John Oliver’s take-down of Trump was hilarious, but will we still be laughing when he wins most of the primaries tomorrow?
Maybe he won’t. Maybe his balloon will finally pop…and he’ll be replaced with Rubio. Or Cruz.
This is a no-win scenario.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Out of curiosity, who are the intelligent, competent Republicans right now who we might disagree with on policy but would actually do a good job if elected? Do they exist right now? Or is that a contradiction in terms because current GOP policy is so bad?
@1: Um…Bloomberg? Actually, I think he dumped the Republicans. Now if you want a billionaire who is a good businessman, if evil, Bloomberg should be your guy long before Trump.
If ever two adjectives and a noun were so utterly mismatched…
Or maybe Paris Hilton, although I think she may be too young to run for President of the US right now. At least she can make money, though. Unlike Trump.
I can imagine a Republican being intelligent and competent. It’s when you also demand empathy that the problems really start.
@5: I can imagine it, but I’m not seeing it. The current crop is a failure by their own “the market is sacred” standard. Any fiscally responsible Republican would be rallying behind Obama’s health care reforms. They have saved money. But they’re not. So either they’re grossly incompetent or have another agenda besides “fiscal responsibility” or both.
They’re not doing so well on the “Christian nation” thing either. Jesus’d’ve flipped the tables on them about 3 elections ago.
Yeah. I wish the GOP was a limited federal government, stronger states, fiscal conservative party that wasn’t based on hate, discrimination, white power etc. I disagree with those platforms, but they’re at least arguable. You can negotiate on them, assuming all parties are acting in good faith.
But they’re a paralyzed federal government, totalitarian state government party, that wants to spend all of the monies they can on the stuff they care about (military, big business, religion), and funnel federal money to rich people. and fuck minorities because the Bible tells us so. And they’re running even further right. So yeah, I think all the reasonable Republicans might be caucusing with the Democrats now.
See, I think that by and large there’s a reverse Hanlon’s razor thing going on. I don’t think any prominent politician is significantly less intelligent than average – and I think a lot of them are actually pretty calculating.
Trump alone reeks of “I hired a couple statisticians and sociologists to try and play a political version of Moneyball”, but I think that even more traditional republicans are just playing shit up to win votes. I think, with politics, it’s generally safer to go with “Malice” than “stupidity”. If a politician says something stupid or blatantly contradicted by science/history/whatever, it’s probably because they figured it’ll win them votes or let them push a policy through.
@Vivec I think there’s a lot of truth to that, Vivec, unfortunately. But I don’t necessarily care whether a politician saying a shitty thing is lying for votes, or genuinely believes it. The result is the same, and if they’re willing to throw someone under the bus for votes, that already implies they don’t give a fuck about that demographic. So they’re still racist, even if it’s calculated and know when they’re lying.
The “win” scenario is that, whether Trump wins or loses, we’re as close as we’ve ever come to the destruction and realignment of the modern incarnation of the Republican party. Trump being the next President probably does it, as does a Trump landslide loss.
And as bad as Trump is, Rubio or Cruz wouldn’t be any better (and possibly even worse).
Maybe, possibly, sorta maybe, disclaimer, disclaimer, etc.: Maybe he gets votes, not to support him, but as a way for the frustrated to “send a message” to the system they see as irredeemable. Unfortunately, that is literally (literally), shooting oneself in ones foot. Trying to send a protest message, by voting for the worst possible, will not work out well.
along those lines, I sometimes like to imagine (fantasize), that Trump is actually a Democratic Party plant to disgust even the die-hard Rethuglicans into abandoning their candidate and turn tail to vote Dem. Then I see, that too would be shooting oneself in ones face.
All of those Trump supporters Oliver highlighted, I can only hear them speaking in a sarcastic voice, but that’s just my ears, hearing any praise for Trump, my ears automatically hear it as sarcasm. That must be my ears have been trained by Jon Stewart into sarcasm babel fish.
@9
Oh yeah, I’m not making any sort of excuses for them.
If anything, my argument is that these republicans are often more dangerous than the “lol bumbling idiot” characterization leads them to believe. They’ll sell out any group necessary to get power and then use said power however they want, damn the consequences or justification.
I just personally think it’s much more motivating to think of them as evil plutocrats that will make very calculated actions to get in power than bumbling idiots that you can safely ignore.
It’ll be Trump, as he’s going to sweep almost every state in tomorrow’s GOP primaries and then coast on that momentum to beat Rubio in Florida on March 15th, which is a winner-take-all state for delegates. With that, the rest of the field will fold. The Republican establishment will suck it up and try to minimize the damage down the ticket in the general election, lick the party’s wounds, and look forward to 2020. Maybe they’ll actually stop being the Party of No and get serious again, but that might depend on how badly Trump loses in the general election.
…and John Oliver is brilliant!
It reminds me of the fielding average of a very good shortstop – a few bobbles per season at most.
When he’s on the air, I revel in the weekly dose of snark.
re @13:
ah, I too have started pondering the simile of that year ith optometry. IE: yr 2020 — vision 20/20.
amusing…
For all the Clinton and Sanders supporters who refuse to vote for the other if their candidate loses, seriously, suck it up. The GOP can obstruct Obama’s Supreme Court nomination until after the election, and for all other things, would you rather have one of the top three Republicans in office?
I’m a Canadian in Canada so I don’t get a vote for the “leader of the free world”, but holy crap I can’t imagine a universe where I can’t stand either Democratic candidate enough to abstain or vote third party in this election.
And this is coming from someone who advocated third party just four years ago, who got caught up in that whole “the lesser of two evils is still evil” thing. But that was while the GOP was still courting wingnuttery. It’s drowning in it now. Is Clinton too far to the right or Sanders too far to the left for you? Look at the three men who are likely going to be the Republican nominee. Ugh.
If you think that the GOP base will get behind someone with the last name Rubio or Cruz, you’re not being pessimistic enough.
Tabby Lavalamp @ # 16: For all the Clinton and Sanders supporters who refuse to vote for the other if their candidate loses, seriously, suck it up.
A friendly amendment: For all the Clinton and Sanders supporters in purple states…
Since in USAstan our votes get counted state by state, rather than by, y’know, voters, those who live in, e.g., Texas or Massachusetts, can vote for protest (“third”) parties and not make any difference other than sending a tiny message. Meanwhile, we who live where the balance is close [*greetings from Florida!*] have to take our nausea meds and follow your advice, lest the false narratives that emerged from 2000 come true this time.
The latest national CNN poll:
1. Donald Trump: 49% (up from 41% in CNN’s poll in January)
2. Marco Rubio: 16% (up from 8%)
3. Ted Cruz: 15% (down from 19%)
4. Ben Carson: 10% (up from 6%)
5. John Kasich: 6% (up from 1%)
A few state-by-state polls:
– Georgia (NBC/WSJ/Marist): Trump 30%, Cruz 23%, Rubio 23%, Carson 9%, Kasich 9%
– Tennessee (NBC/WSJ/Marist): Trump 40%, Rubio Cruz 22%, Rubio 19%, Carson 9%, Kasich 6%
– Texas (NBC/WSJ/Marist): Cruz 39%, Trump 26%, Rubio 16%, Carson 8%, Kasich 6%
– Massachusetts (Suffolk): Trump 43%, Rubio 20%, Kasich 17%, Cruz 9%, Carson 4%
Yes, this was hilarious but were any of Oliver’s viewers ever on the Trump train to begin with? One of his first “takedowns” was of the Miss America pageant where he also mentioned the Miss USA contest and that Trump, as the owner at the time, had one of the “ugliest souls.” And he’s made fun of him plenty of other times as well.
I’ll give credit to Oliver’s show for doing their research (as always) and for attacking the man instead of his supporters. One of the things the media, and to an extent the GOP, is only just beginning to understand is why his supporters don’t care for either party in this race. And this is because of how they have been left feeling downsized and abandoned by rich free market conservatives or slurred as a bunch of anachronistic cultural boors by the left.
Either way my state (California) doesn’t get its primary until June 7th…meaning a state with more than a tenth of the population of the country has little to no say in the nomination process. I don’t blame conservatives for feeling abandoned by the GOP as living in a largely unwinnable state but progressives don’t have it much better (plus the GOPsters regularly trek here to debate at the Mecca that is Reagan’s Simi Valley library).
In European nations, Trump is the object of scorn and satire.
http://www.businessnewsworld.com/news/donald-trump-elicits-shock-and-biting-satire-in-european-media.html
The Washington Post leads this story today: “The Republican Party’s implosion over Donald Trump’s candidacy has arrived.” We can only hope.
This quote in the article from Gov. Nikki Haley (SC) jumped out: “It’s scary…I think what he’ll do to the Republican Party is really make us question who we are and what we’re about. And that’s something we don’t want to see happen.” It would just never do for Republicans to be self-reflective. No siree bob tail. We’re right and that’s that. Who needs all that thinking and reassessment stuff. That’s for elitist intellectuals and liberals. (And she wonders where Trump comes from.)
There are at least three Republican parties: The Wall Street Republicans, who only care about making money; the libertarian Republicans, who only care about reducing government; and the social conservative Republicans, who only care about banning abortion and gay marriage. Those goals are obviously in conflict — to give one obvious example, social conservatives oppose abortion rights, libertarians support them (so long as the government isn’t paying for it), and Wall Street doesn’t care. And at one level, the leadership of the GOP deserves some respect for holding that coalition together as long and as well as it has. And one thing Trump might accomplish is to finally blow it apart. If he gets the nomination, we may wake up one fine morning to find that the GOP has split into two or three smaller parties. What the rest of us see as incompetence, may in reality simply be that nobody can get those feuding factions to work together as well as they need to in order to survive.
Now, I’m a Democrat; I want Trump to get the nomination because I think it will inflict enormous damage on the GOP if he does. I don’t see him winning more than a handful of states in November. He has 40% of the GOP electorate, which is enough for him to win four-way primaries, but only about 20% of all voters, and that’s not enough to win in November. Hell, at that point, with its huge Latin population, Texas might even be competitive.
The only thing I can think of that would make things even worse for the GOP would be if they were so blatantly obstructionist to not even consider a Supreme Court nominee, just because it would be Obama’s nominee. Oh wait . . .
Today Donald Trump compared himself to Gandhi, and he did it by quoting socialist leader Nicholas Klein, but falsely attributed the quote to Gandhi. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
John Oliver was brilliant, as usual.
Lindsey Graham recently said of the GOP that they’ve gone batshit insane*.
They’re off the rails and deep into wacky land. I fully expect them to continue the playground insults right up until the convention.
IMO the least evil of them may be John Kasich of Ohio. Not that I find him acceptable as a candidate — he’d have to take a rocket plane to the left to be acceptable — but Kasich at least seems rational on a level the others do not.
*His words, not mine.
Rightwing doofus Jeffrey Lord defended Trump’s refusal to disavow the KKK by saying that David Duke is a leftist:
I agree with the last sentence. More details on the Media Matters site.
And, regarding the KKK and the Democratic Party, see a previous discussion on the Moments of Political Madness thread.
I goes farther than that: when a politician from a mainstream party says something stupid or evidently false to pander to the extremists, the moderate voters start pretending to agree with the bullshit out of tribalistic habit, which creates the illusion that a lot of people favor stupid policy X or believe fictional story Y, thus creating even more incentive for politicians to repeat the lie, creating a vicious circles where the number of people who call a deer a horse keep increasing.
***
I’ve seen even more perverse reasonings: “Candidate X is a fascist, lots of people support candidate X which clearly shows that the plebs are too stupid to be trusted with the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, therefore, I’ll vote for candidate X who once in power will dismantle democracy and fuck up his own supporter, which is great, because the sheeple deserve to be beaten into submission”
***
Not among european far-rightists: here he’s the object of endorsements. Remember that a sizable chunk of the European public opinion long fro the “good old days” of the colonial empires, when the whole planet was Europe’s brothel and non-whites were often treated like cattle and fucktoys. These people are pissed that open hunting season hasn’t been officially opened on refugees, pissed that many sons and daughters of immigrants are getting richer (for instance, the french Muslims who are the most often subjected to racist aggressions aren’t the fundies or the poors living in ghettoized neighborhoods: it’s those who got diplomas, successful careers and who married outside their community), pissed that they aren’t given preferential access to the upper-class’ scraps like their grandparents were, and they enjoy Trump’s bullying as much as their american counterparts.
I hate the whole “mic drop” thing. Good microphones are works of art and deserve love.
I am fairly sure that was a prop (from the crappy mix at the end) but it may serve to encourage someone to toss a really good mic. Just say “no!” to mic drops!
@ #13
First I was assured he wouldn’t really run, it was all talk, then that there was no way he could get the nomination, now that there’s no way he can win the election. What makes me think that next will be in a few years, that there’s no way he can be re-elected.
“There’s no Way dictator-for-life Trump will get the word TRUMP mounted on the front of the White House!”
More violence at a Trump rally:
Talking Points Memo link.
The press pen at Trump rallies is already a notorious Dumpf move. Trump pens the press in one place so that he can point to them and threaten them during his rallies. He encourages his supporters to heckle them.
The reporter who was choke-slammed to the ground never touched the Secret Service agent.
Nebraskan senator Ben Sasse refuses to vote for Trump
The first of many, I hope. We may finally be seeing the GOP implode over this.
I think the GOP is already fractured — into the Tea Party, the Evangelicals and The Anarcho-Conservative Randians.
Mitt Romney took to Twitter to slam Donald Trump for dodging questions about white supremacist supporters:
The Trumpster was not good at disavowing white supremacists, but he had no trouble rejecting Mitt Romney. He said that even if Romney eventually came around to endorsing him, he would not accept the endorsement. So, white supremacists, okay; Mitt Romney, not okay.
In other news, we will not be seeing the last of Ben Carson anytime soon. He says he will stay in the Republican race for president until his money runs out.
Trump’s winning in the GOP race not because he’s a real winner but because the rest of the bunch are real losers. That won’t be the case in the general election, where Clinton will beat him handily because you can count on Trump to act like a jerk, which she will take full advantage of, just like she did during the Benghazi sideshow.
@ #35
You are very optimistic, however, you may be overestimating American voters. Acting like a jerk is seldom a deterrent.
The best thing in the world would be for Trump to sweep Super Tuesday and lock up the nomination. Put in a real pickle, then, would be Cruz (Christian first, American second and the Pastor in Chief) and Little Boy Rubio who really, really, really tries his best to do what he’s told, alas, fails. The GOP would then have to contend with matching Trump against Clinton.
Trump has no political experience, no real business experience – he doesn’t even have an MBA – no economic experience. His only claim to fame is self-promoting the Trump brand and using other people’s money which he does exceedingly well. However, the country is not a business, it’s not run like a business and business skills are completely irrelevant to governing.
Therefore, Clinton by a landslide and, hopefully, burying the Tea Party in the process.
I don’t think there will be any difference among Republican candidates.
If anything, Trump will be less effective at fucking things up than the other two.
Clinton will be better for civil rights, but she will happily continue the erosion of the middle class, the support for wars, the push towards authoritarianism, and be so much better at hiding it and evading public outrage.
@Gwen Sutton #7:
The dems are doing the vary same, they are only better at giving the appearance of caring.
@Lynna OM, #21
Italy had Berlusconi.
And still, the current nominally centre-left Italian PM is doing MORE damage with much less press coverage.
As a Brit, I would like to ask the good people of the United States of America to please, please not make the huge mistake of allowing Trump – sorry, Drumpf – to become President. The rest of the world (including the ‘free’ world that you like to say your President leads) can’t vote in your elections, but the outcome most definitely effects us all.
We are quite capable of electing our own corrupt, authoritarian, ego-maniacal kleptocrats to ruin the countries were we live. Why, in the UK we have a prime example leading the whole country off a cliff right now, and he isn’t even the worst example in his own party (the xenophobic euro-skeptic wing of the Conservatives hold that… err… honour; they even have a Trump-lite type in dear old Borris Johnson). We really don’t need your help in centralizing the process to a Drumpf-tocracy in the US.
Yours sincerely,
The rest of the Earth’s population.
@#37, Doc Bill
Be careful what you wish for.
Republican voters don’t care about experience; in fact, as the continued success of the Tea Party has shown, they reward politicians who gum up the works by refusing to cooperate. (And, it must be said, the modern-day Democratic Party refuses to fight for pretty much any real liberal or left-wing cause, so even the slightest sign of recalcitrance from the Republicans automatically wins the fight for them. The Tea Party won the minute Obama said he was going to be “bipartisan” back in 2009.)
Realistically, no matter what Republicans may say, in reality the overwhelming majority of them are going to show up at the polls and are going to vote Republican. Trump has 8 months to sweet-talk those parts of the party who are upset right now, and he knows how to appeal to irrational egotists because he is one. (And, I might add: he knows, and has known all along, that he was being irrational and horrifying. Salon ran a story about it a few weeks ago; the whole show was calculated precisely to give him free media coverage, which matters much more than actual policy, as the Clinton-Sanders race is demonstrating amply on the other side. Once he has the nomination and they can’t avoid giving him press, I suspect that a lot of his positions will be walked back — it’s not like his current batch of supporters are smart enough to notice inconsistencies, or care about them if they do notice.)
Therefore, Clinton by a landslide and, hopefully, burying the Tea Party in the process.
The primaries are showing record lows in Democratic turnout, so far. That’s before Clinton is
coronateddeclared the winner. She is a singularly unappealing candidate, and those parts of her platform which aren’t designed to discourage the base are exactly counter to everything she did while in office, except for her pro-choice stance. By the time the Republican attack ads — which will make a point of showing how the stances she copied from Sanders (like being against the Trans-Pacific Partnership) are the reverse of what she was doing when she was a Senator or Secretary of State — have been in the media for a month, Independents will have decided in droves that she’s no better than Trump and not bother to vote, and of course all Republicans would rise from their deathbeds and walk 20 miles uphill through six feet of snow in a hurricane to vote against Hillary Clinton.So would you Vicar, so your screed is taken with a grain of salt the size of Montana.
“#MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain”
At the risk of Godwinning the thread, Google “Adolf Schicklgruber.”
Once again, tragedy then farce.
Texas is one of the states where they have enough electoral votes to make a difference, so it will really be an important influence in this election. The GOP oilmen of Texas are not going to vote for the Donald. They didn’t get rich and powerful by being foolhardy, and their dependence on the status quo might make them vote Dem should Donald win the nomination. Massachusetts is an interesting result for the GOP, but they hardly ever win that state.
There are problems on the Dem side as well of course, but unlike the entire GOP field, being completely unqualified to be President isn’t one of them.
@ #43
If those numbers hold up for Texas, Cruz and Trump will divide the 155 delegates that are up for grabs, since only candidates with 20% or more of the vote receive delegates. 47 of these are statewide delegates, but since you need 50% to claim all of these, they will most likely be divided up also. For Massachusetts’ 42 delegates, only 5% is required to claim a share.
The Republicans tried to avoid a long, protracted primary fight by making all primaries from March 1-14 proportional, and those March 15 and later, winner take all. That’s why someone like Kasich is trying to hold out until Ohio, which is March 15, in hopes of having a block of delegates going into the convention. What influence this will give him is debatable. If Trump piles up a big enough delegate lead before the 15th, it will be very difficult to catch him, just picking off a few winner take all states after that will clinch it for him.
Nerd of Redhead
Hillary is just a Republican in a pretty mask — remind me again why anyone with an ounce of sense should vote for her…
WMDKitty, #46
Because she’d be running against Trump/Cruz/Rubio.
She’s not Rubio, Cruz, or The Donald.
All else is bullshit.
If your choice is Clinton vs any of the current GOP field, Hillary is the best choice. Several Supreme Court members will very likely be changing in the next term of office, and with a dead-locked congress, the judicial branch of government is key to making any sort of social progress. It seems likely that she will get the Dem nomination. If she is smart (and she is very smart) she will name Bernie as her running mate. I keep trying to imagine a Hillary/Donald debate. He might be able to act like an enraged male gorilla against an all male field, but that same behavior will offend many deeply religious, conservative GOP people when he directs it towards Hillary.
I personally am not a huge fan of Clinton, but she is in fact quite good at her chosen career, and is the most qualified candidate. I like Bernie, but Hillary is simply better qualified, and the other choices are terrible.
@ #46 WMDK
Even if Drumpf might become POTUS if you don’t?
If it comes down to HRC vs Drumpf, sure, I’ll hold my nose and do what must be done.
Beyond that, I’m voting Bernie because he’s an actual Democrat.
I think Sanders, were he not to get the nomination, would be a fantastic choice for Secretary of Labor or the Treasury, or even Chairman of the Federal Reserve. I’d also love to see the heads explode if he gets any of those positions.
Hillary.
I can’t find the poll now, but last month I believe upwards of 40% of Republicans said that they wouldn’t vote for Trump under any circumstances. Now, I agree that HRC has an enthusiasm problem, but I think it’ll be easier to fire up the vote to go to the polls for the first female President than for a megalomaniacal buffoon.
Anyway, if anyone needs another laugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OemqVWi_R0k
I think Sanders, were he not to get the nomination, would be a fantastic choice for Secretary of Labor or the Treasury, or even Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Or VP?
If you can’t tell Clinton from a Republican, I suggest this site. Seriously, if you can’t tell Clinton and Sanders from the Republicans on their records on reproductive rights then you’re not paying attention. Also health care reform. Neither Sanders nor Clinton is really as far to the left as I’d like and I have a definite preference for Sanders–I’m a donor to his campaign–but I’m going to vote for Clinton reasonably happily if she gets the nomination. She might be an old style Republican from the 1960s or so, but she’s no modern Republican.
I think everyone has fallen for the image the donald wants to project
it is a con,
He is a showman.
He is a casual bigot and a professional asshole..
He is Bush with a comb-over but without the establishments support. Just as smart and just a competent but with out the booze and drugs in his history
He is famous for making money from being rich and famous.
I do not know if I can stand the tension waiting for the election in November. so much can happen until then so much has happened up to now. It is a little close to being really crazy and I have seen too much of that so if someone could reassure me that it will be all right in the end we will make some real progress before the ice caps melt and russia and the middle east implode and any other of the major dangers looming on the horizon come calling.
I would be very grateful!
uncle frogy
Here in one of the bluest parts of Virginia the only signs outside our polling place were for Trump. I guess Clinton and Sanders have both decided that he doesn’t have a chance.
@dianne,
Do you really want two old white people to be the face of the Democratic party? I’d rather she choose a young Latin@–one of the Castro brothers, perhaps. The Latino vote is likely going to be key, regardless of who the Republicans nominate.
There haven’t been any liberal Republicans with any clout in the party since the 1970s when Rockefeller was Ford’s VP. But when Ford ran for President in 1976, conservatives forced Ford to dump Rocky and go with Bob Dole as his running mate. The 1970s were the early days of Nixon’s Southern Strategy and there were still some liberals in the GOP back then, like Jacob Javits and Lowell Weicker, Jr. A lot has changed since then.
That’s a good idea. The main reason for making Bernie VP is to head off the “my candidate didn’t win so I’m going to stay home and pout in the general” crowd. I think really Bernie would be better in a policy wonk sort of position, preferably an economic one. Put him in charge of reforming the banks: then Clinton’s ties won’t matter as much. On a practical level, while Clinton’s life expectancy is likely at least 8 years*, she’s not young and has had serious health issues already so the VP has a higher than average chance of ending up with temporary or permanent executive authority. Make it someone good and, really, someone young would be preferable. I have fantasies about Elizabeth Warren, but that’s probably not happening. And she’s also non-Hispanic and mostly white, so not demographically ideal. Michelle Obama? Make it the all former first lady all high powered lawyer team?
*Note that I have no access to her medical records and am basing this statement strictly on demographics and certain assumptions about her health.