I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE BOTTOM IS • US presidential elections part VIII

lol

https://twitter.com/JTSantucci/status/764240592482205696

when i see trump signs in my hometown the effect is sorta lynchian. not sure if this would be true of any other candidate

There will probably be a few Harry Dean Stanton write-in votes

At the end of a fund-raiser on Long Island last week, he playfully buzzed the crowd twice with his helicopter.

does nobody remember Randy Rhoads?

i remember lonesome

Like son, like father.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/12/1559583/-Pat-Buchanan-says-if-Trump-loses-it-means-American-democracy-is-fraudulent-and-rotten?detail=facebook

Pierson at it again: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-afghanistan-trump_us_57af33d8e4b007c36e4ef660?

massive eyerolls at the Tucker Carlsons of the world critiquing the "anti-Trump media bias".

"The media that helped gain Trump the nomination through endless free press coverage excessively focuses on the completely incorrect shit he says - they should not be focusing on these things so much out of fairness!"

Rich LOLwry takes that line too.

I like that the general public wants to take the media to task for actually deciding not to give every candidate's statement equal weight at least when it comes to outright distortion.

"so it was wrong! let the people decide it was wrong! who are you to dictate what is right and wrong? Pierson says we weren't Afghanistan, and she has the right to her opinion on that!"

this is the shittiest multiplatform viral horror-themed reality show i've ever watched

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MubunsD-7g

http://www.mediaite.com/online/katrina-pierson-attributes-false-afghanistan-comment-to-audio-disruptions-and-echoes/

we heard echoes; that's all she's willing to say

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CpyMGucWEAAWI76.jpg:large

That sounds like an actual con artist routine. Acting hurt, instilling guilt...

cheers

I'll never speak to you again.

tantalizing

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/trump-connecticut-why-is-he-campaigning-there-226959

lol

https://twitter.com/marieberd/status/764650930759278592

“He can go have lunch in Connecticut and be home for supper,

riddle solved

Hillary should tell him to go get his fuckin shinebox at the first debate

Efforts still underway to get rid of Trump.

RNC Operative #1: Think Donald tells his wife everything?
RNC Operative #2: He's a nut job. He talks to everybody. He's always acting like a jerk. Nobody listens to what he says. Nobody cares what he says, he talks so much.

Speaking of which:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-compared-to-mentally-unstable-character-from-taxi-driver-by-robert-de-niro-a7189226.html

Rupert Pupkin, I can definitely see; Travis, no.

Agree.

Pupkin was quite likeable, though

A side effect, but I am worried that one of the effects of the race is the mainstreaming of the conspiracy theory mindset: this is the big 'cache' of 'ammo' for Donald Trump supporters on Reddit - terrible thinking all over the place.

https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4xlrtu/the_stump_cheat_sheet_updated_version_20/

Trump is campaigning like he has no concept of the electoral college and thinks it's all about the total national vote. "Ok, pull over the bus, here are a couple more voters. Ooh, let's land the plane in Connecticut, I know a couple of people we can get. What's our tally at?" Maybe that explains why he's obsessed with the size of the crowds, or convinced he should win in places like PA. It's confirmation bias. All he knows is concrete numbers, and the only concrete information he seems aware of is what's in front of his face at any given moment.

If it's any comfort, I don't think a Reddit zone for Trump enthusiasts counts as mainstream, though more generally I agree this is a problem.

Sure, the problem may be more that it's the breeding ground for more respectable sources - Sean Hannity's been banging on the "Hillary's Health" button for a while now, and based on nothing more than the bullshit listed on that link.

read some speculation (twitter, ymmv) that trump is campaigning in places like connecticut because he's not campaigning to win the election, he's campaigning for list building purposes so he can rent/sell the mailing lists after the election for $$$. probably also paying family/friends/close associates lots of $$$ for campaign work and such - sort of like the ben carson scampaign where he raised a lot of money yet spent so much in the fundraising process.. all these fundraisers made a lot of money and very little went to promote the candidate

like this http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/tea-party-pacs-ideas-death-214164

What was left of the Tea Party split for a while between Trump and, while he was still in the race, Ted Cruz, who was backed by Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots. In 2014, the Tea Party Patriots group spent just 10 percent of the $14.4 million it collected actually supporting candidates, with the rest going to consultants and vendors and Martin’s hefty salary of $15,000 per month; in all, she makes an estimated $450,000 a year from her Tea Party-related ventures.

The popularity of the "voter fraud" and "DNC staffer murdered: Clinton connection?" conspiracies among Bernie or Busters as well as right wing fringe is definitely troubling. I do think that has filtered into the mainstream quit a bit. It's genuinely scary what people believe and how they avoid doing any critical thinking. In that sense it's an underexamimed phenomenon of the election.

she makes an estimated $450,000 a year from her Tea Party-related ventures.

my god. why why why did i not get on the ground floor of this scam? i guess i truly didn't expect for half of america to lose its mind after the election of a black man. so stupid of me.

Trump isnt that smart. He's campaigning in these places because he's a moron and a loser.

Xp

i know how banal this is at this pt. but it just struck me in a unique, dizzying way it's never struck me before that the national republican party chose donald trump, a man with no previous political experience whatsoever and a failure in every other respect, as their nominee for president of the united states of america. wow! it really does seem like a cathartic implosion of dumb entitled losership that will send shockwaves out through a generation or two. and also there's a surprisingly pleasant aftertaste to it, like anything is possible. the lows have no floor. but maybe the highs have no ceiling??? lol.

Trump's reasoning for campaigning in Connecticut reminds me of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wm72oqsYqA

read some speculation (twitter, ymmv) that trump is campaigning in places like connecticut because he's not campaigning to win the election, he's campaigning for list building purposes so he can rent/sell the mailing lists after the election for $$$. probably also paying family/friends/close associates lots of $$$ for campaign work and such - sort of like the ben carson scampaign where he raised a lot of money yet spent so much in the fundraising process.. all these fundraisers made a lot of money and very little went to promote the candidate

-----

Trump isnt that smart. He's campaigning in these places because he's a moron and a loser.

I don't think it takes much intelligence to come up with that idea, though. He's smart enough to know he has to start making post-election plans right now.

Scorcese will probably make a movie about this campaign on his 80th birthday with Leo as the Orange Orangutan.

Idk if dumb is the word, from what Trump's staffers have leaked, it seems more like he's stubborn, that he thinks he defies historical norms and knows best, so he could well be insistent on his chances there while his staff throws their hands up in anguish.

he could also be conning his base which would be fairly hilarious, but they'll never believe he did it, short of him writing a book called "How I Made Hella Money Off of 35 million Idiots"

behold, the 20-40% who will vote for Trump no matter what he says

https://youtu.be/6MubunsD-7g

He's smart enough to know he has to start making post-election plans right now.

i don't think he is! he's just doing what he's always done. no forethought to it.

Yup

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/08/12/trump_supporters_haven_t_been_affected_by_trade_or_immigration_at_all_study.html

loooooooool https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/764870785634799617

(xp) We know all about that sort of thing over here. 94.8% of the population of Stoke-on-Trent identify themselves as white. 94.4% of people living in Sunderland were born in England etc etc etc.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-hillary-clinton-up-florida-new-hampshire-extends-lead-electoral-map/

Re: Mordy's Slate link: this accords with my experience. Genuinely dispossessed white people have comparatively little overlap with the white people who are politically fervent; it's more a matter of tribal identification.

Trump supporters are mostly doing fine. They just feel more tribally connected to those (white) people that they think are "left behind by globalism," as opposed to those who are thriving. Tribe Gun-Rack is able to feel outrage on behalf of the Appalachian white unemployed who can't find work in a steel mill anymore. But poor people of color had it coming because they're shiftless and lazy. Plus they have Tribe Latte looking after them, and Tribe Gun-Rack hates Tribe Latte more than anything.

Genuinely dispossessed white people have comparatively little overlap with the white people who are politically fervent; it's more a matter of tribal identification.

this. the brexit voters, overwhelmingly motivated by fear of immigration, for the most part voted in areas with little to no immigration. London, a city with high immigration, which has lived with immigrant communities for many decades, voted to stay.

fear of "Other" is strongest and most persistent when there is little to no contact w/Other

xp that's true, but brexit vote wasn't completely uncorrelated with immigration: http://spatial-economics.blogspot.com/2016/07/brexit-and-location-of-migrants.html. yes the places that voted remain had low immigrant populations, but they were also the places where it was growing the quickest.

i'm generally skeptical of analogies between this and brexit, but you could make the case that the trumpiest places/groups (as distinct from the most classically republican) are those that have experienced the most *change* in demographics/economic activity, rather than the ones that are the most extreme in an absolute sense. this is what seems to have happened in the UK.