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

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

I'm imagining if Bloomberg had thrown his hat in the ring, it would have gotten pretty ugly.

Guess I should have added "Christian" in there, huh.

I think if Al Gore had been elected president he'd have gotten it just as bad.

So Iago, what do you think now that Assange destroyed Hillary? Wow, that was surely dangerous information he gave, huh?

aw man don't summon him

Yeah, that makes him seem infinitely more entertaining and less boring to read than he actually is

I don't think the GOP elite hates any of these guys for personal reasons, they basically turn the hate machine on strategically. GOP elite would support a poor black female president if it meant they got what they wanted.

the base, otoh...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/10/04/trump-backers-feel-played-as-wikileaks-fails-to-come-through-on-october-surprise/?postshare=3061475583962364&tid=ss_tw

RCP average moving in the right direction at last - interestingly the 4-way average is looking better relative to the 2-way average, which may indicate that some Johnson- and Stein-inclined voters are getting nervous and becoming more reconciled to voting for the (bad and hated) major-party establishment choices.

Sorry, or maybe not. Actually Johnson and Stein's graphs still look pretty flat - so it may instead be that undecideds are hesitantly shuffling over to Clinton as things get realer and closer.

xpost yeah, but he's still forecasting around Ross Perot 1996 numbers which, frankly, at this point, usually is when third parties find their chances start to decline, especially after first debate.

I'm still skeptical that he can hit 8 percent, but I'm really curious as to how much noise this really is. Stein seems to be declining at a quicker rate.

I really hope Johnson misses 5%, don't want that fucker getting government funding (not that a Libertarian is getting elected any time soon but I just want to see less bumper stickers)

(which is to say - maybe his support is actually solid and not a mirage)

they look flat because they're on a scale from 1-100, but both have lost ~1/5 of their support over the past month (9 to 7.5 for johnson, 3-2.5 for stein), which in the context of a close two-way race adds up to a significant amount of new floating voters staying home or voting clinton (or voting trump i suppose lol)

Why do Trumpists even care about the possibility of revelatory emails or classified info or whatever? Why get yourself worked up now about the absence or presence of solid factual info? Just start another whispering campaign about Shrillary being secretly part dog and having a love child with Tim Kaine.

Well, they could always campaign on the policies...lol

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/data-points/poll-hillary-clinton-holds-national-lead-over-donald-trump-n658721

well this is interesting - 26k registered voters, but the biggest gulf seems to be between male voters who have, and who have not been married.

Married men broke for Trump 52 - 35, "never married" men favored Hillary 51 to 28.

is this cos Hillary reminds male voters of a nagging wife?

How many of the married men category are divorced? Just curious

don't think they surveyed that :/

Trump also winning the vote amongst people who have lost chunks of their frontal lobe in boating accidents

ahahahah that Assange announcement

it was literally nothing

Married men broke for Trump 52 - 35, "never married" men favored Hillary 51 to 28.

is this cos Hillary reminds male voters of a nagging wife?

― Neanderthal, Tuesday, October 4, 2016 8:06 AM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No, didn't you hear? Male Clinton supporters are low-T and probably couldn't satisfy a woman and so are naturally unmarried.

never married is for the most part just another way of saying young voters