Election developments move quickly after latest Trump embarrassment

-- Paul Ryan canceled Trump's appearance at a campaign swing through Wisconsin the two were scheduled to make today.  Sen. Mike Lee of Utah took to Facebook Live to urge Trump to quit the race.  There were denouncements aplenty, but essentially nobody except Lee withdrawing their endorsement.  Update: there's a growing list of Republicans calling for him to drop out.  But of course he won't, and he can't anyway; voting is already happening in nearly two dozen states, including mail ballots like Texas and expats overseas.  The GOP is stuck with him, and the nightmare for downballot Republicans is real.

Update II: Both Vox and Rick Hasen outline some highly implausible scenarios -- Hasen calls them 'unlikely contingencies' -- whereby if Trump chose to drop out, the GOP could finagle the Electoral College representatives to be counted for both Trump and whoever might replace him.

Trump apologized on video, but more in defiance than in contrition, and promised he would strike back at Clinton using her husband's old track record.  That portends a lively yet revolting set-to for Sunday night's second debate.  Trump's polling continues to slide even before the impact of yesterday's sexist insults tape can be measured, which leads to more predictions falling in behind mine on Monday that Trump is finished.

Despite all of this, I still do not think he can lose Texas.

-- Meanwhile, Wikileaks released some of John Podesta's emails, which confirmed Hillary's shilling for Wall Street.  Still not quite the October Surprise her political opponents have been eagerly anticipating, though the RNC is seizing on it to distract themselves us from Trump's implosion.  We get another "it's the Russians" reaction from Democrats, and sputtering outrage from all the usual alt-right suspects, who have forced a "Bill Clinton is a rapist" Twitter hashtag to trend.  Some lay blame on the media, another predictable response.

-- All of this noise has drowned out the capture and subsequent release of several peace activists by the Israeli navy as they attempted to land at Gaza, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Matthew, the New Cold War with Putin and Russia, the hot proxy war we're fighting with them in Syria, more devastating climate change statistics, and a host of other things that are more important than Trump's sophomoric frat boy behavior or Clinton's latest email dump.  But at least it knocked Kim Kardashian's robbery back to the entertainment section.

-- In brighter news, Jill Stein is returning to Texas at the end of next week, with stops in El Paso, San Antonio, and Houston, at the Last Concert Cafe' on Saturday, October 15.  I'm delighted that she has long seen the Lone Star State as a tremendous growth opportunity for the Green Party.

It's not a protest vote, not a wasted vote.  It's an eviction notice.

Some offbeat election news, scatter-shot

-- Darrell Castle, the Constitution Party's presidential nominee -- "on thirty-five state ballots (twenty-four, actually) and maybe the only social conservative running" -- has the ultimate putdown to those who still parrot the fallacy that a vote for the lesser evil is your only option.

“People say, ‘Well I have to vote for the lesser of two evils because if I don’t Mrs. Clinton may get elected,'” he says. “But I speak to a lot of Christians, and I tell them as a Christian you cannot do that if you have some regard for scripture because Romans 3:8 says you’re prohibited from trying to achieve a good result by doing evil.” 

There you go, evangelicals and Ted Cruz supporters.  Get Castle's polling moving upward.

-- I had a bizarre conversation with a California Berniecrat who is voting for Clinton because he isn't certain whether Clinton could carry his state (a fairly delusional thought, unless you just can't believe the polls or fear the election is going to be hacked by the Russians, or something).  Bizarre, at least, until I read this.

Whether Donald Trump is entitled to California's 55 Electoral College votes would be called into question if Trump wins the state's popular vote, a Trump-supporting third party and election law experts are warning.

It's an unusual situation and everyone seems to agree there's a potential problem, but they disagree on the severity and likely resolution if Trump defies polls and wins the state.

[...]

The problem arises from the fact that Trump is nominated by both the Republican Party and the state branch of the American Independent Party, and the two parties did not agree on a joint slate of electors, Just two names overlap on lists submitted earlier this week, bringing the total number of Trump electors to 108.

California ballots will list the two nominations together near Trump’s name, with “Republican, American Independent” or some abbreviation – and ballots don't list individual electors. But if on the evening of Nov. 8 it becomes clear he has won the state, the two nominations will net Trump nearly twice the number of electors allowed.

Go read it; it's kinda fun.  And not so much bizarre, but about as possible a scenario as a swarm of undocumented immigrant conservative Yetis helping the GOP hold the line in Orange County.

-- I think writing in Bernie Sanders' name is ridiculous and a little sad, but I do not think that any vote cast is a wasted one.  This is debatable, however, as I will explain in a moment.  But for now, and as a matter of public service ...

In Texas, a write-in vote for any candidate in any office who has not been certified by the state of Texas is a vote that will not appear in the official canvass.  Strangely, there will be a record of it kept by your county clerk, but that will not be made public.  Perhaps the clerk's office would respond to a FOIA request and announce the number of votes cast for Hypnotoad, or Jesus Christ, or Mickey Mouse for President some time after the election.  Otherwise we'll never know how many votes were "wasted" in this fashion ... the only way you can waste a vote, other than by not casting it at all.

To the latter: over 50% of the American people will waste their votes in this manner, as they remain unregistered to vote, and about 50% of those registered, give or take a few, will likewise fail to get themselves counted.  Those who do not exercise their citizenship are doomed to be governed by their inferiors, so the saying goes, and have earned no right to complain.

-- I have seen some really interesting voting rationales by some 'friends' on Facebook.  The most creative one recently was a woman who said she could not vote for Jill Stein in Texas because the GP "doesn't do party-building" between presidential elections (an atrociously misinformed statement coming from an otherwise bright but binary-thinking progressive Democrat).  In the same paragraph she said she would vote for down-ballot Greens "to show support for having additional options".  That's really something, isn't it?  A Catch 22 that she puts herself into and takes herself out of at the same time.  I suppose the Greens should be happy with whatever vote for them she can muster.

A rationale that a fearful or recalcitrant liberal might employ in deciding to vote for Hillary in a close county -- like Harris -- might be in order to help the Dems retake majority status, with the presiding judges in all precincts and at early voting locations.  Note that this would have nothing to do with turning Texas blue, as it won't.  Similarly, and as the anonymous person mentioned in the previous graf has indicated she will do, here's the best reason to vote for Jill Stein and the Green candidates running in Texas (there will be four or five dozen on the ballot throughout the state, not all of them on your ballot, because they're running for county offices and things like SBOE, which are multi-county in a specific region):

If Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka receive 5% of the national vote, the Green Party will qualify for general election public funding in 2020 that will be worth over $10 million dollars.

Securing 5% of the popular vote will also guarantee state ballot access lines for the next election cycle, saving the Green Party time and money that could be spent where (the GP) needs it most. 

Charles Kuffner, as you might have guessed, is contemptuous.  It is indeed going to be one giant leap for mankind if the Greens can pull it off, as someone on another celestial plane once said.  With respect to those who would rather focus on a brand new Congress, I applaud the efforts of BernieDems, etc. in working to reform that party on the inside, but I spent the past ten years heavily involved in that effort, and you can see the fruits of that harvest came in spoiled rotten every single year.  Been there, done that, just took the forty T-shirts I got for it to Goodwill.

I would sooner join al-Qaeda and try to reform it from within.  A decade of my life spent demonstrating the definition of insanity is far too much.  I'm going to do something different from now on.  I'd be happy to have your help if you're so inclined.

Libertarian candidates falter

Gary Johnson seems to be having a personal crisis.  AKA meltdown.

In an interview on CNN early yesterday [...] Johnson explains why if "crossing 'i's and dotting 't's" on international political leaders and geography is more important than the policy itself and than admitting mistakes, he’s not meant to be president (but if honesty and peace are what voters want, then he is).

Jeremy Binckes at Salon told Johnson he looked 'jittery' and 'in need of sleep'.

If it makes you feel any better, your excuse makes sense, even the way you phrased it on CNN: “OK so I point out an elected leader that I admire, and then all of a sudden I have to defend them against things that I’m not even aware of,” Johnson said. “If that’s a disqualifier to run for president, so be it.”

I hate to break it to you, but that’s sort of what international politics is about. The U.S. has allies, and they sometimes come for dinner. It’s really not good if you insult them on their special day.

... (Y)ou also tried to explain away your gaffes by saying that you have “never been in politics before.” Are you forgetting that you were a two-term governor of New Mexico, and that you actually ran for president in 2012 (as a Republican first, then as a Libertarian after you couldn’t get in the debates)?

You’re starting to see the truth here, though, when you say, “I guess I wasn’t meant to be president.”

It’s understandable. Running for president is hard, even if you’re running as the candidate for the “we want to vote for a Republican, but not that Republican” crowd — and especially if it seems that you haven’t done your international relations homework.

But back to how you’re feeling. You look jittery. You need sleep. If only there were something you could take to make you nice and sleepy, and, ya know, mellow out a bit.

This comes alongside Bill Weld's odd capitulation.

Gary Johnson’s hapless running mate, William Weld, is essentially giving up on the presidential race and wants to spend its last few weeks attacking Donald Trump.

The same day Johnson admitted he’s not keeping up with world affairs, Weld told The Boston Globe Trump is his only priority from now until November 8.

[...]

The Globe said Weld also hinted that he might abandon the Libertarian Party altogether, although he said he’s “certainly not going to drop them this year.”

Still, he said his priority after the election could be working with Republicans like Mitt Romney to rebuild the GOP.

When Weld, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, joined Johnson on the Libertarian ticket, he said he would be a Libertarian for life and fight to make sure his running mate became the next President of the United States.

But Weld apparently wised up after Johnson’s month of stunning gaffes, with the third-party contender consistently failing to know anything about current events or foreign affairs. When Johnson couldn’t name a single world leader he admired during an MSNBC town hall, Weld stepped in as his hype man, reminding him of a couple names.

Johnson spent his Tuesday morning arguing on national TV that his ignorance about the world could be a virtue, because it would prevent him from sending soldiers to dangerous countries.

Weld last week told MSNBC he’s “not sure anybody is more qualified than Hillary Clinton to be president of the United States.”

Kind of a humiliating way to wind down a presidential campaign, isn't it?

No winners

Pence 'won' on style -- he didn't sniffle or vomit on the table -- and Kaine 'won' on substance, but he was unpleasantly aggressive and interrupted far too much.

(I)t was as if two different Donald Trumps showed up at Longwood University on Tuesday night.

There was the Trump to whom Kaine kept pivoting in every answer, and eagerly interrupting Pence to prosecute: the Trump who called Mexican immigrants “rapists”; the Trump who spent years perpetuating the “outrageous and bigoted lie that President Obama is not an American citizen”; the Trump who has “again and again praised Vladimir Putin” as a “great leader”; the Trump who “believes that the world will be safer if more nations have nuclear weapons”; the Trump who has “claim[ed] that NATO is obsolete”; the Trump who “went after John McCain, a POW, and said he was not a hero because he had been captured”; the Trump who has “called women ‘dogs,’ ‘pigs,’ ‘disgusting.’”

This Trump, Kaine argued, “demeans every group he talks about” and is the kind of “fool or maniac” who “could trigger a catastrophic [nuclear] event.”

Then there was the Trump that Pence kept evoking every time he responded to Kaine’s parries with a sad shake of his head or rueful chuckle: the Trump who “didn’t say” this or “never said” that; the Trump who doesn’t consider Mexicans rapists, but rather sees the current immigration system as a “heartbreaking tragedy”; the Trump who isn’t bigoted, but rather “fully support[s]” community policing; the Trump who might misspeak every once in awhile, but only because “he is a businessman” and “not a polished politician.”

In short: a kinder, gentler Trump.

As usual, the zero-sum Beltway pundits will declare one vice presidential wannabe the winner of Tuesday’s debate. But ultimately, it’s up to voters to decide which of the two Trumps on display better aligns with reality, at least as they see it — and that more than anything else will determine the effect, if any, of Kaine and Pence’s performances.

In truth, both candidates did well, because they both did what they came to Farmville to do.

The very fact that the debate was more of a referendum on Trump than Clinton should count as a win for Kaine. With his constant interruptions and clockwork attacks, Kaine forced Pence to talk about Trump a lot more than Pence forced Kaine to talk about Clinton. That was the point. In a battle between two historically unpopular presidential candidates, the one the election becomes about is the one who’s more likely to lose. Consider that nearly every unflattering Trump quote that Kaine cited was factually accurate — despite Pence’s dodges and more-in-sorrow-than-anger objections — and you have plenty of fodder for a few more “Yes, Trump really said X” news cycles. And that, in turn, could be enough to convince a few more swing voters that Trump is temperamentally unfit to serve as president — which is, of course, the Clinton campaign’s ultimate goal.

A key example of Kaine’s executing this strategy came early in the debate. After the Democrat rattled off a list of Trump’s various offenses — McCain, Judge Curiel, rapists, “‘dogs,’ ‘pigs,’ ‘disgusting'” — Pence countered that Trump’s insults were “small potatoes compared to Hillary Clinton,” who called “half of Donald Trump supporters a ‘basket of deplorables.’”

Kaine was ready with his rebuttal.

“And she said, ‘I should not have said that,’” Kaine replied. Then he seized on the fact that Trump has never expressed similar regrets as an opportunity to run through Trump’s greatest hits yet again.

“Did Donald Trump apologize to Sen. John McCain? Did Donald Trump apologize for calling women ‘slobs,’ ‘pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘disgusting’? Did Donald Trump apologize for taking after somebody in a Twitter war and making fun of her weight? Did he apologize for saying that President Obama was not a citizen of the United States?

“You will look in vain to see Donald Trump ever taking responsibility for anything and apologizing,” Kaine concluded.

Here's another place where the two talked past each other.

Thanks to his running mate’s long history of divisive remarks — and Kaine’s incessant reminders of them — Pence had the harder task Tuesday: making Trump seem tolerable (and tolerant) to voters who still haven’t made up their minds about him.

So rather than defending the indefensible, Pence simply decided to pretend that it didn’t exist.

One exchange — about ISIS and foreign policy in general — stood out. After Kaine battered Trump relentlessly on the subject — “He does not have a plan. He trash-talks the military, ‘John McCain is no hero,’ ‘The generals need to be fired,’ ‘I know more than them,’ ‘NATO is obsolete’” — Pence tried to brush it off.

And here's another of Pence's disarmingly condescending putdowns.  "Did you work on that one for a long time?", before ...

“That had a lot of creative lines in it,” he laughed.

“See if you can defend any of it?” Kaine snapped.

But Pence refused to take the bait. Instead, he gave “this president credit for bringing Osama bin Laden to justice,” then pivoted to a generic conservative attack on Obama’s foreign policy ...

Kaine had the far easier case to prosecute, and did so well.  Pence just dodged.  But the governor looked "presidential" while doing so, and that's what stood out to the talking heads afterward. (Update: More debate viewers thought they'd rather have a beer with Pence.  And so it goes.)

It is a credit to Pence’s skill as a political communicator — he worked for several years in the 1990s as a conservative radio and television host — that he was able to pull off this sort of 180-degree turn without inducing whiplash. He was polished, disciplined and steady. He seemed calmer than Kaine, and considerably more polite. He sounded empathetic. He spoke in talking points, but delivered them as if they were thoughts that had just occurred to him. And most important, Pence realized that the best way to defend Trump was not with words — which he rarely offered up — but rather by leaving viewers with the impression that Mike Pence is everything they fear that Donald Trump is not: decent, grounded, consistent. If that guy’s also going to be in the White House, how crazy could things really get?

Vice presidential debates rarely, if ever, affect the outcome of an election. The most they can do is “change the narrative” until the presidential candidates debate again.

It may be, then, that while Kaine won on points, Pence won on style — and both, in the end, conjured up the Trump they intended to conjure up. The story of those two Trumps will be the story of the rest of this race.

I had forgotten that Pence made his bones by being a Rush Limbaugh wannabe before entering politics.  And there were a few "I wish Pence was the nominee" Tweets from regretful conservative #NeverTrumpers.  Been there, seen that (Paul Ryan, Sarah Palin; and also from Democrats in the past: Joe Biden -- yes indeed, and in this cycle too -- and Lloyd Bentsen).  On policy, Pence is Trump without the swagger and bombast, and this was his audition for 2020.  Mark it; he'll be in the thick of the GOP scrum in four years.  (Update: No More Mister has an insightful rebuttal to my -- and Chris Matthews', whom I don't watch any more -- prediction about Pence.)

Ajamu Baraka's debate performance was more thoughtful, IMHO.  Alas, the only candidate of color, the only veteran, the only person willing or able to discuss or even acknowledge American hegemony was -- just as Kaine and Pence -- preaching to his choir.  And frankly it's a shame that the Libertarians have gone into hiding for these affairs; William Weld could have made things interesting by joining Baraka in Democracy Now's after-debate, instead of doing his solo bit.  I barely saw any Libs participating in the Twitter feed.

All four veep prospects represented well enough to make the case for their running mates, but the needle won't be moving over the remaining thirty-four days.  These, even more than the presidential faceoffs, are just pep rallies for red and blue cheerleaders.  During the course of the evening on Twitter, the #HipHopAwards broadcast on BET trended higher than the #VPdebate.  That alone should tell the full tale about the optics of two old white men quarreling about women's reproductive freedoms, or improving police tactics and making significant reforms to criminal justice without mentioning the words 'Black Lives Matter' in seeking a solution to the nation's most compelling social crisis.

Yeah, the system isn't rigged; it's broken.

Veep debate scattershooting

-- Snoozefest or something substantive?  You decide.  I'll be live-Tweeting it so you don't have to watch; just check the Twitter feed, top right, if you're inclined.  If you're as intelligent as you have demonstrated just by reading here, you should stop watching teevee news about the presidential election.  I am not kidding.  You'll be less scared, more calm, and better able to enjoy the cool weather, your pumpkin spice whatever, the MLB playoffs or the fall festivals or just life in general if you do.  Seriously.

-- The insiders are saying that the Trumpbatross around Pence's neck is too heavy a lift.  Democracy Now! will feature the Green Party's Ajamu Baraka participating in the debate, as Jill Stein did with Clinton and Trump last week.

-- Voting is already under way -- always two words, please; it's not your underwater underwear, after all -- in 20 states plus the D. of C.  Mail ballots are going out and being returned in Harris County and throughout Texas (the deadline to register to vote is fast approaching; visit your nearest taco truck.  Hopefully there'll be one on every block next election).  These ballots are important tools for the Democrats and Republicans, as most of these voters are seniors, strongly partisan -- which is to say they vote straight-ticket -- and very reliable.  The Ds have upped their game statewide and erased the R's advantage in recent cycles due to the workhorse efforts of people like Glen Maxey.

-- This is, by a long distance, the worst thing I have read in the entire 2016 cycle.  After reading all of it -- turgid, ponderous, uses every single logical fallacy in the book -- I must say that I certainly hope I read nothing worse.  And then he doubled down on it today.

Here's Fred Rogers with some advice to that guy.

And here's Ted Rall speaking for me.

To my many friends and readers who plan to vote for Hillary Clinton: please stop bullying me.

Also please lay off other people, progressives and liberals and traditional Democrats and socialists and communists, citizens who identify with the political left, who plan to vote for Dr. Jill Stein or stay home.

I’m not going to vote for Donald Trump. I agree with the mainstream liberal consensus that he should never hold political power, much less control over nuclear launch codes. He’s dangerous and scary. But that doesn’t mean I have to vote for Hillary Clinton. ...

1. The main reason that I’m not going to vote for Hillary Clinton is the same exact main reason that I’m not going to vote for Donald Trump: I don’t vote Republican. Being age 53, Nixon was the first president I remember. Hillary Clinton’s politics (and her paranoia and insularity) remind me of Richard Nixon’s. I can’t bring myself to think of a Democrat as someone who solicits millions of dollars from Wall Street or votes with crazy Republicans (like George W. Bush, whose stupid wars she aggressively supported) to invade foreign countries just for fun. She plays a Democrat on TV, but we know the truth: she’s a Republican.

[...]

3. There’s a big difference between an impressive resume and a list of accomplishments. Hillary has the former, not the latter. I hold her resume against her: she has held tremendous power, yet has never reached out to grab the brass ring. As senator, her record was undistinguished. As Secretary of State, she barely lifted a finger on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, contributed to the expansion of the Syrian civil war, and is more responsible than almost anyone else for destroying Libya. What she did well she did small; when she went big she performed badly.

[...]

5. She still hasn’t made an affirmative case for herself. By clinging to President Obama, she’s running as his third term. The standard way to pull this off is to present yourself as new and improved: the old product was great, the new one will be even better. Her campaign boils down to “I’m not Donald Trump.” No matter how bad he is, and he is awful, that’s not enough. Watching her in the first presidential debate, at the beginning when Trump was besting her over trade, I kept asking myself: why doesn’t she admit that the recovery is good but has left too many Americans behind? Why hasn’t she proposed a welfare and retraining program for people who lose their jobs to globalization? A week later, the only answer I can come up with is that she has no imagination, no vision thing.
6. She has made no significant concessions to the political left. Frankly, this makes me wonder about her intelligence. Current polling shows that the biggest threat to her candidacy is losing millennial, working class, and Bernie Sanders supporters to the Green Party’s Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson. She would not have this problem if she’d picked Sanders as her vice presidential running mate. Even now, she could bag the millennial vote by promising the Vermont senator a cabinet post. Why doesn’t she? For the same reason that she won’t embrace the $15-an-hour minimum wage (she gets $225,000 for an hour-long speech but wants you to settle for $12) — she’s a creature of the corporations and therefore the political right. She’s not one of us. She doesn’t care about us.
7. My vote is worth no less than the vote of someone who supports a major party nominee. So what if the polls say that Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be elected president? Why, based on those polls, should I strategically vote for someone whose politics and personality I deplore? By that logic, why shouldn’t they change their votes to conform to mine? I have my vote, you have your vote, let Diebold add them up.

I don’t have a problem with you if you plan to vote for Hillary. This year is the best argument ever for lesser evilism. But the fact that we are selecting between two equally unpopular major party presidential standardbearers indicates that the two-party system is in crisis, if not broken. We need and deserve more and better options. The only way to get them is to start building viable third parties — voting for them, contributing money to them. What better time to start than now?

Anyway, there’s absolutely no way that my refusal to vote for Hillary will put Donald Trump into the White House.

That is game, set, and match.  But here's your memory jogger, just in case.