“I can’t vote for Trump. He’s a crook. He’s too corrupt,” said Scott Simeone, 64, an independent voter from Amherst, who backed Trump in 2016 and 2020. “I voted for him, and I didn’t realize he’s as corrupt as he is.”
Wednesday Reads: New Hampshire Primary
Posted: January 24, 2024 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: 2, New Hampshire art, New Hampshire primary, Nicki Haley, PUMA, Republicans debasing themselves, Tim Scott, Trump's cognitive decline 16 CommentsGood Day Sky Dancers!!
By G.D. Thompson
It wasn’t a surprise that Trump won the New Hampshire primary, but he wasn’t happy with the result. Nicki Haley failed. She lost, but not by enough to satisfy the psychopathic former “president.” His “victory” speech was ugly and rage-filled. What a loser.
Sam Brodey at The Daily Beast: Trump Wins NH Primary, But Not Quite the Victory He Wanted.
If Haley’s performance wasn’t quite what she hoped for, it also wasn’t what Trump predicted either. Both candidates managed to sound disappointed Tuesday night—with Trump raging that Haley wouldn’t drop out, and Haley not hiding that the outcome was, factually, a defeat.
Either way, New Hampshire still managed to offer a split decision. Trump may have marched closer to the nomination, but Haley did well enough to march on—at least for now.
While the final results won’t be available until both candidates have left the state, at no point in the night did Haley come close to giving Trump a scare.
After the polls closed at 8 p.m., it only took a matter of minutes for the Associated Press to call the primary for Trump. By midnight, the former president was up by about 11 points, 54 percent to 43 percent, with two-thirds of New Hampshire ballots reporting.
Trump’s reaction:
Trump and his team will, of course, celebrate the win, but it’s far from the massive victory Trump had spent days predicting—underscoring how his political operation has been hamstrung by his own inability to rein in his boasts. On Monday night, he was bringing up polls showing him beating Haley by 40 and 50 points, predicting the numbers will be “higher even than what you’re seeing.”
Indeed, Trump was already complaining about the result before polls had even closed, posting to his Truth Social account that it was “SO RIDICULOUS” that Democrats and independents are allowed to vote in the primary. (Registered Democrats are not allowed to vote in the primary.)
“BUT WORD IS WE ARE DOING REALLY WELL!!!” Trump nevertheless insisted.
In subsequent posts on social media—made after New Hampshire was called and Haley spoke—Trump continued to fume about his victory, exclaiming “DELUSIONAL!” in reference to his rival. “Haley said she had to WIN in New Hampshire. She didn’t!!!”
Onstage in front of a cheering crowd in Nashua later, Trump told several lies—such as claiming he won New Hampshire in the 2016 and 2020 general elections even though he lost both times—but one lie particularly stood out: that he wasn’t mad.
“I don’t get mad,” he said. “I get even.”
He is incapable of taking the win and being magnanimous toward the loser. I watched a bit of Trump’s speech with the sound off. The most striking part was Tim Scott of South Carolina grinning maniacally right behind Trump–obviously this was designed by Trump to humiliate both Scott and Haley (Haley appointed Scott to the Senate).
Winslow Homer, The Bridle Path, White Mountains, 1868
More on Trump’s reaction to the results from Politico Playbook:
He rage-posted about her speech in real time on Truth Social. “DELUSIONAL!!!” he wrote. When he came on stage at his own event 30 miles south in Nashua, he could barely contain his anger. Gone was the sunny Trump of Iowa caucus night who magnanimously praised his defeated rivals.
Trump began his remarks with a falsehood. He claimed to have won New Hampshire in both the primaries and the general election. Nope: HILLARY CLINTON beat him there in 2016 and JOE BIDEN won in 2020. This was a particularly noteworthy claim at the top given the subject of his remarks: the fact that Haley did “a speech like she won” even though she lost by 11 points.
“This is not your typical victory speech,” he warned, and he was right. As the clear victor, he had one job: ignore Haley and focus on Biden and the general election. But he couldn’t let it go.
He attacked her as unelectable. He suggested New Hampshire Gov. CHRIS SUNUNU uses drugs (“He’s got to be on something”). He hinted darkly that she would be under investigation (“a little stuff that she doesn’t want to talk about”). He even mocked her outfit (“the fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy”)
Josephine Harvey at HuffPost: Sen. Tim Scott Said 4 Words To Trump That Made People Cringe To Their Cores.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) left critics cringing on Tuesday with a stunning display of sycophancy to former President Donald Trump.
The senator, who dropped out of the GOP presidential race in November, was one of two former candidates onstage with Trump in Nashua to celebrate his victory over Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primary.
In 2012, when she was governor of South Carolina, Haley appointed Scott, then a member of the House of Representatives, to his Senate seat to replace retiring Sen. Jim DeMint.
“Did you ever think that she actually appointed you, Tim?” Trump said of Haley during his speech. “And you’re the senator of her state. And [you] endorsed me.”
“You must really hate her,” he added.
Scott, who had been standing behind Trump, approached the mic and said: “I just love you.”
“That’s why he’s a great politician!” Trump said.
Trump: You’re the Senator of his state. She endorsed me. You must really hate her
Scott to Trump: I just love you pic.twitter.com/fwo60526nK
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 24, 2024
Read Twitter reactions at HuffPost.
At Public Notice, Noah Berlatsky writes: Why Republicans are (still) humiliating themselves for Trump.
With close to 90 percent of the vote counted early Wednesday morning evening, Donald Trump had beaten Nikki Haley by just over 10 points in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary.
For Haley, that margin is a victory of sorts, since she was further behind in polls and finished a weak third in Iowa. But a moral victory isn’t enough….
Trump has long had a commanding lead in the polls. But even with Haley still in the race, prominent Republicans are rushing to anoint him and remove all doubt about who leads the party.
Melissa Anne Miller, View from the Studio after a Light Snow
Primary rivals entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott— the last actually appointed by Haley — all endorsed Trump. So did Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, a think tank which had been one of the big conservative institutions backing DeSantis. Texas Sen. John Cornyn immediately endorsed Trump following his New Hampshire victory.
“I have seen enough,” Cornyn tweeted, hopping on the MAGA bandwagon before it becomes too late to get credit for it. Even Republican National Committee (NRC) Chair Ronna McDaniel went on Fox News late Tuesday and all but endorsed Trump by urging Haley to get out of the race.
Trump’s consolidation of Republican support isn’t exactly a surprise. But it’s a chilling reaffirmation that the GOP is his party, and stands for what he stands for — authoritarianism, cruelty, election denial, corruption, criminality, conspiracy theories, and mob-style threats like the one Trump made against Haley during his unhinged New Hampshire victory speech.
Since Trump’s ascent in 2015, Republican rivals and critics have repeatedly been forced to come crawling back to him on their bellies, begging forgiveness and humiliating themselves.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump suggested that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s wife was ugly and (utterly without evidence of any kind) accused Cruz’s father of being involved in JFK’s assassination. Cruz said then that Trump was a “bully” and “pathological liar.” Yet, this year he “enthusiastically” endorsed Trump.
Cornyn, Ohio Sen. JD Vance (who once called Trump “America’s Hitler”) and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham have all performed similar reversals.
Even Haley, who has sharpened her rhetoric against Trump in recent weeks as he’s crudely insulted her and hit her with birther smears, has indicated she’ll support Trump if he’s the Republican nominee.
Read more at the PN link.
From Mark Alesia and Alexandria Jacobson at Raw Story:
Even by the standards of Donald Trump, the former president spent the past week in New Hampshire unloading extreme rhetoric against Nikki Haley.
And even though Trump managed to spew racism, fascism and cruelty in his remarks and social media posts, New Hampshire didn’t punish him, giving him a convincing victory over Haley in Tuesday’s primary.
Here’s some of what Trump said in New Hampshire:
— After a man at a Trump rally Monday shouted, “12 years of Trump”: “You’re right. Don’t say that too loud. … You know they love to call me a fascist.”
— Widely seen as a racist dog whistle, Trump referred to Haley’s birth name of Nimarata as “Nimrada.”
— “You know I’ve been indicted more than Al Capone. You ever heard of Al Capone? Probably the greatest mobster of them all.”
— Speaking about former President Jimmy Carter, 99, who is in hospice care: “He’s happy because his presidency is now considered brilliant in comparison to Joe Biden.”
— On the media: “These are sick people. We have to straighten out our free press.”
— Trump’s reaction to the notion that Haley would be stronger in the general election against President Joe Biden: “BIRDBRAIN HAS BEEN LYING ABOUT THIS, AND MANY OTHER THINGS, FOR WEEKS. SHE CAN’T BEAT THE DEMS.”
— “Nikki Haley, I know well. Sadly, she’s made an unholy alliance with the RHINOS, the never-Trumpers … the globalists, the radical left communists.”
— “Nikki Haley is using radical Democrat money to fund the radical Democrat campaign operation that she’s running.”
— Reacting to a person who said, “Free the J6ers”: “We will.” He also referred to the jailed lawbreakers from the January 6 insurrection as “hostages.”
A couple of journalists wrote about growing red flags for Trump.
Sam Stein and Natalie Allison at Politico: Donald Trump has a big problem ahead.
Donald Trump has a problem no matter what happens in New Hampshire on Tuesday night: There’s a whole swath of the Republican electorate and a good chunk of independents who appear firmly committed to not voting for him in November if he becomes the nominee.
It’s an issue that became starkly apparent in polling ahead of the Iowa caucuses, when an NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of voters in that state found that fully 43 percent of Nikki Haley supporters said they would back President Joe Biden over Trump. And it’s a dynamic that has been on vivid display as the campaign shifted this week to New Hampshire.
Primary elections can create intra-party divisions that, in the moment, seem impossible to heal. In 2008, a bloc of Hillary Clinton supporters started the PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) movement as a threat to never back Barack Obama after that bruising primary. Bernie Sanders’ supporters vowed to never support Clinton eight years later. In 2016, Trump himself faced pushback to his nomination all the way up to the convention floor.
But 2024 is different. Trump is not making his pitch to voters as a first time candidate. He is a known quantity who is being judged by the electorate not for the conduct of his current campaign so much as his time in office. And that, political veterans warn, makes it much harder for him to win back the people he’s alienated, including those once willing to vote Republican.
The data supports the idea that there are problems ahead for the former president. Even before the Iowa survey, a New York Times/Siena College poll found that — including independents who say they lean toward one party over the other — Biden had slightly more support among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (91 percent) than Trump did among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents (86 percent).
That’s far from a majority of Republicans preparing to pass on Trump in November. But in a close election, it could be enough to tip the scales for Democrats. At a minimum, it is a major liability for the GOP should the party, as expected, push Trump through as its nominee.
I can’t believe they reference PUMA!
Aaron Blake at The Washington Post: Trump’s increasing flubs risk blunting big polling edge on mental sharpness.
and Time’s #8 Buzzword of the year 2008 is …
Posted: December 31, 2008 Filed under: PUMA | Tags: PUMA, Time Magazine, Top ten Buzzwords of 2008 Comments Off on and Time’s #8 Buzzword of the year 2008 is …8. PUMA
By John Cloud
Louise Ma
An acronym for “party unity my ass,” this term was the rallying cry of Clinton supporters who backed her candidacy even after many party leaders called for consensus around Obama in order to ensure a unified Democratic front going into the general election. As Barrett of doubletongued.org points out, PUMAs hoped to bring the Clinton-Obama fight “to a head-to-head smackdown vote at the [Democratic] convention.” Instead, Clinton threw her support to Obama well before the convention. This word, which disproportionately described female voters, recalls TIME’s 2007 buzzword of the year: cougar, i.e., an older woman seeking younger men.
Only Cardboard …
Posted: December 9, 2008 Filed under: Human Rights, president teleprompter jesus, The Media SUCKS, Women's Rights | Tags: Cardboard hate crimes, Carville on Favreau, Feminists, James Carville, misogyny, New Agenda, Obama Chief Speech Writer Jon Favreau, PUMA 3 CommentsHere’s James Carville in one of his worst moments.
Here’s my response:
What if it were a cardboard cut out of Obama and a noose instead of a bottle of beer?
What if it were a cardboard cut out of Joe Lieberman and some one was putting say, a felt star on him, or a tatoo’d number on his arm instead of groping him or say they were doing the same thing and were wearing swastikas instead of Obama team tshirts?
What would your reaction be?
What would the reaction be of black civil rights leaders or leaders of the antisemitic leagues? Being plied with alcohol and groped is strong symbolism for women. We know that most men can out wrestle us and we are one moment of trust away from brutalization. Many fratboy antics are in fact sexual assault.
AND Symbols matter.
Would these two cardboard ‘fratboy antics’ I discribed above be taken as trivial or would they be considered hate crimes? After all, a small town in Louisiana became a symbol of lingering racism with the hanging of a noose in a tree by a couple of idiot high school boys. Why didn’t folks consdier that to be just highschool boy antics? What about the University of Kentucky students that had an effigy to hang of Barrack Obama who were treated way worse than those guys in California’ responsible for the hanging of Sarah Palin in effigy in a Halloween display? The guys in California only experienced a little neighborly humiliation. Not so the kids at at U of K.
And you know what? None of these citizens put words in the president’s mouth and yet there was tremendous outrage in each circumstance. In several cases, these were adolescent boys and not 27 year olds on the way to be a Director in the White House for a President of the United States. This is the jerk responsible for “Yes we Can” and “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”. Obama rode those two banal slogans into Washington.
The only time symbolic brutality is sanctioned these days is if its victims are women, GLBT, and possibly the homeless mentally ill people. This has got to stop. A symbol is powerful. If this were not true, people would not be upset by swastikas, confederate flags, and nooses. We need to stay upset about this until this jerk is told to resign.
Reframe, Reform, Regroup
Posted: November 12, 2008 Filed under: Human Rights, PUMA, Women's Rights | Tags: election reform, future, PUMA, The Way Forward series, third party 1 Comment
There is a general consensus out there in the Pumasphere that we need to regroup and continue to voice our issues. I have found that it is much easier, at this point, for me to list the issues that made me a Puma. It’s much harder for me to suggest a blueprint for the regrouping.
Our political process needs reform. Both parties have now won elections by perpetrating ugliness, fraud, and lies. Tactics used by Democrats this year were the source of much frustration and anger in the past when used by Republicans. How can you claim higher ground while stooping to conquer? We have to find a way to stop the parties from using the deep pockets of special interest constituencies to game an election. I’ve been amazed at how the same blogs that howled at Rovian tricks have borrowed some of the same plays and chortled in glee when these nasty strategies work in their favor.
One of the nasty strategies is the hyperpartisanship that allows candidate surrogates to demonize opponents and their supporters. This year’s Judas goat appeared to be women candidates and women in general. I was horrified at the level of misogyny given a pass by the DNC. I was even more horrified that much of this was done by women. I now have a list of women’s groups and women’s activists whom I no longer consider feminist. This includes NARAL, Emily’s List, Gloria Steinham, and many others. We cannot allow the parties to use us to beat up on women who disagree with us on an issue or so. The progress of women depends on not allowing any one to define the weakest ones in the herd so that the predators can weed them out for destruction. My guess is that women’s rights as well as GLBT rights will not achieve anything with the new congress and the new president. We will be used once more to place the usual suspects in power so they can enrich themselves and further legislation that has nothing to do with anything we value. Yes, I will be happy to see all those nasty, birth control phobic executive orders go away. I doubt we will see legislation, however, demanding insurance providers cover all forms of women’s reproductive care let alone laws enabling federal funding. So how much are marginal differences worth to us?
To further the Obama cause, we will see more Prop 8s. As long as it advances Obama’s status, they will support laws that winnow out the least powerful among us. We need to reframe what it means to be “for” us and “against” us. Lip service and proxy misspeaks should not be so easily forgiven or forgotten. We need to reframe them so that folks see them for what they are–nonsupportive of women’s rights and a disservice to our self-esteems and our causes.
So, can we reform either party? Will the Republicans give up their love of controlling women’s bodies while curbing corporations that run amok? I don’t think so. Now that the Democratic Party has learned they can fool enough of the people enough of the time, will they show some respect to those of us that loathe this new process and their new flunkies? Dream on. We can choose to be a segment that can select a few kings or we can try to coordinate with others to forge a new independent way that could possibly lead to a third party. I’m still drawn to the latter as a long term strategy. I think Bloomberg may take a run at the presidency in 4 years and he’ll need some voting blocs. We should keep all of our options open because I have no doubt we will be in exhile for some time.
It is likely for election reform we will have to work state by state. If we want more women’s voices in the process, we will have to run or put women candidates into office. The blogosphere continues to be our best weapon. We can connect, reframe the issues, demand reform where we can, and look for the best possible structure to regroup. I think that’s all I can offer up for debate at this point. I will say that I am willing to stick it out and work for it because the problem is at the very heart of all that is the promise of democracy.
NOTE: This is my contribution to the The Confluence’s The Way Forward Series: Pondering our future as P.U.M.A.s. If you follow this link and look in the upper right hand comment, you will find the ideas of others in the PUMA movement.
Politics Make for Strange Bedfellows
Posted: November 1, 2008 Filed under: Action Memo, Hillary Clinton: Her Campaign for All of Us, No Obama, PUMA | Tags: No Obama, Now is the time to PROTEST VOTE, PUMA 1 Comment
I’ve been watching some of the links showing up here at my blog and also at The Confluence. Something really STRANGE is going on. The Republicans are abuzz with praises for Pumas. I’m reading blog after blog on the right saying that PUMAS may very well save the country. Check out these links. It will make you a believer in the old saying that politics make strange bedfellows.
From Redstate: More on Why McCain should Win: The Puma Factor
From McCain Democrat Clinton Republican: People Want to know about Puma
From Death by a 1000 papercuts: Pumas the Democrats the Media Doesn’t Want to Talk About
To be real honest, I’ve had a feeling that folks have been reading many of our sites for some time. This includes the media. I also know that some of the things that have been discussed here on The Confluence and on other Puma sites have shown up a few days after the topic was completely dissected by the PUMA community. Several times we’ve been accused of passing right wing memes when I swear the points were discussed here prior to being tossed around on right wing blogs and even right wing radio shows.
Several stories broken here (including SimoFish’s posting of the Hillary Fundraiser where Hillary says she thinks that putting her name up for a roll call vote would help her supporters gain closure) and on No Quarter. ( Think ACORN and most of the ACORN threads including the Obama expenditure on “lights, etc” which turned out to be voter-registration related .) These were first discoverd in the PUMA world.
You may feel discouraged and think that we’re not making a difference, but you really shouldn’t. This should tell you that our voices are being heard and that our cause has been well-argued. Now is the time for us to finally decide where to put our final action: OUR VOTE. As for me, I’ve gone into a voting pack with SM77 who lives in the swing state of Florida. I will be voting for Cynthia McKinney for her, here in New Orleans, LA. Louisiana is a red state. She will be casting my vote for John McCain in Florida.
Please, PUMAs, stick to your guns and cast your vote in accordance with our principles. It is up to us to show the DNC that denying one-man one vote to TWO states, stacking primaries so that small states out count large swing sates, and allowing rampant caucus frauds are not behaviors we wish the democratic party to undertake. Let them know that we don’t appreciate them putting a candidate with no accomplishments and a race-baiting, misogynistic campaign to the front of the line. Vote your conscious! Vote like a PUMA! Even the Republicans know that we can make a difference!
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