Month: September 2016

I wrote about the debate for Salon of course:

If someone had told me 10 years ago that the first general election presidential debate of 2016 would feature a CNN chyron that said “Awaiting the Historic Clinton-Trump Debate,” I would have thought you were crazy. If you had told me the polls would be tied going into that debate I would have thought the world had gone crazy. But that’s where we are and last night’s debate showed how far we’ve gone down the rabbit hole.

My preview of the debate yesterday focused on the fact that Trump’s “serious” debates at the end of the primaries, when there were fewer rivals, gave us some clues about how he might perform in the main event. He was aggressively incoherent and sometimes completely unintelligible, proving repeatedly that he had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. This has actually been obvious from the beginning of his campaign if you watched his rallies and interviews. It’s just that his personality is so remarkably bizarre that I think the lack of substance is easy to overlook. (I confess I have been somewhat surprised that so many people find his rambling “braggadociousness” appealing enough that they fail to notice that he is ignorant about everything important to the job of president.)

In recent days with the hiring of campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and CEO Steve Bannon as well as sage advice from his pal Roger Ailes, Trump has been tamed just enough to read a stump speech on a Teleprompter, and he’s sounded a bit more intelligible. So there was always the possibility that he would have done a little bit of prep work, read a briefing paper or two and otherwise taken the debate seriously. It is the most important office in the world, after all. It wouldn’t hurt to do a little cramming on the details before appearing in front of 100 million people to make the case for why you are the best person for the job.

Trump’s campaign made it very clear that he wasn’t doing any of that, but I think many political professionals assumed there was a large element of spin involved. He had to have at least done some practice debates, right? But it turns out that for the first time his campaign was telling the whole truth. Last night Donald Trump demonstrated not only that he didn’t prepare but that he has no underlying knowledge of the subjects a president is required to know. He simply tried to bluff his way through with incoherent misdirection, hostility and sarcasm, even as he made the absurd claimed that his temperament is his best quality. He gave the worst debate performance of his short political career. In fact, it may have been the worst debate performance of any political career.

I wasn’t sure whether or not Hillary Clinton would be able to handle him. It’s disorienting to see someone spout gibberish at such an important event, particularly when it’s combined with Trump’s narcissism, as when he oddly asserted that Clinton only started talking about jobs in response to his candidacy, or that NATO created a terrorism policy because he goaded them into it. (That’s ludicrous, of course.) But she handled him well, with humor and authority, proving that it can be done.

The reviews all seemed to indicate that Trump’s best moments were his early comments on trade policy. Which is probably true but it’s actually not saying much. He name-checked some Rust Belt states where the issue is particularly salient, which shows that he may have had some coaching, but his obsession with the subject, to the exclusion of all other economic concerns, is one-dimensional to say the least. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be economic at all, and is better seen as an illustration of his crude nationalism. He shows no interest in workers as people. They are nothing more than statistics that prove America is being screwed over by foreigners. Trump seems to think that screwing workers is an American billionaire’s prerogative.

In fact, Clinton deftly turned the tables on his populism by painting him out as a rich Republican swell just like all the rest, hitting him repeatedly on his business practices and failures. As Washington Post reporter Robert Costa said on MSNBC after the debate:

She yanked him toward the Republican Party. She said, “You’re not going to be able to run as an outsider, you can’t be a populist.” She said, “You’re just like George W. Bush, you’re trickle-down economics like Ronald Reagan, you’re supply-side, Trumped up. This is a candidate whose real appeal is that he’s non ideological, that he’s not running as a partisan Mitt Romney, George W. Bush Republican, and she said “I’m not going to let you.”

I don’t know whether anyone was convinced by that but it was one of many moments that confused Trump and pushed him off his game. When Clinton hit him for saying he hoped for the housing collapse, he reacted with a very plutocratic answer: “That’s called business, by the way.” He made the same mistake later when she pointed out that there were times when he hadn’t paid any taxes by saying, “That makes me smart.” These were just two of many errors, lies and flashes of ignorance, temper and petulance that characterized Trump’s embarrassing performance.

The simple fact is that Hillary Clinton dominated him. The debate was all her thrusting and him parrying over and over again. By the end he was visibly slumping and seemed confused. And since being a “winner” is so central to his candidacy and his personality, the loss is even more devastating.

The pundits are all wondering if that means Trump will bother to prepare for the next two debates (if he deigns to show up at all). But that may not be something he’s actually capable of doing. His former co-writer Tony Schwartz, who knows him well, says that Trump has an extremely short attention span and is unable to study or learn in any concentrated way. But just because he has no interest in or ability to learn any substance, it doesn’t mean Trump won’t make changes. From his comments at the end of the debate and later in the spin room, it appears that he believes Clinton wasn’t “nice,” so he plans to attack her personally by bringing up her husband’s infidelities at their next meeting. He won’t be better informed or more controlled, he’s just going to take the gloves off. But she’s got a much thicker skin than he does, and unless he learns how to take a hit it’s highly likely she’ll be able to get the best of him next time too. It turns out that along with a thin skin, Trump has a glass jaw.

Clinton trumps Trump
by Tom Sullivan

If there was any red on Donald Trump’s face as last night’s presidential debate wore on, his orange makeup hid it well. The Republican candidate who boasts at rallies he will negotiate the best deals, great deals, tre-men-dous deals with world leaders last night could not negotiate 90 minutes against an American one. Hillary Clinton demonstrated she is a leader with knowledge, experience and intelligence that far outstrips Trump’s.

Within the first half hour, dry mouth set in and Trump had to keep sipping water to stay lubricated. (It didn’t make his answers any more coherent.) At one point, he seemed to wipe a bead of sweat from his upper lip. But it was the regular, audible sniffing like a cokehead that started early and continued through most of the debate that had Twitter buzzing. Likely, Donald Trump is allergic to being around strong women.

I can't with this coke breathing.. #debatenight— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) September 27, 2016

Jonathan Cohn of Huffington Post:

Trump couldn’t keep up with Clinton’s knowledge of policy, and became increasingly obstreperous when she attacked him. He interrupted her repeatedly and then, frustrated with questions from host Lester Holt, he interrupted him, too. Eventually, Trump lost focus and started to ramble. The lack of impulse control, the derogatory attitude toward women, the utter disregard for truth ― all of it came into full view.

And at that point, maybe, Trump’s style stopped seeming refreshing ― and started seeming disturbing.

Perhaps three scheduled debates is too few. The wonkish Clinton shined last night. She may be a strong leader and relentless campaigner, but has been a weak candidate. She admits her speaking skills are no match for her husband’s, which are legendary. She often appears aloof and defensive. After 25 years of constant attacks, who can blame her? (A lot of people.) And she could not put away Bernie Sanders through the unexpectedly long Democratic primary. But against Donald Trump the loudmouthed reality TV star, Hillary Clinton dominated the dominator and was clearly in control. No contest:

Republican pollster Frank Luntz reported on Twitter that 16 people in his focus group thought Clinton, the Democratic nominee, came out as the winner. Only six people thought the winner was the Republican nominee Trump.

A CNN focus group of undecided Florida voters arrived at the same conclusion. Eighteen of the 20 participants chose Clinton as the winner.

Clinton hit Trump hard on his claim to renegotiate a host of postwar treaties that have defined international relations and stability over the last half century. When he attacked on her negotiation of the Iran nuclear treaty, “one of the worst deals ever made by any country in history,” she looked into the camera to reassure world leaders:

CLINTON: Well, let me — let me start by saying, words matter. Words matter when you run for president. And they really matter when you are president. And I want to reassure our allies in Japan and South Korea and elsewhere that we have mutual defense treaties and we will honor them.

It is essential that America’s word be good. And so I know that this campaign has caused some questioning and worries on the part of many leaders across the globe. I’ve talked with a number of them. But I want to — on behalf of myself, and I think on behalf of a majority of the American people, say that, you know, our word is good.

It’s also important that we look at the entire global situation. There’s no doubt that we have other problems with Iran. But personally, I’d rather deal with the other problems having put that lid on their nuclear program than still to be facing that.

And Donald never tells you what he would do. Would he have started a war? Would he have bombed Iran? If he’s going to criticize a deal that has been very successful in giving us access to Iranian facilities that we never had before, then he should tell us what his alternative would be. But it’s like his plan to defeat ISIS. He says it’s a secret plan, but the only secret is that he has no plan.

“Donald Trump Punches Himself Out” writes Michael Tomasky at Daily Beast:

For the first hour or so, it was kind of a rope-a-dope performance by Clinton. She let him punch himself out. For the first 20 minutes or so, some of the punches landed. On trade, and on other issues. But then Trump started to over-punch, especially in the way he interrupted Clinton repeatedly.

Then, in the closing 30 or 40 minutes, she went into him hard, on his failure to release his tax returns in particular. Trump tried to hit her hard, on ISIS, but the punches didn’t quite land.

I could go into issues. But really, the particular issues don’t matter here so much. These things are about affect. As the wise heads say, you can watch these things with the sound down. And I would imagine that if you did watch this one with the sound down, Trump looked petulant and, well, low-energy.

Mostly, Trump looked down at his podium.

Already flagging, Trump tried to argue she has “no business ability,” and “doesn’t have the look. She doesn’t have the stamina” to be president. Clinton counterpunched:

CLINTON: Well, as soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease-fire, a release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world, or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina.

When she pointed out Trump had tried to switch from looks to stamina, Clinton brought up Trump’s past derogatory remarks about women’s looks. Trump, the would-be president of the world’s only superpower, responded by referencing his personal feud with Rosie O’Donnell, “I said very tough things to her, and I think everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her.”

It was that bad.

On Debate Night Your Tweet Matters

by Spocko

When the debates are on, my comedian friends and I are trying to come up with funny tweets. We’ll comment on the zingers and if they landed or not. We retweet the ones we think are the funniest. Getting a like for a funny tweet is nice, but getting a retweet really hits the ol’ dopamine centers. ( Frank Conniff is my favorite. The HRC camp should classify him as a national treasure and put him in charge of strategic zingers.)

While I’m trying to craft 140 character zingers, my political friends are trying to fill out their debate bingo drinking cards.

“When Hillary’s opponent says, ‘I’m going to build a wall!’ take a drink. If he says, ‘Mexico will pay for it,’ take a shot of tequila.’ If the moderator, asks ‘How will that work?’ or cites comments from the Mexican President about paying for the wall, eat the worm. (Don’t worry, you won’t have to eat a worm!)”

When I watched the first GOP debate I knew I was no longer watching a political debate but the TV show Who Wants to be President? which morphed into Last Comic Standing. It was all about the zingers, insults and nicknames. I expect a lot of the same in tonight’s debate.

I’ll admit it, it’s great fun to make fun of the debates, but, as we used to say in the shop, “It’s all fun and games until someone launches a nuke.”

Like most sentient beings, I don’t want to help the short-fingered vulgarian get into power. You might not either. Beyond screaming at the TV during one of his lies, what can you do now? it turns out that you should also Tweet smart, because the media is dumb.

Tweeting Smart example for sane people: Because some analysis only counts keyword use, Tweet Hillary Clinton‘s full name vs. The Talking Yam’s. “Hillary won. #imwithher You heard me, Hillary Clinton won the #debatetonight and we are #strongertogether

The mainstream media covering the Presidential election has an over reliance on social media to replace their “man on the street” pieces. Every word we say, or don’t say, is counted, sorted and analyzed by the media then presented as “the public’s reaction.” So, if you don’t use the right keywords you might get missed by the dumb tools in the media. As far as the media is concerned, my funny-pithy tweet doesn’t count because their tool didn’t see I was commenting about the debate.

Credit, Shout: Wired TwitterBots Eagle

But you know whose tweets will get picked up? The millions of TwitterBots controlled by a handful of people. They know how the keywords, counting and sorting tools of the media work. This means that when the media talks about “the public’s reaction” It’s not totally the public’s reaction. This is a problem. How big is it?

One estimate from Twitter Audit is that 1 out of every 4 followers of Big Orange Hair are fake. And yes, both sides do it, Hillary Clinton has the same percentage of fake twitter followers as her opponent. You can be outraged or see it as “Bot Parity” for those accounts.

However, simply looking at fake followers of one candidate isn’t enough. Think about all the dark money spent on the election. Millions of fake followers from the 11 GOP presidential candidates can be endorsing Mr. “Issued Two Death Threats To Hillary In a Month” with a few keystrokes.

Samuel Woolley and Phil Howard wrote a very enlightening piece for Wired this May, Bots Unite to Automate the Presidential Election

Social media bots exist and they are being used. Fake Twitter accounts are a great way for corporations and rich people to push a trend. They can even order up positive tweets about the Mr. “My Ex-Wife Testified I Raped Her” from millions of hispanics, women and black tweeters. Plus, the tweets can’t be traced back to them.

How much do these fake tweets influence people? Does the media understand them and factor them out before talking about “public perceptions?” (Have you ever heard anyone in the news media even mentioning them when they read off Twitter stats?)

I would say, ‘Buyer Beware.” but we are the ones being sold. In the world of social media there is no regulation, no Federal Election Commission pushing for transparency.

Social media manipulation tools exist, they are being used all the time and we know nothing about them. If the mainstream media doesn’t understand how they are being played, we the people need to understand this, so we can act appropriately.

Let the #debatenight tweets begin. And may the best real Tweets from actual individuals win.

There Is Only One Candidate Part 6

by tristero

Huffington Post main page at September 26, 2016 3:19 PM EST:

31 mentions of “Trump”
7 mentions of “Donald”
Total Trumps: 38

4 mentions of “Clinton”
2 mentions of “Hillary”
Total Clintons: 6


Put another way, today the Huffington Post believes that Trump is more than 6 times as important as Clinton.

Sigh.

Adding, I was speaking to my smart daughter about this and she said, “Yeah but most of the headlines are negative. Doesn’t that matter, that he’s being trashed?”

It would if this were seen as a political campaign, but that’s not how Americans perceive this election. Sorry, fellow liberals and wonks. There are no big ideas at stake here. It’s just marketing exposure doing what marketing exposure does.

Suppose you make decent organic peanut butter. And you decide to advertise it by creating an ad campaign in which you trash Jif more often than you tout your own good qualities. Suppose every commentator everywhere agrees with you, and chooses to emphasize how lousy Jif is more than they mention your product. They’re reasoning is, “Once Americans realize how unhealthy Jif is, they’ll know they have to eat organic peanut butter!”

Suppose in addition, because the makers of Jif are such cunning marketing people, that the name “Jif” is ubiquitous – on fancy buildings, on major highways, on huge casinos, on every magazine cover, on TV, social media, in the schools, and there are even books and TV movies about the greatness of Jif.

So even though your organic peanut butter is a demonstrably healthier product on so many levels, Jif appears to be pretty tempting, what with that added sugar and all. And besides, Jif”s being mentioned more than 6 times as often as any other nut spread – can’t remember exactly what they said…it’s all too technical and a blur…There’s gotta be something there, maybe it’s good!

So seriously, what’s the big deal about Jif being bad? Besides, what’s the alternative?  I mean, how bad can Jif be? 

Gimme!

And that is what is going on right now.

(With apologies to Jif: consuming 1 mg of Trump is way more dangerous than eating an entire case of Jif in one sitting.)

Trainwreck America

by digby

Now where on earth do they get this idea?

by digby

Justin Wolfers in the NYT has a story about the betting markets and tonight’s debate. Obviously it doesn’t really tell us anything real but it’s illustrative of what these people know about the presidential race:

They don’t seem to expect much substance on issues, judging from the under-over bets on how many times various issues or words will be mentioned. The top three terms are “email” (you can bet on whether there will be over 7.5 mentions, or under 7.5 mentions), “deport” (the line is 6.5 mentions) and “liar” (5.5 mentions). Expect less discussions of “racism” (an over-under of 2.5 mentions), Wall Street (3.5 mentions) or each candidate’s “foundation” (4.5 mentions). If you’re wondering how there can be half a mention, there obviously can’t; this is how Las Vegas breaks a tie.

This is what people have “heard” and expect to hear more of. Because these are all words they’ve heard over and over again and which have determined for many Americans what this campaign is about.

Can you see the problem?  I knew that you could:

.

Turning their backs

by digby

… to take a selfie:

2016, ya’ll. pic.twitter.com/M0AZceVagQ

— Victor Ng (@victomato) September 25, 2016

Andrea Mitchell says that this illustrates the fact that millennials hate her.

.

I gotcher false equivalency for ya

by digby

This from Think Progress shows just how insane this need to provide “balance” really is:

Over the weekend, various major media outlets discovered that Donald Trump lies a lot. 

“Never in modern presidential politics has a major candidate made false statements as routinely as Trump has,” the LA Times reported.

“Donald J. Trump has unleashed a blizzard of falsehoods, exaggerations and outright lies in the general election, peppering his speeches, interviews and Twitter posts with untruths so frequent that they can seem flighty or random — even compulsive,” wrote the New York Times.

Politico had a worthy plan to evaluate Trump’s truthfulness. It decided to track the public statements of both candidates for one week and compare them.
That exercise found that Trump says something false every 3 minutes and 15 seconds while Clinton utters a falsehood every 12 minutes.

“Compared with Trump’s machine-gun style of spewing falsehoods, Clinton’s detours from the truth were rarer and more targeted,” Politico concluded.

But dig a little deeper and you’ll see that Politico went to extreme lengths to create even this level of equivalency between Trump and Clinton.

One of Clinton’s eight “lies” is her claim that Donald Trump’s plan to eliminate the estate tax would be a $4 billion tax cut for his family. Politico argues that this is a lie because it is based on Donald Trump’s own estimate of his net worth.

In other words, Clinton is guilty of lying because she took Trump at his word about his own net worth. It’s not enough for Clinton to tell the truth and to accurately describe the impact of his estate tax plan. She also has to identify and correct Trump’s lies. 

Trump’s actual net worth cannot be independently determined because, among other things, Trump has not released his tax returns.

I wrote about Trump’s debating style for Salon today:

What a long strange trip it’s been since I wrote about the first GOP debate in August 2015. The stage was so crowded with Republican all-stars they couldn’t fit them on the same stage. The anticipation of seeing amateurs like Dr. Ben Carson and Donald Trump face off with seasoned pols like Gov. Chris Christie and former governor Jeb Bush, and the fringier Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, was thick enough to cut with a knife.

Trump got off to a great start and set the tone for the rest of the debates when he responded to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly quoting him saying women are “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals” by replying, to the great amusement of the crowd, that he had said that only about Rosie O’Donnell. It’s doubtful there were more than a handful of people in the country that night who dreamed that a little over a year later he would be standing on the stage facing Hillary Clinton.

There were 12 debates and seven candidate forums during the Republican primaries. Trump participated in all but one of the debates and three of the forums, and he dominated all of them. After Trump was asked a tough question early on about the nuclear triad and looked like a deer caught in headlights, he learned to take advantage of the time constraints by volleying insults and crude zingers to avoid answering difficult questions. He found that he could deflect and distract by being outrageous.

But the final debate between the last four standing, Trump, Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. John Kasich, was different. It may be the template for what we’re going to see tonight. Trump wasn’t his usual garrulous self. He was “serious” in that debate, no name-calling, no acting out. And he made absolutely no sense.

Take just this one question as an example:

Moderator: Mr. Trump, you don’t want to raise the retirement age, and you also don’t want to cut benefits, even for wealthier Americans. But according to the Social Security Administration, unless adjustments are made, Social Security is projected to run out of money within 20 years. So specifically, what would you do to stop that from happening?

Donald Trump: Well, first of all, I want you to understand that the Democrats, and I’ve watched them very intensely, even though it’s a very, very boring thing to watch, that the Democrats are doing nothing with Social Security. They’re leaving it the way it is. In fact, they want to increase it. They want to actually give more.

And that’s what we’re up against. And whether we like it or not, that is what we’re up against.

I will do everything within my power not to touch Social Security, to leave it the way it is; to make this country rich again; to bring back our jobs; to get rid of deficits; to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse, which is rampant in this country, rampant, totally rampant.

He babbled on for some time about how he would get rid of deficits and how China is ruining everything and how he will cut all the fat and make America great again. It was a simple bold promise to “fix everything” and voters don’t have to worry their pretty little heads about the details.

But you’ll notice where he also said, “the Democrats are doing nothing with Social Security. They’re leaving it the way it is” and “that is what we’re up against” but then immediately said, “I will do everything within my power not to touch Social Security, to leave it the way it is.” It’s a bizarre, contradictory statement that allows him to have it both ways, to criticize the Democrats while taking exactly the same position.

The confused moderator let that go but followed up with facts and figures suggesting that “waste, fraud and abuse” would only amount to about 2 percent of the money needed. Trump replied that there’s plenty of money if we stop being the policeman of the world — and said in the same breath that we must spend whatever it takes to build up our military. He ended with:

We are going to be in a different world. We’re going to negotiate real deals now, and we’re going to bring the wealth back to our country. We owe $19 trillion. We’re going to bring wealth back to our country.

If you wrap all that up, what Trump was apparently saying is that we’re going to “negotiate deals” to “bring back” wealth and make other countries pay for the massive costs of building up our military, shoring up Social Security and everything else. This is inane twaddle, but it isn’t name-calling. He soundedserious.

When Trump’s numbers were challenged by Marco Rubio, this was how he responded:

Look, I’m just saying very simply we have a country that I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve been going over budgets and looking at budgets. We don’t bid things out. We don’t bid out, as an example, the drug industry, pharmaceutical industry. They don’t go out to bid. They just pay almost as if you walk into a drugstore. That’s what they’re paying.

I’m self-funding my campaign. Nobody is going to be taking care of me. I don’t want anybody’s money. I will tell you something. We’re going to go out to bid in virtually every different facet of our government. We’re going to save a fortune.

That is nonsense word salad worthy of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. (He’s going to “bid out” the pharmaceutical industry? Even in Trump’s fantasy universe, what does that mean?) Word salad is very difficult to rebut, particularly if it is delivered with a confident attitude. Sure, it’s incoherent gibberish, but because it’s all over the place it’s difficult to nail down specifically what’s wrong with it without getting lost in the weeds. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is a skilled and seasoned debater, but she’s never dealt with anything like this.

It’s possible that Trump will lose his cool on Monday night and demonstrate to the world that he is temperamentally unfit for the presidency. But it’s unlikely. He’s already proved that he is capable of keeping it together if he has to. What he has not been able to do is demonstrate that he knows what he’s talking about. The question is whether a majority of the American people can see that, or perhaps more important, whether they even think that matters.