Month: October 2016

Trump’s sacrifice

by digby

I sure hope this comes up in the next debate:

On July 18, 2011, Trump appeared on Fox News and was asked about President Barack Obama’s comments that well-to-do Americans should make a sacrifice for the country by paying more in taxes. He replied:

“Well, I don’t mind sacrificing for the country, to be honest with you. But you know, you do have a problem because half of the people don’t pay any tax. And when he’s talking about that he’s talking about people that aren’t also working, that are not contributing to this society. And it’s a problem. But we have 50 percent. It just hit the 50 percent mark. Fifty percent of the people are paying no tax.”

Yeah, he said that.

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He prefers vets who don’t have PTSD

by digby

You know, the strong ones. Like him. Who went to military boarding school and had to endure some really tough pillow fights.

Trump, this morning, to a room full of veterans:

“When people come back from war and combat and they see maybe what the people in this room have seen many times over, and you’re strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can’t handle it.” 

The room was silent when he said it.

The fundamental divide

by digby

I wish I understood why so many liberals are reluctant to admit this. It is clear as day. I wish it weren’t so but it is.

The conflict between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump over racial and gender issues in Monday’s debate reflects a deep divide in voter attitudes: views on the influence of men, women and racial groups in society are closely related to vote preferences.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, mainly released Sunday, finds that majorities of Hillary Clinton’s supporters believe minorities and women have too little influence in American society, while half say men and whites have too much influence. For all his outsider appeal, Donald Trump’s supporters, by contrast, are far more apt to endorse the status quo in this regard.

See PDF with tables and full results here.

All told, the survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds that about half of Americans think women, men and whites have about the right amount of influence in society these days. Fewer — three in 10 — say the same about racial and ethnic minorities.

Of the rest, many more say women have too little rather than too much influence (42 vs. 10 percent). The gap also is wide for minorities (40 percent say they have too little influence, 23 percent too much). In contrast, Americans overall are more apt to say men and whites have too much rather than too little influence, 37 vs. 9 percent for men, 34 vs. 12 percent for whites.

The divisions among Clinton and Trump supporters are deep. Two-thirds of Clinton supporters say minorities have too little influence in the country these days, while just 17 percent of Trump supporters agree. Among Clinton supporters, 58 percent say women have too little influence; only 21 percent of Trump’s say the same.

Further, 50 percent of Clinton’s backers say men have too much influence, and 53 percent say the same about whites. That view plummets to 20 and 8 percent, respectively, among Trump voters.

Instead, roughly two-thirds of Trump supporters say women, whites and men alike have about the right amount of influence. Four in 10 Trump supporters say minorities have the right amount of influence -– and as many say they have too much.

These results stand up in a statistical model. Controlling for demographics, partisanship, ideology and presidential approval, seeing too little influence for whites and men and too much influence for minorities and women independently predicts support for Trump. Other than disapproval of Barack Obama, which is by far the best predictor of support for Trump, views of group influence have a similar effect as partisanship, ideology and race.

This is what’s driving the Trump phenomenon. Of course it is.   

A quick Senate scorecard

by Gaius Publius

[Note: Alaska race updated.]

I want to offer a quick Senate scorecard for the upcoming election, not just races to watch and their current status, but the effect of the races on the “final score” — control of the Senate until the wipeout in 2018 puts the Republicans firmly in control.

To do this, I want to organize the races the way basketball or football analysts look at your favorite college team’s upcoming season — games grouped by Should Be Easy, Tough Call, On the Bubble, Would Take a Miracle. For this exercise, we’ll ignore the baked-in results in places like California (Democratic and will stay that way), and list the races to watch by these categories:

• Washouts — four contests (IL, WI, OH, FL)
• No Change — one contest (CO)
• Possible Flips — three contests (NH, PA, IN)
• Toss Ups — three contests (NV, NC, MO)
• and one Wild Card race — Alaska

We will look briefly at these 12 races. Others may disagree, but it looks to me like these are the ones to watch.

For reference, the state of the Senate today is:

• Republicans: 54 seats
• Democrats: 44 seats
• Independents: 2 seats (caucusing with Democrats)

No independent is up for reelection this cycle. Democrats need a net pickup of +4 to tie in the Senate (50-50) and +5 to take it outright (ignoring for now the “60 vote rule” that makes sure no progressive legislation gets passed). Here are races in each group, with the likeliest outcomes by group in parentheses.

Washouts (+2 D)

The “washout” states are those where one party has conceded the race by withdrawing money. All four seats are held by Republicans. Two of the Democrats have washed out, as have two of the Republicans. These are:

Net result: +2 Democrats.

From Electoral-Vote.com:

Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy in Florida, incumbent Republican Mark Kirk in Illinois, Democratic challenger Ted Strickland in Ohio, and incumbent Republican Ron Johnson in Wisconsin are doing badly enough that their parties either have already cut off the money (the two Republicans), or are close to doing so (the two Democrats).

I think most would call these races closed. Note: Sen. Chuck Schumer interfered with progressive challengers in Florida and Ohio, both of which are now projected to stay Republican. The +2 Democrats could easily be +4 Democrats in this category, absent that interference. (Update: Start here, search on “Sestak”, then on “Florida”.)

No Change

This category could be larger (I had the New Hampshire race here at first), but let’s play it safe.

The Hill on Bennet:

Once viewed as one of the only ripe opportunities for Republicans, Bennet appears poised to sail to reelection. Republicans aren’t coming to the aid of Darryl Glenn, a county commissioner who trumpeted his conservative bona fides during the primary. But he’ll need to look beyond his base in a state that Obama carried twice and also has a large Latino population.

Michael Bennet is this guy, by the way, from 2014: “Shorter Republicans: ‘We forgive Michael Bennet for trying to win the Senate.” Shorter Sen. Bennet: “Glad we’re still friends.’“

Possible Flips (+2 D, maybe)

These are fairly close races where the Democrat could flip a Republican seat. I have three of these:

If the current leader wins each seat: +2 Democrats, but this is iffy.

In New Hampshire, Ayotte has been surging (+8 in a mid-September Marist poll), but she’s coming from behind. Hassan could take it, but I’m not confident.

The Hill on the Pennsylvania race:

The presidential race appears to be trickling into Toomey’s reelection. Political observers in the state say he’s running a strong campaign, but his dip in the polls is largely thanks to the top of the ticket.

Toomey continues to withhold his support from Trump. But his opponent, Katie McGinty, a little-known former gubernatorial chief of staff, has been helped by Clinton’s consistent lead over Trump in the Keystone State. McGinty has maintained a lead since mid-July, though one survey has Toomey up 7 points.

RealClearPolitics has this race a wash, but I think Toomey has the edge. In Indiana, Bayh is only up by single digits, but has never trailed.

(Note: Chuck Schumer interfered with non-establishment Democrat Joe Sestak in the primary, someone whom many expected to beat Toomey. Schumer-chosen candidate McGinty has a steeper uphill climb.)

Too Close To Call (A wash)

There are three races here — Nevada, North Carolina, Missouri — and Republicans are defending two of the three seats. (Nevada is an open seat, but was Democratic.)

Republicans flip one seat if all three leaders win. Most likely positive case for the Democrats is no change (two wins and one loss). If Democrats win out: +2 Democrats.

Subtotal (+2 D or +4 D)

If you’re counting the total to this point, Democrats are up +2 among the Washout races, then it’s a wash until the Too Close To Call races, where there’s either no change (more likely) or they go up +2 (by winning them all).

In other words, our best case so far gives the Democrats +4 seats, and our middle case gives them +2 seats. That’s not enough to take the Senate.

Wild Card race: Alaska

Alaska is a Republican seat at the moment, with Lisa Murkowski defending it. A pro-Sanders Democrat is in position to win the seat — and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wants him to lose (!).

Howie Klein has written about the Alaska race here:

[T]he populist Democratic Party in the state– which gave Bernie a 81.6% to 18.4% landslide over Hillary and massive victories in every single electoral district (numbers that beat Trump too)– also nominated Ray Metcalfe, a former Anchorage state Rep who was one of the state’s original Bernie for President organizers. Although he won the party nomination, 15,198 to 10,074, Metcalfe is not a Schumer kind of candidate….

The DSCC (and Alaska’s grotesquely corrupt Democratic Party establishment) are worried that– with teabagger and Trumpist Joe Miller in the race as a Libertarian and tearing Murkowski apart from the right– Metcalfe could actually win. … That’s how Schumer’s reptilian mind works. So he’s encouraging a proven corruptionist buddy of his, Mark Begich, to mount a last minute write-in campaign to draw votes away from Metcalfe and throw the election to Murkowski!

More from Electoral-vote.com (my emphasis)

Alaska looks like it’s going to become a free-for-all. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is running for reelection, trying to keep a seat that she last won as a write-in candidate after being primaried by tea partier Joe Miller. She could end up facing four viable opponents: Ray Metcalfe (the Democratic nominee), Margaret Stock (an independent with a very impressive resume), Miller (who’s back, as the recently-chosen nominee of the Libertarian Party), and possibly former Democratic senator Mark Begich (who may run—wait for it—as a write-in candidate). 30% of the vote could very well win this thing.

Schumer has succeeded in every race he tried to influence, so I’ll give Murkowski the win.

Update: Mark Begich, who was “being asked to launch a write-in campaign,” has dropped out of the race. Ray Metcalfe is polling well behind Murkowski and Miller.

Net change: None.

Your most likely 2017 Senate

The most likely 2017 Senate, the high point of the bell-shaped curve, if all current likelihoods hold, appears to be this:

• Republican: 52 or 50 seats
• Democrats: 46 or 48 seats
• Independents: 2 seats (caucusing with Democrats)

So there it is, a scorecard to follow as these races evolve. For the Democrats to reach 50 seats, watch the Too Close To Call races, plus Alaska.

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

GP

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Taxes are for suckers
by Tom Sullivan

In December 2010, I commented on what Paul Krugman called the right’s “humbug factories” (conservative think tanks). One need not invoke malice to explain the behavior of certain politicians, he wrote, while ignorance remains a possibility.

But Krugman left out a third possibility. His column reminded me of the 1978 “Great Pool Shootout,” as ABC’s Wide World of Sports billed the live tournament between fifteen-time world straight pool champion, Willie Mosconi, and well-known pool hustler, Minnesota Fats. A relentless self-promoter, Limbaugh-like with a touch of W.C. Fields, Fats was asked beforehand if he practiced much. The hustler replied with characteristic bombast, “Practice is for suckers.” Mosconi won the contest in three straight sets.

And here we are nearly 40 years later. The bombastic Donald Trump handily lost his first debate to Hillary Clinton and faces two more. Dan Balz at the Washington Post writes:

Donald Trump has one week to prepare for his next debate with Hillary Clinton. It is a critical event for him. Yet everything he’s done before and after the first debate sends a loud, clear message: He seems to think debate prep is for chumps.

Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post commented on what was a very bad week for Donald Trump, one capped by a disjointed speech in Manheim, Pennsylvania Saturday in which he mimicked Hillary Clinton’s stumbling into a van. Cillizza observes:

True character tends to be revealed when times are tough. Anyone can be magnanimous, happy and generous after a win. It’s a hell of a lot harder to maintain that dignity and charitableness after a defeat.

Trump has shown throughout this campaign that he runs well while ahead. His chiding of his opponents, his dismissiveness of the political press — it all plays great when he is on top of the political world.

But, last night in Manheim, he showed what we got glimpses of almost a year ago in Iowa: When he’s down, Trump is like a cornered animal. He lashes out — at everyone. That is when he’s at his most dangerous — to his own prospects and those of the party he is leading.

Those observations may not be earth-shattering, but we may get the opportunity for more shortly. Grace under fire, Trump is not.

Appearing at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, former presidential candidate Jeb Bush responded to a student’s question about Trump’s claims of a rigged election:

“Trump only talks about things being rigged when it’s not going well for him,” Bush replied. “It’s a leading indicator.”

The revelations in yesterday’s New York Times about Trump’s nearly billion-dollar loss in his leaked 1995 taxes reverberated in Toledo, Ohio where Hillary Clinton has struggled to convince voters that Trump’s success is not as it appears :

The revelations about the Republican nominee’s taxes gave Clinton a fresh opportunity. In conversations around Toledo, many voters said they were offended by Trump.

“It’s disgusting,” said Steve Crouse, 65, the owner of Toledo’s downtown Glass City Cafe and a separate printing business. “As a businessman, he’s got that right to do that. It’s the way the laws were set up. But it’s not right. I would feel guilty if I didn’t pay anything. It’s flat-out cheating the government. You’re using all the roads, the fire department, the police, so you should pay for that.”

As with practice, taxes are for suckers seems to be Trump’s philosophy. In Trump’s mind, that makes most of his working-class supporters, what?

The Trumpish aftermath of round two with Hillary Clinton ought to be entertaining. Too bad Howard Cosell is not around to officiate.

QOTD: Mr Magoosolini

by digby

I can hardly believe it, but this is what he said, defending Trump:

“Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman?” 

In fact, his performance this morning on the all the shows indicates that someone’s put LSD in the water at Trump tower.  They’re all tripping. It’s the only logical explanation.

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This strikes me as being somewhat important

by digby

Ruby Cramer at Buzzfeed reports on Clinton’s voter registration efforts:

[T]he invitation to visit her campaign’s webpage, IWillVote.com, is part of a three-month ongoing effort inside the Democratic nominee’s Brooklyn headquarters that, in the span of Tuesday alone, resulted in a total of 64,000 new voter registrations — a feat that laid bare the significant gap between Donald Trump’s bare-bones operation and the field program that Clinton and her hundreds of aides have been building for some 17 months.

Clinton has said her campaign has set a goal of registering 3 million new people to vote. Tuesday’s 64,000 count does not include the voters the campaign has registered online on other days, or through its field program on the ground in the battleground states, but the nationwide Voter Registration Day push, outlined by a campaign official late Thursday, provides a snapshot of the capabilities of a highly organized operation.

Inside headquarters, the newly enhanced IWillVote.com is considered a significant improvement on the party’s existing technology. The Democratic National Committee built the website ahead of the 2014 House and Senate elections, one of the party’s worst cycles in recent memory. The first iteration of the tool amounted to a one-stop shop where voters could find information about their state’s registration rules and dates.

Two years later, in July, the Clinton campaign began a major overhaul of the site.

The rebuilt version allows voters to go step by step through the registration process in every state, allowing the campaign to see how much of the registration process each voter completes, and follow up individually with the people who started but did not complete the form. From Tuesday’s drive, the official said, Clinton operatives now have the ability to identify and contact an additional 120,000 people who began registering.

The effort also featured events across the country and what the campaign described as an “aggressive” push across platforms from surrogates and celebrities, including singers Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato, Hollywood fixtures Shonda Rhimes andGeorge Takei, and the president himself, who joined Ryan Seacrest’s popular radio show to help promote the website and its Spanish-language counterpart, VoyaVotar2016.com.

The coordinated effort resulted in 292 million “earned social media impressions” over the course of Tuesday, the campaign official said, and continued into the week. (On Thursday, two days into the registration drive, one of Clinton’s most enthusiastic celebrity boosters, singer Katy Perry, tweeted in all capital letters, “HOW MANY MORE FUNNY THINGS DO WE HAVE TO DO TO GET YA TO THE POLLS NOV 8TH?!”)

The campaign’s tech department, staffed with about 70 people, is led by a former director at Google, Stephanie Hannon, who recruited members of her team from Silicon Valley. A 10-person voter and volunteer-focused team within the department, known internally as the “Voter Agile” team, worked on the registration project through the summer and early fall, building out the various features on the website — tools that allow users to request to vote by mail or encourage their friends to register. (The Voter Agile team is also responsible for a polling place lookup tool and online call tool.)

Clinton does not speak with natural ease about the world of technology, often spelling out her website URL or SMS sign-up number for crowds as if addressing something vaguely foreign. (“Go to ‘Hillary Clinton Dot Com’ or text ‘Join’ — J-O-I-N — to 4-7-2-4-6 to get involved!” she says slowly.) But the 68-year-old candidate, known for an attention to detail and penchant for exhaustive preparation, does appear to delight in her campaign’s exacting field program and attempts at even the slightest advantage.

Aboard her campaign plane on Thursday, as she took questions from reporters, Clinton could not help but mention another one of the tech team’s recent projects — a “college calculator” that allows voters to see how much her student debt plan might help them save. “I love my college calculator. I hope you all will write about it again!” she said.

Clinton has also shown a heightened attention throughout this campaign, her second presidential, to the organizing philosophy her manager Robby Mook has made a trademark. In the primaries, she tailored her events, her schedule, even her remarks, to a strategy aimed at building an organization of passionate volunteers to help get out the vote. (“One of the things I learned last time is, it’s organize, organize, organize,” she said last spring in one of the first interviews of her campaign.) It was the field program in Iowa that delivered the narrow victory she needed badly in those first caucuses.

Through the general election, Clinton has remained committed to the strategy, making a point of speaking directly to voters in ways designed to boost the state field programs — and often doing so with an incredible specificity not often seen from candidates.

This summer, at a rally in West Philadelphia, Clinton not only urged voters to register to vote — she personally instructed them from the stage on how to sign up (“the deadline for registering is Oct. 11”), where and when to canvass (“we have packets for you at the door so you can also canvass, meet your neighbors, canvass across West Philly after this event”), even relating the address of a nearby field office opening (“52nd and Cedar!”).

I keep hearing that Clinton has run the worst campaign in history and has shown no concern whatsoever for the good of the party or down ballot races. This would argue otherwise.

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Politics and Reality radio: Conason on the Clinton Foundation; Policing with Driverless Cars

by Joshua Holland

This week, we’ll speak with Joe Conason about his timely new book, Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton.

Then we’ll be joined by Boston Globe transportation columnist Robin Washington to talk about the future of policing in an era of driverless cars. Traffic stops make up fully half of what cops do.

Playlist:
Wyclef Jean: “Heaven’s in New York”
The Fugees: “No Woman, No Cry”
Bruce Springsteen: “Backstreets”

Victims of the fever swamp

by digby

This is one of the most disturbing stories I’ve ever read about one of my fellow Americans. It’s about a woman, down on her luck and suffering some mental health issues, who goes down the rabbit hole of the right wing conspiracy fever swamp. Here’s a little taste of how she spends her time:

“Oh, look,” she said, reading a headline. “‘A West Virginia member of the House of Delegates says Hillary Clinton should be tried for treason, murder and crimes against the U.S. Constitution and then hung on the Mall in Washington, D.C.’ ”

She scrolled.

“I want to find out if he’s going to the nut house because of it,” she said.

She lit a cigarette and squinted at the screen.

“Look at this,” she said, pointing to a photo of Michelle Obama with a caption suggesting she is a man. “It’s everywhere.”

And then she began explaining, step by step, how she had come to believe that the first lady might actually be a man named Michael.

She figured it started with the Christian televangelists she had followed since the 1980s. In particular, she loved John Hagee, who had said that the Antichrist would appear as a “blasphemer and a homosexual.” And Jerry Falwell, who had blamed the Sept. 11 attacks on “the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians.”

“Also,” Melanie said, “Falwell disclosed that the first Christmas Bill and Hillary spent in the White House, Hillary collected ornaments from homosexuals all over the world. And those ornaments were hung in the White House foyer.”

And if that wasn’t enough to prove they were “anti-Bible,” she said, the Clintons went on to support allowing closeted gay people to serve in the military, which she saw as a watershed moment when America began turning away from God.

Then came Obama — “Obama and his gay initiatives,” she said — and her suspicions about him deepened with each one. First he supported allowing gays to serve openly in the military. Then gay marriage. Then came the one that struck Melanie as the strangest and most sinister of all: allowing transgender people to use bathrooms matching their gender identity.

“It’s like he wants to classify us — alpha, beta, gamma, delta,” she said, referring to the dystopian future described in the novel “Brave New World.”

As she tried to understand it all, the best explanation she found was that Obama himself must be gay, a notion introduced and reinforced by all sorts of stories and photos and videos showing up in her Facebook feed. Of these, few were more convincing than a video of the late comedian Joan Rivers, which was what brought her to the matter of the first lady.

“Here we go,” she said now, finding it on her phone.

She read the headline out loud: “Joan Rivers died two months after calling Obama gay and Michelle a transvestite.”

And then she scrolled through one YouTube video after another, including a 13-minute 28-second one with more than 1.4 million views that she watched again now. In it, a reporter asks Rivers when America will have its first gay president. “We already have it with Obama, so let’s just calm down,” Rivers says as she walks away, adding, “You know Michelle is a tranny.” “I’m sorry, she’s a what?” the reporter asks. “A transgender,” Rivers replies. “We all know that.”

“So,” Melanie said, explaining why she thought Rivers was serious. “There are societies out there, especially in Hollywood, that we don’t know about. Joan is in the LGTB community; she’s steeped in it. I watch her stuff on E! Anyone knows that.”

“So,” she continued, “I think if she comes out and says we already have a gay in the White House and Michelle is a tranny, I mean, do you think she’s nuts?”

She took a drag on her cigarette.

“Well, I don’t,” she said, and turned her attention to the question of the Obama children.

“Let’s look,” she said, and began googling.

She started with mrconservative.com, where there was a story, headlined “Evidence Michelle Obama Never Gave Birth to Malia & Sasha,” that said: “We have seen pictures of Barack and Michelle dating back far before they had children, like shots from their wedding, but when it comes to what would have been Michelle’s childbearing years, there is absolutely nothing. Not one picture of her pregnant or with a newborn baby.” It continued: “Ancestry.com and GenealogyBank.com have no records of Malia or Sasha being born,” and also said that “Malia and Sasha [bear] little resemblance to their parents,” which “could very well be because the two girls were adopted, possibly from Morocco.” After reading that, Melanie scrolled through links to versions of the story on americasfreedomfighters.com and redflagnews.com and others among the dozens of similar websites that have proliferated in recent years and draw millions of visitors each month. She looked up from her phone.

“I think those kids were kidnapped,” she said. “We should be looking for those kids’ parents.”

Austin is online often, checking her Facebook and Twitter feeds for stories involving the Obamas and the Clintons, many of which come from conspiracy-theory websites. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
She kept scrolling for more evidence.

“Obama gay is on Infowars,” she said, pausing for a moment on the conspiracy theory website that now had more than 6.9 million U.S. visitors per month and a daily news program hosted by Alex Jones, who had interviewed Donald Trump. “I just want to finish by saying your reputation’s amazing,” Trump had told Jones in December. In May, Jones had devoted his show to “the possibility that Michelle Obama was born a man,” and as the Republican National Convention began, he had hosted a rally attended by Trump adviser Roger Stone. Melanie kept scrolling.

Obama Muslim. Obama ISIS. Christian beheadings. A link to an article on a website called commonsenseshow.com detailing how the U.S. government had imported 30,000 guillotines in preparation for martial law, and explaining that a single guillotine “reportedly can chop off the heads of about 100 people per hour,” so that “in one ten hour day, 30 million people could be executed.”

It was afternoon now, and Melanie got herself a glass of iced tea. She thought about the two legislators who had said Hillary Clinton should be executed, and all the memes, and all the stories on all the websites. The more she read, she said, the more certain she was becoming that she was not out of the ordinary, and that her hospitalization, for instance, was just one more example of an increasingly unjust world. She went over it again: the police cruiser, the injections, the medical bills after. Her hips still hurt. Her gait was off. She was almost out of cigarettes.

Last February she was involuntarily committed for a spell over her obsession with all this nutty stuff. She says this:

“So you see, the media, everybody helped me get to February,” she said, referring to the day the state police took her off to the hospital. “I didn’t get there on my own. But I’m supposed to be the one to pay the price for it for mouthing off? I need to learn my lesson?”

She got up from the table.

“It’s not that I’m some whacked-out whatever,” she said. “I had a lot of help.”

Indeed she did.

And, by the way, Donald Trump is more like her than people care to admit.

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Yes, he can go lower

by digby

If you thought his making fun of a disabled reporter was a fluke, it wasn’t. He’s just a common asshole with the emotional maturity of a nasty 7 year old bully.

The first comment on that YouTube is:

“Hillary is ready for death”