Mike Cernovich is just some dude on Twitter with 125k followers, so I don’t want to make more out of this than is warranted, but his email to RNC chairman Reince Priebus does at least demonstrate how disavowing Donald Trump isn’t some panacea that can assuredly help the Republicans save the House of Representatives.
To be clear, Cernovich is following his leader. Here are the Tweets Donald Trump sent out this morning.
Despite winning the second debate in a landslide (every poll), it is hard to do well when Paul Ryan and others give zero support!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016
Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016
Thinking about all this, called immediately to my mind some Bob Dylan lyrics from 1965.
Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dyingTemptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person crying
We can pity Paul Ryan if we’re so inclined. He does find himself in perhaps the most difficult position of any elected Republican because as Speaker of the House he needs to try to satisfy everyone and that’s not even remotely possible in his current situation. But it’s true, he is far from the only Republican crying.
Meanwhile, Trump and his minions bluff with scorn, issue suicide remarks from their hollow horn, and make clear that the Grand Old Party is busy dying.
The House Democrats have opened up a generic polling lead of seven points, but that lead grows against incumbents:
Fresh internal polls conducted by the DCCC — the House Democrats’ campaign arm — after the second presidential debate on Sunday night painted a grim picture for Republican lawmakers.
They show that Republicans — who started moving en masse against Trump after the revelations in the videotape — faced a backlash regardless of whether they continued to support Trump or not…
…While a generic ballot tests shows a Democrat up by 7 points over any Republican lawmaker, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s poll — conducted nationwide by the Global Strategy Group — shows the Democratic candidate has a 12-point edge if the Republican recently withdrew their support from Trump. If a Republican lawmaker continues to support Trump, the private polling shows they are at a similar 12-point deficit.
“Voters think not standing up to [Trump] and standing with him are the same thing,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Executive Director Kelly Ward. “Voters blame all Republicans for creating this monster.”
“The only thing limiting us is our own budget and where opportunities exist in the battle field,” Ward said.
And it’s not only internal Democratic polling that shows this. The NBC/WSJ polling shows it, too.
Trump has plummeted to an 11-point deficit in a four-way matchup, and Democrats lead on the question of which party should control Congress by a seven-point margin, the highest since 2013.
But here’s another wrinkle that further complicates that bleak picture for the GOP: Despite the fact that Trump is now losing by double digits, fully two-thirds of Republicans say that others in their party should stick with the nominee. Just nine percent say that downballot Republicans should renounce their support of Trump, and 14 percent say they should call on Trump to quit. That’s a very, very tough place for Republicans to be right now.
So, how many people will show up to vote for Trump on election day but knowing he will lose feel inspired to vote against downticket Republicans who criticized or repudiated him? This is different than leaving the ballot line blank or voting for a third party protest candidate, although both of those actions will hurt as well. Actually casting a vote for the Democrat out of spite despite opposing them on the merits creates a double-whammy effect that counts as a two net-vote loss.
There’s also the post-election scenario to consider, where Republican House members who do survive have to immediately begin planning to stave off primary challengers from disgruntled Trumpistas who blame them for delivering a stab in the back.
It’s an ugly, ugly, ugly set of problems for Republican lawmakers.
Some of this was completely foreseeable, but I doubt anyone thought in the first years of the Obama administration that Glenn Beck would be essentially endorsing Hillary Clinton by the end of it. But Beck found out what Dylan was talking about.
For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest inWhile some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless himWhile one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in
So, too, did Erick Erickson. And I’d like to extend my sincere good wishes for his health, the health of his wife. It is a terrifying thing for both parents to be seriously ill when they have young children.
As to the Republican infighting, how bad has it gotten?
Bad enough that now the Trump camp is blaming Paul Ryan for leaking the Access Hollywood tape through his advisor Dan Senor.
.@dansenor Writing about #BillyBush tapes, hearing your wife (ex NBC) got a hold of tapes and you pushed the story for your boss. Comment?
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) October 11, 2016
If you’re not amazed, you’re not paying attention.
So, does Strickland have any more of a chance now? All the more reason the DSCC was stupid to throw in the towel a month ago. Also, can anyone tell me how this helps Putin? I’m just wondering, given all the stupidity I see on Twitter, why Trump is a Putin plant. Wouldn’t Putin want to win? So he really wants HRC to win? Just asking. And Trump just sent out this:
http://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/785842546878578688
15 minutes ago. Real helpful!
I would imagine that delegitimizing western democracies, rather than picking winners, is the ultimate aim of Putin’s interference, much as it was with the Soviet interference that preceded him.
How is Clinton winning delegitimizing? Sure, Trump’s followers think that, somehow. But then how is what Putin doing any different from what the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson are doing? Yet I haven’t heard a peep about them lately.
It’s not who wins, so much, though an American President beholden financially to Russian bankers would be ever so wonderful for Putin; it’s the damage done to the U.S. government’s entire legitimacy in the eyes of a significant fraction of its citizens. The more the country is torn apart in fratricidal conflict, the less strength and attention it would have to turn to opposing Russian interests.
If I were in the Chinese Communist Party, I’d point to the nonsense that the US political process has become thanks largely in part to freedom of opinion as all the more reason to smugly continuing to censor political discussion for the “good of the people.” Seriously, I can’t imagine anyone looking at this from the outside going “yeah. We’ll just let people post up whatever they want.”
"….some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."
Alfred Pennyworth
The Dark Knight
Kasich is still working against Strickland — it’s personal, it’s his highest priority, Kasich is still a scorpion. So probably no. Ohio is still a state of the Shallow South and half the USPS trucks in the state are down with broken axles from carrying approximately nine pounds per day per capita of Portman mailers. Somebody ought to see if they can find out who’s paying for that and where they got the money — doubtless by skimming all of the sweet, sweet “Obamacare” money that is flowing through Kasich’s (otherwise inexplicable) Medicaid expansion.
The quandary for Republican congressional members that you write about is indeed one of their making. As another commenter here writes in his footer, when you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Having written that, I remain skeptical that when filling in their ballots, a lot of Trumpistas will actually vote anything other than (R). They’re going to think about it and then say to themselves, no, I can’t do it.
On the other hand, I would be thrilled to be wrong about this.
Thanks for bringing up Dylan’s tune. Some great imagery there in his lyrics. He recorded some remarkable music in the years right after he supposedly betrayed the folk-music movement.
some time semi-recently (maybe within last 5 years? certainly within last 10) referring to “those motherfuckers” who criticized him when he plugged in his guitar.
Tha’d be what, at least 40ish years prior to the time he said it?
Not that he’s holding a grudge or anything! See also “Positively 4th Street”:
And when you lie down with rabid dogs, you end up with a viral infection that eats your brain and makes you irrationally violent before you die in agony.
for La Peste.
Finally enabled all the HTML needed to embed tweets in comments, but it doesn’t show until after you post and refresh.
You might have affected something else. My attempt to post a new diary was stymied by a “you didn’t close a P tag” error when I had never used one.
Yes, along with several others.
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thanks, I will fix that now.
Something is wrong. I get error codes now. I have to change the ‘auto format’ button to ‘plain text’ for my posts to go up.
Otherwise I get HTML error codes.
.
.
I’m not having that problem. Can you describe it some more?
It’s fine now.
Between the ‘preview’ button, and the ‘post’ button is an optional button ….’auto format’. You can also move it to ‘plain text’ or ‘HTML Formatted’. I have never had to touch it, until this morning, when I had to change it to ‘plain text’.
But it’s fine now. I do wonder about hot links. I’ll try one later.
.
Probably caught it at a moment when I was fussing with allowed HTML.
It’s hard to figure out how to allow all the tags for embedding tweets and video without breaking anything.
At my age it’s hard to figure out to get out of bed without breaking anything.
Thanks, BTW!
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Tweet links must have some evil voodoo in their coding. Disqus can’t seem to handle them at all.
Tweets at last!
Can he drive his poll numbers down even farther?
Almost certainly yes.
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Trump and Trumpers (as opposed to Republicans and CDS maniacs) have no strategic sense and flawed sense tactics. Their tactical sense derives from the feeling that if you can shout someone down loud enough, they will always do what you want because you control them. They also have a sense of the future that extends all the way to next week.
So, yeah. They are vindictive enough, mean-minded enough and have so little vision of the future that they will punish Trump’s R detractors.
Hopefully enough will boycott Ayotte and Heck to swing those seats.
Also, they’ve been fed the “Silent Majority” propaganda for decades, and it’s very effective — it’s got them convinced that “most” “Americans” (or “real Americans”) agree with them.
Trump has this problem magnified both by his narcissism and his intellectual limitations (meaning, his inability to understand real demographic numbers or polls).
He’s starting to sound like a stage boss from a video game.
Every House and Senate Dem candidate should run an ad of video clips intercutting the GOP incumbent/candidate saying stuff like “..we need to bring back what’s right and good about our American values for our kids’ sakes!” with Trump’s “grab them by the pussy”, back to the same person saying “…and that’s why I stand with Donald Trump!”
That’s being done:
against Ryan!
LOL!
Right about now the Clinton team is probably having some meeting;
“Or, or, or…we can use this!’
The options are limitless.
Of course let us never forget she fainted, and is the worst candidate in history.
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I’ve said this before, Ill say it again. This is the best movie ever.
We have a left wing populist uprising, a right wing populist uprising, Russian hackers and a REAL Manchurian candidate, a “Face in the Crowd” style tape, an election that could tip the balance in a growing Middle East war, and the potential dissolution of one of America’s two parties.
Did I miss anything? “2016: The Reckoning” In theaters now through November 8th, rated R for adult language.
Sorry, the script is implausible. Please hire a script doctor and rewrite. Let’s do lunch once you’re done.
all i can say is:
“thanks, obama!”
Gotta say something short and sweet here:
Trump’s aim…if of course he is not a Dem/Centrist/Spook Brigade Trojan Horse, which boggles the mind but nevertheless has at least an outside possibility of truthfulness…Trump’s aim has always been twofold:
1-Take over the Republican Party as “his” party, win or lose in the 2016 election. (Win being the preferred option, I believe. Although maybe not…)
Or failing that:
2-Destroy much of the power of the Republican Party; take over that section of its constituency that leaves the party (plus the many undecideds/unaffiliateds that lean in his direction) and then start a third party in his own image.
This may just be a gigantic marketing scheme; it may also be the result of an unhinged, sociopathic mind and/or (shudder) some unholy combination of the two above possibilities, but there it is.
As I have been saying here since July 2015…whichever of the two above possibilities ensue, do not take this man or his possible “defeat” for granted. Not now and not after he is defeated…if or course that’s the outcome of this particular telenovela. He cannot be laughed offstage and…apparently…neither can he be effectively pushed offstage by massive media pressure. (The most single-voiced media opposition to a single U.S. citizen that I have ever seen in all of my years of observing this society.)
End of post; back to lurking.
AG
P.S. Why am I lurking now? (I’ve gotten some emails asking just that question.)
Because.
That’s why.
It happened on dKos just before the 2005 July massacre. I did a timeline search there that proved it. But…the trolls won.
So it goes.
It can happen anywhere.
Bet on it.
Money talks.
Louder than common sense, and much louder than common honesty.
Bet on that as well.
I’ve been called a troll here because I always regarded the choice between Sanders and Clinton as–believe it or not–an actual choice, involving weighing the candidates’ relative merits, instead of as a sort of declaration of religious affiliation, whereby one is then expected to denounce those who make a different choice.
Don’t feed the trolls.
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AG, nice oblique way to call us to get out to vote for Clinton and downticket Dems.
That truly is what is needed at this point, even if the results are less progressive that what mught have been possible this year.
I’ll trade that slightly less progressive ideological position for the destruction of the modern conservative movement and the current three-headed beast of a Republican Party. Not to mention the disempowerment of Mitch McConnell.
If the Democrats do succeed in taking the House and Senate, it would be a positive gesture to name Elizabeth Warren majority leader of the Senate and Jim Clyburn Speaker of the House, dontcha think?
Seen this?
DAMN!
No I hadn’t. I had heard of the drop in ABM ballots in NC and just assumed it to be bad news.
Hope it holds up.
As I have been saying here since July 2015…
“Now that my ridiculous prognostication has been proven wrong I’ll move the goalposts and declare victory.”
Too bad you weren’t willing to “bet on it”. I wouldn’t have minded the extra scratch.
So I have to ask, as the Republican Party self-destructs: is Clinton merely lucky, or does she have a hand in some of this (eg. the leaked tape)? I expect that if she does, we will not find out for some time, but I had to ask anyway.
And there likely are a silent minority of Republicans (if that’s still possible) who will leave the top line blank and vote the Democratic downticket because the Republican candidates uniformly snapped into line behind Trump. These are folks who cannot bring themselves to vote for Hillary. This might be as much as a hidden 10% that will not show up in polls because no one polls the downticket except generically.
Republican incumbents are going to be whipsawed by the three factions in the GOP. Would be nice is some of those wealthy folks Clinton lined up would kick in for some strategic Democratic challengers to do a last minute blitz. By strategic, I mean against Ryan, Joe Wilson, Issa, Jason Chaffetz, Louis Goehmert, Steve King, Grassley, Portman, Rubio, Shelby, McCain, Boozman, Isakson, Crapo, Moran, Lankford, Thune, Lee, just to slam through long shots in hope of a flip. There probably are some more House nutcases worth taking a shot at in the closing days. Start with local radio buys and frequentlly. Place around Beck show and other Republican shock jocks. Conservative sounding PAC for attribution. Uncooordinated with candidate campaigns or DNC. And vetted to be thoroughly legal. Make the remaining Republicans want to overturn the Citizens United ruling and get money out of politics. Put the fear of God into McConnell on the day after the election.
has a lovely, lilting ring to it.
(Since your quotes were all relevant and appropriate, but never got to my favorite lines.)
RE:
Also too, giddy, gobsmacked, thrilled, appalled, chortling, grimacing, overcome by schadenfreude, overcome by trepidation . . .
Jeez these assholes and their apparently fragile manhoods.
You have no idea. Cernovich is one of a bunch of misogynistic alt-righters who are regularly mocked at the feminist blog We Hunted The Mammoth. He first came to the attention of the blog through GamerGate. At that time, he earned the derisive nickname “JuiceBro” because of his advocacy of juice fasts and “high-energy juicing” (actual juice, not steroids) for health and fitness. As far as his involvement in the campaign, We Hunted The Mammoth documented JuiceBro’s claiming that he caused Hillary Clinton’s health problems by
magicinviting his Twitter followers to imagine her being sick. Yes, really.http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2016/09/24/trump-superfan-mike-cernovich-thinks-he-caused-hillarys
-recent-illness-with-a-tweet/
We Hunted The Mammoth documented two more alt-right misogynists who have been complaining about Paul Ryan’s distancing from Trump. The first was a Pick Up Artist who goes by the nom de net of “Heartiste.” He ranted about Ryan using all the insults could muster, including calling him a “cuck.”
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2016/10/08/alt-right-pickup-artist-heartiste-attacks-cuck-fot-paul
-ryan-for-condemning-trump/
The other was Theodore Beale, who writes fantasy and science fiction using the nom de plume of “Vox Day.” He also excoriated Ryan, writing “Never trust a moderate, a Churchian, or a cuckservative. Never. They will stab you in the back in order to virtue-signal every single time.” So, “JuiceBro” is in plenty of bad company.
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2016/10/08/theodore-vox-day-beale-defends-trumps-alpha-talk-about-
women/
Can’t help wondering if Himself demands that all the women around him wear those ridiculous F-me pumps.
consistent with everything else we know about him.
At one point, many months ago, I think I had commented that the best of all worlds would be one in which Trump remained upright until securing the nomination and then self-destructed shortly before the election. I could never have imagined that that would actually be the case.
I hope that there are a few videos/scandals waiting to drop – the Access Hollywood video appears to have done a lot more damage than I would have expected, but even that will be a little stale by election day.