Nate Silver says it's almost time for Democrats to panic

Might be time to refill those anti-anxiety prescriptions, Hillbots.

Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls has been declining for several weeks, and now we’re at the point where it’s not much of a lead at all. National polls show Clinton only 1 or 2 percentage points ahead of Donald Trump, on average. And the state polling situation isn’t really any better for her. On Thursday alone, polls were released showing Clinton behind in Ohio, Iowa and Colorado — and with narrow, 3-point leads in Michigan and Virginia, two states once thought to be relatively safe for her.

It’s also become clearer that Clinton’s “bad weekend” — which included describing half of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” on Friday, and a health scare (followed by news that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia) on Sunday — has affected the polls. Prior to the weekend, Clinton’s decline had appeared to be leveling off, with the race settling into a Clinton lead of 3 or 4 percentage points. But over the past seven days, Clinton’s win probability has declined from 70 percent to 60 percent in our polls-only forecast and by a similar amount, from 68 percent to 59 percent, in our polls-plus forecast.

That’s not to imply the events of the weekend were necessarily catastrophic for Clinton: In the grand scheme of things, they might not matter all that much (although polling from YouGov suggests that Clinton’s health is in fact a concern to voters). But when you’re only ahead by 3 or 4 points, and when some sequence of events causes you to lose another 1 or 2 points, the Electoral College probabilities can shift pretty rapidly. A lot of light blue states on our map have turned pink, meaning that Trump is now a narrow favorite there instead of Clinton:

Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida have all gone pink of late.  Give the polling time to catch up with popular opinion, and this time next week we'll see if this momentum of Trump surging and Clinton falling is sustained as the first debate -- Clinton and Trump only, as you may have heard -- looms on the calendar.

When a candidate has a rough stretch like this in the polls, you’ll sometimes see his or her supporters pass through the various stages of grief before accepting the results, beginning with a heavy dose of “unskewing” or cherry-picking of various polls. In this case, however, the shift in the race is apparent in a large number of high-quality surveys, and doesn’t depend much on the methodology one chooses. FiveThirtyEight, Real Clear Politics and Huffington Post Pollster all show similar results in their national polling averages, for example, with Clinton leading by only 1 to 3 percentage points over Trump.

This potentially ignores a more important question, however. Sure, Clinton might lead by only a percentage point or two right now — with a similarly perilous advantage in the Electoral College. But is that necessarily the best prediction for how things will turn out in November?

Silver goes on with the deep dive; I'm an executive summary kind of guy.

This is a complicated question, and one that we might want to revisit over the next couple of weeks. But the short answer is… I don’t know. We know that many news events — most notably, the political conventions — produce short-term “bounces” in the polls that partly or wholly reverse themselves after a few weeks. There were also some examples of this in 2012. Mitt Romney’s position improved by several percentage points following his first debate in Denver against President Obama, but his gains soon proved fleeting. Media coverage of the campaign — which tends to rally behind whichever candidate is gaining in the polls until it tires of the story and switches to scrutinizing the frontrunner — could also contribute to such swings back and forth.

So it’s plausible that Clinton’s “bad weekend” could be one of those events that has a relatively short-lived impact on the campaign. As if to put to the question to the test, Trump upended the news cycle on Friday by relitigating the conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. (Trump finally acknowledged that Obama was born here, but only after falsely accusing Clinton of having started the “birther” rumors.) If voters were reacting to the halo of negative coverage surrounding Clinton rather than to the substance of reporting about Clinton’s health or her “deplorables” comments, she could regain ground as Trump endures a few tough news cycles of his own. Over the course of the general election so far, whichever candidate has been the dominant subject in the news has tended to lose ground in the polls, according to an analysis by Larry Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley.

All of this is tricky, though, because we still don’t have a great sense for where the long-term equilibrium of the race is, or even whether there’s an equilibrium at all — and we probably never will because of the unusual nature of Trump’s candidacy. Perhaps Trump isn’t that different from a “generic Republican” after all. Or perhaps (more plausibly in my view) he is very poor candidate who costs the Republicans substantially, but that Clinton is nearly as bad a candidate and mostly offsets this effect. Still, I’d advise waiting a week or so to see whether Clinton’s current dip in the polls sticks as the news moves on from her “bad weekend” to other subjects.

So is there anything that Clinton can do to take the initiative and regain the lead instead of just reacting to how awful Trump is, hoping that will somehow rally undecideds to her cause?  Two sources may have that answer.  First, Glenn Thrush at Politico, in "Five reasons Trump might fall in autumn" (I'm excerpting just the last two):

4. Terrified Democrats are Clinton’s secret weapon. This is the big one, the factor upon which the election truly hinges. Raw, small-mammal fear. Trump’s success might be the only thing that gets many Democrats (or anti-Trump moderates outside the party) to hold their noses and vote Hillary.

The wow in recent national polls is not Trump’s rise, but the fact that more Trump voters are psyched about their candidate than Democrats are jazzed about their less-than-exciting nominee. In the Times survey, 51 percent of Trump supporters were enthusiastic about him vs. 43 percent of Clinton supporters who were thrilled about her. But fear is as powerful an emotion as love in politics (it’s why negative ads work and the decision by Jeb Bush’s super PAC to dump tens of millions into positive ads was so bad) — and Democrats are panicking, in a way that could be good news for their underperforming nominee.

Ultimately, Trump Terror has been at the core of Clinton’s strategy since the end of the primary, and it’s why her comment about half of Trump supporters being in a “basket of deplorables” probably won’t do any long-term damage: It’s basically still a base election, and she needs to get them out to win. A more vexing problem is her continued meh performance with younger voters who are flirting in the 25 to 30 percent range with third-party candidates.

The endgame strategy, here, in a quote: I ran into a top adviser to Clinton at a social event earlier this week, and asked him how things were going. “How the hell do you think it’s going? We’re probably going to win, but there’s a 30- to 40 percent chance we are going to elect a f---ing madman for the White House.” Then the guy headed for the bar.

5. Gary Johnson? Really? Very, very few Clinton voters are leeching directly over to Donald Trump — but a substantial number are visiting the pot-loving, socially liberal, bean-bag decorated Libertarian halfway house run by 2016’s chilliest third-party candidate, Gary Johnson. Johnson is a smart ((Ed. note: LOL), iconoclastic critic of both candidates who has been making a broad pitch for Bernie Sanders’ supporters, and it now appears he’s drawing skeptical former Clinton supporters in substantial enough numbers to affect the race.

Clinton’s Brooklyn brain trust is in a quandary on dealing with this: Attack him, and Clinton allies have compiled oppo files on the former New Mexico governor, and raise his low profile; let him roam the firmament snatching up progressives in his VW van and lose votes.

Fortunately for Clinton’s team, support for Johnson seems relatively soft (as opposed to the smaller, but more militant following attracted by Green Party candidate Jill Stein), and Clinton’s team expects many to drift back to her cause, as third-party defectors often do in October and November.

Barring an unexpected Johnson boomlet, this will be their anti-Johnson strategy — claiming that a vote for the mild-mannered Libertarian is, in fact, a vote for President Trump.

That might work.

Just ask Al Gore, who made the same case against Ralph Nader in 2000.

Priceless.  Now Angry Bear, who's already freaking out.  Too long to excerpt in context, so here's the bottom line.

 I just desperately wish she would run a campaign that is grounded in the economic and anti-campaign-funding-corruption populism in tune with 2016.  A.k.a., a strong desire for change.  Instead she’s running a deplorable one and turning a lot of us former Sanders supporters into basket cases.

Turns out that a substantial percentage of millennials think there’s no difference between Clinton’s policy preferences and Trump’s.  Not all that surprising, I guess, given that Clinton spent the summer campaigning for Republican votes.  Brilliant idea!

Clinton has abandoned the hard-negotiated Sanders platform as if on cue.  The Democratic fear factor is one of the few options left for her to try to hang on and run out the clock.  A 'prevent defense', as the best football coaches say, only prevents victory.  And an inevitable coronation suddenly finds itself flailing.

I don't have any insights that Nate Silver doesn't already have, and he admits he doesn't know where this will wind up.  But to me it feels like the Titanic's unsinkable hull has been breached, and she is slipping under the waves.

Why is Clinton losing to Trump?

Is this just a natural, cyclical closing of the huge gap that existed a month ago?  Is it something more significant?  I think the answer is mostly fundamental and as simple as 'people don't like her and don't trust her'.  Matt Yglesias explains.  Bold emphasis is mine.

Hillary Clinton’s ongoing campaign to paint Donald Trump as unacceptable in the eyes of most Americans is working. It’s just not good enough. That’s the message of the spate of recent polls showing a dramatically tightened race that Trump may even be narrowly winning.

The truth is that Trump is not doing well. Even Trump’s very best recent polls (which, by definition, are outliers that likely overstate his true level of support) show him receiving fewer votes than Republican candidates usually get. A recent CNN poll of Ohio, for example, that gave him a 5-point lead in the crucial swing state also shows him only getting 46 percent of the vote. Mitt Romney and John McCain both did better than that. Clinton’s attacks and Trump’s well-known weaknesses seem to have him losing the support of some GOP loyalists, even in his best polls.

The problem is that Clinton herself is doing worse. Because despite her campaign’s emphasis on Trump’s weirdness and unpopularity, that isn’t the only force shaping this race. It’s profoundly unusual across two other dimensions — the strength of third party candidates and the weakness of the frontrunner — that will probably prevent Clinton from ever opening up a sustained comfortable lead unless she can do something to make herself better-liked.

"A freakishly unpopular frontrunner".

Despite a couple of days’ worth of bad polls, Clinton still leads in national polling averages. It remains the case that if the election were held tomorrow, she would win.

In that context, her 42-56 favorable/unfavorable split in national polling is truly, freakishly bad. Political junkies have probably heard the factoid that Clinton is the least-popular major party nominee of all time — except for Donald Trump. But conventional dialogue still underrates exactly how weird this situation is. John McCain, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Bob Dole were all viewed favorably by a majority of Americans on the eve of presidential elections that they lost, and Mitt Romney was extremely close.

It is totally unheard of to win a presidential election while having deeply underwater favorable ratings, and it is actually quite common to lose one despite above water favorable ratings.

Since there are only two major party nominees in the race and they are both far underwater right now, it’s pretty likely that precedent will be shattered. But we are in a bit of an undiscovered country in terms of the underlying opinion dynamics.

Here I am given hope that the two "major minor" candidates (since there are almost a dozen others that will appear on someone's ballot somewhere), more commonly referred to as third-party candidates, are still to rise.

RealClearPolitics’ four-way polling average shows Gary Johnson at 9.2 percent and Jill Stein at 2.7 percent.

If those numbers hold up (which of course they might not), they would make Johnson the strongest third-party candidate since Ross Perot in 1992. That’s a big deal. Stein’s strength is, however, even more unusual. She is polling ahead of where Ralph Nader did in 2000 and is the strongest fourth-party candidate we’ve seen in a 100 years, besting both the Thurmond and Wallace tickets from the infamously four-sided election of 1948.

To find a fourth-place candidate polling higher than Stein’s current results, you need to dial all the way back to the 6 percent of the vote Eugene Debs earned in the bizarre 1912 election that saw the GOP nominee (the incumbent, no less!) finish in third place behind a third-party bid spearheaded by ex-president Teddy Roosevelt.

Did you know that Perot was only polling in the eight-percentage-point range when he was allowed to be in the debates with GHWB and Bill Clinton in 1992?  In context, he had polled as high as the thirties and forties as a tease candidate, before announcing that July he would not run, and then declaring as an independent on October 1, ten days before the first debate.  If not for Perot's help, we might have never seen the first Clinton in the White House.  (To be certain, Bush lost in '92 because of his own mistakes.  Just like Al Gore, eight years later.)

But back to Hillary.

Lambasting Trump while being unpopular herself would be a clear winning strategy in a zero-sum, head-to-head race. But in a four-sided race, where the two lesser candidates aren’t receiving much scrutiny from the press or the campaigns, it tends to have the side consequence of pressing a lot of people to Johnson or Stein. The fact that there are two different third-party candidates in the race — one for people who think Clinton’s too left and one for people who think she’s not left enough — makes it really difficult to avoid bleeding voters.

If polls stay very tight or Trump pulls into a lead, then anti-Trump messaging to Johnson and Stein voters could take the form of classic warnings about spoilers and wasted votes.

But the fact that Clinton has been consistently leading in the polls — and in August was doing so by a large margin — has itself undercut purely tactical arguments for voting Clinton. If she is overwhelmingly likely to win, which is what people have been hearing, then you may as well not vote for her if you don’t like her.

It’s simply going to be very hard for Clinton to open up the kind of stable lead that her supporters think Trump’s awfulness deserves while she herself is so little-liked. September of a general election year is probably not a great time to turn that around.

But the fact remains that her basic problem in this race is almost painfully simple. Over the course of her winning primary campaign she became a deeply unpopular figure. And it’s hard — indeed, unprecedented — for such an unpopular person to win the presidency.

The polling this weekend and next week will reveal the trends in more detail.  Clinton's campaign is already preparing "a vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for Trump" messaging, a demonstrative failure.  Here's your Daily Jackass, by the way.  These mules are not even going to get a featured post from here on out.

The first presidential debate is Monday, September 26, ten days away.  I don't know where Gary Johnson is going to be, but I expect Jill Stein will be outside the Hofstra University hall in Hempstead, NY, getting herself arrested, just like four years ago.

Here's Jeff Feldman, of Framing the Debate fame, with the "more".

Clinton is not just disliked for some abstract reason. She went out and actively made a key group hate her and her people. She alienated a key block that she now needs. She has not secured the Left that's tipped to Stein. Clinton's strategy with that part of the Left has been to shame them. It was a segment of the Sanders base. For months and months her campaign did it. They even hired people to do it under the guise of online commenting, etc. They're still doing it. The result is that a now significant percentage has left the party. She could have done something different. She could have gone after the Left -- brought them into the fold, worked more in public with Sanders, etc. She made no moves in this direction. And now it's probably too late. It will likely go down as a historic misjudgment on her part: believing it was still the 1980s and she could win by distancing herself from the McGovern wing. But it's not the 1980s. She alienated one of the most active, nimble and contemporary segments of the big tent. Take them back and she is on top. The crucial part of the vote that doesn't like her -- she invested time and money into making them hate her more, instead of doing the opposite.

Clinton will hold more of the Berners than she loses to Stein, but more than those two combined will choose the worst possible course of action and not vote (or write in Sanders).  Stein has increased her numbers from four years ago by a multiple of at least nine -- but that only gets her to three percent.  If her November tally winds up at four or six percent nationally ... well, that's still not saying much in the grand scheme.  But it is certainly something to build a foundation upon.  If the sheer number of people that Sanders pulled back to the Democrats, plus former Dems like me, have faded away -- this time forever -- we can now better calculate Clinton's opportunity cost, whether she wins the presidency or loses it.

Can she overcome all of this adversity and these setbacks of the past two weeks and still capture the White House on the strength of Republican crossover votes?  That's essentially what she has gambled on, almost from the very beginning.  If she can, then she will owe that caucus a very large debt.  And won't it be swell to watch her pay that back over the next four years.

Colin Powell agrees with me

This election sucks all around.

 "A national disgrace" and an "international pariah."  (Indeed he is.)

"Greedy", "unbridled ambition", and "everything (she) touches she kind of screws up with hubris".

It does make you wonder if Powell might vote for the stoner who blanked on Aleppo, though.

It's disappointing to me, as you may have previously suspected, that Gary Johnson and Jill Stein haven't gotten more traction in the past month or so.  Duopolists would rather just call them unqualified, but I cannot find any redeemable qualities in either Trump or Clinton to merit my vote.  Is 85% of the electorate so deplorable or terrified that the only option they see outside the blue/red box is to tap out?

Seems to be the case.  While we wait for polling that will reveal whether Clinton's lead has been further dented by her own hand, some of the goat entrails available to us push the needle back to the right and forth to the left (not the actual left, but as represented by the Democratic Party.  I consider that an important distinction to make, since I don't consider the Democrats to be all that left any more except on a few social issues).

Hillary blew a lead to Obama in 2008, beginning in January that year in Iowa.  She almost choked up the "inevitable" nomination to Bernie Sanders this year.  There is certainly enough doubt that she could not have won without all of the DNC's cheating on her behalf.  In historical context, why should we be surprised that she's giving way to Trump?

She really is that bad.  She's lucky she's running against Trump.  I'm still not going to be choosing either evil, however.  And whether you would vote for a third-party candidate or not, they should be allowed to participate in the debates (and a majority in a recent survey of likely voters agrees).

So sign the petition.  Unless you just like the system the way it is.  Rigged.

Cartoonists go off on Hillary

You won't see any of these at Ted's Shill shop or Juanita's beauty salon, after all, and the week is still young.  There'll be many more.

And here's some "equal time" ...

Scattershooting a few of my fellow bloggers

-- I was kind of saddened to read this.  It's chock full of all the fear and loathing of Trump that you have come to expect from various quarters of late, but the saddest part of it buys into the false logic, repeated ad infinitum, that voting for a third-party candidate -- particularly in a swing state -- is a waste.  A spoil, as even poor Bernie Sanders revealed when he declared himself to be a Democrat running for president a year ago.

Brother Neil formerly advanced that if he lived back in his home state of Ohio, he would vote for Clinton.  That's logic I share (although many Greens don't).  But that's not the same as considering a vote for Jill Stein in Ohio a waste, and if you believe that Texas is suddenly in Electoral College play -- and were also a Democrat, or Democrat-leaning -- then your vote for a third-party would suddenly be in danger of being accused a "spoiler".   Which tells you why some Democrats are so busy spinning that Texas is about to flip blue.  (Hillary's 'powering through' her pneumonia has surely ended whatever surge of that kind existed before last week).

There's both a public debate and a mathematical analysis that disproves the premise of wasted or spoiled votes, but I wouldn't expect any quivering Hillary fans to get it.  It's those folks still straddling the fence that I hope will be braver and smarter than this.

No, wait; the saddest part is that Neil's reason for switching to Clinton is that he thinks Julian Assange is a Russian agent, or in cahoots with Putin, or some of the other conspiracy theories advanced by the DNC after their email servers were hacked.  To be fair, there is a veritable mountain of circumstantial evidence that this could be the case, but no actual proof.  Smoke but no fire, as Clinton herself might say.  My opinion has always been that the content of what was in the leaked DNC emails was more critical than who hacked them, but that's another story Hillbots don't speak of.

Candidly, I think he's spent too many hours standing out in the sun holding a sign of late.  Anyway, if this is the kind of progressive you claim to be, then the word has lost all meaning.

-- Let's hold the lady at the beauty shop to account for the rumor she's spreading about Hillary leading Trump by double digits in Harris County.  She ain't writin' no blog down there in Fort Bend, after all.  It's going to be extremely difficult to hold a ten-point lead after Sunday's developments had it existed, either by rumor or something else, and I wouldn't have believed it a week ago.

Once again, for the sake of fairness: Clinton should win Harris County, and handily, and she should have some nice coattails for the judicials and others down the ballot.  But before 'a basket of deplorables' and 'overheated' became walking pneumonia, it could have been a much bigger win.

Not ever 55-45 Clinton, though.  I'll pull a Kuffner and remind you that Obama only carried Harris County by 50.5% over McCain in 2008, and by a scant eight-hundredths of one percent -- 49.39 - 49.31, or less than 1000 votes out of more than one million, one hundred thousand cast -- in 2012.  Somebody's pulling ten percent out of  their deepest, darkest nether region.  Maybe it's her big blue butt, probably someone else's, I don't know.

And speaking of Kuff ...

-- In this post a few weeks ago, the Betsy Johnson he linked to as running for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 5, is not actually the Betsy Johnson running for that office.  I know this because I called the San Antonio office of her firm, which directed me to Austin, and the person answering her phone said specifically that she "is not a candidate for public office".

The funny part is that Betsy Johnson worked in Greg Abbott's OAG for ten years.  Which wouldn't necessarily make her a Republican... or a Democrat, for that matter.  But if she were a Democrat running for statewide office, what she would have to say about working for Greg Abbott might be newsworthy.  The Texas Democratic Party might even be trumpeting (no pun intended) it.

This is just an uncarefully researched mistake on Kuff's part, I feel certain.  But if you're going to pick fun at political candidates in other parties who don't have websites, or Facebook pages, or essentially any online presence whatsoever save a state bar listing, then you should be prepared to acknowledge your own party's.  (I contacted Cliff Walker, the man in charge of candidate recruitment for the TDP, who provided me the contact data for the Betsy Johnson in the most previous link, and the addresses match.  She did not return my phone call.)

Which is what I should do at this time with respect to Judith Sanders-Castro, the Green running for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 5.  She has not returned my calls, either.

My chastened blog brothers and sister:

I kid because I care.  I feel embarrassed by the fact that our Little Alliance has withered and become such a joke over the past few years, and claim my share of responsibility for running some folks off with my abrasive manner.  But y'all need to get it right, especially since there's no Republican blogosphere locally or statewide remaining (Breitbart doesn't qualify as anything but propaganda) to keep you accountable, and our mainstream media remains a big fat corporate fail.

Now if I have made some mistakes or errors in judgment, I'm prepared to either admit them or defend them.  I expect no less from each of you.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance has a secret plan to ask someone else for a plan to bring you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff is not surprised that the Justice Department is accusing the state of Texas of misleading county election officials about the updated voter ID requirements.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos believes the editorial board of the Dallas Morning News should hold the Texas Republican Party to the same standard as it does Donald Trump. According to the DMN, Donald Trump is no Republican. But neither is the Texas GOP for that matter.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes a bad week for Ted Cruz: afraid of 'Value Voters' and dissed by John Cornyn.

Asian American Action Fund praised President Obama for pledging to double the funding for unexploded ordnance removal in Laos.

Socratic Gadfly looks at the Texas Trib and Bizjournals touting "the world of apps" as an allegedly surefire get-out-the-vote idea, is sure that it's NOT a surefire idea with folks like Valley Hispanics, but expects the Texas Democratic Party to be suckers for it anyway with pretty much the same results as before.

Equality Texas is hopeful for some improvements in civility -- at the very least -- after AG Ken Paxton had supper with the Briggle family.

Egberto Willies believes the story of the pharmaceutical company CEO who raised the price of EpiPens to stratospheric levels ought to be enough to motivate us -- and Congress -- into taking some action.

"A basket of deplorables" was a bad gaffe but still might not cost her the election, writes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.  Think more along the lines of "clinging to their guns and Bibles" as opposed to "47%".

Txsharon at Bluedaze finds herself once again in the fracking crosshairs.

Neil at All People Have Value added a page of his public art and revised his photography page as well at NeilAquino.com.

=============

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

CulturemapHouston has news of Houston's finest Italian restaurants joining the global relief effort for victims of the earthquake in that country by offering the signature dish of the town of Amatrice.

Jonathan Tilove at First Reading Dem-splains why Texas Republicans would be better off with a President Hillary Clinton.

Grits for Breakfast wants to see racial profiling data added to the discretionary traffic stop-and-searches performed by Texas DPS troopers.

Lawflog details the bar grievances he has filed against Hillary Clinton and several other attorneys associated with her and her presidential campaign.

Juanita Jean reminds us of the Trump U - Greg Abbott connection.

Eileen Smith looks at the Catholic angle on Donald Trump.

Anna Dragsbaek chastises Bexar County DA Nico LaHood for his misinformation about vaccinations.

The TSTA Blog is hesitant to be optimistic about pre-K in Texas.

Houston's Metro is looking for an urban designer.

Nan Little Kirkpatrick makes the connection between abortion access and transgender health care.

Jenny Dial Creech is not having Art Briles' apology.

And Pages of Victory describes his altercation with those aggressive red wasps that are so prevalent this time of year.

"A basket of deplorables'

Not her "47%" moment (unless she manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and then only in the mid-November talking-heads analysis).  It feels more like a "clinging to their guns and Bibles" moment; a serious error in judgment but a non-fatal one.

I think it was a stupid thing to say if you’re trying to win an election.

[...]

Nice. Insult a big chunk of voters. I thought liberals were supposed to be caring people, people who often went the extra mile to engage people who have different points of view than they did, talk to people who have different attitudes than they have and, in a perfect world, find common ground, and go from there.

Another thing that occurred to me was that during the brutal Democratic primary it wasn’t unusual to hear Bernie supporters labeled as sexist and racist, so do we also belong in “the basket of deplorables”? Does Clinton really believe that all of her supporters are perfect, tolerant, compassionate, people? Pure as the driven snow? Does she really think that none of them are even a little bit xenophobic, a little bit “Islamaphobic”?

Lastly, the optics were awful, imo. There she was before a room full of rich people and she elicits laughter by mocking fellow Americans by insulting them en masse and publicly writing them off. Is that a wise thing to do when you’re in the process of interviewing for the job of representing all Americans?

I don’t think that it was wise, I think it was elitist and stupid. And it wasn’t helpful to a country on the edge.

Over at Twitter #BasketOfDeplorables (which has been trending all day) I saw a comment that hit home for me that said that’s what happens when you spend “all August fundraising with elites”. I agree with that conclusion.

Her election to lose, and she's doing her damnedest to lose it.

You could not pick a worse, more inept, inexperienced or offensive joke of a presidential candidate than Donald Trump. The United States has become the butt of international ridicule over our very own “Kim Jong-Un.” Any candidate running against Trump from the opposing major party with a pulse ought to be beating him in the polls by double digits. But Hillary Clinton isn’t.

The Democratic nominee is barely ahead of “the most unpopular presidential candidate since the former head of the Ku Klux Klan,” and a recent CNN poll puts her at 2 percent behind Trump. Granted, it is only one poll, and several other recent polls have found her a few percentage points ahead. Still, no Democrat could ask for an easier Republican candidate to beat. In the history of American presidential races, it is likely we have never had a more comically unsuitable figure as Trump nominated by a major party. And yet Clinton is struggling to come out ahead.

I haven't had a conversation with a single solitary Hillary supporter that is willing or able to discuss the reasons why she isn't crushing Trump.  Her flaws, mind you, not his and not those of his base.

The Democrat’s ardent supporters—those who have championed her from Day One—claim that we live in a sexist country and that her gender is what is standing in the way of most Americans embracing her. They assert that the media and her critics hold her to an unfairly high standard. But in a country where white women have benefited far more from affirmative action policies, how is it that we easily elected the nation’s first black president twice, only to stumble over a white female nominee?

The problem is not her gender. [...] Her refusal to even attempt to embrace bold progressive values and her inability to read the simmering nationwide anger over economic and racial injustice are the larger obstacles to her popularity.

In positioning herself first and foremost as what she is not—Trump—Clinton is picking only the low-hanging fruit. My 9-year-old son could make fun of Trump in clever ways, and does so routinely. For Clinton to fixate on Trump’s endless flaws suggests that her own platform has little substance. For example, in a recent speech she said of Trump, “He says he has a secret plan to defeat ISIS. The secret is, he has no plan.” While these kinds of statements might make for funny one-liners, Clinton’s main credential is that she once led the State Department, and she did so with such hawkishness that Americans who are weary of endless wars are not impressed by the experience. (Not to mention that she was caught telling lies about her private email server while secretary of state.) If she proposed diplomacy over war, a plan to exit Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria, a promise to withhold weapons from Saudi Arabia, a commitment to Palestinian human rights, etc., voters might sit up and take note. 

Forget hoping she abandons her bellicosity; no candidate as experienced as Clinton should be committing such tone-deaf gaffes.  Not even in a room full of five- and six-digit check-writers.

Black voters tend to vote Democratic—a fact the party has taken for granted for decades. But if Clinton wants to earn those votes, she could take a page out of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s book and visit (or send a representative to visit) the ongoing occupation of Los Angeles City Hall by Black Lives Matter activists. BLM is calling on Mayor Eric Garcetti to fire Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck over a spate of killings by officers that has made his department the most violent of all departments nationwide. Instead, Clinton goes to Beverly Hills for a fundraiser to hobnob with wealthy donors and celebrities, including Garcetti. 

One thing I have noticed, anecdotally, is some black voters and influencers starting to move away from her.  I cannot tell for sure if this is meaningful or not.

Rather than reaching out to American voters on such issues, Clinton has been busy pandering to one particular community: the uber-rich. According to a New York Times article, she has made multiple trips to wealthy enclaves over the past month alone. In addition to Beverly Hills, she has visited Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons, rubbing elbows with celebrities and other rich elites. Just in August she raised more than $140 million through such fundraisers—easy fodder for the GOP to criticize in a new set of ads.

While making herself accessible to America’s upper classes, she has made herself almost completely unavailable to the press. Until Thursday, Clinton had not held a single news conference in 2016, inviting the unflattering comparison to President George W. Bush, who came under fire for avoiding interactions with the media. Bush was skewered for acting like he was hiding something, afraid the press might ask hard questions that would invite a blundering response. Clinton, one could argue, does not need to win over the press—most mainstream outlets already embrace her nomination and are pushing hard for her election. A recent article by Paul Krugman in the Times is a prime example. Ordinary Americans, however, continue to be unimpressed.

Perhaps Clinton feels that she can win without trying. After all, she has said publicly to her supporters, “I stand between you and the apocalypse.” She is positioning herself as a better option for president than the apocalyptic one. But that’s not saying much. And perhaps that is the point.

Maybe Clinton thinks she does not need to win over ordinary Americans. She knows she has the support of the Wall Street elite, the Pentagon war hawks and even a growing number of Republicans, one of whom implored his fellow Republicans to save the party by voting for Clinton.

And yet all of that may not be enough, as the polls are showing.

Hillary Clinton is running the worst possible campaign at the worst possible moment in the cycle, at the worst time in political history (history at least as long as I've been alive, anyway).

If Clinton loses this election, it will not be because Americans are dumb, racist misogynists who would cut off their noses to spite their faces in refusing to elect a sane woman over an insane man. It will not be because too many Americans “selfishly” voted for a third party or didn’t vote at all. It will be because Clinton refused to compromise her allegiance to Wall Street and the morally bankrupt center-right establishment positions of her party and chose not to win over voters. This election is hers to lose, and if this nation ends up with President Trump, it will be most of all the fault of Clinton and the Democratic Party that backs her. 

As I post this today, I still think she wins.  But if we're using the two-horse-race analogy, she's fading fast and in danger of being overtaken at the finish line.  I have to say, given these most recent national polling developments -- which again are not the Electoral College, and most assuredly not the EC or even the popular vote as Surveyed by a Monkey -- I am still bemused at those Democrats who allow themselves to believe, in however slight an amount it may be, that Texas may flip.  I think they're just trying to scare progressives into voting for Clinton, and that, sadly, is working.  For a party that gets so few votes in Texas, the Greens certainly punch above their weight in terms of engendering fear, loathing, and contempt from partisan Democrats.

Two things to keep in mind:

1.  The media sells you the notion that the race is close; and
2.  If Clinton does lose, it won't be Jill Stein's fault but she'll be blamed anyway.

Sunday Funnies

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

Dateline San Antonio.

Eight months before the next municipal election, Mayor Ivy Taylor is ramping up her re-election bid — shaking up her campaign and winning support of her former arch political rival.

Just a little over a year ago, things had become so strained between Taylor and mayoral challenger Leticia Van de Putte, a former state senator, that Taylor refused to shake her opponent’s hand after a debate broadcast on Texas Public Radio. But after Taylor won the bitter runoff election, hatchets were buried, fences mended and olive branches extended.

This week, the two stood side by side at a Taylor fundraiser in Terrell Hills that raised $180,000 for her re-election bid and where Van de Putte heaped praise on the mayor.

“I generally thought I was better suited to be mayor simply because of my experience and maybe the style of leadership I have. I knew Ivy to be a good administrator,” Van de Putte said in an interview with the San Antonio Express-News Thursday, describing what she said at the fundraiser.

“But she’s stepped up to the plate and she has shone. And so it is with those results that I wholeheartedly stand in support, and I said, ‘Voters got it right,’” Van de Putte said of her endorsement.

As a commenter at the OP noted ...

If Van De Putte can deliver the Latino vote to a token black anti-LGBT Republican with an ethics background that is totally shameful and who's in the lobby's fold, Latinos are in serious trouble. But the fact is she couldn't deliver it for herself, why should we think she can do it for Taylor. She's probably already lined up the city's lobbying contract for her and her Rino (Republican-in-name-only) friend Hope. At some point Leticia, it's time to move on and let the next generation of qualified and ethically responsible leaders step up and move the city in a transparent and accountable manner.

Bexar County Latin@s have, as throughout Texas, failed to drive their voters to the polls and take back (or take over) the city, county, and state for conservative Democrats since the Anglo Dems became Reagan Republicans in the Eighties.  Thus the Anglo Republicans -- we'd have to call them moderates for the most part -- and their considerable wealth are the ones who run the show.

Two more excerpts.

Van de Putte, who is now a lobbyist with former Secretary of State Hope Andrade, lauded the mayor for several accomplishments since she took over leadership of San Antonio, including ...

And:

According to an email sent to a contributor, about 150 people attended the Wednesday fundraiser for Taylor that raised $170,000, nearly doubling what she had reported was left in her account on June 30. ...

The invitation to the fundraiser, obtained by the Express-News, shows scores of supporters contributing as much as $1,000 apiece. The list of 236 people, organizations and political action committees included dozens of well-known San Antonians, including (mega-auto dealer) Ernesto Ancira Jr., Louis Barrios, Bill Greehey, Gordon Hartman, Peter Holt, (former CEO of Clear Channel Communications, now iHeartMedia) Lowry Mays, Red McCombs, Gene Powell, (construction magnate) Bartell Zachry and (former General Motors chairman and former CEO of Southwestern Bell/ATT) Ed Whitacre.

[...]

In a campaign shakeup, Taylor replaced Justin Hollis, currently running a re-election campaign for U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, with Christian Anderson, a veteran political consultant.

[...]

Taylor’s bid was notable because she entered the race late, having originally said she wouldn’t seek the elected position after being appointed to the seat in 2014, and was under-funded in the race that included Van de Putte, former state Rep. Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio, and former Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson.

Taylor said in a statement that she would still work with Red Print Strategies, a Washington-based Republican consulting firm. But she said it would be Anderson running the local operations.

"Van de Putte, who is now a lobbyist with former Secretary of State Hope Andrade ..." is just one nugget of data in this piece that reveals the merging of pro-business Democrats and Republicans in Texas.  It's an adjunct of the damage Trump is wreaking upon the GOP, and to a lesser degree the rejection of Hillary Clinton as the kind of Democrat that many longtime liberal Democrats can unite behind.  Neither group of centrists wants to be associated with its base of so-called 'extremists', the people who for the most part turn out for GOP primaries and don't in the Democratic one.

We're witnessing the birth of a modern-day American Tory Party.  It's likely to be the third party that everybody who isn't a progressive or a Tea Partier will ultimately join.  If either the Dems or Repubs can succeed in chasing off their base, they'll co-opt the name and ballot line of the hollowed-out shell of the former duopoly member and assimilate it.

And for the time being, they'll praise this as "bipartisanship", in the same manner as it is presented by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Scattershooting the blogroll

-- Because the "most recent posts" feed in the blogroll to the right is jacked, I have switched it to alphabetical order until it can be fixed.  I prefer "most recent", but the alpha listing will enable you to more easily find something that you have followed here previously.  There's lots of 'T's because of 'The' and 'Texas", so be patient in searching.

-- I've also made several additions and subtractions, so there is considerably more fresh content and minority POV.  And fewer Shillbots.

-- Here are some photographs from the Standing Rock camp, the swelling group of protestors joining the Hunkpapa Lakota and Yanktonai Dakota -- and the support of almost one hundred other tribes -- opposing the latest response from the fossil fuel industry to work around the blocking of Keystone XL.  It's taking on a Camp Casey quality.

-- This is what the planet is up against.  It's the reason why you have Democrats, especially Texas Democrats, supporting fracking just as much as you do Republicans.  It does make that Peak Oil conversation look quaint though, doesn't it?  Do you think they'll be able to extract most of this vast supply of oil and gas for equally massive profits before we all fry?

None of the Above for CiC

The biggest loser appears to have been Matt Lauer.  First, to the duopoly combatants.

After months of what the military calls stand-off attacks, launched from a distance, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump finally met on the same stage Wednesday night for hand-to-hand combat.

War analogies are almost as distasteful as football ones, aren't they?

Unfortunately for those seeking information on their respective military policies, they were separated by a half-hour, which meant there was plenty of unilluminating blather spewed by both candidates. That’s to be expected when neither has issued a detailed national-security blueprint or spelled out their plans to defeat ISIS with any specificity.

The candidates ran through their talking points—little they haven’t said before—set apart by stirring martial music, a “live exclusive” MSNBC logo on the screen, and nasal-spray and bladder-control advertisements. Of course, with each candidate limited to about 25 minutes, they couldn’t say much. Clinton spent much of her allotted time responding to questions over her lousy email security while serving as secretary of state. By the time a veteran asked her a serious question about defeating ISIS, moderator Matt Lauer jumped in, encouraging her to answer “as briefly as you can.”

Fun.  The lies and bullshit got thicker, though.

Clinton said she would follow the plodding path blazed by President Obama. “We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again, and we are not putting ground troops into Syria,” she said. “We’re going to defeat ISIS without committing American ground troops.” Trump didn’t address the issue, except to confirm he would destroy ISIS quickly. “The generals have been reduced to rubble,” he argued of the U.S. military’s high command, their hands tied by an overly cautious White House.

But Trump, who said last year that he knew “more about ISIS than the generals do,” has suddenly done an about face and says he will order “my generals”—itself a jarring construction—to devise a plan to defeat ISIS. Obama, of course, has done that as well, and has decided on a go-slow approach to grind the caliphate into dust. Sure, the U.S. could steamroll into the Syrian city of Raqqa, crushing at least ISIS’s physical capital. “I’ve talked to some U.S. generals who are really frustrated,” retired Marine general Anthony Zinni told Time Aug. 31. “They could be in Raqqa in a week.” But that would only set off a new wave of problems, as the U.S. has learned, relearned, and learned again in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Trump dismissed such concerns. In a non-sequitur, he suggested that a Trump Administration would “take the oil” to end such turmoil.

I'm as repulsed as any Clinton supporter.  Believe me.  But because of her lack of press availability over the past year, she was once again forced to refry the email beans.

She may have wanted to talk about why she is qualified to be US commander in chief, but she spent nearly a third of her time on the defensive about her emails.

She talked about classification "headers" and explained that there was "no evidence" her server had been hacked. She even said it may have been safer than those of the state department's, given that the government's (non-classified) system had indeed been breached.

When it came to handling classified information, she was unapologetic. "I did exactly what I should have done and I take it very seriously," she said. "Always have, always will."

For those keeping track at home, Mrs Clinton has gone from asserting that she never relayed classified information to that she never sent "marked" classified documents to that she never sent material with classified headers.

That's the rhetorical equivalent of rear-guard action that ends with your army pushed into the sea.

Her Iraq War authorization as a senator and the Libyan matter were also parsed.  As usual, she was unable to mollify the critics.  But leave it to Lauer to lower the bar enough for both Trump and Clinton to slither under it.

So Lauer didn't correct Trump on his record about Iraq?” The Washington Post’s Phil Rucker tweeted.

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof wrote that the forum was “an embarrassment to journalism,” while his colleague Paul Krugman wrote that “everyone knew this would happen,” but Lauer didn’t “have a follow-up planned” for Trump’s answer.

"I hate media-on-media violence, but Trump's support for the invasion of Iraq has been. .. rather well documented. No Lauer follow-up?” wrote Yahoo News’ Olivier Knox.

NBC News’ own political unit fact-checked Trump's claim later, calling it “false”.

To be sure, Lauer got credit for pushing Trump on his plan for defeating ISIS and confronting Trump with a tweet of his from 2013 on the thousands of unreported sexual assault in the military where Trump said: “What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?” Many also lamented the short amount of time allotted for each candidate, just 30 minutes including audience questions.

But that didn’t take away from what many journalists saw as a quick and easy fact check.

"How can someone like @MLauer not set the record straight on Trump's bogus claim of being against the war in Iraq?” wrote the Washington Post’s fact checker Glenn Kessler.

Trump was buffoonish on the military rape question as well.

Trump [...]  began by  saying that it is  a "massive problem" and that "we're going to have to come down very, very hard on that."

"The best thing we can do is set up a court system within the military," he said according to Time. "Right now the court system practically doesn't exist."

[...] Lauer quickly interjected to read a tweet from Trump three years ago. In May 2013, Trump said that sexual assault was to be "expected" when you put women in the military:

26,000 unreported sexual assults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2013

After Lauer called Trump out on his 3-year-old tweet, Trump maintained saying, "It is a correct tweet. There are many people that think that's absolutely correct."

Lauer then asked if that means Trump would take women out of the military and the Republican nominee said, "No, not take them out, but something has to be happened [sic]. When you have somebody that does something so evil, so bad as that, there has to be consequences for that person. You should have to go after that person. Right now, nobody is doing anything."

Incoherent.

Despite the whining in advance that Hillary would "lose" because Trump is graded on a curve, and the predictable and rote complaints about sexism and misogyny (spawning its own hashtag, naturally), it's the macro view of this forum that leaves me disgusted.

The most dispiriting thing Wednesday night was the grim view of the world the candidates gave Americans, with their relentless focus on fighting and terror. That, in part, comes from candidates eager to court—some might say pander to—the military vote. There was scant optimism, reflecting the hunkered-down nature of U.S. politics since 9/11. The frontier spirit that made the U.S.—a national character trait for more than two centuries—was nowhere on the deck of the USS Intrepid, docked in the Hudson River.

More than 500,000 Americans have died on U.S. highways since 9/11. A U.S. resident is 1,000 times more likely to die in a car crash than a terrorist attack. While the federal government has succeeded in reducing the number of vehicle fatalities, few blame the federal government for the asphalt carnage. But because such deaths are an everyday occurrence, they have become part of the white noise of American life.

You wouldn’t know it from listening to the candidates, but the world today is less violent than it has been in generations. If the candidates had focused on that Wednesday night, instead of heightening fears over relatively small threats, the evening could have been inspiring, as well as informative.

With these two odious people?  Not a chance.

Trump could win

-- But I don't believe he will.  As terribly bad a candidate as Clinton continues to demonstrate herself to be, I still think she's going to hold on and win the presidency.  But it's going to be a much closer contest than it should be, and if she were running against anybody but Trump, she'd be losing.

Update: Just so there's no misunderstanding, Trump has a much better shot at defeating Clinton than Texas does of turning blue.

-- In a week where the media's focus will be on national security (which I interpret as 'who's going to drop bombs on somebody else first') there will be various war pigs trotted out in favor of their  preferred CiC ...and some snarky rejoinding to that.

[...] Clinton and Trump will participate in a joint forum Wednesday sponsored by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and broadcast on NBC and MSNBC -- their first joint appearance of the campaign.

Clinton is also bolstering her national security push with a new television ad called "Sacrifice," highlighting Trump's criticism of Arizona Sen. John McCain's war-hero status and his fight with the Muslim parents of an American soldier killed in combat.

And her super PAC, Priorities USA, is launching a $5 million ad buy in the swing states North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Iowa and New Hampshire on Friday with a spot titled "I Love War."

Featuring a mushroom cloud, it touts Trump's hawkish remarks about war and nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, Clinton's running mate, Tim Kaine, delivered a security-focused speech Tuesday in Wilmington, North Carolina, accusing Trump of flip-flopping on how the United States should handle the war in Iraq.

"He says whatever he feels like at any given time because you can do that when you're a TV star. But you can't do that when you're president of the United States," Kaine said.

First of all, it's impossible for Trump to love war more than Clinton.  That's not the bigger-dick  contest you might think in this case, though; baiting Trump into responding in some irrational way on Twitter to reinforce her message is, but so far he's only countering with a Pee Wee Herman-esque "I know you are but what am I".

"I just don't think she has a presidential look and you need a presidential look," Trump said of Clinton.

"I'm talking about general, by the way, she says things about me that are horrible," Trump said. "As an example, the single greatest asset I have according to those that know me is my temperament."

Yes, we're all laughing heartily.

This is simply the wrong conversation our nation ought to be having, as we are already bombing four different countries, seven if you want to include the three previously bombed during the Obama administration, and Hillary Clinton -- you know, the one with all of the vast foreign policy experience -- thinks that's too few.

I won't be watching these "Bigger Balls" contests and I hope not to have to blog about them.  But Trump might say something like "I'll just use nukes", so I may be forced to comment.  (Pro tip to Trump's debate coaches: have him prepared for the nuclear question, and make sure he answers it less hawkish than Hillary.)

The truth is that I cannot stomach the fact that -- irrespective of how small his hands may or may not be -- Trump is probably smaller than Clinton in the macho/war/genitalia length and girth department.  And that fact is precisely as repulsive as you feel repulsed having read that sentence.

Labor Day Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance reminds you that Labor Day is more than college football, binge drinking, and sleeping late, and offers the resources of the Zinn Education Project to use and peruse as you wish.

Off the Kuff looks at the state's voter ID outreach efforts, which began last week.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos is hardly surprised to learn about the veil of secrecy that shrouds the $2.5 million Texas Voter ID education effort.

Socratic Gadfly hears about a new idea in the newspaper biz, charging people to have candidate endorsement letters to the editor published, and rips it to shreds.

After listening to Donald Trump's white nationalist speech, CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme woke up very angry at the Republican party.  Remember the ugly, angry GOP debate audiences in 2012?  These were the special people invited to attend.  Think about Senate Republicans blocking a Supreme Court nominee, threatening the full faith and credit of the US and so very much more.

It's Labor Day, and according to (faulty) conventional wisdom, we can all begin to pay attention to the coming election, writes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Neil at All People Have Value says his friend Libby gets enthused by ideas. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

Texas Vox posts the details of the Texas Railroad Commission candidates' forum, in Austin on September 10.

The city of Lewisville reported its 16th case of West Nile virus in mosquitoes tested there, reports the Texan-Journal.

Txsharon at Bluedaze details her white privilege at age four.

And Texas Leftist got hungry and went out for lunch after blogging about the Trump surrogate's fear of 'taco trucks on every corner'.

=======================

The Texas Observer's Patrick Michels writes about how a campaign to keep a Jesus sign brought discord to a God-fearing East Texas town, while John Wright reports on El Paso's challenge to the anti-trans rhetoric of the GOP.

Grits for Breakfast exposes the Democratic Party's hypocrisy on criminal justice reform.

PoliTex asks whether Ted Cruz still has the golden touch.

Steve Snyder takes a deep dive into the voter ID litigation agreement.

Megan Woolard Arredondo explores the challenge of climate change for San Antonio, and Space City Weather explains why hurricanes are strongest on the right side.

Swamplot maps where Houston's pot smokers live.

Cherise Rohr-Allegrini critiques the anti-vaccinations film Vaxxed.

Eileen Smith calls on her fellow Texans to keep Rick Perry on "Dancing With The Stars" for as long as possible.

Houstonia raises a glass to the mannequins of summer.

And Pages of Victory finally cops to his age.

Sunday Funnies

Conservative media take over Trump's campaign, look to post-election battle for soul of GOP

A lot of people don’t want to vote for a third-party candidate like Jill Stein or Gary Johnson because they believe their vote will be “wasted.” But they don’t apply the same logic to most other things in life, many of which involve setting yourself apart from the herd.

It's Labor Day weekend; time to start paying attention to the election

As some sayer of sooths will point out.  At some point.

-- A couple of fresh contenders for the crown of Daily Jackass (honestly, these two seem like the third-string players scrambling for a roster spot) include Tessa Stuart at Rolling Stone with the compilation of greatest hits, and Brent Budowsky at The Hill, calling for a debate between Gary Johnson and ... Bernie Sanders.

 Two of the most genuinely pathetic pieces I have read this cycle. 

-- If you don't understand why Trump has managed to erase Clinton's large and long lead (there's a Mel Brooks/Blazing Saddles joke there) in the national two-horse race polls, just look at one thing: the incessant media coverage of his ridiculous and pathetic immigration "plan".  It's not just because Hillary's Foundation is crumbling or that her e-mail Scandal O'Day resembles a a case of herpes, it's because Trump and his minions dominate the discussion everywhere you look.  I try my hardest to ignore the daily spew but it's become impossible.  What's truly remarkable is how his surrogates manage to catapult the propaganda in the least effective way: #TacoTrucksOnEveryCorner, as if that were a bad thing.  Yes, it's hate speech and bigotry and we'll all be the worse for the experience even after he's finally gone away.  Unless he doesn't go away; consider the horror that the media asks him to comment on every single policy initiative of President Clinton's during the next four years, as they did with McCain following 2008 and Romney after 2012.

Turn him off.  Maybe our corporate teevee media will get the message if the ratings start going down, but I doubt it.

-- Vladimir Putin says he doesn't know who hacked the DNC.  And at this point, what difference does it make?

In an interview two days before a G20 meeting in China with U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders, Putin said it might be impossible to establish who engineered the release of sensitive Democratic Party emails but it was not done by the Russian government.

"Does it even matter who hacked this data?" Putin said. "The important thing is the content that was given to the public." 

"There’s no need to distract the public’s attention from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it," he added. "But I want to tell you again, I don’t know anything about it, and on a state level Russia has never done this."

I believe him.  Which is more than one could say about most of what both Clinton or Trump have had to say about the matter.

I sit with Colin Kaepernick

The advancement of civil rights in this nation requires protests of this very nature -- with something personal at risk of loss to the protester, like Ali, and MLK, and Malcolm X -- and compels by force of conscience people who look like me to stand, or sit, with them.

It's called the First Amendment.  There's a reason the Founders put it ahead of the Second one, after all, and if you're a Second Amendment person but not a First one, then you're an asshole.  But just so we're clear, let's be certain that we all understand that your right to complain about Kaepernick is included within his right to sit during the anthem.

Because we also know this has nothing to do with the First Amendment.

And now... let's all STFU about this trivial matter.  But before we do, let's give the #VeteransforKaepernick the last word.