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Month: November 2016

The Trump campaign is their safe space

The Trump campaign is their safe space

by digby

Ted Nugent at a Trump rally last night

The former Governor and George HW Bush staffer John Sununu of New Hampshire was stumping for Trump :

“Do you think Bill was referring to Hillary when he said, ‘I did not have sex with that woman?”

At another point, the pro-Trump audience mimicked Native American war cries when Sununu mentioned Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, from neighboring Massachusetts.  

He did say that the cries of “execute her!” were going too far, so that’s nice.

The first woman presidential candidate from a major party has had to face that disgusting bullshit every step of the way from sexist pigs overseas, in law enforcement, from the GOP and a large portion of the American public.  The people who are voting for trump say they’re voting against “political correctness.” What they’re voting for is their desire to be able to act like nasty, crude boors in public and not feel embarrassed for it. The Trump campaign is their own little safe space.

Nah, they were always both

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Aquí están los votantes ocultos (Here are the hidden voters …)

Aquí están los votantes ocultos

by digby

Here are those hidden voters. I wrote about the sleeping giant for Salon this morning:

Back in the early days of the presidential campaign I wrote a column here piece about the devastation former California governor Pete Wilson wreaked on the Republican party when he awakened the sleeping Latino giant with his crude campaign against immigration. You would think the rest of the GOP would have learned from his mistake — the once-dominant California Republican Party is such a shell of its former self that there is literally no possibility a Republican will be elected to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer. (Both remaining candidates are Democrats.) If this year’s turnout among California Latinos is high, it might get worse.

Republican leaders knew about this. The “autopsy” they did after 2012 was very explicit about the party’s need to reach out to Hispanic communities or risk losing the presidency for the foreseeable future. That report famously observed:

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. In the last election, Governor Romney received just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote. Other minority communities, including Asian and Pacific Islander Americans,also view the Party as unwelcoming. President Bush got 44 percent of the Asian vote in 2004; our presidential nominee received only 26 percent in 2012.

The base wasn’t having it. When Donald Trump came along and articulated their rage at Latino immigrants, any hope of such outreach was abandoned. And it looks like they may have committed the same fatal error that Pete Wilson made 22 years ago in California.

Last Friday night, ace Nevada reporter Jon Ralston sounded the alarm: Latino early voting in Clark County (which includes Las Vegas) was about to go through the roof. Turnout had been beating expectations throughout the early voting period, but on the last night there were long lines at voting places in predominantly Latino areas and by law they had to hold the polls open to ensure everyone would be able to vote. At the end of the night Ralston declared that Donald Trump’s hopes of winning Nevada — which is crucial to his electoral college math — had been dashed. The Latino vote had surged beyond all expectations and if the polling was even close to correct the vast majority were voting for Hillary Clinton.

More stories of massive Latino turnout emerged over the weekend from all over the country. Florida is showing a huge surge, up 75 percent from 2012, with more than a third being folks who haven’t voted before, a group that may not be showing up as “likely voters” in opinion polling. According to the New York Times:

In Orlando, voters waited up to 90 minutes on Saturday at one early voting location at a library, some spending the time taking pictures of one another in front of candidates’ signs. Parking lots for a quarter-mile surrounding the area were packed. 

Mrs. Clinton clearly carried the day there. Jon-Carlos Perez, 30, an independent voter and a concrete laborer originally from Puerto Rico, said he cast his vote for Mrs. Clinton in part because “she’s not an idiot like Trump.” 

Alyssa Perez, 23, a doctoral student at the University of Central Florida who voted at another busy location in Orlando, said she considered Mr. Trump to be “anti-women, anti-Hispanic, anti-Muslim” and said, “I don’t want to live in a country where there is a president who has those kinds of views.” 

Canvassing on Saturday morning in North Miami, Mary Kay Henry, the president of the Service Employees International Union, and a handful of local members focused on households, many of them Haitian or Hispanic, with an infrequent voting history. But nearly every resident who answered their door assured her they had already voted.

In Arizona, Latino voters have the dual motivation of voting out the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, one of Trump’s major endorsers. Democrats there have a strong get-out-the-vote effort with a coalition of 14 organizations mobilizing the community. Latino early vote has reportedly doubled from 2012.

In North Carolina the early vote is up 75 percent; it’s up 25 percent in Colorado. Most pollsters will admit that surveys that don’t sample Spanish-speaking households — as most do not — are almost assuredly undercounting Clinton’s share of support.

If these communities continue to turn out on Election Day, it could signal what analyst Ronald Brownstein described this way on Twitter:

Much of the commentary credits Trump’s racist message with motivating these communities, and there’s no doubt that has galvanized people. As Sen. Lindsey Graham has put it, “Trump deserves the award for Hispanic turnout. He did more to get them out than any Democrat has ever done.”

But as a Monday report in the New York Times explains further,  that’s not the whole story. Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats have been working with the communities for years, knowing very well that this is a young demographic that’s set to grow substantially over the next few years.

[T]hey set out to reach them in their communities, talking to them in their language, with the belief that touching them in the most personal way possible, at churches, bodegas, bus stops and nail salons, was also the most persuasive. And the effort was focused on more than registering potential voters. Democrats sought to make electoral politics part of the daily conversation for a demographic that had until now largely sat on the sidelines.

The Clinton campaign targeted Latinas in particular:

Starting in Nevada, the campaign convened groups of women to discuss issues that were important to them, like health care and education. After each meeting, the women were asked to write down the names and contacts of five other women who might support Mrs. Clinton. The program, called “Mujeres in Politics,” was deemed such a success that the campaign replicated it in Colorado and other states with large Hispanic populations.

Clinton’s campaign has struck a bold stance on immigration policy, in stark contrast to any previous candidates for president, including Barack Obama. Clinton is arguably to Obama’s left on issues of undocumented immigration and deportations, and has said she will make immigration reform a priority for her first 100 days in office. One of her most effective ads was this one featuring a young girl whose parents may face deportation:

Most of these immigrants are hard working folks, doing manual labor or service jobs, people who are also benefiting from unionization drives (which don’t come easy) and a helping hand from government on health care and education. They contribute massively to our economy, our culture and our society. All those pundits and analysts who been wringing their hands over the plight of the angry Trump voters and the Democrats’ alleged abandonment of the working class don’t even seem to see these working-class people.

There are millions of these newly energized voters all over the country and they are voting in vast numbers. Between Trump’s threats and Clinton’s outreach, after this election they will very likely be Democrats with a lot of clout in a party that has an agenda that might actually be able to deliver for them. If Trump’s voters can cool down and clear their heads, they might realize they’d be better off standing with these folks than against them.

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GOP Latina FTW

GOP Latina FTW

by digby

I wonder how many Republicans have made the choice Ana Navarro made. I hope that if the shoe is on the other foot some time in the future, I will make the same choice:

I had decided to write-in my mother as a symbolic protest vote against the Democratic and Republican nominees. I didn’t want to vote for either of them.

I had hoped that a week before the election, Trump would be losing Florida by a large enough margin that my vote wouldn’t matter. But darn it, my home state is too close to call. Florida could be the decisive state (again) as to who ultimately becomes the next president of the United States. I thought back to the 2000 election, which was decided by 537 votes in Florida. I thought about how I would feel if the same thing happened in 2016. I thought and I thought and I thought….

Then I cast my vote for Hillary Clinton. Let me rephrase that. I cast my vote against Donald Trump. I did it without joy or enthusiasm. I did it out of civic duty and love for our country.

I voted against Donald Trump because I am an immigrant. Trump has spent this campaign focusing on the very bad things done by a very small group of very bad immigrants. He has portrayed immigrants as criminals, rapists, and murderers. He does not talk about the contributions immigrants have made to America. He does not talk about immigrants who have made this a better and stronger country. He does not talk about the thousands and thousands of immigrant names that fill the Vietnam Wall in Washington or that are carved on so many headstones in every US military cemetery around the world.
I voted against Donald Trump because I am Hispanic. On June 16, 2015, the first day of his campaign, Trump called Mexicans “rapists.” I was not born in Mexico. I am not of Mexican descent. But I knew he was also talking about me.

I voted against Donald Trump for every American who looks and sounds like me. Because we love this country. We are proud of this country. We stand as equals in the United States of America.

I voted against Donald Trump because of 8-year-old Alessia. She is my best friend’s daughter. Alessia was born in Miami. Both her U.S.-citizen parents were born in Venezuela. Alessia can’t sleep at night. She is afraid that if Trump becomes president, her parents will be forced to leave our country.

I voted against Donald Trump because of Judge Gonzalo Curiel. He was born in the United States to poor Mexican immigrant parents. Judge Curiel is the federal judge assigned to the Trump University case. Trump dismissively called Judge Curiel “Mexican” and attacked his ability to perform his job impartially because of his descent. Attacking another American’s qualifications solely based on his ethnic background is bigotry. Plain and simple.

In the midst of the Judge Curiel controversy, I rode a taxicab in D.C. The driver was an African immigrant. He told me he worked 14 hours a day, six days a week, so his three children could one day be professionals. He teared up telling me he feared that if Trump became president, his children’s ability to be professionals would be questioned because their father happened to have been born in Ethiopia. I voted against Trump for that man and his three children.

I voted against Donald Trump because of Senator John McCain. I consider him a national hero. Like generations of McCains before and after him, John McCain wore our nation’s uniform. He enlisted at the age of 17. He was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He spent five years in captivity being savagely tortured. Trump doesn’t consider him a hero. Trump likes people “who weren’t captured.” Yes, the same Trump who avoided the draft at least four times because of a foot spur. He doesn’t remember on which foot.

I voted against Donald Trump because of Serge Kovaleski. That’s the name of the reporter with a disability who Trump mimicked and mocked. And I voted against Trump because of Daniel Navarro, my severely disabled brother. My entire life, I have been pained and angered seeing young kids stare at him and mimic his disability. I had never seen a grown man mimic a disabled person. Trump did so in front of thousands of people at one of his rallies. In front of millions of people watching on TV. Most of us would punish our children for exhibiting such behavior.

I voted against Donald Trump because of all women in my life who have been sexually harassed or assaulted and remained silent, bearing the embarrassment, even shame, for years. I heard Trump on tape boast and laugh about being a celebrity and getting away with grabbing women and not being able to contain himself from kissing women. He explained it away as “locker room” talk. Trump was not a teen-age athlete when he said those words. He was a 59-year-old businessman. Sexual assault is no laughing matter. It is a crime.

I voted against Donald Trump because of Megyn Kelly, and Rosie O’Donnell and Alicia Machado and Carly Fiorina and Heidi Cruz and so many other women Trump has called, “bimbo” or “fat,” or “ugly” or objectified and demeaned.

I voted against Trump because of Mr. and Mrs. Khan, the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, who lost his life in Iraq in 2004. I voted against Trump because of my friends, Retired General John Kelly and Karen Kelly, who lost their son, 1st Lieutenant Robert M. Kelly in 2010 in Afghanistan. I voted against Donald Trump for all the Gold Star families who have endured the unbearable and incurable pain of losing a child, a spouse, a parent, a sibling fighting for our country. Trump somehow managed to compare the sacrifice of losing a son to the “sacrifice” of erecting a building. I have no words.

I voted against Donald Trump because of Nykea Aldridge. She was Dwyane Wade’s cousin. She was shot in the head and killed while pushing her baby’s stroller down a Chicago street. Donald Trump sent out a tweet about her death for his political gain. “African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!,” it ended. No, Donald. Actually, every single poll shows they won’t.

I voted against Donald Trump because our system is not “rigged.” I live in South Florida, a community filled with political exiles from places like Cuba and Venezuela and Nicaragua, countries with corrupt, totalitarian, repressive governments. Our system is not perfect. But for 240 years, our democracy has respected the will of the people and allowed for peaceful succession. To question its legitimacy is irresponsible, reckless and un-American. 

I voted against Donald Trump because I believe in freedom of expression and freedom of the press. I voted against Donald Trump because of Wolf Blitzer. Some of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust. Wolf’s parents survived and fled to America. Trump has fostered an atmosphere at his political rallies where his followers angrily shout, “Jew-S-A!” and hurl insults and anti-Semitic slurs at members of the media.

I voted against Donald Trump because I am a deeply flawed person of faith. If I went into a confession booth right now, I’d be in there for hours. I believe in the redemptive need to admit mistakes, express regret and ask for forgiveness. I have done it too many times to count. The thought of a powerful leader who lacks the basic humility to admit error and ask for forgiveness — not even from the God he professes to believe in — astounds me.

I voted against Donald Trump because I am a Republican. I accept that Trump duly won the Republican nomination. But I do not accept that he represents Republican values — not the ones I grew-up respecting.

I have been a Republican since before I could vote. My family fled communism. Ronald Reagan fought communism. That sealed the deal for me. I have been an active partisan my entire adult life. This is the first time I voted against the Republican nominee for President. 

I did not want to vote for Hilary Clinton. Unlike Senator Bernie Sanders, I do care about her “damn emails.” I am disturbed by the blurry lines and for-profit overlap between Clinton’s philanthropic, business and political worlds.

Most of us suspected Hillary Clinton was going to run for President again in 2016. She and Bill Clinton knew it too. They knew they would be under scrutiny. If for no other reason, they could have and should have behaved differently.

No, she shouldn’t have set up a private server, which could have compromised national security. No, she shouldn’t have given paid speeches to Wall Street. No, her closest aide, Huma Abedin, should not have had an ethically questionable arrangement that allowed her to simultaneously work for four different Clinton-related entities, including the Department of State. No, the Clinton Foundation should not have accepted donations from countries which abuse human rights and discriminate against gays and women.

In every single one of those instances, Hillary Clinton and her closest advisers, including Bill, exercised bad judgment.

Like so many other Americans, I am left deciding which of these two candidates is the lesser of two evils, which one is capable of inflicting less damage on our country, our social fabric. The personal decision for me boiled down to choosing between a person who I consider to have very bad character and a person who has exercised bad judgment.

Our founding fathers set up a government of checks and balances. We can and have survived presidents with bad judgment. But I fear the effects on America of a president with bad character.

I worry that Trump brings out the worst in America. Division. Hostility. Racism. Bigotry. Misogyny. Things we used to hide. Feelings we used to try to overcome. Under the guise of not cowing to political correctness, some people are no longer embarrassed or ashamed to show the warts on their souls.

Some tell me, in 2016 we should no longer expect the president of the United States to be a role model. I refuse to accept that.

The president of the United States has to lift us all in moments of national grief. The president of the United States has to hug the children and spouses of fallen soldiers. That person represents us all. That person is recognized as the face and the voice for America in front of the rest of the world, and more importantly, by our children. A person supported by the Klu Klux Klan and its former Grand Wizard David Duke can never represent me. He can never be a role model for me.

We each have a right and a duty to make a personal choice based on those things that are most important to us, that we value most. My conscience compels me to do every little thing I can to make sure a bad person is not our next president. In America, we don’t choose our leaders through violence or armed insurrections.

One vote is our right. One vote is our weapon. I am exercising mine against Donald Trump.

Obviously, I disagree about the damn mails and Clinton’s judgment. I think it’s a trumped up scandal full of nothing. But that’s not the issue.

This election is the difference between normal democratic politics and fascism, sane and insane.

Republicans like Navarro are not political allies.

But they are not fascists and they are not insane.

I think what truly depresses me about this election, more than any other election I’ve witnessed, is the knowledge of how many Republicans are either fascist or insane or both. It’s more than I thought, although perhaps tomorrow we’ll be surprised. It’s been very clarifying. And terrifying. Between lefties failing to see the forest for the trees and uninformed voters being propagandized from all directions and right wingers being over-stimulated by racism, sexism and xenophobia, it obviously wouldn’t take much for “it” to happen here.

Keep your eye on the alt-right, folks. Something is happening all over the globe — and here too. In the meantime let’s hope that there are enough non-fascist, sane voters out there to knock it down, at least for now.

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We’ll never see those taxes

We’ll never see those taxes

by digby
And, win or lose, it’s possible we’ll never see another Republican’s taxes again. Why would they bother? Obviously, Republicans care nothing about the honesty of their leaders only whether a Democrat used emails or something equally nefarious. 
Anyway, the Washington Post compiled a list of all the lies Trump has told about his tax returns:

Excuses that Trump and his supporters have given for not releasing tax returns


Trump: “I’m being audited … so I can’t.” (See next section.) (Repeatedly since February)
Trump: “There’s nothing to learn from them.” (Fact-checkers say this is false.) (February, February, May, May)
Trump: “Mitt Romney looked like a fool when he delayed and delayed and delayed and … didn’t file until a month and a half before the election and it cost him big league.” (February, July)
Trump: His tax rate is “none of your business.” (May)
Paul Manafort, former campaign chairman: American people “wouldn’t understand them.” (May)
Manafort: The only people who want them “are the people who want to defeat him.” (May)
Trump: “I don’t think anybody cares.” (Polls show this is false.) (May, September)
Eric Trump, son: Would be “foolish” to release; “you would have a bunch of people who know nothing about taxes trying to look through and trying to come up with assumptions on things that they know nothing about.” (August)
Mike Pence, vice-presidential nominee who released his tax returns: They’re a “distraction.” (September)
Donald Trump Jr.: “Would distract from (his dad’s) main message.” (September)
Kellyanne Conway, campaign manager: “I just can’t find where this is a burning issue to most of the Americans.” (In April, before joining his campaign, Conway said, “Donald Trump’s tax returns aren’t … transparent” and called for their release.) (September)
Jeffrey Lord, commentator: Tax returns are “a political gimmick, a gotcha … Political opponents are going to go through there and look to make issues out of things.” (September)
Trump Jr.: “There’s a lot in a 12,000-page tax return that wouldn’t make sense to open up.” (September)
Trump: “You will learn more about Donald Trump” by looking at his financial disclosure forms than by looking at tax returns. (Fact-checkers say this is false.) (September)
Rudy Giuliani, Trump surrogate: “The way all of you are treating this is a very good indication of why someone might not want to release their tax returns.” (October)
Trump: Blames Clinton for fact he doesn’t pay taxes: “A lot of my write-off was depreciation, and that, Hillary as a senator, allowed. The people that give her all this money want it.” (As a senator, Clinton did vote to closetax loopholes — including one Trump may have used to pay no federal income taxes.) (October)

Why IRS audits would not prevent Trump from releasing his tax returns:


Trump’s tax attorneys said in March that his returns since 2009 were being audited. The IRS said nothing, including an audit, “prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information.”
His tax attorneys said returns from 2002 to 2008 are no longer being audited. Neither are the returns from 1977 to 2002. Trump said he will still not release any of those returns because “they’re all linked.”
Multiple former IRS commissioners say audits are a bad excuse.
President Richard Nixon released his tax returns while under audit.
All major presidential nominees of the past 40 years have released their tax returns.
Trump can delay the completion of his audits.

What we would learn from Trump’s tax returns


How much (or how little) money he makes
How much (or how little) he pays in taxes
How much (or how little) he gives to charity
What deductions and tax credits he uses
His investments
His business partners
Who he owes money
What he writes off as business expenses
How much (or how little) money he keeps in foreign accounts (including in Russia)

Theatrics of the absurd by @BloggersRUs

Theatrics of the absurd
by Tom Sullivan

Little Lord Flauntleroy lounges uneasily in his gilded jet and glowers out the window at the larger Air Force One. The New York Times this morning profiles Donald Trump at the end of his erratic campaign as needy and unwilling to be alone with his thoughts. He keeps aides up with him so he has someone to talk to and struggles “to suppress his bottomless need for attention.” The profile continues:

On the surface, there is the semblance of stability that is robbing Hillary Clinton of her most potent weapon: Mr. Trump’s self-sabotaging eruptions, which have repeatedly undermined his candidacy. Underneath that veneer, turbulence still reigns, making it difficult for him to overcome all of the obstacles blocking his path to the White House.

The contrasts pervade his campaign. Aides to Mr. Trump have finally wrested away the Twitter account that he used to colorfully — and often counterproductively — savage his rivals. But offline, Mr. Trump still privately muses about all the ways he will punish his enemies after Election Day, including a threat to fund a “super PAC” with vengeance as its core mission.

Yup. That guy wants to be president.

The Republican candidate traveled in his gilded jet on Sunday to Minnesota (a state no Republican has won since 1972). Trump arrived at a hanger to the soundtrack from “Air Force One” to warn of the “disaster taking place in Minnesota” because the state’s Samaritans had welcomed Somali immigrants and refugees. To Trump’s disappointment, FBI Director James B. Comey announced earlier that, well, never mind, there wasn’t anything in the Hillary Clinton emails the agency had discovered in a separate investigation:

FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers Sunday the agency hasn’t changed its opinion that Hillary Clinton should not face criminal charges after a review of new emails.

“Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July,” Comey wrote in the new letter to congressional committee chairmen.

In Sterling Heights, Michigan, Trump responded:

“You can’t review 650,000 new emails in eight days. You can’t do it, folks,” Trump said, adding, “Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it, the FBI knows it, the people know it, and now it’s up to the American people to deliver justice at the ballot box on November 8.”

They know she’s guilty of something. Positive. They’re just not sure of what. But the shit enemies fling at Hillary Clinton has piled up for years. They just know if they keep digging in it, someday they will find a pony. Trump wants to jail her whether they do or not.

In an op-ed in the New York Times by Nikolai Tolstoy, the chancellor of the International Monarchist League, has a recommendation for Americans who share Trump’s authoritarian impulses. He argues for the advantages of monarchy:

The French politician of the early 20th century Georges Clemenceau once remarked, “there are two things in the world for which I have never seen any use: the prostate gland and the president of the republic.” As they contemplate the choice before them this week, many Americans may share something of that sentiment. There is an alternative.

Why this man isn’t already on Donald Trump’s campaign team is beyond me.

Spite by @batocchio9

Spite
by Batocchio

Donald Trump is a bully and a bullshitter. His fans love him for the first part and don’t recognize or don’t care about the second. They love him because he hates the people they hate and vows to inflict pain on those other people, who aren’t real Americans or full citizens in one way or another, due to their skin color, national origin, religion, gender, sexuality, or just beliefs slightly more moderate than those of the conservative base. In one sense, Trump’s nothing new in conservative and Republican politics – like many before him over the past 50-some years, he stands for bigotry and plutocracy – but he’s made the past subtext more explicit and harder to deny. In this election, Trump and his supporters have given an increased, starring role to spite.

Republican hopefuls Scott Walker and Chris Christie also sold themselves as bullies, but Walker’s working style is stealth to achieve right-wing aims without providing the reassuring hatred of angry speeches for the base. Christie, although unquestionably a bully, was damaged by the bridge closure scandal and couldn’t compete with the appeal of Trump’s explicit bigotry. Ted Cruz, although undoubtedly right-wing and favored by some religious conservatives, was extremely disliked by others on the right. Ben Carson was both right-wing and clueless enough for the gig, but his somnambulist, soporific style didn’t really fire up the base. Carly Fiorina showed she could be vicious, but not in the league of Trump. John Kasich’s actual positions are pretty right-wing, but during the primaries, he chose to portray himself as reasonable, practical and comparatively moderate, which contrasted him with Trump, but didn’t win over a majority of Republican primary voters in most states. Sure, all the 16-some candidates could be counted on to preach “small government” and push for even more tax cuts to the rich (the chief goal of the Republican establishment), and most were game to throw in some racist dog-whistles per usual, but they couldn’t match Trump’s belligerence, nastiness and complete lack of shame. Trump knew what the conservative base wanted, and was determined that he would be the last, biggest asshole standing.

Trump lies much, much more often than Clinton, and over five days, “averaged about one falsehood every three minutes and 15 seconds over nearly five hours of remarks.” Using Harry Frankfurt’s definition, Trump is a bullshitter more than a liar, because he simply doesn’t care if what he says is true or not. Unfortunately, many of his supporters are unconcerned, too – as The Washington Post reported in June:

Many of Trump’s fans don’t actually think he will build a wall — and they don’t care if he doesn’t.

Many also don’t think that Trump as president would really ban foreign Muslims from entering the country, seize oil controlled by terrorists or deport 11 million illegal immigrants. They view Trump’s pledges more as malleable symbols than concrete promises, reflecting a willingness to shake things up and to be bold. . . .

Perhaps more than any other presidential candidate in history, Trump has mastered the art of putting forth a platform that is so vague — and so outlandish — that supporters can believe what they want to believe about his plans, even when it comes to something such as a concrete wall on the southern border.

They also don’t care about his many scandals, or that he’s a horrible businessman who screws over nearly everyone who works for or with him. Nor do they care that he’d cut taxes for the wealthy and explode the national deficit and debt. (To be fair, the tax cuts for the rich are Trump’s main appeal for the Paul Ryan crowd, but they wouldn’t help most Americans, including most Republican voters.) Alas, political coverage spends little time on actual candidate policy positions, a dynamic that has helped out Trump tremendously – he gives few specifics about his policies, but as he himself has pointed out, his voters don’t really care. His standard approach is to bluff and bullshit his way through any question – bragging that he’s great, he knows everybody, he’ll hire the best people; his opponents are awful, idiots, the worst ever. This approach works well enough for short interviews, especially with friendly or nonconfrontational outlets, but exposes him as an ignoramus when a more in-depth answer is required or follow-up questions are allowed, as in the three presidential debates (although the moderators still could have spent more time on policy). Whatever one thinks of Hillary Clinton’s policies, she actually has some – policy papers on her website amounting to 112,735 words compared to just over 9,000 for Trump’s site. For that matter, other Republican candidates offered more substantial policies than Trump, too, that conservatives might like more than Clinton’s – but Trump’s appeal is mostly image and little substance, all swagger, viciousness, a game of dominance.

Lying isn’t new to politics, even if the depth and breadth of it from Trump is significant. (Although let’s not forget the 917 falsehoods from Romney that Steve Benen documented, especially as some folks are pining for Romney as so much better than Trump – he was, but when judged fairly, still awful.) The lying is a serious problem, but even more troubling is that conservative political figures don’t stop telling specific lies after being directly called on it. This disdain for fact-checking and truth didn’t start with Trump. Back in 2008, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin kept claiming “I told Congress thanks but no thanks to that Bridge to Nowhere” even after fact-checkers had shown it wasn’t true and their work was widely reported. In 2009, Palin, Betsy McCaughey and other conservatives were hawking lies about the Affordable Care Act creating “death panels,” a falsehood that was debunked, but they keep on saying it. In 2015, during the Republican primary debates, Carly Fiorina told a despicable falsehood about a supposed undercover video of Planned Parenthood: “Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’ ” Fiorina was referring to fake footage, and was fact-checked on her statements, but when directly pressed on the issue, she insisted on repeating what by then she had to know was a lie, and a monstrous lie at that – one that demonized her political opponents for political gain. Fiorina simply didn’t give a damn, effectively saying “screw you” to the press and anyone who cared about the truth. She knew how the lie would play with the conservative base; its members would take her statements as further proof that the people they already hated were monsters. These dynamics also describe what Rush Limbaugh has been doing since his career started in the 80s – some of his listeners will even admit he exaggerates, but don’t much care. As I’ve written before, Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck and their ilk “aren’t selling facts, they’re selling grievance, cultural solidarity, an emotional truth, and the Two-Minutes Hate. Right-wing audiences simply do not care if their leaders are corrupt, incompetent and lie to their faces – as long as they get their scapegoat.” (Tom Sullivan and others have made similar observations.) Lying on this level, especially from a politician running for national office, is a power play, authoritarian and antidemocratic – it says, essentially, I can tell bald-faced, horrible lies and you can even call me on it and it still won’t matter, because it’ll fire up the base and win me votes and give me power – and then we’ll see what you say about me, huh?

This brings us to Trump himself and his good pal and campaign surrogate, Rudy Giuliani. More than any other figures in this election, they’ve adopted the belligerent smear as a key campaign tool, and tried to bully any critics into silence. Trump has threatened to make it easier for him to sue reporters, revoked the credentials of The Washington Post because he didn’t like their (accurate) coverage and has encouraged his crowds to boo the media. (His supporters issued death threats against a reporter who tweeted about the atmosphere of hatred at a Trump rally. That proved him right, but their driving impulse isn’t persuasion – it’s intimidation.)

Bigotry and spite has been central to Trump’s campaign from the beginning (and let’s not forget his earlier racist birther bullshit). When Trump announced his run for president on 6/16/15, he attacked undocumented Mexican workers by saying, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” In late November 2015, he repeatedly claimed that “thousands” of Muslims and Arabs in New Jersey cheered during the 9/11 attacks when the Twin Towers fell, but such cheering never happened. On 12/7/16, he announced that “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” (One doesn’t have to be a lawyer to know that’s unconstitutional, but I’d add it’s clearly immoral – we know how discriminating against a group based on their religion can go, and it’s not just ugly, it can be deadly.) In June 2016, he claimed that American Muslims knew who potential terrorists were but weren’t turning them in. (Muslims aren’t real, full Americans, you see, and can’t be trusted.) In July 2016, Trump pulled something similar. I’ll quote Josh Marshall at length, who wrote (his emphasis):

Trump claimed that people – “some people” – called for a moment of silence for mass killer Micah Johnson, the now deceased mass shooter who killed five police officers in Dallas on Thursday night. There is no evidence this ever happened. Searches of the web and social media showed no evidence. Even Trump’s campaign co-chair said today that he can’t come up with any evidence that it happened. As in the case of the celebrations over the fall of the twin towers, even to say there’s ‘no evidence’ understates the matter. This didn’t happen. Trump made it up.

The language is important: “When somebody called for a moment of silence to this maniac that shot the five police, you just see what’s going on. It’s a very, very sad situation.”

Then later at the Indiana rally: “The other night you had 11 cities potentially in a blow-up stage. Marches all over the United States—and tough marches. Anger. Hatred. Hatred! Started by a maniac! And some people ask for a moment of silence for him. For the killer!”

A would-be strong man, an authoritarian personality, isn’t just against disorder and violence. They need disorder and violence. That is their raison d’etre, it is the problem that they are purportedly there to solve. The point bears repeating: authoritarian figures require violence and disorder. Look at the language. “11 cities potentially in a blow up stage” .. “Anger. Hatred. Hatred! Started by a maniac!” … “And some people ask for a moment of silence for him. For the killer.”

At the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law, if you translate the German, the febrile and agitated language of ‘hatred’, ‘anger’, ‘maniac’ … this is the kind of florid and incendiary language Adolf Hitler used in many of his speeches. Note too the actual progression of what Trump said: “Marches all over the United States – and tough marches. Anger. Hatred. Hatred! Started by a maniac!” (emphasis added).

The clear import of this fusillade of words is that the country is awash in militant protests that were inspired by Micah Johnson. “Started by …”

We’re used to so much nonsense and so many combustible tirades from Trump that we become partly inured to them. We also don’t slow down and look at precisely what he’s saying. What he’s saying here is that millions of African-Americans are on the streets inspired by and protesting on behalf of a mass murderer of white cops.

This is not simply false. It is the kind of wild racist incitement that puts whole societies in danger. And this man wants to be president. . . .

These are the words – the big lies rumbling the ground for some sort of apocalyptic race war – of a dangerous authoritarian personality who is either personally deeply imbued with racist rage or cynically uses that animus and race hatred to achieve political ends. In either case, they are the words of a deeply dangerous individual the likes of whom has seldom been so close to achieving executive power in America.

As for Giuliani, who’s always been an authoritarian, he claimed in early July that he had softened Trump somewhat on the “ban on Muslims,” but by the end of the month, “said he would be in favor of forcing Muslims on the federal government’s terrorism watch list to wear electronic monitoring tags or bracelets for authorities to track their whereabouts.” In mid-July, Giuliani gave a screaming speech at the Republican National Convention (video here). As he has at past conventions, Giuliani trotted out his beloved ‘the Democrats didn’t use the magic words’ bullshit argument, but it was his combination of bigotry, apocalyptic framing and shameless demagoguery that really struck me. (Honestly, I found the speech chilling, and not in the way Giuliani intended – the first word that came to mind was “Nuremberg,” same as for Blue Gal. By the way, Godwin’s law doesn’t apply if the analogy is valid, and Mike Godwin himself has weighed in on this in relation to Trump.) Trump and other speakers at the convention took a page from Nixon’s book (really, it’s a conservative staple) and talked a great deal about “law and order.” But the truth is, they don’t truly care about “law and order”; they certainly don’t care about due process. They only care about punishment of the people they hate. That has always been the scared and spiteful essence of their pitch. Trump and at least some of his surrogates are willing to lie, fear-monger and stir up racial anxiety and hatred for political gain. On some level, beneath any denial or self-delusion, they know what they are doing. They are consciously choosing to do this. It’s sadly nothing new, but it remains despicable and even evil.

Unfortunately, Trump and his surrogates haven’t been pushed nearly hard enough on this. Nor have their followers. I’d occasionally see Fox News segments in which people endorsed Trump, saying they liked him because he said what was on his mind and wasn’t “politically correct,” but tellingly, the hosts never really pressed such guests on what exactly they meant by that. It’d be nice if we could have an honest conversation, where such people would say outright, “I want to treat Muslim-, Arab- and Mexican-Americans as second-class citizens,” but of course they won’t, nor will they admit to being scared of Muslims but knowing very little about them. As soon as Trump proposed banning Muslims – which was a campaign statement, not an off-the-cuff remark – every single interview should have pressed him on it (or any of his other bigoted statements). He and his supporters have the right to express their views, but I’ve been dismayed that haven’t been challenged nearly enough. (“Do you realize what you’re saying? Do you realize what this would entail?”) At least a few folks have pressed Trump on how he’d deport over 11 million undocumented immigrants or how he’d build a border wall, but he’s never given convincing answers. Of course, the conservative base doesn’t care if such things are impossible, because a promise of hostility from Trump against their chosen foes is enough. But it’s important that such insanity and extremity be put on display, front and center, for the rest of the electorate.

Any number of Trump’s positions, statements and actions are disqualifying, and I’ve barely touched on some of them. His economic plans are horrible. His personal character is atrocious –he doesn’t pay people who do work for him. He’s a rampant misogynist who’s bragged about sexually assaulting women. Trump’s also endorsed torture repeatedly: “I would bring back waterboarding, and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” His attitude is driven, as usual, by his machismo and his ignorance – as Rear Admiral John Hutson put it, “Torture is the method of choice of the lazy, the stupid, and the pseudo-tough.” There’s virtually no admirable position or trait Trump possesses – yet he was the Republicans’ choice for president. And despite efforts to disown him, Trump’s ascent is a feature, not a bug, of movement conservatism and the choices the Republican Party has made over 50-some years (much more on that in a future post).

The Washington Post has an editorial titled, “History will remember which Republicans failed the Trump test,” and The New York Times has an ongoing feature titled, “More than 160 Republican Leaders Don’t Support Donald Trump. Here’s When They Reached Their Breaking Point.” (The number went up throughout the campaign season.) These are valuable pieces, but Brad De Long did something similar with George W. Bush back in 2007 – it would be a grave mistake to forget how horrendous Bush and other Republicans and conservatives were and are, even if Trump weren’t in the picture. It is Republican dogma never to raise taxes and to cut them on the rich; conservatives have been fighting against a sustainable fiscal and economic model since Reagan, and have likewise been fighting against a responsible model of governance. Liberals criticize the Democratic Party all the time, and there’s certainly room for improvement there, but Republicans have become much more conservative over the years, have enacted unprecedented obstructionism in the modern era and simply are the major problem in American politics. Unfortunately, many Republicans and conservatives will deny this, as will the many shallow “both sides” political commentators around (see Digby, driftglass or my archives for much more).

Step one is defeating Trump, but efforts can’t stop there. I’m always in favor of outreach and discussion, but it’s important to acknowledge that they might not work – some people will never be persuadable – especially if they’re primarily driven by spite. We can’t count on ‘cooler heads to prevail’ or ‘the better angels of their nature’ to hold sway for everyone. The conservative base hates many of their fellow Americans and will not be dissuaded. So while we’re trying to convince the crowd charmed by the season’s latest bigot or snake oil salesman to reconsider, it’s essential to get out the vote in case such outreach fails. Voting is crucial, and sustained activism is even more so. Even if Trump loses this election, there’s much more work to be done.

Can you believe this guy is being supported by 90% of Republicans?

Can you believe this guy is being supported by 90% of Republicans?

by digby

Remember when the right vilified the Dixie Chicks because they opposed the Iraq war?


Here’s the Republican nominee for president talking about the military:

Donald Trump isn’t letting up on his criticism of the offensive to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS. In fact, he doubled down on Saturday, questioning the reasons for the US-backed mission and criticizing US leaders involved in its planning.

The Republican presidential nominee knocked US officials as a “group of losers” for not launching a “surprise” attack and said he was convinced the offensive — which is led by the Iraqi military — was launched “for political reasons” to benefit his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. He suggested she would get “credit” for its success.
Trump’s repeated criticisms of the ongoing military operation in Mosul come despite forces on the ground making key gains.

“Whatever happened to the element of surprise, right?…What a group of losers we have. And now it’s a very tough battle, they’re dug in. It’s a very — much tougher than they thought,” Trump said at a campaign event in Tampa, Florida. “We need different thinking in this country, folks. They should have kept their mouths shut.”

Those remarks came after he questioned the core rationale behind the military offensive, which is central to defeating the terrorist group in Iraq.
“Who benefits by us getting Mosul?” Trump asked the previous night during a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania. “You know it’s going to benefit Iran. We’re not going to benefit. Because Iran is taking over Iraq.”

Although Iran has gained influence in Iraq since US forces largely pulled out of the country in 2011, retaking territory from ISIS is crucial to the US goal of destroying the terrorist group — which Trump has vowed to accomplish as president.

I’ve mentioned this before: the man thinks the only military strategy in the world is a surprise attack. It’s bizarre. And his notion that Iran is taking over Iraq is … simplistic, to put it kindly.

It was only yesterday that if you dared say the military was a bunch of losers you could get punched out by a stranger. It was completely beyond the pale. Now the GOP presidential candidate says it and Republicans cheer.

By the way, lest anyone gets the idea that this signals that the right has become peaceniks, think again. They just want their own guys in charge of kicking foreigners asses. Which they dearly want them to do. People don’t change that much overnight. Don’t kid yourself.

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Politics and Reality Radio with Joshua Holland Sam Wang Talks Polling; The Coming GOPocalypse; What Are Black Republicans Thinking?

Politics and Reality Radio: Sam Wang Talks Polling; The Coming GOPocalypse; What Are Black Republicans Thinking?


with Joshua Holland


We’ve come to our final show before the 2016 election, which feels like it’s dragged on for 20 years. Whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist, we have something for you this week.

First up, stats guru and election modeller Sam Wang from the Princeton Election Consortium talks to us about missing voters, phantom swings and why his rival’s model at FiveThirtyEight is more bearish on Hillary Clinton’s chances of victory than everyone else. (As of Saturday afternoon, PEC’s model gives Hillary Clinton a 99 percent likelihood of becoming the 45th president.)

Then we’ll be joined by Brian Beutler, a senior editor at The New Republic, to talk about his disturbing piece, “The Trump Apocalypse Might Not Come, But the Republican One Will.” If you thought Republican obstruction of a Democratic president’s agenda had reached a zenith with Barack Obama, and couldn’t possibly get worse, Brian has some bad news to deliver.

Finally, we’ll be joined by Stanford University sociologist Corey Fields to discuss his new book, Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans. If you’ve ever wondered how any African-American could support the party that nominated Donald Trump, Fields will share some of the insights he got researching that question.

Make sure to vote on Tuesday, and remind a few friends to vote as well!


Playlist (Do you sense a theme?):
Barry McGuire: “Eve of Destruction”
Thea Gilmore: “Bad Moon Rising”
Elvis Costello: “Waiting for the End of the World”
The Doors: “The End”

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Why we can’t have nice things

Why we can’t have nice things


by digby

Today’s Meet the Press was a real doozy. The panel was especially bad. You can watch it here.

They talked about the new WSJ/NBC poll with the pollsters who offered up these word clouds which were put together from what the Clinton and Trump voters said when asked to name the first word that came to their minds when you mention their rival:

They went on to lament the fact that both sides think so negatively about their rival and they clutched their pears about what awful negative ratings both of them have. 
Here’s the thing. Clinton is accused of being a liar and a criminal, but it’s not true. Indeed, FBI director Comey announced today that the emails they found on Anthony Weiner’s computer were either personal or duplicates of what they’d already seen and they found nothing of interest and that’s that. There was no criminal activity including lying to the FBI which she did not do.
So, people believe a lie about Clinton, largely because the news media has relentlessly flogged a fake scandal for a year and a half. 
The words about Trump are well … obvious. He has openly demonstrated it on the trail, in debates and in interviews. And he has been disclosed as being all those things in the past. 
They aren’t the same. 
But the press portrays her as just as “bad” as he is, lamenting how ugly the race is and how awful it is that the parties can’t produce even one decent candidate. 
It’s maddening. You don’t have to think Clinton is a wonderful leader to know that they are not even in the same galaxy in terms of honesty, fitness for the office, personal integrity, professional qualifications, intelligence, competence and decency. To pretend they are the same is just gaslighting half the country. 
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