that this time, the loonies won’t vote.
WereBear
Apparently, this is Trump shifting into “national leader mode.”
Damn! Keep the Trump coming. We haven’t seen the worst yet, I am sure of it.
TK
@Trentrunner: Was thinking this as well. Pretty sure Deadbeat Don doesn’t actually understand what sarcasm is.
Woodrowfan
@Jeffro:no. where did you see it??
TK
@Jeffro: “My name is American Patriot” sounds like a shitty Captain America ripoff.
Baud
@TK: A sidekick to American Maid!
Punchy
I’m stunned that CNN hasnt officially (clearly it’s unofficial but unmistakable) rebranded as TNN. He’s all they cover. All day, everyday. They make MSNBC look like Trump deniers.
enplaned
Thank god Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, because it means the election is about him.
One thing Democrats must face, if Trump loses, is just how close we came to losing. Had the GOP nominated almost anyone else, perhaps even Ted Cruz, we’d now be facing defeat, the loss of the Supreme Court and a GOP president, House and Senate. We’d have been facing total disaster.
Hillary Clinton and the other party bigwigs who greased the skids for her, came very damn close to screwing the pooch. The degree to which the country, even her own party, wanted someone other than Hillary, essentially *ANYONE OTHER THAN HILLARY*, was shown in the primary when Bernie Sanders (Bernie Sanders!) gathered so much support.
Hillary is just a bad politician. Doesn’t mean she’s necessarily a bad person — but she’s just not a good politician, at all. In 2008, she lost to a black guy. Yes, a black guy who is one of the most talented politicians of his generation (and who I love and for whom I volunteered), but Hillary lost to a black guy who came out of nowhere and took her down.
Further, Hillary’s a bridge to the 20th century — in a country that so badly wants to move on, she’s the past.
In a country that is so overdue for a women president, she’s tainted on that score too – a woman who will only be president because she was the wife of a former president (Hillary is a high-performing individual — she’d likely have been high achieving on her own merits, but she’s not a politician, she’d have never gotten this high politically because her personal political skills are poor).
The Democratic party and Hillary Clinton damn near screwed this up. We need to be very, very cognizant of just how close we came to handing over the country to GOP hell (and, believe me, this isn’t over yet — we could screw it up still).
Baud
@enplaned: No.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
@Punchy: you have to understand Trump is today’s version of the OJ Simpson bronco chase.
Gin & Tonic
@enplaned: Poured vinegar into your Cheerios by mistake this morning?
waspuppet
Not just a lame attempt to pass it off as a joke, but an indignant “I’m SO INSULTED you didn’t know I was joking!”
Again, those domestic-violence accusations against Trump seem SO far-fetched now, don’t they?
(And that actually WAS sarcasm.)
TK
@Punchy: Which brings to mind a question. How bad would Trump have to be before Fox turned on him? Is there a bridge too far for them? Openly suggesting nuclear war or something?
Chyron HR
@enplaned:
WAAAAAH!
IT’S NOT FAIR!
BERNIE WAS SUPPOSED TO GET THE CAKE WALK ELECTION, NOT THE BITCH!
BERNIESTEIN OR BUST 2016?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro: I’ve been informed by our betters in the media that we’re supposed to be very concerned at the fact that the Clinton State Department didn’t say “FUCK YOU AND DIE IN A FIRE” anytime anyone from the Clinton Foundation attempted to contact them.
amk
Trump closes up shop in New Jersey.
krispe kreme effect.
Face
@Kay: Uh, yeah, well…HRC only has about a ~5% lead in FL. You’d expect someone with only 1 office to be down 10-15%. Whatever Trump is doing is not quite successful, but it’s not failing massively, like the numbers suggest it should be.
Le sigh.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Seconded.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@enplaned: Yeah, she’s so horrible and incompetent and everyone hates her.
Oh, except she’s the most admired woman in the world and has been for decades.
Same thing, amirite?
(roll-eyes)
Cheers,
Scott.
satby
@enplaned: actually, no one in the Democratic party screwed up anything. The only thing I see that’s screwy is your analysis.
enplaned
@Chyron HR: Don’t get me wrong. I never supported Bernie, and I long ago gave Hillary $5400 — because Trump. And I love that we’ll destroy the GOP, and I would support Hillary over any GOPer.
But we came really damn close to losing this thing, and losing it badly. I’m an atheist, but if I was a god-fearing man, I’d say that Trump’s nomination, and the revelation (to the country — I have long been aware of it, as has anyone with eyes to see) that the GOP is infested by the spiritual descendants of segregationists, just in the nick of time, is proof that someone’s looking out for us. We got damn, damn lucky.
amk
@enplaned: Yeah, one could see how easily bs was able to kick out ‘corrupt’ dws.
Baud
@Face: Offices are for turnout, not polling leads in August. Trump has 40% baked in nationally, and even more in wingnut states.
Baud
@enplaned:
To have a great nominee.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@enplaned: The only person I could have seen beating Hillary on the Republican side was Kasich; and he was NEVER going to be the nominee.
TK
@enplaned: It’s not altogether clear we’d have lost “badly” to any other GOP candidate. If they had nominated someone else we’d be having a different conversation. Possibly a more policy oriented one, and the GOP’s boilerplate rhetoric of cut all taxes all the time and cut environmental regs to put more lead in the drinking water isn’t necessarily a big seller despite Hillary’s difficulties as a retail politician and orator.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@enplaned: I think that boring governor who name began with a K and no one voted for in the primary was the only one who stood a chance against Hilary in the primary, so no.
Woodrowfan
I agree somewhat with enplaned. Not that Hillary is a bad politician. I think she’s a good one. But she’s been smeared by the righties for a quarter century, and there are a lot of Americans who took it all in (including a lot of the Bernie Bros.) You throw enough crap and some of it will stick eventually, even if it is bullcrap. A lot of voters don’t pay enough attention to know it’s BS, they just take in all the attention paid to some issue (EMAIL!!!!) and think “she must have done something wrong..”
The problem with the whole “Most Admired Woman” thing is that she won with only 13% of the vote! Yes, a lot of people really like her, but a lot hate her because of the RW BS. and a lot of us are in the middle. I voted for her in the Primary because I thought she’d be a good president, better than Bernie. But we did luck out with a weak, weak opponent who is self-destructive. Hopefully she’ll win, we’ll get the Senate back, and get some decent justices on the SCOTUS. But I think we dodged a bullet and need to do a lot of work to make sure we take advantage of the opportunity.
dmsilev
@Face: I’m not sure that’s right. Field offices are for GOTV, i.e. for converting supporters into actual votes. If Clinton has BIGNUM field offices in Florida and Trump has something that’s within a rounding error of zero, it means that Clinton is more likely to over perform relative to her polling numbers. Normally, both sides have at least vaguely competent operations so that cancels out and you get something roughly in line with the polling. This year, who knows? But it’s very possible that Clinton’s field operation means that all of the close-run states end up tilting towards her by a couple of points.
enplaned
@Chyron HR: Man, do you ever have me wrong. I have never supported Bernie. Jill Stein — hell no. Nader — never. Please don’t make that assumption, because it’s totally wrong. I wrote my $5400 check to Hillary long ago. But I’m capable of supporting her as the best possible alternative, and still seeing her as a really bad idea. She should never have run.
This isn’t a religious issue — it’s a matter of simply recognizing the hard fact that her negatives in the polling are extraordinarily bad.
satby
@Baud: this.
And can I just say “thanks enplaned” for assuming that those of who enthusiastically support Clinton are saboteurs or idiots? Because it’s not offensive at all that supporting the most qualified person is “screwing up, and badly” to paraphrase you.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
Programming Note:
Playoffs – 3 hours to kickoff (photo)
schrodinger's cat
I see infinite campaign cash is back as a concern troll.
amk
@enplaned:
LOL. dig deeper.
Anya
Is this Trump’s way of acknowledging something backfired on him.
amk
@schrodinger’s cat: ‘concern’ is superfluous. 5400 bucks and yet ‘she should have never run’.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@enplaned: A fired-up fringe opposition doesn’t mean that the Democrats would have won.
“It’s the Economy, stupid.”
The economy is getting stronger each quarter (but not as quickly as it should have). Unemployment is low and the labor participation rate is slowly rising. Wages are slowly rising. There are no scandals (no matter how much the GOP tries to construct one). There’s no incompetent administration failure to point to.
Why would sensible people want to give the Presidency to Trump?
If “people like divided government” is true, then why would people want to give more power to the GOP when they’ve shown that all they want to do is scream NO?
Demographics are pointing to stronger Democratic-leaning majorities going forward (but not quickly enough for my taste).
The Democrats have won the popular vote in all of the elections since 1992 except for 2004. What fundamentals would change that now?
None of these semi-objective measures point to anything except a GOP loss in November 2016. Trump just tilts the scale even more than usual.
I have not been worried about Hillary’s chances in November. I just want her to have a big-enough majority to get (too many long-delayed) things done over the next 2 years.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Er, first sentence: Democrats would not have won.
(sigh).
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Trump really doesn’t get what he is doing, does he?
dmsilev
@Anya:
I think so. He’s incapable of admitting he made a mistake, so instead he insists that the entire rest of the world made a mistake by missing his “obvious” joke.
MattF
@Woodrowfan: I sort of agree with this. The R strategy wrt Hilz has been based on the conventional rules-of-the-game wisdom that elections are decided at the margins– the anti-Hillary smears are most effective on precisely those people who can’t make up their minds. But 2016 is not a conventional election, and we have the opportunity to change the rules of the game. So, GOTV!
enplaned
What I thought should have happened was that Obama should have run with someone else on his ticket in 2012. I love Joe Biden, but what if Obama had set up someone new, someone younger, a woman, in 2012. Imagine the additional excitement if Obama had run with a woman VP in 2012. How great would it have been, in 2012, to be able to vote for the first woman VP! Someone 40-something. Someone new.
And that person would have been really well set up for success in 2016. To me, setting someone up as a new power in the Democratic party in 2012 as part of that election was such an obvious way to go, I have to assume it was at least considered. But I could also imagine that the price to be paid for that would have been the Clintons *not* campaigning for Obama in 2012.
I’m not a Clinton hater, but I am someone who thinks they had their chance, that the pool of talent in this country is bigger than just a few families, and that I’d rather have something new. And I think many people feel the same way. When I see another Bush run for office, or another Kennedy, or another Clinton, or another Biden, or another whatever, I think, man, really? Frankly, I’d like a nepotism (or aristocracy) amendment to the constitution — if you’re related, or were related, in the first degree, by blood or marriage, to a Federal office holder, then you can’t occupy that office. We’re Americans, not fucking British. We’re supposed to be against aristocracy.
bemused
Trump doesn’t seem to be enjoying running for president anymore. I’ve read that at Trump’s Wed (?) rally, he was even more incoherent than usual if that is even possible. I’ve heard a little bit of audio and curious to hear more but I don’t know if I could stand to watch the whole thing..maybe in 5 minute increments.
A republican woman for Hillary said Trump acts like a two year old. She said she recognizes the behavior because she has a two year old. When you look at children’s common behaviors at toddler age, I’d have to agree. From about 18 months to 2-1/2, some traits that Trump exhibits,
Easily frustrated and short attention span.
The word “no” has no or little effect.
Compulsive behavior.
Mood shifts and quick anger.
Thinks only of taking, not giving.
Has no concept of sharing.
Rigid and inflexible.
Cannot adapt or wait. Only thinks of now.
They give orders, want to make the decisions, want to do it themselves.
Language is more or less “jargon”.
Everyone has been playing diagnose what the hell is wrong with Trump. I’d like to know if it is possible to accurately pinpoint Trump’s issues by reputable psychologists/psychiatrists from afar.
enplaned
@satby: Qualified is one thing — but politicians have to be liked as well. Yeah, they need charisma, they need a certain touch. I don’t have it myself, and neither does Hillary. For some reason she rubs a lot of people the wrong way (and I am speaking of more than just the knee-jerk misogyny that too many people have).
Hillary was also more qualified in 2008, and got smoked by Obama — who should never have come close.
schrodinger's cat
What will the Rage Cantaloupe say today?
Patricia Kayden
@Laertes: It’s so awkward when your supporters and spokespersons go from channel to channel to try to explain your “sarcasm” and “jokes”. It’s almost as if they do not know that every time you say something stupid or controversial, you’re just being “sarcastic” or “joking”.
Funny that.
@Kay: It’s almost as if Trump wants to lose.
Keith P.
Eez joke, get it?
MattF
@bemused: The short answer to your last question is ‘No’. I’d look more at Trump’s political error– he was successful during the R primaries with a divide-and-conquer strategy, and he’s trying the same trick for the general election. It may be that his personal psychological demons limit his behavioral repertoire to the degree that he can’t change his strategy, even if he wants to. But I don’t see how that would change the answer to the question of what to do now.
schrodinger's cat
@enplaned:
But, you are and a GOP troll to boot. You have been trying to change the conversation from the Rage Cantaloupe’s antics to Clinton. You can no longer fluff up your nominee so your tearing down the Democratic nominee.
SFAW
@Ceci n’est pas mon nym:
I remember that one! They were on that planet where something had happened, and then they DID SHIT, and got all up in someone else’s (figurative) face, and then something else happened? And then that computer tried to do something bad to the crew, but something ELSE happened, and everything failed or got fixed.
THAT episode?
Bruce K
Well, if nothing else, at the end of the year we’ll have some data points as to how well a Gish Gallop works across an American presidential election, right?
Joel
My question is; how will Trump embezzle his campaign funds? Can he just pocket all the direct donations to his campaign? Or does he have to launder it through his businesses? Is he grafting from the RNC slush funds, too?
MattF
@SFAW: And the crewman in the red shirt got vaporized.
Patricia Kayden
@enplaned: Secretary Clinton has been the target of Rightwing outrage for decades so the fact that she has a lot of baggage is not surprising at all. Unfortunately, Rightwingers have created a perception that Secretary Clinton is not trustworthy and prone to scandals. While she certainly is not perfect, she’s not the evil, murderous cartoon character which Conservatives have ginned her up to be.
But you’re right that Trump has been the perfect opponent for Secretary Clinton as his miscues and misbehavior render him unelectable as President. Thank you, Mr. Trump (and your gigantic ego). And thank you to the poorly educated rubes who support you.
Joel
@enplaned: At no point in recent history has Trump been a threat to win the presidency. That doesn’t mean that he can’t close the gap. It just means that you have no evidence to support your hypothesis that the “Democrats have come close to losing”. The rest is tl;dr but also nonsense.
SFAW
@enplaned:
Thanks for sharing that deeply insightful and well-thought-out semblance of a whiff of an opinion. I have already forwarded your important thoughts to Robby Mook, and he said he will give it all the consideration it deserves, and then some.
By the way, do you have any thoughts on Hillary’s voice, that I could also pass along to Robby? Because I think one of the easier things for Hillary to do would be to “fix” the midwest/Chicago nasality which people — not saying YOU, of course, because it’s blindingly obvious how much you love Hillary — seem to be bothered by. I think any valuable insights might be just the thing to help Hillary turn this around.
MattF
Debunking of claim that Hilz would be losing badly to any other Republican.
enplaned
@schrodinger’s cat: Jesus, you are really effing paranoid. No, I am Democrat, registered. I have given a ton of money of Democrats since 2006, and I volunteered for the Obama campaign in 2008. I have given Clinton the max possible this year — not because I like her, but because the alternative was disaster.
Not sure how to prove any of this, but it’s true.
Joel
@Face: Field offices should not move polls. They should move votes.
This election will be a good test of that (to date, untested) hypothesis.
SFAW
@SFAW:
And THAT,
BaudelaireDeadbeat Donnie, you fucking moron, isacting!sarcasm. As others have pointed out: what you call “sarcasm” was just more of your fifthe-grade-level insults.And you got about 11-and-a-half to go before you get to the dozens.
schrodinger's cat
@enplaned: Not paranoid. I have your number. You are regurgitating same tired GOP talking points about Hillary Clinton.
Bobby Thomson
@Trentrunner: I’ve been trying to explain that to my daughter, who has been using the same excuse.
Grippa
@enplaned:
All that as may be.
But, Clinton will be a good POTUS.
And, by the way, the GOP did what they did.
What you wrote is based upon a hypothetical.
SFAW
@MattF:
Shit! I was thinking of the worng episode!
Bobby Thomson
@Eunicecycle: isn’t that the Ritalin Hyper Bowl now? You can’t expect him to keep up with sports.
Agrippa
@Chyron HR:
Got it in one
schrodinger's cat
@Joel: Its the latest Republican talking point, we would be winning except for Trump.
The Ancient Randonnuer
@enplaned: Democrats this cycle because Trump got the GOP nomination just like we got lucky in 2008 when McCain picked Palin as his running mate.
Replacing Uncle Joe would have been a mistake of epic proportions. It would have sent the wrong signal to the country and he may well have lost in 2012 with a boneheaded move like that. I trust Obama and I trust Clinton to make the right decisions to win. They were BOTH lucky and they are capitalizing on the unforced errors by the opposition. Hillary Clinton has earned her place on the ticket and she’s done it with a lot of hard work and plain old guts.
#ImWithHer
JanieM
@MJS:
Why not? He’s kept it up for more than a year already.
nonynony
@Joel:
Federal law says that first the campaign has to pay outstanding debts. Once all outstanding debts are paid off the remaining cash on hand can only be used to run for another office, donated to other political campaigns, donated to a particular political party or donated to charity. So there are plenty of loopholes for Trump in there – he can bleed the money out and leave the campaign in debt – making sure that his own businesses take the bulk of the money and other businesses get the bulk of the debt (his filings suggest that he’s doing the first part of this already). He can make out-of-pocket expenditures on things that he claims are campaign related and get in-kind reimbursements (his filings indicate that he’s doing this also, more than other candidates tend to do).
I suspect that once the campaign wraps up it will be in debt up to its eyeballs. Debt that will never be repaid. Some of that debt will be to Trump and his companies, but most of it will be to businesses that contracted with Team Trump and didn’t get payment up front and with employees who will be owed paychecks for the final month or so of the campaign that they will never see. Trump will be in the black once you take into account the payments out to himself minus the debt he’s owed, but nobody else will. That’s my suspicion for how he will – perfectly legally – move a good-sized chunk of money from his campaign coffers and into his own businesses.
Interestingly this is all small potatoes for a guy who is supposed to be worth as much as Trump claims to be worth. But then we all know that he’s worth less than he claims.
geg6
@Jeffro:
They really are astonishingly angry people, these Trumpeteers. I don’t know how they haven’t burst a vein. I just don’t understand what this old, white guy who looks fairly middle income comfortable has to be so spit spewing angry about. If there is any more pampered and petted political constituency in America than old white men, I don’t know who that could possibly be.
enplaned
@SFAW: Again, this is not a religious issue. All you need do is look at Hillary’s negatives in the polling. That is a heck of a mountain to overcome in a presidential election — except when your opponent has even higher negatives. It doesn’t matter whether those negatives are fair or not. Hillary has had a ton of shit poured over her through the decades — it wasn’t right. But that’s where she is. That’s the net result. And some of that is because of her own management of her image — Obama has had a ton of shit poured over him these past 8 years too — and yet his negatives are actually OK. How about that?
The media hates Hillary. If it was a GOP nominee that could even halfway pretend to not be the rightwing asshole he is against Hillary, you know the media would be in the bag for the GOPer.
Again, we’re incredibly lucky that this was the year the GOP id finally burst its chains and nominated Trump. This is someone Hillary can beat. We got lucky.
Bobby Thomson
@enplaned: and just think, we could have screwed up even more by nominating the incompetent grifter she defeated handily. Not sure how we would have nominated him, but I guess we dodged a bullet?
sherparick
@bemused: Trump is running has he has been running since he made his campaign announcement and said that “Mexico is sending its rapists and criminals” and announced he would build a wall. He gets his news and ideas from the Breitbart/Alec Jones/Alt right side of the twitterverse. The plurality of raging white male “resentiment” that is the animating and emotional base of the current Neo-Confederate Party, operating under the names “Republicans” and worked perfectly to win first a plurality and eventually a majority of those voting “Republican” in the primaries. The old Eastern WASP Republicans have been driven out, their unholy alliance with white ethnic anti-black resentment blowing up in their face. Hence why Trump dominated the Eastern Primaries. There were no longer any moderate Republicans. And in Trump’s bubble they are the “real majority” and “fraud” is Brown, Asian, and Black people voting.
Mike R
@JanieM: Agreed, Trump is the Michael Phelps of idiocy.
SFAW
@Jeffro:
Well, remember, Trump’s supporters are “passionate.”
SFAW
@enplaned:
Yeah, thanks, whatever.
geg6
@enplaned:
Jesus. What a load of shit all wrapped up in one comment.
Peale
@Woodrowfan: but which of the major candidates would have been stronger? Kaisch and Walker were never even close to the top of mind of voters. The only candidate that came close to building a field organization was Cruz, but I like Hilary’s chances against the slimy angry one. Ben Carson spent more weeks at the top of the polls than Cruz did. These were their strongest, most public candidates. I guess republicans would have needed to reach deeper to find someone. but who?
Shalimar
@Kay: Donald Trump’s lifestyle over the last 40 years has cost at least 10 times the amount of money Fred left him. The one thing Donald is good at is grifting. The banks always get left holding the bag, while, as he himself points out, Trump takes lots of money out of failed projects like the Atlantic City casinos. Some of his scams, like the airline, vodka, steaks, etc, have been vanity projects to raise his brand name, but he always makes money off of even the worst of his real estate ventures. If he didn’t spend so much money, he would easily be an actual billionaire now.
WereBear
He does not want to lose. He does not know how to win.
Sure, in the Republican primaries the biggest, nastiest, stupidest mouth will win, and he did. But national campaigns, even in this messed up, irony-is-dead, era, requires at least the pretense of looking like a Statesperson, so the talking heads can be all earnest and pretend it all makes sense.
Trump blows that out of the water. It’s like running a three year old, with a straight face, as not-a-joke.
Ain’t gonna work. Trump is messing up the entire system, and it is a thing of dysfunctional beauty.
Poopyman
@SFAW: Oh yeah! Now that you describe it that way I remember it too!
WereBear
@SFAW: LOL! There’s at least six episodes where they confused a computer to death.
mapaghimagsik
Wait, could this be a scam like ‘The Producers’?
bemused
@MattF:
I wasn’t thinking of what to do now. No one can do anything about Trump except watch him crash and burn which I believe he will. It’s after the dust settles on Trump’s flameout, I am wondering if respected mental health experts and political scientists will have some more insight into why Trump wanted to run for president and what he expected to get out of it. Maybe there is no there, there and he’s entirely impulse. I always want to get a better handle on what makes people like Trump tick.
geg6
@Face:
You do realize that campaign offices’ function is not to improve polling but to actually get out the vote on election day, right? There is no correlation between how many offices one has and current polling. Campaign offices exist for the benefit of the only poll that matters and the thought that they have an effect on any other poll is ridiculous.
hovercraft
@Kay:
He’s a businessman, he excels at organization and managing people, can’t you tell?
nonynony
@enplaned: Dude, you show up with an unfamiliar nym reciting this week’s Republican Talking Point about how lucky the Democrats are that Clinton is up against Trump instead of a Real Republican. If only the odious Ted Cruz or the hapless Jeb Bush had been nominated – why they’d be trouncing Clinton right now despite how much everyone hated Ted Cruz the more they got to know him and how inept Jeb Bush was at doing anything at all.
It’s a stupid talking point being pushed by Republicans. You show up with a new nym pushing said stupid talking point. You should not be surprised at all when people around here assume you’re a troll. Because you’re trolling. Perhaps you’re just a useful idiot and not doing it intentionally, but repeating Republican Talking Points is trolling for them – doing it for free because you’re a Sad Democrat Who Thinks Democrats Always Fail doesn’t make it not trolling.
And honestly if you ARE a troll then you’re doing it wrong. You should really start out by being more positive and making yourself a known member of the community for, oh, six months or so. Then have your turn towards the “Sad Democrat Who Pushes Republican Talking Points Because Democrats Can Never Win”. At least that character is credible, rather than the “Sad Democrat Who Pushes Republican Talking Points Because Democrats Can Never Win Who Shows Up Out Of Nowhere And Starts Pushing This Week’s Republican Talking Points Immediately”.
Face
@schrodinger’s cat: He/she is not a GOP troll. Come on! So everyone has to fluff and pimp HRC as the GOAT or else you label them a troll? Ridiculous and farcical.
SFAW
@Mike R:
Bullshit. Phelps was, and maybe still is, the best in the world in his area of “expertise,” for N years running (where “N” is a large positive integer). (For what it’s worth, I’m not a Phelps fan.)
Trump is an idiot, and vile, and a misogynist, but he’s not the best at anything. Except possibly self-promotion — how else could someone with so little brains or talent to offer make it seem as though he’s some sort of savior?
WereBear
They have thwarted ambitions to be even more pampered and petted.
celticdragonchick
@enplaned:
I will agree with you a bit there. Elizabeth Warren or Kirsten Gillebrand could not be talked into running however. I really would have liked to see Jennifer Granholm run.
delk
Pretty sad (SAD!) when the RNC is being pushed to treat their candidate the same way their congressional members treat Planned Parenthood.
SFAW
@nonynony:
You coulda just said “concern troll,” and saved yourself some effort.
ETA: Not saying that to bust your chops — I agreed with everything you wrote — it just seemed like a lot of time and effort wasted on the latest “Hillary has high negatives and wears pantsuits” pundit.
geg6
@enplaned:
Did I miss a previous Hillary administration? No? Then she hasn’t had her chance, has she?
Bobby Thomson
@enplaned: the best possible alternative who never should have run.
Not one of your better efforts, Doug.
Peale
@MJS: if he does need a vacation, can I recommend duck hunting and wind surfing?
Agrippa
@enplaned:
I am weird, I suppose. I do not do “like” with politicians. “like” is fickle.
The word is “respect”. Not “like”.
I am fully aware that people “hate” Clinton; mostly GOP. But, there are some leftists who use words like “neo liberal” and “corporatist” to indicate their hatred.
I do not do “hate” either.
The Ancient Randonnuer
@mapaghimagsik:
Trump is no Max Bialytoc and definitely not a match for Mel Brooks. However, with that hair he could pass for Zero Mostel.
Mike R
@SFAW: If you think that saying Trump is the best idiot ever is a compliment, well that is your choice.
eric
@JanieM: Because he was winning then, he is a LOSER now. Sad!
SFAW
@Face:
No, it’s that we’ve heard it all before, countless times, from Trumpkins-passing-as-Dems, Bern-or-Busters, and so forth. It’s almost as tiresome as the MSM’s both-sides-ism.
Peale
@JanieM: actually he’s kept it up for 40 years. 3 more months is nothing,
SFAW
@Mike R:
I don’t think it’s a compliment, I just don’t think Mario Mendoza should be confused with Babe Ruth (or Ted Williams or Stan Musial).
Plus: Louie Gohmert (SMIC) and Sean Hannity (SMOTV) have him beat eight ways from Sunday.
eric
@Peale: he has been fawned on for 40 years. that aint happening. Sad!
nonynony
@SFAW: Nope. Concern troll doesn’t go far enough because this “concern” is so fundamentally rock stupid that it needs to be smacked around hard.
This stupid talking point about how lucky we are that Trump is our nominee is being pushed by Republicans. Democrats who are falling into that trap are morons who need to be called out on it. Trolls who show up trolling with it are idiots who need to be pushed back on hard.
As to why they’re morons – name the Republican that could actually win the Republican primary that Clinton wouldn’t be beating like a redheaded stepchild right now:
* Ted Cruz? Nope – the man was an odious piece of garbage that couldn’t even get Republicans to vote for him. It would be a repeat of Obama/Romney in 2012.
* Marco Rubio? A dumber version of Sarah Palin out there doing his robot dance on stage? He’d get trounced by Martin O’Malley let alone Clinton.
* Scott Walker? He has the charisma of a rock. An ugly rock. And like Cruz the more people got to know him the less they liked him. Another Obama/Romney 2012 candidate.
* Jeb Bush? it is to laugh
The only one that ever had me worried against any Democrat at all is Kasich. And it turns out that he fails the second part of that problem up there – Republicans like him can’t win the Republican primary anymore. Anyone who got through this primary season was going to be damaged goods. Trump was the most damaged and would be the easiest to beat, but none of the rest of them were going to be our next President either.
Sad Democrats who are so concerned about how negative Clinton’s numbers are should take a good hard look at exactly who the Republicans were running and explain to me which of them would have been contenders at this point. Most of them couldn’t even get Republicans to vote for their odious personality defects – how were they going to convince anyone else?
ETA: I saw your edit and I know that you weren’t busting my chops. But this particular meme needs to die a painful death. It’s rock stupid given who the Republicans ran this cycle. Sure Clinton would be having problems running up against Ronald Reagan in 1980 or George W Bush in 2000 but the Republicans weren’t running either of those races this year and based on who they ran this meme is rock stupid.
MJS
@JanieM: For the primaries, as much as it may have seemed like it was “all Trump, all the time”, there was at least some splintering of the media attention to the other 18 candidates (16 Rs, Hillary and Bernie). Now that it’s down to 2 candidates, there is increased focus on exactly what it is he’s saying. It may be that he’s been saying these things all the time, but there are far fewer candidates to take any of the glare off of him. And when the only other current candidate has been exceedingly disciplined, ALL of the spotlight is going to be on him, and given his combination of being very stupid, but unaware of his stupidity, it’s only going to get worse for him. That’s why I don’t think he can keep this pace up.
sherparick
Pat Buchanan and Kevin Phillips, both Nixonites, have either released material or given interviews in which they made the southern strategy plain. Here’s a 1971 Nixon administration memo with details. The highlights:
From http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Southern_strategy:
“From Day One, Nixon and I talked about creating a new majority…Northern Catholic ethnics and Southern Protestant conservatives—what we called the Daley-Rizzo[3] Democrats in the North and, frankly, the Wallace Democrats in the South.”
“nominate for the Supreme Court a Southern strict constructionist who would divide Democrats regionally”
“elicit white working-class support with tax relief and denunciations of welfare”
“Bumper stickers calling for black Presidential and especially Vice-Presidential candidates should be spread out in the ghettoes of the country … We should do what is within our power to have a black nominated for Number Two, at least at the Democratic National Convention.”
They even predicted in the memo that it would divide the country along north-south lines and eventually cause the media to turn against them.
[edit] It’s about states’ rights!
Lee Atwater, a political strategist for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, described the Southern Strategy in a 1981 interview:[4]
“”You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
Trump rather pathetically imitated Nixon at the RNC (a reminder that Trump is 70 years old and was 22 in 1968 and 26 in 1972 when Nixon ran and began to associate himself with Roy Cohn in those years, and through Roy, Roger Stone. The “Southern Strategy” has been amplified and revved up, and joined with the anti-abortion movement over the last 30 years by right wing activists, talk radio, web sites, and, of course, Fox News.
As Trump demonstrates, particularly in this General Election running against a woman, the emotional drive of his candidacy and following is rage against the liberation of minorities, rage against the liberation of women, the personifications of those trends in liberation, President Obama and Secretary Clinton.
Redshift
I guess “I gave Hillary $5400” is the new “I am a lifelong Democrat”.
Ceci n'est pas mon nym
@SFAW: Yeah, that’s the one!
I was thinking of the one with the Jack-the-Ripper creature that possessed the shipboard computer. But perhaps a better analog is the one with Mudd and the robo-women, where they burn out the robots with a firehose of illogic.
I’m not enough of a Trekkie to be able to remember titles.
Come to think of it, I can think of at least one more episode where confusing illogic was used to escape: the one with the Chicago gangsters. So maybe that really was a common plot device.
BR
@Joel:
I think he’s doing something simple — every time he flies somewhere, he pays his “airline”, when he lands he pays his limo service and then his hotel, etc. And I’m sure at crazy marked up rates. It adds up. He probably figures the more campaign events he holds, the more he gets paid, because each one siphons money from his campaign to his pockets.
amk
@JanieM:
against 3rd rate morons.
Bobby Thomson
@WereBear: help me, LANDRU!
nonynony
@BR: As I said above though – that’s nickel-and-dime stuff for a guy who’s “supposed” to be as rich as he claims to be.
danielx
@Kay:
Yes. Our man Trump thinks in big concepts (doesn’t Trump Grand Canyon sound good?), while details* are left to other people. What other people? Top people, naturally.
It’s a wonder his business career hasn’t gone down in flames before now.
*Aside from screwing contractors and such, that being something that the orange douchewaffle can really get into.
celticdragonchick
@nonynony:
No…no…he does have some points to address there. It is entirely correct to note that the media has had their sights on Hillary for 25 years and constructed the “evil greedy bitch” narrative that every story gets filtered through (Looking at you , Maureen Dowd) and you do not have a similar example on the right. Her negatives are very high, and much of that is because of blatant bullshit. However…
Speeches delivered to Goldman Sachs folks etc DO NOT HELP and serve to actually reinforce the established narrative. She has had other missteps as well, and moreover, she gets compared (unfairly) to her husband who is the most talented politician in the last 50 years and anybody would come out worse for wear on that.
I do think she would beat Cruz or Bush the Third. Rubio (and some of the others) would be a major problem, however, and the fact that most Americans actually believe the country is headed in the wrong direction (I can only imagine where the hell that idea came from) means that this gets cast as a “change” election and Hillary (as has been said as nauseum on TV) is not really a change candidate* and she has had some trouble trying to make a case that she is.
*(in fact, I rather like that actually since we are kinda getting Obama term 3)
danielx
@nonynony:
Campaign as huge bust out operation?
geg6
@nonynony:
Another thing people never seem to mention is that when Hillary actually gets the job, her positive polling numbers shoot up to insanely high levels and stay pretty stable there. This was true for her as a senator and as SoS. My theory is that too many people are suspicious of such an ambitious woman aggressively seeking a position of power. Once she gets the position, they see how good she is at it and reward her for it.
Mickee
87 days to go and I already have advanced TFS (Trump Fatigue Syndrome), characterized by:
1. Irritation/blistering of hands and forehead from repetitive face-palming
2. Hypersensitivity and anxiety triggered by the sound of Trump’s voice
3. Obsessive/compulsive need to locate reliable sources to fact check unending false statements
4. Avoidance of the Internet to protect self from daily bombardment of ‘fresh hell’ Trump has unleashed on the populace.
5. Generalized unease and mild clinical depression that in polls, 40% of Americans ‘likely to vote’ still support this f**ng idiot
rikyrah
@Ceci n’est pas mon nym:
Amen.
The GOP has never been faced with this before.
They’re used to the Nominee’s using the office to grift AFTERWARDS, once they get into office.
They’ve never been confronted with a Nominee that sees THE ACTUAL CAMPAIGN AS THE GRIFT.
PS- I still don’t think he’s ‘forgiven’ the loans to the campaign. I’m not convinced – AT ALL.
Shalimar
@enplaned: Republicans hate whoever Democrats run. They slime whoever Democrats run. The media picks up that slime and flings it around for ratings. Look at all the shit that has been said about Obama in the last 9 years. You couldn’t create a more scandal-free politician in your dreams, and his approval ratings are barely above 50%, finally.
There is no dream Democrat who would have been an alternative to Hillary Clinton. I voted for Sanders in the primary (before the asshole started encouraging the rigged election bullshit), but they would have destroyed his reputation too. It is just the way the opposition and media are. If you say she shouldn’t have run, you at least need to provide the name of a candidate you think could have done better this year.
hovercraft
@Laertes:
It was not sarcasm, he’s just using that excuse because he’s getting panned by everyone, even the RWNJ’s are saying this is dumb.
scav
For all his shoveling the coal of terror into the be afeeeeaaaaaarrrrrrrreddd of the scary media-enabled Isis-founding feminist gun-grabbing miner-killing crooked witch of Obama-spawn train engine without a track, his personal vision of living under the apocalyptic hellhole is simply “— I’m going to have a very, very nice, long vacation.”
And the crowd cried out for more. poor little rubes. satisfied with so very little sincerity and support, so long as it’s delivered witha large side of carnival invective in a loud and mean enough tone.
SFAW
@Ceci n’est pas mon nym:
Um, no. “A Piece of the Action” used other plot devices, but not that one.
enplaned
@celticdragonchick: Big problem with Granholm — was not born a US citizen. So, may not legally be president.
bemused
@geg6:
I know some of these old farts. They constantly write cranky letters to local small town papers bitterly complaining about everything. Some of them have even been on city councils in the past and think the current whipper snapper members are crooks, liars and running their towns all wrong. They are retired with too much time on their hands, probably have age related infirmities and mad their retirement funds/benefits don’t go as far as they thought they would. They love to create trouble. I also know nice, normal guys in same age group who go out and volunteer their time doing all sorts of great things for their communities. I think most of the old assholes were always assholes and vice versa.
nonynony
@celticdragonchick:
Seriously? You think Marco Rubio wouldn’t have gotten chewed up and spat back out again?
You must have been watching a different Marco Rubio campaign than I was. He was seriously unprepared to be out on the campaign trail and I’m certain he would have gotten beaten like a mule prior to the instigation of animal cruelty laws had he actually accomplished his goals.
Clinton ran against Barack Obama and almost beat him. A genius once-in-a-lifetime campaigner and politician and she almost beat him. I’m sorry – I have a very hard time understanding why anyone thinks that any of that gaggle on the Republican stage outside of Kasich would be able to flip enough states that Obama won in 2012 over to themselves here in 2016 to win the election.
I think people’s prejudices against Clinton have blinded themselves to the fact that she’s damn good at what she does. And also that the entirety of the Republican party has gone batshit insane and all of their candidates sucked this year. (I’m not saying that you’re in this category but seriously – Marco Rubio? I can almost believe a case for Scott Walker being competitive against Clinton but Rubio?)
WereBear
@BR: While it is my firm belief that Republicans have always had a very large and serious grifter element, their move to welcome Birchers, racists, Fundies, and right wing terrorists into their fold has increased that proportion to the Pinnacle of Grifter VP and now, Grifter Presidential Candidate.
But that was what the W Administration was all about, too, from Cheney’s sweetheart energy deals to flying pallets of cash to Iran where they mysteriously disappeared.
DesertFriar
@dmsilev:
Christmas Day 1170
King Henry II : “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
New Years Day 1171
King Henry II: “Yo. It was a joke!”
SFAW
@nonynony:
OK. I agree re: Kasich (and most/all of the rest of your comment). But the idea that anything we write here will kill the “Hill is WEAKWEAKWEAK and would LOSELOSELOSE to Generic Republican Candidate” meme.
Just remember, the light bulb must first have a sincere desire to be changed.
Shalimar
@rikyrah: I’m with you on Trump not forgiving the loans. The campaign filed a finance report for June reporting that the loans had been forgiven, and that is what the FEC released. We still haven’t seen the actual paperwork forgiving the loans, and I won’t believe it exists without evidence. Lying on a campaign finance disclosure results in fines, usually years later. Does anyone seriously believe the threat of those fines would stop the Trump campaign from lying if it was worth over $40 million to Trump personally to lie?
His campaign was falling apart financially at the end of June because no one would donate. The only reason he survived to the convention is because he supposedly forgave the loans and donors started giving.
Ceci n'est pas mon nym
@SFAW: Wasn’t that the one where they started a card game with Calvin-ball rules to confuse their captors?
SFAW
@enplaned:
Obama was able to overcome that, are you saying a woman could not?
rikyrah
@enplaned:
Honestly?
I don’t disagree with anything that you wrote.
Except, the President is a loyal person, and would have never dumped JoeyB in 2012.
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
He’s the bull, she keeps gently waving the red flag, he charges, working himself into a lather, while she calmly steps aside.
Maybe? Does that work, ’cause I’m not to keen on what the next step would be for the bull. Though in this case I doubt the matador needs to aid in the destruction of this bull, it’s so crazed that it’s ramming itself head first into brick walls, and is putting itself down. The red flag in this instance are simply the facts that he knows nothing and is losing.
randy khan
@amk:
The best line in the whole article is the last one:
Trump backer and state senator Joseph Pennachio:
Good luck with that.
SFAW
@Ceci n’est pas mon nym:
Fizzbin (or however it’s spelt).
MattF
@SFAW: I don’t know– does O let non-Kenyans borrow his time machine?
rikyrah
@Joel:
Embezzle?
Didn’t you see the expense report a few months ago?
Damn near every payment was to something he owned or the kids owned.
No embezzle.
It’s in Your face, out in the open, GRIFT.
traitor
I am a patriot!
SFAW
@Shalimar:
They could ask him for the long-form docs.
hovercraft
@TK:
Pretty sure he doesn’t understand much of anything.
Hoodie
@celticdragonchick: There is nothing better than beating the GOP with Clinton. It’s a validation of the Clinton and Obama presidencies and helps reinforce the impression that the GOP is so nuts, they can’t even get an effective candidate to oppose someone conventionally viewed as controversial. If she wins, the GOP will not be able to help itself and will continue with nonstop faux outrage, and HRC has shown that she’s more than up to that. That will mean at least four more years of the GOP stuck in the position of being “the stupid party” instead of reforming so that it can appeal to women and growing minorities.
MattF
Today’s lunch special.
SFAW
@MattF:
I will neither confirm nor deny the existence of such a machine. Nor will I confirm or deny that the President allows others to use his own machine-whose-existence-I-will-neither-confirm-nor-deny.
IYKWIMAITYD
rk
@enplaned:
Really? Replace a loyal popular vice president with some inexperienced young unknown woman. So that she excites some people? That works for the GOP. Remember Sarah Palin? Most democrats would have thought Obama was off his rocker.
rikyrah
@nonynony:
Not true. She hung on until June. But, it was over – mathematically, the night of the Wisconsin Primary.
The math was not on her side from that moment on…
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@celticdragonchick: I’m sure someone will mention this before I hit “Post Comment”, but Granholm is Canadian by birth.
She’s wonderful at the conventions. I wish she had a larger national role in the party.
Cheers,
Scott.
enplaned
@nonynony: See it totally the other way. In 2008, the reason Hillary lost is because of the weaknesses that make her a dubious proposition as a politician. She picked bad people (Mark Penn anyone?). She was ill-prepared (remember, Obama actually won because his campaign picked up all those later-stage red states because the Clinton campaign thought they would have it wrapped up by then). Yeah, Obama ran a perfect campaign, but it hinged on Clinton weaknesses, and if she’d corrected even one of them, he’d have been dead.
There was a massive enthusiasm gap — Obama kept raising huge amounts of money in small quantities from more people, while Hillary raised a bunch at the beginning from big donors who then couldn’t donate more). Same thing happened this year — Sanders smoked her on fund-raising because of that enthusiasm gap. And even Trump made the Hillary campaign worried with his July takings.
You need to excite people, you need to get their juices flowing. Hillary has just never done that, not on any large scale. It’s a weakness. To acknowledge that is just a statement of fact.
JanieM
It seems not unlikely that to him, “ALL” the spotlight on him = “I win!! I win! Hugely!” There’s nothing “worse” about it. Maybe the people around him don’t see it that way, but so far they haven’t had much luck changing it.
Redshift
@celticdragonchick:
The “wrong direction” isn’t just about the presidency. Wrong direction + high Obama approval says to me that American voters would like to change Congress, but the country as a whole doesn’t get too vote on that.
And keep in mind that the “change election” narrative was decided by the media based on that “wrong track.” They also decided that we had a revolt by angry populists on both sides, and many of them are still sticking to that narrative.
The reality is that if a third Obama term without GOP obstructionism was on the ballot nationwide, it would win in a landslide.
chopper
@enplaned:
yeah! no…
hovercraft
@SFAW:
I think he should also opine about her hair, the color of her pants suit, and whether placing her hand on her heart looks sincere or contrived.
enplaned
@rikyrah: I agree, which is why in a perfect world, Biden would have suggested it and stepped aside. Which, I realize, is asking a lot of a politician. But at some point you need to be thinking of the country, and Biden has certainly had his chance.
SFAW
@SFAW:
… is exceedingly optimistic, at best.
I think it would be great if I could complete a thought once in a while.
Woodrowfan
@Peale: good question. Kasich, Rubio, Cruz perhaps. Yeah, I know, Rubio is a clown, but he’s enough of a blank slate to voters can see in him what they want to see. I have some Facebook friends who liked Christy, and now are going for Hillary because Trump is so bad. Yeah, they’re not the most politically astute people. But that’s the people we’re talking about, the people who kind of pay a little bit of attention, who voted for Bush over Gore because Gore was “stiff” and said that thing about the internet, and Bush seemed like a good guy. They pick up a little bit here and there and make up their minds based on half-grasped shallow impressions. They’re the ones who think Hillary lied about her email and something about a video of Benghazi, but Trump seems so bad that they’ll go with Clinton..
catclub
@Trentrunner: good point.
SFAW
@hovercraft:
Watch it, pal — it’s obvious that it’s contrived, and anyone who says otherwise is a Hillbot in extremis If you think it’s sincere, then you’re no better than the Bern-or-Busters! Or vice versa. Or something.
enplaned
@hovercraft: Quite a straw man you’re constructing.
That’s all bullshit. What isn’t bullshit are Hillary’s extraordinarily high negatives in polling, which are generally regarded as pretty damn important.
None of you clowns have responded to that, for the reason that, as data, it’s damning. Yeah, the feckless US public actually likes to like their president, and the feckless US media encourages that. Gore vs Bush, y’know, which shouldn’t even have been close, but was, because of the preceding sentence. There are hard political realities, and that’s one of them. You don’t have to like it, but it’s reality.
Uncle Cosmo
@Eunicecycle: And he’d probably pronounce it “hyper-bowl”.
scav
@randy khan:
But that’s the entirety of their base. The orange noise is their leader, and it’s not going to stop either.
SFAW
@enplaned:
You might consider stopping. Because each time you write one of your overly long, impressive-sounding-but-not-exactly-accurate explanations of why you hate Hillary as a candidate, your bullshit “reasons” just become more obviously bullshit.
And I would LOVE to debate this point-by-point, but I need to go inspect the weeds.
chopper
@Face:
nobody’s demanding “fluffing and pimping”, but arguing with a straight face that Clinton sucks so bad she’d be getting creamed by anybody other than trump is stupid.
shomi
Always hilarious when “Sarah Palin is going to run for Prez” MarkyMux tries to explain the world to us. People like him and DougJ injecting what they seem to think is wisdom into this blog is a hoot.
Chyron HR
@enplaned:
Yes, you’re right, this is a bullshit site full of saboteurs and/or people too dumb to understand your brilliant thesis that Clinton isn’t REALLY winning even though she’s going to be the next president.
You should go somewhere your genius will be more appreciated, like USuncut.com. That’ll teach us.
catclub
@WereBear:
Now that would be surprising. Iraq was bad enough.
Redshift
@randy khan:
Never was the term “white noise” more apt.
SFAW
@enplaned:
And, just to be clear: WE FUCKING GET IT THAT HILLARY HAS HIGHER NEGATIVES THAN SHE SHOULD. We’ve gotten it for about 20-25 years now. We’re aware of the MSM’s hatred of her. But, in the end, it doesn’t really matter, except to concern trolls. I expect, were FDR to return, persons of your “thought” process would talk about him being a rich guy from Noo Yawk who does not understand the common man, or some such.
Either vote for her, or don’t. But stop already with the pointless, bullshit concern-trolling. Your “justifications” and “explanations” string some of the right words together, but the conclusions you have drawn from the evidence available says either that (A) you are not very good at comprehending the evidence and then translating it into an accurate and useful point, or (B) you are choosing which evidence to analyze, and ignoring evidence which doesn’t fit in with your pre-programmed narrative.
rikyrah
@Peale:
Kasich, mainly because he had all those years of television training at Fox, and was from Ohio.
Walker never scared me because, like Cruz – who is leagues smarter than Walker – has the personality of a turnip, and more importantly, they can’t hide it.
Kasich…because he would have spoken in Frank Luntz-approved dogwhistles, and given cover to the MSM.
I have said this for months, and will continue to say it – they dislike Trump because he doesn’t speak in dogwhistles.
not only did the GOP hide behind them, but also the MSM as they covered for the GOP.
This election season has been interesting to watch the MSM try and cover for Trump, and how many ways they can work around his appeal of basic RACISM.
how all the different things they’ve tried to call it, except for what it is – WHITE SUPREMACIST BASED NATIONALISM.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
Actually, a turnip is smarter than Scotty Walker.
SFAW
@WereBear:
Did they come from unlimited corporate pallet donations?
Gelfling 545
@Baud: exactly.
Omnes Omnibus
@celticdragonchick:
You want someone ineligible for the office to run?
Gelfling 545
@waspuppet: This is exactly why Republicans should stick to simple, declarative sentences. Simile, metaphore, sarcasm, jokes always misfire for them.
hovercraft
@Peale:
Especially since we were told that this field was the cream of the crop, their deep bench. Just like back in 2012 RMoney was the perfect candidate to knock off Obama. Hillary has been under attack for decades because the republicans have always feared she would run, and tried to disqualify her in advance. On paper others would have looked good on paper, but can you imagine Rubio on a debate stage with Hillary? Christie was nothing compared to what she would have done to him. The media always gives the GOP way too much credit, remember when Obama was making a mistake going down the GOP retreat because he was going to get eaten up by the policy wonks like Ryan. The fact that they let these people go on TV and spout their nonsense with no real pushback, or incompetent pushback. So when someone like an Obama or Clinton are refuting the nonsense and making sense they are shocked, shocked that they win the debate. Hillary on stage with no media filter is not the monster they portray, and in a one on one debate you cannot hide.
Shalimar
@enplaned: Hillary Clinton had high positives and low negatives as Secretary of State. She has high negatives now because of 2 things: Benghazi and the email scandal. Both of which are completely made up bullshit scandals with direct parallels with much worse behavior during the Bush administration that no one cares about. That is the tell that the people driving her negatives don’t care about her scandals either, they’re just tossing shit at her so some of it will stick with people like you.
Woodrowfan
@hovercraft: remember how Gore cleaned Bush’s clock during the first 2000 debate? Remember the press spin? Gore is mean! Gore is condescending! I’m not sure once Clinton did the same to Rubio or Walker that the press would not do the same “What a bitch!” Republicans can get away with weaker candidates because of the way the press operates.
patroclus
I don’t think Hillary is a particularly good campaigner – especially compared to Obama or Bill. She doesn’t give very inspiring speeches, she’s not particularly good at shmoozing or crafting presentations to certain audiences. She is, however, very disciplined and consistently on message. She’s better than Kerry, Gore and Dukakis, but that’s not saying all that much. But she is a top-notch candidate. Other than incumbent Presidents, she is the best candidate the Democrats have fielded since Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. As a former Secretary of State, Senator, FLOTUS and head of the Children’s Defense Fund, she has a wealth of experience and a lifetime of direct political involvement that dwarfs prior Democratic candidates. Even though she’s been out of office for 4 years, she has been able to project the aura of incumbency because of that experience. Everyone knows she already has the foreign policy chops and she’s such a policy wonk that she clearly has the domestic chops as well – unlike Obama and Bill, there will be far less of a learning curve with her than them as POTUS. She has been able to project both being a liberal and centrist at the same time – which is kind of amazing when you think about it. She is such a good candidate that she seems likely to win by far bigger margins than both Obama and Bill despite her weaknesses as a campaigner.
hovercraft
@enplaned:
Elections are a choice, Hillary has high negatives, yes, but she would be running against a person. Just as Bernie had low negatives, they would have been driven up by the ads run against him in the general, same goes for Rubio et al. Comparing where she is versus where they are now is apples to oranges. She’s been hit for decades, so her numbers are pretty baked in, there is almost nothing new to learn to make her look worse. But for the broader public, learning about a Rubio would drive up his negatives.
Miss Bianca
@enplaned: And a hale and hearty “fuck you” to you. HRC would have had this no matter who the Republicans had barfed up as their candidate. Take your concern trolling and shove it.
Saskexpat
@enplaned: One counter to your point about Clinton’s favorables/unfavorables is that her polling is actually very decent when she is in office. Not just good for her, but decent for any politician. The only time she has really bad unfavorables is when she is running a campaign.
I think a huge part of it is sexism, pure and simple, in that folks react negatively to a woman who openly seeks power in what is seen as a man’s role.
There was a mashup of questions Clinton had been asked through the years by media, and it was shocking. She was asked everything short of “Why do people think you are a conniving, power-hungry bitch?” Couple that with the power of right-wing tinfoil hat media, and it creates bad unfavorable.
I think any democratic female presidential candidate is going to face similar attitudes from voters and the media. A very reasonable argument could be made that Clinton is the ideal candidate for this situation. Put another way, name one female politician out there who can handle this kind of pressure and vilification with Clinton’s poise. I sure can’t.
schrodinger's cat
Mission accomplished. Thread derailed. Congratulations! enplaned.
ruemara
@enplaned: You’re a dick & your “analysis” is wrong.
patroclus
@hovercraft: Trump is running such a terrible campaign that he hasn’t even run any negative ads against Hillary as yet. If Bernie were the candidate and Trump neglected to run any negative ads against him, I think Bernie would similarly win by a landslide. We all just sort of assumed that Bernie was vulnerable to negative ads, but Trump is so incompetent that he may well have blown that opportunity even if we had picked Bernie as our nominee.
Bobby Thomson
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: DNC chair or White House chief of staff.
TS
@enplaned:
I know this thread is dead but if EVER there is someone on a web site making this statement – they love them some Donald Trump
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@schrodinger’s cat: Meh. Seems like enplaned is being rather effectively planarized, heh, in this thread. He’s not convincing anyone, even if he did, implausibly, give $5400 simoleons to Hillary’s campaign. After all, her “sky high negatives” have been underwater since June 2015.
Trump is a bully, a fraud, and is insane – he provides more proof every week. The Teabaggers picked him, and they deserve him. It will be delicious when Hillary crushes him in November.
Cheers,
Scott.
satby
@hovercraft:
Yeah, how about it? Seriously, the sewage that’s being spewed.
Miss Bianca
@celticdragonchick: No. No. NO.
Wall Street speeches are not a problem. the flap that is being MADE over them is the problem. This is a flap that serves several constituencies: the right-wing loves it that the left wing is all up in arms over this – it’s evidence that their smear campaign is working. They’re getting something for all their money, time and effort.
First of all, HRC was a senator from NEW YORK, for crying out loud. So, she SHOULDN”T be addressing Wall Street firms?
And if she is, once she’s out of office and they’re no longer part of her constiuency, she SHOULDN’T be getting paid?
If you want to get mad over anything with the “Wall Street speeches”, get mad over this fact: however much she’s getting paid to speak to Wall Street, it’s LESS than Donald Trump made. Hell, it’s less than Rudy Giuliani made.
The outrage to me is not that she’s getting paid to speak to Wall Street. It’s that, once again, a woman who is MORE qualified than any man she is up against is making less for doing the same job.
ENOUGH about the goddamn Wall Street speaking fees. It’s not often that I agree with anything that Fortune magazine says, but they’re right on with this one: it’s completely hypocritical concern trolling.
Miss Bianca
moderation hell – too many links, I guess. Help, please!
The Other Chuck
@geg6: That and she’s the rare breed of politician who’s better at doing her job than running for it. Obviously she’s gotten pretty good at even the latter, but it’s also clear she would prefer to actually be getting shit done, since it involves at least slightly less mollycoddling of insane egotistical assholes on a day-to-day basis.
WereBear
@catclub: Ooops! Sorry, mistyped.
The Other Chuck
@enplaned:
I don’t know if anyone else has just come out and said it, but you sir are a worthless fucking liar.
Feebog
Late to the party as usual, but Nonynony nailed it at #126. I originally thought Walker might be threat, but then I saw him on that road trip to England, a complete moron. Cruz is vile, it comes through on TV, and he would only be marginally better than Trump. Rubio is an empty suit in high heeled boots. Jeb! carried the Bush stink around him and a lot of people are wondering how he ever got elected in Florida. As far as Clinton’s fav/unfav’s are concerned, they have improved slowly and steadily since the convention, something that cannot be said of the Orange Cheeto. Look, Clinton was the best candidate of those who tossed their hat in the ring. Would this be a somewhat closer race if Trump was not the Republican candidate? Likely, but that does not mean she would be losing.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@enplaned: Nice concern trolling. The $5400 thing is totally unconvincing, though. Just a protip for the next time you decide to troll a Dem website. But your troll-fu is pretty good otherwise, having a core of inconvenient truth (which any good concern troll needs) at the heart that I want to address.
First, your bullshit: No, Cruz or Bush or any other GOP candidate would not be winning this election. They’d be getting slaughtered as well; maybe not to the extent that Donald “I said bomb my own house and I meant pronto, I hear there’s some Mexicans in there” Trump is, but they wouldn’t be winning. The GOP ran the worst slate of candidates I have ever seen in my life. Not a one electable to national office. They frankly should have run Pence, hell, he’s put up with Trump for two whole weeks without killing him or breaking down on national TV, but no, it’s was “Jeb’s turn”, so only the lunatics and JEB? turned out. The results of that were wholly predictable.
The nugget of truth: Dems also ran two pretty shit candidates this cycle. The less shitty one thankfully won; had Sanders won you could have just handed the keys of government over to the GOP and left the building. An actual Sanders candidacy would not have lasted one month.
That did not happen and the Dems will win the presidency. If we can do the impossible and nail down the Senate we might be able to do the only thing I want/need/expect Secretary Clinton to do, and that’s to nail down the Supreme Court. That’s a must do, can’t compromise mission; without the judiciary to keep the tea party barbarians from destroying the Republic, we have nothing and will accomplish nothing – and will lose a lot of ground that won’t be made up in my lifetime.
Why do I call Hillary a shit candidate? Not because she’s a bad employee, that’s for sure. Works hard. Makes decisions. Gets the job done. No, it’s not because of her merits. She’s a shitty candidate because for 24 years and counting, the right wing has treated her as Satanic Threat #1 and the vast majority of the general public, sadly, believes at least some of that bullshit. Not her fault, but her baggage to bear. Given another, non-existent choice, I’d have run someone else…but that wasn’t an option, because there was nobody else. So be grateful for Clinton and let’s hope we can reclaim the Presidency and Court this election.
celticdragonchick
@Miss Bianca:
Optics matter a lot…and the American people in general are not happy with Wall Street. It was staggeringly tone deaf on her part to give those paid speeches. They reinforce the whole “greedy rich bitch” character assassination meme the MSM has been building on her for 25 years.
We already know that the GOP will build nontroversies out of thin air and the MSM will gravely cover it as something serious and disturbing(!). Fer fuck’s sake…why hand them ammunition??
Also, as others pointed out, I did not know Governor Granholm was Canadian by birth.
Oh well…still would have loved to see her run…
randy khan
@patroclus:
By all accounts, Clinton is very good in retail politics settings – small groups, etc. The “listening tour” when she ran for Senate the first time was a big success, for instance. The big speeches are the issue (and her acceptance speech was meaningfully better than she used to be, so apparently she is learning something).
Tom Q
Has anyone considered that enplaned is a reincarnation of NR? The latter hasn’t been around since Hillary started skyrocketing in the polls, but his/her shtik was always moaning about how bad Hillary’s favorables were and how that was going to lead to a loss. That argument seems ridiculous in light of the significant poll leads, so a slight tweak leads to “she’s going to win but boy howdy if it were anyone else…”
Many of us never took Bernie Sanders’ better favorables vis a vis Hillary seriously, understanding that exposure in direct campaigning would have changed those numbers. Same with Kasich/Rubio (the most plausible “would have done better” candidates); Hillary’s camp would have see to it that their odious positions got a full airing — they wouldn’t have been able to run as Generic GOPer who’s not a loudmouth like Trump, which is all that accounts for their decent numbers today. The Obama coalition demographics would still be in play, and Hillary would be at worst highly competitive; more likely — given Obama’s approvals — leading, though not as dramatically as she is over Trump.
Miss Bianca
@celticdragonchick: FFS..if you haven’t figured out by now that just “breathing while being named Hillary Clinton” is going to be reason enough to set the attack dogs to attacking, then I don’t know what to tell you. So she should spend all her time worrying about how what she does is going to LOOK like, rather than what it actually accomplishes? By that rubric, she would never be leaving HER HOUSE. Which is, sadly, exactly what a certain proportion of the American people want, when it comes to strong and capable (read: intimidating) women. Why are you adding to that dynamic? Why are you giving it your approval?
Yeah, she gave Wall Street speeches. Then she donated the bulk of that money to charity. Nobody ever talks about that part, because oh… the point is that she made speeches to eevil Wall Street and.the “optics” are bad. Bad in whose eyes? Not me, and I’m poorer (and therefore, obviously, dumber) than dirt.
celticdragonchick
@Tom Q:
I dunno. Rubio is an idiot, granted…but any conventional Republican has between 43% to 45% as a base and Rubio would almost certainly carry Florida. Fe cryng out loud…Florida is in play right now and Hillary is up against the worst presidential candidate in American history (I feel pretty comfortable saying that at this point)
Rubio does have that ‘blank slate’ thing going for him where he is not particularly offensive and allows you to project any nice thing you like if you lean Republican or just want “change” (getting real fucking sick of that political meme BTW)
Also pretty sure Rubio would not be offending Hispanic Americans at record rates and would have a competent campaign in all of the battleground states. That is why I do think Rubio would have been difficult in this cycle. It would come down to winning the debates, where Rubio’s lack of experience would be a liability and Hillary could hammer him on live TV for missing hundreds of floor votes as well as his comment that: “I hate this job”.
Tom Q
@celticdragonchick: Rubio would certainly have presented better than Trump, which would have prevented the blowout margins we’re seeing today. But this is a guy Chris Christie destroyed inside ten minutes; why would we think he’d have stood up to a six-month major league presidential campaign?
Omnes Omnibus
@Tom Q: It also doesn’t fucking matter. Rudio is not the GOP nominee. Trump is. Speculation on how HRC would have performed against Rubio is as meaningful as speculation about how she would do against Kodos.
Uncle Cosmo
@enplaned: Barely-competent concern troll badly needs to fuck off & die.
celticdragonchick
@Miss Bianca:
For an election?
Yes. Elections are almost always about how people feel about a candidate and how a candidate looks to them.
Issues (which you and I and most of us here obsess about) do not matter that much to most voters. Most voters are not well informed, do not read political blogs and have poor memory retention of political events (which is why Ted Cruz and his government shut down did not end up hurting the GOP) They absorb generalities, which is why Hillary has such poor ratings as a candidate (25 years of SHE’S A CROOK!!!!!!!!) while also having such high ratings when she is actually on the job (because she actually does her job job pretty fucking well)
Politics is about optics. Never give the other side ammunition to use against you and particularly not if it actually contributes to an established meme or perception about you.
Remember Mitt Romney and his 47% comment? That may actually have won Obama his second term. The race was that close…and Romney, in one sentence, solidified the perception that he was a rich smirking asshole who doesn’t give a shit about anybody who makes less than 7 figures a year.
celticdragonchick
@Tom Q: The Robo Rubio thing was really devastating…but I see no reason to suspect that a couple months of debate prep would not have cured that. I think his major liability would still be a lack of any record (or votes!) to defend after all his time in the senate, which means you can make him look like a tax payer funded deadbeat who is part of the do nothing Washington problem. (Which is actually pretty true…)
Miss Bianca
@celticdragonchick: I hear you. Yes, an argument can be made that perceptions matter more than policies to the mass of voters. Slight difference, however, between HRC and Romney: Romeny actually *is* a rich smirking asshole who doesn’t give a shit about anybody who makes less than 7 figures a year. In his case, the “optics” of the 47% remark revealed who he really was.
In HRC’s case, the more people actually encounter her – and the more she’s actually, really, on the job – the more people realize that their perceptions may, in fact, be wrong.
But I’m not sure why I’m bothering to argue with you. After all, you’re actually trying to make the point that Rubio maybe, mighta, coulda, been a contender. Which is such patent horseshit that I have to end up questioning your judgement – hell, even you don’t believe it, because you end up making precisely the opposite argument, again because the “optics” reveal *who he actually is* – when it comes to your other arguments as well.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, that all depends, doesn’t it? If it’s Kodos the Executioner, there’s one set of issues to address; if it’s Kodos Johnson, it’s a different set
Jeffro
@?BillinGlendaleCA: good thing we don’t listen to our betters in the media then ;)
Jeffro
@?BillinGlendaleCA: agreed . Emplanned’s Analysis also failed to note that Clinton and especially her campaign team are much better than anyone give them credit for . And I think the effect of seeing the Democratic Justice league up there on the stage at the DNC really brought the party together
J R in WV
Would be a catastrophe if he won election to anything more important than dog catcher.
celticdragonchick
@Miss Bianca:
More of my despair at the quality (allegedly) of our electorate.
Dubya should not have won, but he did. Never underestimate the native ignorance of the American voter.
satby
@celticdragonchick: And then the ignorant voters elected Obama twice.
Yeah, there are low info voters who depend on “optics” (and what a bullshit word that is) to help them make decisions, but a good candidate, vision, and ground game gets the job done. And we have all that again.