Wakeup: Trump Doesn't Need a Majority

    Wakeup call: Hitler was named Chancellor after getting only 36% of the vote.

    Gottwald in Czechoslovakia pulled a coup 2 years after the Communists got 38% of the vote.

    Boris Johnson just led the UK out of the EU with only 43.6% of the vote.

    Bush claimed a "mandate" after losing with only 47.9% of the vote, going to the Supreme Court to rubber stamp the vote theft.

    Trump's Russian & other pals helped him "win" 3 Midwest states by super thin margins via voter repression & hacking, and then block the investigations.

    Relying on the 2020 results to throw Trump out? Don't.

    When a man shows you what he's made of, believe him.

    Trump doesn't need to "win" - he just needs to stay in power. His cronies will help him do exactly that.

    Danger, Will Robinson, Danger.

    Comments

    No no, I learned at Dagblog that you just have to energize the liberal base to do more "outreach" to drag more urban couch potatoes to the polls.


    That's called "freebase" - Richard Pryor, that great organizer and motivational speaker, popularized it some time ago. Really sets the crowd on fire.


    Interesting.

    I learned over at Kos that all you have to do is patiently explain to middle America how stupid they are while pushing forward a candidate known to be horribly unpopular.

    Just imagine the synergy if such luminaries were to combine wits!


    OMG, kgb! I was just thinking of you as I was thinking of the classic libertarian hatred of public health nazis! Nice to see your name. What an irony that i tempted you to comment. I was being facetious there.

    Still in Idaho?

    I never participated at Daily Kos. Were you are TPMCafe? I know you participated here.


    Hitler had a base of veterans who were pissed off at the results of WW1 and the Kaiser who surrendered. His cultural revolution brought children into his movement once the regime got started.

    Trump's base is a collection of special interests groups who understand they are toast if society becomes more progressive. Unlike the Fascist and Nazi movements, there is no format of the future, only a desire for the past. It is a powerful political tool in the context of the Trump team taking advantage of an ethos they do not share. But it is not an idea or the promise of a future.

    It is nothing.


    There are a lot of similarities but I think you sometimes err by getting way too invested in comparisons to Hitler and early-20th-century fascism. History never repeats itself exactly the same way.

    Trump's base is really all over the world. No different then the Taliban who just won't be dragged kicking and screaming into modern life, or nationalists wanting to maintain nations while globalism is already a given or ethnic tribalists wanting to revive and then retreat into their ancient traditions. Air travel, cell phones, people from across the globe marrying each other and having children: the new new world, they can't deal with it.

    It was a hard time for many people dealing with the industrial revolution too, ya know. Had to wait for all the old fogey people to die off, and some of em never did.


    To be clear for all, I referenced a Nazi, a Communist and a Euroskeptic quasi-populist.

    In short, I'm just arguing that severe regime change often happens with far less than majority backing.

    Allende won with 36.2% to 34.9% and 27.8% for his 2 opponents, yet next thing you know he's nationalizing tons of stuff and Castro's spending a *month* on a visit. Quite the mandate.


    BIG OOPS, I just realized my reply was to moat! and I was thinking about NCD because I was just over on his thread! And saw his Atlantic quote downthread and then confusing the two and who was saying what.

    And then you, PP, took it as me talking about you. I wasn't. I was talking to NCD, who wasn't here!

    Moat doesn't "do" Hitler the same as NCD, I know that.  And I did read your whole comment ,I was just mashing several comments together in my mindWhich goes to show ya: A.D.D.epidemic  =  one of the real downsides of the new new world we all have to learn to deal with.

    Mea culpas...(oh, continuing with the A.D.D., on that I just saw this--shouldn't use it no mo because Latin is western colonialist lingo, doh)

    Edit to add: Sorry to go too far off topic of the minority winning election for radical change. It is an important point and not too mention a personal pet peeve that some here don't seem to see that is what we can easily have with the system we have in this country as far as presidential election is concerned.


    No, I didn't think you were referring to me - just thought it the logical place to out my response.


    Very eclectic of you. If the Nazi bit wasn't material to making your point ... why did you even throw it in? I kind of feel like Goodwin is as Goodwin does on that.

    But to your larger point ... Is there even a tiny thread tying all these oblique references to arbitrary, unrelated events in history together with the political/socioeconomic reality that exists in contemporary America today?

    I'm trying to figure out the difference between your premise here and, say, referencing a bunch of random times that a truly horrid wannabe authoritarian has simply been defeated at the polls and concluding "see ... nothing to worry about."

    Sure, history shows this sort of thing can go any number of ways ... this fact alone doesn't make any outcome more or less likely.


    You should register. Or if that is not important to you, find some way to distinguish yourself from other anoms.

    Your use of polysyllables suggests you are not the other people/person.

    But who knows.


    Dersh clenched it - "ends justify the means"

    Which amendment or Article is that? Doesn't matter.

    Or is it simply "might makes right" like with Christie?

    https://digbysblog.net/2020/02/raw-power-and-corruption-rule/


    Atlantic, October, 2018-

    ......Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.....


    The thing that unites them is not cruelty ... although Trump is undoubtedly cruel.

    They are united by fear.



    Chairman of "The Democratic Coalition" asks a question for the attention of people like, er, Bernie-or-anybody-but Joe-Jolly Roger:

    .@BernieSanders and @AndrewYang — are either of you bothered by these poll results? If so, is there a message you’d like to send to your supporters RIGHT NOW?#VoteBlueNoMatterWho pic.twitter.com/cwYVjRGuIE

    — Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) February 1, 2020

     


    same from Joy Reid and Michael McFaul:


    Hope McFaul doesn't see this but this fanboy is clearly thinking of one individual:

    Suggests the possibility that the "hey you kids get off my lawn" ol' man thing may not be a bug, as is my worry, but a feature.


    Here's the thing. If you want candidates to attract independents to the party ... you have to accept that independents aren't just going to roll over for any old bullshit the party does. If you dump the candidate who independents want to vote for and swap in some douche, you can't *REALLY* expect independents to be obligated to keep supporting someone they don't want ... do you?

    Both Sanders and Yang had a *significant* level of independent support ... the vast majority of whom appear to be sticking with Biden compared to a tiny, tiny handful of people who vocally don't want to. 

    But instead of applauding both candidates for legitimately getting a bunch of new people through the door, making friends, and moving forward to beat Trump ... y'all just sit there shitting all over everyone left of Regan 24/7 for the fraction of a percent of supporters who didn't immediately hop onboard and holler "Yippie!" when the party went with the absolutely lamest choice behind damn Bloomberg.

    If you support a candidate and people think you candidate sucks, the failure win this vote is on you. Your team won. Now go win. Quit blaming Bernie. You chose *someone who is NOT Bernie* to lead you into victory. Bernie can back your candidate up, but winning this isn't HIS responsibility anymore. 

    If the people who have been legitimately convinced from day-one that Biden was *the* candidate to pick can't just stand up, answer the criticisms ... and make a compelling argument in the first instance why Biden is worth voting for ... Bernie just isn't going to be able to help you.

    Biden's YOUR boy. Selling him isn't Bernie's job. It's yours. And at this point ... you can't even win over Jolly Roger? Jesus. If all of you Biden people are *this* lame, we're screwed.


    In case you forgot, kgb, I'm an Independent, have been registered as one since 1980. And I get a lot of grief for it here from one user in particular (So I was being facetious for those in the know about that).

    But if I recall correctly, I am a little more centrist on many things than you are.

    What I tend to dislike the most is people being passionate about a single candidate for president to the point of not being able to vote for anyone else. As if our system was set up so that the president controlled everything that happened. Too much cult of personality voting coming home to roost, that's where we're at now with the ultimate fake celeb prez. We needed to think more like parliamentary voters do, or at least used to: there's no king/queen, just flawed people who take on these jobs and try their best.

    I would have happily voted for Bernie in the situation we are in. Especially because I know he couldn't execute his pie in the sky dreams. Nothing wrong with him but the viciousness of some of his diehard fans. He'd be fine as Prez, I've followed his actual career in the Senate and what he did not just what he said.

    Like I used to say over at TPM Cafe in 2008 when it was flooded with horse race fans, Obama and Hillary were about as alike as two candidates could be and here were all these people ready to paint one or the other as the worst evil that could be thrust on the world.


    The Republicans + Coronavirus already made sure whoever gets in will be mopping up the mess for the next 4 years anyway. Unless we screw it up and they keep fucking it up another 4, but that doesn't serve them - they'll blame this last 4 on the Dems first, Trump 2nd, and then create another Tea Party to rally around and rebrand. As long as their backers are getting their trillions...

    (hi, KGB - show up to spank us? Have to figger out which ones like it. Frankly I figure we're all here for the masochism by now)


    Repubs still @ 93% support - Trump can do no wrong. 

    Good news is Independents aren't having it - now down to 39%.

     

    https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/493165-trump-job-approval-sl...


    Is just proof of what the Never Trumpers and Lincoln Project types complain all the time:

    Trump stole their party and they had to leave it.

    More proof of it is only Romney felt protected enough to vote against him.

    To this day I have not been shaken in my belief that the cumulative effect of liberal political correctness over decades, getting worse and not better, turned the majority of those registered as Republican voters into lowest common denominator populists primed for someone like Trump to play them. The poor victimized white people's party. (Pat Buchanan started this thing.)

    The educated registered Republicans fled to Independence. They are the ones with a set of ethics, a set that everyone liberal might not think so great, but at least they had a set.

    Someone like Richard Painter is a good example. So are suburban women whose husbands still vote for Trump types because they are still angry about the people on welfare driving Cadillacs while they have to come up with the scratch for all those different taxes plus a now a fortune for the health insurance while the minority kids get grants and scholarships for college tuition and they got to cheat for the privilege to pay $40K a year....blah blah blah

    Edit to add: Bill Clinton's "Sister Soulja" moment paid off big time, big time, in significant red-leaning approval rating, especially when combined with the "them, them them we've nearly them ourselves to death, don't have a person to waste" speech. Plus-talking about "the American people"  and "see, a rising tide lifts all boats" all the time, all the time. Plenty of lower class white didn't even care that he was callled "the first black president" to them, "slick willie" was not a derogative.


    Except those women still register as GOP, and either lie to pollsters or still carry Trump's water/colostomy bag.

    93% of a significant portion of the US is huge. I don't think PC libs quite explain the near total lockdown on differing opinions. Has the GOP gotten so much smaller to account for this? Do we have a trend bigger than Rick Wilson, Bill Kristol, George Conway, Mitt Romney and Richard Painter? Too few for a kaffie klatsch much less a rival party faction or new party.


    how huge? I believe there are more Independents now than registered Republicans, but I could be wrong.


    p.s. comes to mind, the best polls are the ones that break it up into more categories including "lean Republican" and "lean Democrat". Among Trump 40% overall approval, it's the 6-8% that swing over the hard as stone 1/3 of the country that votes wacko conservative and that hasn't changed in my lifetime, that 34% or so will never vote for anyone with a hint or whiff of liberal or even moderate. (And they are permanently angry at the rest of the population! And almost inevitably you've got to get some of that 6-8% from rust belt to win the electoral college. Still really just got to take the Reagan Dems away from the wacko 1/3.)


    And the article notes this is just wiping out Trump's brief "War President" bump, so he's at the same 43% he's been at for 2 years now (538 poll).

    But it's not like there haven't been relatively successful public challenges to this order in Texas (Beto), Georgia (Abrams), Alabama (Doug Collins?), Wisconsin (supreme court pick), North Carolina (several), Michigan... 

    So why would Trump's personal support hang on so (relatively speaking) well? Conservatives hated Bush Sr so his popularity waned. McCain and Colin Powell and Mitt Romney were different currents in the GOP - why are they dead, yet the numbers look about the same, more entrenched? Hillary was relatively popular in West Va. and Appalachia in 2008, which is why they had to attack her for the "racism" of pandering to whites. Why have the lines hardened?


    I suspect enough Reagan Dem types who simply despise political correctness and elite snobbery about Trump not being intellectual dig his whole MAGA shtick are a small part of the approval rating. (The dislike would include for elitist educated scientist types, ya know.Think of all the working class guys who just despise going to a doctor because doctor makes them feel like stupid piece of shit who needs  to lose the beer gut.) I always felt Joe is an excellent competitor for those votes, even before Trump. He knows how to court them, he shows them respect. He turns off lefties has been his downside


    P.S. I don't just know those type of guys from growing up in the Midwest. We have them on Staten Island, they are trade journeymen and butchers. They are Joey Buttafucco. They are Joisy guys. They are upstate New York who returned another variety of babbling idiot Al D'Amato to the Senate for two decades, Senator Pothole talked their talk and walked their walk, who cares if he takes a little taste to wet his beak.


    His prior performance on the presidential trail was iffy. This year it got dropped in his lap as kind of the best known, safest thing in a storm. Which may just mean this year we stopped pining for the stripper at the nightclub or the trending socialite, or the radical chic hipsterette, and went back to the wife in the suburbs who knows how to get the kids off to school - no longer desperately seeking Susan. Such ends the Revolution, not with a bank but with a whiskbroom.


    oh and a major point: I think Obama chose him precisely to get some of that demographic! Not a single one of them would ever vote for an elite highly educated black guy with a terrorist name, exotic global youth, oreign father and hippie mom without Joe vouching it was safe.

    Easy to ignore slick willie's highbrown education because he stilll had good ole boy roots, talked the talk (dislike the man's choice of wife? you betcha.) 


    Oh for sure - Joe's a better VP than Pres. Hillary needed someone that known and aolid. - Tim Kaine looked better on paper than the campaign trail.


    kgb, you still have an account here (where others can see what you blogged back in 2012 and before), why doncha sign in and visit legit once in a while, you get the functions then of seeing new replies and the like:

    http://dagblog.com/users/kgb999


    Monica mans up - will others do what it takes?


    Sorry, Monica, *nothing* could convince Republicans to impeach. A super high body count where Trump obstructs relief efforts only makes him stronger. Killing granny is now just what's required to Keep America Great. They might send Trump the whole Fox blonde lineup as his "just desserts". They are totally captured - why, I can't figure out. "Owning the Libs" would seem to pale compared to "keeping Granny safe", but forget the Wall, forget economic solvency, forget security and holding back Xi/Putin/Rocket Man, forget having a job next month, forget his putting his Dior-wearing idiot spawn on key rescue committees - it's still all good with The Donald.

    But you tried. The last time politics was a bit fun - and you were one of the movers and shakers. Without you it would've been 30 years of Mitch McConnell announcements.


    The next impeachment begins


    I am anxiously awaiting to see what the Dems do during the SOTU, like with the plot of an edge-of-your-seat movie. I think that what they do there will determine whether they could continue with prosecution like this to their benefit or not. Of course, in an ideal world, purely as a moral and legal thing and as to history and constitutional principle, they should do it. But I am talking political strategy, it's all going to be very interesting.


    Do like the Senate - let Trump speak, but no witnesses, no cameras.


    here's some opining on the SOTU:



    impt. cavaet, you can't trust the current approval ratings polls:

    Flagging this again: We're seeing very large differences in Trump's approval ratings by poll mode right now — perhaps the biggest of his presidency so far. We have some suggestive evidence that partisan non-response bias is artificially inflating his numbers in some phone polls. pic.twitter.com/H89RFXn47s

    — G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) February 5, 2020

    Tweeter knows his stuft: Data-driven journalist @TheEconomist. Mostly cover polls, elections & political science. Past @pewmethods @UTAustin

    then also his ratings went down on SOTU:

     


    Plus Vindman's brother was fired too, an amazing case if family retribution.


    Swings who know what high unemployment is like will think twice about voting against Trump even if they have come to hate him:


    "Swings" huh? Seriously?

    You are referring to a group of Americans as "swings" ... while simultaneously claiming to understand, with authority, this (apparently homogenous?) group's motivations and voting proclivities?

    Hmmmmmm.


    I think the reference to "swings" was not to a group, per se, but a bloc of voters not committed by other considerations. So, the opposite of what you said.


    not homogenous by very definition, they go back and forth, back and forth, like actual swings

    learn to read and you'll see by the construction of my sentence, I was opining about a subset of this group of people who had a certain priority




    Fox News latest poll going with your headline:


    He doesn't need a popular vote majority. But that's never been the game.

    What Trump *does* need is an electoral college majority. Just like every presidential candidate always has.

    And on that front, do you really think Trump going to win in Michigan again? Really? After figuratively telling them to drop-dead (with literal consequences) and delivering NOTHING from the national stockpile to assist the state? And look what just happened in Wisconsin not a few days ago.

    Trump maybe still has a chance in Ohio, but he has objectively lost crucial states at this point ... and has not expanded his map one iota. How does he pull it off? He's certainly not taking Nevada. Trump's path to winning the EC is increasingly more fraught than his path to winning the popular vote.

    I'm not entirely sure what your point here is. Are you implying that Democrats will manage to lose the EC again and whine because they don't like the long-established rules ... or are you implying that Trump might lose the EC and still try to hold on to the presidency somehow?


    He will steal the election, brazenly.

    He doesn't care about the rules or reputation - he will whine until he gets enough veneer to satisfy his base, even if they're 10% - if it's an obvious coup, they still won't care. Winning is everything.

    Rig voting machines, suspend Congress, create special pandemic rules to be rubber stamped by the Supreme Court, call out the National Guard, cancel voter registrations for large swathes assumed to be Democrat, disqualify New York electoral votes - it's all good. He will claim he did it to save the Republic.

    He is forming an illegal oil cartel to boost gas prices for Putin and MBS at the expense of the US - and the party is cool with that. There are *zero* norms that they care about. Winning is all.



    New and different wakeup. Makes a good case that is one fear that now needs to go away, that we've become irrationally afraid of this. The notion that he is bound for four more years is pure superstition.


    Krugman thinking more along the lines of the straw that breaks the camel's back

     


    just retweeted by Jeffrey Gettleman, an ace boots-on-the-ground-type reporter, who has probably never covered a single press conference in his life and doesn't "do" political coverage either:






    Majority is not 50% in other cases.

     

    In their systems of govt they have more than just 2 parties with politicians on their Federal level.

     

    Majority is having the most seats. Say if the US was 3 party and there is 100 US Senators. If Democrats have 45, Republicans 40 and Libertarians 15 the majority would be Democrats at 45%.

     


    That's called a "Plurality", not a majority. BTW, Lincoln was elected with <40% of the vote, as a curiosity (3 other candidates to split with).

    Who are you?



    Law & Order wins - Ppl forget Covid & extorting Ukraine & bonesawing a reporter & even a country massively out of business. Short attention spans, highly forgiving for politicuans they chose. No one likes to admit they made a mistake.

    I still agree with the 1 comment that Obama was way too careful delivering for Black people - both for symbolism And a missed opportunity to improve things. Why didnt Holder do more to clean up the police?


    lookit the cyncism herein; Trump got hurt bad on this metric June 13-16, but Joe doesn't fare that well either:

    Do you think Donald Trump cares about people like you?
    Yes 37% (-20)
    No 57%
    .
    Do you think Joe Biden cares about people like you?
    Yes 47% (+6)
    No 41%@FoxNews 6/13-16https://t.co/9gBY9Lqvu4

    — Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) June 19, 2020

    After watching that video, I bet "cares about a person like me" doesn't really affect vote that much as it once did; they think about the eventual results brought about, more think on whether results "will be good for a person like me." I do have family members that have expressed that notion for quite some time, but I thought atypical outliers.

    PS. For some things, I think Fox polls are good to look at! 


    which reminds me, that guy also said Obama cared more about the immigrants, and I betcha that is going to rear up again big time when the unemployment checks and PPP checks start disappearing and the unemployment rate is still way up there...


    Except Covid's brought immigration to a halt while focusing people on problems the rest of the world's having, and largely the Wall's been a joke. If that's how Trump supporters might see it. I dont think Its a big win for him, but i'm trying to view that objectively - hard to do. What does NASCAR foretell? It Will be harder to just blame "the other", not that most blacks are immigrants, So there could logically be differentiation. But the Indian mother-and-daughter piecing together their pawnshop, the mixed black-Hispanic couple attacked in their small salon, the Black security guy killed by looters... I dont think this chaos has been a big marketing success for the anti-immigration crowd. Even the anti-Chinese blame game has stalled.



    Well, he got some more sleep (I think the crowing about his supposedly dejected look last night while deplaning is a bit too much wishful thinking, he's got a bedroom on the plane and looked to me like he was probably just woken up)

    and

    I see he's a Republican again and still tweeting about LAW AND ORDER

    The Democrat House wants to pass a Bill this week that will destroy our police. Republican Congressmen & Congresswomen will hopefully fight hard to defeat it. We must protect and cherish our police, they keep us safe!

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2020

    as he did yesterday:

    Republicans are the party of LIBERTY, EQUALITY and JUSTICE for ALL. We are the Party of Abraham Lincoln and the party of LAW AND ORDER! pic.twitter.com/H6Qnf6J3GB

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2020

    When can we expect to see Willie Horton is what this enquiring mind wants to know.

     


    p.s. a reminder of this most excellent analysis by a woman who really knows her stuff

    POLLS SHOW STRONG SUPPORT FOR THE PROTESTS — AND ALSO FOR HOW POLICE HANDLED THEM

    By artappraiser on Sun, 06/14/2020 - 2:17am |

    Americans have a history of supporting causes in the abstract, then retreating.

    By Andrea Benjamin @ WashingtonPost.com, June 11. She is an associate professor of African and African American studies at the University of Oklahoma, is the author of "Racial Coalition Building in Local Elections: Elite Cues and Cross-Ethnic Voting."

    see link for excerpt


    Starting to see a lot of tweets complaining about Dem local governments not doing anything about maintaining LAW AND ORDER concerning the nearly nightly anti-statue mob fests across the country. It's definitely both an official conservative Talking Point (noticed Newt and Dan Crenshaw hot on it yesterday and Tim Cotton and Trump today) but there also seem to be a lot of just super irritated people about thinking you can just vandalize publicly owned stuff for weeks on end without going through a process to change the public stuff

    What the hell is happening to our country? Why are these worthless Democrat city and state officials allowing lawlessness and destruction of public property? Restore law and order! https://t.co/4ddNjSgUNP

    — Fernando Amandi Sr. (@FernandoAmandi) June 23, 2020

    If you want to remove statues, get your city council to do so lawfully (or persuade private institutions to do so). Lincoln was right: mob rule is dangerous, and "there is something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country."

    — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) June 20, 2020

    Curious (not?) I notice that Russia Today just loves the stories, they grab whatever videos they can find right away (hmmmm...)

     

    #Protesters try to pull down Andrew Jackson statue in Washington DC https://t.co/ywPGLywPir pic.twitter.com/biNRiC8dby

    (@RT_com) June 23, 2020

    Vandalism every night plus fireworks every night plus pandemic -- not a good thing for most people's nerves.

    I do think it would be a good idea for Dems in the House to do something to keep college-age kids (leftie & otherwise) out of trouble and pleasing Putin. Like put them to work ala FDR and the CCC, get Greta to promote joining in order to work on saving the environment?

    Is good for Trump, just that simple.

    P.S. Brits definitely going strongly with "you have to do this lawfully" thing, they put protective boxes around lots of the statues and now they're doing this:

    These are the people wanted in connection with the vandalism we saw recently in #Bristol - please inform Police if you know who they are https://t.co/ilkwbbcg6M

    — Susan Hall AM (@Councillorsuzie) June 22, 2020

     


    was a great speech, still a great speech--vandalizing CNN does what exactly?

    https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/05/30/keisha-lance-bottoms-full-address-atlanta-protests-vpx.wgcl

     


    What good is being done here in this scene?


    Why "two women"? There's also a Guy much Closer, And looks like a 2nd Guy in the background.


    oh the guy that tweeted it is probably sexist. So what, that's a diversion here,  all 4 of them are ridiculous. What are they doing there, what is their cause? Anarchy against the government authority? To illegally pull down a statue of the 7th president? To scream at cops? They probably prefer to use a pronoun that would surprise anyways. The video itself is the thing. Americans in general just won't like this, it's arrogant childish nonsense and a lot of these statue protesters now have totally co-opted BLM for their anti-colonialist quest that they just learned about in Colonialism 101 before coronavirus shut down the ability to take Colonialism 102 .

    Like the professor warned, the public will turn on a dime if the protests aren't peaceful, especially if the Dems don't speak up soon and silly co-opters like that group. There's worse ones out there aren't even anti-colonialists, just taking advantage of the ability to vandalize public property for the hell of it or because they have some grudge against a celebrity depicted. It's way outta control. Every night there's one. They've got to start going through proper channels if they really care (like with the TR statue) and stop the random vandalism and calling the media to come see their performance....


    Got distracted by this story on the Fox reporter's feed:

    http://inthesetimes.com/article/21364/commie-cadet-spenser-rapone-social...


    Why bother with one statue? Wreck the church some more, try to tear it down, get to yell at some cops for national coverage, to do what,  piss off Trump, give GOP more talking points?

    and Andy, he's still here:

    It's so stupid, makes it hard to believe it's not one of those Russian ops.

     




    "Spoilage"

    (yeah, i'm not a huge Palast fan, but...)

    https://www.gregpalast.com/1913369-ballots-thrown-away/


    Though others may think it positive, I find this poll result for Wisconsin scary close

    I badly wish that Biden would do a "sister souljah" moment towards the radical left protesters, looters and nihilists. Now with rising crime, rising gun ownership and divisiveness is not the time to be stressing "defund the police". It's the last thing to be stressing. Maybe talking making them more effective at fighting crime, that would be okay. And don't ally with the woke police who aim to make people feel guilty about anything they say, but I think he's already got that, always did,partly what makes him a good candidate.



    I see this having very little effect on Wisconsin voters. Foreign policy is not much of a concern. I simply can't imagine anyone I know or ever knew caring two hoots about this especially if my eyes glaze over reading about it, theirs surely would.

    As far as the majority white  Wisconsin populace that elected Johnson, he must be doing fine as far as they are concerned as they re-elected him and he defeated Russ Feingold, who they used to love, two times.

    I don't see much outrage coming if they knew, which most probably don't. Again I don't see Wisconsinites caring about this. More care about spending too much on foreign entanglements, foreign aid, and too much on defense (Pentagon elites as bad as any other kind.)

    And any disinfo. Trump leaners would get from Russian trolls would be negligible, would be more from Fox News Hannity and Limbaugh who don't need much Russian help to spin shit.

     As for Milwaukee blacks, a reminder that this is their world, and Milwaukee city & county and surrounding burbs are  already as about as divisive as one could get segregation wise before Trump was in the picture.  Like total segregation. And both sides enable it to the max. The black culture would get any disinfo. word of mouth, or from celebs they are fans of, not so much from political internet. There's two cultures there in Milwaukee and they do not mix. Any blacks who manage to get a good education and avoid prison or multiple pregnancy while young get out and go elsewhere.

    A reminder that though there is a Democratic governor, both state legislative houses are majority Republican. Here's the main thing: the rest of the state does not want to become like Milwaukee. (And certainly not like the much more radical Madison.) In all ways.

    Milwaukee government alderman etc. is very liberal p.c. and woke. (And was so for decades before woke became a word.) This is not appreciated by the Wisconsin populace overall, they do not like to have to come up with the taxes to pay for all the "handouts".

    Waukesha  and Waukesha county is the Milwaukee exurb (it's growth is due to white flight) to watch. They are swingy.

    The state as a whole is just not liberal! Just not a world that fits in any shape or form. They like their Democrats sensible, down to earth, not liberal, Reagan Dem style though not as hard and fast as Michigan. Joe does fit the bill I've got to say. Plenty of them voted for Obama both times, another sensible, not liberal type of guy. The "no drama" thing a big plus as well I would imagine. (Obama's grandparents that helped raise him were actually sounded like Wisconsin type people).


    Good news is that Nate Silver says don't bet on it. But that's for now, of course:


    It says 3 times out of 10 Trump wins. That's not a bad bet overall, esp. if you have a gut feeling, insider knowledge, or faith in the DHS to do the wrong thing. Continue to be afraid.




    Better 10 points down - Biden has to win by 5 or they'll use any closeness to challenge and overturn, and who knows what they have for internet-connected voting machines that will never be audited. Thread:


    Why those old people tweets above hit me, and why I stressed the "law and order" thing in a couple blog posts, it's here too:

    I think of oceankat's parents being scared of riots and looting in FL. It's a meme that I think still sells with swing voters in swing states (as well as suburbans) to the point where they switch in the voting booth, it's a gut reaction, emotional, not rational.

    I think Joe is doing the right thing to counteract that so far, but I wonder about downticket, the blue wave thing may not materialize like it seems right now if things get worse and there are more Kim Klacik types. 

    I can't stress enought the point of my own blue city turning against having Dem mayors for many terms. Crime and corruptions is why, it's just that simple.

    As creepy as the NYPD is, they were the first to reduce crime rates drastically so that NYC was safer than nearly any other city. NYC giving up on Dem management is something too many like to ignore. It's clearcut why that is. Look at how unpopular the current mayor has become. We give them a chance and they fail over and over an over, rinse and repeat. Bloomberg a pill and a nanny but he restored the city only to fall apart again with bad Covid management. Gonna be a tough one recovering from this...


    Bet the 43% of Republicans here are old people:

    It's simply about placing all life over money. Same as crime rate. Same as not approving of Geo. Floyd video type behavior from cops, which doesn't necessarily mean: defund the police for chrissakes.


    just more evidence that the Klacik ad and those funding her are mainly about getting the votes of older people frightened about crime and urban decay:


    Aunt Crabby tweets similar to Gregg Smith and Grandmother Courage


    Please don't be so judgmental. "Voters who believe in snake spirits or self-medicate bleach" is a more respectful way of framing the question. College isn't for everyone.


    Interesting that Trumpies fear exactly the same thing from the election that many Dems do:

    If Trump wins, Democrats do not intend to respect the result. “Not my president”. They did not respect the result last time, and even less will they respect it this time

    from 



    Nate Silver saying "wake up, he doesn't need a majority" as of today:

     


    Selective voting wait lines


    BUT PP, what swing states would that impact though? We know if the black vote turnout in Milwaukee had been larger in 2016, Hillary might have won Wisconsin. But where else? Sad and unfair as it is, in many states such things would not matter as to presidential results. Would that even matter in AZ which is being talked about as a possible swing?

    I've read that its hard to get out the Hispanic vote in TX, that it's really hard, so such things might work there.

    I think there is a reason that you read so much political operative talk about white suburban women, that is because they have studied the situation and that's a demographic that makes a diff. While minority vote, not so much.

    Again, downticket is way different. But for pres., brutal analysis, does minority vote really matter that much to put so much effort into discouraging it?

    Splain to me why you think this is a Trump conspiracy, why it would matter so much to Trump to do this. I think it is more regional, state and local.

    Nate Silver added this related tweet:


    I didn't say it was a Trump conspiracy - the GOP's been doing this for decades. And it doesn't have to be swing states, though it can keep some like Georgia & NC from getting closer to swing. Instilling hopelessness is part of the model.


    ok thanks for clearing it up


    Here ya go, Dexter's on it, used to inform us on inside politics of Iraq & Afghanistan, now he's digging into a stranger, more foreign place:

    Who Gets to Vote in Florida?

    With the election hanging in the balance, Republican leaders continue a long fight over voting rights.

    By Dexter Filkins @ NewYorker.com, for Sept. 7 issue.

    Long, I haven't started it yet.


    Hidden Trump voters could have big November impact

    Guest op-ed byvJ.T. YOUNG @ TheHill.com— 09/02/20 11:30 AM EDT

    Trump supporters are far more likely to hide their preference in polls. This was the finding of recent research that investigated this increasingly prevalent assumption. If true in even small percentages, an imposing Trump surge could be hiding within the electorate.  

    There is growing suspicion that Trump supporters are not divulging their preferences to pollsters. This would hardly be surprising considering the left’s current cancel culture climate.  

    Five years of vituperation has increasingly turned violent. There are daily occurrences for those willing to objectively look at the riots occurring in big cities across America. Even high-profile people are not immune, as Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s narrow escape outside the White House following President Trump’s acceptance speech demonstrated. It is logical that ordinary Americans could feel vulnerable.   

    To test this theory, CloudResearch recently sampled American voters in search of what they term “shy voters.” Their results show that Trump supporters were “significantly more reluctant to share their opinions on phone surveys compared to Biden supporters.” Almost 12 percent of Republicans and nearly 11 percent of Independents, were also almost twice as likely to be reticent than Democrats (about 5 percent).  

    These seemingly small percentages could have major November implications. For illustration of roughly how big, look at 2016 exit polling.   

    In the last presidential election, 36 percent of voters were Democrats, while 33 percent were Republicans and 31 percent were Independents. Applying CloudResearch’s “shy voter” percentages to each group yields 9 percent of the electorate as not giving their true candidate preferences.   

    However, those roughly one in 11 reticent voters are not, as CloudResearch discovered, evenly distributed between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Instead, they run about 2-to-1 in Trump’s favor. On the net, they come out to around a 3 percent hidden “Trump bump.”  [....]


    Shy voters may be discussing military service and insults this long weekend. Perhaps will shift attention from "Law and Order" issues.


    It actually shocks me that it means so much to so many to do the "respect our troops" thing, and not just the unwashed but lots of elites.That's why a lot of the tweets and reaction interest me, trying to get a handle on something i thought was gone. GuessI read too many blogs in the early 2000's that screamed that our troops are crusaders, babykillers and torturers and let it overinfluence me, got the wrong impression about the populace at large.

    It could have never gone away but I have an inkling the Obama's attitude helped revive "respect our troops" feelings among many.

    Anyhow, yeah, this could be the thing. He's got time, though, to do all kinds of bullshit spectacle shows to rectify his image.

    And throw this in--which I haven't mentioned before, but comes to mind. I watched parts of the videos they did of him talking with various "ordinary people" at the White House for the RNC convention. It was very blatant that he was getting training from someone about how to look mild mannered and kind and interested in others. It seemed phony and stilted to me, but it was certainly done well enough to counter any doubts that once true believers have had.


    p.s. I can't imagine back in the old days of Iraq war 2 anyone on the left being upset by reports that "Stars and Stripes" was being shut down. Was more like it was an evil arm of the administration that made sure the troops were brainwashed.


    WWII is totally the "done good things" war. Korean also for those who know about it. Even with Vietnam, no one knew if it was a noble war or not - still don't. (the Domino Theory was accurate - China failed, pivoted with Deng Xiao Peng to making money instead.). Obama partly recouped the Iraq War reputation with the ISIS operation. But I remember being in a US airport near some holiday and it was flooded with troops in their way home for a few days. It shocked me to think how many there were in what was a minor war overall. But tell any of their mothers or fathers that they're "losers". The GOP is based on old people outlook, even where they're young. This steps on that big time.

    Re Stars and Stripes, they're fairly straightforward and open, surprisingly, which is why conservatives pushed for Rush and Fox News to brainwash the troops where they could.


    Yes, i know about Stars and Stripes, I think it's actually a pretty damn good paper, on the first news group I participated in, 2003-2005, Sean Paul Kelly's The Agonist, me and one other news junkie (who's ex was in the military, and they were still friendly, so she was a "military family") would post from it because it would have actual facts about incidents. And I remember even more the grief we would catch from posting from it. Only Al Jazeera had the real truth about the crusader actiivties, you see..the more outrage the better. Remember the picture of the little Iraqi girl screaming when her parents were shot? A fav for the emotional effect of all American crusaders = evil. And not to forget from that time, Ms. Judith Miller and her antics made posting NYTimes articles nearly as suspect as Stars and Stripes..


    on your other point, I saw an intriguing related comment by Yglesias yesterday, almost posted it then, went back to find it now

    in doing so, I had to scroll past tons of other tweets he did today, among other stuff, he jumped hot an heavy on the Trump flotilla thing, it really inspired him...surprise


    flotillas, caravans, street marches and Washington Mall parades - the Trump Years as fanfare for the uncommon man


    Delusions from reality that he manages to get everyone involved in. Everyone is watching and arguing abot the man in front of the curtain and the shows he puts on, while, as Yglesias notes, reality is still going on behind the curtain.


    Beto sez:


    I take this as Frank Luntz pointing out that it's looking like the Biden campaign knows what they need to do and are not working on delusionary presumptions:

    Joe Biden is telling his Facebook fans that they’re currently losing in Michigan. pic.twitter.com/RHCwzQP5KE

    — Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) September 6, 2020

    Biden’s campaign is citing this @Trafalgar_Group poll as its reference. https://t.co/oatVuLpuf1

    — Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) September 6, 2020


    What's his message? Where's his visibility?



    A bit confused. It's wrong,against the law what they did, BUT the way I read it is that non-voters were purged, 

    Put more simply, stripping people of their right to vote because they chose not to is unconstitutional.

    so how does that equate to what Mark Eliot says, stealing that election, if these people wouldn't have voted anyways? Article doesn't give any examples of those people trying to vote and being told they were no longer registered because they hadn't returned a verifying postcard. There may have been some but I don't see it here. Proof of "stealing the election" is in the (probably much smaller) number of those purged who then tried to vote. Is this why Stacey Abrams gave in? Because it became clear a lot of those people didn't try to vote?

    I get the concern for the presidential election, as many of these people might be interested enough to vote and find too late that they are no longer registered, but I don't see it in this one.


    So the action taken was unconstitutional?

    If the action was unconstitutional, that is the bottom line.

    Edit to Add:

    Stacey Abrams formed Fair Fight to combat voter suppression. Voter purges, clouding purges on "nonvoters" is one thing the organization opposes.

    https://www.npr.org/2020/02/21/806103885/stacey-abrams-spearheads-fair-fight-a-campaign-against-voter-suppression


    of course, doh.. As is often the case, you are totally diverting from what I was trying to discuss with PP to turn a thread towards what you are interested in and want to lecture Dagblog about because we are sooo stupid whypipple, perhaps make me into a straw man to argue about your favorite outrage.  Right now I am trying to ask him not you what in the article proves this particular election was stolen if most of those people weren't going to vote?


    Sigh

    State officials claimed that people removed from the voter rolls for inactivity had likely died or moved away. But an APM Reports investigation found tens of thousands who hadn't — and still wanted to vote.

     

    On Election Day 2018, James Baiye II drove to Lucerne Baptist Church in the same suburban Atlanta neighborhood where he'd been registered to vote for most of his adult life. He dropped his brother and elderly mother at the front door, parked the car and got in line. Though he'd been registered for years, the 31-year-old African American hadn't been a frequent voter. He'd spent a few years playing football at a junior college in North Carolina. In 2012, Baiye says, he requested an absentee ballot but there's no record of it in the state's voter file. In fact, he hadn't cast an in-person ballot since 2008, when Barack Obama first ran for president. 

    This year was different. He'd become excited about candidacy of Stacey Abrams, the Democrat who was vying to become Georgia's first African-American governor, and the nation's first-ever black woman to lead a U.S. state. It wasn't Abrams' race that swayed Baiye, he said, but rather her pledge to run the government differently. "A lot of being there for the people," he said. "I just wanted to see her succeed."

    But when Baiye finally reached the front of the line, there was a problem. Poll workers couldn't find his name on their list of registered voters. This was puzzling: Baiye is a citizen, he wasn't a felon, and he hadn't moved.

    What Baiye didn't know was he'd been caught up in one of the most hotly debated campaign issues in Georgia. It turned out that a year earlier Baiye had been removed from the voter rolls in a purge led by the office of Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who was running for governor against Abrams. 

    On a single day in late July 2017, Kemp's office had removed from the rolls 560,000 Georgians who had been flagged because they'd skipped one too many elections. Abrams would later call the purge the "use-it-or-lose-it scheme." An APM Reports investigation last year estimated 107,000 of the people purged under the policy would otherwise have been eligible to vote last year, just like Baiye

     

    https://www.apmreports.org/story/2019/10/29/georgia-voting-registration-records-removed


    As one part:

    Of the more than 300,000 names that were purged from the rolls – nearly four percent of the total number of registered voters in the state – the study discovered that “198,351 Georgia voters who supposedly moved from their registration addresses who, in fact, have not moved at all, and therefore were wrongly purged, a 63.3% error rate.” This is a conservative estimate, however, because the report “left out of this list those voters whose addresses we were unable to confirm,” the ACLU explains.

    Looking at the data another way: two out of three – 2/3 or 66% — of the state’s list remained at the address where they are registered.”

     


    AA is right. It's not rigging the election, it's using their executive power to game the system to disenfranchise potential voters in order to win the election.

    Republicans are masters of gaming the system. Trump is the greatest historic best at gaming, and undermining, the system.  Which is why he is so bigly historically loved by Republicans.


    Yeah, that's what I was getting at, it's a long term thing. Not like clear evidence where you can say "aha, they riggged this election." Make it even harder, and fewer and fewer of those people will ever vote. It's to make sure only elites who have time to follow all the procedures. In a way, it's back to the landowner thing of the early Republic, people with "wealth" and status.

    The opposite is systems that require everyone to vote or they get fined! With that, more of those with less resources will vote than the other way around, they can't afford not to.


    Under the Communists they'd go around in each village to make sure everyone had voted. There's one funny story of the village idiot slipping out the back and running across a field... Every vote counts.


    I didn't listen. May not. It will change and hopefully they'll do something written. Just thought I'd plop it here since I saw it.



    cross-link: A BIG CHUNK OF PEOPLE OF COLOR AND WHITE PEOPLE WITH DEGREES ARE BEHIND TRUMP

    By Perry Bacon, Jr. @ FiveThirtyEight.com, Sept. 8



    In regards to the "holding back", Strzok speaks of it only as as a set of decisions made by a foreign power.

    But if it was a collusion in the usual way people work together, Trump's team may have told them to back off.

    Once something can be a little like something it can be a lot of like something. The crabbed way we gather evidence has no relation to the world of getting things done.



    Durham and Barr should switch facial hair every other day.


    Nate Silver:



    Texans for Trump, even has more minorities there than elsewhere:

    Lowish non-white numbers for Biden in Texas — 79-19% with black voters, 51-43% for Hispanic

    — Conor Sen (@conorsen) September 24, 2020

    dupe deleted

     


    lots of people thinking like you in mid-Sept., PP:


    Phil says don't get your knickers in a twist about the past


    Russian election stealing alert


    No, early votes aren't safe


    $1bill for Karl Rove - WATCH OUT!


    just to feed your paranoia, what's life without a little anxiety:


    Why wasn't it stolen?

    Fired election cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs appeared Sunday night on “60 Minutes” to publicly dispel the “nonsense” flowing from the Trump campaign team about voting machine manipulation.

    His agency saw no evidence of system hacking or compromise “on, before, or after Nov. 3,” he told Scott Pelly of CBS.

    With 95 percent of 2020 ballots on paper (up from 82% in 2016), there is an auditable paper trail in place to reveal any manipulation of machine counts.

    “That gives you the ability to prove that there was no malicious algorithm or hacked software that adjusted the tally of the vote,” Krebs said. Hand recounts in Georgia confirmed machine tallies there.

    “And that tells you what?” Pelly asked.

    “That tells you that there was no manipulation of the vote on the machine count side.”

    If there was some foreign algorithm flipping votes, it did not work. Most likely, it did not exist, Krebs said. Claims by Rudy Giuliani and the president’s legal paper tigers are “farcical.”


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