Open Thread Nov. 8: Red Hats, Day Drinking and Denial

Defeat is an orphan, all right, and Trump left Ed Gillespie’s losing race in the convent doorway with a note saying, “He wouldn’t embrace me.” The Daily Beast has the schadenfreude-tastic details.

That anecdote about Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller fetching the Boss’s quarter-pounders opened a sluice gate of partially hydrogenated journalism about the president’s diet. The headline-grabber came from Greg Valliere, a widely-followed global strategist at Horizon Investments, who had a Secret Service source tell him “he has never seen anyone with worse dietary habits” and “never saw him eat a piece of fruit.”

Best quote of the day came from Trump-hating GOP strategist Rick Wilson. Asked if “people in the GOP establishment [are] aware that they’re reaping what they’ve sowed all these years,” Wilson replied:

“Nope. It’s all red hats, grunting absurdity, magical thinking, day-drinking and denial. … We were a party of principles and ideals. We are now a party of one man and his mob.”

The stupid question about why victims of Harvey Weinstein and other powerful predators don’t come forward sooner or more often is partially answered by Ronan Farrow at The New Yorker, who found himself spied upon by the former Mossad agents Weinstein used to dig up dirt on his accusers. They can’t lock away this creep soon enough.

If you’re interested in how the Russian troll farms operated, there’s lots to recommend this look at how they approached election day last November.

How do we know Donald Trump is lying about a coal comeback? This analytical look at energy market economics finds that it soon will not only be cheaper to build and run a solar generating plant than building and running a coal burner, it will be cheaper than just continuing to run an existing coal-fired power plant.

Busy day, so I probably missed a lot. Add anything else you find noteworthy.