Jesus, that's from July isn't it.
Keith Ellison really is great. It's almost weird to have him as a representative because each time there's one of those "Congress is considering [horrible thing] or needs to address [whatever issue] right now! Call your representative in Washington to let them know!" things it almost always ends up that Ellison is one of the only ones there already doing it, and I'm left with no actual reason to actually try pressuring anyone to do something. I guess I could call his office to say "Good job" or something, but I feel like it's pretty clear from his electoral results that a lot of people feel that way and I don't see how he could have missed that.
God Stephanopoulos and that woman (who is she?) are awful.
How is there not a "here's what Omarosa thinks of Trump's rise" story circulating on Facebook.
4: Oh god, that really is spot-on.
I don't want to skip ahead when the primaries are so wonderful, but I am really looking forward to the VP selections.
They have to pick women, right?
6
Trump - Fiorina?
Trump - Palin?
Trump - Megyn Kelly?
Trump - Melania Trump?
There is more than a bit of Putney Swope in the whole Trump thing.
Trump-Ivanka, they've already go the poster ready to go.
If Trump really wanted to fuck with everybody's heads, he could go on TV and publicly offer Hillary Clinton the VP slot.
I can't decide if it should be Trump/Tyson or Trump/Cosby. Which one will be better to nail down the African-American vote?
13: Now that's silly. Morgan Freeman would never run with Trump.
12 is serious! Tyson's already a Trump supporter, right? And Cosby might not like him, but all Trump has to do is promise to pardon him.
I'm loving the Trump/Scarborough rumors myself. I think that would be pretty amazing, and also a good reason for Liberal MSNBC to maybe find something else for that morning slot (not that I think they would, obviously, but...)
Is this the new politics thread?
Archdruid Report ...cause this made me laugh:
For that matter, Clinton's own attitude during the campaign so far reminds me of nothing so much as what happens when someone puts money into a defective vending machine. She's fed the thing her quarters and pushed the right button, but the desired product hasn't dropped to the bottom where she can get it. Now she's jabbing the button over and over again, and in due time she'll be pounding her fists on the thing and screaming at it because it won't give her what she's paid for. I honestly don't think she's ever, even for a moment, considered the possibility that the voting public isn't simply a passive, mechanical mass that will spit up a presidency for her if she just manipulates in in the right way. I doubt it has entered her darkest dream that the American people might just up and decide to cast their votes to further their own interests rather than hers.
Which may the secret source of the loathing:that Clinton, and well the rest, believe electorates are a technocratic, an engineering problem to be solved, according to fixed rules like physics or economics
Anyway, first commenter at Archdruid:
"I have noticed, oddly enough, that quite a few Sanders supporters I know, including myself, are more than willing to throw their lot in with Trump if Clinton gets the nod. He is bombastic and crude. He says ridiculous things that are more than a little racist. But my God, I'll take a bombastic narcissist who sees himself as an American Marius or Caesar over the corrupt classes of sneering hypocrites.
I'd prefer a Sanders, but if the choice is business as usual or Caesar, give me Caesar. Among the under 40 set I know in southwestern Ohio, the feeling seems remarkably common. If we cannot hope, we shall spite, and perhaps our pain can be felt by those who think themselves our betters."
I love this sentiment soooo much.
Trump / Snipes
Bernie / Elizabeth
I honestly don't think she's ever, even for a moment, considered the possibility that the voting public isn't simply a passive, mechanical mass that will spit up a presidency for her if she just manipulates in in the right way.
What a shitty thing to say about Hillary Clinton. She lost hard to Obama just 8 years ago. She understands that possibility and how it will hurt better than anyone else alive.
I always like Bob being Bob, but since his idea isn't only Bob's but appears to be the idea of the day (including from noted purveyor of bullshit Paul Campos), let me repeat myself from yesterday.
The notion that "there are tons of people who are so ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT that they will gladly vote for Trump or Sanders because they are the POPULISTS, but not for any mainstream candidate" is almost certainly wrong. There is no evidence at all that this statement is true. There is good evidence that it is not true.
Almost everyone who likes Sanders hates Trump (and would vote for a more liberal candidate over him). Almost everyone who likes Trump hates Sanders (i.e., would vote for a more conservative candidate over Bernie).
It's mean and wildly exaggerated, but her reaction to that loss was to do more or less exactly what she did going into 2008 only harder, which pretty clearly matches the analogy that the author there is making.
21 is right that it's a shitty thing to say, but the mental image of the various presidential candidates being frustrated in their different ways by a thieving vending machine is making my day.
Yeah, the vending machine thing is perfect and 21 is a non sequitur.
And also, not even in the top ten meanest things I've heard said about a politician this week. What on earth are you guys on about...
That analogy and the line of thinking that Clinton believes the presidency is hers if she pulls levers, shuts out the possibility that she is being substantially brave in the face of a risk she knows full well. Since she is bright and can remember back an entire eight years, that is extremely unlikely and a shitty thing to say about her.
Almost everyone who likes Trump hates Sanders (i.e., would vote for a more conservative candidate over Bernie).
Trump supporters would not vote for Hillary over Bernie. They would certainly vote for Rubio/Cruz over him. Bush, maybe not.
that she is being substantially brave in the face of a risk
Is brave really the appropriate word to describe Clinton's run for president?
I don't have personal knowledge of how she took the loss to Obama, but assuming that it sucked for her, then yes. Among other things, like hardworking and possibly out-of-touch, she is taking a risk she doesn't have to. That's brave, even if the motivations are mixed.
If she chose not to enter the race because of the risk of feeling awful in case she lost, we'd recognize that as the opposite of brave.
28: The two things are orthogonal to each other. You can believe running for the presidency mostly entails pulling a bunch of levers, and is also a risky thing which requires bravery. She could pull the levers wrong, again. Scary stuff!
Knowingly facing the risk of losing a lifelong dream and trying for it anyway? Brave.
33: Have you ever thought about it that way for a male candidate?
Yeah. But I'm the one who pities Olympians for what they're about to go through as soon as the Olympics are done.
I suppose I wouldn't think of it that way for someone I thought was too deluded to consider the possibility of losing. So I wouldn't think someone were brave if they knew they were anointed by God and could not fail. But I think Clinton isn't that deluded (which is part of why the idea that she thinks of voters as a vending machine is cruel).
CNN's pre-debate analysts just explained why a massive Trump victory on Super Tuesday would really be a victory more for Marco Rubio than anyone else. I was not convinced. I still think, naively, that a big win for Trump would be a win for Trump.
I'm sure they'll explain it the same way after Trump gets done owning Rubio tonight.
Now that Jeb's gone, Trump is gonna have to focus his ownage-laser elsewhere. I think it's gonna be on Rubio. Kasich seems to have figured out that if he plays nice he can maybe be VP.
In his opening bit Rubio already looked terrified - I mean, more than usual. He was stumbling over his memorized lines in a way he doesn't normally do until he's pushed on something. I'm guessing it might work the other way - Rubio will go after Trump. But that's liable to end in (hilarious) disaster so it could be awesome. Cruz is a lot less of a threat to either of them, so he's going to be the little brother of the debate trying to tag along.
...oh, and as I was typing that he started doing it. Go me?
Rubio just said that immigrants take jobs from hard-working Americans like his mother.
Uh...
39:
I believe Cruz's strategy is to let everyone else get cut down and then eek by Trump. I don't think Cruz is afraid of Trump. Rubio is, though.
To my surprise it sounds like the Republican party didn't try to cram as many people interested in booing Trump into the debate.
Rubio and Trump are fucking gutting each other right now.
It's sort of magnificent.
I think Trump is coming out ahead but purely on grounds that Rubio is sounding increasingly agitated and panicky sounding. His tendency to speak faster and in a higher voice whenever he's put under pressure is... not helpful.
Well, Rubio sounds scared but he's not stopping. Talking over Trump and just bringing up all the worst stuff about his past is a good idea, really -- but Trump is gonna hit back just as hard like he just did.
Attacking Trump in a way that actually brings him down is likely to be a suicide mission.
Now Cruz is getting into it too. Rubio is really not having a good debate at this point - the more pressure he's under the more likely he is to crack at some point.
Also that moderator is absolutely amazing. I think she should be a moderator for all the other debates on either side through to November.
I've been grumpy with Ellison as much as I've been happy with him, but it sure is true he doesn't miss many tricks.
There was a thing going around the other place that David Mamet is a Cruz supporter, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about both of them.
Attacking Trump for saying he'd make deals is a pretty good idea from Cruz.
Carson- Congress should overrule SCOTUS on the equal protection clause. I guess ConLaw isn't brain surgery either.
Trump wants people to.. have pre-existing conditions?
I have never heard anything as incoherent as Trump's explanation of the US healthcare system.
Get rid of the lines but keep preexisting conditions. It will be a beautiful thing.
And yet somehow Rubio is still losing this debate, which is amazing. He really needs a lot of coaching on how to speak slower when poked.
The most shocking thing about that exchange was that the moderator actually made the point that you can't cover preexisting conditions without a large risk pool. Didn't get an answer but pushed on them at least.
Oooh - Rubio had a trap planned with the repeating-things line. Trump didn't win that one after all.
I'm not convinced Rubio won anything either though.
I'm not partial to the use of obscenities (in the political context*) or British gutter slang, but this display puts one in mind of that richly expressive term "shower of cunts."
* Whoa, [blogger/commenter/etc.]! You called a presidential candidate a "sack of fucking shit"! Do you ride a Harley? May I touch your vintage Schott Perfecto?
Whoa, did Carson just propose that we just... eliminate health insurance entirely? That sounds horrific.
I missed part of that answer, but did Carson just say that $5000 a year per person is going to buy high end health insurance?
Oh, so he said $5000 a year is enough to pay full health expenses without insurance? I don't know which is stupider.
As far as I could tell, yes. It's not clear what exactly the policy he was proposing is but it's very clear that it's completely insane.
Ha! Ted Cruz badgers his way into getting to say something about Obamacare, which turns out to be attacking Trump. Sidelining Cruz entirely seems like it might be an intentional strategy at this point, actually.
A shockingly controversial position for a Republican debate- I won't let people die on the streets!
"We're gonna make great deals with doctors." Oh my God, I love it.
Gentlemen! Gentlemen! You can't fight here! This is the war roomdebate stage!
This is good- EPA, DOE, and "other agencies" spend $1T a year! Wow, again, moderators have numbers at hand to refute him.
WASTE FRAUD AND ABUSE! WASTE FRAUD AND ABUSE!
62:
Oh man, that's what I was just thinking.
66: I was laughing at that one.
Man, Cruz looked really uncomfortable about that SC line. That must have stung for him.
Bigly hunched o'er his mutton haunch
A hank in hand, with which to stanch
The bursting juices, running fat,
Doon hi' chin to chest, and, with that,
On winged hope his appetite to launch.
Flippanter has poeticized. All power to Flippanter!
As the race has gone on Trump has really mastered his "stand there while being attacked looking above it all" face. I think if nothing else that's why he's going to come off as winning this debate - everyone else looks awkward or uncomfortable. Cruz especially is starting to look like he's really soaking in the flop sweat.
74:
Like I've been saying, reality TV prepared him well for this.
This seems like a good point (from TPM):
This 'dying in the streets' debate is a good example of the way Republican elites managed to convince themselves that their middle class and working class supporters are laissez-faire free marketeers who want to cut their own Medicare. Cruz thinks he managed a huge coup by proving that he will let people "die in the streets" whereas Trump will not. Completely meaningless point in policy terms and one that makes him look stupid to basically everyone who's not employed by a right-wing think tank in Washington. (And because Trump is saying it, everybody gets that we're talking about white people.)
Kasich looks less crazy than Cruz and smarter than Rubio, but I know that he's pretty nuts too and a gold bug.
||
Does anyone remember whether Joan Jett's version of "Do You Wanna Touch Me?" got significant airplay in urban midwestern markets in the early '80s? I can clearly remember "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" being huge back then, but I'm not sure about DYWTM.
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Is Kasich really just coming out in favor of another Korean war? That sounds... good.
But also 78 is right: at least as far as affect goes he really would be their best bet for an anti-Trump (of what's on stage right now). I wonder if there's any way for the RNC to sell him to the base at this point, though.
The first Korean war didn't have enough nukes involved- let's fix that mistake!
Trump's point about not being the world's biggest military and trying to foot the whole bill is not a bad one.
I KNOW!
I'm kind of freaked out about how he's casually saying sane things while other people are proposing starting horrible wars and letting people die in the streets. At this point he sounds significantly less hawkish than Clinton does. Maybe I should think more seriously about voting for him in the general election?
His points about Libya and Iraq "go to the beach rather than do harm" is actually pretty good too.
I find myself agreeing so much in the debate with Trump that I wonder what is going on.
Yeah that's freaking me out. He really is ... good?
whether Joan Jett's version of "Do You Wanna Touch Me?" got significant airplay in urban midwestern markets in the early '80s?
It didn't.
86:
He's swinging very much to the middle.
Duh, he's got the nomination wrapped up- nothing he says can possibly shake his supporters- so he's pivoting to the general already.
"Would you buy a used war from this man? Vote for me and I'll start a new one!"
Trump just gave Cruz permission to speak. The alpha male games are amazing right now.
I follow Seth Stephens Davidowitz on Twitter, and he does some interesting things with google trends to predict primary outcomes and debate polls. The trends he's looking at say this was a bad night for Trump. We'll find out.
It's pretty clear what attack Trump is going to use to characterize Rubio: "choke artist". It's certainly as accurate as "low energy" was anyway.
My guess is that the debate might help Rubio, but the after-the-debate press will almost certain help him if only by being an easy way to turn it into mostly a two person race. I doubt anyone who found Trump appealing is going away after this debate finding him less appealing. Rubio seemed as anxious and sweaty as usual, anyway. Cruz is absolutely going to get hurt by this one though - I think he might even have a chance of losing Texas to Trump (if very narrowly).
I missed the debate but saw the Trump post-debate interview. Trump has the "I would bully them but it's beneath me" attitude down perfect. The best was when he implied Rubio had a pathological sweating condition. He also said that Carson was treated unfairly by the moderators. Is this a play to pick up Carson's voters?
I'm listening to the CNN post spin, where they're all saying Trump totally failed and Rubio did fantastic. Didn't see the debate, but feels like complete RNC spin.
Googling "Trump Polish workers" as Rubio implored now yields a bunch of articles about...Rubio imploring viewers to google "Trump Polish workers".
92:
The punditocracy is eating its own tail at this point.
96: Given the CNN "analysis" vs polls of the Dem debates, I can only assume trump won handily.
62: talkingpointsmemo.com/election2012/tea-party-debate-audience-cheers-idea-of-letting-sick-man-without-insurance-die-video.
The audience in the last five seconds ! Republicans have gone soft.
96.2: They've pretty much said that in every debate except for the hilarious meltdown one. It has gotten sort of hilarious at this point.
Also Trump defends Carson a lot in the race. It's not clear to me if he's doing that to angle for Carson's supporters, or because he figures that Carson really is well liked and it only makes him look good to defend him against other people, and so on. My guess is that his 'defenses' tend to involve defending Carson against other people who are also on stage, so it's a fun way to attack his opponents while seeming magnanimous at the same time.
What's his track record so far?
Surprisingly good for the primaries, haven't seen any debate stuff.
101: It's not like Carson is every trying; he's running in a different race. So why not? It's positive for all the reasons you mentioned, with no strategic negatives.
76: What did he say that sounded reasonable? (I didn't watch because ... I just can't watch it anymore).
So, I don't know about the rest of youse, but I've decided I no longer give a flying f**k about the contest between Hillary and Bernie. As a last gasp at sanity, and at basic human decency, the Democratic primary is now little more than a diversion.
Trump is going to win this thing. I mean, if he can win the GOP nomination (he can; he will), he can win the general, and he probably will. Embrace the abyss, people.
So on random Trump-y topics, my wife was reading this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/25/melania-trump-defends-donald-by-saying-she-immigrated-legally-but-for-models-like-her-its-easier/ and noticed the following:
Melania Trump says: ""I follow the law," Trump said. "I follow a law the way it's supposed to be. I never thought to stay here without papers. I had visa. I travel every few months back to the country, to Slovenia, to stamp the visa. I came back. I applied for the green card. I applied for the citizenship later on after many years of green card. So I went by system. I went by the law, and you should do that."
I can't for the life of me think of an employment visa category that requires returning to one's home country every few months for a visa stamp, and yet also allows for lawful employment as a model. Sounds an awful lot to me like a tourist visa.
Which, you know, would mean she had been working illegally in the US before she got her green card.
At this stage, Trump is hands-down the least bad non-Democratic candidate. I never thought I'd write that sentence, but here we are. So I see no reason at all not to root for him.
105 got a laugh out of me. I'm in an unimportant primary state and am on the "fuck it" train. I just don't have the give a damn this time around. I don't know how you all still do it. My contribution to the cause will be safeguarding Uncle Joe Biden tomorrow by assisting with some traffic control tomorrow while he visits a local cancer research center. (not joking, three hours overtime for almost no work and still plenty of time to do the weekly Costco run before it's time to get my wife drunk)
Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow. How sober do you expect the night before when I'm on my days off? Christ, it's only the VP in a lame duck year. Back off already.
I like that drunkeness is scheduled chez swift. Very law-and-orderly.
Hadn't heard of Omarosa before, but she'd obviously be the ideal candidate if Bernie gets good advice.
TPM and NRO sure do have wildly different takes on the debate.
Embrace the abyss, people.
At this point I'm guessing that (1) Trump will win the general, (2) he won't be anywhere near as bad in practice as people expect (think first Bush, not second), and (3) The left will have a 4 year long fit at all the insanely stupid things he says despite (2). That faction of the right (namely all of it) that has as it's primary motivation pissing off liberals is going to be in hog heaven the whole time, but will be severely disappointed at his actual policies.
He did distinguish himself in this debate by critiquing Clinton's foreign policy from a dovish side. It was a very strange moment, but he's got enough big-loud-swagger that he actually did sound like he was saying the US ought to be strong and bold and rely more upon diplomatic negotiations than military actions directed at regime changes. So at least as far as that goes... maybe? He's got a lot of narcissism and I'm-a-tough-guy stuff built into his sense of self, but for once it looks like it's all built around being good at negotiating things as opposed to being good at blowing things up so that could be a (bizarre) change for US foreign policy.
Also, re:112, TPM sounds about right to me in their analysis. Cruz couldn't find a purchase no matter how hard he tried, and Rubio actually did have some good lines but he delivered them like he was a precocious third grader smarting off to an indulgent older relative (complete with looking away and flashing "look I did it!" grins after he landed a zinger).
My prediction: Trump will lose to Clinton. This will convince the Republicans that they lost because they didn't nominate a real conservative. There will be a recession in 2019 that swings the next election to Ted Cruz. In 2020, the Republicans destroy everything. In 2024, honest-to-God socialists sweep to power, which is shortly followed by a military coup. After a bloody civil war, Chinese and Indian peacekeepers under the banner of the UN restore order. Everyone comes to the conclusion that the US was a fine idea at the time, but it's now a brilliant mistake.
Is the NRO paving the way for a Clinton endorsement?
115. And Elvis Costello will be proclaimed King of America.
115: I think Walt may have been bitten by one of our other commenters.
The recession's going to be sooner than 2019, by the way; I would say early 2017 if I had to guess (or maybe late 2016). Clinton will get the nomination and beat Trump handily this year; Democrats will also take a narrow Senate majority.
The "not a real conservative" thing will happen but I don't think Cruz will benefit from it - instead it will be Rick Scott running in 2020. The 2017 recession will allow Republicans to take back the Senate in 2018 (there are a lot more Democrats than Republicans up for re-election that year - the reverse of 2016).
I also think there is a good chance that Clinton doesn't run for re-election against Scott (just as Truman and LBJ didn't), after two years of being solidly blocked by a Republican Senate majority. Instead it will be her VP, who will be a white man in his early or mid fifties and politically to her left.
2020 will be a foreign policy election, in particular around the South China Sea. It will look good for the Democrat incumbent, because of the economic recovery then under way, but Clinton's VP won't have much foreign policy credibility (because Clinton will be all over that herself).
116 is scary plausible. Between this and the Supreme Court thing, I'm getting increasingly apocalyptic. I actually don't see how the country survives the combination of ideological parties, our ridiculous constitutional system, and primary elections. Something has to give -- our institutions aren't set up to handle the political stress being placed on them. And the rest of the world is particularly fucked. We were very lucky in retrospect after WWII that we had a system under which for about 50 years everyone agreed to ignore the gross infirmities of our constitution and govern as if we had a modern state, but now that consensus is broken and we're all fucked. We saw something loosely analagous with state government in California and it spent about 25 years in the abyss, only recently sort-of pulled out by a strong Governor and single party rule. And California didn't have nuclear weapons or the capacity to blow up the world economy or world peace.
I don't think Trump will win (which is good!)or that his candidacy will in any way be good for the Republicans (again, like in California, his candidacy is the Prop 187 moment that will kill the party among Latinos forever and thus seal its fate) but I do think we're in for at least another 10 years of being in more or less a constitutional crisis, and God only knows how it sorts itself out.
I meant Walt's 115. 119 is also plausible but I think understates (from the perspective of someone lucky enough to be in a parliamentary democracy) just how much strain our system is under. Think 1910 in Britain or the end of the French Fourth Republic (not Weimar because I don't actually think we'll become undemocratic, just ungovernable).
It was clear you meant 115, but I like thinking that the NRO endorsing Clinton would be the apocalypse.
It's funny, I agree with almost everything that RT has been saying about this election except for his, "the system is horribly broken and everything is about to fall apart" moments.
I don't think our constitutional system is looking great right now, but I also don't think 115 or 119 is very likely.
120. I don't think it's a purely American thing. Britain and Spain are holding together by the skin of their teeth; France is about to vote majority Fascist; Hungary and Poland have apparently already done so, and Finland may be next. The only reason Italy hasn't gone down the toilet recently is because it was already there. Which leaves Germany, Japan and Canada as large first world countries not in existential crisis: how long do you give them?
124, Having all the "checks and balances" that generally prevent anybody elected to federal office (or even state office) from doing anything is a purely American thing. Although I guess in countries where the coalition that wins the election is able to start governing after the election, there are other problems based on how nothing that any voters want to do is acceptable to the finance establishment.
I mean, an actual apocalypse is unlikely. But the country has barely had coherent government since 2011 and high-stakes constitutional confrontation is likely to only get worse. And that's the better case scenario. The worse case scenario is President Cruz/Trump/Rubio and Republicans in control of all three houses blowing up everything.
Incidentally, I posted this in another thread, but I am amused by Kevin Drum's report that the Republican's approach to Trump might have been both complacent and incompetent (quoting Huffington Post)
Multiple Republican campaign sources and operatives have confided that none of the remaining candidates for president have completed a major anti-Trump opposition research effort....Presented with that void, outside conservative groups have frantically moved to cobble something together
[Also, I suppose this from Yglesias as well.
When Mitt Romney raised the issue of why Donald Trump hasn't released his income tax returns earlier this week, it seemed like not much more than light trolling grounded in historical irony. . . . [but] . . . The actual exchange didn't seem all that dramatic or necessarily damaging, but the unsatisfying nature of the answer essentially guarantees that the question will keep being asked as long as Trump is a candidate. Romney managed to shift the course of the campaign more than many of the candidates who've actually been in the race.]
it will be Rick Scott running
No way is this face getting elected president.
Makes a good spokesman for teeth whiteners.
Hard to get those blood stains off but somehow they did.
Re: Trump's taxes - does anyone except the pundits care? If it's revealed that he's never paid a dime in taxes in his life, I don't think that anyone planning to vote for him would change their mind.
Would embarrassing donations be listed? No one cares if he's not generous but maybe he gave to some unexpected beneficiaries.
130 -- I assume that to produce a low tax burden, they show him as having little income and enormous losses. The threat isn't that he looks like a tax cheat, but like a shitty businessman.
Even elephants are sick of being used as the symbol of the Republican party.
I think this is a John the Baptist election for which ever side loses. If Trump loses the repubs come back with an actual fascist in 2020, if Hillary loses the Dems run an actual socialist in 2020.
Do presidential candidates' financial disclosures include the tax records of businesses they own? I would have guesses it was just for them as individuals.
Jesus fuck - Christie endorses Trump.
I don't think there's any requirement that candidates release tax records at all. There are financial disclosure forms, but they don't require the same kind of disclosures as tax filings do. I'd be stunned if Trump's wealth isn't structured so that he files many different corporate returns and that his personal return shows him with little income, so he'll either look broke or like a shitty businessman if he releases his filings (and if someone is competent to read, summarize, and use them effectively).
Chris Christie just endorsed Trump.
I think you mean Future Attorney General Christie. Or he just hates the fuck out of Marco Rubio.
Future Atlantic City development consultant, presumably.
120:
Sounds like you're calling for a massive peaceful overhaul of our political system. A political revolution, if you will.
128 Looks like one of the Gentlemen in Hush.
139: I don't fully understand voters' desire to "back a winner", but for endorsements it definitely makes sense. Trump has practically locked up the nomination.... why wouldn't Christie endorse him?
138
Makes some sense. Christie has been a conservative persona non grata since he hugged Obama. He's been frozen out from the party's mainstream, so he might as well hitch his wagon to Trump. Also, he's a vindictive SOB. This is perfect timing to piss over any positive press Rubio might have gotten from last night's debate.
I'm looking forward to Christie embracing his true calling as a bouncer at Trump's campaign events.
https://twitter.com/JamilSmith/status/703277466694131712
There was some faint hope, never that good, that a lot of the GOP would stay very tepid for him through and post-nomination.
Good article from an Italian on the Berlusconi analogy.
Like Trump, Berlusconi consistently seemed too absurd to be true. And yet he was. He won elections again, and again, and again, thriving off any and all attention. People didn't take him or what he said seriously. Then one day we woke up to find our government overrun by criminals, our economy destroyed, and our cultural mores perverted to the extent that the objectification of women was commonplace. There was no more laughing left to do.
On the other hand, it might make a little difference that you need to get wider support of you personally to be US President than to be PM of Italy - Berlusconi's own party never got more than 28% of Parliament, the rest was coalition stuff I know nothing about.
What exactly was it that brought Berlusconi down? Was it the underage prostitute or the default crisis? Which one of these do we have to look forward to?
Which leaves Germany, Japan and Canada as large first world countries not in existential crisis: how long do you give them?
Koizumi and Abe are radical assholes enough. Privatized postal savings and infrastructure, changed the interpretation so that Japan can go to combat in defense of an ally. In a lot of ways the political structure and social institutions have changed as to be unrecognizable from twenty years ago.
And remember, the LDP lost its majority in 2009, first real time since mid-50s. Maybe Japan was just ahead of the curve.
Archdruid in article linked below called out "Caesarism." Before they become dictators, Caesars are entrepreneurial organizers of disruptive factions (not movements.)
Marx's "Bonapartism" theoretically needs the military, but maybe the press has taken that authoritative incorruptible role.
124 of course misses a lot of countries: Turkey and a few in South America. ME of course.
I am pretty hesitant to posit global political and social trends. It looks crazy in multiple places too often but then settles out.
Real meta-historicists watch...the rate of profit.
146: I flat out don't believe that whether or not people took Berlusconi seriously or take Trump seriously did anything to help them win. Who says "Berlusconi is a big joke. I'm not going to vote"? Nobody. A strict no-Berlusconi-jokes policy would have still left Berlusconi as PM. In fact, it might have helped him, since an image as a buffoon probably cost him votes. God is not punishing us for our flippancy.
I'm not so sure about Germany. There was a wave of sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year's Eve, supposedly by North Africans, which soured the mood towards refugees and immigrants. It wouldn't take much to fuel the rise of the far right.
God is not punishing us for our flippancy
You misunderstand -- He punishes us for our complacency.
152 Didn't at least some of that turn out to be bogus?
153: So, when people say that the problem was we didn't take him seriously, they aren't saying that it was wrong to make jokes. What was wrong was assuming that he posed no real danger and not doing everything to destroy him before he became too strong to be destroyed easily.
(He in these sentence can refer to Trump or Berlusconi or .....)
154: Did it? It sure sounded like the kind of thing that turns out to be bogus, but every once in a while I look into news stories, and I haven't seen anyone reporting that it was bogus. I've been relying on BBC News and the Guardian, though. I don't know how good their coverage of Germany would be.
155: But what could they have done, short of assassinating Berlusconi? Painting a politician as a buffoon is usually a good strategy for making them unelectable. Look at what happened to Dan Quayle, or Sarah Palin.
156.2: I have absolutely no idea in the case of Berlusconi.
156.1 I think I saw a story about one particular incident which turned out to be fabricated and lazily thought that applied across the board but no, a bunch of bad shit really did happen.
Berlusconi also owned almost all the news media in the country. Our media could at least theoretically stop writing about Trump 24/7 if they wanted to.
This is somewhat concerning: http://mobile.philly.com/beta?wss=/philly/blogs/attytood&id=369343491
I didn't expect HRC to do much about climate change, but I'm a little dismayed that she seems to be about as bad as Cheney on the conflict of interest.
RE Cologne, I read just the other day that, of a few dozen identified suspects, 4 were refugees. But the refugee/immigrant* distinction is irrelevant to the sort of xenophobia that could be stirred up.
*I don't actually know if the non-refugees were immigrants, but I haven't seen anything suggesting that the original identification of the suspects as being of African/ME extraction was incorrect. Again, first generation German son of immigrants is all the same to xenophobes.
They were foreigners, mostly Algerians. Germany has problems deporting north Africans with no valid visa because the Algerian and Tunisian embassies are basically nonresponsive.
The volume of migrants is really pretty high. It's not a simple problem, not everybody who is concerned is a xenophobe.
And remember, the LDP lost its majority in 2009, first real time since mid-50s. Maybe Japan was just ahead of the curve.
That was only a temporary blip. Hatoyama was so incompetent that the DPJ lost all credibility, and subsequently Kan caught so much flack for his supposed mismanagement of the post-tsunami, post-Fukushima situation (actually I'm bloody glad he was in power then, as he is one of the vanishingly small number of relatively competent and honest Japanese politicians) that the opposition now has no chance of kicking out the LDP again in the foreseeable future, however many mistakes Abe may make. (Abe and the LDP have 37% or so support at the moment, the DPJ less than 10%.) Japan has gone back to its normal status as a de facto one-party state.
It's not a simple problem, not everybody who is concerned is a xenophobe.
I didn't mean to suggest they were; I was speaking in the context of Germany lurching to the right in the manner of Hungary, which would be a xenophobe-powered lurch.
Germany's done the hard rightward lurch before and it didn't work out well for them. I suspect that experience has left behind a cultural memory which would effectively push back against it happening again.
Once all the Germans were warlike and mean. But that couldn't happen again. We taught them a lesson in 1918, and they've hardly bothered us since then.
A succinct chart that illustrates what I believe underlies a lot of what is driving current electoral politics in the US (and political in many other parts of the world as well).
Enhanced by demographics.
165: one would think that about Austria, too, but the FPÖ has been leading the national polls since we got here, and took a decisive lead over the summer: https://neuwal.com/wahlumfragen/index.php?cid=1#focus
Meanwhile in Germany the AfD is now the 3rd strongest party in national polling, even while one of its leaders suggests that armed guards shoot people trying to cross the border.
Does anything think that about Austria? Austria has always have the reputation of loving its former Nazis.
Captain von Trapp and his family singers?
They ended up as naturalized Vermonters, just like Bernie Sanders.
They ran a ski resort didn't they? Their offspring still may for all I know. I wonder how they voted.
Cross country skiing, and they did what every good Eastern European immigrant does, started a brewery.
I'll take the Austrian over the American.
174: IIRC the last of them died just a few years ago.
Kevin Drum makes the case against liberals siding with Trump when he happens to take on Republicans from the left.
No liberal wants to see a conservative in the Oval Office. Not Rubio, not any of the others. But there's a difference between accepting an ordinary member of the opposition party and accepting a fatuous clown like Donald Trump. The former will enact lots of policies we hate, but that's democracy for you. We've been through it before and we'll go through it again. The latter is a mockery of everything democracy stands for.
Even if you assume that Marco Rubio might be more technically destructive of liberal policies than Trump--an unlikely but admittedly possible outcome--Trump would be more destructive of the very core of liberalism. If we're willing to accept bigotry and belligerence and just plain inanity--along with the small but genuine chance of a something truly catastrophic taking place on his watch--just for the sake of maybe getting a slightly better outcome on a few liberal policies, we really ought to just hang it up.
And is also interested to see McConnell talking about the possibility of opposing Trump in the general election.
Mitch McConnell is the ultimate transactional politician. He never bothers with fancy justifications for what he wants to do; he just tells reporters that his goal is stop x or push y because it's what he wants, and that's that. It's almost refreshing in a way.
So if he's seriously suggesting that Republicans in significant numbers might break with Trump and hand the election to Hillary Clinton, he's probably serious. He doesn't play 11-dimensional chess. I've been frankly dubious about all the promises I've heard from conservatives about abandoning Trump even if he wins the nomination, and I still am. I think most of them will eventually invent some reason to "reluctantly" pull the lever for him thanks to their existential horror of a Hillary Clinton presidency. But who knows? If McConnell is up for it, maybe it's a more serious possibility than I think.
I'm confused how he can say "that's democracy for you" if a monster like Cruz is elected, but if the same electorate picks Ttump it's not democracy? And it's easy for him to say that hard right policies that don't affect him, where Trump at least is something of an unknown (lying? Doesn't care? Doesn't understand?), shouldn't be an important factor about which evil is lesser.
Overall Drum's been getting very Slatey in the last 6 months or so. A lot of Both Sides Do It, and odd contrarianism (look, Flint's water is pretty much fine now!)
Drum has always been very establishment. I have a hard time holding it against him for some reason. These are tough times for the establishment. Even though I like Mr Drum I am pretty much beside myself with joy at the unhappiness of the establishment. In particular I hate the Republican side of that establishment much more than I love liberalism. I'm dutiful enough that I'll be voting for HRC in the general, but I'll be rooting for Trump in my heart. He is the president America deserves.
In related new I just ordered a Cthulu for President t-shirt. It'll make a nice souvenir of my favorite election season ever.
The president America deserves. Just not the one it needs right now.
Drum has always had a "There are rules, this isn't Nam" streak, where he'll criticize his side if he thinks they're not playing fair.
The thing about Trump is that he really could be the harbinger of fascism. I don't think he is, exactly, but it's not as if the signs aren't there. Imagine he got elected President, and got into a huge public fight with McConnell over his policies. If Trump got on TV and said "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome Senate Majority Leader," and McConnell was found dead in a ditch a week later, it wouldn't actually be a completely startling turn of events. I can't blame Drum for taking the possibility seriously.
182:
I actually couldn't sleep for two hours after reading this. I guess that's why I don't usually Facebook before bed.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/trump-weaken-libel-laws-amid-feuds-reporters-37239118
The latter is a mockery of everything democracy stands for.
Uh no, the latter is the reason why we try to limit democracy in the first place, and leave government to wealthy entrenched interests instead of entitled disaffected losers who feel they have little to lose.
I'm with Walt in 182. Crazy dictators are funny until they're not.
Only way to win is to be the crazy dictator yourself.
The most likely result if Trump is nominated is Trump loses horribly in a general election. The second most likely is that he wins and is a buffoonish, more ineffective than not standard Republican, which would be bad enough. The third most likely is that he is elected and we have insane weird dictator times.
I dunno if I agree with Drum that Trump is worse than the others, but possibility #3 is terrifying even if very unlikely. And somehow electing (even nominating) Trump is more embarrassing for America even than electing George W. Bush. The latter shows a willingness to elect an evil moron but a somewhat world-standard conservative evil moron. The former is just humiliating, a demonstration of being both deeply and proudly stupid and reckless, something an 8th-rate third world country might do.
Those walls are gonna be just as good at keeping people in as keeping them out.
Well, Drum is from the state where the Austrian body-builder was elected governor and laid waste to the place from end-to-end. Dogs ran wild and such. Of course he is terrified of media figures.
177
Someone that owns the family name is still aggressive about protecting their trademark, since they sent their lawyers after a Seattle bar named Von Trapp and made them change their name.
Even if you assume that Marco Rubio might be more technically destructive of liberal policies than Trump--an unlikely but admittedly possible outcome--Trump would be more destructive of the very core of liberalism.
It seems to me that this is the critical bit, but what Drum means isn't liberalism in the sense of a basic center-left democratic welfare state.* He means it in the exact sense that the link up there means it: the polite "let's try to improve things but we should absolutely stay civil at all times and not be too rash" establishment/neoliberal/technocrat/whateveryoulike sense of liberal. Trump would destroy that in some ways, yes, but mainly by virtue of wrecking the polite fiction that very privileged people have that everyone else is just overstating things, or being silly partisans, or whatever. The trouble isn't that Trump would destroy our system, though I can't imagine he'd improve it. The trouble is that he would absolutely and utterly eradicate "both sides do it we should come together in a sensible bipartisan way and do the things that, really, all serious people know needs to be done" as a thing (for, like a few years until the wealth that stands behind it now would reassert itself - I'm not Pollyanna here.
*He may or may not see the difference. If he does he definitely doesn't want it to be too commonly known though.
That passage quoted in 178 might be the dumbest thing Drum has ever written. How has every policy that the Republicans have ever promoted, including those promoted by Rubio, not been a total mockery of democracy. Calling it "politics" when you say shitty things with a straight face, but "mockery" when you actually acknowledge the joke is part of the problem. That encourages people to say shitty things and pretend they aren't shitty.
How infuriating.
I mean, as much as he wants (desperately) to pretend otherwise the list of things he thinks Trump might do looks an awful lot like a list of things Rubio would actually do. The bolded bits at least seem to me to describe policies and principles that Rubio, unlike Trump, has directly and very explicitly said he believes in:
Trump would be a uniquely dangerous president. He's a serial liar. He's a demagogue. He's a racist and a xenophobe. He appeals to our worst natures. He'd blithely enact ruinous policies simply because his vanity makes him immune to advice and policy analysis.* He'd appoint folks who make Michael Brown look like Jeff Bezos. He would deliberately alienate foreign countries for no good reason. He'd waste money on pet projects like border walls and huge military buildups that would likely have no appreciable effect. And while that volatile personality of his probably wouldn't cause him to nuke Denmark, you never know, do you?
*Frankly this one also sounds like "But Trump wouldn't read my columns and treat me like I'm important and clever!"
(Not entirely unlike Trump, I mean, but as far as direct policies and principles Rubio has been way more direct about that. And he's definitely gone into more detail about how he'd do them too.)
190: Sure, if you completely make stuff up then that's exactly what Drum means. But if you read his actual article, you see that his actual argument is "Trump would be a uniquely dangerous president. He's a serial liar. He's a demagogue. He's a racist and a xenophobe. He appeals to our worst natures. He'd blithely enact ruinous policies simply because his vanity makes him immune to advice and policy analysis. He'd appoint folks who make Michael Brown look like Jeff Bezos. He would deliberately alienate foreign countries for no good reason. He'd waste money on pet projects like border walls and huge military buildups that would likely have no appreciable effect. And while that volatile personality of his probably wouldn't cause him to nuke Denmark, you never know, do you?"
I have never seen that Phil Ochs song ever deployed, except as a lazy substitute for an argument. If we're going to reduce the argument to character flaws, then isn't "Trump is the least bad" as pure an expression of white privilege as can be imagined? Trump is an open white ethnonationalist that is being backed by a white supremicist Super PAC that even as we speak is running robocalls telling Republicans "Don't vote for a Cuban." It sure looks like the people who would bear the brunt of the downsides of a Trump presidency are going to be non-white people.
Do the question is should you prefer the demagogue who talks loudly but can't actually work within the political and bureaucratic system, or the dog whistle party machine representative who whispers about all the terrible things he might actually get implemented?
195: Are you asking a leftist who lives in the state led by Perry, Corbyn, and Cruz? Try to understand my feelings!
Which are: Californians just piss me the fuck off. After regaining control of your state from the Austrian body builder the best you could come up from your deep well-nurtured bench was fucking Jerry Brown?
I loved Jerry Brown, but c'mon. Fucking 70s reruns.
If we're going to reduce the argument to character flaws, then isn't "Trump is the least bad" as pure an expression of white privilege as can be imagined? Trump is an open white ethnonationalist that is being backed by a white supremicist Super PAC that even as we speak is running robocalls telling Republicans "Don't vote for a Cuban." It sure looks like the people who would bear the brunt of the downsides of a Trump presidency are going to be non-white people.
This is the part that bothers me about "Trump as least bad" arguments by white liberals. Trump's rhetoric is already spurring actual violence against minorities by his more unhinged supporters, and it's hard to imagine that sort of thing won't increase enormously if he has the presidency as a bully pulpit.
Woah, we quoted the exact same passage. I agree with you that Trump would probably not be as bad as Cruz or Rubio, but are you literally incapable of imagining that somebody could read the facts and come to a different conclusion than you, other than as a result of their personality flaws? And we're talking about Kevin Drum, not David Brooks. Mother Jones columnists are not noted for being treated as important or clever by Republican politicians.
The special danger of Trump seems to me to be the danger of his normalizing genuinely scary bouts of nationalist violence, which isn't exactly a new thing in American politics but it's never a good one. But that's not what Drum is saying in the article there: he's talking about the policies or things Trump would attempt to do. And that's not something where there's an interesting difference except when it comes to the rhetoric and the extent to which people can pretend that the people advocating things that come close to ethnic cleansing, or war with Russia* or whatever is politics as usually and not something to be too worried about.
I mean, he really does say something like "yes that would be very bad but that's democracy for you and we'd just have to vote harder and try to overturn/fix things later" with regards to the exact same stuff but coming from someone who isn't clearly a horrifying clown. It's not, deep down, an argument about what Trump would do: it's an argument about how people would have to talk about Trump doing those things. And specifically it's that he would wreck the generally civil dialogue that people are still pretending is happening between Republicans and everyone else.
Drum is having a similar reaction to Trump as the National Review: they're refusing to accept that Trump really, actually is deep down what the Republican party is and has been for a very long time.
When a guy like George W. Bush is the standard by which sane Republicans are judged, I don't think we really risk much by electing an insane one.
Remember that the Republican Establishment - the thing that Drum prefers over Trump - pretty clearly favors Trump over Cruz. And it's not hard to see why. Trump is a blowhard and racist, etc., but Cruz is fucking crazy.
The idea of defaulting on America's debt is nuts. Period. The idea of leading a party that unanimously voted to do so is so horrible that I really don't see we have anything to lose by electing Trump. If he can get elected, he may be the only thing that stands between the US and the abyss.
Marco "No Exceptions For Rape Or Incest" Rubio is also a nut. And he is also onboard with economic and foreign policy lunacy. The only reason the Establishment is ok with him is the well-founded belief that he's incredibly dishonest.
Republicans have been feeding a downward spiral for decades now. Fuck things up so that people are mad, get elected, fuck things up some more. We've been lucky that Trump is as bad as it's gotten - though we have no particular reason to believe that Trump is as bad as it's going to get.
We had no right to expect a Republican as good as him could win the nomination this time around. He is admittedly a risk, but at this point, Trump looks like a great stroke of luck for America.
200: Maybe. Or maybe the racist far right understands Trump better than we do. Jean-Marie Le Pen has endorsed Trump, and not Cruz or Rubio.
Sometimes when I think I've already discounted how stupid people here are I get surprised and they're even stupider. A massively incoherent, demonstrably racist demagogue says stuff about tarriffs that will be 100% impossible to implement and says marginally less bloodthirsty stuff in a debate and you all get your panties wet. "Oh I'm so sophisticated." No, you're a fucking idiot. What the fuck. Here are your choices for how President Trump would work:80% likely to be a normal Republican with an additional propensity to say stunningly stupid and potentially dangerous things, as well as appoint idiots; 20% likely to be a full-bore racist facist. There's no good prospect or outcome. Yes the other Republicans are also horrible and electing them would also be a disaster, but get a fucking grip, idiots, having some basic norms of liberal democracy work is a fundamentally good thing and Trump is a disaster and a sign if how desperately fucking embarassing the United States has become. 199 and 200 are particularly the writings of people with their heads too far up the ass of the internet to see straight. Fuck you, you ignorant white clowns, you are part of the problem.
In a contest between Trumpism and Halfordismo, I'm still undecided.
Actually, thanks to "Roger the Cabin Boy" who at least is honest enough to admit it, I've figured out what the psychology is: resentment of your own failures against an "establishment" that has failed to recognize your genius that's so extreme that you'd happily blow up everything just to get the frisson of satisfying your resentment. It's actually worse than the sincere Trump voters, who are just angry but don't purport to be sophisticated liberals or political analysts. Fuck you, you morons.
Huh, I'm surprised by the vitriol. A couple comments.
A lot of Both Sides Do It, and odd contrarianism (look, Flint's water is pretty much fine now!)
I don't think that's a fair description of this. Yes, it's an example of him being a cranky (technocratic) centrist saying, "knock off the left-wing exaggerations." But I would characterize it as "both sides do it" or say that he's writing that to burnish his "very serious person" credentials.
How has every policy that the Republicans have ever promoted, including those promoted by Rubio, not been a total mockery of democracy. Calling it "politics" when you say shitty things with a straight face, but "mockery" when you actually acknowledge the joke is part of the problem.
First of all, there are all sorts of areas in which Republicans and Democrats differ on policy which represent honest political disagreement and in which reasonable people can be on either side of the issue (to name 5, take School Vouchers, lowering the capital gains tax, eliminating the inheritance tax, siding with Israel over the Palestinians, preventing drug legalization) I think all of those are bad ideas and I think that, even when there's an element of a good idea there, the specific ways in which Republicans propose to implement the policies make them clearly worse.
That said, they are actual policy positions, and plenty of people support them.
The way in which I would read Drum's comment that, "there's a difference between accepting an ordinary member of the opposition party and accepting a fatuous clown like Donald Trump." Isn't just that he thinks the party establishment has a valuable role to play. It's that the parties represent recognizably* different political goals.
Trump is, depending on how you view his campaign, either running on a platform in which policy goals are completely irrelevant -- the only thing that matters is "Trump!" -- or he's running on an ethnonationalist platform (as Walt put it) which, if taken serious is in direct contradiction to key American political values.
* I realize there's a lot of research that suggests large numbers of Americans do not recognize what separates the two parties, in terms of politics. Personally I'm not willing to go, from there, to saying that the policy differences between the two parties do not represent policy differences between their voters -- but I recognize that it's possible to make that argument.
Really, I should have just agreed with everything that Walt has said about Drum. His comments are shorter and spot on.
Republicans are also horrible and electing them would also be a disaster, but get a fucking grip, idiots, having some basic norms of liberal democracy work is a fundamentally good thing
How are those supreme court nomination hearings going then, jackass?
The difference between people surprised by Trump and people who aren't remotely surprised is that the latter have actually noticed that most of those precious norms have been steadily undercut, eroded, or just straight up blown up by the Republican party over the last twenty years or so, and understand what that means. "Oh but what about the precious norms that keep the Senate functional! What will happen if the largest bloc of the majority party in the House of Representatives just decide to throw any contact with the world to the wind and threaten to default on the national debt unless someone makes the President not count!?" My god. It would be catastrophic. What people are pointing out is it's too fucking late. Trump is where the Republican party is, and has been for a long time. The only difference is that he's too obvious and that's why people are freaking out about what he's doing. The downside of Trump is that he's a horrifying bigoted lunatic who really might destroy the country. The upside is that unlike all the other fucking horrifying bigoted lunatics who really might destroy the country running in the Republican primary, which is fucking all of them, even idiots who think that we've still got those norms working are finally paying attention enough to notice what's been going on around them for the last twenty years.
There's nothing impressive about being late to the party, even if it does make you feel morally upstanding for whatever ridiculous reasons you might want to throw out there.
Speaking of "Calling It Now," Clinton wins South Carolina.
Yes, you jackass imbecile, I've been saying for a while that one of the bug fucking recent dangers in this country has been that basic bipartisan norms are going overboard and the SCOTUS hearings are an example. That doesn't mean you embrace team I will blow everything up and make it far worse demagogue because he said some shit you could tolerate at a debate. You fucking disgust me, moron.
What people are pointing out is it's too fucking late. Trump is where the Republican party is, and has been for a long time. The only difference is that he's too obvious and that's why people are freaking out about what he's doing.
Echoing the Timothy Burke post in the other thread, I think it is possible to both believe that the current Republican party is terrifying and crazy and still think that Trump is doing something different, not just being more transparent.
Nick S is making the same point but more nicely and without calling out you despicable fucks on your resentful bullshit.
127:
I sort of wonder if the business end of the Republican party might end up drafting Romney (or similar) to run as an independent after all to spoil the election for Trump if he gets the nomination. I'm certain they'd sooner deal with Hillary (even for eight years) than with Trump.
Naw. Y'all know how I am voting, which isn't for any person.
But Halford's favored candidate is the one who understands Washington and "how to get things done" which means I will get to see multiple fucking signing ceremonies with Clinton in the middle and Cornyn and Cruz smiling on either side. I remember the last Clinton administration, which probably caused more damage and strew more corpses, in indirect very liberal ignorable ways, than the following Bush administration. Not looking forward to a fucking repeat.
I demand a skill position on team blow things up. I have seniority.
At least their "resentment" isn't making the comment section an unreadable YouTube garbage mess.
Yeah, but he's not as much of a manly internet tough guy is he so he actually deserves respectful responses. Has anyone here actually fucking endorsed Trump or are you just shitting all over everything because you're not feeling like a big guy right now and want to get into a self-righteous snit and call people idiots?
Go ahead, show where people are saying they think Trump would be a good president, or are fucking excited about watching him win and proceeding to destroy things. And no, "he's probably not a lot more dangerous than the candidate who advocated shooting down Russian planes over Syria and said that a literal hot war with Russia would be unfortunate but might be necessary" does not fucking count, even if you think Rubio is dreamy and totally wouldn't shit all over the United States.
For all of my distaste for the "establishment", I would never go full Trump. Never.
174: IIRC the last of them died just a few years ago.
Some of the offspring of their offspring live in Portland and sing with Pink Martini. Such is the End of History.
I can't link because Wapo demands my $5 or whatever but the most recent post on Wonkblog
"Bernie Sanders is right:Bill Clinton's Welfare Reform Doubled Extreme Poverty"
Vote as you must, and I won't say you will have regrets for the rest of your life, but understand in voting for Clinton you are enabling a not so lesser evil that will hurt and kill the most vulnerable en masse and embrace the fucking sorrow without any shred of righteousness.
The NYT is well pleased with Clinton's victory in SC.
215 -- both in this thread and elsewhere you, PF, and R the Cabin Boy have been at or close to "Trump's not that bad" for weeks and have barely contained glee over it. Just admit it, you're a resentful piece of shit who wants to blow things up and root for him.
And fuck you Halford
The despair this year is finally breaking us, and you want to fucking gloat.
Does that work for you in real life Halford, or are you just hoping that somehow on the internet you would be able to intimidate people by putting in a lot of swears when you plead with them to say something that wouldn't make you look like a jackass hurling a bunch of empty bullshit at people?
At least Mobes and swift admit when they've been drinking. Tigre just gets mean.
I don't usually encounter people who are basically Trump supporters in the stupidest possible way in real life, so I don't usually yell at them.
High black turnout in SC, apparently. A good sign for the general?
We're still grieving the primary season for fuck's sake, and looking for ways to vent.
Give it a rest, and come back to the Trump teasers in six months, when in the context of Trump vs Clinton, it might mean something.
You are gloating the Clinton triumph in a way you think will catch you less heat around here, rubbing your neoliberal centrism and the inevitability of submission in our faces.
It's really fucking ugly.
227 was me. I'm very proud of my work there.
225: Have you tried looking as dishonestly in real life as you're doing here? Because if not that may be your trouble.
Of course in real life when you say that you think a fucking war with Russia wouldn't be that disastrous, or at least within the realm of reasonable politics even if you do disagree with it people probably treat you the way people willing to say bullshit like that deserve. But here on the safety of the internet you can throw around as much macho posturing and self-aggrandizing bullshit about your moral superiority to everyone else as you like without being feeling publicly humiliated as a result.
Hey, halford, don't let bob troll you. Celebrate Clinton's huge victory tonight instead. You only have to worry about Sanders for a few more days, looks like. And then I bet everyone here, and everywhere that isn't truly insane, will get on the same page about the importance of beating Trump or Rubio or whomever.
201: I take your point. And I don't think Le Pen is erring by endorsing Trump.
I've been sensitive for a long time to the fact that my own relative tolerance of Trump is, in an important sense, a function of white privilege.
But I'll still argue that Trump is a performer, and that he knows that many of his most egregious racist commitments are not only politically impossible, but close to physically impossible.
How do I feel about South Carolina?
Politics of Fear
...yeah, Glen Ford BAR
Black participation in the Democratic Party is not a matter of free allegiance, but the perception that there is no other effective means to hold back the barbarians of the White Man's Party.In practice, it is institutionalized group panic, a stampede every four years. Blacks are drawn into the jaws of the Democratic Party, not by ideological affinity, but in search of protection from the Republicans.
Matched only by a rapacious cynicism on the part of the neoliberal candidates, a sadistic glee in throwing the weakest and most vulnerable under the bus for four years, and then getting rewarded with unrequited loyalty in election season
232 -- your half-hearted gesture towards self awareness makes the despicable shitheadedness of your position even worse. Anti-semitism is the socialism of fools, but naive hey I kinda trust in Trump he's not that bad hey tarriffs he's the best of bad options hey populism the socialism of people who are both fantastically naive and fantastic assholes.
I thought I agreed with RT but then he started swearing so I'm not sure anymore. There's a 5% chance that Trump blows up the country, a 15% chance that Trump governs like any other Republican, and a 80% chance that Trump is simply handing Clinton an easy path to the White House while seriously fracturing the Republican Party. I might be too pessimistic. Trump is probably the greatest thing to happen to the Democratic Party since the Great Depression.
Yeah, it's true that he's a terrible candidate for the Republicans, which is great. My beef is with Trump-tolerant/Trump-curious internet "populism" from liberals, which AFAICT turns up only on the internet and isn't a real political force, but which is both so so stupid and so so despicable.
155: The Boston Globe thinks that unenrolled Massachusetts voters should take a Republican ballot and vote for Kasich to stop Trump. No joke. (Too lazy to link.)
which AFAICT turns up only on the internet and isn't a real political force, but which is both so so stupid and so so despicable and so so completely made up out of a desire to go on some pathetic tough-guy rant.
There we go, fixed that one for you. Next time you feel like being a self-righteous tool why don't you at least try to find something plausible rather than accusing people of being pro-Trump when they point out that in fact the other candidates are at least as batshit insane as he is, no matter how much more cleaned up and polite looking they are.
221: For the record, in this election, I routinely disagree with roger, but am, as you say, pretty much on the same page as MHPH.
While I grant that my "sympathy" to Trump - which exists solely in the context of the Republican primary - is problematic, I think you've failed to examine your own privilege in the context of your preference for more conventional Republicans.
You think that GWB and his Establishment successors are not as bad as Trump because you don't have to fret about abortion or drowning in New Orleans or being one of the thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died as a result of GWB policies that Trump criticizes aggressively, but that are endorsed by your preferred candidates.
Characterizing my view thus ...
"Trump's not that bad"
... seems a bit uncharitable. I wouldn't characterize your view as "Rubio and Cruz are not that bad," despite your insistence that it is grossly unacceptable to prefer their only credible opponent.
I demand a skill position on team blow things up. I have seniority.
You've earned it.
A few comments, in the spirit of full disclosure. First, because of my bet with Tigre I will get a small benefit if Trump is the nominee, and I have to admit that it does provide some benefit of hedging against loss. I do think to myself, "Trump is terrible, but if he wins that's $100 to a good cause."
Secondly, part of why I appreciated Drum's post is because I don't have a strong position on the Republican side. Even after reading Drum's post my strongest opposition is to Cruz -- I just can't root for him, even if it was him or Trump. But Drum does convince me that between Trump and Rubio there's reason to root against Trump -- even if I think they'd be equally bad in terms of policy.
Finally, it is a bit of a luxury to feel like any Republican candidate will be at a disadvantage in the general election. If I had to chose between, say, Trump who I thought had a 10% chance of winning the general and Rubio who I thought had a 30% chance of winning, I'd take Trump in a heartbeat.
But, my guess is that the odds of winning are closer than that, so I don't have to use that as deciding factor.
But the weird thing for me about this conversation are the people who think Drum's argument is either self-serving, disingenuous, or just establishmentarianism (either willful or out of obtuseness). I just don't get that.
I think one can disagree with Drum's position, but I have the same reaction to some of the comments as Walt in 198, " are you literally incapable of imagining that somebody could read the facts and come to a different conclusion than you, other than as a result of their personality flaws?"
I think that whoever said above that Drum has, over the past few months, seemed more establishmentarian (not that he was ever anything but) is reflecting something I've heard pretty frequently lately. I wonder if this charge is simply a matter of Drum going after Sanders on a few occasions and people feeling annoyed that their preferred candidate isn't being treated well. I think it's more than that, actually, but I have no idea and just realized I don't care very much.
I don't have any problem with Drum (or Krugman, or other writers I've respected) pointing out flaws with Bernie's plans on the merits. But Drum's fallen for a lot of the equating Bernie and Trump which I think is total bullshit. He equates Trump claiming Mexico will pay for a wall with Sanders wanting single payer. (Actually, it's worse, he claims Bernie wants NHS ie single provider which has never been Sanders' proposal and which a wonk like Kevin surely knows is different.) Single payer certainly falls into the policy-type questions listed in 205, whereas the wall is a sick joke and even Trump knows it.
We were supposed to have settled these debates with the Trump or Cruz or Carson thread. I've been trying not to invoke "but if you think Trump is the least bad you clearly don't care about minorities" because that seems kind of cheap, and because the fact is they're all horrible in their own way. But Trump does seem to bring more of a threat of everything collapsing, which seems like a difference in kind, and what I think Drum was getting at.
50 fucking points, 75-25
Like I said, totally curbstomped in March, molars in the gutter. It was all so over last year.
I'm depressed. I need my cartoons.
In total fairness I'm not sure that Trump is worse on net than other R candidates -- certainly not if you include electability as a factor. I'm not rooting for Rubio either and at a visceral level I hate Cruz more than any of them. But "Trump is preferable" seems obviously wrong, two cheers for Trump populism seems obviously wrong, and "let's just embrace the fact that there's no party system that can provide workable governance" is wrong, and "let's cheer for the guy who is not even doing lip service to not being racist or attempting to actually govern consistently with the law or norms of ordinary politics" is really really wrong. There's pretty much no scenario in which even hinting at a preference for white nationalist clownish strongmen over institutional candidates is a good thing for anyone. At best it means an even worse, even stupider, even less governable Republican party. At worst it means we're dealing with a full-on quasi facist movement at a time when we're already going to be facing a semi-permanent constitutional crisis regardless. Liberals should 100% not either accomodate Trump or see him as anything other than a terrible person and terrible sign for the country, and there is definitely a bleeding over between "I hate the DC establishment" and "at least Trump hates the DC establishment" that's getting increasingly common on the liberal internet and is dumb and needs to stop.
"And that foot is me"
- R Tigre
But "Trump is preferable" seems obviously wrong
I would say he's preferable to the others in the same way that I'd say I would prefer to eat a bowl full of shit to eating a bowl full of shit and worms -- it's probably true, but the only reason I'm even going to the trouble to mention that one is better is to have a consoling nervous laugh at how horrified I am.
I laid awake in bed for two whole hours last night -- and this wasn't the first time -- thinking about what to do if Trump gets into office and starts imprisoning Muslims, political enemies, activists, etc. I started thinking quite seriously about the possibility of having to hide Muslim friends or acquaintances in my closet. Would it maybe be safer if I went out to the country until the whole thing blew over? How am I supposed to even know if things have gotten bad enough that I need to? Trump's brought on a lot of anxiety for me because I've been realizing that it must never have been clear to many Germans or to many Soviets exactly when things had passed the point of no return. Hell, it's quite possible that it did with the Patriot Act and the bulk collection of phone records by the NSA. Do I leave the country? Where do I go? If America goes full fascist, is the impending collapse of the world economy and coming military belligerence threatening enough that there's no point in leaving?
So when I respond to Trump saying he wants a health care plan where "people don't die in the streets" or that Bush lied us into Iraq by going on Unfogged and saying "lol, it's funny that in some ways he's better than the others", please understand that that I (and I think probably others) are laughing because that's all we can really do to live with this circus before we crawl into bed and go back to work the next morning.
I thought Trump was the least worst, in that he was sort of an insane wildcard who possibly isn't actually a Republican, but now that he's been endorsed by David Duke and Le Pen, and I can't even say/think that anymore. They're all the worst. At this point, I actively want no one to win the Republican nomination, which is impossible. I still think Trump is most likely to lose it, and Kasich would be most likely to win it.
My guess for the SC margins is that Trump's rise is scaring the fuck out of African-American voters, and Clinton is clearly the risk-averse candidate. I think that's very understandable. Why risk a vote for the Socialist when a Dem loss in November means the KKK-endorsed candidate becomes President.
Clinton got 73.5 percent. That's crazy.
246: Oh hey look at that your bullshit about people here supporting Trump keeps fading away when you're called out on it doesn't it. Now we've descended all the way to "some people on the internet somewhere may be sliding into an uncomfortable middle zone between enjoying watching the assholes that made Trump's political success possible scrambling around trying to deal with the shit they caused, and saying that, hey, at least they're not expecting people to not notice that that particular shit isn't exactly what it smells like."
And of course we're dealing with a quasi-fascist movement right now. What you seem to be having trouble with is the idea that the "institutional candidates" aren't right there in the middle of it too, if not as successfully in electoral terms (for now) because they've let themselves feel too sophisticated to believe that their base is exactly what the base, and the people they pay to rile up the base, have been saying. We've been dealing with it for a while, too, which is why some of us here were able to predict a serious Trump candidacy back when you were poo-pooing it because your sense of politics was obviously more reasonable than "the Republican base is a bunch of white supremacists divorced almost entirely from any actual connection with reality and on resentment, old grudges and neat sounding slogans."
Trump is going to get fucking crushed in a general election, will drag down their down-ticket candidates, and will set off a vicious, bloody knife fight inside the GOP. Meanwhile, a whole cohort of already fairly leftist young voters will come to political adulthood associating the GOP with open racism.
You bet I'm pulling for him. It's practically a cheat code.
Drum's argument to me reduces to "Please, stop the Republican Party from tearing itself apart now that it's at the brink of controlling the entire government."
See, that is exactly the opposite of what I want.
It seems like you're accusing us of some heightening the contradictions amoral bullshit, when in reality what I'm hoping for is that Trump is causing the Republicans to self-destruct in such a way as to reduce their power to fuck things up for a decently long time. Maybe wishful thinking (no part of that wish includes a President Trump, FTR), but there it is.
252 -- you'll notice that I treat people who aren't consistently not that smart bullshit artists with more respect, but keep fucking that chicken, and keep trying to walk back those Trump-loving moments.
Tigre just doesn't want America to be great again.
I don't think for a second Trump destroys the Republican party. He may and likely will lose this election, which is great. And he will help alienate Latino voters from the party for hopefully a very long time. But we're a two party system with a definite path to the Republicans controlling (at an absolute minimum) one house of Congress and most states, for at least the next 5-10 years, in the best-case scenario. As shitty and horrible as the current party is it's going to be at least a blocking factor in government for the foreseeable future. In that context a party open to the kind of bullshit Trump has been spewing and inclined to accomodate itself to his voters is a goddamn nightmare that no one should be happy about, even if he is indeed a shitty candidate. Going from horrible assholes running a party with power to horrible, possibly openly white supremacists in total chaos people running a party in power is not a net win.
More seriously, it seems that Tigre's just going through the five stages of grief. Having spent some time in denial, now he's clearly in anger mode.
Next is bargaining.... the Republican establishment is doing this right now. "Please, just everybody vote for Rubio, ok? Or... oh, I know! A third party candidate!"
Myself, I'm settled into depression. I suppose acceptance isn't far off, but I'm not happy about that.
256 - Oh of course! Those moments, that you absolutely pointed out before, and totally didn't make up. How could I possibly have forgotten that. I should never have said I was going to vote for him or that I thought he would be an excellent president - why, if I hadn't said those things you would just be jerking off like a whiny tool who thought that saying a bunch of belligerent shit would make him look impressive and is now quietly trying to pretend it didn't happen.
I guess I should sympathize though. It must suck to get shown up when you try to puff yourself up and then no one is impressed.
I wonder when the NRO endorses Trump, they'll title it vote for the witless ape.
a party open to the kind of bullshit Trump has been spewing and inclined to accomodate itself to his voters
Seriously? A party that makes celebrities of Rush Limbaugh, Ted Nugent, and Ann Coulter? That horse left the barn a long time ago.
Buttercup, the amount of NRO you read can't be healthy. Are you ok?
Don't worry, I'm a trained professional. We call it ethnography of the repugnant other. I actually haven't been reading it all that much recently, since the thrill of schadenfreude has worn off, and they're kind of shrill and one-note. That article did stand out to me because of the headline.
I read them for a while but found them to be disappointing. Like you said, shrill, one note, and full of snark in place of actual argument.
Do you ever read The American Conservative? It's actually a pretty darn good publication. I don't always agree with them, but I think they publish articles that are generally smart and productive and that generally sharpen my thinking about things. I have this fantasy that deep down, all conservatives are secretly like them.
Trump is the candidate of single payer for some, miniature electric shocks for others as they get herded into pens and imprisoned or deported.
I have this fantasy that deep down, all conservatives are secretly like them.
Sadly, the truth is that they're actually all like Trump.
My guess for the SC margins is that Trump's rise is scaring the fuck out of African-American voters, and Clinton is clearly the risk-averse candidate.
This is consistent with some of the stuff I've seen on FB (not specific to SC, just general emphasis on mobilizing minority votes because of the threat of Trump).
In other news, this thread title keeps making me think of Aimee Mann's Calling It Quits.
Real ethnographers of the repugnant other don't go to NRO; real ethnographers of the repugnant other go to Steve Sailer.
My uncle just came out with "Sanders is in many ways the Trump of the left" on Facebook and it's all I can do not to ask him to enumerate the ways, since afaict while there sure are some similarities the illocutionary effect of the statement is to intimate something far more severe than is supportable.
Like, not really being connected to the elite of the party under whose banner they're running: sure. But.
Great, now that racist fuck is going to show up in comments here.
(He prefers Clinton, he isn't a total nut job. Though I don't see what striking advantage sober, thorough, mundanely realistic proposals are when the legislature is run by a nihilist death cult.)
273: Sorry, please googleproof or redact.
I hope I'm not the only one watching this basketball game...
270
I have limits; I'm only human after all.
265
I think I may have read something by them before, but I'd forgotten they exist. I generally only read Right wing stuff for commentary on the Republican primary (or sometimes the Dem primary, though I can only stomach so much), because other than that I really have no desire to wade through all the muck.
276
Whatever you do, don't repeat his name three times while looking into a mirror.
The American Conservative is indeed pretty good. If only conservatives were really like that instead of being reactionary loons.
Rubio is starting to really hit Trump hard, calling him a "con artist" in a recent Fox News interview and saying in the debate that he'd be "selling watches in Central Park" but for his inheritance.
I'm really puzzled as to why he didn't do this sooner. It's not particularly hard to do, and he and his campaign staff must have known in November that the road to the nomination was going to go through Trump. It's always been alpha male games with those voters, so the only way to actually beat him was always to hit hard and relentlessly. Somehow no one really did that.
264, 270 At LGM (where I've stopped reading the comments as diligently due to the idiocies of this primary season) we call that "hunting mangoes" after the 'never get off the boat' scene in Apocalypse Now.
I've only been on LGM a few times and the only time I stopped to read the comments (which was a few weeks ago) they were just depressingly bad. Should I give it another shot?
I'm probably not one to say as I've been reading and commenting there on and off since the first year of that blog. It can be good and has its iwn cast of characters and internet traditions (of which we are all aware). But these days I much prefer the Unfoggedtariat.
As you know, Bob has zero interest in Republicans, or in talking about them. Like a beauty contest measuring feelers and mandibles on cockroaches. They should all just die.
I read about every comment at LGM, it is my 4th most visited site. I might learn something from the loyal opposition.
Drexciya from tonight's SC thread. Black woman, I think.
Black people, who I take to be fine and critical stewards of their vote, defined the candidate who semi-cynically came to the defense of the first black president's political legacy as further left than the person who wanted singlepayer. There are reasons for that which are far removed from the conclusion that they're wrong and the sooner that realization is reached and thought through, the better off the left's evolution will go.(I say all this as someone who will, barring some unforeseen/cataclysmic annoyance, likely be voting for Sanders on Tuesday, but who feels poorly and deliberately underrepresented by both candidates, with an abiding and increasing dislike for both of them)
"Cataclysmic annoyance" is an evocative turn of phrase.
Isn't South Carolina one of the most conservative Democratic electorates? Given Sanders is the most New Deal liberal candidate since, uh, FDR? it can't be a surprise he'd lose big.
I've never thought he was going to win the nomination anyway, but I don't think this counts as new evidence of that, just confirmation.
Wow what a great thread! Thank you apostropher.
There is too much free-floating testosterone, and gratuitous d**k-swinging, in this thread.
Look, boyos, it's like this:
Trump will be the GOP nominee; and Clinton will be the Democratic contender. And yes, HRC is a flawed candidate who will break your heart with her numerous concessions to the perhaps-mythical 'middle' as she runs to the centre in the general. However, she is not Catherine de' Medici in a pantsuit, she's just a garden-variety centrist Democratic candidate, and she's all we've got if we want to stop Trump.
Support Hillary, or support The Donald. There is no middle ground here, and it really is that simple.
Well there is something like middle ground. I sent Sanders money and promoted him in every way I could. I just can't do that for HRC. I'm trying not to say negative things about her and will continue to. I'll vote for her, but my support is necessarily more limited. I'm also going to continue to vocally enjoy the effect the Donald has on politics in the US. I think knowing where we stand is important and valuable and I love it when the truth becomes clear. I'm sure people will continue to attack me for that, but I can't imagine living any other way.
||
I learned a fun fact the other day: payday loan companies and for-profit universities pay over $100 per click on Google ads. And they do, I think, pay every time someone clicks on their link (with some safeguards thrown in so someone doesn't write a script to fuck with them).
>
I make $5,000 per month working from home clicking on Google ads, and you can too!
Oh, they don't pay the clicker; they pay Google. But there's a small amount of satisfaction that comes from knowing that a for-profit university just spent $100 for nothing.
289: Now I get it, this and Tigre. How could I forget how y'all work
It ain't the candidate, or the deluded and authoritarian center, or the cruel neoliberal policy agenda...
...we're already getting setup. If Clinton loses in November, it's gonna be our fault, we insufficiently loyal didn't clap hard enough discontented Democrats.
They are already passing the blame away.
That 289 comment definitely would be more at home at LGM. Disagreement and disobedience as "dick-swinging" is standard house style there.
289: whaddyamean "gratuitous"? When I swing my dick it is always a moment of world historical significance
Back before I used Privacy Badger, I used to always get google adds for Republican candidates, because I would click on them relentlessly. I remember I used to get lots of ads for Senator John Cornyn when I was on Atrios' site. It was a good feeling knowing that I was helping to steer a chunk of RNC money to a liberal blogger.
Dick swinging is the only evidence I have that the world is spinning.
289: Who the fuck are you even talking to with that "now now children" bullshit?
Even if it is just bob and you've decided to use the plural for rhetorical effect or something, give it a rest. Whatever else you'd think his political views are far enough from Clinton's that it's completely reasonable for him to be unhappy about the prospect of a Clinton presidency, and no amount of chiding people for not being as worldly as you are or something is going to change that. The fact that you had to make up a bunch of stuff about Clinton that no one said, and then reassure everyone that Clinton really is just what anyone complaining about her here had said, only goes to show how far afield you had to go for that bullshit too.
Corey Robin 2/27, Welfare Reform, commenter "Kevin"
People, Clinton is getting the nomination. Please, please, please do not turn your critiques and your attacks (or, if you prefer, your efforts to pull her left) into a campaign that in fact dampens youth and lefty turnout and results in a Trump, Rubio, or Cruz presidency. Mr. Robin's Clinton posts, and the comments in support, are moving more and more into that zone every week. Don't blame Clinton for your frustration with the limitations of our 2-party, power-divided-into-many-quadrants (way more than 3) political system. Just remember, best your gonna get is way, way better than worst you could get.
More polite than the "dick-swinging"
294-3,4 LOL. Well they couldn't blame themselves could they?
Apparently, you have to resign from the DNC to endorse Sanders:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-sanders-gabbard-idUSMTZSAPEC2S9JDNKG
Huh, in the morning I'm sober and my enemies are still foolish. Advantage Tigre.
Admittedly my charcterization of mhph's views was not particularly fair, but at a deeper level I'm sure I'm right. You see what actually-existing American populism gets you, fools! Buffoonish racist demagogues. Don't accomodate it based on amorphous resentment.
I disagree with Apo's reasonable but wrong point in 262. Sure, there's always been a core element of proto-Trump-ism in the Republican base. But it's worse to have it full-on embraced as the party's official position. Big difference between having fascist assholes as a core part of your coalition and having them absolutely run things. One is bad, the other is worse. The same was true of the "tea party" btw -- that was even more clearly just the regular old conservative movement dressed up with a new name. Still, the country was worse off as its positions became identical with the positions of one of our two major parties. Just like the Democrats can be (and are being) moved to the left, the Republicans can be moved to the "right" (or, in Trump's case, to open quasi-fascist white supremacy, in a way we haven't seen exactly to date). I agree that Trump is a pretty unelectable candidate, which is a good thing, and that he's likely to alienate minority voters from the GOP even more and mobilize them against him, which is also a good long term thing. But like it or not we're gonna have Republicans partially in charge of this country for the foreseeable future and it's not exciting that they're going open and full facist buffoon, even if they already sucked.
Further to 304, I guess I word prefer if they just openly endorsed candidates rather than pretend to be neutral.
305: "I may be wrong, but on a deeper, more metaphorical and unspecified level I'm right."
Yeah, there we go. Good to see you're still a reasonable serious adult and not a petulant little shit. You know you sound exactly like the people who spent all of the early parts of 2000 sneering on the people who said the Iraq war was a horrific catastrophe, and then had to back off it and claim that, well, even though they were wildly wrong and for exactly the reasons that the idiots who'd been pointing out that for years were still obviously foolish and not respectable people, right?
Also, re:304, jeez that's really kind of awful. I mean, like somewhere between a lot of people and everyone paying any attention I figured that the DNC was being really open about pushing Clinton to the front. But I would have thought it was a quieter/subtler thing than that makes it sound.
307.last Stupid question: have any DNC members endorsed Clinton without resigning?
God I fucking hate this primary season. It turns us all into vexatious assholes. I've had to stop reading LGM comments much less participate in them because I'm afraid of what I might say to commenters I really like. I'd hate to have that happen here.
305- I think it is interesting that you regard the people who don't toe your lines as enemies. Is that how Halfordismo got its start?
If this is but a late-February foretaste, 2016 will be a long, miserable year around here.
On the deepest, most metaphorical level possible, I alone am right about everything. It is a terrible burden, but I will bear it with all the grace I can muster.
312 Know that you are not alone.
This is one of the two things that I'm worried about. If either Trump or the RNC field a third party candidate that would be awfully close to a decision to trade the Presidency for keeping their majority in the Senate, and given that 2018 is both a midterm election and one slanted in their favor that might actually be a trade they'd be willing to make.
The other thing that worries me (though less because it's still a serious longshot and I don't know exactly how they'd do it) is if the RNC turns on a dime and manages to push Rubio out in favor of Kasich. Rubio's chances in Florida are looking increasingly grim, but Kasich at least has a shot at Ohio. And the race is still at a place where taking most of Rubio's support would make a Kasich candidacy a possibility. How to move people to Kasich's column is something I'm not sure about, though, since up till now he's been pretty poisonous to the base. His "aww shucks I'm jess folks" stuff, while it could actually be a serious threat in the general election hasn't managed a serious under-the-table "don't worry I'm really a crazy person" appeal to the base, especially not if they have the opportunity to vote for what is basically a talk radio station come to life.
It's maybe worth nothing that Tulsi Gabbard is a proud Islamophobe. (No, I don't think this endorsement reflects poorly on Sanders.)
I feel pretty confident now in judging, from the timidity they've displayed so far, that the Republican elite and/or donor base is not going to do a convention coup or a third-party run. They're happy to harness resentment, but every time they've considered going against it in any public form they've punted.
But if they did that, MHPH, how exactly would it help their Senate chances? I'm not following.
314: assuming* that Trump performs on Tuesday at anywhere near his current polling numbers, he's going to have a massive a lead and the wind at his back. And assuming Clinton performs at anywhere near her current polling numbers, Sanders will increasingly be an afterthought. Both Trump and Clinton will probably then pivot to the general election -- a move that's already underway, particularly for Trump -- and we can see what's what.
* I obviously have no idea what's going to happen, but I'm expecting Trump to slightly underperform his polling numbers and Clinton to slightly overperform hers. We'll see in 48 hours.
314
Kasich is the person I'm most worried about in the general too. It's easy to miss this because the media hates Sanders with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, but they really don't like Clinton much either.* The "fair and balanced" and "let's have a close horse race" nature of the MSM would portray Kasich as far more reasonable than he is, and unlike the rest of them he's also able to fake non-sociopathy.
I think it's pretty clear Bernie did way better than expected but isn't really going to get the nomination. I hope he stays in all the way to keep pressure on Hillary's left flank, and I think progressive Dems now have to turn to local races. We need massive grassroots support for progressive Dem candidates in house races, massive GOTV efforts for elections, and we need to aggressively primary worthless corporate Democrats, especially senators. That's what got the Republican party moving right, and we need to do it too. "Lesser of two evils-ism" is ok in a general election, but is sure as hell shouldn't be the message in the primary.
*Before the NYTimes had to treat Sanders as a real presidential candidate, they spent a lot of their time trying to promote a Biden run.
One small good sign, maybe: Trump's average favorability has not budged in the past few months, has even declined a bit. It had only climbed from even lower late last summer when he put his chips on the racist vote. So no signs yet of more Republicans rallying round.
SOT*: Did somebody here recently explain how the Republican primaries/convention/nomination process works? Like the logistics, party rules, etc.? And if so do you remember where and feel like linking it for me? Pretty please?
*The S can be for Semi or Sorta or Somewhat
Are people reading about the clash in Anaheim? Wondering if it's more blood that should be blamed on Trump, given it was a KKK rally.
323
It's hard to say, because protesting at a Klan rally is a dangerous affair regardless. I doubt Trump helped, though.
Trump is on record in 2000 denouncing David Duke and the Klan. I'm wondering what's happened. One of the reasons I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around Trump as a white nationalist candidate is he's been famous for decades and this hasn't ever been a side of him, at least not since the birther thing in 2008. I wonder if he's had a neurological exam. Mild strokes can go unnoticed but cause serious personality shifts.
Here's the quote from the NY Times.
"The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani," Mr. Trump said in a statement, referring to Pat Buchanan and Lenora Fulani, the former standard-bearer of the New Alliance Party and an advocate of Marxist-Leninist politics. "This is not company I wish to keep."
324.2 He's an opportunist. He threw out that Mexicans are rapists, deport them all, build a wall, bar entry to Muslims, etc, shit and the white supremacists flocked to his banner. He works with what works.
324
Seems more likely that his disavowal of Duke and his statement on the Reform Party were written by staffers. When he has to think on his feet he tends to switch topics 47 times a minute, bob and weave, and contradict himself every other paragraph.
325
So, he saw a niche platform going unfilled, and decided to fill it? I guess it works if you have absolutely no shame or concern for your reputation as a human. This brings up two different problems with a potential president Trump.
The first, and worst case scenario, is Trump is being serious. We clamp down on the border, ramp up deportations, severely restrict immigration, etc. Minorities experience increased harassment from the state + white nationalists.
The second possibility, which is slightly less bad, is Trump means none of it. He said some stupid stuff about Mexicans and it made him popular, so he dialed it up to 11 and is now winning. In this case, pres Trump doesn't really attempt to do anything different from any other standard Republican, and may even be less crazy than say, Cruz on immigration, but he's emboldened a large group of white nationalists, including some local police forces or low level governments. In this case, we see a significant uptick in hate crimes.
The best case scenario is Trump gets elected, says he didn't mean any of it, and the white racist vote turns their anger on Trump rather than take it out on non-white people, but that's a quite distant possibility.
People are talking about Trump tacking to the center right now, but honestly I'm not seeing it. I mean, he's wandering around semi-incoherently and pissing all over accepted Republican Party doctrines, sure. But that's been his entire campaign so far. And it's the source of a good deal of the panic we're seeing from places like the National Review who are still having trouble coming to terms with the fact that the Conservative movement is not, in fact, a bunch of wise and thoughtful people with a political philosophy to lead America forward it's a bunch of terrifying, authoritarian white supremacists who couldn't care less about free trade or states rights or whatever.
317:The reason we're seeing high turnout right now among Republicans is partially that the race is exciting for both Trump supporters ("finally someone speaks for the little minded guy!") and for the others ("oh jesus christ the world is ending!"). In a general election with only two candidates Trump's unfavorability numbers and general scariness would turn off a lot of voters, and it would force the NYT/etc. to keep their hatred of the Clintons under wraps. If you add a "reasonable conservative" into the mix the people who wouldn't come out for Trump out of fear or shame might still come out. And you'd see the press finally free to indulge themselves in an unending stream of coverage of whatever obviously horrible and totally not bullshit scandal they've just run across.
So instead seeing depressed conservative turnout we could actually see significantly increased Republican turnout, and while those votes are going to divide themselves up between two candidates and neither camp would amount to a plurality, the downticket effect would be the same as if they were all coming out for a Republican candidate. (There aren't any Trump-for-Senate races going on, or at least not ones that matter.) That's why I never thought a Trump third party run would be harmless or beneficial too, and it really doesn't matter where the non-Trump candidate is coming from as long as the RNC is putting serious support behind them.
The first, and worst case scenario, is Trump is being serious.
Trump has been all over the place on most issues, but fear and hatred of brown people has been a lifelong obsession for him. Remember when he took out full page ads to call for the hanging of the Central Park five? As near as I can tell he still isn't convinced they were innocent.
Minorities experience increased harassment from the state + white nationalists.
It will go beyond that. We are talking murders and lynchings and more events like the Tulsa Race Riot.
329 Good point. But I still think it's less that he's a true believer than that he gets off more on the mob mentality he stirs up, which I think is potentially even more frightening.
As near as I can tell he still isn't convinced they were innocent.
He certainly wasn't as of a couple years ago. And the disgusting ad he ran back in '89 (included at the link) is just perfect for the anti-BLM crowd today.
Not sure where the NYTimes piece on Libya fits into all this, since I can't tell if painting Clinton as a warmonger will actually hurt her much in the general election. But it does seem like the inevitable assault on Clinton is beginning.
People are talking about Trump tacking to the center right now, but honestly I'm not seeing it.
You couldn't possibly be suggesting that the media narrative has no basis in reality, now. You couldn't possibly be suggesting that.
305.last: perhaps it looks different once you've had Jesse Helms as your senator for thirty solid years. The idea that the party of Trump is somehow qualitatively different than the party of Lee Atwater is... curious.
the downticket effect would be the same as if they were all coming out for a Republican candidate
I'm not sure about this. If Trump is fighting a war with "mainstream" Republicans, that war is going to cause some damage. Republican leaders are going to have to *choose* whether they support Trump or not, and they are going to pay a price for whatever choice they make.
Jesse Helms could never have been elected President.
The idea that the party of Trump is somehow qualitatively different than the party of Lee Atwater is... curious.
Atwater's signature message was that you have to talk in code. There are all kinds of horrible things you can do once you drop the pretense of speaking in code.
338-2 That's true. There are all kinds of horrible things you can do by speaking in code. That's especially true if people don't bother to fight you. Much of the base of the Republican party wishes to bring back Jim Crow. They were doing it by degrees already anyway. The question is, now that it is out in the open again, are we going to fight them?
I plan on doing what I can.
338: Yes, because the country was changing, they had to talk in code. The country has continued changing in that same direction. Dropping the pretense won't make getting elected easier, and it will force a lot of people to admit that there really is a fundamental moral difference between the parties.
The GOP is already openly racist. They have never in my lifetime *not* courted and cultivated the racist vote. The difference today is primarily the superficial southern veneer of manners versus New York fuckyouism. Putting a nice face on it doesn't change the underlying pathology.
337: I don't believe Trump can either.
340 last: I hope to God you are right.
In other Trump/White Supremacist news, Jeff Sessions just endorsed.
342:
He was waiting on David Duke, presumably.
places like the National Review who are still having trouble coming to terms with the fact that the Conservative movement is not, in fact, a bunch of wise and thoughtful people with a political philosophy to lead America forward it's a bunch of terrifying, authoritarian white supremacists who couldn't care less about free trade or states rights or whatever.
You mean they aren't all thoughtful students of Edmund Burke and Friedrich Hayek?
344: You're really not giving their due to the motley crew of alcoholic, repressed Catholic convert "philosophers" that the NR has been pushing for years, like what's his name, whosit and old I forget his name.
Douthat tried to blame the rise of Trump on Obama today.
I'm not sure why Democrats aren't being more overt in their rejoicing.
Douthat tried to blame the rise of Trump on Obama today.
I'm not sure why Democrats aren't being more overt in their rejoicing.
You're really not giving their due to the motley crew of alcoholic, repressed Catholic convert "philosophers"
There must be some people who convert to the Catholic church out of sincerely held religious principle, but they are not very visible compared to the ones who convert because they're basically horrible authoritarians.
Who does 345 and 348 refer to? I don't know who the intellectual right claims to admire these days.
You can, of course be a horrible authoritarian with sincerely held religious principles, like J.H.Newman.
348: or just a horrible authoritarian who also happens to have sincerely held sexist beliefs, like Anne Widdecombe.
Robert Novak is the name that comes to my mind for 348.
I am on Team Apo. Roberto is on Team Nikki Haley:
"I think what he'll do to the Republican Party is really make us question who we are and what we're about. And that's something we don't want to see happen."
God forbid the Republican Party should actually be forced to examine the rot at its core, and to have that decay exposed to the American people.
Well,the choice is going to be between rationalizing and embracing their racist core -- something they've been doing for decades with Atwater's Dogwhistle -- or reject open racism and accept defeat up and down the line. I guess I'm not as optimistic as some of you folks about how this will play out.
354: I don't really understand the psychology of this. Once they discover the rot at the center of their core, what's to stop them from deciding that rot is awesome?
Who does 345 and 348 refer to?
NRish converts to Catholicism include, I believe:
Ross Douthat, Robert P. George, John Finnis, Richard John Neuhaus, Ramesh Ponnuru
355-356: If Atwater and I are wrong - if open racist appeals will work nationally - that really doesn't have much of anything to do with Trump. Trump isn't creating something. He's revealing something.
I mean, yeah, I do accept the Overton Window argument here - that Trump is moving the needle a bit. But only a bit, and the damage is already done. Cruz and Rubio and their ilk have been actively pushing the country in the direction of concentration camps, and will cheerfully adopt that policy if the Party has the stomach for it. And if the Republicans are not ready for concentration camps, then there won't be concentration camps.
Republican racism was always poorly hidden. The relationship of the Republican Party with open racists like Bob Jones has been, at worst, uneasy. Trump's removal of the fig leaf is a change, but not much of one, and one that was on the way regardless.
358.1: The best thing I can think to say about Trump is just this. The existence and extent of racism in the US has been a politely ignored topic for, well, pretty much all of the United States (even when it was more obvious it was worse than polite people talked about publicly). The election of Obama brought a lot of it crawling out of the woodwork, which has dragged everyone's attention back to its existence, and the results haven't been that bad so far - Black Lives Matter, for example, gets a lot of clout due to the willingness of (white) people to notice this stuff, and part of that is just that so many people suddenly started forwarding pretty openly racist shit about Obama that they wouldn't have done about anyone else.
Trump is just a symptom of what was already there (the racism, but also the extent to which people were living in a fictional world, authoritarians, and otherwise politically non-functional) both in society and in (Republican) politics. The nicest thing I can think to say about him is that he's too direct that way to have those bits ignored or effaced by people talking about him, and that he's on the Republican side any way too prominent to be effectively disavowed by them at this point. (Disavowed, yes, but when you're getting ~40% of the party's support it's hard to say that he isn't representing the base of the party pretty well.)
Trump isn't creating something. He's revealing something [...] that was on the way regardless
Exactly so. And if Cruz or Rubio pull off some Hail Mary pass and eke out a win, it isn't like Trump's constituency disappears or shrinks.
I suspect Ajay is also thinking of Blair.
But people are not exemplars of consistent ideologies. They're amorphous blobs of vague and contradictory notions. The danger is the Trump's public racism will have a radicalizing effect. You can already see it happening. It sure seems like protestors are more likely to get beat up at a Trump rally than at a Rubio or Cruz rally. Trump is the first candidate to get robocall support from a white power PAC (and I can't believe "robocall support from a white power PAC" is now something that exists in the real world).
I don't think radicalization is guaranteed to happen. In fact, if Trump gets repudiated at the ballot box I can see it seriously damaging the cause of racism in American politics. But it's a high-stakes gamble to take.
Rubio is finally going full savage on Donald Trump. By this I mean he's responding to his campaign in the same way Trump is conducting it: like a schoolyard bully. He makes fun of his spelling, of his hair, of his demeanor, and of his business history. I don't know why he didn't do this sooner -- it's pretty clearly the only way to win over the core of Trump's support. The field is narrower now, sure, but it was pretty clear that everyone was just kind of dancing around the elephant in the room. It might have been a suicide mission to try to take him down like this, but it's one that would have had a high payoff if it could be survived and would get whoever did it gratitude with the party for decades. If anything, now seems like a worse time to do it than December or January would have been. It looks even likelier now that Trump will be the nominee, and a sitting senator probably doesn't want to make too much of an enemy with his likely next President.
Which makes me wonder if perhaps our new Koch protege might be angling for a third party run. The Koch brothers can afford to fund his candidacy almost entirely by themselves. They might actually prefer to run him as an independent because it will appear to legitimize their status as maverick outsider patriots. Finally, there's always the chance that Donald will completely implode on the campaign trail and make it into a real race again. If that happens, it's at least possible Rubio will be sworn into office in 2017.
More importantly, I think it's pretty obvious the Republican party is on the verge of collapse or a split. Running an independent but Republican-minded campaign seems like a good way to kick that off, and the Koch brothers might figure that if it's inevitable, they may as well take the opportunity to be the architects of it while they can.
360:
It really is going to shrink, though. His support skews old and white. Some of these people are old enough that they actually grew up in segregated schools and angry that their children and grandchildren didn't. Fortunately for the rest of us these voters have statistical tendency to die, and the country is getting less white. This might be the last year a Trump-style campaign could be viable even in the Republican party.
Like Tigre is fond of (angrily) pointing out, if they can stumble into lots of power at precisely the moment the moment that their long-term power is most threatened, what they do with that power will not be pretty.
363: I don't know why he didn't do this sooner
Clear strategy for "mainstreamers" until very recently was to try to become the last man standing against Trump (and Carson). Look at the targets of Super PAC spending through most of the campaign.
A miscalculation? Sure seems that way. Read a synopsis of the plot of Putney Swope for a taste.
I too am on Team Apo.
I am puzzled that Tigre can live in a state where Republicans have been entirely shut out and will be for the foreseeable future, and not believe that this election season is creating the same dynamic nationally. He and I clearly assess the risk:reward balance differently.
The crazy Republicans are old white people that are poisoned by Fox News. But they're dying out and their attitudes are repugnant to a lot of people. Yes, making those attitudes visible has value. I think there's going to be a sizable contingent of right-leaning voters who can't bring themselves to pull the lever for Trump. They won't vote for Clinton, so they'll have to stay home. Trump is the return of Palin, and people really resented McCain for nearly putting her near power.
Here in California, we're getting inklings of reasonable Republicans again; we have a couple good Republican mayors. Single party Democratic rule has been good all around.
I always long to believe in those demographic arguments, but I'm worried that they won't work out as successfully as I'd like them to. I mean, I keep hearing that this is the election where the demographics turn on Republicans and make it all over and then they stay in charge of large parts of America, so whatever their base dying off is doing to them it hasn't stopped them from setting things up so they'll be doing ok for at least a little longer.
And whether or not it's the Republican party I'm fairly sure that there's always going to be a decent sized chunk of voters who are appalled by the changes that have happened during their lifetime, and aggressively resent the fact that what used to be ok saying in polite company is now something you can barely say in the privacy of your own home without being shunned by everyone around them (including the ones who are also saying that same thing in their homes as well). If you add a closed ecosystem like Fox News or something to that you can pretty much turn any old unfashionable bigotry into all of them with fear mongering and social reinforcement too.
What I think will be interesting to see is if the changing demographics force a bunch of realignments in the way the parties work, in sort of the way that old (mostly exhausted) conflicts left the mid-twentieth century parties ideologically and geographically fractured prior to the Southern Strategy. What those would be, though, are a mystery to me.
I am puzzled that Tigre can live in a state where Republicans have been entirely shut out and will be for the foreseeable future, and not believe that this election season is creating the same dynamic nationally.
Long answer deleted, but at the national level we're way closer to California in 1995, maybe 1990, right now than we are to California in 2016. And an insane, desperate Republican party really fucked things up here for about 20 years, even without being actually in power. The national Republicans are definitely in partial power for the foreseeable future, at least the next 10 years, and will not be shut out nationally. I do think Trump is a terrible candidate for them in the Presidency and the long term. But you'll still have to deal with them for 20 years. A party that's openly fascist and cracking up, which inevitably will have some control over the levers of power and has a chance of actually being in power, is genuinely fucking dangerous, even if Trump appears pretty unelectable right now.
363: He's only a sitting Senator for the next 9 months; Rubio's seat is up this year and he's not running for reelection.
The crazy Republicans are old white people that are poisoned by Fox News. But they're dying out
Fox creates these people. There have been countless articles about once-liberal (or at least -reasonable) parents driven mad by Fox; it's foolish complacency to think that that well will dry up.
Anyone our age or older grew up in a culture that was comfortably majority white, which means that they're susceptible to the poison. Hell, people our age gladly join in on Millennial-hating using Fox-approved, get-off-my-lawn talking points. And I don't mean conservatives.
In absolute terms the potential audience for Fox is shrinking, but there will be enough to keep the GOP the party of angry white supremacy for a long time.
364: Trump leads every Republican demo; maybe some of those 20-y.o.s will outgrow it, but I wouldn't count on that. They say that whoever you vote for the first time is your party for life.
More broadly, I feel like this clip, via someone here's FB post is relevant to the topic under discussion. It's from the 1980 Republican primary debate and features Reagan and Bush I arguing about who can be more compassionate towards illegal immigrants. Lord knows I hate Reagan, but whatever you think about Trump or the Republican party it's clear that *something* has changed and is changing.
More broadly, I feel like this clip, via someone here's FB post is relevant to the topic under discussion.
Wow, that is remarkable.
Bush I actively campaigned against David Duke when he was the Republican nominee for governer in Lousiana. Bush II stacked his first RNC with non-white Republicans, and called Islam "the religion of peace".
the GOP the party of angry white supremacy for a long time.
Yeah, but that won't carry national elections. I keep saying that Republicans have to get 65% of the white vote. All the white vote, including white Democrats and white women. Angry white supremacy doesn't get them that far. Their unfortunate sidelines in misogyny looks more and more outdated as well.
371: To say that Trump draws similar percentages of voters among Republicans in younger demographics tells us almost nothing absent some information about the number of voters compared to the number of non-Republican voters in that age group.
All the evidence is that Trump, the Trump-equivalents and the Trump-lites are pushing young people out of the Republican Party.
it's clear that *something* has changed and is changing.
We know what this is. Billionaires have taken so much wealth that the small amount left for everyone else actually pinches in daily life. Climate change is making us communally poorer. The thing that's changed is that people are accurately assessing that they can't get ahead and probably can't keep up either. They're furious.
The Olds remember a time when they could still kick someone lower down, and Fox News is trying to keep that alive for them. But the Youngs seem to be thinking, 'wait, it sucks to be kicked. Maybe no one should be doing any kicking.' I wish they accompanied that with even more pitchforks, but I can wait.
372 and 374: Nobody is claiming, in this context, that Trump is like past Republicans. When did Cruz call Islam "a religion of peace?" Rubio?
To talk about whether Trump is preferable to his opponents, you have to compare him to his opponents. Not to some ancient RINO like Reagan.
The Overton Window has long ago moved on. Reagan even signed an amnesty bill.
Didn't Rubio sponsor an amnesty bill?
376: But that's just reiterating the strong demographics=destiny claim. My point is that, insofar as the GOP continues to exist, there's no evidence that Trump supporters are the proverbial pig-in-a-python that will eventually pass through the system.
It may well be that Trump destroys the GOP brand forever among the vast majority of under-50s (or whatever cutoff you like), so that it becomes a rump party sooner than mere demographics would indicate. Hell, the Democrats still ran against Hoover in my living memory, and I was born 40 years after he lost that election. But that's a separate claim from saying that his supporters are all oldsters about to die. Young Republicans aren't voting for Rubio or Rand, they're voting for Trump, same as every other Republican.
Didn't Rubio sponsor an amnesty bill?
Rubio claims he did not..
While a senator, Rubio co-authored the Gang of Eight bill in 2013 that included a pathway to citizenship. Ahead of the release of the bill, Rubio said that the proposal "is not amnesty."
There's a solid case to be made that Rubio was lying. But if we're going to give points for lying, Trump is yuuuuuge liar - and one with a much more heterodox history than Rubio.
In any event, Rubio is running hard away from the Gang of Eight compromise.
Trump, meanwhile, is going to have a big beautiful door in his wall.
From the linked piece, Rubio-the-Senate-candidate explicitly called out Reagan:
"You cannot grant amnesty. If you grant amnesty, you will send a message that all you have to do is come into America illegally, stay here long enough, and we will let you stay. No. 2, you will destroy any hopes you have of having a legal immigration system that works. If the American people see us grant amnesty, they will never again believe in legal immigration, they will never again support it. And that's wrong for our country, bad for our future."
"In fact in '86 when Reagan created an amnesty program, about 3 million people were granted amnesty. The result was that you had a bunch of people standing in line to enter legally who all claimed to be illegal because it was easier to get through the amnesty program. So we can't have amnesty.
If we're going to give politicians credit for hypocrisy and insincerity, I think Trump comes out better than Rubio.
Here's Atrios giving more reasons to like Trump: Anti-Trumpism
I suppose Trump's explicit racism as opposed to the usual dog-whistle kind might make them worry about the GOP brand a bit, but otherwise the general Republican bigwig and establishment journalism (except for cable news) opposition to Trump has little to do with Trump himself or his policies. It's that DC is an interconnected web of journalism, think tanks, donors, various party "insiders," low, middle, and high level staffers, lobbyists, the military-industrial and security state complexes, etc. Most of those people know they can leverage what connections they have under the other candidates, because they're all, to varying degrees, a part of the same web. But Trump isn't. Even "outsider" candidates usually have to kiss the pinky rings of those who are, or imagine they are, "insiders," but not Trump. Statements like "The Republican Party is imploding" don't (or shouldn't) mean that Trump is destroying the electoral chances of Republicans, it means he's potentially breaking that web.
by Atrios at 15:00
128 Comments
What Atrios is saying could be said equally, with a few wording changes, about the Democratic Party as well. Both parties' establishments have more in common than they like to admit.
Oh I think they know it very well.
371: I voted for Dole in '96. By 2000 I was supporting Bradley. And now I'm a Sanders fan.
385
I voted for Reagan in 1980 (I was so stupid in those days), skipped a couple and am now a Sanders fan.
Something something 9/11 something Chappaquiddick.
269: I have finally succumbed and just put the song on.
This piece by Mark Ames is interesting and disappointing: https://pando.com/2015/08/11/behind-scenes-donald-trump-roger-stone-show/
TLDR Donald Trump is just a mainstream Republican dirty trickster. Probably true and sad, I really liked the idea he had them shitting bricks.
389:
Holy shit I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse.
||
so, I went to vote and the machine that takes the ballots was broken.
I left without taking a ballot and will go back tonight. People were just handing them over to one of the poll workers. There was a woman who looked like she might becabTrump supporter making a big stink about it and threatening to post a youtube video.
Is it worth complaining to the Secretary of State?
||
||
I just tried to vote. The machine that they put the ballots in is broken.
A woman who looked like she might be a Trump voter was making a huge stink, threatening to make a youtube video.
I was bothered and left because the line was growing. Some people were leaving their ballots with the election worker. I left and will go back after work.
Is it worth complaining about to the Secretary of State. Politely.
|>
Huh, that didn't show up initially.
389: really not seeing how Trump's activities so far are supposed to be helping the establishment Republican candidate win. And Ames' research ability continues to be far short of minimum necessary.
As I recall Stone left his campaign pretty early on. If there was some fancy chess maneuvering going on there I'm guessing it died the second Trump realized how easily he could win that race. It's not impossible that if (and I'm still super skeptical, but if) that is what Stone was there for it could easily be why he got out of the boat at that point.
Also 394 seems right. It's really not clear how it was supposed to help the Republicans.
This is kind of impressive: Max Boot goes so far as to say "I'm a lifetime Republican but Trump surge proves that every bad thing Democrats have ever said about GOP is basically true." (He's on a #NeverTrump roll.)
That is impressive. I'm curious how long the current spat of self-knowledge among a bunch of the "no no conservativism is respectable and intelligent and the Republicans are conservative" commentators will last after the election. My bet is that like 2012 there will be a brief autopsy about what could have happened and the conclusion that it was a brief madness brought about by the Kenyan Usurper and as soon as the grown-up RNC establishment types are back in control everyone who voted for Trump will suddenly not be racist crazies anymore and/or disappear entirely from America without somehow costing the Republican party any votes whatsoever.
If Trump gets elected god only knows how long it'll take, but I'm still predicting a revisionism regarding just how ugly he and the people supporting him are as early as the convention. So we'll see.
395 is interesting: Clinton loses against Cruz? Really?
397 is impressive and I really was not expecting that to be a verbatim quote.
I talked to someone at work today who voted for Rubio, because she thought that Clinton could beat him more easily.
538's latest podcast points out that Dukakis in 88, Bush in 92 and Bush in 2000 were all expected to win the popular vote based on polls at this point in the campaign; general election polls are pretty meaningless this far out.
I don't get how Clinton loses against Cruz but Bernie beats him by 17. What ~10% of the electorate has the preference (ignoring other intervening candidates) Bernie-Cruz-Hillary?
403:
I think people are very, very much underestimating the role of cynicism as a driving force in this election. There are people who really are insane enough to vote for Cruz just to stick it to the Clintons. Bernie is anti-Clinton but also has spoken out in favor of not cutting Medicare and Social Security.
403: maybe, none. The poll doesn't ask them to rank candidates, it asks them how they would vote in various matchups. So it's possible that Sanders beats Cruz, but Cruz beats Clinton, because there are a lot of students who say they would turn out to vote for Sanders against Cruz but would refrain from voting for Clinton against Cruz. Or alternatively a load of people who really hate Clinton and will vote against her, but would be pretty unexcited by Sanders or Cruz and so wouldn't vote.
399: Some candidates have been scrutinized; some have not. Even Trump hasn't really gone after Cruz yet. Similarly, nobody really believes that Bernie's polling reflects what would actually happen in November.
Everybody knows Hillary, on the other hand. Her negatives have probably been driven up as far as they are going to go. (Unfortunately, her favorable ratings are probably also where they are going to stay.)
I think these polls are systematically going to underestimate Hillary by overestimating everybody else. It's only a recent development that other Republicans are seriously attacking Trump, and his weaknesses as a Republican have relatively little to do with his weaknesses as a general election candidate. Heck, his deficiencies as a Republican have almost nothing to do with his considerable deficiencies as a human being.
404: Even more important than cynicism is complete ignorance. Some percentage of people that hate Hillary Clinton and know absolutely nothing about Ted Cruz.
Even more important than cynicism is complete ignorance.
Words to live by.
Heck, his deficiencies as a Republican have almost nothing to do with his considerable deficiencies as a human being.
Negative correlation is still a correlation.
Heck, his deficiencies as a Republican have almost nothing to do with his considerable deficiencies as a human being.
His advantages as a Republican, on the other hand, have very much to do with his considerable deficiencies as a human being.
406: While some of that is certainly in play, I really think it has more to do with 2016 being an absolutely terrible year to be the establishment candidate in either party, as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker have discovered. If there were a third credible Democrat in that race (i.e., not O'Malley), I expect Sanders would be winning outright.
412: Dunno, I think the difference between Clinton and the Republican "establishment" candidates is mainly that the Democrats actually do have a popular (with the party) president in office, which makes being the establishment more attractive.
What is Kevin Drum on about today? He's fretting over principled Republicans' inner quandary? I'd like to see a lot more of that quandary. Really study it. Watch it for a while, to make sure I haven't missed any aspects of it.
Seriously, K-Drum. Pigeons coming home to roost is the kindest way I'd describe that quandary, not 'an occasion for compassion.'
I think 396 nails it. Trump hired his longtime pal for his vanity Prudential run. When Trump figured out he could win, his interests no longer aligned with Stone's. Boom, done.
I'm wondering about the E. Warren hypothetical. The Bernie voters are her voters, basically. But how would she be doing against Hillary?
On one hand, she is an extremely inexperienced politician compared to him. On the other hand, she is actually an established Democrat (inside the tent pissing out, so to speak) so you wouldn't have every single party insider resenting her presence.
414: Well I have zero sympathy for conservatives or Republicans, Drum's whole thing is that he harbors no hatred in his heart (except for Apple). I think he's always believed that some percentage of Republicans were completely sincere, including the parts where they denied that their policies/politics were designed to appeal to racists. I kind of think 397 (and the thing Drum quotes*) suggests that, for some sliver, that denial was (mostly) honest. That is, Max Boot surely knew that more racists voted GOP than Dem, but mostly believed that he was part of a principled ideological party, not the party of white supremacy. I mean, it's not as if even cynical Dems would have predicted that an openly racist demagogue would win in a cake walk--we all though the white supremacy part was a unifying theme, not a bedrock beyond which literally nothing else matters.
*which was in the WSJ, so negative points for obvious manipulative dishonesty, but it's the same sentiment that seems pretty sincere from Boot. Who, as a foreign policy guy, probably never paid enough attention to domestic issues to realize that the Republican story of how their anti-black policies were only coincidentally so was always BS. I mean, the guy's a pro-war asshole, so fuck him, but I'm willing to concede that he's shy of monstrosity.
What is Kevin Drum on about today? He's fretting over principled Republicans' inner quandary?
I think he is, precisely, addressing himself to Max Boot in 397 (thanks Minivet, that is remarkable). There's a easy (and correct) liberal response to say, "sure, Republicans may say NeverTrump, but when push comes to shove they'll pull the lever for him in November." Drum is saying, "that's because it's hard to draw a line and say, I cannot support this." I read him as both wanting to encourage conservative Republicans to make that choice -- to live up to their rhetoric and vote against Trump -- and to remind liberals that it's a big thing to ask.
This would certainly be the first time I have linked to a McArdle article for any reason other than to mock it.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-29/the-die-hard-republicans-who-say-nevertrump
415: I do follow Stone on Twitter; and despite not being with the campaign he has continued to be a strong promoter ob Trumps' on social* and real media (although he was recently "banned" from CNN**). So as with everything about the man, I would not assume that the on-the-surface impression is what is really going on.
*His main activity has actually been bashing Clinton and Bush.
**Stone called Navarro a "diva bitch," and "borderline retarded." He said Martin was a "stupid negro," and called both of them "quota hires." (I think on Twitter.)
417 seems right to me when it comes to Boot especially, but I'd disagree about the honesty of the ignorance. A lot of them were definitely ignorant of how direct that racism was, and how central it was, and how authoritarian and divorced from reality the GOP is. But I don't think that ignorance comes from happening not to run across things that would make it obvious, or just not being in a position to easily notice how bad it was outside of the polite-insiders-we're-totally-principled circles* either.
I think the key when it comes to Boot is that he doesn't say that it turns out that the GOP is [whatever], he says that it's what the Democrats have been saying about it for years and years now. Which means he's well aware that intelligent knowledgeable people were saying this stuff over and over, and chose to not pay attention to what they were pointing at.
*I'm also a bit suspicious of apparently honest and thoughtful people who take this stuff seriously as well, if only because 90+% of the stuff that is supposedly conservative philosophy and thought and stuff is the kind of stuff that's nice sounding rhetoric but in actual thought is mile-wide-inch-deep stuff, where it tends to collapse when poked at with questions like "No but really why is that?", or "Can you give examples of where that consequence has happened in the past?", or "And what connects this policy to that principle, exactly?". There are people trying to take seriously a lot of the stuff out there (like the libertarians turned liberal because "oh, oh right ok I see" phenomenon). But there's way, way more self-congratulatory people passing empty phrases back and forth and patting each other on the back for being serious thinkers, held up by an elaborate system of funding designed to create useful idiots. I think it's the sort of thing that a lot of the people trying to be serious thinkers should (given what their abilities seem to be) see right through almost immediately, but a lot of them don't.
This would certainly be the first time I have linked to a McArdle article for any reason other than to mock it.
That is notable.
Conversely, if you want to grind your teeth, read Scott Adams on Trump (and, if you do click that link, remember that I warned you).
**Stone called Navarro a "diva bitch," and "borderline retarded." He said Martin was a "stupid negro," and called both of them "quota hires." (I think on Twitter.)
I can certainly see why Trump wouldn't want a loose cannon like him around.
419: The comments to this story in Gawker are the same. Anecdotes about Republicans who will stay home rather than vote for Trump. My friend's parents, Republican local party officials for decades are similar. Her father will vote for the Republican nominee, but her mom already knows she can't bring herself to vote for any of them.
396,415 Thank you for providing reason to take Mark Ames' piece less seriously.
417 I'm not prepared to give Boot credit for sincerity. I think he's positioning himself for the likely loss of Trump and the need to detox the party from the truth. If you are a foreign policy guy it shouldn't escape your notice that US foreign policy is fundamentally about murdering brown people.
Roger Stone tweet form today for instance:
I am disturbed by numerous reports of voting irregularities in multiple states
Is the Establishment stealing votes from @realDonaldTrump ?
From McArdle's article, which is delicious and wonderful:
"It may be true that the country I love and fought for has gone over the cliff and is willing to elect a narcissistic con-man as president, but I will never, under any circumstances, put my name to its death warrant."
No, fucker. It wasn't "the country". It was YOUR party, YOUR ideological peers. You did nothing while Fox News sent them batshit crazy, and now you're stuck with the candidate they want.
This is also a worthwhile read: http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism
Trump (and the similar candidates that will inevitably follow) is an enormous problem for the GOP's long-term health. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of assholes.
I'm ambivalent about the McArdle piece. On the one hand, they are in fact right about what Trump is, are seeing him clearly and, which reflects well on them, are uncomfortable with the idea of him anywhere near any kind of power. But also they keep talking about their commitment to Conservativism, and to other Conservative candidates and so on, and frankly Trump really isn't anything more dangerous than plenty of the candidates they talk about donating to, just without the veneer of plausible(ish) deniability. (I mean, look at the substantive stuff they're objecting to! Outside of "he's a dangerous freak" a lot of that stuff is practically the Republican party platform!)
I think that a lot of them are the kind of people who simply adopt a political party/tribe based on their personal history or something (an awful lot talk about how they or their family were Republicans for decades). And so I'm willing to believe that they're not much more racist than your average person in America, except maybe for being a susceptible to racist ideas based on where they're coming from. I'm not convinced that that's a good thing at all: treating politics like football is a really, really dangerous and harmful thing: it's not a game, and the content of what people are proposing/say matters a lot*. I mean:
My grandfather and great-grandfather were white Republicans in Alabama in an era when that simple fact would get the Klan on your lawn. They despised George Wallace.You have to work hard not to notice that the parties traded status as far as that goes, and did it a long time ago too.
*See also this bit from Drum, where he talks about some Republicans being willing to sacrifice a really large amount of what they want to avoid a massively bigoted demagogue from taking office:
Either way, they're giving up their chance to kill Obamacare, to nominate a Supreme Court judge, to restore religious liberty as they see it, and to repeal all those executive orders they hate.He's seriously saying "Look they're sacrificing their ability to replace Scalia with someone who will exert massive amounts of power to support bigots and wealthy interests because of their fear that Trump would exert massive amounts of power to support bigots and wealthy interests." This isn't principle.
417 I'm not prepared to give Boot credit for sincerity. I think he's positioning himself for the likely loss of Trump and the need to detox the party from the truth. If you are a foreign policy guy it shouldn't escape your notice that US foreign policy is fundamentally about murdering brown people.
I don't think that has anything to do with it. If you are a foreign policy guy it saddens you to realize that nobody votes on the basis of foreign policy, nobody thinks we should be the world's policeman, nobody even thinks we could even come close to successfully policing the world if we tried. The popularity of Trump's "Let's admit it, America sucks" message is shocking to them. These guys thought they were winning elections by having grandiose plans to rebuild and reorganize the Middle East. Everyone said "Yes, that sounds good", but nobody actually believed in it or wanted to spend trillions of dollars on it if they had the option not to.
So Max Boot and the neocons now has to start thinking like all the free-market economists do. They know that most people think immigration is bad for non-immigrants and free trade agreements are bad for everyone. So while trying to pursue those policies, they know they have to fool people into being unaware that they are happening until it's too late.
414 et al. The most significant contribution fro Drum today seems to be that his family name used to be "Drumpf".
431- I'm not sure I see the contradiction between your thinking and mine. I think it has long been the case that foreign policy types counted on people not understanding what is going on though.
After reading the Vox article, I'm left wondering: do American minorities have a latent (or active) authoritarian streak? Like, why don't Black people want a strongman to take care of them? Or Latinos? Have they learned that any strongman will beat the shit out of them first?
I understood that they only sampled (and are discussing) white authoritarianism. But I'm wondering whether authoritarianism can persist in any homogenous culture, or if there's something about the white culture (was once on top?) that combines to form authoritarianism.
Wouldn't Latinos and Blacks require Latino or Black strongmen respectively?
Like, why don't Black people want a strongman to take care of them?
Who's the black private pol that's a sex machine to all the chicks?
Who's the man who would risk his neck to keep the liberal media in check?
434: Don't know if there's data, but it would be interestingly complicated by the childrearing-related questions they are often measuring authoritarianism off of.
What is Kevin Drum on about today? He's fretting over principled Republicans' inner quandary? I'd like to see a lot more of that quandary. Really study it. Watch it for a while, to make sure I haven't missed any aspects of it.
John Scalzi asking who is the "we" that should try to stop Trump, seems to agree with Megan.
News flash, pundit guys: No one can save the GOP from Trump but the GOP, and its voters clearly have no intention of doing that.
After reading the Vox article, I'm left wondering: do American minorities have a latent (or active) authoritarian streak? Like, why don't Black people want a strongman to take care of them? Or Latinos? Have they learned that any strongman will beat the shit out of them first?
Get ready for potential black strongmen to see if they can pull a Trump in a Democratic primary sometime soon. Floyd Mayweather Jr., Senator from Michigan?
Is McMegan just jealous that Trump stole her idea of beating up protesters and actually implemented it? It's always hard when your throw away comment gets turned into big business by someone else.
438: Right.
Drum, from Day 1, has completely misread the Trump phenomenon and failed to grasp the appropriate reaction to it.
And we're asking them to vote for her. Or, at the very least, to campaign against Trump and cast a protest vote. Either way, they're giving up their chance to kill Obamacare, to nominate a Supreme Court judge, to restore religious liberty as they see it, and to repeal all those executive orders they hate.
Trump is also not a good bet to kill Obamacare, restore religious liberty as they see it, or nominate a Supreme Court justice that they would find appropriate. Plus, he's a pig.
And who is the best bet to give us a shiny new Middle East War? Probably not Trump, who for all we know is serious about his disdain for the decision to invade Iraq.
This should be an easy choice for conservatives of any non-racist stripe.
Haven't read through McMegan's e-mails, but anti-Trump Republicanism isn't any more of a mystery than pro-Trump Republicanism is.
The Republican elite - a substantial minority of Republican voters - has always viewed a big part of the party's electoral coalition with contempt: those poor, dumb bastards who respond to stuff like Terri Schiavo.
I mean, I've got Republican elite types in my immediate family who have said as much over the years. They've always felt that Real Republicanism wasn't an easy sell - that the party starts out with 47% of the public (to use Romney's figure) predisposed to opposition.
All Republicans know that the party's animating philosophy is that We are better than They. To the elite, Trump is a "They."
And the Trump folks have always understood that. They have been willing to endure the contempt because they are pandered to, and because the only alternative is to enter a coalition with a bunch of brown people.
But now they've got a real alternative.
440 reminds of something that's been bothering me recently: why are people protesting Trump rallies?
I mean, I get that he's awful and pushing back against that awfulness is valuable and important. But why go to his rally and start shouting? What makes me wonder isn't that it's futile (though, really guys come on), it's that it seems actively counter-productive at this point. Some lone protester suddenly interrupting and the the crowd and the security there ganging up to throw them out is part or the rally at this point. It's part of the show: "Look! There are the press - hate them! And there! There's a Liberal! Shout at them! Threaten them! We're all together against our hated enemies! We're tough and totally not scared of things!". Why would you want to help out Trump like that?
It reminds me of a passage someone here quoted from someone in the thirties who went to a Nazi rally and was stunned by the extent to which someone would make a fuss and then "now everyone beat up that guy!" was basically just a part of what would happen at them, like it was part of the appeal. (I would link to it, because it's certainly a creepy parallel but I lost track of where it was ages ago.)
443 Is a really good point. It's some kind of extreme naivete bordering on complicity.
Also I just got around to reading the article in 429, and it's good, but there's kind of an impressive amount of denial in it (by the authors they're talking about as well as the article itself) all the same - especially impressive given that the article is literally pointing out exactly what everyone surprised by Trump has been in denial about for years:
Their book concluded that the GOP, by positioning itself as the party of traditional values and law and order, had unknowingly attracted what would turn out to be a vast and previously bipartisan population of Americans with authoritarian tendencies.
"Traditional values" and "Law and Order" aren't neutral terms here picking out some general kind of interest in a stable and calm society. They're code words for "hate women" and "hate black people". There's nothing unintentional about making not especially disguised appeals to racists and it turning out that your voters seem to include an awful lot racism. (And, I mean, we know it was intentional because they talked openly about it at the time those terms first showed up.)
And it goes on to describe Authoritarians in pretty much the exact terms any sane observer would use to describe the governing philosophy of Fox News, and the entire media ecosystem that the conservative movement has been building and curating since the '80s, and trying to increase in people as much as possible:
Authoritarians are thought to express much deeper fears than the rest of the electorate, to seek the imposition of order where they perceive dangerous change, and to desire a strong leader who will defeat those fears with force.
Would anyone be surprised to find out that Trump hires "protestors" to provide a punching bag to his supporters? Campaign staff meets them outside with all fifty after they're ejected.
It would be a good idea for him to do it. The only surprise to me would be the amount of prior planning involved in doing it, and the extent to which they've been able to prevent the protesters in question from admitting after the fact to it.
People have been taught that non-violent civil rights protesters were heroes, and seeing the violence directed against them awoke the conscience of the nation. But...things have changed. Now Bull Connor would be viewed as a hero?
He probably was by the same kind of people* who support Trump.
That Vox article is still driving me nuts with its combination of important insight and total, bizarre lack of it. After basically giving an explanation of how bigotry works, they conclude with "So really it's not bigotry per se." It's like watching a person without much insight accurately explain what very insightful people are saying and then adding some reflections of their own to it. If they could convey the first bit, what the hell is going on with the second? Also it's pretty clear that despite the people talking about how they're unfortunately stuck with the term "Authoritarians" they could just as easily use the more traditional term for these exact same people: cowards.
*Or just the same people in a lot of cases, to be honest.
These are both good: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/02/29/democrats-always-prove-the-commies-right/
Those are both very good. Depressing, but good. Thanks.
450.1: Nice to see that Freddie is still at it.
