Open Thread – Tuesday, September 6, 2016
“Donald Trump has run head-first into an electoral wall,” Politico reports. “In poll after poll, Trump isn’t even close to winning a majority of the vote. While he’s narrowed the gap between his campaign and Hillary Clinton in recent weeks, in the past 21 national polls conducted using conventional phone or internet methodologies over the last five weeks, Trump’s high-water mark in a head-to-head matchup with Clinton is 45 percent.”
NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–CNN/ORC–Trump 45, Clinton 43
NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–NBC News/SM–Clinton 48, Trump 42
One of these polls is wrong. It is likely the CNN poll, not because I am biased, but it is their first since switching to their likely voter screen for this year, and sometimes that produces screwy results. But it will get TONS of play this week. Trump is now winning the race. And I actually don’t mind it. It will do three things: 1) wake up the Clinton campaign, 2) wake up the media to get off their three week Clinton bashing and 3) wake up Clinton supporters and liberals.
Meanwhile, it would appear, from a new Washington Post Poll of all 50 states, that Hillary leads in Texas. I need time to decipher this piece more because it just dropped, but still. Texas.
Hillary Clinton Struggles to Fight Back Coughing Attack https://t.co/9tuHL6BVcK
— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) September 5, 2016
Unbelievable.
NBC: Hillary coughed
Drudge: Hillary is dying!
538: Odds Hillary has black lung
Vox: What is coughing?
CNN: Flight 370 still missing— TBogg (@tbogg) September 6, 2016
Donald Trump said that he has an “obligation” to go head-to-head with his rival Hillary Clinton in all three upcoming general election debates, Politico reports.
Said Trump: “I think you have an obligation to do the debates. I did them with the other, you know, the other cases. We had, I guess 11 debates. Obviously I did well in the debates. Obviously according to the polls. The online polls they did right after the debates. And I think I’m doing the same thing.”
He added that only a “natural disaster” could deter him from sparring against Clinton. A disaster like his campaign?
This might be the most Trump exchange of all-time. pic.twitter.com/gb07QXOUzj
— Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) September 4, 2016
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump “ran virtually parallel campaigns on Monday as they geared up for the final stretch of the presidential race. She made nice with the news media by opening up her campaign plane and chatting with reporters. He followed suit, inviting a smaller group of reporters onto his plane and answering questions during the 30-minute flight,” the New York Times reports.
“She took along her running mate, and so did he, as both focused on Ohio and nearly crossed paths in Cleveland. Their motorcades all but passed each other, and all four candidates’ planes ended up on the tarmac at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport at the same time.”
This whole Hillary Health conspiracy is about finding a way to call a woman weak without the consequences.
— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) September 6, 2016
A must-read piece from Paul Krugman, who says Hillary is getting Gored:
Americans of a certain age who follow politics and policy closely still have vivid memories of the 2000 election — bad memories, and not just because the man who lost the popular vote somehow ended up in office. For the campaign leading up to that end game was nightmarish too.
You see, one candidate, George W. Bush, was dishonest in a way that was unprecedented in U.S. politics. Most notably, he proposed big tax cuts for the rich while insisting, in raw denial of arithmetic, that they were targeted for the middle class. These campaign lies presaged what would happen during his administration — an administration that, let us not forget, took America to war on false pretenses.
Yet throughout the campaign most media coverage gave the impression that Mr. Bush was a bluff, straightforward guy, while portraying Al Gore — whose policy proposals added up, and whose critiques of the Bush plan were completely accurate — as slippery and dishonest. Mr. Gore’s mendacity was supposedly demonstrated by trivial anecdotes, none significant, some of them simply false. No, he never claimed to have invented the internet. But the image stuck.
And right now I and many others have the sick, sinking feeling that it’s happening again.
Longtime right-wing conservative icon and ERA opponent Phyllis Schlafly dies at 92 https://t.co/XRXIo0rj1C pic.twitter.com/gSzHPJIbxh
— Raw Story (@RawStory) September 5, 2016
Good. The world is a better place because it has a little less hate in it today. I don’t know where she went, but I am glad she is no longer here.
Josh Marshall to the press: You Failed, Chumps
The Times uniquely, though only as a leading example for the rest of the national press, has a decades’ long history of being lead around by rightwing opposition researchers into dead ends which amount to journalistic comedy – especially when it comes to the Clintons. But here, while all this is happening we have a real live specimen example of direct political and prosecutorial corruption, misuse of a 501c3 nonprofit and various efforts to conceal this corruption and the underlying corruption of Trump’s ‘Trump University’ real estate seminar scam. It’s all there – lightly reported here and there – but largely ignored.
The core information here isn’t new and it’s definitely not based on my reporting. Much of it stems form the on-going and seemingly indefatigable work of Washington Post reporter David A. Fahrenthold who’s been chronicling Trump’s long list of non-existent or promised but non-existent charitable contributions. In this case, it goes to a $25,000 contribution Trump made to the reelection campaign of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2013. The neglected story has only popped up again now because Trump was penalized by the IRS for a relatively technical part of the corrupt act.
This first problem was elementary and obvious, probably stemming from Trump’s almost pathological cheapness. He made the campaign contribution from his Foundation. This part is straightforward. You can’t do that.
But then, as Fahrenthold details, Trump or however was handling the paperwork went to great lengths to conceal the improper contribution. In this case, the efforts to conceal the contributions from the relevant federal authorities is a much bigger deal than the underlying offense since the initial contribution could conceivably have been made by someone in Trump’s organization who didn’t realize that funds couldn’t be commingled in this way. The first step could have been based in ignorance or haste; the second clearly stems from bad faith and possibly criminal intent.
Trump refuses to say whether Obama born in U.S. | TheHill https://t.co/xoqCWHqXKZ
— andrew kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) September 5, 2016
President Obama is like the kid everyone – jocks, nerds, drama, band, etc – wants to be friends with. #G20China pic.twitter.com/mXLCQEytjI
— Nerdy Wonka (@NerdyWonka) September 4, 2016
Except for Putin. And that horrible Trumpian Phillipine President.
"Hello Newman." "Hello Jerry." pic.twitter.com/BM6dR2YDnJ
— Borzou Daragahi (@borzou) September 5, 2016
“Hillary is getting Gored”
And when the media does have a truly solid story about how bad Trump really is, we get headlines like this:
“Trump dismisses questions about improper gift to Florida attorney general”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-denies-he-talked-with-florida-attorney-general-about-donation/2016/09/05/e15d62e0-73b8-11e6-8149-b8d05321db62_story.html
As if his dismissal somehow makes it all OK. And the story is the dismissal.
If Hillary had paid Loretta Lynch or James Comey $25k to not prosecute her, guess what would happen? …or would Hillary be allowed to “dismiss” it all away.
The double standard is ridiculous!!
The media CLEARLY wants Trump elected. You get 10 Blitzer Bonus points for being the first on the scene at the end of the world.
This is the media creating the horse race. They need readers/viewers, so it’s in their interest to keep Trump viable. That means they’ll keep up the double standard. I fully expect them to give Trump’s debate performance (which I predict will be cringe-worthy) a YUGE pass.
I wish I could remember the name of the blog/blogger who focused entirely on pointing out how Al Gore was being undermined by the media. I’m not sure if he is still writing, but I’d bet you could pull that stuff up today and find it still going on.
Do you think they can “accidently’ horse race Donald into the White House? Do they have a secret nuke that they gan set off to make sure he drops back down in the polls?
A close finish could be just as damaging as a Trump win.
Ah, the 2nd season has started. I so enjoyed waving to the north bound traffic from my beach cruiser in Dewey yesterday. No more parking meters, no more cops harassing everyone, no more DC folk driving aggressively down the Avenue in their 100K status cars. Woo Hoo, now if the ocean would calm down so I could have a swim
Remember when Trump said he would make a profit off his presidential run? He was telling the truth for once:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-rnc-self-dealing_us_57cdcba0e4b078581f13b262
“Do you think they can “accidently’ horse race Donald into the White House?”
Yes, I absolutely think that could happen. Remember journalism ethics (http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp) back when somber individuals would intone the events of the day. Reporting, I mean actual reporting not commentary? There were no panelists comprised of left and right supporters each arguing their version of the facts – there were just the facts.
Now news, or what passes for news, is entertainment and entertainment is driven by ratings. The fourth estate is now merely a fourth floor walkup with a shared bathroom. And since ratings is today’s currency, there is no choice but to create “news;” to build drama; to create a horse race.
Still, that’s akin to the singular blaming of Wal-Mart for the demise of Mom and Pop stores and for depressing wages. That blame resides squarely on the shoulders of a populace who fail to support the Mom and Pop stores and likewise fail to demand a responsible fourth estate; who seek entertainment rather than education and information.
It is also on the shoulders of the political establishment who deal in sound bites, single images, and hyperbole to convey their message (usually of fear) and who fail to educate the populace on why a policy does or does not makes sense without generating a self-important treatise full of arcane algorithms, graphs, and Keynesian-type economic theory that causes everyone’s eyes to glaze over.
The consequence is a possible outcome that is a result of influence and manipulation just as surely as stuffing a ballot box. Everyone is culpable and it will take everyone to fix it.
But no one will because no one has the will. And I’m an eternal optimist!
“Do you think they can “accidentally’ horse race Donald into the White House?”
In so many ways we are a sick, sad political culture. We are a hollowed out facade of a country. I’m sure Trump will get votes from people who simply want to burn the entire decrepit edifice to the ground.
The way we are STILL treating Natives (out in North Dakota, in case you have been media blacked out) … is there anything worth saving?
The press are dancing on a dangerous edge. They’ll keep the horse race up for as long as they can, and then they’ll Palin Trump. (h/t to Jason for turning Palin into a verb!)
Unlikely feminist hero Gretchen Carlson settles with FOX News for $20 million, which is one-third of Ailes’s golden parachute. Somehow the settlement was paid by FOX despite her lawsuit being against Ailes personally. That’s how much it was worth to FOX to make sure we never hear the tapes.
Fox News alone rakes in $1 billion a year in profits. The stories I read said that Fox paid because it’s essentially his insurer.
Meanwhile, for those who can stomach it, an interesting read from a private investigator in Oakland who works for the state (Cali grants death penalty defendants an investigator as well as a lawyer).
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/38647-focus-americas-criminal-injustice-system-annals-of-a-private-eye
White suburbanites and exurbanites especially should read it for a glimpse into a world they judge without understanding.
Wow! Great article. Thanks!
Meanwhile in Delaware, a Wilmington man was arrested over the theft of a campaign sign, apparently KHN’s: http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/crime/2016/09/04/man-charged-stealing-political-sign/89862914/
I have no idea if it’s the same guy, but Googling the name turns up a Delaware attorney.
The AP has confirmed that the man charged is a Morris James attorney: http://m.delaware1059.com/story.php?id=27001
LOL! gotta love the logic:
Maybe he was just helping the sign cross the street?
I predict this will be the most lawyered-up case in the long sordid history of Delaware political sign-stealing.
Sign stealing..Jesus. Is there anything that has a smaller upside and a bigger downside?