Trump, the Republican Id

After braving a power outage by fleeing to a brick oven pizzeria with power, I whipped up a batch of chili for an upcoming camping trip and, in an act of ultimate sacrifice, avoided the third presidential debate by watching a baseball game called by Joe Buck. As such, and fortified by frequent reference to my Twitter feed, I am in an ideal position to discuss the most recent events.

I want to be clear about this: Nothing about Donald Trump's actions at any point in what passes for his campaign should surprise anyone. Appall, disgust, revolt, sure. In the context of his campaign to date, his apparent refusal to accept the outcome of the election is not outside the margin of calamitous error.

In sense, this is a testament to the durability of the American experiment. Beginning with the election of 1800, interrupted only once (albeit a big once, in 1860), every presidential transition has been accepted by both sides in the contest with no attendant civil unrest of which I am aware. This has led to a justified complacency in the peacefulness  of our political process, to such an extent that a major party candidate for President elicits (thus far) the equivalent of nervous chuckles upon his (oh what a giveaway) refusal to say whether he would accept the outcome of an election process in which voter fraud plays infinitesimally less than no part.

The combination of peaceful precedent and buffoonish mouthpiece may lead some to downplay this, but in any other context this would be a disqualifying action. In this election it's just the next news cycle.

Republicans, you own this. Republicans, fix this.

He Is What He Always Has Been

I am in an undisclosed location and so have recourse only to crappy mobile blogging, but what links do you need at this point? What is new now that you did not either know or could infer earlier? Who could be undecided?

Believe me, I understand the support for Trump; I get what he has tapped into.

Those who only now say "Wow, hey, this Trump guy should drop out" really need to ask themselves where they were during the primaries.

This is not a question of finding useable material during opposition research. It's a question of how to drink from the firehose and pass that on in a controlled manner, and the Clinton campaign is conducting a master class as I write this.

You want Trump off the ballot now?! Nice try; he is all yours.

Indecision Me Molesta

So the next presidential debate, or clash of candidates, will be a "town hall" with questions presented by "undecided" voters. The latest completely unsurprising revelation about Trump's enlightened view of women, one would think, should reduce somewhat the ranks of the undecided to those lost in the supermarket.

I don't know about that. One would think that this election in particular would reduce the number of undecided voters to a number within the statistical margin of error. Lots of people hate and fear Clinton for various reasons (one can learn so much from one's fillings if you just LISTEN), and it would seem even less possible to remain neutral in the subject of Donald Trump even without his legitimate nomination by the Republican Party and his active/passive endorsement by the Republican leadership as the Republican Party's candidate for president. (Did I mention that the GOP nominated Donald Trump as their candidate for president? I'm still kind of wrapping my mind around that, but not really given the context of everything that's happened since at least 1972.)

Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, undecideds. I'm sure they're out there, but all I can say is "Really?"

I'm just glad that Giuliani is leading the charge on the family values front. We all know that Rudy can't fail.

The problem, frankly, is that we've allowed things to get to this point. We have lost something as a country by (re-)legitimating fear of the Other and giving equal time and respect to a platform of lies and ugliness and those who aspire to work for the crackdown, regardless of the outcome of the election. Remember: If he goes there will be trouble, but if he stays it will be double.

#NeverTrump 2/15/16* - 9/23/16

Principled conservative Ted Cruz, the shining principled beacon of post-Trump America, has folded like something that folds either extremely badly or extremely well, take your pick. (None of these seemed appropriate.) In a bold yet principled twist, he did so on Friday afternoon, a time traditionally reserved for news releases that the releasers hope don't get noticed. (I will readily admit that Both Sides Definitely Do That, out of principle of course.)

Color me shocked. No, wait, what's that other color - oh yeah, got it: utterly unsurprised. (For a few weeks in the early '70s it was included between Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber in the Crayola 64 boxes.)

This post, I think, has improved somewhat from its first draft, which consisted of the following paragraph:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Anyway, all of this will be forgotten in time for 2020, so Cruz has nothing to lose by betraying, in however principled a manner, his staunchest supporters. Besides, it's not possible for a heel, even a principled one, to do a heel turn.

*Conservative foolishness has many parents but I am dating the rise of #NeverTrump to the publication of National Review's hilarious parody edition.

Tuesday Superficiality: More of the Same, from Trump and Myself

The most charitable explanation for the latest verbal extrusion from the legitimately nominated (irrespective of how many Republicans actually voted for him) Republican candidate is that he was joking about Hillary Clinton being thwarted politically by way of getting shot. Tell you what: make that same public "joke" and have that explanation ready for the earpieced suit-and-shades folks who pay you a visit. No, please, you go first this time.

Strictly speaking this should not move the needle on the outrage meter, as it should have fused itself to the right side of the apparatus months ago. But stay tuned for the next round of principled denunciations and combination disavowal/endorsements from the erstwhile Howard Bakers of the GOP, and ask yourself, "So is that what it takes to get disqualified? Everything prior is acceptable discourse and behavior?"

That we have come this far down such a road is a poor reflection on, in ascending order, our level of civic engagement, our national political media, and, at the very pinnacle of this towering edifice of suck, the Republican Party as it is currently constituted.

Tuesday Superficiality: You Broke It, You Bought It, No Matter How Huge and Classy It Is

Somewhere back in the runup to the Iraq War (or perhaps after) Colin Powell famously referenced the "Pottery Barn Rule," i.e. "You broke it, you bought it." (That Pottery Barn had no such rule was par for the course for those fact-indifferent paragons of mendacity; however, the concept itself is valid enough.)

We can apply YBIYBI to the GOP and its base voters who propelled Donald Trump to the nomination. Some in the party seem to be acting as if Trump were an aberration, when in fact it is the logical (if batsh*t insane) culmination of forty-plus years of the GOP's cultivation of reactionary nativism under a veneer of pipe-smoking adult-sounding bromides. Trump's innovation, such as it is, was to reject the use of dog whistles and start belting out the quiet parts like Ethel Merman. And whaddaya know, the base not only drank it down, but are mad at the GOP establishment for having previously watered down the message.

Now we are treated to the spectacle of non-endorsement endorsements from the erstwhile Howard Bakers of the party, "he doesn't reflect our values," etc. Yeah, well, he does now, or he wouldn't be your nominee, now would he.

The big question, as always, is "What are you going to about it?"

Well?

#OkFineTrump

It appears that Indiana Republicans ignored JJV's call to the barricades or the beaches or wherever they were to resist Trump manfully until the, shall we say, last trump. Now we get to watch the ring-kissing and "well he's the nominee so what can ya do", aided and abetted by the horse race-dependent media because after all Both Sides Do It.

As always in such matters it is a useful exercise to replace (R) with (D) and imagine what the Party of Lincoln would say were Trump to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. If that were the case I'd cash in the kids' 529s and invest in clutchable pearls and fainting couches.

I truly believe that in a healthy, functioning civil society, we would not have arrived at this point. However, we must play the hand we are dealt (or, more accurately,  deal to ourselves as a country), and at this point, the most bitter anti-Hillary, pro-GOP partisan (I think I know someone like that) needs to answer this question:

Is Donald Trump fit to be president?

Or, perhaps more specifically, is Donald Trump more fit to be president than Hillary Clinton?

Personally that does not rise to the level of "legitimate question" but YMMV.

No rush on this; you have until early November.

Oh yeah, almost forgot: given what has come to pass, it is incomprehensible to me how Ted Cruz clearly is so truly, deeply, madly loathed, more than enough to deny him the nomination. You have to work very hard to be so very hated.

A Tale of Two ITs

The presidential election wasn't decided by the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two campaigns' get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations, but it's useful to take a look behind the scenes.

First, here's a look at the Obama campaign's sophisticated IT approach, based partly on its experience in 2008. Cloud computing! Decoupled apps and databases! Whee!

Next, here's the Romney campaign's approach, starring a single web server running through a Comcast Internet account and 11 - count 'em - database servers. Did I mention that they didn't really beta-test the whole thing, and didn't train end users? What do you suppose happened?

Oh, but it didn't fail at all, says the guy responsible. Sure...

Quasi-appropriately this is the first post published (by me, at least) using the Blogger app for the iPhone.

Seamus's Crate by the Dashboard Light

Politico reports that Mitt Romney has secured the endorsement of Meat Loaf.

Better yet, "Earlier Thursday, Ann Romney went on Rachel Ray’s cooking show. She made meatloaf." Now that's campaign message discipline.

Endorsement highlight, after a helpful reminder from Mr. Loaf that the Cold War isn't over:*

I have never been in any political agenda in my life, but I think that in 2012 this is the most important election in the history of the United States. Because there has (sic) storm clouds come over the United States. There is (sic) thunder storms over Europe. There are hail storms – and I mean major hail storms! – in the Middle East. There are storms brewing through China, through Asia, through everywhere.

I have been arguing for Mitt Romney for a year. I made three phone calls today to Democrats in California, and I got two of them to switch to Romney, so two out of three ain’t bad.

Hee yuk.

*Spoiler alert: It is.

This Never Happened to Pablo Picasso

There's an Iowa way,* apparently. Newt must have asked him about the weather in July.

*With apologies to JWT

Ripped from the Comments

Someone sounding like our own JJV has weighed in on my recent rant about the 2010 midterm elections. I will provide excerpts (while, I trust, staying within context; by all means police me) and comment thereon.

...when your policies drive red ink and also maintain high unemployment you have to suffer the consequences...

So I guess red ink plus deferred high unemployment gets a pass; that explains the absence of Tea Party activity before 2009. At any rate, my understanding is that unemployment would have been worse had a stimulus plan not been implemented, but I defer to the economists in the readership.

The tea party provided the energy for this election and probably lost the seats of Nevada and Delaware for the Republicans but the gains everywhere else would have been impossible without these folks. You can only think them crazy if the American Founding and a limited Federal Government is now deemed crazy.

Agreed to a certain point on the energy, which was directed and coopted for its own ends by the GOP. Regarding the American Founding, I was unaware of any cries of "Taxation without Representation!" except from the DC crowd. Meanwhile, any of those folks truly believing in limited government were strangely silent before 2009. If only we could put our finger on what it was about 2009 that suddenly awakened the great American public to the sudden cataclysmic danger.

Also, any suggestion that the media is pro-Tea Party can only be greeted by calls of mood modifying drugs being applied to the suggestor.

I'm with you on that one. Point me to the blogger who said that and I'll heap derision with the best of 'em. Lest it was unclear, my point was that the media exaggerated the grass roots nature of the Tea Party in its quest to report the conflict rather than the facts.

Men in Orange Should Avoid Men in Black

OK, back to politics. Via Lawyers, Guns and Money comes this report of Roseanne Cash saying "no sale" to incoming Speaker of the House Boehner in no uncertain terms.

Decrying of the "tone" by pearl-clutching Republicans in 5, 4, 3...

Democracy in America

It's still relatively early on Election Night but it's pretty clear that the House has gone GOP and that the Senate will feature such luminaries as Rand Paul and Joe Miller, with Sharron Angle thrown in for the Trifecta of Batshit Crazy. The next two years promise little in the way of achievement and much in the way of cynical political theater; those who imagine the sound of articles of impeachment being drafted instead hear the opening of a desk drawer in which said articles have lain since Election Night 2008. With the minor delay of changing the House rules to allow bills and subpoenas composed in red crayon, the next order of business should be a flood of hearings and fishing expeditions which will expose the statistically likely indiscretions as existential threats to the Republic. I am not the first to suggest that the resulting GOP supernova in 2012 will not have been worth it.

The biggest story of this election cycle is also the most clearly false. The so-called Tea Party movement is nothing but the co-opting of selfish scared people by Republican activists and funding. Any other depiction is based on wishful thinking by all parties enabled by the news media, who do have a point: Fat dorks in tricorner hats and Sansabelt knee breeches (white Rockports optional) are a compelling visual.

Thank you, good night, and God bless the United States of America, 'cause man, was that one messy sneeze.

Update 11/3: OK, Angle didn't make it, but substitute Club for Corporations stalwart Pat Toomey in the above.

Candidates Say the Darnedest Things

It should be clear by this point that my colleague and his Paper of Record are in the minority as far as the latest HRC own goal is concerned.

The bottom line to the past few days of bizarre outbursts is that this is the sign of a desperate candidate at the head of an undisciplined campaign. How she thinks that attempting to destroy Obama to position herself for 2012 (as a current theory goes) will actually advance her interests is beyond me.

This is also another symptom of short-term tactical thinking, an extension of the "Super Tuesday then coast" strategy that got her in this mess in the first place. As always, remember that this was supposed to be the experienced, politically savvy team.