The October 15, 2016 Thread

Filed in National by on October 15, 2016

PRESIDENT
NATIONAL–Pew Research–CLINTON 53, Trump 44
FLORIDA–PPP–CLINTON 46, Trump 42
NEVADA–8 News Now–CLINTON 43, Trump 41
NEW HAMPSHIRE–WBUR/MassINC–CLINTON 41, Trump 38
OREGON–SurveyUSA–CLINTON 48, Trump 38
INDIANA–Monmouth–TRUMP 45, Clinton 41

The New York Times says Trump’s Heated Rhetoric Has No Precedent: “On Thursday and Friday alone, Mr. Trump unleashed a barrage of near-apocalyptic warnings about the potential destruction of the country, broad accusations about the illegitimacy of American democracy, and crude innuendo about his opponent that is almost without precedent in modern presidential history.”

“He warned that Hillary Clinton was conspiring with financiers to destroy American sovereignty, claimed the fate of civilization depended on his victory and ridiculed the appearance of the one of the women accusing him of sexual harassment, while also deriding Mrs. Clinton’s looks and saying she ought to be in prison. He also said the presidential election amounted to ‘a big ugly lie.’”

“While delighting his partisans, Mr. Trump’s rhetorical shooting spree has enraged Democrats and unnerved many Republicans, who believe he is acting out a political death wish.”

Jeet Heer says Trump is going to tear everything down with him:

Trump has decided on a “burn it down” strategy because that’s the one way he can hope to keep together his splintering Republican Party support. Which tells us two things: One, Trump has given up hopes of appealing to a wider electorate. Two, his pitch, from here on out, will be a purely negative one.

Although Trump might still occasionally mouth the slogan “Make America Great Again,” his real message now is “Punish Our Enemies.” Even when he repeats his greatest hits (promising extreme vetting of refugees and declaring that inner cities are hell), his voice had an angrier edge.

Trump was never a happy warrior, exactly, but he had some zest in the primaries. There was a hearty gusto in the way he insulted Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio. That gusto was gone tonight, replaced by pure agitation and irritation.

Brian Beutler noticed something: the Hillary Clinton / Barack Obama offer to “normal” Republicans has expired. Now they are all Trumpicans.

Last week, Palmieri was even more specific, telling reporters, “One thing that we would note is people like John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, Rob Portman, Congressman [Joe] Heck, we think they have a lot to answer for. These are leaders of the Republican Party that legitimized Donald Trump’s candidacy, that propped him up a number of times. Kelly Ayotte herself has said on 30 different occasions that she supports him, she said as recently as a week ago that he was a role model.”

The unambiguous message is that Clinton’s offer not to treat Trump as a totem of the Republican Party has expired. Obama underscored the shift in strategy this week when he upbraided these Republicans for sticking with Trump through disgrace after disgrace. “Why’d it take so long for some of them to finally walk away?” heasked. The Democratic super PAC Priorities USA has seemingly picked up these signals and will begin airing ads in Senate battlegrounds in the coming days.

Clinton’s conservative critics will surely object that her magnanimous-sounding offer was always a feint. But consider that until the Republican Party descended into total chaos, Republican candidates were doing a pretty good job decoupling themselves from Trump without much Democratic resistance. Incumbent GOP senators in every competitive state were running significantly ahead of him, aided in some measure by Clinton’s consistent message that Trump is an altogether different beast.

The GOP’s reaction to the Trump tape created the perfect occasion for phasing out this overly generous gesture, because it laid bare the devil’s bargain Republicans made this past summer.

Jeet Heer asks, what if losing the election makes Trump stronger?

President Trump would face, for perhaps the first time in his life, an environment in which the law—not his word—is the law. Top military and intelligence officials have already vowed to disobey Trump if he ordered them to commit war crimes, as he has promised to do. Try to imagine Trump negotiating the finer points of public policy, even with a Republican-dominated Congress or Senate. His loyal followers will become disillusioned because he will be unable to deliver on his promises to build a wall and deport everyone without documentation and make the rest of the world bow before America’s might. Or they will become disillusioned because he won’t even try to deliver on his promises, which were nothing but lies in the first place. Or they will become disillusioned because their entire political philosophy requires them to reject the very existence of government, and Trump will be the CEO of the world’s most powerful government. Whatever the scenario, a single term beckons—assuming that Trump can evade impeachment that long. In Trump’s victory lies the defeat of Trumpism, as his wish-fulfillment agenda comes crashing, finally and inevitably, to earth.
But a narrow loss would hold no such pitfalls for Trump. Robbed by Crooked Hillary and a rigged election, undermined by politically correct wusses and Mexican rapists, Trump will don the mantle of martyrdom. Nothing is more central to Trump’s brand than a sense of grievance, and nothing will make him and his followers feel more righteously aggrieved than losing to Hillary Clinton in a close election. In defeat, his power and appeal will grow a thousandfold.
Even worse, that sense of grievance may find its ultimate expression in the form of TrumpTV. Free from the responsibilities and limitations of the presidency, Trump would be his new channel’s greatest star, a pretender-president expounding in prime time from a mock Oval Office. Imagine the network’s all-star lineup, personally recruited by Roger Ailes and Steven Bannon: Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter. Trump will be president in the same way he is a successful businessman: He will play one on TV. The ultimate source of his power has always been ratings, and a narrow defeat by Hillary Clinton will send his ratings through the roof, enabling him to proclaim his message more loudly than ever.

And make no mistake what that message will be: the promotion of civil insurrection, and perhaps even race war. If Trump loses, it will be because his base—white men, many of them without a college education—is now outnumbered by racial minorities and college-educated women. Trump’s defeat, coming after Barack Obama’s two terms, would affirm that white men are no longer guaranteed what they consider to be their rightful place at the center of national politics. Stripped of their political and social hegemony, they will increasingly resort to violence to maintain their hold on power.

Martin Longman:

If the Republicans do hang on to a narrower majority in the House and Paul Ryan seeks and gains the Speaker’s gavel again in the next Congress, he’ll immediately discover that he simply cannot pass spending bills without resorting to mostly Democratic votes, which will lead rather quickly to the same situation that Boehner found himself in where he was constantly under threat of being deposed. Ryan surely knows all this.

As a result, I doubt Ryan would seek the speakership, doubt that he’d get it if he did seek it, and doubt that he’d keep it if he did get it.

A better result for the GOP would be to lose control of both houses of Congress so that they will not have any responsibility for governing and can go back to being a minority oppositional party. But, if they are so unlucky to win a majority in the House, they’ll discover (whoever they choose for Speaker) that the real majority and the real power isn’t formed by R’s and D’s but by the majority that is actually willing to pass appropriations and keep the government’s doors open. And that majority simply won’t be made up of wholly Republicans in the next Congress or for the foreseeable future. Regardless of what the voters decide, the GOP is incapable of being a governing party.

Mitt Romney said in a podcast interview that he didn’t know how the Republican party could be put back together after this election.

It’s hard for me to gauge what would happen if Mr. Trump were to lose. I think it’s more likely he’ll lose than not. If he were to win, I think my party would be particularly troubled between those who were strong supporters of Mr. Trump and a smaller number at that stage who would be wanting to go in a different direction. But if he were to lose, then I think there are going to be many, many people who still carry his banner — a banner, if you will, of anger, resentment, wanting dramatic change, different policies on immigration and trade than we have typically adopted as a party versus those who are the traditional, more mainstream Republicans.

Whether they can come back together again or not is a darn good question. I happen to think that for that to happen requires a person of unusual skill: a Churchill, an Eisenhower, an individual who’s able to step forward, a Reagan, who’s able to step forward and bring people together.

Cracked has a great, long sympathetic piece on rural America’s view of the elite and city folk, well worth a read if you want to understand Trump voters feeling left behind:

How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind

As a kid, visiting Chicago was like, well, Katniss visiting the capital. Or like Zoey visiting the city of the future in this ridiculous book. “Their ways are strange.”

And the whole goddamned world revolves around them.

Every TV show is about LA or New York, maybe with some Chicago or Baltimore thrown in. When they did make a show about us, we were jokes — either wide-eyed, naive fluffballs (Parks And Recreation, and before that, Newhart) or filthy murderous mutants (True Detective, and before that, Deliverance). You could feel the arrogance from hundreds of miles away.

Michelle Cottle at the Atlantic asks what is going to happen to Trump die-hards after November 8?

Short answer: nothing good.

Now, I’m not talking about what his supporters will do to the GOP if their hero flames out—which seems increasingly likely. I leave it to party leaders to angst over that looming horror show.

Rather, I’m thinking of the sad state in which Trump will leave his followers. Because, make no mistake, no matter how badly he behaves, Trump will end this race with his world more or less intact. Sure, he may lose some money and some friends and some invitations to Upper East Side dinner parties. But he will remain rich and privileged and more famous than ever, and, as a result, he will be largely insulated from the fallout of his latest exercise in self-promotion.

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  1. puck says:
    October 15, 2016 at 8:28 am

    After the election the deplorables will still be deplorable. But I don’t see Trump as a leader. He will sulk, and attempt to shore up his business empire.Notice his kids have been relatively silent lately. They must have their hands full keeping the business afloat.

    If he starts some kind of alt-right TV network, I think it starts with instant lack of credibility. I think Trump TV will be focused more on entertainment.

  2. Delaware Dem says:
    October 15, 2016 at 8:30 am

    A couple things will happen to Trump in a pretty short order: Melania will divorce him; Trump and or his business will file for bankruptcy, and the Trump kids will become reality stars.

  3. Mitch Crane says:
    October 15, 2016 at 9:32 am

    Alexandra Petri has discovered and revealed the truth about Hillary in her blog post in today’s Washington Post. A must read:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2016/10/14/the-hideous-diabolical-truth-about-hillary-clinton/?utm_term=.5d7e5574c7fa

  4. Jason330 says:
    October 15, 2016 at 11:21 am

    “These books will help you hate Hillary Clinton, but only if you already do”

    That embedded link in Cranes linked to story kind of says it all.

  5. Prop Joe says:
    October 15, 2016 at 12:21 pm

    Normally, a high-quality piece of satire like Petri’s would leave me in stitches. However, I’m finding it hard to laugh in any way at the piece given the fact that there is a significant number of Americans who would actually say with full faith and conviction that what Petri wrote is 100% the truth.

  6. Al says:
    October 15, 2016 at 12:27 pm

    Powerful article.

  7. anonymous says:
    October 15, 2016 at 2:01 pm

    Here’s a stunning quote from a HuffPo story. The source is identified only as a “one top Republican fund-raiser”:

    “O’Reilly interviewed him and threw him 15 softballs that he should have hit out of the park and what does he do? He sits there and stares and denounces [Paul] Ryan and McCain. I was watching with interest and my wife turned to me and said: ‘I don’t know if I could vote for him.’ I said, ‘You’re voting for him!’ But it went through my mind: What if Putin insults him? Does he drop a bomb on Moscow or something? I’m not sure he is stable.”

    When asked how he could possibly vote for someone he thought might be unstable, he said, “I’m voting against her because I can’t stand the woman. But I think he is a jackass and I don’t think he’s mentally balanced.”

    So he would rather have an unstable man than a capable woman whose agenda differs from his. This is quite an admission from a poobah in a party that likes to portray itself as the “conservative” one.

  8. Liberal Elite says:
    October 15, 2016 at 10:38 pm

    Hillary should take up Trump on his drug test challenge.

    If Trump really has been using cocaine, then this acceptance could get interesting.

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