Sorry, I was up late having fun of Twitter, went to a Caron gratitude breakfast this morning, coached a soccer game, and had a picnic with my son’s grandparents.
So, when I left off, Donald Trump was about here:
Trump apologizes for hitting on married women by threatening to attack a married woman for the infidelity of her husband. #classy
— Martin Longman (@BooMan23) October 8, 2016
I briefly saw Chuck Todd on my teevee (before I changed the channel to a less oppressive college football game) saying essentially that the Republican establishment has given up on the election and that Trump’s “blame Bill Clinton’s wife” apology wasn’t terribly effective.
Am I up to speed?
I’m amazed you were able to step away from all this. My Schadenfreude cup runeth over.
Well, it did keep me up until nearly four in the morning, but I have a life outside of politics (at least on the weekends).
Yes, me too. I pry myself away from the computer to spend time with my wife and son. Still, they went out for a bit and here I am.
On Friday nights I typically drive up to Vancouver, B.C. for a Sufi service. Yesterday I managed to get through a very busy day at work without looking at your site or any other. But when the last appointment ended and the last phone call returned, I was online. Never got in my car, never drove to Vancouver. At midnight, I managed to drag myself home and then was back online. Fell asleep with MSNBC my lullaby.
Heh, pretty much. All the Republicans disavow his words, yet continue to think electing him as President is just fine. The GOP “Victory Fund” has directed that all operations be “put on hold” for the time being on all mailing and fundraising. That doesn’t seem to bode well for the Donald. Oh, and Paul Ryan pretty much told him to stay the fuck away from Wisconsin.
I think I managed to get a big time Trump supporter so whipped up last night on our city newspaper’s Facebook political discussion page that they have been permanently blocked by the administrators.
The sun is shining here. The GOP is collapsing under its own weight before our very eyes. All in all, it’s a wonderful Saturday afternoon.
Hope your day is going “fine as frog hair”.
Any chance Trump has his “Checkers” moment? I doubt it. Say what you will about Nixon, he had a kind of genius. Evil genius for sure but he knew how to play the game. Trump is a spoiled brat idiot who knows one thing, which is how to draw attention to himself, which in turn plays the press. He’s been in the right at the right time, but his house of cards is collapsing now.
I find it fascinating to watch how the various rats are responding to this. Party leaders like McConnell and Ryan are creating distance but not renouncing. Ayote is running for her political life. Utah and Alaska Republicans too. A lot of them are screwed either way. It’s just a choice now of lesser of negative outcomes. Won’t say lesser of evils because that’s precisely what they are.
I love Harry Reid’s response. Still the boxer at heart. http://nvdems.com/news/reid-statement-on-continued-republican-support-of-donald-trump/
Suddenly, politics have gotten kinda fun again.
And it keeps getting better and better. Republican leadership, whether or not they have taken back endorsing him, are getting booed by Trump followers.
They are in a bind.
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One wonders who Trump is more likely to ‘go after’.
My guess is that Trump will eventually go after republicans. He will look at them as traitors. I would not be shocked if within a week or so he tells his followers NOT to vote for establishment republicans.
They are already booing, what’s next?
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Your fingertips, god’s ears, and all that.
My ultimate hope was that Trump would get shut out of the Republican party by the donor class and then run as an Independent in all 50 states.
If he were to tell all of his Trump’s Chumps to either sit at home or vote for someone/something else instead of Republicans, this could totally jumpstart my post-2016 Republican disintegration theory into reality.
2020 might look more and more like 1860, nevermind the refrain that whomever the Republicans put up in 2020 easily beats Clinton.
Glad you’re safe, warm and dry.
I have to say this.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
MY FUCKING SIDES ACHE FROM LAUGHING SCHADENFREUDE UP THE WAZOO.
Personally, I have this contented warm glow. The coming weeks should be fun but let’s not forget to keep working hard. Lots of down-ballot races all across the country. Without the Senate, we may not see Supreme Court appointments.
If Trump goes the full crash and burn it’s likely the republicans will react by MORE obstruction, not less. It’s human nature to dig in.
It’s weird, everyone on all sides seem locked in, like some steam punk kabuki play. Trump can’t get out, nor get away from his demons, so stays in to his final self destruction. The republican establishment looks on with horror, but is also locked in with no good choices, and their self build image collapses. Evangelicals are left with ….nothing.
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I haven’t been this glued to media and enthralled by a growing presidential shit-storm since The Saturday Night Massacre.
Hideous Hugh Hewitt has bailed now on Trump:
Hugh Hewitt @hughhewitt
For the benefit of the country, the party and his family, and for his own good, @realDonaldTrump should withdraw. More and worse oppo coming
and I am dying to see if Horrible Sean Hannity bails on the the Orange Predator the way he did when Cliven Bundy started to tell us all about “The Negro.”
Love your tweet, Martin.
Meanwhile, over at CNN.com: Ho. Lee. SHIT:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/08/politics/trump-on-howard-stern/index.html
Quote after disgusting quote from Trump — complete with audio files — starting with discussing his daughter’s body and agreeing with Stern she’s “a piece of ass” and going downhill from there.
I get the feeling the reporters who put this story together needed a long hot shower afterwards.
That was nauseating. What. A. Degenerate.
What’s also frightening is the insight it gives into Trump’s megalomania and total lack of judgment. Did he really think he could run for President with THIS out there? Sheer madness.
And yet he’ll still likely grab about 40% of the electorate.
Now starting to wonder if he hasn’t maybe screwed the pooch on it, to the point that not even all the loony 40% will stick with him.
Especially since I see no reason to doubt there won’t be lots more like this. I’d bet it’s already moving through the pipeline.
Right, but I’d argue that it’s almost a political law that Trump picked up at least a few voters in exchange for what he’s lost.
And of course, the refrain continues from your left and right, that Clinton is still the worst evil, or if nothing else, that BothSidesDoItTM.
That said, I hope Strongman Trump gets throat stomped in the electoral college and the popular vote. I hope the Republican party will be in effect prohibited from controlling the executive branch indefinitely, and that we can stock the USSC with left wing justices that will be up there for the next 30+ years.
And of course, 53 Senate seats and a friendlier House.
What I’m most interested in, is whether the TrueProgressivesTM who out-principle us LesserProgressivesTM, will organize to make 2018 a good midterm election for progressives.
I think everyone here has read, over and over and over that midterms typically suck because the candidates aren’t progressive enough…well, after Sanders did what he did, and after progressives have said what they said, are they going to get up and do something, or sit back, let the Democratic party do everything, and then complain that the Democratic party didn’t do enough while they sat at home complaining about it.
Sure, I haven’t been smearing shit on Clinton everywhere I went over the past year, but I would definitely love to see the 2018 midterms offer up real progressives. Is the Sanders coalition going to walk the walk? Or is it going to disappear until Jill Stein pops back up in 2020 to tell us how Clinton is actually worse than Ted Cruz, and that I should instead vote for her, or Mickey Mouse, or however I’m supposed to waste my vote.
in Trump’s pocket for whom this, finally, was the deciding factor to nudge him/her to crawl in there.
Failing.
Sorry.
Laws, including political ones, don’t apply to Trump. (Yes, you can take that multiple ways, all of which probably work.) So far anyway. Until they do (let it be so!).
No issues with the rest, though.
Misogynist non-voters.
Misogynist Johnson voters.
If you’re failing to imagine people voting for Trump because of what he said, just take a stroll outside of progressive blogs.
. . . voting for Trump because of what he said . . . “
Trying, but failing to imagine anyone doing so who wasn’t already planning to/wouldn’t have otherwise.
Gosh, thought I was pretty clear on that!
You can’t imagine that one single person, out of 150 million voters, might decide that Trump disrespects women enough that they’ll go ahead and vote for him instead of staying home to silently disrespect women?
That works out to, roughly, 6.6666666666666666666666666666667e-9% of voters who might hate women enough that they’ll go out and vote instead of staying home.
You’ve been crystal clear on your failure to imagine it. I clearly disagree with you on it.
exist (i.e., in theory).
I can’t imagine that person.
That was my point.
is feeling a lot better about things right about now than EITHER Melania OR Ivana:
Happened by CNN. They are set up in front of the debate venue. Lots of students standing around in the camera shot. The female Trump supporter shouts out some lame talking point and the students spontaneously in unison groan “Oh No”. Appears the talking points aren’t working with the young ones.
Well, we know that the “Nancy” Trump was hitting on was Nancy O’Dell, of Entertainment Tonight. She was newly married. After she rebuffed his “hard” advances, as he describes them himself, he tried to get revenge against her by trying to get her fired from her job, ostensibly for being visibly pregnant.
I’d say that’s new.
Oh, and there’s now all the other women whom Trump harassed are starting to stand up and say “yeah, he groped me too.” Then another and another will come forward. He’s been doing this for 50 years. There are a LOT of these women. There will be more and more of these stories right up till election.
She’s replied to this with a word salad of Palin proportions lambasting the media and talking about Vietnam vets get spit upon when they got home. She’s an utter wingnut. Tribalism is a powerful emotion.
I really want to believe this is being coordinated by Clinton’s team — is there any possible truth to that?
Some truth, I’m sure.
A lot of this stuff was hiding in plain sight. It needed to be seen in the correct frame, though. That part is on the Clinton campaign.
“liberal” [HAHAHAHAHA!!!!1!!!] media DELIBERATELY . . . DELIBERATELY, I tell ya! . . . withheld and sat on all this dirt until now, i.e., until Trump’s nominated and too late to dump him (though I wouldn’t be surprised by another attempt!) for any alternative with a non-zero chance. Or indeed any alternative at all.
This is a result of simple investigative reporting by the Washington Post. Trump has been screwing with Marty Baron, Editor in chief, attacking him publicly, attacking the Post, revoking their credentials to his rallies, etc, and basically pissing him off royally. This is not ever a good idea, and especially not if you’re someone living in as much of a glass house as Donald Trump, with a life that can’t bear much real scrutiny.
All Baron did was put some reporters on different Trump investigations and, since Trump has a skeleton in every closet it wasn’t that hard to uncover something. Many somethings in fact, as they have been reporting in recent weeks. But, this in particular was the clincher. And I’m sure Marty Baron has a slight happy enigmatic smile on his face, in the way that a Washington Post editor hasn’t had since the salad days of Ben Bradley during the Watergate era.
Ha ha ha! Drumpf must not be familiar with Greener’s Law:
Whether Greener, Twain or Brownson said this is a matter of debate. Here is a link discussing all three.
http://freakonomics.com/2011/05/12/ink-by-the-barrel/
Is it so coincidental that Billy Bush is a cousin of Poppy Bush and that Poppy and W would have a direct interest in the preservation of their Republican Parrty? And that Poppy Bush has substantial CIA and covert ops experience and a huge Rolodex?
If Billy suddenly remembered the interview after the disastrous first debate, it would not take that long to set up someone inside NBC who could release the tape to some convenient outlet for the Clinton campaign in the media.
Tasking old-fashioned reporting often comes with putting out questions for certain information and memory of events. Could have a general question from Farehthold to Billy Bush about Trump’s Apprentice years have triggered this cascade of events?
We know that Poppy is willing to deal with an enemy in order to sandbag an opponent and to do so with retired CIA officers (the 1980 October Surprise).
BTW, we are having a similar bump in Obama’s Syria policy that has suddenly shifted from a nod-nod-wink-wink collaboration with Syria and Russia against the rebels around Aleppo into a possibility of a major incident in which a US or Russian plane gets shot down and the possibility of severe and quick escalation exists. Who doesn’t want Obama to quickly end Daesh? It is likely domestic and somehow related to Ashton Carter.
Works on a couple of different levels, Shaun. The Colonel Kurtz command that needs to be terminated upstream in Laos. Who will play the Martin Sheen in this Francis Ford Coppola drama? Dennis Hopper can photograph the whole “Warrior poet” thing. Lance can go surfing on Robert Duvall’s orders, etc.
As the day has gone on the people in tight races Ayotte, Heck, and real never Trumpers like Sasse have said they wont be voting for him. McCain unendorsed. But the Trump rank and file are pissed, hurling boos at Paul Ryan and Heck today. By any measure Trump still has a lot of support to bolster his own instinct to attack the traitors.
If we had a normal political system I’d say GOP has decided to crack up and we’d see new parties but we don’t. And you thought debate #1 got the ratings.
Trump tweeted this, which suggests retribution against those who won’t endorse or have un-endorsed. And people are worried about Jill Stein supporters! I think the Republicans could easily have many Trump voters sabotaging Republican candidates who are “hypocrites.”
“Tremendous support (except for some Republican `leadership’). Thank you,” he wrote. He later tweeted, “So many self-righteous hypocrites. Watch their poll numbers – and elections – go down!”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/trump-debate-hypocrites-republicans-229408#ixzz4MdE11XlZ
Also
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/10/us/politics/republicans-trump.html?
I think it’s been clear for a while that when Trump loses, There Will Be Blood. Hopefully, just some scattered incidents, but he has been priming his followers for it for months. Now, there’s a chance the gun may be posted at establishment Republicans. I don’t wish violence on anyone, but if the Trumpistas must attack someone, well, you can see the chickens heading home.
They have been primed for years to look for traitors. Then primed for months by Trump.
All he needs to do it point them.
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If Trump were to lash out furiously at McCain, is there any chance that it would shave away enough votes for him to lose his AZ seat? RCP average has him at +16.
And then the same questions for Ryan, Rubio et al.
HELP them.
How do you do it? Have a pretty full life AND blog intelligently based upon, obviously a lot of reading and experience.
AND have time to join the neo-con conspiracy to discourage the left from nominating someone who can actually bring change to this country.
That alone is a lot of phone calls.
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