Well, Trump’s fans are going to continue to get mileage out of “Deplorables” in perpetuity…it does, in fact, go down in history as one of the most boneheaded blunders in a very incompetent campaign. They snark on Hillary whenever possible, for the same reason that anyone snarks on anything…because it’s a gratifying emotion and in this case they get to pat themselves on the balls for winning.
No, we’re not at Trump’s tipping point. He doesn’t have a tipping point; if he did, he would have tipped over a really long time ago, on one of the innumerable occasions when everyone insisted he would. “He won’t even run for president…he would have to reveal his taxes and income blah blah blah”…oh, for sweet days gone by.
The tipping point will be when he issues pardons to everyone, including himself and then resigns and watches years of court cases over pardoning himself. If the Supremes rule that he can’t, Pence will pardon him “for the good of the nation”.
The tippling point is when, 5 years from now, he’s still president and out of complete and utter frustration we all decide to just get drunk for the duration!
I don’t see him making it past 2020 (well, January, 2021, anyway). Too many people hoodwinked by 2016 have gotten to see the swamp that he’s always been a part of.
40%? sigh Who are these people, and why do they support him? I feel like we’re living in a slightly shifted parallel reality. One where their Trump is very different than the one the rest of us see.
Most sensible people never thought he’d make it past 2016. We forgot to factor in how stupid some people can be.
Trump will say, “Hey, remember how I promised to drain that swamp? Well, it’s ten times bigger now than it was four years ago. So obviously you need to re-elect me to drain it.”
And the people who have been dumb enough to listen to Trump in the past will listen to him again.
It also depends a lot on who he runs against, what things come up during the campaign, and how the economy is doing. Very hard to predict with those unknowns even without the Trump wild card factor.
Conservatives had a test of judgment and character in 2016, which they failed. Today, liberals have a test of intelligence and character.
You should have been 80% confident. The 20% covered a number of improbables, such as Comey breaking Justice Department guidelines. Note though that Romney’s odds in late October 2012 were less than 10%. (538 models).
Also randomness. Also the unusually high number of undecided votes. Also false equivalences by the mainstream media. Also the votes of lots of stalwart Republican professionals who should have known better.
Anyway, the extent to which polls move in the next week will indicate Trump’s current ceiling of support.
I don’t know, but 19% of the public gets most of their news from Fox. 19%<40%. Liberals (eg me) are failing the intelligence test: I can’t figure this out either.
Awkwardly, I mucked up the fact a little. Vox cited this Pew study: the main campaign news source for 19% of 2016 voters was Fox News. That’s actually rather different than I reported.
CNN 13%
Facebook 8%
Local TV 7%
MSNBC 5%
ABC 5%
CBS 3%
NPR 4%
New York Times 3%
Local Newspapers 3%
Ok, here’s the Pew study on the public, (in contrast with 2016 voters). It discusses TV vs. Newspapers vs. Online vs Radio, broken down by age:
Economic study shows the influence of Fox News: it causes Democrats to shift rightwards more than MSNBC causes Republicans to shift leftwards. It tilts the electoral base. A stunning new study shows that Fox News is more powerful than we ever imagined - Vox Nice article, here’s one snippet: [INDENT][INDENT][INDENT] What’s more, they find that Fox isn’t setting its ideology where it ought to to maximize its viewership. It’s much more conservative than is optimal from that perspective. But it’s pretty close to the slant that would maximize its persuasive power: that would result in the largest rightward movement among viewers. CNN, by contrast, matched its political stances pretty closely to the viewer-maximizing point, showing less interest in operating as a political agent. [/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT]
Additionally casual readers of Media Matters for America know that Fox consistently screws up their facts.
Adam Davidson of the New Yorker: [INDENT][INDENT][INDENT][INDENT] There are lots of details and surprises to come, but the endgame of this Presidency seems as clear now as those of Iraq and the financial crisis did months before they unfolded. Last week, federal investigators raided the offices of Michael Cohen, the man who has been closer than anybody to Trump’s most problematic business and personal relationships. This week, we learned that Cohen has been under criminal investigation for months—his e-mails have been read, presumably his phones have been tapped, and his meetings have been monitored.
Trump has long declared a red line: Robert Mueller must not investigate his businesses, and must only look at any possible collusion with Russia. That red line is now crossed and, for Trump, in the most troubling of ways. Even if he were to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and then had Mueller and his investigation put on ice, and even if—as is disturbingly possible—Congress did nothing, the Cohen prosecution would continue. Even if Trump pardons Cohen, the information the Feds have on him can become the basis for charges against others in the Trump Organization.[sup]1[/sup]
This is the week we know, with increasing certainty, that we are entering the last phase of the Trump Presidency. This doesn’t feel like a prophecy; it feels like a simple statement of the apparent truth.
I know dozens of reporters and other investigators who have studied Donald Trump and his business and political ties. Some have been skeptical of the idea that President Trump himself knowingly colluded with Russian officials. …However, I am unaware of anybody who has taken a serious look at Trump’s business who doesn’t believe that there is a high likelihood of rampant criminality. [/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT] Ok, ok, but 40% of the country is in the tank, right? And his supporters knew he wasn’t a saint when they elected him. So how is this any different?
It’s different argues Davidson. He recalls his 2003 reporting in Iraq, when on the ground it was immediately clear that the US’s reconstruction plans unworkable while Bush had approval ratings north of 70% and was making his Mission Accomplished speech. He recalls his reporting on the financial crisis, when he realized that the asset base of our largest banks was crap. There is often a gulf between perception and reality. But that doesn’t imply that consensus views can’t change: they can and do and sometimes must.
Last 5 sentences, emphasis added: [INDENT][INDENT][INDENT] We don’t know the precise path the next few months will take. There will be resistance and denial and counterattacks. But it seems likely that, when we look back on this week, we will see it as a turning point. We are now in the end stages of the Trump Presidency. [/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT]
[sup]1[/sup]So I guess Trump will have to provide blanket pardons to perhaps a half dozen or more people. Respect for democratic norms won’t be much of a constraint for Trump. Though a Democratic majority might be. Ok, it takes 2/3 for impeachment. Would the GOP really play along? Erick Erickson is the founder of Red State: he interviewed an anonymous Congressional friend of his in Safeway, far away from Capitol Hill. His friend needed to vent: [INDENT][INDENT][INDENT] He may be an idiot, but he’s still the President and leader of my party and he is capable of doing some things right. But dammit he’s taking us all down with him. We are well and truly fked in November….It’s like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really f*cking stupid Forrest Gump. He can’t help himself. He’s just a fking idiot who thinks he’s winning when people are b*tching about him.
….If we get to summer and most of the primaries are over, they just might pull the trigger if the President fires Mueller. The sh*t will hit the fan if that happens and I’d vote to impeach him myself. Most of us would, I think. Hell, all the Democrats would and you only need a majority in the House. If we’re going to lose because of him, we might as well impeach the motherf**ker.
….I say a lot of shit on TV defending him, even over this. But honestly, I wish the motherfcker would just go away. We’re going to lose the House, lose the Senate, and lose a bunch of states because of him. All his supporters will blame us for what we have or have not done, but he hasn’t led. He wakes up in the morning, shts all over Twitter, shts all over us, shts all over his staff, then hits golf balls. F*ck him. Of course, I can’t say that in public or I’d get run out of town. [/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT]
