My prediction (more overarching, less specific than yours): Don will realize that he has absolutely no chance of winning. But he’s not one to shrink quietly away. He is going to gold plate this dumpster fire so he ends up with a monumental defeat on November 8. It’s going to be freaking YYUUUUUUU-- wait for it— mungus. If he’s going to lose, he’s going to go down as the most epic candidate of all time. He won’t want to merely be another Romney, or McCain, or Kerry. He’s going to want to be in the history books. He’s going to sell the movie rights. He’s going to want to be an entire college Poli Sci course to be studied for the next 12 generations. He will continue to escalate his rhetoric, he’s going to do crazier and crazier shit, hell, he may actually shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. While waggling his weiner at passersby. He is going to go all-in on the crazy. His new campaign slogan will be: Come on, America, let’s get weird.
What I find really encouraging is the last paragraph. The one about the Trump anchor is just the normal partisan concern that you want to win elections, not lose them.
But the last paragraph is a principled rejection of Trumpism, and an argument that the party must pull back from it.
Even if Trump loses, as increasingly seems likely, the Republicans are going to have to ask themselves over the next four years: “What do we really stand for?” “And how do we stop Trump II in the next round of primaries?”
Even before I opened the link I thought, “huh, prominent? I bet most of the names will be former-some-staff-position-or other.”
Yup, that’s exactly what it is. Not a household name among them. “Former” in front of almost every title.
Trump still has a chance of winning. Not a great chance, but maybe one chance in six. Unless that changes on its own, and there’s no reason to think it will, the GOP will stand by their evil man.
Seriously.
Ann Coulter is upset that the GOP is not standing up for Trump, who is being raped by the media.(warning, that link goes to Coulter’s website)
Assange or Trump? Or both?
Here’s NBC News’s Katy Tur on the day-to-day weirdness of covering Trump: Katy Tur Talks Covering Donald Trump's Candidacy for NBC | Marie Claire
What were you expecting? That people with jobs there would do this? They wouldn’t have jobs long, then. The current staffers are probably thinking the same thing, which is why Trump depending on the RNC for field offices is not a really good move.
I don’t remember a similar defection in either 1964 or 1972. And these are only the ones with the guts to sign their names - but defecting is getting easier and easier.
My favourite quote from that Tur article:
Assange
In this regard, Pissed Off Republicans (kudos on that) are indistinguishable from Democrats. This is a hopeful sign for our democracy.
Confronting him about the polls wouldn’t make a difference:
In his mind his poll numbers were great during the primaries, so he should go back to what he was doing then, and he doesn’t understand why all these losers keep telling him he should change how he’s talking. I’m assuming that someone has pointed out he’ll need a lot more votes than to win the general election compared to the primaries and that 14 million won’t cut it, but he probably ignores that.
Republican strategist say that we are looking at “an extinction-level event” for the GOP.
Hyperbole? Maybe. Maybe not.
Trump’s turning his rally crowd on Tur–with such venom that the Secret Service had to walk her to her car to make sure no Trump fan assaulted her–is another example of Trump “punching down.” Tur isn’t a powerful news anchor with name recognition; she’s a (physically small) beat reporter.
Dozens of journalists have similar stories to tell.
Will all of Trump’s current fans really continue to glory in worshipping this Bully-in-Chief? Or will some of them peel away in shame at having been toadies?
That was a great read; thanks!
On CNN, the Arkansas Attorney General just said that she supports Trump because she respects a man who upholds the Constitution. This in response to civilians being subject to military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay.
And she spins every question back to how bad Clinton is.
He… kinda got his own problem going, right now
Seems that during a conference about Bridgegate where Christie denied any and everything, an aide texted “He just flat out lied” to a colleague…
The Donald is back on the cheating issue: http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/12/politics/donald-trump-pennsylvania-cheating/
I’m rather taken by this part:
(Bolding and Italics mine)
I mean, it’s not even a dog-whistle anymore; he’s blowing the damn thing loud enough to wake the dead.
IMHO as always; YMMV.
The state that is currently a good, solid blue according to 538, and that he said looked like a war zone when he saw the capital city from his plane? Yeah, the ONLY way he could lose that state is is there’s cheating by “certain people.”
There is going to be violence at the polls. I hope I’m wrong but statements like this could lead to it, considering some of the people who support him.