rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

New Montana poll from @montanastate:

President
Trump - 45% (+5)
Biden - 40%

Senate
Bullock (D) - 46% (+7)
Daines (R-inc.) - 39%https://t.co/Fum3RAOJcl

— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) May 5, 2020

nice!

for anyone else who reflexively checks 538's pollster ratings, here's what they look like for Montana State University:

https://i.imgur.com/Yu0eugO.png

4th poll in a row with Cunningham having a lead in #NCSEN, 2nd in a row that has him up 9 points. North Carolina's polling is pretty blue right now: #NCGOV just got moved to Likely D in our ratings last week. https://t.co/uJh0vK1Acs pic.twitter.com/vnA28xwWBt

— Chaz Nuttycombe (@ChazNuttycombe) May 5, 2020

the coronavirus holding pattern is pretty bad for most parts of life, but i would like to freeze the current condition of the polls in the senate swing states

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/17/politics/state-polls-2020-analysis/index.html

I suspect the betting markets still favor Trump due to how far we are from the election and the sheer advantage of incumbency

https://www.kciiradio.com/2016/08/13/trump-leads-in-iowa-clinton-leads-national-polls/

I'm Pollyanish enough to make the same mistake twice--I don't think Trump will win--but this was interesting:

James Woods is that rare thing in Hollywood: A supporter of Donald Trump. And on Sunday, Woods perfectly encapsulated the message that could get Trump reelected.

He tweeted this (in part):

"Donald Trump is a rough individual. He is vain, insensitive and raw. But he loves America more than any President in my lifetime."

Trump retweeted that assessment; "I think that is a great compliment," he wrote. "Thank you James!"

It's, of course, not a great compliment. If someone called you "vain, insensitive and raw," would you be flattered?

But Woods' tweet is 100% right when it comes to how Trump can win again in November.

"Great compliment"!

http://www.cnn.com/2020/05/18/politics/donald-trump-james-woods-2020-reelection/index.html

But Woods' tweet is 100% right when it comes to how Trump can win again in November.

I didn't even have to glance at the byline to know who wrote this drivel.

I'm not sneering at you, clem, just noting that this person is the most credulous of Beltway hacks, and only he could write a sentence this obvious.

Cillizza bugs me sometime on CNN, for sure. But I think his basic point--pretty much the same argument made in Audience of One--about this strange "he's-awful-but-he's-on-our-side" pull that Trump has for some people isn't that far off from something that exists.

a lot of people on the left are trying to talk themselves into Biden the same way really

the way Cilizza treats this administration like a fun reality show full of quirky characters even as the US nears a 100k death toll thanks in no small part to the president's incompetence is absolutely shameful & honestly makes me wonder if Trump was right about the media all along

trump loves america the way a child loves a milkshake
it's likely analogous to how he loves KFC

a lot of people on the left are trying to talk themselves into Biden the same way really

A less toxic version of awful, I think, but good point.

(Please, please, please--I don't want to argue about Joe Biden.)

it's a stupid thing to say and Cilizza should be embarrassed for writing it, if he was capable of shame. Trump does not love America. he whines about it all the time and has a blatant disregard for over half the country. he does not give two shits about the Constitution or the rule of law beyond what immediately benefits him. he still believes that despite being in control of everything there is still a shadow group working behind the scenes to take him out. he has not and will not sacrifice a single thing for the good of this country. fuck Cilizza and fuck James Woods.

Coronavirus has given me a window into Evan McMullin-voting Respectable Republicans (who I grew up with) degenerating into MAGA/Q people in real time.

I’ve got no answers for combating it, aside from outlawing Protestantism.

I don't think Cillizza is in any way saying he agrees with Woods, he's just using him as a example of a mindset that is out there.

he loves america like a man loves fish; he loves to cook & eat it.

mcdonald's will cook it for you

James Woods Mindset

Step one: destroy your serotonin receptors with cocaine
Step two: ????

"There's so much we can do-o-o-o-o...."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay6GjmiJTPM

yes

maybe this is the wrong thread to say this but

i dont think trump is gonna win

we cannot stop you, we can only hope to contain you

guess we need a rolling "trump is not gonna win" containment thread

i really don't know. some days i lean he'll win some days i lean he'll lose.

I'm no longer as despondently convinced he'll win as I was when I started the thread but I still don't think "a lot of people hate Trump" is much of a winner. I guess the covid depression adds a variable.

otoh a lot of people hate Hillary was a winner tho

I'm assuming he'll barely win and will be pleasantly (there's an understatement) surprised if he doesn't

Whether he wins or loses, I think we are in for a really, really rough winter of court cases, whining and MAGA anger.

https://i.imgur.com/5dv0GB8.png

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-older-voters-turning-away-from-trump/

xxp I think a significant part of it is that democrats think a politician needs some general appearance of being liked or loved, that someone looks and acts presidential, whatever the hell that means

other people will complain about their manager but cheer on when management fires slackers, or even when their department gets eliminated because it's an unprofitable part of the company. and seeing government as a major corporation isn't limited to the left or right. so Trump seems unscrupulous, greedy, and conniving but we've decided government is business and we ended up with President Deals

And that, I think, whatever you might think of Cillizza himself, is the point of the piece I linked to. I also think--he wouldn't say so--that it's aimed at the complacency of thinking Trump can't win, that it's meant as a warning against 2016 happening all over again.

Cilizza doesn't offer warnings. That would imply that he is capable of caring about other people. He knows that whatever happens, his job is secure (and extremely remunerative), and that's all he needs to know. US politics is a sport to him; it has no broader significance, certainly no victims he needs to worry his empty little head about.

I say that in part because I fall into that complacency all the time. (Usual disclaimer: Canadian, etc., etc.) A year ago--like 2016 never happened--I suggested to a friend that Trump couldn't win this time. He, meanwhile, had settled into the opposite view, that Trump couldn't lose.

I know everyone here hates CNN. As I've said, I do too sometimes, especially during the pandemic. My issue has always been with the notion that they're not sufficiently anti-Trump. They are--they're as anti-Trump as you can be, to the point of obsession.

That would imply that he is capable of caring about other people.

I guess that's just a fundamental difference in how I see mainstream journalists. I know they can be glib, I know they simplify things, I know a provocative story is worth a thousand times more than calm analysis, etc. But I don't see them as monsters or anything.

certainly no victims he needs to worry his empty little head about

Two of the on-air people Cillizza works with every day contracted COVID; I'm sure he cared about them.

I know people's attention is elsewhere right now but nobody I know seems complacent about the 2020 election

I guess that's just a fundamental difference in how I see mainstream journalists. I know they can be glib, I know they simplify things, I know a provocative story is worth a thousand times more than calm analysis, etc. But I don't see them as monsters or anything.

Cilizza is not a journalist. He is a political "analyst" - an opinion columnist. (I can say that because I am a journalist. I may focus mostly on music, but I have actual skills - research, finding people who know about things, calling them and asking them questions, asking follow-up questions, asking other people for contrasting perspectives, etc. - that Cilizza either does not possess, or does not use to do his job. And I have not always been only a music journalist. I used to edit local newspapers, interviewing sheriffs and mayors and sitting through town council meetings to report on sewer repairs and the installation of stoplights.) No one is quoted in that piece, except James Woods and Donald Trump. It's just dribble, published because his contract requires him to publish something.

I have no strong feelings about *CNN* one way or another, but Cillizza has become a punching bag precisely because he's such an obvious example of vapid politics-as-sport/horse-race journalism.

I think by concentrating on Trump's appeal and analyzing it only in that way, Cilizza isn't criticizing. It's a very surface read of why "Trump is bad" plays without acknowledging the basic underlying premise that people think politics is about a bottom line, twisting the knife, and should be more straightforward with a clear winners/losers dynamic, no matter if the losers are their fellow citizens. CNN does imply that there's something wrong with that world view in their commentary, but they seldom offer any evidence of why it is bad, or what the alternative would look like.

I can only handle so much of that content because while it's more concise than some more bloviating printed publications, it's still a bizarre echo chamber without clear stances.

in short, jaymc otm

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-older-voters-turning-away-from-trump/

― Karl Malone

Even though it assumes a simple-minded ossified politics that drives me to despair, I think that just as much as Trump's bungling coronavirus, the fact that Joe Biden is a very old white man, who is identified with past politics, is a major factor in the defection of older voters from Trump. They can easily imagine him as president, as opposed to 'that woman' or a 'that socialist'; they trust him to think like one of them, not like somebody with all these strange new ideas. iow, all the same reasons why under-30s look at Biden and want to gouge out their own eyes.

I think saying he's bad at his job is one thing and saying he's incapable of caring about other people--saying he's Trump, essentially--are two different things.

This is sort or where I came into ILX 10 years ago (yikes): pushing back against the horror of horse-race politics. I don't see how threads on ILX that consist of people saying Trump-will-win/no-he-won't/Biden's-doomed/Warren-should-drop-out/Warren-should-stay-in/etc. are any different.

I don't think CNN offers an alternative to the idea that social and economic prosperity, let alone political success, are anything other than a zero-sum game where any republican loss is a gain for democrats, and a corresponding balance of the scales in international relations

Starting to think that maybe “lots of people really hate him” will be more of a deciding factor than I did some weeks ago.

OTOH scenes of widespread looting and lawlessness are the ideal Trump free campaign ad.

just deepfake it to look like Trump was all of the looters