The General American Politics Thread

[Kevin]

Here's a running list of Republicans who are either with criticising Trump or calling on him to drop out. When your entire party is running away from you, you know you dun goofed.

I've seen lots of shit go down throughout various elections in my lifetime, but this is one of the top ones that really takes the cake in my view.

[Patticus]

Apparently, they were casting about for options regarding dumping Trump a while back, but it proved fruitless:

They're pretty much stuck with the man at this point. The RNC could cut its losses and end the flow of money to his campaign, focusing on down-ballot races that might become hairy if Trump becomes toxic to their odds after this debate.

McCain has withdrawn his support for Trump. I expect Cruz and many others to follow suit within days.

 

BUT WAIT, IT GETS BETTER!

 

 

Apparently, all scheduled campaign events with Mike Pence have been removed from Trump's website, and Pence has apparently told Trump that he's on his own for the next 48 hours. Is Pence considering dropping out?

[Johnny Boy]

Hoo boy, now I can't wait to see the debate tomorrow. Jesus, to think that now even his own party is turning on him. Hillary picked the perfect time to run for president.

[Patticus]

8 minutes ago, Johnny Boy said:

Hoo boy, now I can't wait to see the debate tomorrow.

It's either going to be an epic October Surprise for the Trump camp, or, much more likely, the death blow for his campaign.

Clinton's campaign is saving all its ire for the debate. She's going to unload on him with both barrels, and all he's got to respond with is Bill.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

Apparently, they were casting about for options regarding dumping Trump a while back, but it proved fruitless:

[/url] They're pretty much stuck with the man at this point. The RNC could cut its losses and end the flow of money to his campaign, focusing on down-ballot races that might become hairy if Trump becomes toxic to their odds after this debate.

McCain has withdrawn his support for Trump. I expect Cruz and many others to follow suit within days.

  BUT WAIT, IT GETS BETTER!     Apparently, all scheduled campaign events with Mike Pence have been removed from Trump's website, and Pence has apparently told Trump that he's on his own for the next 48 hours. Is Pence considering dropping out?

I can see Pence has returned to Trump's website with 2 new campaigns.

[Blue Swallow]

So the RNC cut Trumps funding this morning, and are moving it down ballot. Seems the GOP isn't banking on a Trump victory, the recordings and sexual assault allegations were the last straws I suppose. They may even be trying to get him to step down. I'd say it's a little too late for that, though It would be their best option. 

[Patticus]

2 hours ago, Ming Ming Hatsune said:

I can see Pence has returned to Trump's website with 2 new campaigns.

Surprising, considering the death spiral the campaign has entered since his debate. You'd think he would want to get as far away from the man as possible, but I suppose he doesn't want to look like a quitter.
 

Oh, by the way, CNN has been digging through more of Trump's interviews with Howard Stern:

Quote

In more than one interview with Stern, Trump took part in conversations about Ivanka Trump's appearance, including one about the size of her breasts.
In an October 2006 interview, Stern remarks that Ivanka "looks more voluptuous than ever," and asked if she had gotten breast implants. Trump is willing to engage in the discussion about his own daughter, telling Stern that she did not get implants.
"She's actually always been very voluptuous," Trump responds. "She's tall, she's almost 6 feet tall and she's been, she's an amazing beauty."

In another interview, from September 2004, Stern asks Trump if he can call Ivanka "a piece of ass," to which Trump responds in the affirmative.
"My daughter is beautiful, Ivanka," says Trump.
"By the way, your daughter," says Stern.
"She's beautiful," responds Trump.
"Can I say this? A piece of ass," Stern responds.
"Yeah," says Trump.

In his interviews with Stern, Trump discussed leaving women after a certain age and dating younger women.
In a 2002 appearance, Trump calls 30 "a perfect age."
"Until she's 35," a co-host interjects.
"What is it at 35? It's called check-out time," Trump responds.

In a 2006 interview, Stern asks Trump, "Do you think you could now be banging 24-year-olds?"
"Oh, absolutely," Trump says.
"Would you do it?," asks Stern.
"I'd have no problem," Trump said.
Stern then asked Trump if he has an age limit.
"No, I have no age — I mean, I have age limit. I don't want to be like Congressman Foley, with, you know, 12-year-olds."

Trump frequently talked about his personal sex life on Stern's radio program, which included him willingly engaging in a discussion about having sex with women on their menstrual cycles.

"Will you have sex with a woman if she's having her period? Go ahead," Stern asks Trump in a 1997 interview.
"I thought he was looking at Kate when he said that," Trump responded, looking at his "Art of Comeback" co-author and fellow guest Kate Bohner. "She's done that."
"Donald, seriously, you would not, right, am I correct?," asked Stern.
"Well, I've been there. I have been there Howard, as we all have," Trump responded.
"You don't like it?," asked Stern.
"Well, sometimes you get there by mistake," Trump said.

In the same interview, Stern also asked Trump, "Have you had a black women in bed?"
"Well, it depends on what your definition of black is," responded Trump.
"Interesting. I like this discussion. His bed is a rainbow," Stern said.
"The rainbow coalition, as Rev. Jesse would say," Trump said.

Later in the interview, Trump says he lost his virginity at "about 14."
"It was a young woman, who was really beautiful, she the hot little girl in high school or grammar school or whatever," Trump said. "She was hot. I haven't seen her. I haven't seen her."

In a 2008 interview, Trump said he was still having "a lot" of sex with his wife Melania. Later, when co-host Artie Lang asked Trump if he ever had a threesome -- describing multiple women together weighing 300 pounds -- Trump willingly responds in the affirmative, and actually suggests he has slept with three women collectively weighing 375 pounds.
"I wouldn't say 300, I would say could be about 375," said Trump. "I figure 125 a piece as opposed to 100."
"Haven't we all," Trump added about men having threesomes, "are we babies?"

In an 1993 appearance, Stern and Trump discussed wealthy men who cannot get dates, when Stern says the difference with Trump is that he satisfies the women he sleeps with.
"And I couldn't care less," Trump replied.
In an April 2010 show, Trump engaged in a discussion on the marital infidelities of pro-golfer Tiger Woods. In the discussion, Trump engaged in extremely explicit discussions with Stern on Woods's sexual habits.

"Do you believe in sex addiction?" Stern asked Trump during a discussion of Woods and his then-wife, Elin Nordegren.
"No, I believe people like sex a lot," Trump said. "People like you, people like me. Tiger."
Asked if he ever slept with two or three women in one day, Trump responds, "I have no comment. Look, I like sex, so do you."
"She's hot, she's hot though right?," Stern asked Trump of Nordegren, after Trump said he's talked to Woods since his sex scandal broke in the news.
'Yeah, she's fine," said Trump.
"You don't think she's that hot?," Stern asked.
"It depends by what standard," Trump replied. "What standard are you judging?"

"I have a very high standard," added Trump. "Howard knows, because he got me in a lot of trouble once, he went over a list of 15 supermodels. You remember the list of supermodels. And he'd ask me, 'how was she?' How was she?' And I was married at the time, you know this was not a good question to be asking."
"I think she's good," Trump added of Nordegren's attractiveness.
"No, I'd say she's a solid nine, solid nine yeah," Trump said, when asked how he'd rate her.
When Stern suggested to him he should do a show where he just rates women, Trump said, "That may be the best idea of all I would say I'm the all-time judge, don't forget, I own the Miss Universe pageant."
"Mr. Trump I'm asking you directly, is her ass too big?" Stern asked.
"No," Trump replied.
"Body perfect?" Stern asked.
"Very nice," responded Trump.
"She's very nice, is she a 10, you know what a 10 is?" Trump asked.

Stern then brought up one of Woods's mistresses, saying, "She does a position where Tiger Woods— I'm gonna be a little bit graphic— Tiger stood her on her head -- listen to this..."
"Spun her around," Trump interjected while laughing.
"No, no, no," said Stern. "He put his penis in her behind and then put his fingers in the vagina..."
Trump responded by laughing, saying he's never done that position.
Trump added that Woods is definitely "not gay."

In an April 2005 episode, Stern asked Trump if there was ever a time when he had sex with Miss Universe or Miss USA contestants.
"I never comment on things like that," Trump answered.
Later, Artie Lang interjects from the background, "Give us the first letter of the country you had sex with."
"How many letters are there?" Trump joked.
Stern then posed a scenario wherein one of the beauty pageant contestants went up to Trump and asked to have sex with him.
"Now you're not the type that would say no," Stern said.
"I don't want to hurt their feelings," Trump replied.

Co-host Robin Quivers then asked Trump if sleeping with the contestants could be construed as a conflict of interest.
"It could be a conflict of interest," Trump said. "But, you know, it's the kind of thing you worry about later, you tend to think about the conflict a little bit later on."
Stern then put on a fake foreign accent, saying that "some of these foreign girls" say hello "with vagina."
"Well, what you could also say is that, as the owner of the pageant, it's your obligation to do that," Trump said, before discussing how he got away with going backstage when the contestants were naked.
"Well, I'll tell you the funniest is that before a show, I'll go backstage and everyone's getting dressed, and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere, and I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it," Trump said. "You know, I'm inspecting because I want to make sure that everything is good."
"You know, the dresses. 'Is everyone okay?' You know, they're standing there with no clothes. 'Is everybody okay?' And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that. But no, I've been very good," he added.
Later in the episode, Stern asks Trump to assure his audience that "the chicks will be almost naked" at his pageant, saying to Trump that before he bought the contest, "they were starting to take women who were educated over women who were hot."
"They had a person who was extremely proud that a number of the women had become doctors," Trump explained. "And I wasn't interested."
He continued, "I actually went on the 'Today Show' with Katie Couric a while ago, six years ago, and we had a woman running the pageant who was really into the whole thing of education and everything and I said, 'Look, if you're looking for a rocket scientist, don't turn in tonight. But if you're looking for a really beautiful woman, you should watch.'"
Stern approved of Trump's approach, saying, "I'd rather have a retarded hot woman than a slob who's a doctor."
In a July 2008 appearance, Trump said he got a case of the "the shakes," when it was said Miss Universe would be held in Vietnam.
"The contest of all places was in Vietnam, which was very nice, I got a case of the shakes," Trump said. "It was in Vietnam. Vietnam's a hot country. But, you know, when I was going to high school, when I was going to college Vietnam was like the big deal. Like you have to leave college and go fight --. And I said, 'excuse me?' Now I'm going to Vietnam for a beauty pageant."

In a 2002 episode, Trump discussed the celebrity boxing match of Paula Jones, who in the 1990s accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment.
"It was interesting. That Paula Jones fight, she was not very talented. That was pretty pathetic," Trump said.
"It's funny because Paula Jones would get hit, she'd run," Robin Quivers said.
"She would run, it's too bad she didn't run like that from Bill (Clinton)," Trump replied.

In a 1993 interview, Trump and Stern engaged in a conversation about fidelity in marriage, with Stern relaying how Trump was shocked when he told him that he doesn't cheat on his wife.
"Donald asked me during the commercials — and I don't think you mind me saying it — he says to me, 'so you don't get it on with anybody?," Stern says. "I said 'I'm really faithful to my wife' and he goes 'you're kidding? Really? What's that all about?'
"I can say to Howard's wife, that's true," Trump responds. "He did say that to me. It's great."
Trump adds, "I was actually faithful to my wife for many years, until I realized the marriage wasn't gonna work."

Later in the interview, Trump complained about his ex-wife Ivana's accent
"The funny thing about Ivana is the accent got worse as she grew older, and some people said she wanted it to happen. The accent actually became more pronounced as years went by," Trump said.
"It was like the Chinese torture. You know, the water drops on your head," Trump said.

Jesus, there's just so much of it!

There's more? Jesus, the man just cannot be saved now, no matter how many anti-Clinton leaks WikiLeaks lets out. Still though, if we get more, it'll be fun watching him trying to defend himself.

[KHCast]

So Americans would rather Putin than Clinton apparently. I'm fucking done if this poll is legit.

[Mad Convoy]

7 hours ago, KHCast said:

So Americans would rather Putin than Clinton apparently. I'm fucking done if this poll is legit.

Before jumping to anger, I think there's a few factors you have to keep in mind:

• The media tends to analyze statistics poorly. The poll isn't saying that people want Putin as a leader more than Clinton or Trump, but rather that more people claimed to strongly dislike Clinton or Trump than those who claimed to strongly dislike Putin. There's a subtle but key difference in the wording there-- just because people don't like a person doesn't mean that they don't trust them to be able to run a country. If the question was asked if they would rather Putin, Clinton, or Trump run a country, I bet the answers would be quite different.
• Familiarity is important. People in the US are likely more familiar with Clinton and Trump than Putin and feel more affected by the words and actions of Clinton and Trump than those of Putin, and as a result, have stronger feelings about them. This translates to poll results.
• Even if the poll is to be taken at face value, people still prefer Clinton to Trump. The results are actually pretty close though-- which would indicate that all three are hated. (Granted, I don't see any statistical analysis-- the scientist in me wants to analyze the heck out of those results.)
• The Wall Street Journal includes stuff about Russian polls, but well, Putin is a dictator. He'd be dumb not to have some system in place to pressure the Russian people into voting in favor of him. Heck, you can already see his troll army in action in the comments section of the article you linked. So I'm disregarding them.

---

Oh boy, what Trump supporters remain at this point as going crazy trying to justify this. Throwing everything out there-- "But Bill also sexually assaulted people!", "Hillary is a rapist too, look at all these ladies I found on Google Image Search reliable news sources!", etc. But they can't deny this is real, which makes it all come off as terribly hypocritical. The hilarious but kind of sad part is when people claim that Trump has still got this because he's still got his supporters and will probably get more, when in reality he hasn't gained any from this and lost several influential ones like John McCain. Not to mention that he doesn't have any funding anymore nor any campaign organization that receives and stores funds-- unless he's got an angel investor somewhere, continuing his campaign is probably going to lead him to yet another bankruptcy rather than help his cause. But he's too prideful to leave-- either that or he set out to take over the GOP and destroy it for his own purposes from the very start.

Not to mention that he's just divided the Republican vote. That's going to make it harder for votes to accumulate for him.

[Johnny Boy]

Jesus, everything is slowly but surely falling apart for Trump. And it's nothing short of glorious to watch. Now all that's left is for Hillary to win yet another debate.

[Tani Coyote]

Well hey, at least Trump's consistent in his disgusting perversion, not minding when people objectify his daughter the same way he objectifies everyone else's.

Still though that... that's just amazing. I'm not surprised a party that tries to build itself on family values dropped him in an alleyway.

"Get away with everything."

Did the dipshit who write this notice that it seems the vast majority of people do not like her personally, and are only backing her to keep Trump out of office?

As soon as she's elected, she's going to be at the center of attention and we will be closely watching her.

Yes, the media and party administration are corrupt, but it's delusional to act like this is new. That or a juvenile understanding of politics and power, assuming that every power broker is altruistic. No. Power brokers are self-interested asses. That's why many Founding Fathers pushed for pluralism - they felt that if we included lots of different factions in the government, distributed across hundreds of seats and offices, we could minimize the risk of abuse.

[Patticus]

Things that will happen as soon as Clinton's election victory moves beyond all doubt:

• Almost all of the Republicans backing her candidacy will turn on her within hours.
• The media will zero in on everything she has said, not said, done or not done.
• Benghazi, e-mails et al will yet a-fucking-gain assume the number one spot in the headlines. Expect lots of talk of impeachment and the like.
• Donald Trump will sue the Clintons, the DNC, and/or do/say something equally crazy and disqualifying.

The next few years are going to be a real shit show. I feel bad for her, because you know she has to know what kind of nightmare she's walking into.

[SaturnWolf]

Well, the debate is tonight. With the....interesting audio leak of Donald Trump, it'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. No doubt it'll be a shit show either way, but will at least be a mildly entertaining shit show? 

[Tani Coyote]

The House is rated as secure for the GOP majority, but it's likely they will lose at least a few seats.

We can at least hope that the coattail effect does its work and the GOP majority shrinks enough that Ryan has to work more closely with the Democrats. I really don't want a repeat of the last 6 years. A narrower majority also means it's possible for Democrat leaders to peel off a few GOP House members; I'm sure there's at least a few of them who would love to be kingmakers and sell out the Party for the sake of their district getting a little extra.

And dear God, I'm hoping there's good turnout for the 2018 midterms. Again, we really don't need a repeat of the last 6 years. The GOP needs to just GO.

[Patticus]

Oh Ogilvie, you know the mid-terms won't change until the coming demographic shifts of the 2020s are part way done.

Maybe we could get voter participation up by making the mid-terms a national holiday, too?

[SaturnWolf]

The debate...oh god, what an utter disaster. "I will defeat ISIS!" Trump yelled when asked if he assaulted the woman.

[Dizcrybe]

This might've been a worse debate than the last one. At least proper-ish moderating was happening this time, though.

[Johnny Boy]

Well this debate was a bigger shit show than the last one. As usual most of the questions weren't actually answered, and the moderators felt more like teachers yelling at school children to shut the hell up. I can only wonder what the last debate will be like.

[Patticus]

Well, this was not the resounding victory for Clinton that I had expected to see: She had trouble with some of her answers (the usual subjects she always has difficulty with), and overall she wasn't as good as Trump was with counter-punching. She did, though, effectively use an opportunity to effectively block the "last 30 years" line of attack Trump leveled at her, by listing her accomplishments and what she had done. That didn't stop him from repeating it endlessly throughout the night, though.

Her Lincoln reference was great, she was clearly very prepared for a lot of the subjects raised (and again sounded knowledgeable and authoritative on the subjects she talked about), but Trump got in a good zinger on that one and some others, perhaps blunting their impact. She did well to not rise to Trump's repeated baiting on Bill and the four women present who have long accused him of varying degrees of sexual assault. He was trying to rattle her and get under her skin, and she flatly denied him that.

So, Cllnton's night: Not the killing blow to Trump that I think most of us were expecting, but not a train wreck either. She held her own and did alright, better in some exchanges than in others.
 

Trump... Well, he didn't answer many of the questions posed, and looked about ready to lie down (or piss himself?) at points, and we saw the return of his infamous sniffle - a sign of anger and irritation, according to body language experts. What got me was when he made the open assertion that, as president, he's going to jail Clinton - his opponent. That's unprecedented in American presidential debate history, and more than a little chilling to me.

He wasn't baited into defending himself as much as he was in the first debate though, which is a plus for him, and he got in more zingers/burns than Clinton could. His talking points numbered around 5, though, and his pivot from the lewd comments tape to ISIS was terrible - is he seriously saying that he should be president because ISIS is worse than sex assault? He needed to practically get on his knees, weep and beg forgiveness, but he refused.

Trump's night: Not the night that Trump needed. His goal going into this was to save his dying campaign after the worst week any presidential candidate has ever had. Merely staunching the arterial bleeding from within the GOP was probably one of his primary objectives, which I think he may have completed, to his credit. However, he's still in critical condition, with four weeks of potentially devastating revelations and a last debate (in the style of the first) to go. He needed to really wipe out Clinton, and he did spend 90 minutes insulting her, but I don't think that anything he said came anywhere close to knocking her down. Plus, she didn't take his bait.

 

We'll have to wait and see going into next week(end?) what the polling makes of of the debate - though apparently a CNN poll with a slight Democratic bias has Clinton down as winning, 57/43. The reality is likely around 53/47. Still though, I can't see the debate halting, let alone reversing Trump's campaign's death spiral, but I can't see Clinton's poll numbers soaring quite as quickly or as high as they had been before the debate either. She probably won't break 90% on 538's models, yet.

The first debate and its aftermath turned the race from a neck-and-neck nail-biter into a Clinton comeback story, and the VP debate didn't really seem to move the needle in either direction. This second presidential debate almost certainly hasn't changed the race in Trump's favor as the first debate did Clinton, but his base is likely quite satisfied. That said, Trump mathematically cannot win with his base alone - and he didn't reach out to people outside his base tonight.

Trump needs a flawless month and a brilliant campaign strategy to win this thing, and I don't see it happening.

[Tani Coyote]

8 hours ago, Patticus said:

Trump needs a flawless month and a brilliant campaign strategy to win this thing, and I don't see it happening.

I think the RNC abandoning him says it all, really. I think they've pretty much accepted a Clinton Presidency and want to concentrate their power on Congress.

My father was rambling on about how Clinton has cut some deal with the RNC. He's also convinced that Obama won in 2008 by cutting a deal with Clinton, and that Bernie was bought off as well.

Is it that unfathomable to think that Clinton isn't a political demigod? The RNC cutting funding is a purely political move, because they understand sentiment's pretty much turned against Trump and he's just not worth backing when Clinton isn't that left-wing of a candidate.

For example, is it hard to understand the power of the black Democratic vote in both 2008 and 2016 (over 20% of Democratic voters are black, so they can potentially make or break a nomination; remember Sanders was 45.5% against Clinton's 54.5% in terms of delegates won)? Obama had both the youth and black vote, so beat Clinton. Bernie had the youth vote, but didn't resonate with black voters, and so Clinton beat him. There doesn't have to be a grand conspiracy here, just the simple fact that there's a powerful demographic that has a hand in who wins and who loses the nomination. That's to say nothing of the conservative elements of the Party giving the more moderate Clinton an edge. Clinton, quite frankly, was just better at building a coalition than Sanders.

And she's certainly better at building one than Trump. The youth and Progressive vote was really the only segment of the Party she had to fight to win, and both of those have largely fallen behind her. Trump's at a disadvantage because his Party is still coming apart at the seams.

[KHCast]

This thread needs a good laugh

 

[Dizcrybe]

That shot of Bill was a great touch.

[Patticus]

I read earlier, either on Politico or 538, that if Clinton maintains a 5-or-so point lead (her average throughout the campaign) into election day, then the prospect of retaking the House will be a long shot indeed. However, if her lead were to extend to about 7 points, then there's a chance the House might flip - and even if it doesn't, Republicans will have little choice but to work across the aisle. Better yet, if she can snatch a landslide victory in the double digits, the whole House will probably flip, along with the Senate.

I don't know how true all that is, but it certainly offers a bright blue ray of hope, given today's NBC/WSJ national poll that put Clinton in double digit lead territory. Other polls this week could see her leading by similar margins, and I don't think that Trump's good performance last night is going to move undecided voters into his column - hell, he's having enough trouble keeping registered Republicans on his side! Given last Friday's Access Hollywood video reveal, which must have influenced the NBC/WSJ national poll (conducted over the weekend), his numbers could even slide southwards, inching toward oblivion. But we need to wait and see if the NBC/WSJ poll was an outlier or not.

If all the talk of "much worse" Apprentice tapes results in their working their way into the public domain over the coming month (which is a tricky proposition), I honestly think the Democrats could conceivably sweep both houses, and give Clinton the breathing room she'll desperately need to govern and get big things done before the mid-terms come along and screw it all up.
 

Today, Paul Ryan, cognisant of all this, declared that he would not be supporting Trump, and would instead focus on critical down-ballot races. The RNC maintained radio silence all day, much to everyone's confusion, but eventually Rince Priebus came out and said that the RNC will still support him. I don't think that that's a particularly wise move on Priebus' part, and I believe the GOP will probably suffer on election day for it.

[Mad Convoy]

The Trump campaign is falling apart and its glorious. Hillary is taking a bigger lead than usual and unless we get another October surprise on her part, the margin between her and Trump are probably just going to get bigger.

Priebus, don't make me laugh. Has he not seen how Republicans are dropping Trump like crazy? Didn't the RNC literally just decide to drop Trump's funding? I mean, you can cut the tension in the GOP with a knife at this point. If he wanted to at least try to salvage this, he should admit that the party screwed up in setting the precedent that allowed Trump to get as far as he did and for not jumping on getting a new nominee before the deadline. But he hasn't and won't, and I doubt the other Republicans will give any direct admitting to how badly the party has screwed up either. They'll see Trump as a scapegoat for all their problems that crop up from now forwards, when they should be seeing him as the embodiment of everything wrong with the culture they've cultivated and as a motivator to stop acting so selfish, sexist, xenophobic, etc. lest they fall from grace like he did.

Bring on those more incriminating tapes. Get that producer from the Apprentice in on it too if he's still got stuff. The public needs to hear all about Trump's true colors, and who better to hear those from than the man himself during moments he thought the public would never get to hear?

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Well, you know how that old saying goes: Pride cometh before a Fall.