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

Ontario's in play!

Newfoundland is a long shot tho

I see tons of Clinton signs and and a couple of Johnson things, like the t shirt on a guy sitting near me at the playground. I wanted to ask how he enjoyed the taxpayer funded public facilities but didn't want to voluntarily start a conversation about libertarianism with an Idahoan.

I also finally saw a shitload of trump signs last week on the way to Seattle, all in the cascades where the rugged individualist ranchers don't have to worry about pissing off all of their Mexican neighbors like the farmers a couple miles east.

only two trump houses in town that i've found but one is rly going above and beyond: at least a dozen signs, many homemade/handlettered, one giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN banner

Last night I saw a 6'3ish drunk young blonde man yelling make america great again repeatedly right in the face of a late 40's diminutive Hispanic woman. I hate this election so much.

Can we give prohibition another shot

I'm sure we've discussed this already but I watched A Face In The Crowd at the weekend and its a great movie but there's no way the ending would pan out that way for Trump - his fans are too invested in his grift, he could spit in their faces and call it champagne and they'd lap it up. I just don't know how you get past that level of blind idiot devotion, beyond retroactive education. I mean, this election proves that the Dems/the Left's best hope for the future is to invest heavily in education, esp civic education, so people know better than to vote so hopelessly against their best wishes (full disclosure, I am a British and yes still scarred from Brexit)

That's sickening, Clay.

I just heard Robby Mook spinning a Trump-performed-better-tha-expected-so-what angle... before the debate. That's the Thrillary campaign in a motherfucking nutshell.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/how-important-is-the-first-presidential-debate.html

New Yorker journos hub-bubbing about wtf will happen tonight. If nothing, I was interested in how much they repeat points we've already made in these threads.

....
Jonathan Chait: One more thing about Trump: He has trouble filling up his allotted time. Has to repeat himself and still doesn’t use it all. I think that becomes more glaring ina two-person debate. In a multi-candidate debate, the 10 second insult works okay.

Eric Levitz: Yeah. to this point, the debates were designed by television networks with an eye towards entertainment value. Now Trump is in a format that isn’t crafted for spectacle, but some stuffy notion of the civic good.

Rebecca Traister: One other thing about this debate and its possible implications: will there ever have been a more watched debate?

Ed Kilgore: The first 2012 debate drew 67 million, which was a record. They’re thinking 100 million for this one.

Jesse Singal: It’s such an interesting inversion of the basic dynamic all election, which has been that cameras chase Trump around everywhere and he puts on whatever show he wants to put on. Now he has to show up at a set time for a set span and, in theory, act a certain way and answer certain tough questions

Rebecca Traister: But I think this goes back to the core question here: What does it look like when he’s in that situation, speaking in public with a woman who is much much smarter than he is?

And this seems appropriately dumb:

NBC is going to stream all this shit in VR

They’re thinking 100 million for this one.

No one would give a shit about this endlessly repeated turdoid if this wasn't 100% showbiz, suckers.

Well, yeah. Personally, I can't wait to talk about the ads!

at least the Super Bowl only inflicts brain damage on the participants

^

New Yorker journos

New York Magazine, not New Yorker

It's showbiz except it affects billions of people? I'm sure everyone here would be happier if this debate wasn't meaningful.

i don't get "except" there, AF.

the debate isn't meaningful in any sense of the word

The consequences are real, the debate are theater

is too

I assumed that's what Andrew was saying. Unless they've changed since the last ones I saw and the loser is now summarily executed. Which I might support.

I dunno with a projected audience of 100 million and a record # of undecideds I kinda feel like this one may in fact matter

I can't wait to see which candidate is tougher! Who will be the true American Ninja Warrior!

I dunno with a projected audience of 100 million and a record # of undecideds I kinda feel like this one may in fact matter

― frogbs, M

I love how the media and advertisers has created the conditions whereby the debate will get judged. If they say 100 million will watch, then it must be true!

enh. whatever.

538 now projecting this as a coinflip

why the fuck is this even happening, because Clinton took a tumble on 9/11?

I'm trying not to panic but there's something that feels inevitable about all this. I seriously wake up in a panic thinking Donald fucking Trump is going to be the next president and that a major economic crash may wind up as the best-case scenario

tbf we're probably going to get a major economic crash no matter what happens

I'm just going to keep this in an open notepad file so I can c+p when necessary:

Donald Trump will never be president of the United States.

Mainly because he's going to rip that stupid bible in half while being sworn in and declare himself Emperor Don.

welp, hope you're right

Kneel before Don

Don't those related tweets indicate perhaps criminal tax evasion, albeit mitigated by his "ignorance *is* a defense" note? That is, perhaps Trump Inc. was truly up to illegal stuff, but he was following the advice of council, which perhaps led him astray?

fwiw this is how Martha Stewart ended up in jail

And I'll bet dollars to donuts that she has (or had) more money than Trump. Look out, Donnie!

All hosts of The Apprentice end up in jail

did martha stewart ever host??? she would be amazing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apprentice:_Martha_Stewart

I had a disturbing flashback over the weekend to the Kerry/Bush debate. Kerry did a decent job of spelling out the poor justification and lack of international backing for the continued war on terror, followed by Bush taking a second, then quipping "you forgot Poland!"

for the life of me I can't remember a single thing Kerry said but I'll probably remember "you forgot Poland!" until the day I die

not sure I have the heart to watch these Clinton/Trump debates

"There is so much to know and so much to learn and so much diplomacy and kindness and introspection that goes with that kind of job," Stewart told CNNMoney during a luncheon for Andrea Bocelli's foundation Sunday. "And it does not exist in the world of Donald Trump."

For Stewart, the stakes are high and the only choice is Hillary Clinton.

"This is the most important election of the last hundred years," she said. "We have to be very certain that we elect a person who has experience, knowledge, a base of education in the world of world politics as well as domestic politics and so obviously I'm voting for Hillary Clinton. And we just can't have a country run by someone who is totally unprepared for what comes.

Stewart, 75, had a very public falling out with Trump in 2006, after he called out her NBC "Apprentice" spinoff show, "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart," for low ratings. Trump created and executive produced the show along with Mark Burnett.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Real-estate mogul Donald Trump and domestic diva Martha Stewart fired back at each other in a prime-time-worthy battle of words.
"If I'd had my druthers, there would have been only one 'Apprentice' on the air at one time," Stewart recently told Newsweek magazine.

"The Apprentice: Martha Stewart," NBC's much-hyped new version of the popular reality show launched with Donald Trump, suffered lackluster ratings.

In an interview, she said that having both versions of "The Apprentice" air during the same season was "unfair" but added that "Donald really wanted to stay on."
Stewart said that she was supposed to start out her new show by firing Trump, so that hers would be the only version of "The Apprentice" left on the air.
Trump shot back in a published letter to Stewart on Tuesday, calling her a liar. "Essentially, you made this firing up just as you made up your sell order of ImClone," he wrote. Stewart was convicted of lying about her sale of ImClone Systems Inc. (Research) stock and served five months in prison.

Trump also wrote: "Your performance was terrible in that the show lacked mood, temperament and just about everything a show needs for success."
"I knew it would fail as soon as I first saw it -- and your low ratings bore me out."

In a statement issued late Tuesday, Stewart said Trump's "letter is so mean-spirited and reckless that I almost can't believe my longtime friend Donald Trump wrote it."

tbf I'd vote for Martha Stewart for president any day over Trump, but she's sadly ineligible for the presidency

Martha Stewart would at least recognize that she should study for the job.

it takes absolutely no imagination to think about Trump sabotaging a spinoff, even one that he was executive producing, because he can't even share a little bit of the spotlight

has he talked over Pence at events or grabbed his microphone?

I thought he talked over Pence as he was trying to introduce him as his running mate?

lol

he totally did

What are the odds that he replaces Pence at least once before this thing's over?

Yeah, that's about right - it's largely theatre (not entirely - Hillary Clinton couldn't come out and say the same kind of word salad that Trump does) but there are a lot of people whose minds might be changed by it. It's meaningful meaning there's a wide range of outcomes depending on how it goes. Now the vice-presidents' debate - that's meaningless.

Also as per discussion last Friday, it's not just that there's a lot of undecideds, it's that being undecided in this election is hard for a lot of us to understand.

Also I think he can't replace Pence - if the position was vacated, the party would get to choose the successor.

I had an argument w/a relative who said that Pence "automatically" became the nominee should Trump die or step down. I had to remind her that he isn't president yet: Pence was the party's vote for vice president, not president; that's why delegates vote prez and vice prez separately.

I can understand being undecided on how to vomit on this spectacularly wretched 'choice.'

The audience the Clintonistas are strategizing to reach are those who are 'paying attention for the first time' tonight. I waver on such folks between cf Gene Wilder re "morons," and Can You Blame Them?

I got my ballot over the weekend; I'm overseas so I dunno : does this mean that early voting is opening nationwide?