2016 elections - because it's never too early

[garbon]

Hopefully the Hill's headline is more than just optimism.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/296470-trump-stumbles-after-surge-in-polls

Trump stumbles after surge in polls

After several weeks of positive news cycles and polling gains brought about by a more disciplined campaign, Donald Trump has committed a series of stumbles in recent days that experts see as a return to "bad Trump."

GOP strategists are urging Trump to get back on track before the first presidential debate in nine days, while Democrats are exhaling after a week of panic brought on by Hillary Clinton's own setbacks.

[CountDeMoney]

Lying is one thing, but I really wish he would stop trying to suggest that she should get murdered.

[alfred russel]

Seeing lots of Hillary ads today, none for Trump.

The Hillary ads are all negative: using words of trump and other republicans against him. Last year I would have thought they would be devastating, but now Im not sure. Everyone knows about all these negatives for Trump--that is what the news shows us every night. People don't seem to care. I think I'd feel better if she went positive: show people a version of Hillary that isn't the negative one that most people have. Working for universal health care, working to bring peace in the former yugoslavia, working to support democracy around the world.

[Eddie Teach]

All the years she's fought, and all she's done (good and bad) All Hilary is going to be remembered for is that she lost to trump. That's has to eat her up inside.

That's nothing compared to the President, when he has to hand the keys over to the man whose entire political career was propelled around the lie that he never belonged there in the first place.

That's the thing about America: if a negro doesn't know his place, it'll make sure he eventually gets there one way or another.

He has the Affordable Care Act and Osama, all she has is Benghazi and emails.

[Admiral Yi]

Seeing lots of Hillary ads today, none for Trump.

The Hillary ads are all negative: using words of trump and other republicans against him. Last year I would have thought they would be devastating, but now Im not sure. Everyone knows about all these negatives for Trump--that is what the news shows us every night. People don't seem to care. I think I'd feel better if she went positive: show people a version of Hillary that isn't the negative one that most people have. Working for universal health care, working to bring peace in the former yugoslavia, working to support democracy around the world.

Disagree.  I think Hillary should stay relentlessly negative.  Most of Donald's poll dips have been the result of something dumbassed he said, like he has sacrificed more than Muslim parents of a dead GI.

Plus I don't see what in her Senate or SecState tenures could be spun as all that positive.  Maybe going on record about Barry's Syrian opposition plan sucking.

[derspiess]

Hopefully the Hill's headline is more than just optimism.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/296470-trump-stumbles-after-surge-in-polls

Trump stumbles after surge in polls

After several weeks of positive news cycles and polling gains brought about by a more disciplined campaign, Donald Trump has committed a series of stumbles in recent days that experts see as a return to "bad Trump."

GOP strategists are urging Trump to get back on track before the first presidential debate in nine days, while Democrats are exhaling after a week of panic brought on by Hillary Clinton's own setbacks.

Trump is done.  His campaign will implode any day now.

[Eddie Teach]

His campaign has imploded several times already, doesn't stop him.

[frunk]

His campaign has to implode regularly, it's how it keeps moving.

[Martinus]

Is Observer a partisan website or one of more objective ones, like Politico? Because this looks bad:

http://observer.com/2016/09/exclusive-hillary-clinton-campaign-systematically-overcharging-poorest-donors/

[Admiral Yi]

Is Observer a partisan website or one of more objective ones, like Politico? Because this looks bad:

http://observer.com/2016/09/exclusive-hillary-clinton-campaign-systematically-overcharging-poorest-donors/

Never heard of it, but just take a look at the other stories on the page.

[Eddie Teach]

Apparently the publisher is Trump son-in-law

[CountDeMoney]

Politics |News Analysis
Donald Trump's Anything-Goes Campaign Sets an Alarming Political Precedent

By JONATHAN MARTIN
SEPT. 17, 2016
New York Times

WASHINGTON — When Donald J. Trump descended on the capital Friday, he was expected to finally concede that the racially tinged falsehood he had gleefully propagated, that President Obama was born outside of the United States, had in fact been a lie.

But before Mr. Trump got around to what was a grudging and terse admission, which itself included a falsehood about the provenance of so-called birtherism, he had some business to tend to.

"Nice hotel," said Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, delighting in his newest property and the opportunity to plug it free on live television. He was holding his news conference at his new hotel in the Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue, which, he promised, is "going to be something very special."

He seemed untroubled in using an ostensible campaign event just a few blocks from the White House to openly promote his personal commercial interests 52 days before the election.

In fact, this past week offered a vivid illustration of how little regard Mr. Trump has for the long-held expectations of America's leaders. He is not only breaking the country's political norms, he and his campaign aides are now all but mocking them.

Besides using his campaign as a platform to make money on a new hotel, Mr. Trump leveled an untrue assertion that Hillary Clinton had been the first to claim Mr. Obama was born abroad. He also boasted about his health on the show of a daytime television celebrity while releasing just his testosterone levels and a few other details about his well-being.

Mr. Trump also continued to flout 40 years of tradition by refusing to release his tax returns, a decision that his eldest son admitted this week was not based on an audit, as Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed, but on a desire not to "distract" from the campaign's "main message."

Beyond his handling of personal information, he also casually accused the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve of corruption, claimed that the bipartisan national debate commission was rigged against him, and stated that Mrs. Clinton had not proposed a child care plan. (She has, and did so a year before he did.)

He also mocked an African-American pastor who had just welcomed him to her church, and again referred to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who once said she had Native American roots, as "Pocahontas."

And that was all before Friday night, when Mr. Trump hinted at violence against Mrs. Clinton by inviting her Secret Service detail to disarm "and see what happens to her."

Routine falsehoods, unfounded claims and inflammatory language have long been staples of Mr. Trump's anything-goes campaign. But as the polls tighten and November nears, his behavior, and the implications for the country should he become president, are alarming veteran political observers — and leaving them deeply worried about the precedent being set, regardless of who wins the White House.

"It's frightening," said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota. "Our politics, because of him, is descending to the level of a third-world country. There's just nothing beneath him. And I don't know why we would think he would change if he became president. That's what's really scary."

Stephen Hess, who served in the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations, could not even contemplate the prospect of Mr. Trump as commander in chief.

"It's incredibly depressing," Mr. Hess said of Mr. Trump. "He's the most profoundly ignorant man I've ever seen at this level in terms of understanding the American presidency, and, even more troubling, he makes no effort to learn anything."

Mr. Trump's advocates insist that the critics are missing the larger impact of his candidacy, and how his campaign and presidency could be a force for good. As a New York Times-CBS poll released last week indicated, voters see him as more likely to aggressively confront what they see as a rotten political system, even if they recognize Mr. Trump as a risky choice.

"On the things that are really big, he will in some clumsy way force real change," said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, who is an adviser to Mr. Trump. "Washington won't be the same when he's done."

But that is what is so worrisome to many observers of Mr. Trump's rise. His critics fear that his norm-breaking campaign portends a political future in which candidates pay no penalty for unabashedly telling untruths, disregarding the public's right to know, and lobbing racially charged accusations.

"I worry that if those of us in politics and the media don't do a lot of soul-searching after this election, a slightly smarter Trump will succeed in the future," said Jon Favreau, Mr. Obama's former chief speechwriter. "For some politicians and consultants, the takeaway from this election will be that they can get away with almost anything."

As Martin Nolan, a former editor and reporter at The Boston Globe who has chronicled politics for over 50 years, put it: "Truth has a low priority in the misnomer known as reality TV."

"Rules," Mr. Nolan added, "are for losers."

The only salvation this year, argue Mr. Trump's detractors, is that he is a singular figure in American life, and his would-be successors will not be able to skirt accountability in the fashion of the celebrity provocateur.

"He has inflicted Stockholm syndrome on America," said Stacey Abrams, a Democrat and the minority leader of the Georgia House. "It's not even that we're numb to it, it's just that we've always enjoyed the show. It's entertaining to hate him, to like him and to imagine being him."

But while there may not be another Mr. Trump, he does seem to have thrust the country into a new era. With American culture increasingly coarse and ever more obsessed with celebrity, the country's politics were bound to eventually catch up.

Less than 25 years after Bill Clinton shocked some by unabashedly answering a question about his underwear preference on television, Mr. Trump purposefully brought up the size of his penis at a televised debate.

It is not difficult to find Republicans who recoil at how their own nominee has, to borrow the phrase made famous by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the former New York senator and sociologist, defined deviancy down.

"Trump is reflecting a culture that is more crass, more accepting of vulgarity and more attuned to pop culture," said Matt Lewis, a conservative writer. "The bar has been lowered where going on Dr. Oz is perfectly acceptable and maybe even cutting edge."

Where Republicans differ is over whether the acceptance of Mrs. Clinton's transgressions is just as ominous for the country.

"You can't have a republic without virtue and I don't think there's great virtue in either of them," said Tom Coburn, the former Oklahoma senator, of Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton.

Still, Mr. Weber, who arrived in Washington as a congressional staff member shortly after the post-Watergate election of 1974, said Mr. Trump's approach would inflict the most damage on his own party.

"You don't want to say this is the equivalent of Watergate," Mr. Weber said. "But at least that was a discrete crime. In a way, Trump is harder to deal with. And Republicans didn't feel compelled to defend Watergate: they drove Richard Nixon out of office."

[Phillip V]

Average of polls now has Clinton lead below 1%

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html

[LaCroix]

those polls aren't a great reflection of the voting demographic because they're heavily skewed toward republican voters. nate silver's percentages are the real gauge, and according to him there's a 10% chance texas goes to hillary.

[CountDeMoney]

You simply can't keep up with it all.

Post Politics
Washington Post
Trump goes hard after Robert Gates, saying he likely has undisclosed 'problem'
By Sean Sullivan
September 17 at 10:22 PM

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Donald Trump launched a series of fierce attacks against former Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Saturday.

"He's a nasty guy. Probably has a problem that we don't know about," Trump said at a rally in an airplane hangar here. Trump attacked Gates on Twitter earlier in the day, calling him "dopey."

    Never met but never liked dopey Robert Gates. Look at the mess the U.S. is in. Always speaks badly of his many bosses, including Obama.

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2016

Trump told his supporters he has never met Gates but has concluded that, "he's a mess."

Gates expressed worries about the preparedness of both Trump and Hillary Clinton to be commander-in-chief in a Friday Wall Street Journal op-ed. He wrote that on national security, "I believe Mr. Trump is beyond repair."

Gates added: "He is stubbornly uninformed about the world and how to lead our country and government, and temperamentally unsuited to lead our men and women in uniform. He is unqualified and unfit to be commander-in-chief."

The former Defense secretary under George W. Bush and Barack Obama wrote that Clinton "has time before the election to address forthrightly her trustworthiness" and "to reassure people about her judgment." But he said he does not know whether she will.

"I am so much better at what he's doing than he is," Trump said of Gates.