Delaware Liberal

Thursday Open Thread [8.18.16]

Delaware Dem

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–Economist/YouGov–Clinton 41, Trump 35
COLORADO–PRESIDENT–Quinnipiac–Clinton 49, Trump 39
IOWA–PRESIDENT–Quinnipiac–Clinton 47, Trump 44
VIRGINIA–PRESIDENT–Quinnipiac–Clinton 50, Trump 38
INDIANA–PRESIDENT–Monmouth–Trump 47, Clinton 36
MISSOURI–PRESIDENT–PPP–Trump 45, Clinton 42

The Baghdad Bob culture of the Trump campaign, and of the right wing in general, will bring much delicious crying on November 8.

First Read says Trump knows he is losing: “These kind of shake-ups don’t happen when a presidential campaign is winning. The last time we remember when such an overhaul took place so late in the game was back in 2004, when John Kerry made significant changes to his campaign team. And here’s the current reality for Trump: He’s trailing in national polls by an average of about seven points, per RealClearPolitics; he’s behind in almost every battleground-state poll we’ve seen, including our NBC/WSJ/Marist polls from last week; and he’s losing to Clinton in the NBC battleground map.”

E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post talks about what our Olympians can teach us about politics:

The 2016 campaign is one of the least uplifting examples of politics in our lifetimes. I place most of the blame for this on Donald Trump, although examples of campaigns that were universally regarded as uplifting are rare. Trump’s rise itself reflects a deep cynicism about politics that we have allowed to fester. He praises himself for not being a “politician,” even though that is exactly what he is. In his manipulation of resentments and his indifference to truth, he represents the worst traits we associate with the breed.

But Trump is, finally, a symptom of our impatience with and disrespect for the messy but essential work that politicians do — and the fact that we are badly out of practice when it comes to reconciling (as opposed to sharpening) our differences.

I truly hope that our great Olympians consider joining the political fray down the road. But in the short run, we citizens and our leaders need to work as hard at the skills of self-rule as they do at their strokes, kicks, floor routines and overall fitness. We admire them for respecting the integrity of what they do. We need the same attitude toward politics.

David Atkins says that, as Trump’s Chances Dwindle, In Come the Conservative Fantasy Peddlers:

One of the curious hallmarks of modern conservative culture is the stubborn adherence to ideology and “known truths” even in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary. A half century ago the stereotype was that liberals were the starry-eyed purveyors of untested ideologies and assertions about the essential goodness of human nature, even as conservatives played the role of sober grandfathers who tempered liberal passions with doses of reality. This was never really the case even back then, but it was much closer to the truth than it is now.

Today, it is Republicans whose assertions about the nature of world consistently meet with rejection by reality. Supply-side economics is a proven failure. Climate change is real. Abstinence education doesn’t work. Giving money to the underprivileged doesn’t make them lazy, but rather strengthens the entire community. Tax cuts don’t spur growth, especially when given to the wealthy. Letting gay people get married doesn’t bring down God’s wrath on the nation. Wall Street doesn’t function well when it’s allowed to regulate itself. Letting the private insurance market dictate healthcare costs leads to worse outcomes. And so on.

Faced with these dilemmas, conservatives choose not to adjust to reality, but rather to ever more loudly assert the rightness of their ideological position. Liberals, on the other hand, have largely been chastened by the historical failures in implementation of state Marxism to apply a “use what works” mantra in picking whatever methods can be scientifically proven to lead to fairer outcomes.

Remember Reagan Democrats? They were conservative working class whites who abandoned the Democratic Party for Reagan. We may be now witnessing the creation of Hillary Republicans, in that we are seeing college educated moderate whites who for some reason have long identified as Republicans now abandoning the GOP for Hillary. Nancy LeTourneau:

First of all, Donald Trump’s presidential nomination didn’t simply spring up out of whole cloth. As I pointed out yesterday, it has it’s roots in the Republican’s Southern Strategy, combined with their recent use of racism and nativism to stir up their efforts to de-legitimize the presidency of Barack Obama. The Republican embrace of post-policy paved the way for the candidacy of Donald Trump. Will they continue that strategy after he loses? That remains to be seen. But they’ve stirred up his supporters – who aren’t likely to go away once this election is over. In other words, the great Republican divide will still be with us after November. How that will affect the party affiliation of white college-educated voters is something to keep an eye on.

Jeet Heersays that if Donald Trump is going to lose, he is going to take the entire GOP down with him. That is fine by me.

[T]here is one Biblical champion that Trump resembles closely: the mighty hewn Samson. Like Trump, Samson was famous for his hair, fought against foreign domination of his nation, was quick to vengeful anger, and had a weakness for female beauty.

But for Republicans, there’s one aspect of the Samson analogy that should be particularly worrying. When Samson was captured by the Philistines, he pulled down the pillars of their temple, preferring to die while destroying his tormentors rather than live in captivity. If Trump feels trapped by his alliance with the Republican Party, he may very well unleash the Samson Option, going down in a glorious defeat that takes the GOP with him.

The Samson Option has emerged as a hypothetical scenario because the Republican National Committee is considering scissoring Trump’s purse strings. As Politico reported yesterday, “Publicly, Republican Party officials continue to stand by Donald Trump. Privately, at the highest levels, party leaders have started talking about cutting off support to Trump in October and redirecting cash to save endangered congressional majorities.” Chatter about a divorce has also been fueled by a letter from more than 70 Republican politicians and strategists calling on the RNC to abandon Trump and focus on down-ballot races.

While severing financial ties to Trump might make sense as triage for a party trying to save as many candidates as possible during an electoral slaughter, it carries a significant risk. Trump already has only minimal loyalty to the GOP. Unlike most politicians, he has no need for the party in his post-election career. He is in a position to wreck retribution on the party, destroying it from within if he feels betrayed.

Perhaps you heard that Mein Fuhrer Trump is announcing an ideological test for immigrants who want to enter this country.

Trump is also expected to propose creating a new, ideological test for admission to the country that would assess a candidate’s stances on issues like religious freedom, gender equality and gay rights. Through questionnaires, searching social media, interviewing friends and family or other means, applicants would be vetted to see whether they support American values like tolerance and pluralism.

Now, I wonder what the right answers are? I assume Trump’s answers would favor religious freedom, gender equality and gay rights because he assumes all Muslims are against them, or at list the strident ideological extremists are. But would his own Republican Party pass that test?

Harry Reid, ever the Senate Troll Master, wonders if Donald could pass his own test, or any Citizenship Test.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) thinks Donald Trump needs to take a test before he is elected president…

“Since Donald Trump wants to impose new tests on immigrants, he should take the one test every immigrant has to pass to become a United States citizen. He would almost certainly fail, given his general ignorance and weak grasp of basic facts about American history, principles and functioning of our government,” Reid said. “The fact is, Donald Trump is nothing more than a spoiled, unpatriotic drain on society who has earned nothing and helped no one.”

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