[Zelandakh]

 Winstonm, on 2020-June-24, 09:37, said:

There is not much to do about this situation until November so might as well satirize the hell out of them.

Like this?

[y66]

From https://nyti.ms/3dxxHTa

Quote

Joseph R. Biden Jr. has taken a commanding lead over President Trump in the 2020 race, building a wide advantage among women and nonwhite voters and making deep inroads with some traditionally Republican-leaning groups that have shifted away from Mr. Trump following his ineffective response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new national poll of registered voters by The New York Times and Siena College.

Mr. Biden is currently ahead of Mr. Trump by 14 percentage points, garnering 50 percent of the vote compared with 36 percent for Mr. Trump. That is among the most dismal showings of Mr. Trump’s presidency, and a sign that he is the clear underdog right now in his fight for a second term.

Methodology: https://www.nytimes....ion-method.html

[Winstonm]

 y66, on 2020-June-24, 20:57, said:

From https://nyti.ms/3dxxHTa


Methodology: https://www.nytimes....ion-method.html

I guess Trump has always been a lame FU%K.

[Winstonm]

 y66, on 2020-June-24, 20:57, said:

From https://nyti.ms/3dxxHTa


Methodology: https://www.nytimes....ion-method.html

Quote

“Wall Street firm tells clients Senate will flip to Democrats as Biden surges” – June 23, 2020

“Financial advisory firm Signum Global Advisors is telling clients that it now believes the U.S. Senate is going to flip blue as presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden continues to surge past President Donald Trump in the polls.”

[kenberg]

 y66, on 2020-June-24, 20:57, said:

From https://nyti.ms/3dxxHTa


Methodology: https://www.nytimes....ion-method.html

From the NYT article you cite:

Quote

Arlene Myles, 75, of Denver, said she had been a Republican for nearly six decades before switching her registration to independent earlier this year during Mr. Trump's impeachment trial. Ms. Myles said that when Mr. Trump was first elected, she had resolved to "give him a chance," but had since concluded that he and his party were irredeemable.
"I was one of those people who stuck by Nixon until he was waving goodbye," Ms. Myles said. "I thought I was a good Republican and thought they had my values, but they have gone down the tubes these last few years."


Ms. Myles said she planned to vote for Mr. Biden, expressing only one misgiving: "I wish he was younger," she said.

This is where hope lies There was a time when both Republicans and Democrats seemed reasonably sane. Times change.

Many people stayed away from the Tulsa rally. Why? Well, as the saying goes , "I might be dumb but I am not stupid". And now his aides are explaining why his call to slow down testing was a joke or it was tongue in cheek or it was sarcasm, choose your apologist to get the explanation you want.

Here is where we are. Trump supporters can say "Yes, the man is a fool, but he is my fool so I am sticking with him". Or they can follow the lead of Ms. Myles. Those are really the only choices. I have always had faith that Ms. Myles's approach is similar to the approach of many. At some point, enough is enough.

[Winstonm]

 Winstonm, on 2020-June-24, 22:48, said:

“Wall Street firm tells clients Senate will flip to Democrats as Biden surges” – June 23, 2020

I have always said that in order to get his way this child-president will hold his breath until the Senate turns blue. Might be time to exhale.

[Winstonm]

Donald Trump is no longer trying to hide nor deny his racism - and neither are his supporters. He, and they, are on the wrong side of history.

[Chas_P]

 Winstonm, on 2020-June-25, 16:53, said:

Donald Trump is no longer trying to hide nor deny his racism - and neither are his supporters. He, and they, are on the wrong side of history.

Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

[johnu]

 Winstonm, on 2020-June-25, 16:53, said:

Donald Trump is no longer trying to hide nor deny his racism - and neither are his supporters. He, and they, are on the wrong side of history.

The Racist in Chief is on schedule to be elected as the 2nd President of the Confederacy, and inducted in the KKK Hall of Fame.

[Zelandakh]

American Justice? I feel sad.

[johnu]

 Zelandakh, on 2020-June-25, 19:31, said:

American Justice? I feel sad.

If you compared the Manchurian President's DOJ to 3rd world autocracies, we would look much better

[Winstonm]

Here are two headlines from tonight's edition of the online version of the WaPo:

Quote

White House pushes to put Trump loyalists in Pentagon

Quote

Trump's pick for Manhattan U.S. attorney refuses to say he would recuse from probes of president's associates

The takeaway? Trump wants to make corruption a way of life in America.

[y66]

Peggy Noonan at WSJ said:

Something shifted this month. Donald Trump’s hold on history loosened, and may be breaking. In some new way his limitations are being seen and acknowledged, and at a moment when people are worried about the continuance of their country and their own ability to continue within it. He hasn’t been equal to the multiple crises. Good news or bad, he rarely makes any situation better. And everyone kind of knows.

On Wednesday a Siena College/New York Times poll found Joe Biden ahead 50% to 36%. It’s a poll four months out, but it’s a respectable one and in line with others. (A week before, a Fox News poll had Mr. Biden leading 50% to 38%. The president denounced it as a fantasy.) This week’s poll had Mr. Biden leading among women by 22 points—a bigger lead than Hillary Clinton enjoyed in 2016. He has moderates by 33 points, independents by 21. On Thursday a separate Times/Siena poll had Mr. Trump losing support in the battleground states that put him over the top in 2016. His “once-commanding advantage among white voters has nearly vanished,” the Times wrote.

The latest White House memoir paints the president as ignorant, selfish and unworthy of high office. Two GOP House primary candidates the president supported lost their primaries resoundingly. Internet betting sites that long saw Mr. Trump as the front-runner now favor Mr. Biden. The president’s vaunted Tulsa, Okla., rally was a dud with low turnout. Senior officials continue to depart the administration—another economic adviser this week, the director of legislative affairs and the head of the domestic policy council before him. Why are they fleeing the ship in a crisis, in an election year?

Judgments on the president’s pandemic leadership have settled in. It was inadequate and did harm. He experienced Covid-19 not as a once-in-a-lifetime medical threat but merely a threat to his re-election argument, a gangbusters economy. He denied the scope and scale of the crisis, sent economic adviser Larry Kudlow out to say we have it “contained” and don’t forget to buy the dip. Mr. Trump essentially admitted he didn’t want more testing because it would result in more positives.

And the virus rages on, having hit blue states first and now tearing through red states in the South and West—Arizona, Florida, the Carolinas, Texas.

The protests and riots of June were poorly, embarrassingly handled. They weren’t the worst Washington had ever seen, they were no 1968, but still he wound up in the White House bunker. Then out of the bunker for an epically pointless and manipulative photo-op in front of a boarded-up church whose basement had been burned. Through it all the angry, blustering tweets issued from the White House like panicked bats fleeing flames in the smokestack.

It was all weak, unserious and avoidant of the big issues. He wasn’t equal to that moment either.

His long-term political malpractice has been his failure—with a rising economy, no unemployment and no hot wars—to build his support beyond roughly 40% of the country. He failed because he obsesses on his base and thinks it has to be fed and greased with the entertainments that alienate everyone else. But his base, which always understood he was a showman, wanted steadiness and seriousness in these crises, because they have a sense of the implications of things.

He doesn’t understand his own base. I’ve never seen that in national politics.

Some of them, maybe half, are amused by his nonsense decisions and statements—let’s ban all Muslims; let’s end this deadbeat alliance; we have the biggest, best tests. But they are half of 40%, and they would stick with him no matter what. He doesn’t have to entertain them! He had to impress and create a bond with others.

The other half of his base is mortified by his antics and shallowness. I hear from them often. They used to say yes, he’s rough and uncouth and unpolished, but only a rough man can defeat the swamp. Now they say I hate him and what he represents but I’ll vote for him because of the courts, etc. How a lot of Trump supporters feel about the president has changed. The real picture at the Tulsa rally was not the empty seats so much as the empty faces—the bored looks, the yawning and phone checking, as if everyone was re-enacting something, hearing some old song and trying to remember how it felt a few years ago, when you heard it the first time.

In the end, if the president loses, he’ll turn on them too. They weren’t there for him, they didn’t work hard enough, they’re no good at politics. “After all I did.”

That will be something, when that happens.

Nobody knows what’s coming. On New Year’s Eve we couldn’t imagine the pandemic, economic contraction and protests. We don’t know what will happen in the next four months, either. I believe in the phenomenon of silent Trump voters, people who don’t tell anyone, including pollsters, that they’re for him because they don’t want to be hassled. But eight, 10 or 14 points worth? No.

It’s generally thought that if the summer’s protests and demonstrations become riots again, if they’re marked by more violence and statues crashing to the ground, then Mr. Trump will benefit. This may be true. There will be powerful pushback if things are grim. But I’m not sure he will benefit. A sense that things have gone out of control under your watch does not help incumbents. A sense that he cannot calibrate his actions but will do any crazy thing to bolster his position will not help him. He is a strange man in a strange time, the old rules don’t necessarily apply.

It’s possible, but not likely, that a general calming will occur as progressive activists make progress in party primaries and corporate boardrooms, and as their ideological assumptions ascend in public life. They’ve already won and are winning a lot.

And it’s always possible Joe Biden will awaken to the moment we’re in, see that a leader isn’t someone who sits back in a sunny, well-appointed suburban room and watches, passively, as dramatic events unfold. He could emerge as a real leader with a series of statements putting forth guiding principles to weather our crises. We have problems with race, problems with the police. What rearrangements should be made? How do we make them nonviolently, democratically? What is the meaning of history? What is a statue? What is socialism? What is the path?

He is bowing to the ancient political wisdom that you should never interrupt a man while he’s destroying himself. And he’s afraid of being on the wrong side of rising progressive forces. But thoughtfulness and seriousness would put him squarely with wavering Trump supporters and the honestly undecided, and reassure them that a vote for him is not also a vote for unchecked extremism and mayhem.

Silence is short-term shrewd. Rising to the occasion, taking a chance, making a gamble when everything is going your way but the country needs more—that is long-term wise. And wise always beats shrewd in the end.

We had wondered if Mr. Trump can lead in a crisis. He cannot. Can Mr. Biden?

[kenberg]

The Peggy Noonan article illuminates where we are. I would not usually expect her to vote Democratic in general or for Biden in particular. But then what? It sounds as if Biden might be getting her vote. Same with the earlier article that reported the thinking of Arlene Myles. Afaik, Ms Myles is not a professional commentator, she was just asked for her thinking and gave it. She was a lifelong Republican, but now she is registered as an independent.

I am guessing that neither of these people, or the many like them, favor de-funding the police and they probably don't favor massive forgiveness of student debt. They simply recognize disaster when they see it, and Trump is a disaster. I expect that if we chatted, I would disagree with them on some things, agree on other things, but we could have a productive discussion..

It would be really good, or at least I would really like it, if our political life returned to a style of the past: Discussion, some agreement, some disagreement, mutual respect, not crazy. I know life changes, I expect life to change, but there are times I feel as if I am, to borrow a book title, or a biblical passage, a stranger in a strange land.

I know we can look at the past through tinted lenses, but I find the present to be seriously weird.

[Winstonm]

https://www.yahoo.co...-122942560.html

Quote

Hannity asked Trump: "If you hear in 131 days from now, at some point in the night or early morning: 'We can now project Donald J. Trump has been re-elected the 45th president of the United States'—let's talk. What's at stake in this election as you compare and contrast, and what is one of your top priority items for a second term?"

Deja Vu. As an RN, I have seen this same look of panic in the eyes of many dementia patients when they cannot understand a question but desperately want to hide that fact from public view. It is a startling look that once seen cannot be unseen

[johnu]

 Winstonm, on 2020-June-26, 09:48, said:

https://www.yahoo.co...-122942560.html

Quote

Hannity asked Trump: "If you hear in 131 days from now, at some point in the night or early morning: 'We can now project Donald J. Trump has been re-elected the 45th president of the United States'—let's talk. What's at stake in this election as you compare and contrast, and what is one of your top priority items for a second term?"

Deja Vu. As an RN, I have seen this same look of panic in the eyes of many dementia patients when they cannot understand a question but desperately want to hide that fact from public view. It is a startling look that once seen cannot be unseen

Or maybe he realized how bad his answer would sound right before he started talking.

The Manchurian President's top priority items for a second term:

1. Become the most racist and bigoted President in history
2. Increase graft and corruption of the US government until he becomes the richest person in the world.
3. Put all his enemies in Federal prison
4. Establish a TV network that features himself 24/7

[y66]

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said:

Will somebody w access to the Oval Office read the WSJ editorial “The Trump Referendum” to President Trump. We won’t hv more good scotus justices or the best economy in 50 years like we hv had if he doesn’t follow that advice

The Trump Referendum by the WSJ Editorial Board:

Quote

President Trump may soon need a new nickname for “Sleepy Joe” Biden. How does President-elect sound? On present trend that’s exactly what Mr. Biden will be on Nov. 4, as Mr. Trump heads for what could be an historic repudiation that would take the Republican Senate down with him.

Mr. Trump refuses to acknowledge what every poll now says is true: His approval rating has fallen to the 40% or below that is George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter territory. They’re the last two Presidents to be denied a second term. This isn’t 2017 when Mr. Trump reached similar depths after failing to repeal ObamaCare while blaming Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. He regained support with tax reform and a buoyant economy that really was lifting all incomes.

***

Now the election is four months away, voters know him very well, and Mr. Trump has reverted to his worst form. His record fighting the coronavirus is better than his critics claim after a bad start in late February and March. He mobilized federal resources to help hard-hit states, especially New York.

But he wasted his chance to show leadership by turning his daily pandemic pressers into brawls with the bear-baiting press and any politician who didn’t praise him to the skies. Lately he has all but given up even talking about the pandemic when he might offer realism and hope about the road ahead even as the country reopens. His default now is defensive self-congratulation.

The country also wants firm but empathetic leadership after the death of George Floyd, but Mr. Trump offers combative tweets that inflame. Not long ago Mr. Trump tweeted that a 75-year old man who was pushed by police in Buffalo might be an antifa activist. He offered no evidence.

Americans don’t like racial enmity and they want their President to reduce it. Mr. Trump has preached racial harmony on occasion, but he gives it all back with riffs that misjudge the national moment. His “law and order” message might resonate if disorder and rioting continue through the summer, but only if Mr. Trump is also talking about racial reconciliation and opportunity for all.

Mr. Trump has little time to recover. The President’s advisers say that he trailed Hillary Clinton by this much at this point in 2016, that they haven’t had a chance to define Mr. Biden, and that as the election nears voters will understand the binary choice. Perhaps. But in 2016 Mrs. Clinton was as unpopular as Mr. Trump, while Mr. Biden is not.

Mr. Biden hasn’t even had to campaign to take a large lead. He rarely leaves his Delaware basement, he dodges most issues, and his only real message is that he’s not Donald Trump. He says he’s a uniter, not a divider. He wants racial peace and moderate police reform. He favors protests but opposes riots and violence.

Some Democrats are literally advising Mr. Biden to barely campaign at all. Eliminate the risk of a mental stumble that will raise doubts about his declining capacity that was obvious in the primaries. Let Mr. Trump remind voters each day why they don’t want four more years of tumult and narcissism.

Mr. Trump’s base of 35% or so will never leave, but the swing voters who stood by him for three and a half years have fallen away in the last two months. This includes suburban women, independents, and seniors who took a risk on him in 2016 as an outsider who would shake things up. Now millions of Americans are close to deciding that four more years are more risk than they can stand.

***

As of now Mr. Trump has no second-term agenda, or even a message beyond four more years of himself. His recent events in Tulsa and Arizona were dominated by personal grievances. He resorted to his familiar themes from 2016 like reducing immigration and denouncing the press, but he offered nothing for those who aren’t already persuaded.

Mr. Trump’s advisers have an agenda that would speak to opportunity for Americans of all races—school choice for K-12, vocational education as an alternative to college, expanded health-care choice, building on the opportunity zones in tax reform, and more. The one issue on which voters now give him an edge over Mr. Biden is the economy. An agenda to revive the economy after the pandemic, and restore the gains for workers of his first three years, would appeal to millions.

Perhaps Mr. Trump lacks the self-awareness and discipline to make this case. He may be so thrown off by his falling polls that he simply can’t do it. If that’s true he should understand that he is headed for a defeat that will reward all of those who schemed against him in 2016. Worse, he will have let down the 63 million Americans who sent him to the White House by losing, of all people, to “Sleepy Joe.”

[y66]

 Winstonm, on 2020-June-26, 09:48, said:

https://www.yahoo.co...-122942560.html

Deja Vu. As an RN, I have seen this same look of panic in the eyes of many dementia patients when they cannot understand a question but desperately want to hide that fact from public view. It is a startling look that once seen cannot be unseen

Didn't somebody make a movie about this called Dead Man Talking?

[johnu]

Not everybody thinks the Manchurian President is an awful excuse for a man.

Donald Trump Claims A Friend Called Him ‘The Most Perfect Person’

Quote

During a televised town hall with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday, the president claimed a pal had told him he has to be “the most perfect person” because he was not brought down by the Russia investigation.

It's unclear who he is quoting. Was it:

1: His imaginary friend Jim
2. His pseudonym John Barron
3. His pseudonym John Miller
4. His pseudonym Carolin Gallego
5. His pseudonym David Dennison
6. His alter ego Individual-1

[y66]

 johnu, on 2020-June-26, 13:19, said:

Not everybody thinks the Manchurian President is an awful excuse for a man.

Donald Trump Claims A Friend Called Him ‘The Most Perfect Person’



It's unclear who he is quoting. Was it:

1: His imaginary friend Jim
2. His pseudonym John Barron
3. His pseudonym John Miller
4. His pseudonym Carolin Gallego
5. His pseudonym David Dennison
6. His alter ego Individual-1

chas_p?