Finally Friday Reads:

Posted: August 30, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign | Tags: , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Good Day,

Sky Dancers!

I wish I could say that this is the usual Labor Day Weekend start of the Silly Season heading toward the election, but I can’t.  The first establishment media interview with Vice President Harris and Governor Walz went to Dana Bash, who is not exactly in the bag for MAGA but just a poor interviewer. CNN used to be the place to go for news.  Now it’s the place to go for yawns and gotcha questions.  I didn’t see the interview, but their follow-up panel was sleep-inducing.  I did see bits and pieces last night.  I waited for the Transcript and the video this morning to take in more than just the CNN-chosen ‘highlights.’  There were only two questions and comments that grabbed my attention.

BASH: On that note, you had a lot of Republican speakers at the convention. Will you appoint a Republican to your Cabinet?

HARRIS: Yes, I would.

BASH: Any one in mind—

HARRIS: Yes, I would. No, no one in particular in mind. I got — we got 68 days to go with this election, so I’m not puttin’ the cart before the horse. But I would. I think — I think it’s really important. I — I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences. And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who is a Republican.

BASH: Speaking of Republicans, I want to ask you about your opponent, Donald Trump. I was a little bit surprised, people might be surprised to hear that you have never interacted with him, met him face to face. That’s gonna change soon, but what I want to ask you about is what he said last month. He suggested that you happened to turn Black recently for political purposes, questioning a core part of your identity.

HARRIS: Yeah.

BASH: Any—

HARRIS: Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please. (LAUGH)

BASH: That’s it?

HARRIS: That’s it.

It allowed Harris to share her priorities and discuss Biden/Harris’s achievements. The gotcha moments came over the misunderstanding of her role in border negotiations in North Central America, fracking, and the ‘affordability crisis.’  She answered these questions directly and succinctly.  That’s not stopping the Trumplican Media from saying the interview was a Dumpsterfire.  But then, it’s doubtful any of the MAGA faithful actually watch CNN. I didn’t think any of the gotcha questions landed, but then I operate in a world where I don’t want White Male Christian Dominance with a token Tulsi Gabbard and Vivek Ramaswamy added as props.

BASH: You talk about — you call it the opportunity economy. You are well aware that right now many Americans are struggling. There’s a crisis of affordability. One of your campaign themes is, “We’re not going back.” But I wonder what you say to voters who do want to go back when it comes to the economy specifically because their groceries were less expensive, housing was more affordable when Donald Trump was president.

HARRIS: Well, let’s start with the fact that when Joe Biden and I came in office during the height of a pandemic, we saw over 10 million jobs were lost. People — I mean, literally we are all tracking the numbers. Hundreds of people a day were dying because of COVID. The economy had crashed.

In large part, all of that because of mismanagement by Donald Trump of that crisis. When we came in, our highest priority was to do what we could to rescue America. And today, we know that we have inflation at under 3%. A lot of our policies have led to the reality that America recovered faster than any wealthy nation around the world.

But you are right. Prices in particular for groceries are still too high. The American people know it. I know it. Which is why my agenda includes what we need to do to bring down the price of groceries. For example, dealing with an issue like price gouging.

What we need to do to extend the child tax credit to help young families be able to take care of their children in their most formative years. What we need to do to bring down the cost of housing. My proposal includes what would be a tax credit of $25,000 for first-time home buyers so they can just have enough to put a down payment on a home, which is

part of the American dream and their aspiration, but do it in a way that allows them to actually get on the path to achieving that goal and that dream.

BASH: So you have been vice president for three and a half years. The steps that you’re talking about now, why haven’t you done them already?

So, my answer would be, “D’oh, I’m Vice President, and my job is to implement President Biden’s policy, you know.”  But she’s classier than me and answered this way.

HARRIS: Well, first of all, we had to recover as an economy, and we have done that. I’m very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3%, the work that we have done to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors. Donald Trump said he was gonna do a number of things, including allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Never happened. We did it.

So now, and I — as I travel in the state of Georgia and around our country, the number of seniors that have benefited, I’ve met — I was in Nevada recently. A grandmother who showed me her receipts. And before we capped the cost of insulin for seniors at $35 a month she was paying hundreds of dollars, up to thousands of dollars a month for her insulin. She’s not doing that any longer.

BASH: So you maintain Bidenomics is a success.

So, my answer would be: “Look at the damned economic, inflation, and job numbers, you stupid bitch!”  But, again, she’s classier than me, and I guess I would have to maintain a modicum of dignity, being an economics professor and all.  I would not say that to my class, but they are students, and she’s an overpaid talking head with a penchant for too much one hand then the other hand journalism even when the other hand is stealing us blind and wants to be a dictator.

HARRIS: I maintain that when we do the work of bringing down prescription medication for the American people, including capping the cost — of the annual cost of prescription medication for seniors at $2,000; when we do what we did in the first year of being in office to extend the child tax credit so that we cut child poverty in America by over 50%; when we do what we have done to invest in the American people and bringing manufacturing back to the United States so that we created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs, bringing business back to America; what we have done to improve the supply chain so we’re not relying on foreign governments to supply American families with their basic needs, I’ll say that that’s good work. There’s more to do, but that’s good work.

But hey, what about?  That came next.  Read more at the link or watch the video.

Today, I was delighted by a Washington Post Op-Ed by Dana Milbank, which was witty and true. It was a definite dig at that horrid thing at the New York Times earlier in the week. In a test of character, Trump shows his true grift. In his disorientation, the GOP nominee and former president retreats to his instincts.”

The New York Times ran a fine specimen of unintentional comedy this week: an essay by conservative writer Rich Lowry titled “Trump Can Win on Character.”

The only thing that could have made it better was if it had been under the byline of Stormy Daniels.

Lowry’s argument itself wasn’t quite as absurd as the headline. He was only suggesting that Trump repeatedly call Vice President Kamala Harris “weak,” which Trump probably won’t do, because he’s too busy calling her a communist, a copycat, stupid, a recent conversion to being Black or someone with a crazy laugh who is not as good looking as he is.

Trump could win on various things: inflation, immigration, isolationism. But the notion that a felon and adjudicated sexual abuser who shouts barnyard obscenities and vulgar epithets at his rallies would return to the White House on the strength of his upstanding character? Well, let’s just say there are very fine people on both sides who would have trouble making that argument.

As though in answer to the suggestion that he can “win on character,” Trump responded over the next couple of days by:

  • Holding a campaign event in front of graves at Arlington National Cemetery, where his staff reportedly pushed aside a cemetery official trying to enforce rules against politicizing the sacred ground. Trump posed graveside with a big grin and a thumbs-up, and his campaign set the Republican nominee’s cemetery visit to music and posted it as a TikTok video. When a Harris spokesman commented on the “sad” event, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, declared that Harris herself “can go to hell.” (Vance, after a cool reception last week at a doughnut shop in Georgia, got booed by firefighters this week in Boston.)
  • Announcing that two of the nation’s most prominent conspiracy theorists — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard — would be co-chairs of his presidential transition if he wins the election, with influence over key appointments and policies. Gabbard’s trumpeting of Russian propaganda has been labeled “treasonous” by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and Kennedy’s long-shot presidential campaign somehow fizzled after he acknowledged, among other things, having a brain worm and leaving a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park.
  • Rolling out his latest attempt to cajole his supporters to line his own pockets. This time, he offered another round of “digital trading cards” featuring a Trump superhero. Supporters who parted with $1,485 or more in this Trump-enrichment scam would be sent a piece of the fabric cut from the “knockout suit” he wore during his June debate with President Joe Biden.
  • Proclaiming that it was “Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault” that he was the victim of a failed assassination attempt, asserting without evidence that they prevented the Secret Service from protecting him and that he might have been shot “because of their rhetoric.” The FBI reported that the shooter, a Republican, had searched online for both Biden and Trump events and settled on the Trump rally as a “target of opportunity.”
  • Sharing another fusillade of posts on social media that cited QAnon slogans, called for the imprisonment of his opponents, and suggested that Harris used sex to advance her career.

On Thursday, Trump was in Michigan and as coarse as ever — referring twice to Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, as “Tampon Tim”; preposterously claiming that in Democratic states “you’re allowed to kill the baby after the baby is born”; and saying of Harris: “Nobody knows who the hell she is. She does not give a damn about you.” While complaining that the Army had said he used the Arlington National Cemetery visit “to politic,” he went right on “politicking” about it. Referring to the families of the fallen he met with, Trump said Biden and Harris “killed their children as though they had a gun in their hand.”

That last bit still has me peeved.  I have relatives buried in Arlington National Cemetary, and my Dad chose to be buried in a Washington State Veteran’s Cemetery, where the Pilot and Navigator of his World War II B-25 bombing crew is also buried.  I am incensed about this for my family, who served in the Military from the Revolutionary War forward, including the winning side of the Civil War. Historian Heather Cox Richardson puts this into perspective in her Substack, Letters from an American.

And now the U.S. Army has weighed in on the scandal surrounding Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery for a campaign photo op, after which his team shared a campaign video it had filmed. The Army said that the cemetery hosts almost 3,000 public wreath-laying ceremonies a year without incident and that Trump and his staff “were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and [Department of Defense] policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds.”

It went on to say that a cemetery employee “who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside…. This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the… employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked. [Arlington National Cemetery] is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”

“I don’t think I can adequately explain what a massive deal it is for the Army to make a statement like this,” political writer and veteran Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote, noted. “The Pentagon avoids statements like this at all costs. But a draft dodging traitor decided to lie about our armed forces staff, so they went to paper.”

The deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said the Department of Defense is “aware of the statement that the Army issued, and we support what the Army said.” Hours later, Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita reposted the offending video on X and, tagging the official account for Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, said he was “hoping to trigger the hacks” in her office.

In Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall reported that the Trump campaign’s plan was to lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the 13 members of the U.S. military killed in the suicide bombing during the evacuation of Kabul, Afghanistan, in August 2021. They intended to film the event and then attack Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden for not “showing up” for the event, which they intended to portray as an “established memorial.”

She has also some good news to share from the Financial World. I can only say that Janet Rivlin’s hands are all over this.  Good for her!

Another major story from yesterday is that the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has finalized two rules that will work to stop corruption and money laundering in U.S. residential real estate and in private investment.

This is a big deal. As scholar of kleptocracies Casey Michel put it: “This is a massive, massive deal in the world of counter-kleptocracy—the U.S. is finally ending the gargantuan anti–money laundering loopholes for real estate, private equity, hedge funds, and more. Can’t overstate how important this is. What a feat.”

The White Stripes are the latest band telling the DonOld Campaign to cease and desist! “‘Fascists’: Jack White threatens to sue Trump campaign over use of music. White Stripes singer angered after Trump aide shares social media post using clip of band’s hit Seven Nation Army.”  I wonder if it’s too late for Chachi to record something dismal? The display of privilege in all these acts of theft of dignity and expression is just the latest in the NepoBaby news.

Another bit of Trumplican Justice and Karma from The Hill.  “Georgia election workers seek control of Giuliani’s assets to collect on $146M defamation judgment. Two Georgia election workers have asked a federal judge for control over Rudy Giuliani’s  assets to collect on the $146 million defamation judgment against him for baselessly claiming they engaged in election fraud in 2020.”

The request from Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss comes just short of a month after the ex-New York City mayor’s defunct bankruptcy, filed in the aftermath of the staggering judgment, was formally closed.

“Mr. Giuliani has spent years evading accountability for his actions — first in litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and then in chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings that Mr. Giuliani commenced in this District,” Aaron Nathan, an attorney for the mother-daughter duo, wrote in a Friday court filing. “Now that Mr. Giuliani’s bankruptcy case has been dismissed, Plaintiffs are finally in a position to receive a measure of compensation by enforcing their judgment.”

Freeman and Moss asked the judge to order Giuliani to turn over personal property in his possession and to give the women the power to take possession of and sell any property he does not turn over.

“Those remedies are overwhelmingly justified under New York law,” Nathan wrote. “And they are all the more appropriate in the context of this case, where Mr. Giuliani has proven time and again that he will never voluntarily comply with court orders, much less voluntarily satisfy Plaintiffs’ judgment.”

After a trial in December, a jury ordered Giuliani to pay Freeman and Moss more than $148 million, though after attorneys fees and other adjustments, the judgment was formally entered just under $146 million.

The election workers testified to their lives being turned upside down by a torrent of racist and violent threats after Giuliani, the ex-personal lawyer of former President Trump, baselessly claimed they committed widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Giuliani froze the judgment, and other pending lawsuits against him, by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. But the judge’s dismissal of that case enabled the two election workers to collect on the judgment — even though they are likely to recover far less than $146 million, given Giuliani disclosed only $10.6 million in assets to the bankruptcy court.

Well, y’all have a great long weekend and remember how many lives it has cost to make this country what it is and can be.  We can’t afford to let them all down now.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Thursday Reads: Normalizing a Maniac

Posted: September 15, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: , , , , | 25 Comments

816cba62f17b44613bebf8bbb00c9daf18c74810Good Afternoon!

I’m going back to ranting about the election since yesterday’s media coverage was so over the top.  We heard more about the Crackpot Republican nominee putting on a Barnum & Bailey worthy side show on the TV show of a crackpot Doctor than we heard about the solid criminal investigation into his family’s Foundation which is an obvious scam and the excellent research into his business ties with foreign agents that are not friendly to US interests. Crackpots appear to have a major footing in the 2016 Presidential Election coverage.  Dr. Oz is just the latest one.

The wonderful cartoons are from TNR’s coverage of the unqualified disasters “advising” Donald Trump.  Trump has gathered up a team of crackpots and you can read about them in the article cited below.  The illustrator is MICHAEL WITTE and I’ve lifted many of his accompanying caricatures.  You may see more of his illustrations here.  I’m sure you’ll recognize a few of them.  Rest assured, they are all losers and they are all crackpots. Every. Single. One. of. them.

The Headline of the TNR feature just speaks for itself.  ‘Trumps Court Jesters:  Meet the worst political team ever assembled’—an inner circle of outcasts, opportunists, and extremists with nowhere else to go.  How can the media treat this campaign seriously?  It’s like they normalize him for reading the words of other crackpots from a teleprompter.

With his showman’s flair, Trump has assured anyone who will listen that he will compensate for his political inexperience and policy indifference by surrounding himself with the “best people.” They’ll be the “smartest.” Not to mention the “greatest.” Unfortunately for Trump, no one with those qualifications wants to work for him. When his campaign approached hundreds of aides to the 16 losing GOP candidates—including more than 150 who worked for Ted Cruz—the vast majority passed on the opportunity. When Trump tried to scare up endorsements in Congress, he ended up with a handful of backbench extremists. When he cobbled together a foreign policy team, he couldn’t even find a respectable ex-general from CNN, much less a credible think-tank wonk. When he put together an economic advisory team, he found exactly one willing economist.

So Trump has been forced, for reasons of his own making, to assemble what could well be the worst political team in presidential history: a rogues’ gallery of outcasts and opportunists, has-beens and never-weres, conspiracy-mongers and crackpots. Few of the advisers in his inner circle possess any real qualifications for the positions they hold. Some have been ousted from their previous jobs for incompetence, corruption, or outright craziness. Many, exiled to the political fringes, see the campaign as a way to get back into the game. Most of them, sad to say, have sunk so low that Trump looks like a big step up.

Nicholas Kristoff also has a blunt headline today:   ‘When a Crackpot Runs for President’ – The New York Times.bece1ff7c12b1ea371c35140c502222322c3f26a-1

A CNN/ORC poll this month found that by a margin of 15 percentage points, voters thought Donald Trump was “more honest and trustworthy” than Hillary Clinton. Let’s be frank: This public perception is completely at odds with all evidence.

On the PolitiFact website, 13 percent of Clinton’s statements that were checked were rated “false” or “pants on fire,” compared with 53 percent of Trump’s. Conversely, half of Clinton’s are rated “true” or “mostly true” compared to 15 percent of Trump statements.

Clearly, Clinton shades the truth — yet there’s no comparison with Trump.

I’m not sure that journalism bears responsibility, but this does raise the thorny issue of false equivalence, which has been hotly debated among journalists this campaign. Here’s the question: Is it journalistic malpractice to quote each side and leave it to readers to reach their own conclusions, even if one side seems to fabricate facts or make ludicrous comments?

President Obama weighed in this week, saying that “we can’t afford to act as if there’s some equivalence here.”

I’m wary of grand conclusions about false equivalence from 30,000 feet. But at the grass roots of a campaign, I think we can do better at signaling that one side is a clown.

Even while explaining how Trump is a mythomaniac and a systematic cheater, Kristoff can’t help but run the narrative on Hillary Clinton that is based all of the debunked and discounted charges leveled at her for over 40 years.

What’s a voter to do?b6f8ed9504ff175bd140c2d444b9a022f67e3c98

We were regaled yesterday with two polls supposedly showing Trump ahead in Ohio.  Looking at the details and the polls themselves you’ll see the conclusions are quite spurious.  The CNN poll literally reports results on no voters under 50 because they couldn’t get a sample large enough to get reliable results.

A new poll showing Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton by 4 points in Ohio set the media buzzing, but a look at the polling data reveals that CNN under polled younger voters.

CNN touted their new poll of Ohio as Trump making gains in swing states, “With eight weeks to go before Election Day, Donald Trump holds a narrow lead over Hillary Clinton in Ohio and the two are locked in a near-even contest in Florida, according to new CNN/ORC polls in the two critical battleground states.”

Well, that certainly sounds dramatic, but a look at the crosstabs of the poll shows that things may not be exactly what CNN is suggesting they are in the Buckeye State.

There was something odd about the age of the respondents: (Note: go to the link to see the image of poll results here.)

Younger voters are not listed.

This could be a mistake in the CNN/ORC Poll crosstabs, but it is also easy to understand how Trump suddenly got a lead in Ohio when CNN under polled younger voters.

The CNN poll is a good reminder that all polls, whether they contain good or bad news for the candidate that you support, should be taken with a big grain of salt.

1af5c8ef9eb58c3150ec7000287de7c9da705d57The Bloomberg poll uses a distribution based on 2004 when turnout by Republicans was unusually high.  How do we know that this and not the two most recent presidential elections will be the likely pattern?  What’s the rationale here?  I frankly can’t imagine any racial or religious minority NOT rushing to the polls to ensure a Trump loss. I frankly expect Hispanic turnout to be at an all time high although there may be only a few states where this matters. But still, the media are going crazy over two polls with extremely dubious polling methodology.

The Bloomberg poll differs from most other Ohio public polling in the race. A CBS News/YouGov poll, which was conducted via the internet last Wednesday through Friday and overlaps with the Bloomberg poll by one night, gave Clinton a 7-point lead over Trump, 46 percent to 39 percent.

A Quinnipiac University survey, conducted in late August and early September and released last week, showed Trump ahead of Clinton in Ohio by 1 point in a head-to-head matchup. But Trump held a 4-point lead in a subsequent question that gave respondents the option of choosing Libertarian Gary Johnson or Green Party nominee Jill Stein.

In the Bloomberg poll, Trump maintains a 5-point advantage over Clinton with Johnson and Stein included, 44 percent to 39 percent, with Johnson at 10 percent and Stein at 3 percent.

Incumbent GOP Sen. Rob Portman holds a big lead in Ohio’s closely watched Senate race, the poll also shows. Portman, who is seeking a second term, leads former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, 53 percent to 36 percent.

Recent polls have given Portman a significant advantage, but not to this degree. His previous high-water mark in a live-interview survey had been an 11-point lead in last week’s Quinnipiac poll.

Ann Selzer, the well-respected Iowa pollster who produced the survey, provided Bloomberg with a possible explanation for its divergent results: Voters who identified as Republicans were more likely to be classified as likely voters than those who said they identified as Democrats. Including those who lean toward one party, Republicans comprised about 43 percent of the sample, while Democrats made up roughly 36 percent.

“Our party breakdown differs from other polls, but resembles what happened in Ohio in 2004,” Selzer told Bloomberg, pointing to exit polling from 12 years ago when George W. Bush carried the state. “It is very difficult to say today who will and who will not show up to vote on Election Day. Our poll suggests more Republicans than Democrats would do that in an Ohio election held today.”

38a4cc5b78f7394f4f9ca8bffbcc374438cda2c2My guess is that Ohio is a dead heat with a slight advantage to Clinton given the Republicans in office don’t like Trump and won’t campaign for him. This is one of the reasons why I don’t put much faith in any one poll at any one point in time but prefer to defer to two mathematical laws:  the law of large numbers and the law of averages. I’ve been trained through 4 degrees to evaluate trends and averages based on time series only. This suggests the methodology used by Nate Silver and Sam Wang who forecast based on using all polls and producing an average and trend based on all polls with weights based on reliability of methodology.  They are also quite aware of the tricks used by various pollsters which depends heavily on their political affiliation. It appears Trump could have a route to the White House without winning the popular vote according to FiveThirtyEight writer David Wasserman.  This path is unlikely but frightening.

OK, before I say anything, a quick disclaimer: This piece is not a prediction. In fact, I’m a religious (maybe fanatical) adherent of FiveThirtyEight’s 2016 election forecast model, which I find to be both methodologically rigorous and intellectually honest. I don’t dispute its assessment that Hillary Clinton has a 63 or 64 percent chance of winning the election.

That said, in the event this race does tighten to a coin flip by Nov. 8, there is an unusually high chance Donald Trump could win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote — basically, Democrats’ version of the apocalypse.

Here’s why: Several of Trump’s worst demographic groups happen to be concentrated in states, such as California, New York, Texas and Utah, that are either not competitive or that aren’t on Trump’s must-win list. Conversely, whites without a college degree — one of Trump’s strongest groups — represent a huge bloc in three blue states he would need to turn red to have the best chance of winning 270 electoral votes: Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

A repeat of 2000’s split verdict — except with more potential to plunge this much more polarized and anxious country into chaos — is still not very likely. Right now, the FiveThirtyEight polls-only model posits a 6.1 percent chance of Trump winning the Electoral College while losing the popular, and a 1.5 chance of the reverse outcome. But that’s not so remote, either, and if the national ballot were ever to tighten further, both “crazy” scenarios’ odds could rise.

The secret to how Clinton could win more votes nationally yet still fall short of the White House lies with Trump’s weakness among three geographically disadvantaged groups of voters:

You can go read the analysis or not depending on the strength of your heart.  Larry Sabato of Rasmussen Reports has some additional analysis on the fundamentals as they exist today.  He even refers to this a “strange race” which is probably why the press seem completely unable to cover the maniac in the room.bf18974b0e304ff3df3926ac5d78701fc13fc3c2

Nonetheless, the defining difference in this election is not Clinton but Trump. Forget Wendell Willkie: There has never been a presidential nominee like him. He has divided the Republican Party — separating party elites from much of the party’s populist base — and he has rearranged the electorate in ways we haven’t ever seen, at least to this extent. Minority groups appear to be rejecting him by margins as bad or worse than recent GOP nominees. Trump is having trouble winning a group that isnormally quite Republican: college-educated whites. At the same time, he has drawn very sizable, exceptionally intense backing from non-college whites and, disproportionately, blue-collar white men, and he has the potential to out-perform Mitt Romney’s 2012 showing among that group.

Regular readers will have noticed that we have been publishing political scientists’ predictive models for 2016, the quadrennial attempt to use certain variables to project the election results (at least the popular vote) months in advance. We’re publishing our final update on these models this week. They are mostly derived from election fundamentals that don’t change much over time — economic conditions, the number of consecutive terms a party has held the White House, and so on. Averaging all the forecasts together shows a two-party vote of Clinton 50.5% and Trump 49.5%. Obviously, that’s very close, and taken together these models produced a very similar prediction in 2012 (Obama 50.2%, Romney 49.8%). That undersold Obama, who won with 52.0% of the two-party vote.

The problem in 2016 is that the assumptions that undergird some models are disputable. Take our senior columnist, Alan Abramowitz of Emory University. His “Time for Change” model has an admirable record of prediction over many years, nailing the popular-vote winner in every cycle going back to 1988. Yet this time, Abramowitz has declared that his model will probably miss the mark. Why? As Abramowitz explains it, the assumptions upon which the model is built are unsound: “First, that both major parties will nominate mainstream candidates capable of unifying their parties and, second, that the candidates will conduct equally effective campaigns so that the overall outcome will closely reflect the ‘fundamentals’ incorporated in the model.”

Abramowitz’s model predicts a modest Republican victory this November, and considering Clinton’s myriad weaknesses and a competitive political environment, it is easy to imagine it if the GOP had nominated a mainstream candidate. (We’ll let you go through the 17 contestants and decide which ones might have been able to unite the party, run a solid campaign, and win.) Trump is neither mainstream nor conducting a campaign that is anything close technologically and financially to the Clinton effort.

In our view, this is why — along with strong partisan polarization — the contest, while close, has had Clinton pretty consistently in the lead: Trump is underperforming the fundamentals and reducing the odds of a GOP win. In another era, say the 1960s through the 1980s, the 2016 contest might well have produced a Democratic landslide much as outlier candidates in 1964 (Barry Goldwater) and in 1972 (George McGovern) generated big swings to the other party. Yet dislike of Clinton and polarization have kept her margin to a few points, excepting the post-convention bounce period. Clinton also faces an unprecedented challenge: She is not simply seeking President Obama’s third term and, in a sense, being responsible for the Obama record (good and bad), but in a way she is also pursuing Bill Clinton’s third term, too. Never before has a party nominee been held accountable for two two-term presidents.

It may be that Clinton, if she does indeed win, will mimic one of Obama’s victory margins (four percentage points in 2012 or seven in 2008). Polarization was especially evident in Obama’s reelection contest. A four-point margin would be consistent with the Electoral College map the Crystal Ball has largely maintained since March: Her total of 348 electoral votes would place her performance in between Obama 2012 (332) and Obama 2008 (365). For Clinton to duplicate Obama’s 2008 broader sweep, Trump would probably have to collapse in the final weeks because of the accumulation of controversies and the lack of preparation in the ground game. If Clinton barely wins or Trump pulls an upset to rival 1948 (Harry Truman over Thomas Dewey), it probably means that Trump did something to improve voters’ perceptions of his qualifications for office — right now, a majority of the electorate does not believe he’s qualified — and Clinton, through a combination of mistakes, controversies, and Democratic apathy, can’t generate the kind of Democratic turnout she needs.

The challenge for the Democrats is to keep 2016 from becoming a change election, which it might have been without Trump (and could still become). Prospective Clinton voters will have to be reminded constantly why she believes Trump is unacceptable and why they have to swallow hard and vote for a candidate many are not enthused about. While our Electoral College ratings still show a Clinton victory, the polls have clearly gotten closer in recent weeks. Clinton is generally up about two-to-four points nationally in polling averages (based on RealClearPolitics and HuffPost Pollster ), considerably tighter than the lofty eight-point lead she enjoyed in both averages about a month ago, when she was still basking in a post-convention glow and Trump was making mistake after mistake. In the lead-up to Labor Day, Clinton faced several questions about her emails and the Clinton Foundation, and Trump’s coverage became less negative by comparison.

091a90affb5c531feb838e2b00f61d0421c06243There is actually rumbling among Republicans who really really don’t want Trump to win and a few little glimmers of hope like the fact that the New Hampshire Union Leader just endorsed spacey, libertarian pothead Gary Johnson.   I’m sorry, the man just reminds me of every freaking pot dependent person I’ve ever known.  “Allepo, man, what’s that, man?”  I have no idea why William Weld wasn’t put at the top of that ticket other than every libertarian I’ve ever met these days seems to hate the idea of being drafting and loves the idea of legal pot. Maybe they’re all potheads these days.

The most joyful day moment of the day was watching a Flint Methodist Minister kick Trump’s political grandstanding at her church to the ground.   She totally caught him reading prepared remarks that were just more vile anti-Hillary bile.  He was so unable to make a comeback that he flipped the page and read the last bits rather than doing what he was invited to do which was praise her community for coming to the aid of Flint Residents who still can’t drink their water.  Brian Williams said Trump “pivoted”.  No, he did not.  He was basically totally flummoxed and he had that “bad dog” look on his face.

The pastor who hosted Donald Trump at her church in Flint, Michigan, interrupted the Republican presidential nominee during his speech Wednesday to ask him to refrain from attacking his rival Hillary Clinton.

“Mr. Trump, I invited you here to thank us for what we’ve done in Flint, not give a political speech,” Rev. Faith Green Timmons of the Bethel United Methodist Church told Trump after walking to the podium while Trump was speaking.
“OK. That’s good. Then I’m going back onto Flint, OK? Flint’s pain is a result of so many different failures,” Trump said.
Timmons, in a statement provided at the event, noted her church welcomes “all people.”
“This public event is open to all and today Donald Trump came to observe. Trump’s presence at Bethel United Methodist in no way represents an endorsement of his candidacy,” she had said.
On Thursday, Trump told Fox News “something was up” with Timmons, but he wasn’t bothered because “everyone plays their games.”

Trump was responding to the host’s question about whether he was “bothered” by the fact that she purportedly had written on Facebook (according to the Fox hosts, who noted it was later erased) that she hoped to “educate” Trump on what had been going on in Flint.

“She was so nervous, she was shaking. And I said, ‘wow, this was kind of strange.’ And then she came up. So she had that in mind, no question about it,” Trump said, adding that he suspected that he might face an unfriendly reception at the church.

Trump not only accused the Pastor of sabotaging him but went on to fat shame her after the entire day’s news cycle basically discussed his obesity with the encouragement of Fox and Frauds.  You can watch Pastor Faith Green Timmons of the Bethel United Methodist Church of Flint lecture the nasty orange one.  Trump’s outreach to minority voters continues to fail as well it should.  They certainly know a racist when they see one.  Plus there is this, the Trump Campaign accepts and doesn’t return donations from known White Supremacists.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOizFbqly3g

 

Now this is how I want my pastor to deal with a hater, not get on TV and proclaim him the candidate of Christians.

So, I’m going to give us a break from all of this again tomorrow, I promise.   I will leave you with some words from the great poet Wendell Berry who has written a beautiful essay on racism in the age of Obama in the Lexington Herald Leader.wendell-berry-300x169

A good many people hoped and even believed that Barack Obama’s election to the presidency signified the end of racism in the United States.

It seems arguable to me that the result has been virtually the opposite: Obama’s election has brought about a revival of racism.

Like nothing since the Southern Strategy, it has solidified the racist vote as a political quantity recognizable to politicians and apparently large enough in some places to decide an election.

I grant the polite assumption that not one of the elected officers of the states or the nation is a racist. But politicians do not need to be racist themselves in order to covet, to solicit, or to be influenced by the racist vote. This is shown by the pronounced difference between two by-now established ways of opposing the president.

There is the opposition that is truly political and varyingly respectable. This opposition is identifiable by its incompleteness, which is to say by its focus upon particular issues about which a particular case or argument can be made. Such opposition is credible as such because it implicitly concedes the president’s humanity: Like the rest of us, he is a partial and fallible mortal who, if he is partly wrong, may also be partly right.

The other way of opposition is total. The president must be opposed, not on this or that issue, but upon all issues.

This opposition is often expressed in tones of contempt, not only of the president himself, but of the office he holds so long as it is held by him. Opposition to the president on a particular issue is understood by these opponents as incidental to a general condemnation: the intent, not only to defeat the president in any and all disagreements with him, but entirely to discredit and punish him and to nullify his administration.

This opposition is never mitigated by tokens or gestures of respect for the president’s office, any of his aims or programs, his character, his person or his family. An opposition so complete and so vividly emotional cannot be, in any respectable sense, political.

Some of the president’s congressional enemies – and these may be the most honest of them – have openly insulted him. But such candor is not necessary. Elected officials or candidates seeking the support or the votes of racists do not need to question the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate or to call him a Muslim, a communist, a Nazi or a traitor.

They need only to stand silently by while such slurs and falsehoods are loudly voiced in public by others. To the racist constituency, their silence is a message that secures votes. Their silence declares that no truth or dignity is worth as much as a vote.

Nobody can doubt that virtually all of the president’s political enemies would vehemently defend themselves against a charge of racism. Virtually all of them observe the forms and taboos of political correctness. If any very visible one of their own should insult the president by a recognized racial slur, they would all join in the predictable outrage. But the paramount fact of this moment in the history of racism is that you don’t have to denominate the president by a recognized racial slur when his very name can be used as a synonym.

This subtilized racism is not only a perhaps unignorable lure to Republican politicians; it can also be noticeably corrupting to Democrats.

You can read the rest of his essay at the link.  BostonBoomer is on her way back to Boston so hopefully, she’ll have some great comments to add tonight when she gets to her motel and the half way point some where in Ohio!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today Sky Dancers?