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Month: October 2016

Some feel-good vibes for the Hillbots

Some feel-good vibes for the Hillbots

by digby

If you’re looking for some feel good vibes, watch this Clinton rally with Michelle Obama in North Carolina today. The crowd is raucous and excited,  and both women are obviously having a great time.

And Hillary was the enthusiastic warm-up act for Michelle, which is extremely unusual and shows that she has the smallest ego of any presidential candidate well… ever.  I’ve never seen anything like that.  Michelle is, of course, magnificent.

If you’re a Clinton voter you’ll enjoy it. It’s positive, upbeat and fun in front of a gigantic excited crowd.  If you’re a Trump voter you can find his speech today on Youtube. I watched it too. It’s dark, ugly and full of anger and bile in front of a gigantic, excited crowd.  That’s America right now.

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QOTD: Howard Stern

QOTD: Howard Stern

by digby

When he’s right, he’s right:

“None of this was hidden,” Stern said. “This is who Trump is. He was always bombastic. He always rated women. He always talked in a misogynistic, sexist kind of way, but he did it sort of proudly and out in the open; and he still won the Republican primary. In one sense, the fact that we do an interview and people’s personalities come out, I’m very proud of that.”

What he’s saying is that these are things his followers like about him. And it’s true. Add in the racism, xenophobia and simplistic nationalism and you pretty much describe the package the GOP signed on for and enthusiastically cheered at that Nuremberg convention back in July. They knew what they were getting.

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About those secret voters

About those secret voters

by digby

I wrote about some possible secret voters for Salon today:

One of the emerging themes of the last weeks of the presidential campaign is the resurgence of the right’s “unskewed polls” theory, which holds that when Republicans are behind it’s because the pollsters are sampling the wrong people.

In 2012 this was taken so seriously that Election Night on Fox News was a legendary train wreck as Karl Rove and other guru pundits had to eat their words. There are other theories about “missing white voters” who are being activated by the appeal of Republican nominee Donald Trump to their economic anxieties and the “shy” Trump voters who are afraid to tell pollsters that they really like him.

My colleague Matthew Sheffield analyzed all the data about these theories in his Salon piece a few days ago and they don’t seem to be borne out by any existing evidence. This sort of poll skepticism isn’t unusual among those working for losing campaigns generally. Given one in which the candidate himself is saying the polls are being systematically rigged against him by a cabal of media and political elites from the other party, it would be surprising if there weren’t abundant conspiracy theories to explain the polling.

That’s not to say it’s impossible that there might be voters who are afraid to confess their allegiance to a particular candidate in this election. It’s the most contentious one we’ve had in many years. I suspect most of us have had personal or professional situations where we just avoided the topic of the election altogether for fear of a brawl.

But the idea that Trump voters are hiding their true allegiance in large numbers strikes me as implausible. It just doesn’t track with the swashbuckling, politically incorrect, in-your-face ethos of the Trump movement. Considering the huge gender gap, one would have to assume the shy voters would be a hidden group of Trump men who are telling pollsters they’re voting for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. If you’re the kind of man who likes Trump, you’re probably not the kind who feels the need to hide it.

On the other hand, there could be some “shy” Clinton voters out there who say they are voting for Trump in order to keep the peace with their aggressively pro-Trump husbands and maintain their standing in their conservative communities.

These would be the type of women described in this fascinating piece in Marie Claire by Lyz Lenz. who lives in Iowa Trump country. She describes herself as a “pro-choice, same-sex-rights advocating, Christian-identified feminist” who is known in her community as the “crazy liberal.” She found out something interesting when she went to caucus for Hillary Clinton last winter:

As I made my way to the Clinton section, I saw the unmistakable wide smile of my neighbor Melody, a Christian mother I have always assumed votes Republican. Melody is the former director of a local Christian non-profit — a revered religious leader in our town. And the last person I expected to see out here supporting Hillary.

I was stunned. “This is our little secret,” she said as she gave me a warm hug. We laughed nervously.

Over the course of the 2016 presidential election, I’ve come to find that Melody is not the only conservative woman in my community who’s secretly voting Democrat. While nodding along with their husbands’ politics and passing as Trump supporters in their neighborhoods, there’s a group of women making fervent plans for what happens when they’re finally alone in the voting booth.

Iowa is a swing state that that has leaned toward Trump throughout this campaign. According to polling and focus groups, Clinton is deeply unpopular among this population of conservative white religious voters. It seems odd that they would prefer the crude, thrice-married libertine, but Clinton’s challenge to traditional gender roles seems to have “trumped” those concerns. Among the most socially conservative evangelicals there is a tradition of wifely submission that requires women to adhere to their husband’s choices in worldly matters, and the men of Iowa love Trump.

Lenz reported that there are many clandestine “women for Hillary” groups out there:

There are hundreds of private Facebook groups with names like “Secret Hillary Club,” most of which were formed during the caucus, when Clinton supporters felt alienated by ardent Bernie Sanders fans. But now, these online groups have coalesced into places of support and encouragement for counties that burn predominantly red in the polls. Cynthia Silver, a director and acting teacher living in New York City, started her pro-Hillary private Facebook group after a heated social media argument with a former student. Since Clinton won the nomination, Silver has been surprised to see the group grow to well over 2,000 members from all over the country.

Last spring, Slate’s Michelle Goldberg wrote about how surprised she was to find out that her New York neighborhood voted for Clinton when it seemed that all her neighbors were feeling the Bern. She spoke with several Hillary voters who said they had just decided to keep quiet to avoid confrontation. Imagine how it must be in Trump enclaves with people who wear “Hillary for Prison” T-shirts (or worse).

There is some empirical evidence of a hidden female vote making a difference — for example, in the 2008 New Hampshire primary, in which Clinton won big over Barack Obama even though polls showed her trailing. It’s impossible to prove what really happened, but some online wags (including me) dubbed it the “Tweety Effect” after an internet nickname for MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. The press, including Matthews, had displayed brutally sexist attitudes toward Clinton in the days leading up to the vote, and that may have made women angry enough that they came out in greater numbers than usual, perhaps even prompting some to switch their votes in order to send a message.

According to the polls, the gender gap in this election is already profound. Clinton is the first female presidential nominee from a major party, and the opposition chose an aggressive, rank misogynist to oppose her. The fact that in the face of Trump’s overheated followers, some women are reluctant to support her openly — especially women who normally vote Republican — is a perfect example of why the secret ballot is so important.

No matter what your community or your family or your employer says, your vote is your private decision. There may be quite a few women like those Iowa evangelicals who will cast a vote for Hillary Clinton this year and never tell a soul.

Survey says: Suppression by @BloggersRUs

Survey says: Suppression
by Tom Sullivan

State summary data for NC early voting through 10/25.

The New York Times highlights data I download every morning once early voting begins:

There also aren’t many states with better election data than North Carolina. The state releases detailed, individual-level information on every voter in the state. It even publishes a daily account of who has voted early, either in person or by mail.

It’s terribly useful data. The Times is conducting an experiment in projecting results from the party affiliation of those who have already voted and from its Upshot/Siena survey:

Already, about 812,000 people have voted in North Carolina, out of about 4,425,000 we think will eventually vote. Based on the voting history and demographic characteristics of those people, we think Hillary Clinton leads in North Carolina by about 6 percentage points. We think she has an even larger lead – 22 percentage points – among people who have already voted.

Those early voters tend to be older Democrats. But as the Times observes, this is not a reliable predictor of how they vote in national elections, “a significant slice of them are conservative, older white Democrats who have been voting Republican in presidential elections.” Nonetheless, while both major parties have lost registration in recent years, population growth and registration still favor Democrats, and the ranks of UNAffiliated voters are growing. There is concern about turnout in the hurricane-impacted areas along the coast. The Times continues:

Two things have changed, albeit slightly. First, our estimate for the final turnout has gradually declined. That’s because early voting has been a little slower this year than in 2012. Part of the reason is that there are some North Carolina counties where the number of in-person early voting stations has been scaled back. This has clearly reduced the number of early voters. We have made no adjustment for this effect, which should gradually diminish once more polling stations open on Oct. 27.

The block of early voting sites that opens today includes some of the largest counties in the state. As I noted in September, there is more to this than the Times explains:

The executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, Dallas Woodhouse, last month urged Republican Board of Elections appointees across the state’s 100 counties to “make party line changes to early voting” to limit early voting sites and hours. In its July ruling that threw out much of the the state’s massive voter suppression law, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals restored a week of early voting the law cut from the fall schedule. Local election plans had to be reworked, and nearly a third of county boards did just what Woodhouse asked. (With a Republican in the governor’s mansion, 3-member county boards across the state are weighted 2-1 Republican to Democrat.) Another NCGOP official urged Republican county board members to provide only a single voting site for the extra week and the minimum hours allowed by law.

Many did. The impact of that effort to suppress the vote is clear:

Perhaps the most egregious county is Guilford, a county of 517,600 people, of which 57.9 percent is White, and gave Obama 58 percent of the vote in 2012. The county opened 16 in-person early voting locations in 2012, but has only their central election office open in 2016. The number of in-person voters on the first Thursday and Friday was 21,560 in 2012, but was only 3,305 in 2016, a decrease of 18,255 or 85 percent.

Bill Busa illustrates the suppressive effect starkly at Insight(u)s:

Nonetheless, the Times’ chart shows Clinton widening her margin against Trump as voting continues. But Republicans tend to “bat last” in North Carolina. An early lead can be as deceptive as the numbers of registered Democrats who vote Republican for president. Still, if the trend continues, Republicans will have a greater and perhaps insurmountable deficit to make up in the bottom of the ninth (Election Day).

Today, Guilford County goes from 1 early voting site to 25 and Forsyth goes from 1 to 17.

Impeach or imprison? So hard to choose.

Impeach or imprison? So hard to choose.

by digby

This is going to take up so much time they won’t have any left to do the work people sent them to do. And that’s just fine by them:

After months, if not years, of attacking Hillary Clinton over scandals real and imagined, a conservative watchdog group says it’ll push to have the Democratic nominee impeached.

The prospect of a Clinton impeachment — there’s a throwback term — was raised Wednesday morning by Judicial Watch.

“You’re going to still have a clamor for a serious criminal investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s conduct with respect to her emails and the [Clinton] Foundation,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told NBC News. “There’s been no systematic investigation of various issues.”

He added, “I know this generation of Republican leaders is loathe to exercise these tolls, but impeachment is something that’s relevant. They see [the oversight process] as an opportunity in some measure to keep their opponents off-kilter, but they don’t want to do the substantive and principled work to truly hold corrupt politicians, or the administration, or anyone accountable.”

This isn’t the first time that a potential Clinton impeachment has been suggested. When allegations emerged that the FBI and State Department engaged in a quid pro quo to reclassify one of Clinton’s controversial emails, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced that “a senior State Department official’s attempt to pressure the FBI to hide the extent of this mishandling bears all the signs of a coverup. This is why our aggressive oversight work in the House is so important, and it will continue.”

Similarly, back in August, more than 50 House Republicansurged the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether Clinton Foundation donors had unusual access to the secretary of state during her tenure.

The media’s already eating up everything Judicial Watch is feeding them. So I’d guess the wingnuts will feel confident they can follow through with this and get plenty of face time and lots of Trumpie love o make up for their past transgressions.

Update: More on this from Dave Weigel. This will be spearheaded by the oleaginous Jason Chaffetz, the camera hog of the century. They’re going to put on a really big show.

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Can we stay?

Can we stay?

by digby

Just … this:

That millennial survey I noted earlier shows that younger Latinos are the one group that isn’t fully in Clinton’s corner. I have no idea why that is but when it comes to the issue of immigration there is just no comparison between Clinton and Trump. Clinton’s coalition includes Latinos in a big way which means she has obligation and concern. Trump’s has none — and it’s full of people who are actively hostile to Latinos and all immigrants. There is no choice on this issue.

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L’État, c’est Trump

L’État, c’est Trump

by digby

The Trump family cutting the ribbon on their new hotel today.

I wish I understood why this hasn’t been a bigger deal in the campaign. It’s such an obvious disqualifier and yet the press has just glossed over it like it’s perfectly normal even as they examine every donation to the Clinton Foundation as some kind of corrupt bargain to line the Clintons’ pockets. It’s mind-boggling.


This happened today, less than two weeks from the election:

Trump stood on a ballroom stage alongside three of his children who oversee his hotel projects at what was billed as the official grand opening of Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, just blocks from the White House. Trump’s co-mingling of his business interests and presidential aspirations were on clear display in and around the glitzy ballroom where he spoke.

A staffer employed by the campaign put the finishing touches on the podium on stage. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a top Trump surrogate, was on hand and spoke to reporters about the campaign. Gingrich sat in the front of the room.

Speaking after daughter Ivanka, who has overseen the redevelopment of the Old Post Office building, Trump said the project “shows how to work with our government and to get things done. My theme today is five words: under budget and ahead of schedule. So important. We don’t hear those words too often in government — but you will.”

He noted afterward that he would campaign later in the day in North Carolina before visiting other battleground states.

It was one of many instances in which he has simultaneously promoted his business and political interests. The last time Trump held a major public event at his hotel in the District was last month, when he acknowledged for the first time that President Obama was born in the United States.

He’ll say he’s just supporting his kids and isn’t that nice. Don’t worry he assures everyone that he won’t make any decisions that would particularly benefit the family business when he’s president so it’s ok. Just trust him.

And anyway, if people do nice things for him and it benefits his family fortune, well, that’s win-win, amirite??? L’etat c’est Trump.

I wrote about this for Salon last month. Trump’s conflict of interest is overwhelming and he’s so obtuse that he doesn’t even realize it. That nobody gives a shit about this tells us a lot about the media’s priorities. The news organizations have put dozens of people on the Wikileaks emails searching for a “bombshell” to take down Clinton. They’re just baby birds with their little beaks open waiting for mommy to feed them. This story, which breaks every norm in American politics, even beyond what the crazed Republicans have been doing for the last couple of decades, is almost completely ignored.

If he becomes president, Donald Trump will effectively be running an international business from the Oval Office and nobody cares.

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Trump and his followers share a common psychology

Trump and his followers share a common psychology


by digby




I wrote about the common thread in Trumpland for Salon today:

The New York Times ran an interesting story this week featuring some 2014 audio interviews for a proposed biography of Donald Trump and a long interview with Michael D’Antonio, the author who conducted the interviews. When asked for comment by the Times, Trump said they were “pretty old and pretty boring stuff. Hope people enjoy it.”

They aren’t old and they aren’t boring, and nothing about Trump is exactly enjoyable. But they are worth our attention.

These audio recordings are published in snippets within an interview with D’Antonio on the Times’ “Run-Up” election podcast. They concentrate mostly on Trump’s psychological makeup, which is — no surprise here — stunningly weird. Trump is uncomfortably revealing while simultaneously displaying absolutely no self-awareness. The disturbing if familiar portrait painted in this story is that of a manipulative, grandiose narcissist with no self-control.

Trump doesn’t want to evaluate his mistakes; in fact he doesn’t believe he’s made any. Everything is other people’s fault; and he refuses to listen to anyone, so he repeats the same errors over and over again. As I read the story and listened to the snippets of interviews and the accompanying commentary, it occurred to me that when Donald Trump says, “I don’t like to analyze myself because I might not like what I see,” he truly is the living embodiment of the base of the Republican Party.

Think about it. The GOP has lost the popular vote in all but one presidential election in the last quarter century. The elders of the party know they have a problem with their overwhelmingly white voter base and its hostility to the emerging demographic changes in the country, and they know the party’s ideology has to be updated to accommodate the modern world. Their laissez-faire economic policies failed and their small-government philosophy is inadequate to greet such global challenges as climate change and mass migration.

But their voters don’t want to hear it. Party elders all gathered in the wake of former Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential election defeat to conduct an “autopsy” and set out a plan to adapt their philosophy to changing circumstances and relax their rigid adherence to certain tribal prerogatives, in order to appeal to a broader spectrum of the public. They stressed that they needed to be more open to minority concerns and women’s issues and understood they had to find a way to deal with the challenge of immigration in a more humane way. As the report’s authors rightly advised:

If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e., self-deportation), they will not pay attention to our next sentence. It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies.

Like Trump, the voters have had no interest in such introspection and no desire to to change anything. Indeed, they wanted to double down on xenophobia, racism and sexism and crudely reject anyone who wasn’t exactly like them. And like their new leader, they romanticize violence and keep scores against their enemies. Trump, with his promise to take America back to its overwhelmingly white, male-dominated past, was just what the doctor ordered.

Trump goes on and on in the interview about how winners have to learn how to “acclimate” to new circumstances and sells himself as someone who is particularly good at that. But his performance as a presidential candidate illustrates his self-deception. He has been constitutionally unable to summon the discipline required to stay on message, create a working organization and resist the impulses that drive him to create havoc with his strategy. His campaign has been a train wreck mostly because he has insisted on running it by the seat of his pants, trusting that his instincts are so superior that he didn’t need to learn anything from anyone.

This trait is also reflected in the GOP’s base of voters, who refuse to accept that the world is changing and they have to change with it. Instead, they cling obstinately to a privileged status that no longer exists and close their minds to the reality that it really isn’t necessary in the first place. As Salon’s Matthew Rozsa pointed out this week, they yearn for a return to a time when America was dominated culturally and economically by white people and led exclusively by men.

In a survey published by the Public Religion Research Institute, 72 percent of likely voters supporting Republican nominee Donald Trump say America has changed for the worst since the 1950s. By contrast, 70 percent of likely voters supporting his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton say that America has changed for the better since that decade.

All but the oldest among them have no idea what it was like in the ’50s, other than the fact that uppity people of color and women knew their places. They are anything but “acclimated” to the modern world.

So Trump is the perfect candidate for this group. It’s not just that they are aligned in their xenophobia and bigotry, they are aligned psychologically. It’s essentially about an outsized fear of humiliation and the inability to accept loss, particularly at the hands of people they regard as inferior.

One anecdote in the Times story really encapsulates those underlying dynamics of this race. Trump’s first wife, Ivana, recalled that when she and Donald were first dating they went to a ski resort and she failed to tell him that she was an excellent skier. He went down the hill first and waited for her at the bottom. She said:

So he goes and stops, and he says, “Come on, baby. Come on, baby.” I went up. I went two flips up in the air, two flips in front of him. I disappeared. Donald was so angry, he took off his skis, his ski boots, and walked up to the restaurant. . . . He could not take it. He could not take it.

Unfortunately for Trump, Clinton just ripped and shredded her way down the double black diamond slope of presidential politics — and he’s standing there watching her fly by. And he cannot take it. It still had not occurred to him that a woman could be better than him at anything.
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Priorities

Priorities

by digby

Here is an interesting finding in this poll about millennials.

I have to say that it’s a little disappointing that white millennials cite the “national debt” but not racism as a top concern.  It’s good to see that 24% name climate change though. That’s the issue of their generation.

But it’s interesting to see the way these issues divide among the different demographic groups. It doesn’t mean they all don’t care about the same things. But priorities matter. If anyone had done this sort of thing among baby boomers when they were all under 35, they would have likely named the Vietnam war as a common priority — but it wouldn’t have told you whether they were for or against it. There were plenty on either side. It looks like the millennial generation is similarly diverse in its thinking.

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