I’m not going to go so far as to predict that Hillary Clinton will win in this madhouse of an election, but the odds in her favor keep improving.

More icky revelations about Trump are trickling out.

The Republican party is cutting off support to the Trump campaign.

Many Republican leaders are publicly denouncing Trump, although many are not going so far as to decline to endorse him.

Trump donors are pissed off.

Trump refuses to resign. With an ego that size, can anyone imagine that he would?

Now picture this.

He loses big in the election in November. Even if it’s close, maybe especially if it’s close.

Now put yourself in his shoes, with his narcissism. He’s got to blame someone else, right? Who is he going to blame?

Not Clinton. Not some woman, especially not some woman he thinks is a crook. Maybe there will be some whining of voter fraud, but that’s not going to hold up for long.

He’s going to blame those Republican bigshots, Paul Ryan and John McCain and Reince Priebus and all those governors and senators and congresspeople who failed to support him in the face of these terribly unfair attacks. He has been betrayed. He has been stabbed in the back by his own party.

Trump still has fanatical supporters. Look at Breitbart. Look what’s happening: Trump fans are booing Paul Ryan.

This is what has the Republicans sweating bullets right now. You know they’re busy calculating: they have to repudiate what he said, but how far can they go before they alienate the Trumpian base and find themselves a target of their own fanatics in subsequent elections?

Even scarier — what if he wins? Do you think Trump is the kind of fellow who keeps enemy lists, bears a grudge, and is going to screw over anyone who tried to hurt him the campaign? These guys are trapped.

I do think Clinton will win, though, and then that 30-40% of the rabid electorate that was fueled by racial hatred will pin a Dolchstoßlegende on the Republican establishment and turn on them. They won’t go Democrat, though — they’ll sit there simmering in resentment waiting for a fresh demagogue. It’s just going to get uglier and uglier, but I don’t think the Republicans will benefit.

It’s good to see, finally. The rats are trying to desert the sinking ship, but don’t let them — and it’s not as if they can. It’s only about a month until the election. Deadlines to put names on the ballot have passed; no matter what the other Republicans do, come November, people will go into their voting booths and Trump’s name will be there, even if every other Republican in the country has repudiated him. He will get many votes from angry white people. All that has changed is that the size of his defeat will probably be larger (although we might also get surprised: this much controversy is probably going to increase the turnout, especially among the racist/sexist/white nationalist electorate).

But it’s also too late for the Republican leadership to untangle themselves from the hideous Trump. They endorsed him. They marched out and made their little speeches approving of the man — even Ted Cruz, who told everyone to vote their conscience at the Republican convention, swallowed his pride and got on board the Trump Train. None of these people should be allowed to escape public censure.

It’s particularly galling because we all knew all along that Trump was a racist, sexist, loud-mouthed hateful boor. He declared that Mexicans were racists and that a judge of Mexican descent couldn’t be trusted; they waffled. He announced that he had a plan to deport Muslims, and he took on a running mate who wanted to bar all Syrian refugees; well, that’s all right then. He proposes shutting down Planned Parenthood and bringing in judges who will overthrow Roe v. Wade, and Pence tried to pass a law requiring formal funerals for aborted fetuses; no problem. Trump wants to end marriage equality, and Pence claims tolerance for gay rights will lead to societal collapse; that’s fine, they agree. He calls women pigs, ugly, fat, and mocks them for blood coming out of their wherever; he’s just speaking his mind. He builds a following of openly racist white nationalists, he foments violence at his rallies; Dick Cheney approves this message.

Everyone knew this. These were not secretive attitudes. He was utterly brazen. We also knew that he was incompetent, had a feeble attention span, was anticipating -science, and was totally unqualified for the job, but those are basically the prerequisites for being a Republican nowadays, so we can’t fault them for overlooking that, but the naked hatred was inescapably obvious, and one thing I’ll say for the Republicans, they usually try to keep their hatred discreetly clothed.

So what suddenly turned everyone against Trump? He said lewd things about a white woman. That is unforgivable. Paul Ryan revealed the real problem. Trump was not chivalrous.

Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified.

Fuck you, Paul Ryan. No. Women don’t need you to be their champion, and reverence is not what they are looking for: fairness and equality are. Especially when your version of “reverence” involves supporting a vulgar bigot who doesn’t trust women with their own bodies.

I’ll believe Republicans are sincere in the repudiation of Donald Trump when they also repudiate all the policies and ideas Trump represented. But until then, bury the lot of them in the dung heap of history.

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New entertainment: look up all the people and groups who endorsed Trump before this, when he was a known racist and perpetrator of harassment and sexual assault and were undeterred by his history. For example, here’s a page of Scholars and Writers for America, a long list of very serious very intellectual wankers who think…

Given our choices in the presidential election, we believe that Donald J. Trump is the candidate most likely to restore the promise of America, and we urge you to support him as we do.

Where, apparently, the promise of America is to support slavery and not allow women to vote.

Ladies and gentlemen, the pick of the evangelical Christian right.

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Charles Blow is a bit upset.

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Do you think this will change Trump’s supporters’ minds at all? Now you can find out! Breitbart has rather tersely reported the bare facts of this story. Just read the comments.

Lots of “Bill Clinton is worse!” comments.

TRUMP = boys talk. Clinton actually did attacked and raped woman against their will and used his position to do so.

If only it would sink in that Bill Clinton isn’t in the running.

Then there’s the “All men do it” excuse.

If You’re upset about this, you have never been in a mens locker room. Sorry, but men (if they’re straight) talk about women as women talk about men.

Sorry, nope, I don’t, nor do any of my friends.

There are people who are very happy about what Trump said. It makes him a manly man.

BFD! 2005 LMAO, Yawn! At least he’s not a fag!

TRUMP is a true red blooded American, he has AMERICAN CHILDREN not imports or one that is soley a CLINTON political set up

And then there’s simple denial.

Women love Trump and Trump loves women. Nobody cares.

This is funny. Trump supporters are illogical and full of contradictions.

But it’s also troubling. What would happen if you sent a similar crew of interviewers to a Clinton event? Are they also nonsensical in their reasoning?

I also wonder whether there were Trump supporters who were not amusingly stupid, who weren’t used in the video. How many of them were there? What’s the difference in frequency of idiots between Democratic and Republican voters?

Yeah, I’m looking at a comedy bit and wondering about control groups and sample size and data representation. I’m a science nerd. No apologies.

This stuff matters. We’re kind of lucky that all the witty, sharp, funny comics tend tend to be on the liberal side, while the conservatives have nothing but unfunny smirking dudebros who use racism and misogyny to get laughs, but imagine if a talented, insightful comedian arose among the far-right and turned this same strategy against us. Shall we get into an arms race in which we each raise the worst of the other side as their champions?

I didn’t watch the debate, and I’ve already said I’m unimpressed with trying to declare a winner. The impression I’m getting, though, is that there’s a consensus that Pence was more slick & polished…not that I care, I want to know about the content and the policies. I do think this is neat, though: the latest ad from the Clinton/Kaine campaign shows very clearly that Pence was lying all night long.

John Oliver’s schtick of lacing horrifying evidence with humor is kind of potent. I’m sure someone will try to argue that there is no institutional problem with how the police are regulated in this country, though.

You can talk about the vice presidential debate all you want. I skipped it. And this morning I tried to find out what was said, and all I see is the media arguing about “who won”, which I don’t give a good goddamn about. Did we learn anything about policies? At the end of the debate, shouldn’t we have a clearer idea about what the candidates stand for, and isn’t that what the media should be talking about?

Instead, all I hear about is that Pence “looked” “presidential”, two rather meaningless words.

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Jebus. Now the right-wingers are arguing about the flair the two were wearing. Pence wore the obligatory American flag pin, while Kaine wore a mysterious and almost certainly insidious furrin pin of some kind.

Can we just declare that anyone who doesn’t know what the Blue Star service symbol means isn’t qualified to pontificate on military matters in the US?

He has a new excuse for his ignorance of foreign policy matters: being stupid is an asset.

It’s because we elect people who can dot the I’s and cross the T’s on the name of a foreign leader or a geographic location, then allows them to put our military in harm’s way.

Jebus. We’ve already forgotten George W. Bush, who hadn’t the vaguest idea of the organization of the region he happily invaded?

I understand that the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region.

You don’t even want to know how confused he was about Latin America.

So no, Gary Johnson, the fact that you don’t know how to find your own ass with a mirror, a theodolite, and a butt-plug with built-in GPS does not imply that you are incapable of hip-checking someone while you’re floundering about trying to figure out what you’re doing with our military.