Tag: politics

About those state polls

As I demonstrated yesterday, it’s too soon to talk about the state polls. But it’s NOT too early to talk about the trends in state polls. Here are the two battleground states in which polls have been released this week:

NV: Trump vs. Clinton KTNV Trump +5
OH: Trump vs. Clinton PPP (D) TIE (Trump +3 all four candidates)

Now, there aren’t enough previous Nevada polls for there to be a trend. But given that the earliest Ohio polls were as high as +7 for Hillary, it is apparent that there is a trend towards Trump, as that is 10 points of Trumpward movement. I will review the other battleground states as they come in, but for reference, their early high water marks are as follows:

PA: Clinton +15
VA: Clinton +17
FL: Trump +8, Clinton +13 (Florida was Trump, then heavy Clinton, nothing new since 7/11)
NC: Trump +6, Clinton +10 (same as Florida)
CO: Clinton +13

So, if my prediction of a Trumpslide is correct, we should see significant movement Trumpward in all five states. Virginia is particularly important; if Clinton can’t maintain a strong lead there despite selecting Virginia senator Tim Kaine, she is even more vulnerable than anyone imagines.

The failed case against the Trump-Putin conspiracy

The #NeverTrump crowd is increasingly panicked by Trump’s rise in the polls, and now they’re attempting increasingly unlikely disqualification attempts. Jeffrey Carr fact-checks Josh Marshall’s claims about Putin funding the Trump campaign:

A fact is defined as a “true piece of information”. How many of Josh’s facts were true?

  1. Trump’s debt load was a Bloomberg estimate, not a fact.
  2. Trump is highly reliant upon money from Russia. Open to interpretation, not a fact.
  3. Trump Soho took investment money from Russian criminals. Fact.
  4. Trump’s campaign manager used to work for Viktor Yanukovych when he was running for Prime Minister of Ukraine. Fact.
  5. Putin could put Carter Page, Trump’s foreign policy advisor, out of business at any time. Not only not a fact, but untrue and ridiculous on its face.
  6. Putin has aligned all state-controlled media behind Trump. False.
  7. The Trump Camp only cared about softening the platform on arming Ukraine. False.

For the record, I despise Donald Trump. I can’t imagine a worse candidate for President and I’m shocked and appalled that he is the Republican nominee. However, there’s no need to invent Russian conspiracies to make the Trump boogeyman appear worse than he is.

Two for seven. Not exactly a closed book. The irony, of course, is that we KNOW Putin is funding the Clinton Foundation. As usual, the very worst case against Trump that can be conceived is to claim he might do something Hillary Clinton is already doing.

I assume the claims are false simply due to the unreliability and irresponsible nature of the people making the charge. They’re desperate, and their claims are going to get increasingly weirder. But even if they were true, so what?

We already have 60 million foreigners interfering with the US elections. That’s why we have so many Democrats still in office. What is one more?

Conservatism in ruins

Andrew Klavan’s first thoughts on rebuilding conservatism:

The conservative movement has collapsed and is in ruins. Its vehicle for political expression, the Republican Party, is now in the hands of an authoritarian nationalist who has never read the Constitution and does not believe in free expression, free trade or the separation of powers. Its central vehicle for expression in the news media is in disarray as Fox News becomes embroiled in scandal. Even its defenders on talk radio and in the blogosphere are severely at odds as they are forced to choose whether to defend Trump as the lesser of two evils or to stand fast with the founding fathers against both terrible sides.

The conservative movement has collapsed and lies in ruins. And it has done so due to the deceit and dishonesty of conservative commentators like Andrew Klavan, who apparently feel the need to make provably false statements about everyone from Donald Trump to the Founding Fathers.

Let’s look at the three false statements in this one diagnostic paragraph alone:

  1. Donald Trump is not an authoritarian.
  2. Fox News has never been a central vehicle for expressing conservative views. It has, rather, pushed neoconnery as nominal conservatism while serving as a politically moderate alternative to the hard progressivism of the ABCNNBCBS cabal.
  3. The Founding Fathers believed in trade protectionism and a white America. Whether he gives a damn about the US Constitution or not, Donald Trump has as much or more in common with the Founding Fathers as the conservative movement does. The Constitution exists only to safeguard the unalienable rights of white Americans who are the posterity of the Founding Fathers, that is its sole purpose.
Now let’s look at Klavan’s proposal for rebuilding conservatism, which strangely enough, he provides without ever considering just why the movement is in ruins.

1. There is no substitute for victory. A political philosophy should be an outgrowth of moral values but it is not a moral value in itself. Its purpose is not to be good; its purpose is to be as good as it can be and still win power. A Christian may count it a victory when he is devoured by lions for his faith, but a conservative who is repeatedly devoured by the opposition in elections is just a self-satisfied schmuck. I am completely opposed to those — like Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam — who essentially argue  that conservatives must win by becoming watered-down liberals. But clearly, the methods by which we have been selling our philosophy to the voters have not just failed but failed utterly, and we should rethink them.

True enough, and yet Klavan observably knows so little about the history of conservatism in America that he doesn’t understand that conservatives have never had a philosophy proper. He obviously hasn’t read Russell Kirk, anyhow. That’s why they can’t sell conservatism to anyone anymore; it doesn’t even exist as a coherent self-contained philosophy. Conservatives have never been much more than philosophical parasites on the Left. Klavan should read Cuckservative; if nothing else it would bring him up to speed on the intellectual inadequacies of conservatism.

2. Win what minority types we can with the truth. The opposition likes to point out that too many conservatives are white men. They’re right — but only because blacks and women have been successfully sold a destructive bill of goods in leftist racialism and feminism. The facts are: black people are not oppressed by the police, women are not underpaid for the same work, white privilege is a destructive and racist myth, and true freedom means people you don’t like are going to say things you disagree with in ways you find offensive. These are hard sayings but they need to be said, and they don’t need to be said by conservatives to other conservatives, they need to be said by conservatives to blacks, women and sexual off-beats of all stripes. The Democrats have co-opted these people with destructive lies that make their lives worse. We can’t win them back by jumping on that bandwagon. We need to proudly, unapologetically (and politely) tell it like it is — to them, in their neighborhoods and organizations. We won’t win a lot of them. Not at first. But facts have a way of getting through over time — if you speak them courageously without being a jackass about it.

This is remarkable. And it’s a tactic doomed to failure; conservatives like Klavan can’t win anyone with the truth for the obvious reason that they don’t know the truth. They religiously subscribe to the idiotic lie of the Proposition Nation and they attempt to win over minorities that will never, ever, be won over in significant percentages by the alien ideals of 18th century whites. Klavan can’t explain historical anomalies that puncture his precious Ellis Island myth like the 1790 Naturalization Act, which means he can’t tell it like it is because he doesn’t actually know what it is.

The alternative is that he does know what it is and he is knowingly deceiving his fellow conservatives. But I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he is merely ignorant.

3. Fight the culture wars in the culture. The culture wars are problematical because too often conservatives come across as anti-freedom or bigoted. That makes victory tough. I feel passionately about some cultural issues and indifferent to others, but I believe all of them should be fought on a cultural and informational level rather than a political one. For instance, I believe that abortion is the taking of a human life and that government therefore has a right to forbid it. But just speaking bluntly and honestly, I don’t think I can win that fight in the political arena right now. Happily, the truth may do what politics cannot. The truth is on my side and the more the truth gets out about what abortion looks like, how it’s done, and who the people who support it are, the more the public will know that it is unacceptable. Then we can win politically. As for sex issues, I confess I care not at all about other people’s sexuality (I’m so deeply immersed in my own), but I do care very deeply about religious liberty and the freedom not to participate in what you abhor. That’s a fight we can win and we should argue it everywhere as a freedom issue.

Correct concept, inept execution. Winning the culture war is NOT getting the truth out. It is rhetorically convincing others what the truth is. This is why the arts are the most vitally important battleground in the cultural war.

4. Some class occasionally would be nice. Conservatives have been all but banned from universities, the news media and show business. In response, we formed our own media in blogs, talk radio and Fox. Those are great venues for informing our own, but we could use some outreach to open-minded Democrats. I’ve wasted too much breath trying to convince conservatives that art is good and can change the world over time. They just won’t believe me. But could we maybe agree that screaming at people and calling them evil and talking like a belligerent loudmouth know-it-all is not always the best way to bring them over to your side? No, huh. Well, it was just a thought.

For fuck’s sake. He’s another hapless tone policeman. This is why the Alt Right is going to win; because we don’t give a quantum of a damn about “class”. Someone once told me the important thing was “to win with grace and style”. No, the important thing is to win, even if you have to get bloody and dirty in the process. Klavan, like a good conservative, is far more interested in going down to noble defeat and surrendering while wearing a nice clean uniform than he is with winning.

It very much looks to me right now as if Trump is going to lose this election on pure incompetence and mean spirit. That might actually make it easier for conservatives to regroup in the ruins of the Republican Party. If he wins, we may need a new party of our own. But whichever way things go, I think we need to open a discussion about how conservatives can not only remain conservative but also win elections in modern America.

Is he even watching the political conventions? This sort of wishful thinking is why no one should bother paying any attention to a cuckservative like Klavan now or in the future. Conservatism is dying. Its diseased remnants are flocking to the progressives, as we always knew they would. And we watch them go with dry eyes and a grim smile, because we don’t need a bunch of useless cucks and moderates who were always happier shooting at their own side than the enemy.

I have never been a conservative. I will never be a conservative. I am delighted to see the conservative movement crumbling into dust. Conservatives conserve nothing, accomplish nothing, and stand for nothing. They will not defend the Church, they will not defend America, and they will not defend the West.

The Alt Right will. Join us, if you have the steel.

State polls and date relevance

DH has been resolutely predicting a Clinton win on the basis of the state polls, which correctly predicted Obama wins in the last two elections.

The state by state projections as of today including all most recent polling still indicate a Clinton win with around 312EV. Trump has not altered the road map at this point. Including polling changes that could happen between now and election day, Sec. Clinton is cruising towards victory. 

Although I respect DH’s acumen and take him very seriously with regards to anything that involves data analysis, I am nevertheless predicting a Trumpslide, a win of even bigger proportions than 312 Electoral College votes for Trump. How is it possible for me to do that considering the supposedly reliable evidence of the most recent state polling that DH is citing?

The reason is pretty straightforward. While the state polls have been pretty good predictor of the election results, my suspicion was that this is only true of state polls taken in the last week prior to the election. Before that, they tend to bounce all over the place. Unlike the national polls, they don’t always tend to favor the Democratic candidate, then fall more in line as the election approaches; the state polls appear to be less corrupt than the national ones.

Allow me to demonstrate. I looked at the results of the McCain-Obama race, since that one was more similar to the current race given that it also lacked an incumbent, in all seven of the states identified as key “battleground” states. In each case, I listed the following:

  1. The earliest date that any state poll got the correct result.
  2. The latest date that any state poll had either a) the wrong candidate winning or b) a tie
  3. The RCP average of the final state polls from the last week prior to the election
  4. The actual results.

PENNSYLVANIA
Rasmussen 2/14 – 2/14 Obama +10
FOX News/Rasmussen 9/14 – 9/14 TIE
RCP Average: Obama +7.3
Final Results: Obama +10.3

VIRGINIA
SurveyUSA 2/15 – 2/17 Obama +6
Mason-Dixon 9/29 – 10/1 McCain +3
RCP Average: Obama +4.4
Final Result: Obama +6.3

FLORIDA
PPP  9/27 – 9/28 Obama +3
FOX News/Rasmussen 11/2 – 11/2 McCain +1
RCP Average: Obama +1.8
Final Results: Obama +2.8

OHIO
Quinnipiac 9/5 – 9/9 Obama +5
Mason-Dixon 10/29 – 10/30 McCain +2
RCP Average: Obama +2.5
Final Results: Obama +4.6

COLORADO
SurveyUSA 2/26 – 2/28 Obama +9
Denver Post/Mason-Dixon 9/29 – 10/1 TIE
RCP Average: Obama +5.5
Final Results: Obama +9.0

NORTH CAROLINA
Rasmussen 10/8 – 10/8 Obama +1
Reuters/Zogby 10/31 – 11/3 McCain +1
RCP Average:  McCain +0.4
Final Results: Obama +0.3

NEVADA
Associated Press 10/22 – 10/26 Obama +12
Politico/InAdv 10/19 – 10/19 TIE
RCP Average:  Obama +6.5
Final Results:  Obama +12.5

So, as early as FEBRUARY there were three battleground polls that correctly predicted the result, but in four other battleground states, there was not a single poll among the dozens that were taken that correctly predicted the result until October, or in two cases, November. Since none of the three correct polls were performed by the same company, and since in one case, that same poll went on to incorrectly predict a result that was off by 10 points, it’s pretty clear that these results were random and therefore unable to serve as the basis for a predictive 2016 model.

Not only that, but there are no February state polls comparing Trump to Clinton, because back in February, Scott Adams, Mike Cernovich, Helmut Norpoth and I were about the only individuals publicly going on the record and stating that Trump would be the Republican nominee.

Now let’s look at the latest date that a state poll incorrectly predicted the winner. Even in a state that Obama won by 12.5 percentage points, there were polls in October indicating a dead heat. Mid-September is the earliest date of an incorrect poll; in North Carolina, which was close, even the RCP average had McCain winning right up until the election took place.

Taken in sum, this means that it makes no sense to pay much attention to the state polls until September. What we can before then, however, is the general trend from one candidate to the other; in many of these battleground states, the gradual shift from McCain to Obama, or from leaning Obama to strong Obama, is apparent.

And what do the state polls show in this regard? At the moment, they are too much in flux to clearly read a trend, but they appear to be gradually following the shift from Clinton to Trump already seen in the national polls. So, I see no reason to revise my prediction of a Trumpslide.

John Scalzi, political pundit

McRapey analyzes the Republican National Convention. Incompetence ensues.

The convention, generally, was the worst-run major political convention in a generation, and that should scare you. How is Trump going to manage an entire country when he can’t even put on a four-day show? (The answer, as we found out this week, is that he has no intention of managing the country at all; he plans to foist the actual work onto his poor VP while he struts about as bloviating figurehead.) Trump lost control of his convention and his message twice, once with Melania Trump’s clumsy plagiarism of Michelle Obama, which ate up two days of news cycles before Trump’s people found someone to be their chump for it, and then second with Ted Cruz, that oleaginous lump of hungering self-interest, who rather breathtakingly took to the stage of a nominating convention in order not to endorse Trump, in the most public way possible. That bit of low-rent Machiavellianism ate up another day of news cycles.

In the end, all the GOP convention has coming out of it are two massive failures of message control and Trump’s cataclysmic nomination speech.

And Nate Silver of 538 observing that Trump’s chances of winning the election have rising 40 points from a month ago. And Mr. Trump taking the lead in several national polls, including those from CNN and the LA Times. But while we’re on the subject of badly-run conventions, have we ever seen a national party chairman resign the day before the start of the convention?

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Scalzi?

But that’s the Trump shtick: He doesn’t have policies or positions or plans

No, no positions at all. And who could possibly know what his policies on tax reform, healthcare reform, immigration, foreign policy, and trade could be? Of course, one should keep in mind that John Scalzi is an SJW, and what is it that SJWs always do? I seem to recall someone wrote a book about that.

Trump is still not likely to win — after everything, he’s still trailing Clinton.

Only in the polls taken a month ago. He’s doing rather well in the new ones, so much so that the media is now attempting to discount the very sort of “convention bounce” that we were previously told doesn’t exist anymore.

However, the best dismissal of John Scalzi’s worst attempt to engage in political punditry since his famous “I’m a rapist” post is from a Hillary Clinton supporter, who notes a certain irony about McRapey’s attack on the Republican candidate for President.

In a post about how Donald Trump’s modus operandi is to scare people into voting for him, I count *ten* instances where you tell us that Trump (and the Republican party more broadly) should scare/terrify us, that they’re dangerous, that they’ll bring disaster/tragedy to the country, and so forth.
– Brian Greenberg

The Trumpslide cometh

CNN reports that Trump had the biggest post-convention poll boost since 2000.

We all expected Trump to get a bounce from the convention, although I don’t believe many of us expected it to be quite this big…

Donald Trump comes out of his convention ahead of Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House, topping her 44% to 39% in a four-way matchup including Gary Johnson (9%) and Jill Stein (3%) and by three points in a two-way head-to-head, 48% to 45%. That latter finding represents a 6-point convention bounce for Trump, which are traditionally measured in two-way matchups.

There hasn’t been a significant post-convention bounce in CNN’s polling since 2000. That year Al Gore and George W. Bush both boosted their numbers by an identical 8 points post-convention before ultimately battling all the way to the Supreme Court.

The new findings mark Trump’s best showing in a CNN/ORC Poll against Clinton since September 2015. Trump’s new edge rests largely on increased support among independents, 43% of whom said that Trump’s convention in Cleveland left them more likely to back him, while 41% were dissuaded. Pre-convention, independents split 34% Clinton to 31% Trump, with sizable numbers behind Johnson (22%) and Stein (10%). Now, 46% say they back Trump, 28% Clinton, 15% Johnson and 4% Stein.

The actual poll results are here in PDF format. Trump is already up between three and five points and Hillary hasn’t even taken the stage yet. It’s only going to get worse for Clinton and the Democrats from here.

The Trumpslide has already begun. Now it’s picking up speed.

UPDATE: Nate Silver is now calculating a 57.5 percent chance of a Trump victory, up from 10.8 percent one month ago.

5 Reasons Trump will win

Michael Moore explains 5 reasons Donald Trump will be the next President:

1. Midwest Math, or Welcome to Our Rust Belt Brexit.

I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states – but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million) that the Democrats (1.19 million). Trump is ahead of Hillary in the latest polls in Pennsylvania and tied with her in Ohio. Tied? How can the race be this close after everything Trump has said and done? Well maybe it’s because he’s said (correctly) that the Clintons’ support of NAFTA helped to destroy the industrial states of the Upper Midwest. Trump is going to hammer Clinton on this and her support of TPP and other trade policies that have royally screwed the people of these four states. When Trump stood in the shadow of a Ford Motor factory during the Michigan primary, he threatened the corporation that if they did indeed go ahead with their planned closure of that factory and move it to Mexico, he would slap a 35% tariff on any Mexican-built cars shipped back to the United States. It was sweet, sweet music to the ears of the working class of Michigan, and when he tossed in his threat to Apple that he would force them to stop making their iPhones in China and build them here in America, well, hearts swooned and Trump walked away with a big victory that should have gone to the governor next-door, John Kasich.

From Green Bay to Pittsburgh, this, my friends, is the middle of England – broken, depressed, struggling, the smokestacks strewn across the countryside with the carcass of what we use to call the Middle Class. Angry, embittered working (and nonworking) people who were lied to by the trickle-down of Reagan and abandoned by Democrats who still try to talk a good line but are really just looking forward to rub one out with a lobbyist from Goldman Sachs who’ll write them nice big check before leaving the room. What happened in the UK with Brexit is going to happen here. Elmer Gantry shows up looking like Boris Johnson and just says whatever shit he can make up to convince the masses that this is their chance! To stick to ALL of them, all who wrecked their American Dream!

 And now The Outsider, Donald Trump, has arrived to clean house! You don’t have to agree with him! You don’t even have to like him! He is your personal Molotov cocktail to throw right into the center of the bastards who did this to you! SEND A MESSAGE! TRUMP IS YOUR MESSENGER!

And this is where the math comes in. In 2012, Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. Add up the electoral votes cast by Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It’s 64. All Trump needs to do to win is to carry, as he’s expected to do, the swath of traditional red states from Idaho to Georgia (states that’ll never vote for Hillary Clinton), and then he just needs these four rust belt states. He doesn’t need Florida. He doesn’t need Colorado or Virginia. Just Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that will put him over the top. This is how it will happen in November.

2. The Last Stand of the Angry White Man.

Our male-dominated, 240-year run of the USA is coming to an end. A woman is about to take over! How did this happen?! On our watch! There were warning signs, but we ignored them. Nixon, the gender traitor, imposing Title IX on us, the rule that said girls in school should get an equal chance at playing sports. Then they let them fly commercial jets. Before we knew it, Beyoncé stormed on the field at this year’s Super Bowl (our game!) with an army of Black Women, fists raised, declaring that our domination was hereby terminated! Oh, the humanity!

That’s a small peek into the mind of the Endangered White Male. There is a sense that the power has slipped out of their hands, that their way of doing things is no longer how things are done. This monster, the “Feminazi,”the thing that as Trump says, “bleeds through her eyes or wherever she bleeds,” has conquered us — and now, after having had to endure eight years of a black man telling us what to do, we’re supposed to just sit back and take eight years of a woman bossing us around? After that it’ll be eight years of the gays in the White House! Then the transgenders! You can see where this is going. By then animals will have been granted human rights and a fuckin’ hamster is going to be running the country. This has to stop!

3. The Hillary Problem.

Can we speak honestly, just among ourselves? And before we do, let me state, I actually like Hillary – a lot – and I think she has been given a bad rap she doesn’t deserve. But her vote for the Iraq War made me promise her that I would never vote for her again. To date, I haven’t broken that promise. For the sake of preventing a proto-fascist from becoming our commander-in-chief, I’m breaking that promise. I sadly believe Clinton will find a way to get us in some kind of military action. She’s a hawk, to the right of Obama. But Trump’s psycho finger will be on The Button, and that is that. Done and done.

Let’s face it: Our biggest problem here isn’t Trump – it’s Hillary. She is hugely unpopular — nearly 70% of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest. She represents the old way of politics, not really believing in anything other than what can get you elected. That’s why she fights against gays getting married one moment, and the next she’s officiating a gay marriage. Young women are among her biggest detractors, which has to hurt considering it’s the sacrifices and the battles that Hillary and other women of her generation endured so that this younger generation would never have to be told by the Barbara Bushes of the world that they should just shut up and go bake some cookies.

But the kids don’t like her, and not a day goes by that a millennial doesn’t tell me they aren’t voting for her. No Democrat, and certainly no independent, is waking up on November 8th excited to run out and vote for Hillary the way they did the day Obama became president or when Bernie was on the primary ballot. The enthusiasm just isn’t there. And because this election is going to come down to just one thing — who drags the most people out of the house and gets them to the polls — Trump right now is in the catbird seat.

4. The Depressed Sanders Vote.

Stop fretting about Bernie’s supporters not voting for Clinton – we’re voting for Clinton! The polls already show that more Sanders voters will vote for Hillary this year than the number of Hillary primary voters in ’08 who then voted for Obama. This is not the problem. The fire alarm that should be going off is that while the average Bernie backer will drag him/herself to the polls that day to somewhat reluctantly vote for Hillary, it will be what’s called a “depressed vote” – meaning the voter doesn’t bring five people to vote with her. He doesn’t volunteer 10 hours in the month leading up to the election. She never talks in an excited voice when asked why she’s voting for Hillary. A depressed voter. Because, when you’re young, you have zero tolerance for phonies and BS.

Returning to the Clinton/Bush era for them is like suddenly having to pay for music, or using MySpace or carrying around one of those big-ass portable phones. They’re not going to vote for Trump; some will vote third party, but many will just stay home. Hillary Clinton is going to have to do something to give them a reason to support her  — and picking a moderate, bland-o, middle of the road old white guy as her running mate is not the kind of edgy move that tells millenials that their vote is important to Hillary. Having two women on the ticket – that was an exciting idea. But then Hillary got scared and has decided to play it safe. This is just one example of how she is killing the youth vote.

5. The Jesse Ventura Effect.

Finally, do not discount the electorate’s ability to be mischievous or underestimate how any millions fancy themselves as closet anarchists once they draw the curtain and are all alone in the voting booth. It’s one of the few places left in society where there are no security cameras, no listening devices, no spouses, no kids, no boss, no cops, there’s not even a friggin’ time limit. You can take as long as you need in there and no one can make you do anything. You can push the button and vote a straight party line, or you can write in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. There are no rules. And because of that, and the anger that so many have toward a broken political system, millions are going to vote for Trump not because they agree with him, not because they like his bigotry or ego, but just because they can. Just because it will upset the apple cart and make mommy and daddy mad.

And in the same way like when you’re standing on the edge of Niagara Falls and your mind wonders for a moment what would that feel like to go over that thing, a lot of people are going to love being in the position of puppetmaster and plunking down for Trump just to see what that might look like.

Remember back in the ‘90s when the people of Minnesota elected a professional wrestler as their governor? They didn’t do this because they’re stupid or thought that Jesse Ventura was some sort of statesman or political intellectual. They did so just because they could. Minnesota is one of the smartest states in the country. It is also filled with people who have a dark sense of humor — and voting for Ventura was their version of a good practical joke on a sick political system. This is going to happen again with Trump.

It’s amusing to see how Moore can, despite himself, see some of the relevant issues, and yet fail to understand them. And it’s all so typical of an American liberal to vow one thing and then rationalize doing the other. But as wrong as he is about nearly everything, even Moore can see the Trump train barreling down the line; it’s a testimony to the herd-following nature of journalism that so few journalists have cottoned onto it yet.

Of course, there are at least seven reasons Trump will win, and Moore left out the two biggest, Immigration and Islam, which, though related, are two separate categories. Every time there is a shooting or an attack of any kind, anywhere in the USA or the West, Donald Trump picks up support, because everyone knows that Hillary Clinton isn’t going to do anything about either Immigration or Muslims in America.

Hilbot needs a reboot

Now, some have claimed that Hillary Clinton is ill, brain-damaged, prone to seizures, or a Lizard Queen whose human skin suit doesn’t always fit very well. However, I think that what we’re seeing here is a simple bug in Google’s Hilbot-16, easily repaired by a simple reboot. Nothing to worry about, as Google’s finest engineers are on it.

Please continue not noticing all of the information about the Democratic National Committee being released by Wikileaks.

What only exacerbates the creepiness is the way that she immediately tries to laugh it off and change the subject, which means this sort of thing has happened often enough that she’s been trained how to try to minimize people’s reactions to it. This is probably why she hasn’t been giving any interviews or press conferences.

One wonders how they plan to keep her under wraps if she were to win the election. Perhaps they have in mind a system like the one Robert Silverberg imagined for Majipoor, where the Pontifex disappears into the Labyrinth following his elevation from Coronal, never to be seen again.

It doesn’t matter, really. Because Trumpslide.

UPDATE: Snopes tries to play defense, fails.

The fact that Clinton immediately repeated her initial reaction for humorous effect supports the hypothesis that it stemmed from a conscious movement and not an involuntary seizure.

No, it means that the seizures happen often enough that she has a go-to strategy to try to convince people they did not see what they saw.

The importance of rhetoric

James Carville explains, in an email released by Wikileaks as part of the #DNCleaks in a note of unknown provenance:

Ideologies aren’t all that important. What’s important is psychology.

The Democratic constituency is just like a herd of cows. All you have to do is lay out enough silage and they come running. That’s why I became an operative working with Democrats. With Democrats all you have to do is make a lot of noise, lay out the hay, and be ready to use the ole cattle prod in case a few want to bolt the herd.

Eighty percent of the people who call themselves Democrats don’t have a clue as to political reality.

What amazes me is that you could take a group of people who are hard workers and convince them that they should support social programs that were the exact opposite of their own personal convictions.
– James Carville, Clinton strategist

What Carville is talking about is rhetoric. 80 percent of the people are limited to rhetoric; per Aristotle, they cannot be convinced by information. They can only be moved by an appeal to their emotions or appetites.

UPDATE: The Carville note appears to be a fake being passed around under cover of the DNCleaks; I thought it was a little strange that the wily Carville would come right out and say that. But whether he said it or not, it is true, moreover, it is true of Republicans as well. It is true of everyone and it has been true since Aristotle’s day. Most people simply don’t speak or think in terms of dialectic.

As for those who think Hillary Clinton is a shoe-in due to demographics, note that the DNC doesn’t believe so. And this is a genuine day one DNCleak.


“HRC will go into gen election as vulnerable candidate. Clinton Foundation quid-pro-quo worries are lingering, will be exploited in general.”

Translation: she sold out the USA while Secretary of State.

Hillary picks Sen. Kaine (D-VA)

The Lizard Queen has chosen her running mate:

Hillary Clinton named U.S. Senator Tim Kaine as her running mate on Friday, making a safe choice that will help her present the Democratic ticket as a steady alternative to the unpredictable campaign of Republican presidential rival Donald Trump.

The selection of Kaine, a self-described “boring” Virginian with wide governing experience and a reputation for low-key competence, could appeal to independents and moderates but is likely to anger liberal groups who object to his advocacy for an Asian free-trade pact.

But the Spanish-speaking former Virginia governor and Richmond mayor fits Clinton’s long-stated criteria that the vice presidential choice be a capable partner who is ready to take over the presidency if necessary.

Just on the optics alone, those two are going to look pathetic compared to Trump and Pence. She had to go moderate, of course, but I doubt Kaine will do much to win back the whites she needs. Whereas Pence was a 7/10 pick, Kaine is 4/10 at best.

Of course, she was handicapped by the need to pick a harmless little guy who wouldn’t overshadow her and make her look like his mother-in-law or his retired secretary when he stood next to her.