I’ve actually been ignoring a lot of the political stories this week, big surprise. I mean, I’ve tried to ignore a lot of crap this year, just for my own sanity and well-being. But I got stuck on this Vanity Fair article about how Washington pundits don’t know anything, and most pollsters are making it up as they go along, and it actually gave me some peace. I’ve been getting endless, panicky emails from Emily’s List, Beto O’Rourke, Tim Kaine and various Dem groups. Plus, I follow a lot of political journalists on Twitter. Which means that even as I’m trying to hide out from the hourly apocalypse, it still comes to me and I see the headlines, however dire. This VF article calmed me a bit, because they said what I’ve been thinking for a while: pollsters and pundits have no way of understanding or measuring the enthusiasm of new voters and the anger and rage of long-time Democrats. No one knows. So just keep your head down, stay woke, and VOTE.
All of which to say, I’m not going to even watch or discuss Trump’s last-minute ads which stoke fear of brown people and immigrants. He’s deplorable and racist and we been knew. What did you think his closing message would be? The man got fake-elected on a message of “America sucks because we had a black president for eight years” and MILLIONS OF VOTERS BOUGHT IT. He’s also been “attacking” the 14th Amendment as “crazy,” because… sure? And finally, Trump said that the domestic terrorists – who were radicalized by HIM – stopped the momentum of the Republican Party. He’s just… flailing. We’ve seen it before though.
Trump on mail bomb campaign and Pittsburgh massacre: "We did have two maniacs stop a momentum that was incredible." pic.twitter.com/ffn4C5jklW
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 2, 2018
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
He is so repulsive.
The guys on PSA were saying the same thing on Wednesday’s pod, Kaiser: the Republicans that get asked this question will say that they’re not seeing the votes in an attempt to energize their base to come out. Or conversely they will say that they’re seeing record numbers of people coming out to vote to make their base feel confident and Dems scared.
Even knowing the stats for the incredible number of early voters and new voters doesn’t tell us WHO are the people that are voting. We really just need to try to stay calm and patient, as hard as that is right now.
He’s beyond repulsive, just seeing a photo of him or hearing his voice makes my skin crawl. I heard a clip of him saying to his deplorables, “when you’re at the polls, just pretend you’re voting for me.” I know this applies pretty much everything he says but…WTAF?
I can’t even listen to one second of his voice. It grates on my nerves.
I hear that in the repugs political ads in this area.
I want to say I can’t believe he’s complaining because the acts of domestic terrorism and heinous crimes slowed their momentum. But I can believe it. No sympathy for the victims or loss of life. Just all about me, me, me. Definitely beyond repulsive.
He thinks it’s cute and funny to say shit like that. Malignant narcissists can never see how off-putting their self-obsession is.
And yeah, saying “I can’t believe he said _______” doesn’t make sense anymore. We can believe it at this point. And he will say worse before his term is up, no doubt.
Piece of vile trash, that man.
It seems like this is all just a game to him, which is the most infuriating part of this sh$%show of all.
I laugh at him because he is already making excuses for election losses. He’s so transparent in his insecurity and desperation.
All I want in life (besides all the normal personal things) is to see this president and his family disgraced, bankrupted and most of them thrown in jail. Only then will I be truly happy. And if Dems don’t take the House next week, we are doomed.
Swack – maybe we need an audio version of the Kittens software that changes pictures of Trump to pictures of adorable kittens. In video clips, we need not only to see kittens instead of the Orange Maroon – we need to hear adorable little kitten meows instead of what comes out of President Tweeter’s mouth.
Agreed even listening to impersonations is getting on my nerves. My mom used to say give people a chance to miss you .. Trump does not get that every camera every minute he must be there.
Forgive my ignorance, but what is the PSA podcast? I googled and found “public service announcements”. Can someone link? I think I need to listen to this.
It is Pod Save America.
https://crooked.com/podcast-series/pod-save-america/
They are also on HBO right now on the weekend. Their live podcast shows are being filmed. They’re great.
I’ll give CNN credit that they ran the headline no other paper did and finally put what should be in print – “Trump runs new RACIST ad.” Just call it what it is at this point. We’re not stupid.
Well, just color me a domestic terrorist, because I’m proud to do my bit to stop his mid-term momentum… at the ballot box and on my front lawn (yard signs).
Because that is the most important thing that came from these two tragedies. Not that we ban semiautomatic guns or keep an eye on those who post violent statements on social media or know as president that our words have meaning.
Also, the Caravan Hoax is working. His base is foaming at the mouth over this.
On Twitter Ben Rhodes ruminated about the public reaction if Obama had deployed 15K armed troops within the US borders and Twitter was quick to remind him about the conspiracy theories regarding Jade Helm. Gah. It’s the hypocrisy of these people that gets me the most.
The good thing is, his true base is smaller than the rest of the population. We have to GOTV though.
Right. These people live deep in the recesses of the Fox News Echo Chamber and as a result, they struggle with accepting that their opinion is the minority opinion in the US. If I had a modicum of sympathy for these people I would say that it’s sad, but I prefer the term “pathetic”.
Blows my mind, the number, as that is at least 3 times the number of people from the caravan that will actually make it to the border. Also, what the heck with saying the troops will be able to fire if rocks are thrown at them. Equated rocks to rifles. Makes me glad my grandson is currently deployed (and in the Navy) and can’t be a part of it.
He’s going to get people killed is what’s going to happen. That was my first thought when I heard they were deployed, and I’m nauseated thinking about some of the more radical segments taking it into their own hands. This issue came up under the Bush administration with the Border Patrol but not to the extent of this sort of rhetoric using presidential backing.
Yup. People will die just so Trump can play puppet master with his psychotic base. A stunt that is designed to generate mid-term enthusiasm will likely end in the death of innocent civilians. Our country is being run by a mad man, straight-up.
He is trying to get them killed. He wants that. Let that sink in: the president of the United States is authorizing deadly force on a group of ragtag migrants who are trying to LEGALLY seek asylum. The law states that you must present yourself to a legal port of entry and request asylum. That is what they are trying to do and he is telling the armed forces that if someone so much as throws a pebble at them, they can use deadly force.
For those that say he is trying to get people killed, please correct your statement to “he is getting people killed”.
People died at the synagogues a week ago bc of his word encouraging the extermination of non-Christians, non-whites, media members, and progressive thinkers.
He is modeling himself after Hitler.
If I had a friend or family member deployed over this nonsense, I would not be pleased. This order will greatly impact the lives of those individuals.
It’s just beyond disgusting.
So many of the #VetsResistSquadron folks that I follow on Twitter are outraged over this. And on that note, like most progressives, I’m not a fan of war, but the vets that I follow on Twitter are some of the most consistently empathetic, thoughtful, intelligent, and genuinely concerned people. I encourage anyone here who hasn’t already, to search the hashtag on Twitter because they add a unique and powerful perspective to the Resistance movement.
I will check that out. Good to know some can see reality instead of the gaslighting bluster.
Yes. Yesterday I heard an interview yesterday with the wife of a man who’s been deployed and she is beside herself with anger on behalf of herself and their kids. She said that her husband voted for Trump, had been a supporter, but isn’t anymore.
check out Reddit’s military board, they are pretty salty about all of this:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Military/comments/9tlbul/advice_for_us_troops_sent_to_the_mexican_border/
That said, I think their r/military boards tend to be free thinkers and technology oriented, not so many “Oorah! MAGA! Go Army!” They are more likely to make fun of those types as “moto” (0ver-advertising their military associations at every opportunity when they are actually supply clerks, desk jockeys, or security guards).
Hoax is the right word for it. It’s a sham meant to energize his deplorable base. The deployment ends (or at least is scheduled to at this point) in mid-December, chances are the troops will be on their way home before the main group of migrants – traveling on foot from over 800 miles away – even reaches the border. It’s a giant waste of money and resources, and thousands of military families will be apart on Thanksgiving for no good reason.
I don’t place much credence in polls concerning voting. Most had 2016 completely wrong. I rarely answer any survey or poll, and wonder who takes time to respond in the first place. I think polls can be skewed for many reasons.
We won’t know anything for certain until around midnight November 7.
They didn’t have 2016 “completely wrong,” they had it within the margin of error. What they couldn’t quantify was the effect of the Comey letter and what Russia may have done.
They also didn’t take into account the true number of closet Trump supporters. Unfortunately, I think we’ll see some of that again this year. Most Trump supporters are now basking in the light; but some of the more educated ones (the ones that people say should know better than to fall for this cultist, racist movement) are voting for him as well, but not admitting it.
ByTheSea I wish your were wrong, but you’re not. None of the Republicans that I know are verbalizing how they will vote, but I am proof positive they will vote straight line GOP. I saw an interview on PBS NewsHour with a Trump supporter, she said what I think is the “norm” for middle class GOP voter rationale: I don’t like Trump’s behavior or his tweets, but I like my tax cut, and I am against abortion. So I prayed about it, and I’m going to support candidates who are pro-life. The End.”
Getting out the vote and recruiting non-voters is going to make or break the midterms. “Turning” Republicans into Democrats is going to fail. Bigly.
I’m specifically thinking about one often mentioned US poll site that collects and analyzes various survey data, and still showed a larger lead for HRC. I remember the last week or two how some (US media and pundits) thought Orange was wasting time campaigning. What led them to think that? Polls.
Google “2016 polls wrong” and a lot of articles cover that topic. Pew Research has a good summary.
My reason for now disliking polls is because they can lead to a false sense of security. I remember in the weeks prior to the 2016 election, BO said that no one should ever become complacent, because nothing is certain until after all votes are cast.
I never thought Hillary winning was a sure thing. I remember telling people online on Election Day to stop crowing about victory parties, they were jinxing it. Anything could happen when people went into the voting booth. A chunk of the voters are still making up their mind at that point and who they vote for depends on the last political ad they see or what friend they talked with most recently. Many voters are just as uninformed as Trump himself, and they like to be entertained. They think they know people because they see them playing roles on tv.
I knew we had signs of vote-shifting from the Republican to the Democrat on those machines since 2004, when they became so popular (machines that could not be properly recounted without paper backup), and now Russian cyber experts were on hand for the Republicans. Exit polls stopped being predictive in 2004. Now we are seeing confirmation from some states that the machines can have a “glitch” that shifts the votes, just as people have been reporting since 2004, and the officials have been attributing it to the machines being “old”. Nonsense, they have been doing that selectively since they were installed. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
A programmer in 2004 speculated quite reasonably that a simple
vote-shifting program intended to shift every tenth vote from Kerry to Bush could explain the crazy numbers from one precinct (more votes for Bush than voters) if the program had a simple typo in one character. A 10% shift sounds reasonable to me – they could choose places where a Republican win would not be suspicious and an extra 10% would pretty much clinch the victory.
In 2016, I had never before seen such an organized and relentless disinformation campaign, even involving paid foreigners simulating Americans. (I could see this for myself from the language used and online profiles that read like very bad translations). So Hillary was routinely being smeared and even Democrats were buying it. I see Dems still whining that she was a bad candidate, even though despite all the lies she came so close to winning even the electoral vote (despite all the weird obstacles, including media dazzled by Trump’s craziness and tilted electoral votes per capita due to old population figures) and got three million more popular votes. Repeat a lie often enough and people believe it’s true, and Republicans had been lying about her for decades. Her Original Sin had been attempting real health care reform in the 1990s.
And those polls were way too close. Too many people were telling pollsters they actually were going to vote for a guy who was clearly dangerous and clearly a con man and clearly a chronic liar. (I saw the same thing when Reagan was running – he lied so much that the media gave up trying to fact check him, although Reagan wasn’t so obviously dangerous because he wasn’t a sociopathic narcissist like Trump…. ) The polls should have been showing a tiny percentage of the country willing to vote for Trump, maybe 15% to 20% max of the eligible registered voters who were either as demented as he is or just so racist and selfish that they didn’t care that he was an ignorant and hateful flim flam man.
Not sure which polls you might have read but the stuff I saw in Germany always made clear that Trump might win after all because numbers were really close.
9.89 lies per day. They’re called LIES. Stop using equivalencies like “false statements,” “misstatements,” etc. I’m looking straight at you, MSM.
If you give him this much room to wiggle, Emperor Zero will be an absolute monster come the end of November if the GOP maintains control.
Vote
Wait, so according to Trump supporters, this is an organized invasion, with Dem funding backing it, which accounts for the caravan’s new backpacks, etc. Yet these funded invaders are gonna use rocks? Cause apparently Soros couldn’t afford actual weapons? And these invaders are walking thousands of miles, telegraphing to Trump that they’re coming so he can have the army meet them? Weakest invasion ever. When will these Dems learn: Use cars and planes and knives when funding an invasion. #goplogicfail
So in January 2018 , Whitehouse Reporter April Ryan asked Trump “Mr. President are you are racist?” The Republicans were outraged by that question and wanted her fired. So months later with this campaign ad, I guess we got that question answered.
Ah… the Great Pumpkin does not see the result of his hate speech pushing nut jobs, who think they are Rambo, over the edge. He only sees how these events affect him. Such a problem for him. WWHD (What Would Hitler Do.) Oh and to “Casper” Pence, who stated “This ain’t Hollywood, it’s Georgia,” I would like to inform him that this is ain’t 1950, it’s 2018.
I keep having to mute my phone because I get an ad with Mike Pence solemnly telling me that he and Trump have been working hard for Indiana for two years. You dipstick, Mr. Vice President. You damaged Indiana so badly as governor that you couldn’t run for re-election here and your fellow Republicans pretended you didn’t exist in their campaign materials. Your bunny Marlon Bundo would make a better Governor than you were and people don’t forget that quickly, especially now that soybean farmers just lost a major customer that they probably won’t get back thanks to your friend Donald. We raise soybeans here, Mike.
I just help the door open for an old man with a walker. Then I noticed he had a MAGA hat on. I wanted so badly to let go of the door and let it close in his face. I didn’t but I wanted to. I hate that this evil orange lump has made me so full of rage.
Not to worry. MAGA now just means My Attorney Got Arrested.
And that attorney (awaiting sentencing) just corroborated that The Donald routinely says the kinds of racist things reported recently. Do tell us more, please.
Who’s excited about the midterms?
Wonder if the Dems can reverse their losing streak?