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

The "basement dweller" thing isn't about actually convincing Sanders die hards to vote for Trumo as much as just suppress potential votes for Hlllary. The only people I've seen view the leaked audio as anything other than sympathetic are right wing creeps and some of the more aggressively idiotic Stein supporters.

like, it wasn't even remotely close to the comments he made about john mccain, which remain the gold standard for insulting combat veterans

xp

aggressively idiotic Stein supporters

Redundant.

i'm not a Stein 'supporter' but shove it, you voting with the Bushes and Kissinger on yr moral high ground.

how do you reconcile Hil's 'empathy' -- sounds to me more like 'the poor misguided dears' -- with Bill Clinton's memorable springtime sneer, "Shoot every third person on Wall Street, things will be fine"? Don't these partners think alike?

post-election, Giuliani will return to his Crypt and resume providing pun-laden introductions to ironic tales of depravity and gore

xp

many xps evan: yeah, probably

Well, kiddies, looks like SHRILLARY really took a DUMP on TRUMP! But don't worry. I have a feeling he's going to be SERVER-ing her a fresh helping of deleted SCREAM-mails about her membership in the BENGHAZI Party any day now! EEEE-HEE-HEE-HEE-HEE!

heh

if ppl haven't been, btw, highly recommend the ongoing trump tweet-play by owen ellickson, storified in this link: https://twitter.com/onlxn/status/773652237125955584

i don't think that guy is that funny

lol chuck grassley follows him.

it's hit or miss, def, and also weirdly insists on humanizing ppl like boehner and chris fucking christie (which, lol), but the ratio of hits to misses is ultimately favorable imo

Well, kiddies, looks like SHRILLARY really took a DUMP on TRUMP! But don't worry. I have a feeling he's going to be SERVER-ing her a fresh helping of deleted SCREAM-mails about her membership in the BENGHAZI Party any day now! EEEE-HEE-HEE-HEE-HEE!

― Our Salads Are Now Almost Entirely Blood-Free! (Old Lunch),

I follow people on social media who write like this

Who better than a horror host to teach one how to scaremonger?

an EC horror comic about Trump writes itself

http://deadspin.com/trump-supporters-spent-the-debate-tweeting-at-jon-leste-1787351028

― a full playlist of presidential sex jams (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, October 3, 2016 3:18 PM (one hour ago)

Bigger Putz
Imgivingthisguyaplusone
10/03/16 10:17am
Cardinals fans, amiright?

you voting with the Bushes and Kissinger on yr moral high ground.

So far from claiming the moral high ground, most here are simply claiming HRC represents a higher and drier part of the swamp than Donald occupies.

yes yes, but Gorp up there nevertheless sprays his automatic fire

Clinton up nine points in Colorado: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-clinton-holds-double-digit-lead-over-trump-in-colorado/

can someone explain the significance of Colorado to this simple Canadian? i keep seeing it get brought up.

swing state, has shifted from GOP to Dem in last few elections due to changing demographics etc.

Also: Weed

such a bummer to see trump up in ohio ... what the fuck? then i read this http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/us/politics/ohio-campaign-trump-clinton.html

Ohio has not fallen into step with the demographic changes transforming the United States, growing older, whiter and less educated than the nation at large.

As the place where Appalachia meets the Midwest, and where industrial centers arose not far from a vast farm belt, Ohio has prided itself on being a version of America writ small. Its immigration patterns reflected that, with New Englanders resettling here, followed by Germans and Eastern Europeans. At the same time, Southerners, white and black, crossed the Ohio River in search of freedom and opportunity.

But even some of the state’s proudest boosters acknowledge that Ohio, which is nearly 80 percent white, is decreasingly representative of contemporary America.

“Ohio, like a melting iceberg, has slowly been losing its status as the country’s bellwether,” said Michael F. Curtin, a Democratic state legislator and former Columbus Dispatch editor who is an author of the state’s authoritative “Ohio Politics Almanac.”

He continued: “It’s a slow melt. But we have not captured any appreciable Hispanic population, and there has been very little influx of an Asian population. When you look at the diversity of America 30 to 40 years ago, Ohio was a pretty close approximation of the country. It no longer is.”

What is less clear than the racial trends is whether the state will continue to grow more forbidding for Democrats in future presidential races.

That could be determined by the choices the national parties make after the election, particularly whether Republicans continue Mr. Trump’s project of shifting from a business-friendly to a more populist approach on immigration and trade.

“If the Republican Party looks more like the Trump coalition and the Democratic Party looks more like the Obama coalition, then the states Democrats must win will no longer be Ohio and Iowa,” said David Wilhelm, a manager of Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign and a former Democratic national chairman who lives in suburban Columbus. “They will be Virginia, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia.”

and this nice little bit about jim traficant which i thought was otm

Mike Dawson, a Republican strategist who runs a website on Ohio’s political history, said Mr. Trump would be competitive in two counties in Youngstown’s Mahoning Valley that the Democratic presidential candidate has carried in every election for 60 years with the exception of 1972.

It is no coincidence that the same region kept re-electing Representative James A. Traficant Jr. from 1985 to 2002, despite his routine flouting of ethics. Mr. Traficant, a longtime Democrat who died in 2014, was known for mixing inflammatory rhetoric, a squirrel-like toupee and a hard-edge populism.

“There is not a dime’s worth of difference, as George Wallace once said, between Jim Traficant and Donald Trump,” said Mr. Eckart, whose district abutted Mr. Traficant’s. “They say anything, do anything, just act outrageous, and people just kind of like that.”

cuyahoga county (where i live) is the democratic stronghold of the state and there are definitely v progressive parts. obv cleveland is about 53% black too. but there are a lot of working class whites in the area too that might vote differently this time idk

Have we talked about the Trump Foundation getting more or less put on pause by the New York AG?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/us/politics/trump-foundation-money.html

Yeah, but not too much as there was an argument dominating the thread at the time it broke.

lol

Via Roy Edroso, I live when NRO accidentally gives away the game -- in this case, "Religious principles are only for controlling the rubes and hurting gay people, Timmy!"

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/440650/kaine-death-penalty

to be fair i feel like that might be a line in the catechism

re: the Trump Foundation stuff, one fun takeaway is it undercuts the narrative of Trmp being such a system-knowing knower of the system.

'You forgot to renew your drivers license'
'That makes me smart'

https://twitter.com/LPDonovan/status/783053226614685696

pretty sure Doctor Casino beat him to it

https://twitter.com/SopanDeb/status/783062663576248320

"Somebody said don't call them race riots but that's what they are, they're race riots."

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a49137/linda-tripp-clinton-conspiracies/

Oh boy look who's back

Fwiw Ohio was blue post-convention, and has had almost no polling post-debate. They could still get it together.

Ohio has not fallen into step with the demographic changes transforming the United States, growing older, whiter and less educated than the nation at large.

shorter ohio - a shitload of people go to ohio state, nobody stays

That might be the big news in November -- Ohio no longer a bellwether for Chuck Todd/Halperin types.

'Following the many threads of why Donald Trump is unfit to be president is often like unraveling a cable knit sweater that someone keeps knitting, and knitting, and knitting, then tweeting that it’s fat.'

http://www.avclub.com/article/donald-trump-harassed-apprentice-crew-comparing-th-243500

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ct5CCY2WEAATrvU.jpg

Cry, the beloved Speaker of the House

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/paul-d-ryan-so-handsome-so-sad

In the four months since he formally endorsed his party’s nominee for president, Ryan — the esteemed Speaker of the House, the sterling guardian of conservatism, the intellectual leader of the Republican Party — has been reduced to a miserable Trump flunky sheepishly counting down the hours until the election is over. Each day he spends tethered to the Donald seems to bring some fresh humiliation; each role he inhabits in the entourage proves more undignified than the last. Adviser, apologist, hype man, scold — none brings redemption, or even reprieve. And so he trudges on toward November, a stench of sadness clinging to him as he goes.

Friends and allies, disappointed though many of them are, have tried to show Ryan support in this difficult time. They labor to give him the benefit of the doubt, to rationalize his endorsement — and when they’re defending his honor on the record, they might even find themselves slipping into Messianic metaphors.

“I feel so sorry for Paul,” said Bob Woodson, the veteran civil rights activist who mentors Ryan on issues of poverty and race. “He wishes someone else could take the cup from him. … I’d say ‘weary martyr’ is a good way to describe him.”

Pobrecito

If you prick a Paul Ryan, does he not bleed

If you P90X him, does he not blast his quads?

you can rearrange those words to say

you, paul ryan, a prick: bleed. (if he does not?)

he's drake basically

I love how Upshot originally used a "free throws" analogy for Trump's chances to win the election, then when Hillary declined, they changed it to a field goal analogy, and as her odds have improved, they've kept that analogy but just lopped off a yard on the field-goal length for like, each 2 percentage points...

what I wanna know is....who is kicking. if it's Bill Gramatica, we're fucked

If you're at all familiar with the much-ridiculed Kayleigh McEnany on CNN, the change in her tonight was hard to miss. For months she's dug in on one convoluted defense of Trump after another, but twice--Trump imitating Clinton's stumble, and his not-loyal-to-Bill comment--she didn't hedge on criticizing him. She's either worn down, or she's starting to think about a soft landing.

Hillary, in particular, is a shockingly sympathetic character. She was not born a monstrous political personality. She's a tragic figure.

Serious question: Is there a rich white male politician who the GOP elite could outwardly loathe, like to the point of fantasizing about their deaths, as much as they do either of the Clintons (Bill was poor, Hillary a woman) or Barack Obama?

well not since FDR maybe