Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Bill Clinton circa 1992? Heh. I mean, I joke, but it's funny to think of what party he'd more closely associated with these days.

Look, I'm a free-trade, pro-markets, anti- bureaucracy guy. I'm for sensible immigration reform and I think one can make a very good case for the ends Trump is pushing with very different means. I'd take Paul Ryan in a heartbeat. But we're talking my preferred R candidate.

In terms of what I think an R needs to look like to win -- I'd really have to think on that. They need some of Trump's populism but they also need core conservative values. And most importantly, IMO, they need to be able to sell their message to college-educated suburbanites. They can get blue-collar voters through refining key Trump issues, but they need to be able to sell conservatism to a larger audience. Those voters strike me as socially liberal and fiscally conservative, so you if you can sell them on conservative economic ideas and, of course, safety, you're in business.

Trump is going to wail PAH amongst blue collar voters. He'll destroy her in, e.g., WV -- a formally D state. But she's going to run up huge margins in urban areas and, I think, suburban areas.

So, I cycle all over central Ohio -- a region I think is very bellweather. There is a discernible pattern to PAH/Trump sign population. And right now, in my unscientific survey, the Trump signs become prevalent too far into rural areas. They need to be prevalent about 10 miles closer and they just aren't.

I tend to think Trump will improve on Romney's performance in blighted parts of the state: Appalachia + dead or dying cities. It'll have less resonance in Greater Columbus because, quite frankly, the area is better off than most of the state.

Go back and look at the counties Kasich won in the primary...those are the counties where I think Trump will under-perform Romney.

[iam416]

Yeah, Columbus is not a good area for pessimism. But, e.g., I've read that Trump may have an outside shot actually win the Youngstown area (Trumbull, Mahoning) or make it really close. That's the heart of "Reagan Democrat" country and 35 years of no appreciable improvement has left them embittered as all shit.

But, back to Columbus -- that's where Trump NEEDs to do well. He'll get assraped in Cuyahoga County so he needs to hold Columbus at 50/50ish and there's no chance of that, IMO.

[froot loops]

I'll be in Dublin/Worthington this weekend, I'll be on the lookout for Trump signs.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Dublin is one of the most conservative suburbs. Worthington not so much.

RE: Youngstown. That region matters a lot less than it did in the 80's. Trumbull and Mahoning counties have lost nearly 100,000 people since 1980 between them. Same goes for the vast majority of Western PA, incidentally.

[iam416]

Won't find many Trump signs in either Dublin or Worthington. You'll see them in the farmlands between the Columbus suburbs and, well, Toledo, on Rt. 23.

Dublin is exactly the demographic that Trump should win but won't.

[froot loops]

I was just in Toledo weekend ago. I didn't notice that many Trump signs but I was in the downtown area.

[iam416]

Meanwhile, On Fox News Sunday, Clinton said: “Director Comey said my answers were truthful, and what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails.”

That preposterous assertion immediately earned 4 pinnochios as the most egregious of possible political lies.

And, yet, barely a word about it because, in part, Trump is off waging war against a Gold Star family.

[hack]

Meanwhile, On Fox News Sunday, Clinton said: ?Director Comey said my answers were truthful, and what I?ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails.?

That preposterous assertion immediately earned 4 pinnochios as the most egregious of possible political lies.

And, yet, barely a word about it because, in part, Trump is off waging war against a Gold Star family.

Dunno if it is or not, but certainly a smart opponent doesn't bury that controversy by picking a fight with the parents of a dead soldier. I really don't think Trump's candidacy is a Hillary conspiracy but sometimes you have to wonder.

[froot loops]

It's the downfall of the political strategy to dominate free TV with controversy.

[iam416]

From Jim Geraghty at the National Review (Disclosure--he HATES Trump):

Pop quiz: The Democratic convention featured Muslim parents of a slain U.S. serviceman, contending that the Republican candidate “has sacrificed nothing and no one” and understands nothing about the U.S. Constitution. How should Trump and his campaign respond?

A. Trump should declare, “I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard.”
B. Trump should suggest there’s something odd, abnormal, or sinister about the mother not speaking.
C. Trump should contend the father doesn’t want to keep terrorists out of the United States, declaring, “when you have radical Islamic terrorists probably all over the place, we’re allowing them to come in by the thousands and thousands. And I think that’s what bothered Mr. Khan more than anything else.”
D. Trump should boast that if he had been elected four terms earlier, their son wouldn’t have died.
E. Eric Trump should insist his father apologized to the parents when he has not.
F. A Trump campaign surrogate should suggest the father is a Muslim Brotherhood agent.
G. All of the above.
H. None of the above; take Mike Pence’s approach of declaring, “that’s what freedom looks like and that’s what freedom sounds like,” salute Khan as a hero and thank his family, and pivot to the issue.

Trump and his team chose ‘G’; the correct answer was ‘H’. What is amazing is how the Trump and his surrogates can take any bad situation and find an innovative, groundbreaking way to make it worse… day, after day, after day.

[Da Geezer]

Jon said:

Geez, I ask this in all seriousness and with respect. I agree with your statement above. How does that measure up to the GOP's oft proclaimed intent to stack the SCOTUS with devout anti-abortionists?

I'm catching up, and I am half way down page 489, so if what I am about to say is redundant, I'm sorry.

I agree with Talent about the Roe v. Wade decision taking away the right of the States to adopt their own laws on the subject.

Abortions have been legal my whole life. When I was in college, I paid for an abortion for a cousin who got pregnant. She went to NY and had the procedure. We hear the phrase "abortion was legalized in 1973 with Roe. . . ." and the assumption seems to be that it was illegal prior to that. The issue has never been the legality of abortion, rather, it has been access to abortion, particularly for poor women. In those days, Planned Parenthood was a eugenics movement with the purpose of aborting offspring of undesirables, particularly blacks. But I digress.

In my original post, I emphasized the phrase previously agreed upon rules of conduct. I'd debate anyone on the subject " resolved: Abortion has been viewed as murder in most of human history. That has been the norm, the previously agreed upon rules. The SC then came up with a new right of privacy in order to extend the existing NY-type rules to the rest of the country. So I don't even understand the phrase "appointing anti-abortionist judges. . ." as some of you do, because you consider abortion as the rule and I view it as an exception. That's an honest disagreement among honest people. I'd just like to go back to the rule that the states decide how they want to handle abortion.

Hack: I didn't think you provided any information about mass shootings in a gun allowed zone. Your post was from a partisan anti-gun website that I found almost humorous in its selectivity. I asked the question about your website not having any such shootings for the last two months in Chicago, and then let the matter drop. I will concede that the most likely place to find such shootings is in private homes particularly in domestic disputes. I'd then counter that homes are effectively gun-free zones if the shooter knows the victim(s) cannot have a gun. The context of our conversation was the plausibility of what I called the "Rambo scenario". I assume the NRA could provide cases where citizens protected their homes with a firearm, but we were talking about the deterrent effect of gun-allowed zones.

[Hannibal]

I live in a heavily Republican town and I have seen maybe one Trump in the past few months -- it was homemade. Trump's lack of a ground game is obvious and it's probably going to hurt him.

[Mike]

Same here. I haven't seen a single Trump yard sign but I did see some bumper stickers while I was out and about.

[Hannibal]

I'm not sure the Bill Clinton campaign of 92 could win. The demographics are much different. I'm not sure even if you could replicate the George W. Bush campaigns that it would work. Bush wasn't much as a governing president but he was a really underrated campaigner.

No he wasn't. He was a clueless, poor, and completely tone deaf campaigner. He lost the popular vote to Al Gore and then he barely beat a terrible candidate in John Kerry despite presiding over a robust economy at the time (stronger than it has been at any time during the Obama administration, I might add). A good campaigner would have won that election by 7+ points.

[iam416]

Swift Boat Veterans.....FOR TRUTH!!!!