2017 impeachment - because it's never too early

[DGuller]

The alternative explanation, I guess, is that the Democratic Party is basically dead, and the best possible leaders they could come up with is a fatally flawed re-tread and a very old Socialist? That doesn't strike me as a more appealing story...

It's not dead, but it is and it was far sicker than it appeared.  The party has many fundamental problems, but I would argue the biggest one is enthusiasm gap with the Republicans.  Republicans are energized, about all the wrong things, but energized nonetheless.  Democrats are boring mediocrities that can only energize people about how terrible Republican policies are (which is factually correct but not really that inspirational).

[FunkMonk]

First of all, it's Slate I know. But Kaplan is a credible writer.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/11/buckle_up_conservatives_are_revolting_against_trump.html

Cohen told the Washington Post that he'd written the tweet after submitting names for possible national-security positions at the request of a longtime friend who's a senior official on the Trump transition team. His friend's response, Cohen said, was "very weird, very disturbing ... It became clear to me that they view jobs as lollipop things you give out to good boys and girls." His friend, he added, seemed "unhinged."

However, when I asked Boot this morning about Cohen's retraction, he emailed, "Eliot's tweeting is a matter of concern because it suggests Trump people will stay in their bunker. Heaven help us if they staff the entire admin only with Trump loyalists."

Another source of "discouragement," he said, was the announcement that Mike Rogers, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and before that an FBI agent, had left Trump's transition team over disputes with the campaign loyalists who seem to be dominating the show.

There is also widespread weariness over reports that the next secretary of state might be Rudy Giuliani, a man with no experience in foreign policy and possibly the least diplomatic personality in American politics, simply because he stood by Trump unwaveringly in good times and bad.

Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy four years.

If this is anywhere near true then hahahahaha we're so fucked

[DGuller]

In 2008 you had Edwards, Clinton, Obama, and Biden - all of them as credible candidates you could imagine winning. Hell, Edwards came in second in Iowa. But even then, Clinton was very much seen as the obvious winner.

In 2016 you had Clinton, and that is it. One credible candidate.

How did that come about?

garbon would have us believe that Dems just love Clinton so much that nobody else wanted to run against her, because she was just that big of a rock star, even compared to 2008.

I don't buy it.

Another simple explanation could be that no one believed that she was beatable in the primaries, so no one with any political future wanted to go out and get wrecked.  And the Democrats do have incredibly shallow bench to start with, given their exceptional weakness at the state level lately.

[Ideologue]

Hey, Beeb.  Let's say that the EC did vote for Clinton.  Legitimate or illegitimate?  You're the Burkean conservative here.

(Anyway, of course the PV is "meaningless" in that it has no binding legal effect.  So whatever meaning it has is the meaning people attach to it.  What it means to me is a broken, broken electoral system, that paved the way for a rightist autocrat.  Sure, if it had rewarded, say, a hypothetical Sanders, maybe I'd feel differently.  It'd still be unfair, but I would still enjoy the victory.  So, naturally, I don't expect most right-wingers to care.  Perhaps even less than me, they have no principles above their policy goals, and "functioning democracy" has not been a right wing goal since, roughly speaking, ever.)

[Admiral Yi]

Another simple explanation could be that no one believed that she was beatable in the primaries, so no one with any political future wanted to go out and get wrecked.  And the Democrats do have incredibly shallow bench to start with, given their exceptional weakness at the state level lately.

I don't think that losing a primary is generally considered a career wrecker, unless you're close to the end of your career.

[Ideologue]

The notion he's getting at, I think, is that Clinton would've been vindictive against any challenger.  Which I would not call implausible.

[DGuller]

I mean, it's certainly a hell of a lot more than in 2000.  Anyway, it obviously reflects a value judgment, and my previous assertion of "two million" may be off by about a factor of two (though they are still counting).  And yet, speaking personally, I'd nevertheless consider 800,000 or so people to be "a lot."  (It was still "a lot" at Stalingrad, right?)

The gap is over a million now and still climbing. DGuller is going to have to eat his words.

http://time.com/4572295/hillary-clinton-popular-vote-lead/

What words?

[Razgovory]

Another simple explanation could be that no one believed that she was beatable in the primaries, so no one with any political future wanted to go out and get wrecked.  And the Democrats do have incredibly shallow bench to start with, given their exceptional weakness at the state level lately.

I don't think that losing a primary is generally considered a career wrecker, unless you're close to the end of your career.

It's a hell of a lot of money and time.

[Razgovory]

First of all, it's Slate I know. But Kaplan is a credible writer.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/11/buckle_up_conservatives_are_revolting_against_trump.html

TrumpGOP is going judenrein.  Mnuchin is hanging by a thread.

You might want to keep a bag packed and close to the door.  That is not a joke.

[dps]

In 2008 you had Edwards, Clinton, Obama, and Biden - all of them as credible candidates you could imagine winning. Hell, Edwards came in second in Iowa. But even then, Clinton was very much seen as the obvious winner.

In 2016 you had Clinton, and that is it. One credible candidate.

How did that come about?

garbon would have us believe that Dems just love Clinton so much that nobody else wanted to run against her, because she was just that big of a rock star, even compared to 2008.

I don't buy it.

Another simple explanation could be that no one believed that she was beatable in the primaries, so no one with any political future wanted to go out and get wrecked.  And the Democrats do have incredibly shallow bench to start with, given their exceptional weakness at the state level lately.

And another plausible explanation is that nobody thought that they'd be able to match the Clintons in fundraising, which was probably a correct conclusion.

[jimmy olsen]

I mean, it's certainly a hell of a lot more than in 2000.  Anyway, it obviously reflects a value judgment, and my previous assertion of "two million" may be off by about a factor of two (though they are still counting).  And yet, speaking personally, I'd nevertheless consider 800,000 or so people to be "a lot."  (It was still "a lot" at Stalingrad, right?)

The gap is over a million now and still climbing. DGuller is going to have to eat his words.

http://time.com/4572295/hillary-clinton-popular-vote-lead/

What words?

Sorry, I mixed you up with Dorsey

http://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,9807.msg1033747.html#msg1033747

[jimmy olsen]

First of all, it's Slate I know. But Kaplan is a credible writer.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/11/buckle_up_conservatives_are_revolting_against_trump.html

Cohen told the Washington Post that he'd written the tweet after submitting names for possible national-security positions at the request of a longtime friend who's a senior official on the Trump transition team. His friend's response, Cohen said, was "very weird, very disturbing ... It became clear to me that they view jobs as lollipop things you give out to good boys and girls." His friend, he added, seemed "unhinged."

However, when I asked Boot this morning about Cohen's retraction, he emailed, "Eliot's tweeting is a matter of concern because it suggests Trump people will stay in their bunker. Heaven help us if they staff the entire admin only with Trump loyalists."

Another source of "discouragement," he said, was the announcement that Mike Rogers, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and before that an FBI agent, had left Trump's transition team over disputes with the campaign loyalists who seem to be dominating the show.

There is also widespread weariness over reports that the next secretary of state might be Rudy Giuliani, a man with no experience in foreign policy and possibly the least diplomatic personality in American politics, simply because he stood by Trump unwaveringly in good times and bad.

Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy four years.

If this is anywhere near true then hahahahaha we're so fucked

The Times says it is

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/us/politics/trump-transition.html?_r=2&mtrref=www.slate.com&gwh=C9EA95B7429943D2D3F2AD3BA039B3B8&gwt

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump's transition operation plunged into disarray on Tuesday with the abrupt departure of Mike Rogers, who had handled national security matters, the second shake-up in less than a week on a team that has not yet begun to execute the daunting task of taking over the government.

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Rogers, a former congressman from Michigan who led the House Intelligence Committee, said he was "proud of the team that we assembled at Trump for America to produce meaningful policy, personnel and agency action guidance on the complex national security challenges facing our great country." And he said he was "pleased to hand off our work" to a new transition team led by Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

In another sign of disarray, a transition official said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump had removed a second senior defense and foreign policy official from his transition team, Matthew Freedman, who runs a Washington consulting firm that advises foreign governments and companies seeking to do business with the United States government.
Mr. Freedman, who had been in charge of coordinating Mr. Trump's calls to world leaders after his election, is a former business associate of Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's former campaign manager, who once worked on the re-election bid of Ferdinand E. Marcos, the Filipino dictator ousted in the 1980s.

Mr. Pence took the helm of the transition on Friday after Mr. Trump unceremoniously removed Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who had been preparing with Obama administration officials for months to put the complex transition process into motion. That effort is now frozen, senior White House officials say, because Mr. Pence has yet to sign legally required paperwork to allow his team to begin collaborating with President Obama's aides on the handover.

An aide to Mr. Trump's transition team who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters said that the delay was taking place because the wording of the document was being altered and updated, and that it was likely to be signed later Tuesday.

Still, the slow and uncertain start to what is normally a rapid and meticulously planned transfer of power could have profound implications for Mr. Trump's nascent administration. It challenges the president-elect's efforts to gain control of the federal bureaucracy and to begin building a staff fully briefed on what he will face in the Oval Office on Day 1.

Even as the president-elect worked to fill pivotal roles in his administration, the disarray caught the attention of some senior Republicans who criticized Mr. Trump during his campaign but said after he won that they would not necessarily rule out joining his administration or advising him.

Eliot A. Cohen, a former State Department official, said on Twitter that after having spoken to Mr. Trump's team, he had "changed my recommendation: stay away. They're angry, arrogant, screaming 'you LOST!' Will be ugly."

Mr. Obama has repeatedly said that his priority is to ensure a smooth and professional transition, a process for which his team and aides to Mr. Trump, as well Hillary Clinton's staff members, had been quietly preparing for several months. Mr. Christie, who until Friday served as Mr. Trump's transition chief, signed a memorandum of understanding on Election Day to put the process into motion as soon as the outcome was determined.

But in response to a series of questions about whether the Obama administration had begun to brief Mr. Trump's team, White House officials said late Monday that the president-elect's decision to abruptly replace Mr. Christie on Friday with Mr. Pence had, for the time being, halted the process.

By law, the document must be signed by the chairman of the transition operation or his designee, and neither Mr. Pence nor anyone on his staff has done so.

Among other things, the paperwork serves as a mutual nondisclosure agreement for both sides, ensuring that members of the president-elect's team do not divulge information about the inner workings of the government that they learn during the transition period, and that the president's aides do not reveal anything they may discover about the incoming administration's plans.

Brandi Hoffine, a White House spokeswoman, said Mr. Obama's team was working with Mr. Pence to sign the document, a standard agreement whose wording is largely governed by statute. "We look forward to completing that work so that we can provide the necessary access to personnel and resources to get the president-elect's team up to speed and deliver on President Obama's directive for a smooth transition," Ms. Hoffine said.

The turmoil at the highest levels of his staff upended months of planning and preparation for a process that many describe as drinking from a fire hose even in the most orderly of circumstances — a period of about 70 days between the election and the inauguration on Jan. 20. During that time, the president-elect must assemble a team to take the reins of the vast federal bureaucracy and recruit, vet and hire 4,000 political appointees to help him run it.

Teams throughout the federal government and at the White House that have prepared briefing materials and status reports for the incoming president's team are on standby, waiting to begin passing the information to their counterparts on Mr. Trump's staff.

[11B4V]

Cluster Fuck

[Eddie Teach]

I'm not sure there's even a million votes still out, let alone a million surplus for Hillary.

[jimmy olsen]

I'm not sure there's even a million votes still out, let alone a million surplus for Hillary.

Millions of votes remain uncounted.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-voter-turnout-wasnt-way-down-from-2012/