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

Many anti-Trump conservative sites cling ti tbe fiction that Kasich would've trounced Clinton.

Ned's too much of a gentleman to point out that he posted that article yesterday :)

xpost whoooops sorry! I'm getting too old for this shit, I can't even keep up.

the GOP party apparatus puts their weight behind him in 2020.

What is the "GOP party apparatus" in 2020? Who is in it? Who pays for it?

koch bros; koch bros; koch bros

i don't see them going away any time soon

I don't see them supporting the Trumpist agenda any time soon - so what role they have in the future of the actual GOP seems questionable

the koch brothers are 76 and 80. how much longer will they hang on?

http://theinfosphere.org/images/thumb/6/69/Richard_Nixon

http://www.fullredneck.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Futurama.jpg

Henry Kissinger, who served as national security adviser and secretary of State under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and George Shultz, who was secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan, told Politico the two have discussed publicly backing Clinton.

"We are going to do it together," Shultz told Politico of a possible joint endorsement. "It will have more impact."

Shultz added that he was impressed by Clinton, noting a "deep knowledge of Mexico."

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/294245-former-reagan-official-considers-clinton-endorsement-god

"We are going to do it together," Shultz told Politico of a possible joint endorsement. "It will have more impact."

oh yes, huge.

Shultz and Kissinger doing it together

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/03/trump-detroit-brothers-sisters/89828940/

Scan this just for the photo of him swaying with the congregation

Jackson ended the service by putting a Jewish prayer shawl around the shoulders of Trump, telling the candidate it would help him with any adversity that he would face on the campaign trail.

wtf is this supposed to mean

http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/03/trump-addresses-empty-church-african-american-photo-op-backfires-detroit.html

https://twitter.com/ShaneGoldmacher/status/772091438549139456/photo/1

Extreme Vetting 2: Extremelic Vettaloo

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/watch-trump-backing-pastor-busted-by-cnn-host-for-lying-about-military-service-and-going-to-college/

Barf: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/us/politics/hillary-clinton-fundraising.html

For a donation of $2,700, the children (under 16) of donors at an event last month at the Sag Harbor, N.Y., estate of the hedge fund magnate Adam Sender could ask Mrs. Clinton a question.

extra thousand buys you no "dear" in the answer

There she goes selling access again!

to a crowd that included Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein and for whom the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency is dire.

AND WHY WOULD THAT BE HMM THINK ABOUT IT

There she goes selling access again!

I really can't gauge the pct of irony vs rat feces in this post.

That Times article sure is an endlessly charming portrait of the wealthy "liberal" donor class. btw fuck Hillary.

We'd almost forgotten yr feelings

Krugman crapped on his own paper today, awesome

The Krugman column scans dangerously like a proxy Gary Hart styled dare.

i see, Clinton's campaign isn't her fault just like Gore's wasn't Gore's....

the actual reason you piss people off so much on these threads is not your one-note positions, which are just boring, but the constant putting of words into people's posts that aren't there.

i'm reading that into Mr Krugman's column, Tom, and it didn't take much.

@ByronYork
'I stand between you and the apocalypse,' Hillary tells Calvin Klein, Harvey Weinstein.

@DougHenwood
This is a beautiful quote indeed. Hillary will break the siege of the Hamptons!

wow I can't believe it. you've really opened my eyes. how could I have been so blind.

cmon crut that's what i'm not here for, but eternal redundancy, just like the rest of you

guess my Sunday school teacher was right about Hell

since it was posted here three times, ailes has hired hogan's lawyer to take on new york magazine: https://t.co/nJgWs6pqJM

awesome, psyched for all ailes' dirty laundry to be aired in court

(apologies for that unfortunate mental image)

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/29/greenwald_journalists_should_not_stop_scrutinizing

Glenn Greenwald, what are your comments on Hillary Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump?

GLENN GREENWALD: I mean, Donald Trump is—I mean, the tactic of the Democratic Party in the last 25 years—they know that ever since they became the party of sort of corporatism and Wall Street, they don’t inspire anybody, so their tactic is to say the Republican Party is the epitome of evil. Even when they have conventional nominees like Mitt Romney or John McCain, they demonize them and say they’re this unparalleled threat to democracy. In this election, just by coincidence, it happens to be true.

He literally cannot start talking about the problems with Trump without starting in on how the Democrats have been letting him down since he was an L1 at NYU. I think I just don't understand whatever it was that Bill's first administration did that can never, ever, ever be forgotten or forgiven. The right almost always gets a pass because scorpions are going to sting that frog every time, I guess?

He threw a shitfit in the comments of Lawyers, Guns & Money today when that same quote was highlighted in a post.

That comment thread is relatively entertaining. Although it's also a good argument for strict chronological post ordering because it's just not as much fun to try and follow as is.
He really doesn't get the point of why he's being quoted, either.

I just don't understand whatever it was that Bill's first administration did that can never, ever, ever be forgotten or forgiven.

enacting more Reaganism than Reagan, including deregulating everything in sight, maybe?

When it all comes down to it, no matter how much you hate Hillary, isn't all of the anti-Hillary rhetoric helpful for Trump? If so, is Glenn OK with the prospect of a Trump presidency?

It seems like an obvious question but it's honestly not clear to me.

He isn't, and he makes that clear later, but he can't help himself from reminding everyone that the Democratic party is exactly the same today - if not worse - than it was when Bill signed DOMA. And the fact that he then spent hours yelling at people in the LGM comments this afternoon is, to me, proof that he cares much more about how he is perceived than about what actually happens to this country, or any of the disadvantaged people who live here. He also hasn't lived here for years.

Lol, I didn't know Greenwald supported the Iraq War. Though it makes sense.

When it all comes down to it, no matter how much you hate Hillary, isn't all of the anti-Hillary rhetoric helpful for Trump? If so, is Glenn OK with the prospect of a Trump presidency?

It seems like an obvious question but it's honestly not clear to me.

― Evan, Monday, September 5, 2016 4:19 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't like this logic, because the implication is that you shouldn't criticize hillary b/c trump. that's dumb. it's completely valid to criticize hillary! in fact one has a duty do, in a sense. that criticism can be more or less useful depending on the nature of it, who it's being spoken to, where, etc.

anyway, i'm generally more sympathetic to the LGM troop than greenwald in this "debate" but i don't like the way the LGM folks seem to really want to paint a picture of the so-called "alt-left" as morally equivalent to the "alt-right," which seems to be a thing they're doing now.

i guess the internet makes people dumb. not that i'd know anything about that.

There are two comment threads on LGM. One contains close readings and criticisms of what he said, the other one is just bullshit personal attacks calling him irrelevant. Well, guess who he is answering, lol.

isn't all of the anti-Hillary rhetoric helpful for Trump?

I think Greenwald operates on the assumption that under no circumstances can the Republican party be reformed into a left-progressive party, but he holds out faint hope that the Democrats could be, since most of the voters who are in broad sympathy with progressive policy identify as democrats or vote democratic, which amounts to the same thing. In which case, it makes sense to him to criticize the candidate who might change in response to his criticism, mainly because a substantial bloc of her support is sensitive to the issues for which he criticizes her.

As a journalist, in distinction to being a political operative or activist, Greenwald can't 'work for change from the inside'. He can only expose the flaws, wrong ideas, lies, and crimes of the system. There are plenty of people exposing Trump's frauds and racism. Greenwald is playing a different game, trying to change the underlying political topography. More power to him.

I agree with Greenwald on one point: if you try to characterize candidates like McCain and Romney as Dire Threats to Civilization, then you've boxed yourself into a corner to a certain extent when Trump comes along. Boy, wolf, etc. Romney especially seemed rather inconsequential as a potential president.

isn't all of the anti-Hillary rhetoric helpful for Trump?

pure, evil anti-logic. And it also preempts criticism of Prez Walmart Clinton for 4 years because OMG THERE COULD BE ANOTHER TRUMP

it is evil anti-logic, and you seem to presume that everyone here subscribes to it

Romney mainly presented a 'threat' by potentially bringing the executive and legislative branches both under republican control, at a time when the SCOTUS was also philosophically aligned with them by a 5-4 margin. His cabinet would also have reflected the party pretty accurately. At that point most of the party platform would have been implemented, making Romney's personal golly-gee blandness irrelevant.

away from the pundit class, more of those unusual BernieBros

"Young Blacks Voice Skepticism on Hillary Clinton, Worrying Democrats"

“We’re in the midst of a movement with a real sense of urgency,” explained Brittany Packnett, 31, a St. Louis-based leader in the push for police accountability. Mrs. Clinton is not yet connecting, she said, “because the conversation that younger black voters are having is no longer one about settling on a candidate who is better than the alternative.”...

What frustrates many blacks under 40 is Mrs. Clinton’s overriding focus on Mr. Trump.

“We already know what the deal is with Trump,” said Nathan Baskerville, a 35-year-old North Carolina state representative. “Tell us what your plan is to make our life better.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/us/politics/young-blacks-voice-skepticism-on-hillary-clinton-worrying-democrats.html

to be fair, clinton's team has articulated her plans pretty exhaustively by the standards of presidential candidates. whether you think she will work hard to implement them (or has any hope of implementing them, given the likely composition of the legislative branch in the next few years) is another question.

anyway...

the thing is, pretty much all recent presidential candidates present a "threat to democracy" in that all of them are have/are likely to continue apace the consolidation of power in the executive branch. in obama's case he's had some good reasons to do this --namely the refusal of the legislative branch to pass legislation. he's also done it for some pretty bad reasons.

of course if you imagine what trump /might/ do with this power, the difference shifts to kind rather than degree of harm. strangely some leftists (and some folks on this board) dispute this, but i guess they are more comfortable with extreme risk than i am.