Bonus for @eyebooger
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Oh yeah speaking of huge suckers I read the first chapter of the Bolton book, here are a few of the good lines from it…
"Once the transition began, I thought it reasonable to offer my services as the Secretary of state, as did others. When Chris Wallace came off the Fox set early on November 9, after the race was called, he shook my hand and said, smiling broadly, ‘Congratulations, Mr. Secretary.’ "
Spends 3 pages talking about what a great SOS he’d make and then tillerson gets it “Tillerson was gracious and professional, and utterly uninterested in having me as his Deputy. Of course, had I been in his shoes, I would have felt the same way. Tillerson later told Elliot Abrams, whom he also considered, that he wanted someone who would work behind the scenes supporting him, not someone who had gained public attention”
"Life under Trump, however, did not resemble life in Joseph Addison’s eponymous Cato, where the hero strove to defend the failing Roman Republic against Julius Caesar. Instead the new Administration resembled much more closely the Eagles song “Hotel California”: ‘You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave.’ "
"In early May, after I had another White House discussion with Priebus and Bannon, they took me to what turned out to be a photo opportunity with Trump and Pence in the colonnade that connects the Resident to the West Wing. “John, so good to see you,” said Trump as we walked along the colonnade, surrounded by photographers. We talked about the Philippines and the Chinese threat to bring nearly the entire South China Sea under its sovereignty. When we finished, Trump said loud enough for the trailing mob of reporters to hear, “Is Rex Tillerson around? He should talk to John.” And with that, Trump was off to the Oval. Priebus said, “That was great. We want to get you back over here regularly.”
“I was back at the White House in June to see Trump, walking with Priebus to the Outer Oval. Trump saw us through his open door and said, “Hi, John, give me a minute, I’m signing judges’ commissions.” I was happy to give him all the time he needed, because Trump’s growing record on judicial nominations, in due course to be graced by the confirmation of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, was for conservatives the highest priority and greatest achievement of his tenure.”
“On Iran, I uged that he press ahead to withdraw from the nuclear agreement and explained why the use of force against Iran’s nuclear program might be the only lasting solution. “You tell Bibi that if he uses force, I will back him. I told him that, but you tell him again.” Trump said, unprompted by me.”
Bolton is still at this point a fox news contributor that gets to randomly walk into the oval office and sit in on national security meetings. Also he mentions many times “Trump called him” because he saw Bolton on TV and immediately called him and started ranting like a lunatic, except Bolton tries to act super casual about the whole thing like hey i’m just so smart the president calls me for serious advice “Trump called me a few days later to complain about how the Iran certification issue had been handled, as especially about “people in the state department” who hadn’t given him any options”
Bolton spends an entire page describing the scene where he talks to trump in the oval office about North Korea (again still as a fox news contributor) and lays out a range of options because bolton is such a well studied genius, and he just quotes Trump at the end saying “What do you think the chances of war are with North Korea? Fifty-fifty?” like Trump is just homer simpson with a monkey banging a cymbal for a brain and wasn’t listening.
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Yes this is correct of course. Idk why this keeps getting thrown around. MSDNC loooooves this talking point and Morning Joe had it as his special guest just this morning.
A guy who spends half his campaign (and a chunk of his first one) laying the groundwork for OMGZ RIGGAGE isn’t a guy who is ever planning on just giving up and walking away. We’ll be lucky to ever be rid of him.
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As someone who lives in NH, I would never have thought that lobstermen were politically progressive.
That’s not exactly true. Nate’s model had Trump winning about 30% of the time. All other models were more pessimistic on Trump’s chances than that, usually by quite a bit, pegging him around 10% or less. And no poll really gives you a percent probability. You need a model to convert a set of polls into probabilities.
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Could easily see him quit and have Pence pardon him…
Ok perhaps I am misremembering. Even so, it’s hardly “wrong” when a 10% event occurs.
Never happening.
I guess it’s one of a near infinite amount of scenarios after the election if he loses. Like Trump resigns and is pardoned by Pence on January 15th or so as a procedural move to protect himself.
Pretty sure RCP was outed a few years ago as being run by a deplorable, I think we talked about it maybe over in Exiled? Something like that. I forget the guy’s name.
My post that you replied to didn’t say anything about polls. You might want to look back at what I did write and ask yourself why you felt the need to shift the discussion. It’s a bit telling imo.
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shats
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Yeah if you watch fox they have a lot of realclearpolitics people on during the midday news shows. its weird. i’m like hey this doesn’t seem like the website at all what is going on they’re all right wing people pretending to be moderates.
If the entire electorate believes that Bidrn is ahead, it absolutely helps Biden. One of the stupidest but most consistent patterns among the voters is they like to vote for winners and don’t like to vote for losers. Day after day of reports that Trump is unpopular would be devastating.
The trick is to get that information to penetrate the derposphere to Trump’s voters. That should happen as long as Fox keeps running honest polls.
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The reason Trump isn’t quitting is because he knows he’ll be charged with crimes. Has nothing to do with looking weak.
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Not sure if anyone has mentioned it yet, but part of the reason Trump is doing so badly at the polls is that he didn’t stop the protests. Republicans are starting to think he is all talk and no killing.
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Yeah, try going over to Chiefsplanet and telling them about these polls, see what they say. “Are these the same polls that had Hillary winning! Har!”
I will say that “Vote for Biden because everyone else is voting for Biden!” is the closest the Lincoln Project has ever come to giving me a positive reason to vote for Biden. It’s a stupid reason, but it’s better than that Trump loves Confederate flags or whatever.
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ChiefsPlanet as swing voters. ok.
Agreed, and presidential elections are rare enough that we’ll never really get to statistical significance. Still, I think it’s fair to say that Nate’s model most probably performed the best of any. Based on his performance in 2008 and 2012, I had been thinking his model had too much uncertainty baked in, because outcomes were falling exactly in line with his predictions when his own model was saying he should have been wrong more often. A model saying something should happen 80% of the time when it happens 95% of the time isn’t a great model. But I think 2016 was vindication for all that uncertainty.
People are bad at probability and polls, though. They look at national polling that had Hillary +3 or so and conclude that she’s a lock, and then Trump wins the EC with Hillary +3 in the national popular vote and conclude that polls are garbage.
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Trump’s path to victory is to mash the racism button as hard as he can. He should be going on about how he’s going to stop the Yellow Peril China Virus by embargoing China and how his wall stopped marauding MS13/antifa caravans. The BLM protests ought to be a huge opportunity for him to pander to his white supremacist base, but he’s not taking advantage of it. He’s not tossing out red meat to his base like he did in 2016, and the lack of enthusiasm is killing his campaign.
I think the biggest single difference is that Hillary is out of the picture and he can’t run a campaign based on how America profoundly dislikes Hillary Clinton like he did in 2016.
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Yea what we are seeing, as most people thought and have been saying for a while, is that trump is not a goddamn strategic/politics genius. He happened to arrive at the perfect time in history with the perfect opponent and was able to push the easy political outsider/racism campaign and still barely win. He’s a moron.
Turns out it’s not a cheat code after 4 years of doing nothing but making shit worse and against an opponent that’s not hated by most of the country.
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