Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[pbrower2a]

(06-09-2016, 11:33 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(06-09-2016, 11:14 PM)radind Wrote:

(06-09-2016, 07:08 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: You make some good points, Radind. But just saying "we have a different perspective" does not change the facts; in this case for example, about which candidate is stirring up violence.

But, the issue for me is who is actually conducting the violence. It still appears to me that most of the actual  violence is coming from some opposed to Trump.

From what i can see Trump is a candidate who is stirring up violence and some voters both sides are both becoming more violent. I do not know where most of it is coming from. But it is coming from both sides. They are frustrated. I can understand that. It just makes it worse though.

Polarization in American political life practically ensures that one side gets everything available through politics and that the other gets practically nothing even in a 51-49 split of power. Gerrymandering and the rise of donor-based funding as the foundation of power have debased the concept of government representing constituents. The legislative system now represents economic power far better than it represents voters. Compromise no longer exists on any economic issue. Such practically ensures mass frustration with the political order.

Whether democracy survives the next decade is much in doubt in America. Democracy is effectively dead in some state legislatures in which some Parties have majorities that may never be dislodged. That is how the inchoate democracy died in the Russian Federation and how our democracy can die, too.

[pbrower2a]

Sen. Elizabeth Warren escalated her attacks on presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, and tied Mr. Trump’s inflammatory comments about a federal judge to what she calls the Republican Party’s obstructionism on judicial appointments. In a speech she plans to deliver Thursday night, the Massachusetts Democrat and potential vice presidential pick sharply chastises Mr. Trump for questioning the capabilities of Indiana-born Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is overseeing lawsuits against Trump University, because of his Mexican heritage. More In Elizabeth Warren“Judge Curiel is one of countless American patriots who has spent decades quietly serving his country,” Ms. Warren will say, according to excerpts released ahead of the speech at the American Constitution Society. “Donald Trump is a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anyone and serves nobody but himself.” A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Trump in a statement this week said his remarks had been “misconstrued,” but did not apologize for them. Thursday afternoon, MSNBC reported that Ms. Warren would endorse presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on its Rachel Maddow Show in the evening. In her speech, Ms. Warren also sought to undermine top congressional Republicans’ efforts to distance themselves from Mr. Trump’s comments on the judge without retracting their endorsement of Mr. Trump as the party’s standard-bearer. Both House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky. ) have continued to support Mr. Trump, though Mr. Ryan called the judge comments “racist” this week and Mr. McConnell said he doesn’t agree with them.

In the speech, Ms. Warren says Mr. Trump’s criticism of the judge was in line with how Republicans have approached the judicial branch under President Barack Obama. Democrats have criticized Republicans for slow-walking the confirmation of judicial nominees since the GOP gained control of the Senate in the 2014 midterm elections.

“Trump isn’t a different kind of candidate. He’s a Mitch McConnell kind of candidate,” Ms. Warren said in her remarks. “Exactly the kind of candidate you’d expect from a Republican Party whose ‘script’ for years has been to execute a full-scale assault on the integrity of our courts.”

Senate Republicans said they have been steadily approving judicial nominees.

Republicans said they have been steadily approving nominees and Mr. McConnell noted that he has brought judicial nominees to the Senate floor opposed by many Republicans.

“We’ve continued to process judicial nominees and we’ve done so even when a majority of the Republican conference did not support the nominee,” Mr. McConnell said in an exchange with Ms. Warren on the Senate floor this week, noting that Democrats do not get to set the chamber’s schedule. “The minority is not going to dictate to the majority when and how we do so,” he said.

Both sides wield statistics in the fight over judicial nominees. Republicans note American Constitution Society 2016 Convention Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spoke at the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy’s 2016 convention.

[Eric the Green]

Donald Trump’s Fear Factor

Donald J. Trump wants you to be afraid. Very, very afraid.

by Emma Roller


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/opinion/campaign-stops/donald-trumps-fear-factor.html?ref=opinion&_r=1

That much was abundantly clear in a speech he gave on Monday, reading with faux gravitas from a teleprompter about the shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando that killed 49 people early Sunday morning.

This is a tried-and-true political strategy.

“Whenever there’s a tragedy, everything goes up, my numbers go way up,” Mr. Trump bragged last December, after the shootings in San Bernardino, Calif.

And so Mr. Trump has continued to ratchet up the fear factor with each subsequent attack abroad or at home, always using it as proof of his own rightness. While it’s a tactic that helped him win the Republican nomination, that doesn’t mean it will work going forward.

Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, said that Mr. Trump’s strongman rhetoric and fear-stoking portrayals of Muslims may have worked in the Republican primary, but aren’t likely to win that many voters over to his side in November.

“My sense is that Trump is not helping himself with this,” he said. “He’s coming across as being almost unhinged in terms of talking about things like banning Muslims from entering the country. We know that’s not popular with most voters.”

As in almost any policy area, comparing Hillary Clinton’s platform with Donald Trump’s is like comparing a dissertation on naval strategy to a game of Battleship.

In her speech Monday, Mrs. Clinton didn’t mention Mr. Trump by name, but did criticize “inflammatory, anti-Muslim rhetoric” and threatening to bar Muslims from entering the country.

In his address Monday, Mr. Trump accused Mrs. Clinton — falsely — of wanting to increase the admission of Muslim immigrants and Syrian refugees “without a screening plan.” “This could be a better, bigger more horrible version than the legendary Trojan horse ever was,” he said.

In fact, the United States government is far behind on its goal to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees into our country. Meanwhile, Canada has welcomedmore than 27,000 Syrian refugees since November. None of those refugees have turned out to be terrorist sleeper agents yet.

The subtext of Mr. Trump’s speech was that this horrific act of violence against gay people legitimizes discrimination against Muslims. But it is unfair to generalize that Muslims are anti-gay. A 2015 Pew study found that 45 percent of Muslim Americans say homosexuality should be accepted in society, compared to 36 percent of Mormons and evangelical Christians.

In the wake of the Orlando attacks, I spoke with some current and former members of Congress who are gay. They said we should examine the role of Islamic extremism as one element of the tragedy in Orlando, but that Donald Trump’s proposals are beyond the pale. “Banning all Muslims is ridiculous. It would be damaging to the country. It would make things worse,” Barney Frank, the former Massachusetts congressman, told me. “It would do no good whatsoever.”

Of Mr. Trump’s call to bar Syrian refugees from entering the country, Representative Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin, said, “That would be like saying we should all drink more orange juice and this wouldn’t have happened. It’s completely unrelated.”

“L.G.B.T. people, knowing the sting of discrimination, know the fallacy and the error of giving license to discriminate against other people,” Representative Mark Takano, Democrat of California, told me. “It’s important to see that it’s not about one religion who did this to L.G.B.T. people in Orlando. It’s about a hatred toward L.G.B.T. people, and that hatred can come from a variety of places.”

In Mr. Trump’s mind, any tragedy is the perfect time to say, “I told you so.” After hearing the news of the worst mass shooting in modern United States history, Mr. Trump tweeted, “appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism.” After the San Bernardino shooting, he trumpeted his own poll numbers against Mrs. Clinton’s before admitting that the shooting “looks very bad.” After the attacks in Paris in November, he felt compelled to congratulate himself not once but twice before expressing condolences for the victims. After the attacks in Brussels in March, he tweeted, “I have proven to be far more correct about terrorism than anybody — and it’s not even close. Hopefully AZ and UT will be voting for me today!”

Mr. Trump’s speech on Monday attempted both to address the Orlando shooting and to serve as an opening volley in his general election matchup against Mrs. Clinton. Depending on whether you like Mr. Trump or not, the speech was either an astounding success or a terrifying string of words that could have been cut-and-pasted together from a magazine.
“Hillary Clinton can never claim to be a friend of the gay community as long as she continues to support immigration policies that bring Islamic extremists to our country who suppress women, gays and anyone who doesn’t share their views,” Mr. Trump said in his speech.

But when considering who is bringing hate into this country, Mr. Trump might benefit from a little introspection, and a look at the people surrounding him. On Monday, Roger Stone, one of Mr. Trump’s trusted advisers, suggested that Huma Abedin, a top Hillary Clinton aide, could be a “Saudi spy” or a “terrorist agent.” To employ one of Mr. Trump’s own favorite rhetorical devices, apophasis, I won’t say that Roger Stone is an opportunistic hatemonger whom no one should take seriously. I’m much too politically correct to do that.
632COMMENTS
Watching Mr. Trump speak, I got the sense that he doesn’t understand the consequences his words can have — that his fear stoking has led his supporters to harass a 56-year-old Muslim woman, or to beat a homeless man with a metal pipe and urinate on him, or to bully students for being children of immigrants.

But the even scarier thought is that he knows exactly what he’s doing.


Emma Roller (@EmmaRoller), a former reporter for National Journal, is a contributing opinion writer.

[pbrower2a]

Franklin Roosevelt:

"we have nothing to fear ... but Fear Itself!"

Richard Cheney:

"Be very, very afraid."

[Eric the Green]

[Eric the Green]

[Eric the Green]

The standards for gaffes have gotten so low for Trump, that only he can fit under them! Amazing! I remember most of these gaffes.





Trump may be gaffing his way to the White House, and it's as if nobody gives a gaffe!

[Eric the Green]

Sense and mostly nonsense from the Trumpster. It also seems that the NRA is less insane than Trump in one respect. Now that is hard even for Me to believe.

Trump Doubles Down on No-Gun List, Argues for 'Profiling'

By Cathy Burke   |   Sunday, 19 Jun 2016 11:28 AM

Donald Trump is doubling down on a no-gun ban for those on terror or no-fly lists, asserting anyone with "even an inclination" toward terrorism should be restricted.

He also thinks federal authorities should begin profiling Muslims on flights and in other areas of US society.

Trump argued in a interview with CBS News' "Face the Nation" that profiling is an appropriate terrorism-fighting tool.

"I think profiling is something we're going to have to start thinking about as a country," he said. "I hate the concept of profiling, but we have to start using common sense.”

He added that other countries, including Israel, profile “and they do it successfully.”

In an interview with ABC News' "This Week," the GOP presumptive nominee is potentially at odds with some Republicans.

"We have to make sure that people that are terrorists or have even an inclination toward terrorism cannot buy weapons, guns," Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday.

Pressed if whether that meant people on the no-fly or terror watch list should not be able to buy a gun, Trump responded, "I'd like to see that, and I'd like to say it. And it's simpler. It's just simpler."

Trump has said he'll meet with the NRA to discuss his proposal.

The NRA tweeted its position is ""no guns for terrorists — period. Due process & right to self-defense for law-abiding Americans."

Breaking News at Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/donald-t...z4C8lTNDOJ

NRA's LaPierre: Trump Wrong, Shouldn't Have Firearms in Bars
 
NRA Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
By Cathy Burke   |   Sunday, 19 Jun 2016 12:55 PM


National Rifle Association executive Wayne LaPierre on Sunday disputed Donald Trump's assertion that people in bars should be allowed to carry guns – and would have been able to fight back against ISIS-inspired mass slayer Omar Mateen. 

In an interview Sunday on CBS News' "Face the Nation," the executive vice president and chief executive officer of the gun rights advocacy group warned "We need to face what's coming" from ISIS terrorists.

"They're not going to attack hard targets," he said. "They're going for vulnerabilities. they're going to go for shopping malls, they're going to go for churches. The fact is, we need vigilance, we need preparedness, we need a full court press on personal protection."

When pressed about Trump's advocacy of bar patrons being allowed to carry weapons, LaPierre disagreed.

"I don't think we should have firearms where people are drinking," he said. "But I'll tell you this, everybody needs … to start having a security plan. We need to be able to protect ourselves because they're coming."

The NRA has endorsed Trump. 


Breaking News at Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/nra-wayne-lapierre-vulnerabilities-trump/2016/06/19/id/734586/#ixzz4C8m5dCXv 

[TnT]

(06-03-2016, 09:26 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(06-02-2016, 04:27 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Hitler promised bread and circuses. So did Nero, Caligula, and Commodus, arguably the three most entertaining, and three of the most memorable (for all the wrong reasons) of Roman emperors.

To anyone voting for Donald Trump because he will be more entertaining -- go to Wal*Mart and buy yourselves some entertainment. Wal*Mart has plenty of $5 racks of video and audio.

Good thing that Trump hasn't promised bread and circuses then.  He's promised to fix the trade and build a wall.  I'm going to go on a limb here and say I think a real estate developer might know how to build a wall.

Have you ever been to the desert Southwest?  Building a wall across it, is of course, physically possible.  Making it enforceable?  Lunacy.

[Ragnarök_62]

Zerohedge Wrote:On Friday, June 18, while Donald Trump hosted a rally held inside the Mystere Theater at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, a 19 year old man, later identified as Michael Sandford, approached a uniformed police officer who was assigned to the event. Sandford began a conversation with the officer under the pretense that he was seeking an autograph as Fox5 reported.

As The Hill added, during the conversation, the man attempted to disarm the officer. Sandford was taken into custody without further disruption to the event and was handed over to the Secret Service to face formal charges.

While inside the theatre, a subject, later identified as 19-year-old Michael Sandford, approached a uniformed LVMPD officer who was assigned to the event

<Southernspeak> y'all heard that some young punk tried to whack Trump? Yeah, just lookie at tha yun punk. He's gonna look like some miiithie niice tender whiite meat in da beeg house. Bubba's gonnta poke im goood. Yeah, heee's a miigh scrawnie there, ya seeeee. And yeah, he'd a might bit dumb also, hee's tried to snatch a gun from a beeg cop.  So ya, dem gun control folks have nuthin' here. Ya see, he tried to rip a gun off a cop and we's all know, cops most always have guns. Dem's gun control freaks jus neveeh think dem possiblities uuuuv gittin guns from somewheres else. Yah, one track minds they are. Almos forgit, yun punk's gonta have a miigti beeg asshol when bubba an all his friends git done pokin him.  Ya see, when in beeg house, a guy's get hardly any poontang, so's what to do? Huh? Ya, find closes thang, yun white tender ass izzz ass close ya git, yissiree, dat's da ticket, in da beeg house!  </Southernspeak>  

[Eric the Green]

The Trump campaign is becoming an outright catastrophe



By Paul Waldman June 20 at 9:12 AM 


What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail

Every presidential campaign has its ups and downs, its moments when everything seems to be going right and those when it looks to be hurtling toward defeat. This is one of the latter moments for Donald Trump, with him falling in the polls after a series of controversial statements (and frankly, “A Series of Controversial Statements” could be his campaign motto). Ed O’Keefe reports that panicked Republicans are waging a last-ditch effort to convince convention delegates to switch from Trump to someone or other, and they claim “that they now count several hundred delegates and alternates as part of their campaign.” The effort will almost certainly fail, but the fact that it consists of more than a few desperate people is an indication of how bad things are for Trump.

But wait — doesn’t he have plenty of time to turn this campaign around? So he trails Hillary Clinton by somewhere between 6 and 8 points in all the reputable polling averages — didn’t George H.W. Bush trail Michael Dukakis by 17 points after the Democratic convention in 1988?

Yes, Trump has time to reverse the current situation. But today’s polls aren’t meaningless, even if they don’t tell us exactly what will happen in November. The problem for Trump isn’t the size of his polling deficit (which isn’t all that large); it’s the magnitude of challenges his campaign faces.

While he could manage a stunning turnaround, at the moment Trump seems to have put together one of the worst presidential campaigns in history. Let’s take a look at all the major disadvantages Trump faces as we head toward the conventions:

A skeletal campaign staff. Trump succeeded in the primaries with a small staff whose job was to do little more than stage rallies. But running a national campaign is hugely more complex than barnstorming from one state to the next during primaries. While the Clinton campaign has built an infrastructure of hundreds of operatives performing the variety of tasks a modern presidential campaign requires, the Trump campaign “estimates it currently has about 30 paid staff on the ground across the country,” a comically small number.


Not enough money, and little inclination to raise it. Trump hasn’t raised much money yet, and he doesn’t seem inclined to do so; according to one report, after telling Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus that he’d call 20 large donors to make a pitch, he gave up after three. Fundraising is the least pleasant part of running for office, but unlike most candidates who suck it up and do what they have to, Trump may not be willing to spend the time dialing for dollars. Instead, he’s convinced that he can duplicate what he did in the primaries and run a low-budget campaign based on having rallies and doing TV interviews. As he told NBC’s Hallie Jackson, “I don’t think I need that money, frankly. I mean, look what we’re doing right now. This is like a commercial, right, except it’s tougher than a normal commercial.” It’s not like a commercial, because in interviews Trump gets challenged, and usually says something that makes him look foolish or dangerous. But he seems convinced that his ability to get limitless media coverage, no matter how critical that coverage is, will translate to an increase in support.

Outgunned on the airwaves. As a result, Democrats are pouring money into television ads attacking Trump and promoting Clinton with no answer from the other side. As Mark Murray reported yesterday, “So far in June, Clinton and the outside groups backing her have spent a total of $23.3 million on ads in the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.” And how much have Trump and his allies spent on ads in those states? Zero. Nothing. Nada.

Not enough backup from his allies. There may never have been a presidential nominee with so little support from the people who are supposed to be out there persuading people to vote for him. Every day sees new stories about Trump being criticized by Republican leaders or about Republicans distancing themselves from him. And that includes the people who have endorsed him. Last week the chair of Trump’s leadership committee in the House begged reporters to stop making him defend Trump.
That lack of unity can have a large impact on how Republicans view their vote. While the rote arguments between Democrats and Republicans may seem too predictable to change many minds, when intra-partisan unanimity breaks down, it sends a signal to people that it’s okay to disagree with your party’s nominee — and even to reject him altogether.

A popular president opposing him. Every political science election model says that the view of the current president matters a great deal in determining whether voters decide to change which party controls the White House. Right now President Obama’s approval rating is over 50 percent for the first time in a long while, and he’ll be campaigning vigorously against Trump.

A demographic disadvantage. Trump is running on what is essentially an ethno-nationalist appeal to white voters, at a time when the country grows less white every year. He would have to do significantly better than recent Republican nominees among large minority groups in order to win, yet rather than court them, he has done just the opposite. In the latest Post-ABC News poll, 89 percent of Hispanics said they had an unfavorable view of Trump, an absolutely stunning figure. That’s not to mention the enormous gender gap he’s opening: 77 percent of women also viewed him unfavorably in that poll.
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An electoral college disadvantage. Any Republican candidate faces a challenge in the electoral college, where Democrats start with a built-in advantage. In all of the past four elections, Democrats have won 17 states (plus D.C.) that give them 242 of the 270 electoral votes they need to win. That means that for Trump to win, he has to sweep almost every swing state. But instead of trying to do that, Trump is worried about holding on to red states such as Utah and Arizona.

A candidate with a lethal combination of dreadful strategic instincts and absolute certainty of his own brilliance. 

Trump’s inexperience in politics has shown itself in many ways, such as his utter ignorance about policy and how the U.S. government works. It also means that when confronted with new situations, he often does something politically foolish, as when he responded to the Orlando shooting bycongratulating himself for predicting that there would one day be another terrorist attack. And while for a time we kept hearing that he was going to “pivot” to the general election, instead he seems to be running as though he’s still trying to persuade his own supporters to stay with him. Those supporters comprise a plurality of a minority of the whole electorate.

Perhaps even more importantly, unlike some neophyte candidates, Trump not only doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, but also insists that he doesn’t need to know it. Whatever deep insecurities drive his constant preening bluster, he isn’t going to let anyone tell him that he’s anything less than a genius and things aren’t going great. Which means that as the campaign goes on and his situation gets worse, he’ll be exceedingly unlikely to make the kind of changes he needs to reverse his fortunes.

Trump is no stranger to failure, but in his life as a businessman he could segregate those failures from the rest of his enterprises, at least enough to keep moving forward and find other ways to make money. He could fail at the casino business, or the steak business, or the vodkabusiness, or the magazine business, or the airlinebusiness, or the football business, or the real estate seminar business, or the vitamin pyramid schemebusiness, and maintain the viability of his overall brand. But he has never been on a stage like this one before. He didn’t have hundreds of reporters on the steak beat scrutinizing every twist and turn in the decline of Trump Steaks and putting the results of their reporting on every front page in America.

But now he does, and he can’t just drop one scheme and move on to the next one. In that interview with Hallie Jackson, Trump said, “We really haven’t started. We start pretty much after the convention, during and after.” But his problem isn’t that he hasn’t started; it’s that he started a year ago — digging himself into a hole it’s going to be awfully hard to climb out of.

[pbrower2a]

(06-21-2016, 01:27 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The Trump campaign is becoming an outright catastrophe



By Paul Waldman June 20 at 9:12 AM 


What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail

Every presidential campaign has its ups and downs, its moments when everything seems to be going right and those when it looks to be hurtling toward defeat. This is one of the latter moments for Donald Trump, with him falling in the polls after a series of controversial statements (and frankly, “A Series of Controversial Statements” could be his campaign motto). Ed O’Keefe reports that panicked Republicans are waging a last-ditch effort to convince convention delegates to switch from Trump to someone or other, and they claim “that they now count several hundred delegates and alternates as part of their campaign.” The effort will almost certainly fail, but the fact that it consists of more than a few desperate people is an indication of how bad things are for Trump.

But wait — doesn’t he have plenty of time to turn this campaign around? So he trails Hillary Clinton by somewhere between 6 and 8 points in all the reputable polling averages — didn’t George H.W. Bush trail Michael Dukakis by 17 points after the Democratic convention in 1988?

Yes, Trump has time to reverse the current situation. But today’s polls aren’t meaningless, even if they don’t tell us exactly what will happen in November. The problem for Trump isn’t the size of his polling deficit (which isn’t all that large); it’s the magnitude of challenges his campaign faces.

While he could manage a stunning turnaround, at the moment Trump seems to have put together one of the worst presidential campaigns in history. Let’s take a look at all the major disadvantages Trump faces as we head toward the conventions:

A skeletal campaign staff. Trump succeeded in the primaries with a small staff whose job was to do little more than stage rallies. But running a national campaign is hugely more complex than barnstorming from one state to the next during primaries. While the Clinton campaign has built an infrastructure of hundreds of operatives performing the variety of tasks a modern presidential campaign requires, the Trump campaign “estimates it currently has about 30 paid staff on the ground across the country,” a comically small number.


Not enough money, and little inclination to raise it. Trump hasn’t raised much money yet, and he doesn’t seem inclined to do so; according to one report, after telling Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus that he’d call 20 large donors to make a pitch, he gave up after three. Fundraising is the least pleasant part of running for office, but unlike most candidates who suck it up and do what they have to, Trump may not be willing to spend the time dialing for dollars. Instead, he’s convinced that he can duplicate what he did in the primaries and run a low-budget campaign based on having rallies and doing TV interviews. As he told NBC’s Hallie Jackson, “I don’t think I need that money, frankly. I mean, look what we’re doing right now. This is like a commercial, right, except it’s tougher than a normal commercial.” It’s not like a commercial, because in interviews Trump gets challenged, and usually says something that makes him look foolish or dangerous. But he seems convinced that his ability to get limitless media coverage, no matter how critical that coverage is, will translate to an increase in support.

Outgunned on the airwaves. As a result, Democrats are pouring money into television ads attacking Trump and promoting Clinton with no answer from the other side. As Mark Murray reported yesterday, “So far in June, Clinton and the outside groups backing her have spent a total of $23.3 million on ads in the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.” And how much have Trump and his allies spent on ads in those states? Zero. Nothing. Nada.

Not enough backup from his allies. There may never have been a presidential nominee with so little support from the people who are supposed to be out there persuading people to vote for him. Every day sees new stories about Trump being criticized by Republican leaders or about Republicans distancing themselves from him. And that includes the people who have endorsed him. Last week the chair of Trump’s leadership committee in the House begged reporters to stop making him defend Trump.

That lack of unity can have a large impact on how Republicans view their vote. While the rote arguments between Democrats and Republicans may seem too predictable to change many minds, when intra-partisan unanimity breaks down, it sends a signal to people that it’s okay to disagree with your party’s nominee — and even to reject him altogether.

A popular president opposing him. Every political science election model says that the view of the current president matters a great deal in determining whether voters decide to change which party controls the White House. Right now President Obama’s approval rating is over 50 percent for the first time in a long while, and he’ll be campaigning vigorously against Trump.

A demographic disadvantage. Trump is running on what is essentially an ethno-nationalist appeal to white voters, at a time when the country grows less white every year. He would have to do significantly better than recent Republican nominees among large minority groups in order to win, yet rather than court them, he has done just the opposite. In the latest Post-ABC News poll, 89 percent of Hispanics said they had an unfavorable view of Trump, an absolutely stunning figure. That’s not to mention the enormous gender gap he’s opening: 77 percent of women also viewed him unfavorably in that poll.
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An electoral college disadvantage. Any Republican candidate faces a challenge in the electoral college, where Democrats start with a built-in advantage. In all of the past four elections, Democrats have won 17 states (plus D.C.) that give them 242 of the 270 electoral votes they need to win. That means that for Trump to win, he has to sweep almost every swing state. But instead of trying to do that, Trump is worried about holding on to red states such as Utah and Arizona.

A candidate with a lethal combination of dreadful strategic instincts and absolute certainty of his own brilliance. 

Trump’s inexperience in politics has shown itself in many ways, such as his utter ignorance about policy and how the U.S. government works. It also means that when confronted with new situations, he often does something politically foolish, as when he responded to the Orlando shooting bycongratulating himself for predicting that there would one day be another terrorist attack. And while for a time we kept hearing that he was going to “pivot” to the general election, instead he seems to be running as though he’s still trying to persuade his own supporters to stay with him. Those supporters comprise a plurality of a minority of the whole electorate.

Perhaps even more importantly, unlike some neophyte candidates, Trump not only doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, but also insists that he doesn’t need to know it. Whatever deep insecurities drive his constant preening bluster, he isn’t going to let anyone tell him that he’s anything less than a genius and things aren’t going great. Which means that as the campaign goes on and his situation gets worse, he’ll be exceedingly unlikely to make the kind of changes he needs to reverse his fortunes.

Trump is no stranger to failure, but in his life as a businessman he could segregate those failures from the rest of his enterprises, at least enough to keep moving forward and find other ways to make money. He could fail at the casino business, or the steak business, or the vodkabusiness, or the magazine business, or the airlinebusiness, or the football business, or the real estate seminar business, or the vitamin pyramid schemebusiness, and maintain the viability of his overall brand. But he has never been on a stage like this one before. He didn’t have hundreds of reporters on the steak beat scrutinizing every twist and turn in the decline of Trump Steaks and putting the results of their reporting on every front page in America.

But now he does, and he can’t just drop one scheme and move on to the next one. In that interview with Hallie Jackson, Trump said, “We really haven’t started. We start pretty much after the convention, during and after.” But his problem isn’t that he hasn’t started; it’s that he started a year ago — digging himself into a hole it’s going to be awfully hard to climb out of.

My assessment:

The analogy to the Bush I campaign of 1988 is relevant. Yes, Dukakis blew a bigger lead than Hillary Clinton now has, but:

1. Hillary Clinton may not be the VP, but like the elder Bush she has the highly-successful campaign apparatus of the current President on her side. The Obama and Reagan campaign apparatuses are similar in overall competence and methods. If anyone has the command of the steamroller, it is Hillary Clinton.

2. Donald Trump has an underfunded campaign. That better resembles Mike Dukakis than it resembles George H W Bush.

3. The intra-partisan split within the Democratic Party is so far less severe than the intra-partisan split within the Republican party. I can imagine some dissatisfied Sanders voters drifting toward Jill Stein or even Gary Johnson -- but definitely not to Donald Trump, and in far lesser numbers than I can imagine supporters of Cruz or Kasich going to Johnson/Weld. The 1988 Presidential election was a true binary election unlike this one, which can make a difference -- but more to the detriment of Donald Trump.

4. President Barack Obama is popular enough to be re-elected, except that the pesky 22nd Amendment would stop him even if he wanted to run for re-election. He does not have any scandals, even sexual scandals, that can make him a political albatross. People seem to be recognizing that he does much right. The presumptive nominee of the Democratic party has done everything possible to latch onto the Obama legacy and has been very successful at that. She 'owns' Obama successes and failures in foreign policy, and there are few failures, having been Secretary of State. Prior Republican legacies don't want Donald Trump latching onto those legacies.

5. Hillary Clinton may not have been a Governor -- but she has been a Senator. She has had a cabinet post. As an active First Lady she is more of a political insider than her record of elective office shows. She knows how to do politics as anyone short of President Obama or her husband. "Insider vs. Gadfly" contests usually go to the Insider unless the Insider can be connected to a gross scandal.

6. Republicans would have been wise to try to cut into the electoral disadvantages that they have with blacks, Asians, and now Hispanics. Donald Trump has consolidated ill will among minority voters even if those voters have some conservative traits. Anti-intellectualism that targets a wayward college professor can aid a conservative candidate, but when the anti-intellectualism offends so large an occupational group as schoolteachers it becomes a political disaster. Republicans need to make inroads into the large middle classes of blacks and Hispanics who are politically savvy and active, lest they wish to stare into the chasm of defeat.

7. No state that the Democrats have won in all Presidential elections after 1988 shows any unambiguous sign of going to Donald Trump. Picking off every state that the Republican nominee must win to swing from a loss to a win (which would be Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado) is far easier than what Dubya did in 2000 (Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and West Virginia) -- if the nominee has a competent campaign. Dubya had a more competent campaign apparatus, and he barely pulled off a win of the Presidency in 2000.

If he must defend states like Arizona, Kansas, or Utah, states that any Republican nominee must assume safe, then he is in about as much trouble as a Democrat who must struggle to hold onto Massachusetts, Minnesota, or Oregon.

8. For good reason, all but one successful candidate for election for President in the last century has been either a State Governor, a US Senator, Vice-President, or a Cabinet secretary. The exception is Dwight Eisenhower, to whom any comparison of Donald Trump would be a travesty. (If anything I see Eisenhower and Obama similar in temperament and quality as President -- cautious figures who choose their political battles wisely, respected precedent and judicial decisions, and put deeds above personality). "Governor" and "Senator" are very different functions, but campaigning for them requires mastery of the statewide campaign that has an analogue in the Presidential sweepstakes. The States elect the President (see 2000); the People don't.

Donald Trump has no idea of how to operate a statewide campaign. It shows.

9. Market share is enough in business, which explains how a company that has 10% of the automobile insurance business is a success. Losing 47-51 in an election is not success.

Donald Trump has done little of what prepares one to be President. He has never been a mayor of a large city; he has never been a US Senator; he has never been a State Governor; he has never had a Cabinet post. His personality (arrogance and narcissism) puts people off. He has been able to restructure his business failures -- but he will be unable to do so with a military debacle or a diplomatic calamity. He knows nothing about the judiciary or the military. He has shown contempt for some of the fundamental decencies of the American political heritage.

...In a Crisis Era we need some kindness, caution, and conscience to keep things from going catastrophically wrong. Trump lacks those. Yes, he would be a disaster. If he can offend the sensibilities of so many Americans, just think of what other sensibilities he can offend.

[playwrite]

Quote:The June monthly FEC filings are starting to show up, and they justify incipient Republican panic. Hillary Clinton raised $19.5 million and has $42 million cash on hand. Donald Trump raised $3.1 million and has $1.3 million cash on hand. Clinton is reported to have raised $4.5 million at a fundraiser in NY tonight, more than Trump raised last month.

The Republican convention is a month away, July 18th, the Democratic convention a week after. The candidates can only spend primary money until they are nominated. Trump is on a very tight budget for the next month, Hillary and her allies will be hammering him through his convention. She wants to spend all of her primary cash before she is nominated.

It looks like the Trump campaign could "go dark" up to the convention, relying on news coverage (Clinton should insist on the same level of free advertisement).  Clinton's campaign will be essentially free to "paint" Trump into a corner; he'll have to fight his way through that framing before he can offer his own.  

This likely means big problems for the GOP to keep the Senate as well.

[playwrite]

RNC Convention - All Trump, and Nothing but Trump???

All Trump, all the time? Adviser says he could speak every night of GOP convention

Quote:The Republican National Convention in Cleveland could be fully Trumped.
In an interview with Bloomberg's Masters in Politics podcast, Donald Trump's senior adviser Barry Bennett said the presumptive GOP nominee might speak every night of the convention.
Typically, the nominee's acceptance speech is one of the last acts of a party's convention. But Bennett said Trump may elect to speak each night from a different city.
"I think when it comes to the program a lot of us feel that we could juice up the format just a little," Bennett told Masters in Politics. "More entertaining, more interesting. I don't know why the candidate only speaks on acceptance night, why shouldn't he speak every night from a different city? How come we are not doing broadcasts on Facebook or Google, why are we just relying on 45 minutes of network television time?"

i.e., they don't have any 1st string surrogates to offer in prime time - maybe Ben put-you-to-sleep Carson because Chris Christie will be designated as McDonald's happy meals go-fer.  They're losing sponsors (e.g., Apple Corp).  And they can't afford Clint Eastwood, but only Scott "Chache" Baio!

You can't make this crap up!  

[playwrite]

#TrumpSoPoor is now trending.

My favorite so far -

Quote:(((Political Nerd))) ‏@Sttbs73  4h4 hours ago

#TrumpSoPoor Republicans now want to suppress his vote.

Shxts and giggles, shXts and giggles.  

[Eric the Green]

https://youtu.be/1OpLFsememc

[Eric the Green]

Michelle Obama reminds us of who we really are.

[Ragnarök_62]

(06-21-2016, 09:29 AM)playwrite Wrote:

Quote:The June monthly FEC filings are starting to show up, and they justify incipient Republican panic. Hillary Clinton raised $19.5 million and has $42 million cash on hand. Donald Trump raised $3.1 million and has $1.3 million cash on hand. Clinton is reported to have raised $4.5 million at a fundraiser in NY tonight, more than Trump raised last month.

IOW, politics as usual.  Clinton has just admitted being bought and paid for who  the hell donated all that money. People or corporations [one and the same now, thank you very much Citizens United] don't toss away $ for nothing.
Sorry.
#VoteJillStein

[radind]

(06-21-2016, 04:42 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Michelle Obama reminds us of who we really are.

Diversity is not the problem. But terrorism and violent acts are problems.

[Eric the Green]

(06-21-2016, 05:06 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(06-21-2016, 09:29 AM)playwrite Wrote:

Quote:The June monthly FEC filings are starting to show up, and they justify incipient Republican panic. Hillary Clinton raised $19.5 million and has $42 million cash on hand. Donald Trump raised $3.1 million and has $1.3 million cash on hand. Clinton is reported to have raised $4.5 million at a fundraiser in NY tonight, more than Trump raised last month.

IOW, politics as usual.  Clinton has just admitted being bought and paid for who  the hell donated all that money. People or corporations [one and the same now, thank you very much Citizens United] don't toss away $ for nothing.
Sorry.
#VoteJillStein

No, it just shows Republicans don't want to put their money where their mouth is. No-one should wonder at that.