Saturday, May 07, 2016

Good news for Hillbots

Not those crapholes who do the posting at Blue Nation Review... all of them.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has shifted 11 states on its election scorecard toward Democrats since Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
“This has been an exceedingly unpredictable year,” the analyst said. “Although we remain convinced that Hillary Clinton is very vulnerable and would probably lose to most other Republicans, Donald Trump's historic unpopularity with wide swaths of the electorate — women, millennials, independents and Latinos — make him the initial November underdog.”
Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin were all shifted from toss-up states to leaning Democratic. The “solid Republican” states Missouri and Indiana were downgraded to “likely Republican.” New Mexico is now solidly Democratic, and North Carolina is a toss-up after leaning Republican.The analyst also shifted Arizona and Georgia from likely Republican to leaning Republican.
Cook also moved one House race toward Democrats: Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which was considered solid for Republicans and is now classified as a toss-up race.
Maine’s 2nd District was the only reclassification that favored the GOP, going from solid Democrat to likely Democrat. The Report classifies congressional districts in Maine and Nebraska because they are the only two states that don’t award their Electoral College votes on a winner-take-all basis.
The shifts is good news for Clinton and down-ballot Democrats, who are increasingly seeking to tie their GOP opponents to Trump.

Take a look again at the Electoral College map that Politico posted earlier this week that showed Hillary as a prohibitive favorite already.




Now flip three of the states in yellow above that Cook lists -- CO, FL, VA-- to blue and you have Clinton with 298 EC votes, or 28 more than enough to win.  If NC is a true tossup and she collects OH by tapping Sen. Sherrod Brown as V-P, we're into LBJ landslide territory.  (There's a very good reason that Juliรกn Castro's bubble is suddenly losing air, and FWIW Brown has pretty clearly said -- more clearly than people in his position usually say -- that he's not interested.)

I still think Clinton picks a Latino -- Tom Perez seems to me to have moved ahead of Castro just lately -- to seal the deal, especially in the wake of this past week's TacoBowlgate.

And as long as we're rumor-mongering running mates, Sen. Joni "Make 'Em Squeal" Ernst checks all the boxes for Drumpf: she's looney-tunes conservative, she has a vagina, and she brings swingy Iowa with her.  The Republican nominee is going to need all the help he can get, and she's the mostest in a general election that is (or should be) over before it begins.

Discounting the V-P prognostications above, only Vermont, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, and maybe North Carolina are up for grabs.  That's a lot of states where Americans who can't stand the Republican or Democratic nominees can vote for a Libertarian or a Green for president... without being guilted for doing so.

So the two-horse race is really over unless Hill screws it up pretty badly.  That could happen, but the chances of anything damaging coming out of the FBI investigation into the use of her private email server -- specifically to avoid FOI requests -- grow slimmer by the day. 

My feet are sound asleep; what about yours?

Friday, May 06, 2016

Feliz Seis de Mayo

-- Is it safe to say Mexico is having a yuuuuuge week?  From Houston Texans' tackle Duane Brown's #MexicanMeat to "I love the Hispanics", it was indeed a special Cinco.


-- Let's count the ways Drumpf fucked it up:

Should a presidential candidate really be hawking his name-brand taco bowl to constituents?

Should Trump really be saying “Hispanics” when Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday?

Should Trump even be trying to win over Mexican voters on Cinco de Mayo, an event that’s not celebrated in most of Mexico and serves primarily as a day for Americans to party and drink tequila?

Should Trump be celebrating Cinco de Mayo with a crispy taco salad -- a product invented in Texas?

Should he even be claiming Trump Tower Grill has the best taco bowls when Yelp gives the restaurant a mere 3.5 stars out of five? (Update: Also the Tower Grill does not even sell the taco bowls.)

Why is Trump eating that taco bowl next to a photo of his ex-wife Marla Maples?

Haven't we seen enough bad holiday tweets from #brands? This we assume is just the beginning from Trump. Lest we forget, one of his campaign promises is to end the War on Christmas.

It's going to be a riotous six months for comedians and snarky bloggers, but a seriously bad time for our nation and democracy generally.  So I'm kinda torn.

-- Did you hammer a few too many margaritas yesterday?  Taco Cabana has your coupon for hangover breakfast tacos that's only good this morning.  And hopefully you didn't consume any of the rot-gut at some of these fine Houston establishments.

-- Tony Buzbee, Rick Perry's lawyer, got his drink on a couple of months too early.  He'll be spending some of his Memorial Day weekend getting ready for his DWI trial.

More on Drumpf's racism and misogyny in the pipeline, but I need to go pick up some tacos.

Thursday, May 05, 2016

Requiem for a jerk


Despite the booger-eating, the associations with the worst religious freaks he could wrangle, the unintentional physical trauma he has put his wife and children through, and even all the good things he has done for Democrats... I'm going to miss making fun of the big lug.

Maybe I'll drive past his house and throw eggs, pitch toilet paper up in the trees or something.

Ted Cruz is back home in Houston.

He and his wife Heidi visited and thanked loyal volunteers and campaign staff Wednesday evening at Armadillo Palace.

Close to a hundred people packed into the restaurant for the homecoming. Cruz mingled with the hometown crowd that was filled with many of the grassroots supporters that have been key to the rise of his political career.

"It's wonderful to be home," Cruz told KHOU 11 News as he was leaving the event.

Now he and his family are getting back to somewhat of a normal life. They didn't leave the restaurant with a driver or a motorcade, Heidi drove them home.

For the love of a Jesus Christ that she believes in and I don't, I hope she packs her bags and goes back to New York and Goldman Sachs before she has another nervous breakdown.

As for Ted, the Libs are beckoning.

Libertarians seeking their party’s presidential nomination say Sen. Ted Cruz should endorse them rather than Donald Trump, who rebranded the Texas Republican “Lyin’ Ted” before forcing him out of the GOP primary with a crushing victory in Indiana on Tuesday.

Cruz hasn’t said if he will endorse Trump, whose campaign trail attacks included retweeting an unflattering photo of the senator’s wife and repeating allegations that Cruz’s father was with Lee Harvey Oswald before President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

On Tuesday, Cruz called Trump a “pathological liar” and “utterly amoral.”

The vicious GOP primary, the Libertarians hope, will push Cruz to endorse them and deliver his socially conservative, Constitution-toting base, which they view as rational for a variety of policy reasons as well.

“Ted Cruz has always been brave and stood up to the establishment of his own party, even when it came to shutting down the government, so I wouldn’t put it past him,” says Austin Petersen, one of three candidates seeking the Libertarian nomination at a Florida convention this month.

“With Donald Trump winning, I might be the only pro-life, pro-Constitution candidate on the ballot,” Petersen says. “[Cruz has] always shown the courage to buck the leadership of his own party. It would be shocking, but I don’t think it would be out of character for him.”

New Mexico’s former Republican Gov. Gary Johnson also is seeking the Libertarian nomination, which he won in 2012 before collecting more than 1 million general election votes. Johnson is doubtful Cruz would endorse him but says it would be welcome.

“That would be huge, that could be the quantum leap we need, the attention we need,” says Johnson, who was supported by 11 percent of responsdents in a recent hypothetical match-up against Trump (at 34 percent) and Democrat Hillary Clinton (at 42 percent) from Monmouth University.

“There is an opportunity here,” he says.

Golden.  Then again, he could return to Senate and become a... something besides a pariah.

As Cruz returns to Washington, does he maintain his firebrand, anti-establishment approach — which has inspired his base support but rubbed many of his colleagues the wrong way? Or does he take a more collegial tack, seeking to build upon some of the mainstream GOP support he received in recent weeks?

Because right now, GOP consultant Bill Miller pointed out, Cruz is a “dead man walking in the Senate.”

Former House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, recently called Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh.” Former President George W. Bush reportedly said last year, “I just don’t like the guy.” And Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who ultimately endorsed Cruz, has joked about Cruz being shot on the Senate floor.

“If he chooses to run again, he would need to soften his approach,” said Denton County GOP chairwoman Dianne Edmondson.

A kinder, gentler Ted.  We can all dream, I suppose.  See Kuff for his take.