Trump 49: The Firehose of Fucknuttery—Now With Covid

[GreyhoundFan]

Precisely how we all feel:

 

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

@fraurosena -- that statement from the tangerine toddler really needs an eyeroll reaction.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Imagine what it will be like to never have to think about Trump again"

Spoiler

If you are like me and you watched Tuesday’s debate with a voice in your head screaming make it stop, take heart: We have the power to do just that. We can evict President Trump from the territory he has forcibly seized in our minds. We can — we must — vote him out of our thoughts.

We can remove this awful man from our collective headspace, which he has so thoroughly befouled. We can reclaim our serenity, our equilibrium, our sense 0f common humanity. We can return to a time when it was possible to go hours or even entire days without once thinking about what our president might be saying or doing. We can exhale.

At a recent rally in North Carolina, Trump was making one of his rambling attempts to mock Joe Biden when he told the crowd: “If I lose to him, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I will never speak to you again. You’ll never see me again.” Biden’s social media team quickly posted a clip of Trump’s remarks, then added a zinger: “I’m Joe Biden, and I approve this message.”

Biden echoed that theme in the debate. “If we get the votes, he’s going to go. He can’t stay in power,” Biden said. “Once the winner is declared after all the ballots are counted, all the votes are counted, that’ll be the end of it.”

Biden meant that the election will bring about the end of Trump’s tragically destructive and incompetent presidency. But Trump’s defeat will also mean liberation from having to live in thrall to his malignant narcissism. If he loses, he will go back to being a loud and obnoxious Twitter troll — one still with influence, to be sure, but he’ll be safe to unfollow.

Think of all the time and energy we all must presently devote to the outbursts driven by Trump’s bottomless appetite for attention. Imagine having that psychic burden lifted. Envision the name Trump appearing only in the headlines of below-the-fold stories about criminal investigations and civil lawsuits. Now vote, and make that dream a reality.

Imagine what we could do with the brainpower that is now sucked into Trump’s massive black hole of an ego. How much easier would it be to convince our neighbors to follow the advice of scientists on how best to halt the covid-19 pandemic without having to spend time combating Trump’s bleach-soaked misinformation campaign? What might we be able to do to stimulate a devastated economy without having to worry about the president’s need to brand every bit of aid as a personal gift? Where might the conversation about systemic racism be able to start without the president questioning whether racism even exists, or ever existed, in the faux-America of his limited imagination?

And we can at least try to revive the concepts of fact and truth. Remember those old friends? Remember how we once valued them because they helped us find our way as a society and as a nation?

I believe we underestimate how corrosive and brutalizing it is to have a president who lies not just constantly but remorselessly. Whenever the facts are inconvenient for Trump, he simply invents new ones that are more to his liking. During the debate, for example, he bizarrely claimed to know more about the timetable for developing a coronavirus vaccine than the official he put in charge of developing the vaccine. It was an obvious falsehood — yet Trump stood by it, just as he always stands by his lies.

Through repetition and force of will, Trump creates his own “reality.” But we know it is not really real, so we must constantly spend time and effort dispelling the miasma of mendacity that pours out of Trump’s fog machine of a mouth. Doing so is exhausting, Sisyphean, psychic labor that drains the soul. Yet it is necessary — because the words of a president, by definition, are consequential — and so the only way to end this epistemological trench warfare is to end Trump’s presidency and send him home to Mar-a-Lago, where he can mutter at the walls.

If Biden wins the election, Trump will not go happily and might not go easily. But he will indeed go — and when he leaves the White House, he will also vacate our national consciousness, giving us all some psychic room to breathe.

A vote for Biden is more than a vote for sane governance. It is a vote for American sanity, period.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s ugly rant in Minnesota shows why Republicans fear he’ll lose"

Spoiler

President Trump’s shattering of the “blue wall” states in 2016 shocked many observers into believing that he possesses a quasi-mystical grasp of the values and aspirations of rural and small-town Whites in the industrial Midwest. Elite journalists flayed themselves mercilessly for remaining cosseted in their coastal bubbles and missing the story of the Real American Voter.

But Trump’s latest rant at a rally in Minnesota — along with a new election forecast that shows him losing Midwestern Whites and a new report on rising GOP anxiety about Trump — strongly suggests his preternatural grasp of the region might have deserted him, if he ever possessed it at all.

Trump unleashed a long and hateful diatribe Wednesday night about his favorite target in the state, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D), while spewing wretched nonsense about Joe Biden and refugees. The episode neatly captures the ailing state of Trumpist demagogic politics.

Biden will “inundate your state with a historic flood of refugees,” Trump railed, insisting that “Biden and crazy Bernie Sanders have agreed on a manifesto” that pledged a “700 percent increase” in them.

Trump then unloaded on Omar — herself a refugee from Somalia — by baselessly suggesting she’d been implicated in voter fraud, unleashing a great roar of, “Lock her up!”

“Then she tells us how to run our country,” Trump scoffed. “Can you believe it?”

Trump’s substantive claim is silly. Yes, Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) agreed in their “unity task force” blueprint that Biden will seek to raise the cap on refugees the U.S. accepts to 125,000 per year. But that would only be a modest rise relative to 2017, when Trump took office and the official cap was 110,000.

Since then Trump has dramatically slashed refugee levels — all the way down to 18,000 in 2020. The 700 percent increase would only be relative to that. If anything, restoring pre-Trump levels and building on them would be good policy.

But Trump’s claim that Omar “tells us how to run our country” deserves special attention. As Ronald Brownstein notes, by targeting a Muslim immigrant who is a naturalized citizen this way, Trump tells supporters that “people of color, big cities, liberals are interlopers” in “their White Christian America.”

The illegitimacy of the opposition

Indeed, Trump’s core claim here is really that the opposition’s voters are simply not entitled to legitimate political representation.

More than 260,000 American citizens elected Omar to Congress in 2018 to represent them, to give themselves a voice in “how to run our country.” When Trump suggests Omar has no grounds to tell “us” how to do this, his real claim is that his supporters constitute “our” country, and that those who elected Omar don’t have a legitimate voice in running it because they don’t belong to that “us.”

It’s often said that in 2016, Trump successfully tapped into a sense among many Midwestern voters that they’d been “forgotten” by our political classes, a sense that they lack political agency, which Trump addressed by making them feel heard and empowered. This core idea undergirds elite journalistic self-flagellation for having missed this sentiment in 2016.

There might be a good deal to that claim: Our political classes have failed a lot of people, and Biden appears to be working to speak to that sentiment among working-class whites, among whom he’s doing relatively well.

But Trump has perverted this whole sentiment into a concrete scheme to deny political agency and representation entirely to those who are outside of what he calls “our country."

It’s no accident that Trump slides effortlessly between this line about Omar and his lies about voter fraud. They are two sides of the same coin: Trump is already working to delegitimize as many of the opposition’s legally cast ballots as possible as fraudulent. This would put the idea that they aren’t entitled to legitimate representation into operational practice, to maintain “our,” or his, America’s dominance via illicit means.

But this whole effort appears to be failing him, and not just because the anti-Trump majority outnumbers his lusty support base. Trump is losing the very voters this story is supposed to capture.

Trump is losing Midwestern Whites

In a new analysis, Sabato’s Crystal Ball shifts Ohio and Iowa from the “Leans Republican” to the “Toss-Up” category. Trump carried them by eight and nine points in 2016.

The analysis also shifts Wisconsin to “Leans Democratic” and Minnesota to “Likely Democratic.” Trump won Wisconsin (and the other “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania and Michigan), and came within a hair of winning Minnesota.

Why is this happening? Partly because Biden is outperforming Hillary Clinton among White voters:

Namely, after Clinton hemorrhaged white voters in northern small town and rural areas in 2016, Biden appears to be bringing some of those voters back into the Democratic fold while also improving on Clinton’s margins with white suburbanites. If this pattern holds in the actual results, it could pay major dividends for Biden in the Great Lakes region, where American presidential elections are so often won and lost and where the electorates in the competitive states are whiter than the nation as a whole.

Trump spent months on a “law and order” strategy to galvanize his core White supporters while frightening White suburbanites back to him. That failed.

Then, at the debate, Trump kept it up, falsely insisting Biden wouldn’t utter the words “law and order,” winking to right-wing extremists and white supremacists, and again rallying supporters to intimidate the opposition’s voters.

Yet Republicans believe this is failing for him, reports the New York Times. His racist backlash politics and threats of voter intimidation risk further alienating “women, moderates, suburban voters and people of color,” as the Times puts it. The people outside what he calls “our country."

Republicans fear this approach is putting Trump and his party on track to a big loss. But as his Minnesota rally showed, he remains absolutely committed to winning only in this fashion.

 

[church_of_dog]

On 9/30/2020 at 5:15 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

I think this woman has a better chance of cleaning up than anyone on the moron's staff:

 

Is that a rake?  At least the ocean won't catch fire as long as she keeps it raked.  /sarcasm

[thoughtful]

Shall we add "diagnosed" to the thread title?

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/02/919385151/president-trump-and-first-lady-test-positive-for-covid-19

 

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, thoughtful said:

Shall we add "diagnosed" to the thread title?

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/02/919385151/president-trump-and-first-lady-test-positive-for-covid-19

 

Can't say I have much sympathy.

? He had it comin'
? He had it comin'
? He only has himself to blame....

Spoiler

 

 

[fraurosena]

 

[fraurosena]

Oh. Just noticed these possible repercussions. 

I hope Biden will also get tested, after being exposed to Trump's shouting during the debate.

[fraurosena]

Oops.

 

[Smash!]

Shall we add "diagnosed" to the thread title?
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/02/919385151/president-trump-and-first-lady-test-positive-for-covid-19
 

Please YES! [emoji2]

[47of74]

If the orange butt plug and Melania Antionette become ill, I’m like....

[AnywhereButHere]

I really, really hope that he didn’t give it to Biden. Or Chris Wallace. How many people has he potentially infected by his carelessness!
 

Does he actually have COVID, or is he just saying he does, so he can hold up in his bunker for a bit, avoid his “adoring” public, and then come out at the end of two weeks touting the benefits of injected bleach?

If he has it, but only has a minor case, he’s going to come out swinging, saying that it’s not a big deal, just a cold, he’s stronger than a virus, injected bleach works, blah, blah, blah.

It’s horrible that this is where my mind goes. 

 

[JMarie]

Fox and Friends just said that someone Trump’s age (74) has a 99% chance of recovery. So that’s what he’s thinking right now.

[Audrey2]

I am hoping that he has a serious enough case that it scares his base into taking this seriously and wearing masks. I'm in a very red part of the state and I know I hear complaints about masks and people only half following directives to wear masks into places like Safeway and WinCo. It's been frustrating for me because I take this seriously.

[Becky]

Holy shit.  This was predictable, and part of me is feeling delicious schadenfreude right now, but this is a tremendous problem for the US and the world.  It could be disastrous.  A sitting president with a life-threatening condition, who has likely exposed everyone in the White House, anyone who was on Air Force One with him to and from the debate.... I am outraged at this man's carelessness and stupidity.  Well, I am outraged by him generally, but this just takes the cake.  

I have to wish him well, because if he takes a bad turn and is put on a ventilator, there will be chaos at the highest levels.  What happens to the election if Mr. I Don't Have to Wear a Mask is in a medically-induced coma?

[fraurosena]

Is it awful of me to hope that he gets a relatively* serious case? That way he can't say that covid isn't that bad and people shouldn't exaggerate how sick they are. That he's responsible for the horrific death toll in the US is a contributing factor.

*by relatively I don't mean I want him in any serious danger, but I wouldn't mind him feeling absolutely horrible.

5 minutes ago, Becky said:

I have to wish him well, because if he takes a bad turn and is put on a ventilator, there will be chaos at the highest levels.  What happens to the election if Mr. I Don't Have to Wear a Mask is in a medically-induced coma?

Nothing, I would hope. His presence or not does not influence the public's ability to vote at all. The only thing is that he won't be able to campaign.

Weird, strange, unprecedented circumstances, yes, but no reason to have any effect on the elections.

Will the Repugs attempt to put off the elections? Of course they will. But there is no legal reason for it. 

[GreyhoundFan]

18 minutes ago, Becky said:

What happens to the election if Mr. I Don't Have to Wear a Mask is in a medically-induced coma?

The WaPo laid this out earlier this year. It was updated this morning

Quote

Editor’s note: We are reposting this piece, originally published May 16, 2020. Don’t miss the first part of this conversation at “What happens if a U.S. presidential candidate withdraws or dies before the election is over?”

Joshua Tucker: What happens if the party’s nominee dies or withdraws after having been officially nominated but before the November election?

Richard Pildes: This puts the ball in the hands of the “national political parties,” which for this purpose means the legal entities known as the Democratic and Republican national committees.

The Democratic National Committee has a clear rule for this situation. The 447 members of the Democratic National Committee, the entity that formally hosts the convention, would choose the new nominee. The DNC chair, currently Tom Perez, is required to consult with the Democratic leadership in Congress and with the Democratic Governors Association. After the consultation, the chair provides a report to the DNC members, who then make the choice.

The Republican National Committee’s rules are similar. The RNC has 168 members — three from each state, plus three from six territories. The RNC’s rules provide that the three members from each state cast the same number of votes that their state or territory is entitled to at the convention. So Alaska’s three members get to cast a total of 28 votes, for example. If those three members disagree, they each get to cast one-third of those votes.

Second, the parties would now have to replace the name of their dead candidate on each state’s ballot with that of the new candidate. Depending on when this happens, that might not be simple. Different states have different deadlines for when the parties must certify their candidates for the ballot. In 2016, most were in August and September. If states do not have laws that permit changing the candidate’s name after that date, courts would probably have to be brought in. It’s hard to imagine courts refusing to permit one of the two major parties to replace a deceased candidate’s name with that of a validly chosen replacement.

J.T.: What happens if a party’s nominee dies or withdraws after having accumulated enough delegates for the nomination but before the convention meets?

R.P.: The Democratic National Committee’s rules permit delegates to vote their conscience, even if their states’ voters selected a particular candidate. So Democratic convention delegates would be free to vote for whomever they might prefer. They are not required to vote for the candidate who has earned the second-most delegates, nor would they be required to vote for the person the presumptive nominee identified as the vice-presidential choice, if that had already been announced. This year, the superdelegates — DNC members and elected officials who officially attend the convention without representing a candidate — cannot vote in the first round, but they can beginning in the second round. Such an event would, of course, involve intense intraparty discussions, arguments, efforts to build coalitions and the like. But remember, the delegates have been carefully chosen by the various primary candidates to be sure to support those candidates. So if Biden were out, the Biden delegates would be likely to support whomever the Biden forces in the Democratic Party coalesced behind.

On the Republican side, it’s a bit more complicated. For a candidate’s name to be put into nomination at all, eight state delegations must agree to do so. If a candidate has died, he might not get past that first hurdle. RNC rules, unlike the DNC rules, do require delegates to vote for the candidate selected by their state’s primary (or other mechanism, such as a state convention). I would imagine the RNC would adopt a rule change, or creatively interpret its own rules, to address the situation.

J.T.: Is there any precedent for a presidential nominee being incapacitated at the time of election? So, say one of the candidates is in a medically induced coma and does not have the ability to voluntarily withdraw from the election but is not dead. How would that change any of the above scenarios?

R.P.: We have never had a major-party presidential nominee incapacitated at the time of the election. The closest we’ve come involved a sitting U.S. vice president. When William Howard Taft was elected president in 1908, James S. Sherman was his vice president; when Taft ran again in 1912, Sherman was again Taft’s running mate. Vice President Sherman died six days before the 1912 election, but it didn’t matter, because Taft came in third in the election’s three-way contest.

J.T.: Finally, since we are both from New York, I have to ask: What happens if Joe Biden “shows up” at a virtual national convention for the Democratic Party and announces that he wants his supporters to nominate Andrew M. Cuomo instead. Is there anything to prevent Cuomo from becoming the nominee?

R.P.: Now you have really jumped the shark.

J.T.: Fair enough, although I remember a time when President Trump sounded a lot less likely than President Cuomo …

 

[Smash!]

Re masks: I‘m currently wearing KN95s four days a week. Does it give me headaches? Do the strings hurt sometimes? hell yes, but I don’t wanna get Covid and I don’t want anybody getting it from me if my throat is rough for a day and it‘s Covid just because I can’t tolerate a little discomfort. Those are not normal times ffs.

[Audrey2]

I just called my mother because it's her birthday. I opened with, "happy birthday! How do you like your present?" She hadn't heard about the president so when I told her about both the president and Melania testing positive she decided that it was the best birthday present she's gotten!

[fraurosena]

 

[obiwanfreak]

13 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

 

I wish I was as classy as Joe Biden when it comes to Trump.....

[GreyhoundFan]

Well wishes from his boss:

[fraurosena]

Good grief. His incoherence is... something. It's like he knows he should be sounding empathetic about Hope, but he keeps coming back to himself. And the military, for some reason. Who want to kiss him.