Month: February 2016

Nobody gives him credit for anything but he’s great anyway!

by digby

My experience in Iowa was a great one. I started out with all of the experts saying I couldn’t do well there and ended up in 2nd place. Nice

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2016

Because I was told I could not do well in Iowa, I spent very little there – a fraction of Cruz & Rubio. Came in a strong second. Great honor

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2016

The media has not covered my long-shot great finish in Iowa fairly. Brought in record voters and got second highest vote total in history!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2016

I will be talking about my wonderful experience in Iowa and the simultaneous unfair treatment by the media-later in New Hampshire. Big crowd

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2016

I don’t believe I have been given any credit by the voters for self-funding my campaign, the only one. I will keep doing, but not worth it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2016

The new three lane GOP highway

by digby

Naturally, I wrote about the GOP race Iowa for Salon today:

Sadly, some of his most fervent believers are now becoming distraught that America might not actually be made great again:

She has a right to be disappointed. Trump promised so many victories they’d be begging him to stop winning so much. Imagine how let down she must feel with a 2nd place after that.

Princeton Election Consortium’s Sam Wang sees Rubio’s rise as the key to stopping Trump:

On the Republican side, Trump and Cruz switched places relative to polls. To compare the final polls with tonight’s counts, Trump underperformed by 26.5-24.3=2.2%, Cruz overperformed by 27.7-23.5=4.2%, and Rubio overperformed by 23.1-18.0=5.1%. The late swing for Rubio was visible in the final days of polling. All of this is well within the range of normal polling error in primaries.

It is highly premature to say that Trump is doomed. However, he does look a little less inevitable. It is certainly possible that he can crash from his high position in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and nationally. But I think a bigger risk to him is the possibility that tonight’s results will pressure Rubio’s lower-tier rivals to get out sooner rather than later. As I’ve written before, if the field gets down to three candidates after New Hampshire, that opens up a narrow route to stopping Trump. In short, tonight kept Marco Rubio’s chances alive.

This could take a while, though, because the problem going forward is money. Not the lack of it, as it used to be, but the fact that there’s just so much of it. Normally, the “winnowing” would be happening rapidly as candidates just could no longer afford to stay on the trail, much less pay for ads and staffers. Even if Rubio manages to do well enough to persuade the rest of the establishment pack to get out of the way, all three candidates can keep going indefinitely if they keep winning. And they could. With three candidates in three different lanes it’s not impossible that they could all take states over the next few months.

It’s fair to guess, however, that Trump is not going to be willing to grind out a win by adding up his delegates state by state. It just doesn’t seem like his style. If he starts losing, it’s hard to imagine he’ll stick around for a long slog. His deflated concession speech last night proved that he’s not someone who is energized by being an underdog.

But who knows? Iowa is hardly predictive of winners. Just ask Presidents Huckabee and Santorum. Neither is New Hampshire, for that matter. The good news is that actual voters are now in the mix, giving the rest of us a real sense of what voters, in certain places anyway, are thinking about all these people. And it should be good news for both parties that turnout in Iowa was excellent, which hopefully presages some enthusiastic civic participation across the nation. It’s apathy that usually bring the worst results in politics.

Onward …This thing ain’t over.

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Chamber of Commerce expects Clinton to support TPP as president

by Gaius Publius

If Hillary Clinton is elected president, will she support TPP anyway? Clinton has been pro-“free trade” deals, including very pro-TPP until just recently, when she announced her opposition.

How strong is that opposition? Tom Donohue, chief of the powerful pro-business lobby Chamber of Commerce, thinks it’s not very strong at all. He expects, if elected, she will follow her husband’s earlier lead (he actually brought that up) and get “practical.”

Here’s a clip:

 
This is the essence of money talking about money at a place where money’s private jets have gathered (the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland). From the Bloomberg News introduction:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas Donohue discusses his stance and outlook for the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. He speaks from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on “Bloomberg ‹GO›.”

In the conversation above, note first that the reason he thinks the Senate can’t approve TPP until after the election is that too many Republican senators would be made vulnerable by voting to approve it. Before the election those senators couldn’t vote for TPP and still preserve their seats. After the election, or in a lame duck session, that restriction is lifted.

In other words, he knows and admits that even Republican voters hate TPP. But the wealthy want it anyway, and they’re willing to wait a few months to get it. Even if it wins by “two votes,” as he explains above, it still wins, as do they.

Second, he thinks Clinton will revert back to the family pattern — remember, “two for the price of one” was a Clinton claim — and become “practical” once she gains power and frees herself from having to make promises to voters. Listen starting at 2:45 in the clip (my transcript and underscored emphasis):

Host 1: “Why aren’t you in some trouble whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican? It’s not just Trump. Hillary Clinton has said she’s against TPP.

Host 2: “Bernie Sanders!”

Donohue: “Bernie Sanders is one deal. What Hillary Clinton is doing in this primary is trying to run one step faster than the senator from Massachusetts [does he mean Warren, or is this a misspeak?], who has been threatening her and pushing her to take these far far progressive, very very left steps.

“If she were to get nominated, if she were to be elected, I have a hunch that what runs in the family is, you get a little practical if you ever get the job.”

Host 1: “We used to call it triangulation, right, back in the old Clinton days.”

For me, the key word is “hunch.” Because until Clinton releases the text of her speeches to all corporate clients, and not just to the banks, you’ll never know if his “hunch” didn’t start with someone whispering in his ear, “Don’t worry, Tom. You know I don’t mean it.” After all, the list of Clinton ties to money goes on and on. For an excellent recent analysis of the cross-pollination of gifts and favors, read this, “The Clinton System,” from the New York Review of Books.

Donohue is not no one — he and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are each a very big someone in the world of money, a world that both Clintons have a united and decades-long familiarity with. Just a very small taste of what’s in the NYRB article, this paragraph (my emphasis):

In March 2011, for example, Bill Clinton was paid $175,000 by the Kuwait
America Foundation to be the guest of honor and keynote speaker at its
annual Washington gala. Among the sponsors were Boeing and the
government of Kuwait, through its Washington embassy. Shortly before,
the State Department, under Hillary Clinton, had authorized a $693
million deal to provide Kuwait with Boeing’s Globemaster military
transport aircraft. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton had the
statutory duty to rule on whether proposed arms deals with foreign
governments were in the US’s national interest.

That’s both damning and given the way of the world, at least ours, par for the course. A $175,000 “thank you” to one of the Clintons after the other removed the last hurdle to a nearly $700 million deal involving the same two parties — that’s some “system,” as the article calls it. There are countless examples of this in the NYRB piece. Coincidence? You decide.

Does Donohue think he knows something?

I think Donohue above is dropping one of those “nudge-nudge” hints to the wealthy, a hint that once they get rid of Sanders (they being the bipartisan insider establishment that runs this beneficial game), everything will continue as before. It sounds to me like he knows something, and he’s very comfortable passing it on to Bloomberg viewers interested in the Davos tales.

My suggestion: If you want to avoid another 2009 neoliberal hangover from policies you didn’t vote for … the time to act is now, in the primary. I strongly believe we won’t get another chance like this in our lifetime. In 2024 we’ll be in an entirely remade world.

Speaking of people who know something…

Ms. Warren in the quote above — she maybe knows something too. TPP signing is due this week. Watch this space.

Blue America has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. If you’d like to help out, go here; you can adjust the split any way you like at the link. If you’d like to “phone-bank for Bernie,” go here. You can volunteer in other ways by going here. And thanks!

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP
 

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So many states, so many votes to suppress
by Tom Sullivan

The Iowa caucuses are over. The pollsters are licking their wounds. Donald Trump met his Waterloo, writes Joan Walsh, bested by Ted Cruz. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are in a tie so close that several precincts resorted to a coin toss, “one of many oddities of the Iowa caucuses.”

What that means is upcoming primaries and the even general election could feel the impact of new voter ID laws in place for their first presidential election. A recent study begins to support that despite assurances to the contrary that they do indeed have a discriminatory effect. More on that in a minute.

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio thinks voter purges, long lines at the polls, and voter ID laws are no big deal. Ari Berman writes that the GOP is now the party of Ted Cruz, who championed Texas’ strict voter ID law and, as Texas’ solicitor general, filed a brief in support of Indiana’s ID law that argued “there is no right to be free from any inconvenience or burden in voting.” The GOP has erected hurdles to voting in state after state as though democracy is a track and field event.

Berman observes,

It was only a decade ago that George W. Bush signed a 25-year reauthorization of the VRA—which had been approved 390–33 in the House and 98–0 in the Senate—but it feels like a century has passed. Today, critics of the VRA, who used to be a minority in the GOP, are now the vocal majority.

Former RNC chair Michael Steele called it “a slap in the face of those Republicans who fought for the law and those Republicans who fought for civil rights since Reconstruction.”

Throughout the expansion in these laws, proponents look into cameras and tell the public they are about “election integrity” or “ballot security.” Or about restoring confidence in an election system they have spent years systematically undermining, crying voter fraud to build public support for new voting restrictions. And it’s no, nay, never, are these new “common sense” rules meant to discriminate against American citizens who tend to vote for Democrats.

North Carolina’s voter ID law is still in the courts, but will be in force for the March 15 primary. Writing in the Raleigh news and Observer on Sunday, Ned Barnett argued:

Republican legislators say they passed the photo ID requirement to prevent people from representing themselves as someone else at the polls. They’ve shown no evidence that this is a problem, but they love the ease of defending their solution – it’s common sense. Cue the checks, planes and medications.

Behind that seemingly harmless rationale is a subtle and unspoken Republican motive: A surprisingly high number of people don’t have a driver’s license or an acceptable alternative photo ID. And many of them are low-income and minority voters who tend to vote Democratic.

Barnett suggests it is because North Carolina Republican leaders are really afraid of American voters. “How do we know? It’s common sense.”

A study from the University of California, San Diego offers support for Barnett’s common sense. Using a 50,000 person validated vote in the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies, the authors eliminate the skew from self-reporting of voting. “Self-reported turnout averages about 25 percent higher than actual turnout,” they write. They looked for differential effects of ID laws on voting among different groups, beyond simple aggregate numbers of votes. The authors find that “strict voter identification laws do, in fact, substantially alter the makeup of who votes and ultimately do skew democracy in favor of whites and those on the political right.”

All of this has major political consequences. As Figure 2 illustrates the rate at which Republicans and conservatives outvote Democrats and liberals is much higher when strict photo laws are in place. All else equal, Republicans and conservatives tend to vote at slightly higherrates than Democrats and liberals but that gaps grows considerably in strict photo ID states. In particular, in general elections, the model predicts that the turnout gap between Republicans and Democrats doubles from 2.3 points to 5.6 points when strict photo ID laws are instituted. Likewise the predicted gap between conservatives and liberals more than doubles from 4.7 to12.6 points. In primaries, the gains associated with stricter voter ID laws are even moredramatic. The turnout advantage of those on the right is three to five times larger in strict photo identification states, all else equal. These results suggest that by instituting strict photo ID laws, states could minimize the influence of voters on the left and could dramatically alter the political leaning of the electorate

Furthermore,

The analysis suggests that strict ID laws of any sort do impact the racial balance of the electorate. Working through the effects of the significant interactions, we find that the gap in turnout between Latinos and whites is estimated to grow by 13.3 points in strict non-photo ID states. Likewise the gap between Blacks and whites is 7.4 points higher in strict non-photo ID states all else equal. The pattern of estimated effects for primary elections is nearly identical. Inprimaries with strict non-photo laws, Latinos fall a further 14.2 points behind whites and Blacksend up 11.4 points further behind whites, according to the model. Requiring identification of anysort appears to have a real effect on who votes and who does not. These laws hurt the minority community and help to give whites an outsized voice in American democracy.

New study finds that voter ID laws increase turnout gaps between Republicans and Democrats. https://t.co/00WbeCXKny pic.twitter.com/ISjjMLK359— sean (@SeanMcElwee) January 30, 2016

The effects of voter ID laws are concerning in isolation. But they are perhaps even more alarming when viewed across the longer arc of American history. The effects of voter ID lawsthat we see here are eerily similar to the impact of measures like poll taxes, literacy tests,residency requirements, and at-large elections which were used by the white majority decadesand centuries ago to help deny blacks many basic rights (Keyssar 2009, Kousser 1999, Parker1990, Filer, Kenny and Morton 1991). The measures of old and current voter ID laws todayremain eerily similar: they were both instituted by advocates who claimed they would help toensure the integrity and legitimacy of democracy. Both sets of measures – new and old – alsoserve to distort democracy and reduce the influence of racial minorities. The racially biased measures of old have since been condemned and revoked but they were allowed to stand for long periods of American electoral history.

Count me as agreeing with Michael Steele on this one.

(h/t Sean McElwee)

Josh Marshall on Cokie’s Law



by digby

Cokie’s Law: “It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. It’s out there…”

If you read nothing else today, please read this by Josh Marshall on the overwhelming BS that’s piling up around the alleged email scandal and the terrorism threat. It’s hard to keep your perspective when the press gets on the scent of this bogus scandal and fearmongering. But this is important:

One of the greatest failings in journalism is the way that ideas, theories, nonsensical paranoid fears get ‘out there’ and then talked about, critiqued and so forth and yet there’s no point of stepping back where a considered, knowledgeable, even common sense view would say that the entire concept is simply far-fetched, ridiculous or even impossible. There are two examples of that currently roiling the political terrain, albeit for very different reasons.

The first has to do with the purported looming indictment of Hillary Clinton. Over the weekend there was a stir because a New York Times reporter, Peter Baker, told CNN’s Sunday morning show that Democrats are “quietly absolutely petrified” of a mid-summer indictment. This ‘hot take’ was immediately picked by Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook. The stage was then set for yet another DC bubble derp freakout. Are Democrats “petrified”? I think that’s an overstatement. But are some nervous? I have no doubt they are. But I know people are stocking up on ammo for when ISIS mounts an operation against their house. For most people fear is generated by press coverage, often ignorant or tendentious press coverage. And with the breathless coverage of developments that more or less obviously have no legal impact whatsoever, I don’t doubt that many are nervous.

Here’s the reality. Who knows what we will learn in the future? And this has nothing to do with the political impact of the “emails controversy”. But as a legal matter, the chances of Hillary Clinton facing any kind of indictment are very, very low.

Start with the fact that as far as we know, she is not actually even being investigated for anything, let alone facing a looming indictment. The simple facts, as we know them, just don’t put her in line for an indictment. The first reason is the facts, which rest heavily on intent and reckless negligence. The second is tradition and DOJ regulations which make professional prosecutors very leery of issuing indictments that might be perceived or in fact influence an election. This was my thinking. But as the press coverage has become increasingly heated, I started trying to figure out if there was something I was missing – some fact I didn’t know, some blindspot in my perception. So I’ve spoken to a number of law profs and former federal prosecutors – based on the facts we know now even from the most aggressive reporting. Not like, is this theoretically possible? Not, what the penalties would be if it happened. But is an indictment at all likely or is this whole idea very far-fetched. To a person, very far-fetched.

So why the press coverage? I think it’s a combination of reasons. The most irreducible and perhaps most significant is simply prestige reporter derp and general ignorance of the legal system. Second is journalists’ perennial inability to resist a process story. And third, let’s be honest, wingnut page views.

As I’ve said, the political calculus and potential political damage is a different matter altogether. There is little doubt that this whole on-going controversy, along with stuff in the background about the Clinton Foundation, have hurt Clinton badly on public estimations of her honesty and trustworthiness. But again, on the possibility of an indictment, most of this chatter is just plain ridiculous – a mix of ignorance and tendentiousness.

And here’s another example – election-related but altogether different. Do we need to put up a Trump Wall along the Canadian border to keep out the terrorists?

In the closing days of the Iowa caucus campaign Ben Carson and Marco Rubio have been pushing the national security threat the US faces along its northern border.

Yes, from Canada. Particularly, terrorists infiltrated the US along the generally porous US-Canada border.

According to The Wall Street Journal, a man at a Rubio townhall on Friday asked the senator, ““Once the wall is placed down in Mexico, you and I know terrorists will try to come through Canada. What’s going to be done about that?”

Rubio was totally on board. “The threat to the Canadian border is real as well, We need an additional 20,000 border agents. Not just on the southern border, but to partner with the Canadians on the northern border.”

Added to the hysteria are the 25,000 Syrian refugees who Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has very conspicuously welcomed into the country. According to Ben Carson on Wednesday, “We also have to, you know, harden our defense at our seaports and our air terminals, everywhere. Our northern border in Canada, you know, because Trudeau is taking tens of thousands of Syrians. Believe me, those people, the radical Islamists, they will infiltrate those people, just like they will infiltrate them if we bring them here.”

One must almost become an full-fledged archeologist of derp to dig through the many levels of evidence-less assumptions upon which these fears are based. The assumption is that ISIS, al Qaeda or just “the terrorists” more generally are routinely infiltrating terrorists into the United States to mount terror operations. We need to secure the Southern border against terrorist infiltration. And having cut off that entry way they will focus instead on the northern border.

This is quite simply an entire edifice of bullshit.

Please read the rest. It is so right. He provides all the statistics about terrorism in the US that disproves this nonsense and shows how the media is being complicit in stoking the paranoia.

We are about to enter a period of even worse political craziness than we’ve just come through in the last six months. And the stakes are getting higher even as the atmosphere gets highly charged. It’s important to keep our its about us.

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Why Trump beating Bush in Iowa is good news for Democrats
By Spocko

As a time-traveling Vulcan I try not to violate the Time Prime Directive, but letting you know Jeb Bush didn’t win in Iowa isn’t a big surprise.

To explain why he lost, listen to my friend Cliff Schecter talking to Sam Seder on the Majority Report last Friday.  Link

They were discussing the dynamic between Trump and Jeb. Sam plays clips showing how Trump got into Jeb’s head but he doesn’t quite understand why.

I think the key to understand this is to remember Jeb was the little brother of George W. Bush, bully in chief.

In a biography about George W, the author recounted a story of George shooting his younger brothers with a BB gun–inside their house. He also describes W’s “punching down” jokes and his assigning insult nicknames to people.

Donald Trump’s taunts and insults tapped into what W did to Jeb. Bullies are geniuses at finding hot button insults.  When Jeb appealed to the moderator during the debates you can almost hear him saying, “Mommmm, he’s picking on me again!”

Throwing out a great insult or put down appeals to lots of people. They see it as “winning the conversation.”  They would like to be able to do the same and hate being on the receiving end of the insults.

Most of us hate bullies, so how can a Bully like Trump defeating Jeb be good for progressives and America? The answer to that question came out yesterday in this great podcast on Virtually Speaking with Cliff Schecter and Digby. Start at 43:00 minutes.

Digby talks about some of the research by Ron Brownstein that she has been writing about over at Salon. It’s wonderful to listen to her explain it in the audio clip. (As Mrs. Spocko and I listened to it in the car yesterday she said, “That was so interesting! And Digby speaks in complete sentences, just like Obama.” )

It was encouraging to hear that the push ever rightward by Fox News, RW think tanks, and Citizen United money will not be able to continue to win over the new face of America.

Trump and the right are pushing a “Make America White Again” message that is just not going to continue, unless all the walls are built and the non-whites are kicked out.

 We aren’t there yet, and the right is using all their tricks to stay in power.

Also, sadly, the Democrats at the DCCC haven’t got this message yet, and Cliff points out stupid moves in Ohio and how Debbie Wasserman Schultz continues to fail in her position.

It can be depressing when you read about the 100’s of millions dumped into electing right wing politicians post Citizens United, but
Cliff and Digby provide a message of hope for the future. More progressive Democrats are coming.

Listen to her, it might be just the thing for people to listen to today after they see the results from Iowa.

Do not despair about the future, even though you see RW bullies prevail! I could tell you more about the future, but as they say on Dr. Who, “Spoilers!”

The movement conservatives are shocked

by digby

…. shocked that there exists among them a bunch of barbarians who don’t care about ideology at all. And they don’t have much use for them. This is from Richard Viguerie’s Newsletter by way of explaining everything that’s wrong with many of their own voters:

Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner sees this: “For several years, talk about the civil war within Donald Trumpthe GOP was typically described as a fight between conservatives and the Establishment. But a combination of the historically large field — 17 candidates at one point — and the political force of Donald Trump has revealed that there are many more divisions than that.”

Klein goes on to explore those divisions, which he describes as “Old Establishment” (Jeb Bush) vs. “New Establishment” (Rubio), anti-establishment movement conservatives (Cruz) vs. conservative pragmatists (Rubio again), and populists/nationalists (Trump) vs. everyone else.

Prior to last year, it seemed the split in the GOP was basically a conservatives vs. McCain/Romney/Bush big government “compassionate conservative” establishment that included the congressional leadership of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner (and now likely Paul Ryan as well).

But with the rise of Donald Trump, you definitely get the idea there are a lot of populist Republican-leaning voters who despise the establishment like conservatives do yet don’t give much credence to making government smaller.

As a general group, these populist voters believe:

1. In whatever they want, including government goodies if they favor them (like ethanol subsidies and government healthcare) and for lack of a better way to put it, to “Make America Great Again,” with the “great” part loosely defined.

2. In using government power to spy on people (such as data collection, drones for law enforcement and government oversight of the internet) if it suits them. They say “I don’t have anything to hide and we need protection.”

3. In sparing use of military might. They are against sending American troops overseas because they assume the wars aren’t in America’s interests and they’re too expensive and costly. They’re against war but heartily support veterans and would eagerly dump billions into helping them because the troops were forced to fight some politician’s unnecessary war.

4. In government pensions and services if it assists them personally and aren’t the least bit concerned about whether it’s constitutional or how much it costs – as long as someone else is paying. They care about the national debt but don’t understand most of it is driven from entitlement programs which they favor.

5. In taxing the wealthy because like Trump says, the system is rigged and the rich need to pay their “fair share.” They don’t care about statistics that indicate the top 1% of payers already contribute nearly half the total income taxes collected.

I used to think this voter’s movement was embodied in Pat Buchanan, but Buchanan is a full spectrum conservative. Trump is not.

Because Buchanan is a conservative, I reasoned Buchanan’s populist followers were conservatives too. And many of them are. Like Trump, Buchanan favors an America first trade and foreign policy. But Buchanan also is a true believer in the Constitution and limited government.

And needless to say, Buchanan is a dedicated religious man and is definitely socially conservative. Trump is at best a late convert to these causes, at least if his life-long record is any indication.

As Klein suggests in his article, it isn’t clear whether these people will vote Republican if Trump isn’t the nominee. They sure won’t vote for Hillary or Bernie, but they’ll just as likely say “It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference who’s in office. They’re all corrupt.”

Populism groupthink and the Trump phenomenon

Because this populist bloc fervently believes all of government is corrupt, they don’t care about or look for distinctions in how it’s run or how Congress functions. They don’t recognize that not all of those in Congress are corrupt and there’s a real battle being conducted by a growing conservative group to save what’s left of the original intent of the Constitution.

The populists seem like they didn’t pay much attention in civics class, probably thinking at a young age it’s all stupid and doesn’t make a difference. Now that they’re adults, they don’t know who actually runs government other than the president and maybe a couple members of Congress.

They vote if they have time but if they skip an election or two it doesn’t matter to them. They’re not politically active and resent the attention devoted to elections, preferring to tune them out and complain about the negativity and irrelevancy of politics.

They don’t contribute to or volunteer for campaigns either, because the system is corrupt. They love the fact Trump is financing his own campaign partly because it means he’s beyond the system but also because there isn’t anyone asking them to contribute. It’s like getting a freebie.

They know there’s a Supreme Court but don’t know who’s on it or how each Justice votes. They seem not to care that the president appoints these Justices for life. They’re not like the 10% of Americans who think Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court, but the vastness of government confuses them and they’re ends-oriented people who are more concerned about whether their taxes are too high or their potholes aren’t fixed.

These people have some libertarian beliefs (like legalizing marijuana and tolerance of same-sex marriage), but they’re more pragmatic than anything else. They’re mad as hell and they don’t care what Trump has actually stood for in the past because he’s mad as hell too.

They see Megyn Kelly as part of the corrupt media establishment, so they don’t care if Trump says disgusting things about her.

And they applaud because Trump boycotted last Thursday’s debate.

For them, it all boils down to one thing – Trump is a smart, blunt-talking businessman who has succeeded his whole life and will fix things. He’s from outside the system and that’s enough. He’ll make great deals whereas all the previous government leaders have been too stupid to know a good deal if it smacked them across the face.

Trump will “Make America Great Again.” But what does that mean in practice?

Every American has a right to make up his or her own mind. But the Trump candidacy is a ruse.

Here’s my prediction: instead of being another Ronald Reagan, when Trump fails these folks due to his lack of any real principled foundation, they’ll turn on him like nothing we’ve ever seen before. They’ll say he’s joined the “corrupt” system and go back into political hibernation, even more convinced that nothing ever changes.

Thankfully, there’s a solid anti-establishment alternative in this year’s field for Trump voters, should they give him a chance. His proposals would lead to the ends these people desire without all the hyperbole that comes along with Trump.

He’ll restore the Constitution which will give them the freedom and accountability they demand and the economic prosperity that will pay for the rest. That’s the “Great” in the slogan.

Ted Cruz can be the Reagan-like leader Trump supporters seek. Let’s hope they’ll give it some thought before voting and then somewhere down the line leaving the system altogether when Trump ends up being the man he is rather than the impossibility of what he promises.

If you like you can go back and replace “populist” with “white nationalist” to make this whole thing clearer. Then think about what these folks leave out of this analysis.

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Trump’s inciting violence and offering to pay the legal fees

by digby

I’m thinking it’s time for Trump supporters to get themselves some nice uniforms, don’t you? This is America so I’m going to guess camp will be the preferred choice. Like the duck dynasty guys. But something so they’ll know who the good guys and the bad guys are:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told the crowd gathered at his campaign rally on Monday to “knock the crap” out of anybody who threw a tomato at him.

Trump said the event’s security staff told him there was a risk people would throw the juicy fruit.

“So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them,” Trump said at his rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

“I will pay for the legal fees. I promise,” he added. “They won’t be so much because the courts agree with us too.”

A protestor was arrested last week for throwing tomatoes at Trump at a different Iowa event.

I’m not in favor of tomato throwing by the way. But Trump telling citizens to “knock the crap” out of them and he’ll pay the legal fees is … unpresidential to say the least. If anyone takes him up on it, it might even be called accessory to an assault.

What the hell is happening here? is this becoming normalized? Gangster in Chief?

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Obama’s latest yolo

by digby

Imagine the heads that are going to explode over this:

On Wednesday, President Obama will make his first visit to an American mosque since he assumed the nation’s highest office. The visit to a mosque in Baltimore next week is a part of the administration’s effort to address mounting hate crimes against Muslims and vitriolic anti-Muslim rhetoric from top political contenders.

Obama will visit the Islamic Society of Baltimore, located in Catonsville, Maryland, to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life,” according to a White House statement. The statement did not specify why that particular mosque was selected.

The president has visited mosques around the world, and made his first visit to a synogogue in May.

Citing what they believe to be an alarming increase in the level of Islamophobia in the U.S., however, Muslim leaders have been increasingly vocal in calling on Obama to visit an American mosque.

“For a number of years we’ve been encouraging the president to go to an American mosque,” Council on American Islamic Relations spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said. “With the tremendous rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in our country, we believe that it will send a message of inclusion and mutual respect.”

That need feels even more prescient to some after several Republican candidates called for a halt of Muslim immigration to the U.S. and increased surveillance of Muslims in America.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump was the first to make such appeals, followed closely by many presidential hopefuls. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and former Florda Gov. Jeb Bush suggested that only Christian asylum seekers should be allowed to settle in the U.S.
[…]
Mehdi Hasan, who hosts a news show on Al Jazeera English, said the extreme vitriol from Republican party members makes him long for President George W. Bush as he never expected he would. The Bush administration, Hasan wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed, “understood that demonizing Muslims and depicting Islam as ‘the enemy’ not only fueled Al Qaeda’s narrative but also hurt their party’s electoral prospects.”

President Bush visited a mosque in the days after 9/11 and announced that “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.”

President Obama has made significant remarks about the importance of guarding the rights of Muslims during a time of terror threats.

During his State of the Union address this month, he seemed to directly call out figures like Trump by declaring, “When politicians insult Muslims, whether abroad or our fellow citizens, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer. That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong.”

But with even President Obama waiting until his last year in office to visit an American mosque, that level of acceptance seems to signal a very different era when it comes to acceptance for Muslim Americans.

Yes, it does:

Nearly half of GOP voters in Iowa believe that Islam shouldn’t even be legal within the U.S.

This increase in anti-Muslim feeling is an interesting phenomenon that I’ve never seen adequately addressed. My suspicion is that it has more to do with a black president with “Hussein” in his name than any actual sense of greater danger. Also, certain members of our society just really enjoy being angry and scared. Apparently, it makes them feel alive. Politics as thrill ride …

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Is the GOP really the party of Trump? We’re finally going to find out.




by digby

I wrote one last piece (hallelujah!) about the GOP race in Iowa for Salon today:

It seems as though every political journalist and every pundit  is in Iowa right now. The cable nets have countdown clocks and panel discussions and detailed rundowns of weather patterns and past caucus results. They all say it’s about turnout, turnout, turnout.  And in that respect they may be right. In the Democratic race the gold standard Iowa poll has Clinton up by three and in the Republican race it has Trump up by five so the race is close on both sides. The two outsider candidates, Trump and Sanders are going to need a big turnout, which would include many of the first time caucus goers who support their campaigns.  In a somewhat ominous sign for both, the registration numbers have not increased much for either party and although there is same day registration, the Iowa hands all point out that the Obama upset was presaged by very substantial registrations of new Democrats for months ahead of time. Whether that means anything for this time it remains to be seen, but some of the Iowa talking heads think it might portend lower turnout than the two outsider candidates need.

As we wait for the results it’s worth taking a look at the last ads by the candidates in order to see exactly what they believed was their best argument going into this first contest.

Donald Trump hasn’t “wasted” a lot of money on ads and so far it doesn’t seem to have hurt him.  It helps that all the news networks hang on to his every word and often show his rallies from beginning to end. At one point he had promised to spend 2 millions dollars on ads in Iowa but that doesn’t not seem to have materialized. He ran that Pete Wilson style anti-immigration ad at one point but now it’s even disappeared from his website. In this final month he did put out one sharp and effective ad against Ted Cruz’s immigration record. Say what you will about Trump he knows which side of his white bread is buttered on.

Since before the campaign he’s released Instagram videos opining on all manner of issues of the day. In recent days he’s produced some YouTubes that open with martial music and a “Patton-esque” Trump logo.  He stares at the camera and makes a short emphatic statement.

Here’s an example called “Unifying the Nation”:

Our country is totally divided. There’s so much hatred. There’s so many problems. Our president was a terrible unifier. He was the opposite of a unifier. He was a divider. I will unify and bring out country back together. It’s something I’ve done all my life. I get along with people. A lot of people don’t know that about me. They don’t think that’s the case. That is the case. I built a great company by bringing people together.

I will bring our country together.

We will be unified.

We will be one.

We will be happy again

You’ll recall that Kim Jong Un is among the very few people in the world for whom Trump has expressed admiration, so perhaps he’s been studying his style.

Ted Cruz, naturally, has taken a more traditional approach. Although he and Trump are locked in a close battle for first place, Cruz didn’t run any ads against Trump in the final days. For once it isn’t based upon the dumb assumption that to run against him would ruin his chances to pick up Trump voters when he inevitably flames out. By this time people have recognized that Trump is The Teflon Don.

No, as Sahil Kapur at Bloomberg pointed out, Cruz is attacking Marco Rubio rather than Trump because according to the Des Moines Register poll, Trump voters are solidly with him, while Rubio voters are still subject to persuasion. If Cruz can seduce a few Rubio voters over to his side he might just edge out Trump.