I've had people say it's a hardening, actually ~ US presidential election 2016 part 9/11 never forget

This thread moves too fast for me to remember if I saw the Daily Kos piece I'm about to quote here. So if I'm posting info everyone already has, sorry.

Trump remains underwater in too many key battleground states to be truly viable: Colorado (38 percent), Michigan (37 percent), New Hampshire (37 percent), Pennsylvania (39.8 percent), Virginia (38 percent), and Wisconsin (37 percent).

Trump could win every other battleground state, but without winning at least one of the above, he cannot win. Or put another way, to get to 270, Trump needs to win at least one state in which he is mired below 40 percent.

link

I genuinely do not understand what Cruz has to gain by endorsing Trump.

ignominy

he thinks he has a chance now so he doesn't wanna get left behind?

More baffling to me than the idea that people agree with Trump is that anyone who's been exposed to Trump's rhetoric could have no strong opinions for or against him. Feel like the undecideds this year have been paying basically zero attention to election coverage and/or have no strong convictions about anything at all.

this is why I think Hillary will get more of the undecideds. a lot of people I know hate both but at least recognize that Hillary would probably not be a disaster while with Trump everything up to and including nuclear war is on the table

anyway while I'm on the subject I think this is the greatest vine I've ever seen

https://vine.co/v/5qJzmjUrzqv

okay so, case in point

http://i.imgur.com/cHekK4r.png

yeah but what % of those ppl like the idea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mwAntNGz9k

have been having weird microfantasies of trump calling for the red button and his generals just straight up turning round and executing him julius caesar style, and everyone celebrating, and oprah is president now

at which point of that fantasy do you cum

Ok good thread *everyone picks up and leaves*

yeah but what % of those ppl like the idea

― Mordy, Friday, September 23, 2016 3:27 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Among those who say they will vote for Trump, 48 percent say he’ll create a database to track Muslims; 36 percent say there will be race riots; 33 percent say the government would default on its debt; and 32 percent say Trump would punish his political opponents and authorize internment camps for illegal immigrants.

Only 22 percent of Trump supporters believe he will start a nuclear war.

presumably his voters think those are all good things.

Doug Henwood, in his book, on why "Hillary is not The Problem."

https://twitter.com/leducviolet/status/779355983793446912

Please let those % be joeks

Xxp

Nerp. As I keep asserting, most Trump supporters are basically self-loathing nihilists.

ted cruz, everybody

Purely as a piece of trivia, I wonder at what point in Trump's political "career" he started wearing a flag pin on his lapel whenever he appears in public. Wearing the flag pin has now become 100% obligatory when running for any office higher than school board and it could provide a marker for when Trump became serious about trying to win.

what a hideous person in every respect

xp

I'm going to tell you what I really think of Donald Trump. This man is a pathological liar. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth.

but i'm going to vote for him because of his promises https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/posts/10154476728267464

wonder if he made some deal w/ trump or something. dunno what he gets from this otherwise, he's throwing away a lot of future credibility.

Can't wait for the first presidential candidate who shows up onstage wearing a red white + blue crocheted dick cozy and challenges his opponent's patriotism because he (or she, tbf) isn't likewise wearing a red white + blue crocheted dick cozy because naturally that's been an indicator of one's patriotism since time immemorial or maybe since five minutes before the debate when a dude spontaneously decided to put on a red white + blue dick cozy and make a thing that had never been a thing into a thing and pretend it had always been a thing.

maybe trump agreed Cruz could have Eowyn to do with as he pleases once Trump takes Rohan.

xpost

Theory: Trump will never have the chance to prove he can't deliver on any of his promises, so he will never bear any blame for making them. Since those promises (build the wall and make Mexico pay, kill family members of ISIS fighters) are wildly popular in the GOP base Cruz wants to woo, he's coming around to think Trump will still be very popular with the base even after he loses the election. Endorsing Trump now might allow Cruz to continue to play his national ambitions.

If Clinton wins, we know — with 100% certainty — that she would deliver on her left-wing promises, with devastating results for our country.

oh tedpaws

I think Cruz was being threatened by Reince/RNC and he's up for re-election in 2018 iirc.

oh my goodness look: an article about policy!

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/hillary-clinton-policy-agenda/

uh I didn't know this but is anyone surprised?

n early September, the Washington Post reported that Trump’s policy advisers had quit en masse because not only had the campaign failed to pay them, but he had also made it clear he wouldn’t be requiring their services to prepare for the presidential debates.

look an undecided voter!

http://jezebel.com/for-some-reason-kim-kardashian-is-on-the-fence-about-w-1787013470

"Wouldn’t it be fun if your country’s political future was an abstract, somewhat irrelevant little game to briefly ponder in between million dollar paychecks?"

Hillary Clinton's campaign is getting a jump on fact-checking Donald Trump's debate performance.

On a conference call with reporters Friday, Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri laid out what they are calling Trump's "seven deadly lies." Palmieri said there should be heightened scrutiny at the first general election debate Monday because "his level of lying is unprecedented in American politics."

The first item on the list is Trump's false statement that he opposed the war in Iraq. Palmieri said that letting false statements go unquestioned would give Trump an "unfair advantage." She said the campaign expects the debate moderator to "call out those lies and to do so in real time."

Palmieri declined to say who is playing Trump in their debate preparations.

looking forward to Hillary's "You supported the Iraq War just like I did" angle *rmde*

I'll take any opportunity to resurrect this Tweet: https://twitter.com/jillbidenveep/status/756315385075466240

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/moderator-first-presidential-debate-just-204610290.html

The three topics to be discussed during the debate, held at Hofstra University in New York, will be "America's Direction," "Achieving Prosperity," and "Securing America," per a release from the Commission on Presidential Debates.

gee, I'm kind of bummed that "keeping regular" isn't included there

I think America should head west on Route 66

america: great country or greatest country?

america: great country or greatest country?

no - two continents

Doug Henwood, in his book, on why "Hillary is not The Problem."

https://twitter.com/leducviolet/status/779355983793446912

― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), Friday, September 23, 2016 7:45 PM (one hour ago)

"hillary is not the problem," says the guy who wrote a book with a picture of hillary aiming a gun at the reader on the cover

from that paragraph he apparently thinks the problem is that our system is not responsive enough to populism

he's right on that point

tbf the white plutocrats who founded our country's fear of being strung up by a mob was more or less justified

i can see it both ways. obv you want the gov to be more responsive to the needs of the populace but i tend to think checks against demagoguery + nativist forms of populism are a feature not a bug

in the case of our country they've been a highly detrimental feature - giving us slavery, the civil war, the Gilded Age, the Great Depression, delaying our entry into WWII, defeat of Civil Rights legislation for 100+ years, hampered our response to climate change, etc etc

fucking Senate

The three topics to be discussed during the debate, held at Hofstra University in New York, will be "America's Direction," "Achieving Prosperity," and "Securing America," per a release from the Commission on Presidential Debates.

i just wish the three topics could be a little more broad

you're right and sadly when the authoritarian came knocking it's hard to believe they'll ultimately serve as any kind of check at all xp

wtf "Achieving Prosperity" doesn't have "America" in the title

i keep seeing trump commercial on youtube and nowhere else. and only trump commercials on youtube and no other political commercials.

I think the first Trump commercial I experienced was during "Between Two Ferns."