Charles Pierce argues that now is the time for the Republican Party to die. See also The End of the Republican Party at FiveThirtyEight.
While I don’t see the Republican Party disappearing anytime soon, Donald Trump’s chances of becoming POTUS are sinking faster than cement shoes in the East River. Per FiveThirtyEight, on July 30 it was Trump, 50.1, Clinton, 49.9. Now it’s 18.4 and 81.5, respectively. At this rate Trump will be in negative numbers by Monday.
A former Wall Street Journal reporter writes about his days covering Donald Trump. He writes that Donald Trump is a bad, bad businessman.
A former deputy director of the CIA endorses Hillary Clinton. This is the juiciest bit:
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated.
Mr. Putin is a great leader, Mr. Trump says, ignoring that he has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin. Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests — endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States.
In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.
Trump’s erratic behavior is getting so much media attention that Hillary Clinton is nearly invisible. This may be helping her also.
Clinton’s biggest problem now is that she’s not doing so well among Millennials.
And yet even though roughly three-fourths of all battleground-state Millennials expressed these disparaging views of Trump, the survey found Clinton drawing just 43 percent against him in a four-way race that included libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. While Trump attracted only 24 percent, nearly as many picked Johnson or Stein, and the rest said they were either undecided or wouldn’t vote. By comparison, Obama carried two-thirds of Millennials in 2008 and three-fifths in 2012.
But in comparing two-way and four-way polls at Real Clear Politics, it seems to me that the two fringe party candidates, Stein and Johnson, are taking votes from both Clinton and Trump about equally. So that may be a wash.
Fortunately, the Olympics will give us a little relief from politics. Enjoy.
One:
The Olympics suck!
Or, at least they do since everyone is now a pro, and since US TV only covers US athletes, and doesn’t show us many others.
And yes, I know, I can go to the internet to watch the games, but, while as a child and a young man, I couldn’t wait! Now, I could care less!
Between the pollution, and the incomplete construction, and the horrible police and security in Brazil, these games could be a disaster.
All the more reason to build a permanent Summer Olympic structure in Greece, and stop the blatant corruption, and the rip-off of host cities.
The Winter Games can rotate in the existing structures in Nordic countries, the Alps, the US, and Japan – at least until global warming make the games a moot point…
A for Putin, I believe – as may have suggested – that since Western banks haven’t lent that dead-beat money in decades because of all of his bankruptcies, that his money over the last decade or two, has been coming from Putin’s Plutocratic and Oligarch friends. No matter tRUMP behaves his Vlad’s bitch!
And polls don’t really matter until after Labor Day.
After the conventions, and their “bounces (HA, for tRUMP),” and the Olympics, voters who aren’t political junkies basically pay a minimum amount of attention.
We’ll see better what’s what, in a month or so.
It seems to me that Millennials (or whatever they are called in different periods) are always the tough sell – not just now. I hope they decide to vote.
My daughter pooh-poohs my plans to emigrate to Ireland 😀
I think Trump wil not go away that easily. He will say anything sand his supports will believe anything he says. A poll question on a local right wing radio show was whether the 255,000 number of new jobs in July was a true or fake number. 93% of people who answered said the number was fake. His many supports live in an alternative universe where elections are rigged, government numbers are fake and their is no global warming.
It’s true that Trump supporters live in an alternate universe, but that’s probably short of a third of the electorate. He has to broaden his appeal beyond that to win, and he doesn’t seem to realize that.
Correction “there is no global warming”.
I have recently decided that, after listening quietly
to ridiculous lies on Fox news and from individuals for years while saying to myself noone can believe what is being said, its just hyperbole, now I realize they do believe it, those people are that ignorant or that perverse and so I decide whenever I am able to respond to the craziness I do so. When Trump says that Hillery is the devil, I hope most people see it as a crude political insult, but a serious percentage of the Trump base hears it as the literal truth. Trump and his people will have to be continually challenged not only through election day, but long after his defeat, for the election will be rigged you know. If he wins you won’t have do much you will be in jail. Yes, I am that concerned about effect his election will have. In fact my pessimism increased substantially when I saw your statement that only a third of the citizenry live in their alternate universe. That is an immense number.
Previous party R pony riders were believed by their minions to be blessed by Jesus, and therefore had “skills in magicâ€. I’m thinking the hardcore dupes seemed to hold out hope that Dubya’s once $80B war had to become a $6T+ war, because it was part of some kind of mysterious “mission from Godâ€. There’s no way bin Laden could have been smarter than Jesus’ own US of A.
Trump doesn’t seem like a Jesus saint to me. What I’m hearing from former Dubya dupes is the “but Clinton is worse!†argument. It may be all they’ve got.
Don’t over analyse .. Trump is just a big bag of shit, believe me! If people can’t already see Trump for what he really is, than they’ll never see him for the big bag of shit he really is. My fear, to put it poetically, is the wind beneath his vulture wings. God help us if we as a nation have become so spiritually and intellectually gnarled up that a person of Trumps character could even be seriously considered acceptable in a leadership position.
Before George W. Bush was elected back in 2000 I had the misguided attitude that the Presidency was more of a figurehead position of limited power than one that could cause serious damage to our country. I’ve since learned by that mistake to make the harshest judgment in deciding what’s acceptable for leading our nation..Trump falls short in every measure. He beyond flawed..he’s a scourge upon our nation.
“PAX” tRUMP = Possible.death for humanity.
Good?
Bad?
Let the FSM decide…
Whenever rats are backed into a corner, they get very aggressive and fight viciously. It’s important to keep your fingers out of the way.
Hopefully, ‘ the ship is abandionig the sinking rats!!’
Just saw that Rubio announced that there would be no abortions for zika-infected pregnant women. I recommend that the women deliver the affected babies and leave them on Rubio’s doorstep.
Rubio knows what’s best for you women..I’d recommend that women deliver Rubio a resounding defeat in his upcoming attempt to hold onto his primarily vacant Senate seat (the one he was so disillusioned with).
Trump is a big bag of shit … and Rubio is a midsize bag of shit.
Rubio is a pendejo just like the rest of those GOP dirtbags.. Like a Chatty Cathy doll, just pull the string and Rubio says..” Obama knows exactly what he’s doing”
Boy, I don’t know, I suppose there are a lot of ways to try to make sense of die hard Trump supporters and their ability to tolerate deception and bald faced lies. When we talk about truth and lies, it seems that we are most often just relating what appears to be true to us. Appearance and reality can become entangled with a lot of other things, including the narrative that we adopt to separate us from the crowd of humanity. Some of us can handle being remarkably unremarkable and some of us can’t; the more desperate someone is for for some brief spark of notoriety, the more likely they are to accept any web of outlandish notions that elevates them out of the pack. It’s like the phenomenon that Sinclair Lewis described when he wrote about people believing lies that their livelihood depends on. So, people who feel what little relevance and control they had in their lives slipping away, people who feel nameless and without distinction will welcome any set of illusions that gives them the sense of self worth that they need, regardless of how far it falls from reality. More objective views of truth, facts and critical analysis, really just make them angrier, because they threaten the the construct that sustains them. But, that’s just one way to look at it.
I suppose the Rubio phenomenon is related. The man truly is the quintessential empty suit. I often wonder if he knows how ridiculous he is, and most often my guess would be that he doesn’t. If you give someone a handsome income and prestige in exchange for playing the ventriloquist’s dummy, they might come to believe that they are speaking on their own. Come to think of it, have you ever seen him drink water and talk at the same time?
Whoa! I think I just explained his SOTU response.