Probably the worst thing about the Trump/Pence ticket right now is that they’ve gotten off to such a mistrustful start. For Trump, I think he feels like people in the Pence camp starting leaking that he was the pick before he’d made the final decision, and then he wound up feeling boxed in and looking for a way out. For Pence’s folks, it’s the fact that people in the Trump camp (or at least people highly trusted by the Trump camp) are making it crystal clear that they aren’t all that enthusiastic about Pence and won’t have his back.
When Dan Senor tweeted that it was disorienting to have a conversation with Pence about how unacceptable Trump was as a candidate only to see him accept a position on a ticket with Trump, that only added to the level of basic mistrust.
It's disorienting to have had commiserated w/someone re: Trump – about how he was unacceptable, & then to see that someone become Trump's VP
— Dan Senor (@dansenor) July 15, 2016
These guys have to work together on the stump for the next four months, and they don’t look like a good team so far.
Ant body notice the song playing when Pence comes on stage
You can’t always get what you want
Speakin’ o’ which: if you’ve never heard this Tig Notaro bit from This American Life (only 3.5 min. long, use slider, starts at 46:45–not off-topic; you’ll see!), you owe it to yourself. You’ll thank me.
breakfast in the middle of Trump’s rambling, self-absorbed “introduction” speech putatively “about” Pence.
So many lies (from both of them).
I’m sure Trump’s fans ate it all up uncritically.
It was good, though, that the segment ended with an interview with an Indy Star reporter who pointed out that, e.g., Pence inherited that $2 billion surplus that Trump tried to falsely credit him for from his predecessor, Mitch Daniels.
Ah, facts. Stubborn things!
Won’t make the slightest difference to Trumpers, of course. If they could be reached with Reality, they wouldn’t support Trump in the first place! (Well, any non-racist, non-fascists wouldn’t, anyway.)
QOTD:
That’s almost as weird a journey as Hillary Clinton’s from “Goldwater Girl” to Democratic Party nominee.
ALERT! ALERT! This is where various commenters are supposed to jump in and declare that Hillary Clinton is still a Goldwater Girl, or perhaps a Rockefeller Republican. The fact that those happen to be mutually exclusive categories should not be an impediment. I mean, she’s both a neo-liberal and a neo-conservative, accord to what I read here.
What war over the last fifty years has she opposed? What US-backed coup over the last fifty years has she opposed?
Thank you.
theory as to how/why “neo-liberal” and “neo-conservative” are mutually exclusive categories.
Cuz, ya know, I think I have a reasonably well-informed understanding of what those two terms actually mean, and it’s nowhere near self-evident to me that they’re inherently mutually exclusive.
So it doesn’t seem at all unreasonable to me to posit that so-and-so is both. (Note: this is NOT an opinion re: whether such a claim wrt Hillary, specifically, is reasonable. That’s a separate topic I’m not choosing to address here)
What -do- both terms mean?
To me, the most salient point is that neoconservatism operates primarily in the international relations/foreign policy sphere, while neoliberalism operates primarily in the international trade/economics sphere. Which is why it’s not self-evident to me that they’re necessarily mutually exclusive.
Wikipedia:
I see her as more an LBJ Demican-Republicrat, counting equally the mostly liberal DP positions (except on domestic security matters) adjusted leftward for the times, and the hawkish, reckless, stubbornly stupid FP mindset of the kind that gives this country a black eye in the rest of the world.
Not so much comparable on character qualities though, as she’s sober, not inclined to cheat on her spouse, not nearly the crook that Johnson was, and far more honest as a pol compared to the Riverboat Gambler.
(ducking and covering …)
I think that pols back in LBJ’s times had to grift harder than the system in place today.
And you were more likely to be prosecuted back then, so thus were more criminal.
Dunno about that — seems to me the anti-corruption laws in place and enforced were far fewer back then. Definitely the mass media oversight of the shenanigans and blatant bribery going on in the backrooms of Congress in the mid-century period was virtually non-existent.
Forgot to mention on character this one similarity: trustworthiness. Though Hillary isn’t quite in Lyndon’s Credibility Gap league quite yet.
Nope — LBJ was a New Dealer. She may have been for his Vietnam War before she was against it or perhaps she and LBJ tuned against it at about the same time, but since then has either not objected or actively supported US foreign military adventures. Democrats and Republicans that turned against the Vietnam War for the right (educated and/or well-thought) reasons haven’t since repeated that grave error.
From urban dictionary, a definition of trumpence:
Seems fitting enough.
Mary Poppins]
Feed the cons
Trumpence a job
Trumpence
Trumpence
Trumpence a job
Feed the cons
the wingnuts all cry
Trumpence
Trumpence
Trumpence a job
yer yer rert tweet:
Billmon response:
Who will win the speech critics and viewer ratings numbers, Chelsea or Ivanka? Are the bookies taking bets on this?
Related (sort of) hypothetical question or puzzler:
Would Micheal R Stiles (had he chosen to further his career in elective office) have thought that he had a chance to become HRC’s VP nominee? Who is Stiles? 2015 Phillies Promote Michael Stiles To Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer.
Like Chris Christie, Stiles was a US Attorney. The US Attorney that indicted Edward Mezvinsky Unlike Christie, he didn’t build a political career for himself based on a high-profile indictment. Christie’s big case US Attorney was indicting and convicting Charles Kushner. After his conviction, Kushner turned over the reins of his real estate operation to his son, Jared, and who previously owned, and still owns, The New York Observer.
Did Christie never consider that having thrown Trump’s son-in-law’s father in the pokey would interfere with his chances to be Trump’s VP? That’s some chutzpah!
Trump’s son-in-law, and heavily involved in the family-run campaign?
speaking of bad optics
whose idea was that? both Bill and Chelsea speaking?
Lucky the Rodham bros aren’t on the bill. No way would Bill be denied his rightful, prime time, center stage slot. wrt Chelsea, the three of them view themselves as “The American Family” and have come to expect the public to gush over them.
I find this convention lineup amateurish – together with RidgeCook’s link about the emails suggests some of what the campaign is doing is revenge for 2008. but I hope they put Chelsea’s husband on stage, how’s that for optics?
He’ll be carrying the grand-babies for HillFans to gush over as they take a break from remarking on how beautiful, poised, and articulate his wife is. And the Trumpsters will be doing the same over Ivanka and her little ones. Although it does appear that Kushner didn’t need his FIL to open any doors to further his business interests.
is it some kind of revenge for 2008?
i wonder who’s speaking who we should be aware of.
at previous conventions, people not yet nationally known have made major speeches that turned them into rising stars. I’m thinking of Obama in ’04 and IIRC Bill Clinton in ’88.
any rising stars this time? Chelsea? yep, what Billmon said.
Reading a Democratic Blogger these days is like reading ZeroHedge for financial advice.
To those unfamiliar, ZeroHedge is disaster porn for those interested in economics. It has predicted the upcoming collapse of the stock market for 9 years (The S&P recently made a new all-time high).
Similarly, people like Booman pretty much write the same variant of the Trump’s campaign fucked up everything they do is stupid story.
And yet by my guess they are down by 4. The
So despite all of this stupid shit Trump has done – the best the Democratic Candidate can do is about what Obama did.
What does that tell you?
it’s too close, and not a given that HRC will win. suppose, for example, another shoe drops re: emails, i.e. if they were hacked. although Trump will be terrible for the USA, HRC looks to be more destabilizing internationally, and Trump has the appearance of being more pragmatic, hence preferable.
Trump seems like an unsteady, easily distracted, wayward and rambling fool to me. Couldn’t even put on a good show for his VP “pick.” The guy bad mouths a judge overseeing a case he is involved in to the press. These are things pragmatists don’t typically do, right? There’s so much positive projection onto Trump right now, even on the Left, I can’t imagine what people are going to think if he slips into the White House and they see their dream turn into a nightmare.
No kidding.
This is absurd. Trump’s signature policy proposal is to start a trade war with one of our largest trading partners to force them to build a wall for us along our long border. His other policy proposals include:
This list is by no means comprehensive. I don’t like HRC’s foreign policy instincts myself, but you have to be willfully ignorant or high to make a statement suggesting that HRC is likely to be more destabilizing, internationally or domestically, than Donald Trump.
what ppl observe about Trump in that regard is his emphasis on deal-making; whether or not it would play out that way, of course, we don’t know. HRC’s FP is ideological and what she says is in line with what we’ve seen from her previously. Trump is erratic, in fact I’d say it’s an error to even use the phrase “foreign policy” for his ramblings. but, OTOH, he poses as a pragmatist and that’s what other countries are looking at. They also point out that we’ve elected buffoons before, in fact the USA usually elects buffoons.
What? Don’t get it at all. He’s not just erratic, but offensive in his speech and politics to a large number of people. He’s only pragmatic in the sense that he’s indecisive, noncommittal, and frankly uninterested in anything that doesn’t involve himself, his businesses, or his racial predispositions. You are giving him way too much credit, as too many on the Left seem to want to do (he’s against trade deals–yay!).
Now, as an authoritarian narcissist, he could win. There’s enough chaos in the world that his racial appeals could work. But he ain’t no pragmatist.
well that’s it; as a business man he’s pragmatic – out for himself, of course, but pragmatic. that’s what I’m talking about. he is committed to nothing except what benefits himself, in a pragmatic way, not a, say ideological fascistic way (as, for example, Hitler or the like).
So, basically Donald Trump made money in business (after being born with a golden comb shoved up his posterior) so he’s automatically “pragmatic”? Welcome to the Cult of the Businessman.
The Koch brothers are a LOT more pragmatic than Donald Trump, and they’re a twofer – no need to go outside the family to find a VP. Too bad they didn’t run.
guys, guys, your inability to understand what I’m writing is symptomatic of why fladem uses “neon alert” language, for example, in recent post. I started out explaining what non-usaians think about HRC and Trump in terms of potential FP moves. you are trying to tell me that I’m wrong about what people told me they think? that’s their perceptions, their opinions. the fact that you’re getting upset with me instead of paying attention to some reality out there that I am reporting is pure instance of why HRC is not running more ahead of buffoon Trump (Koch bros should run? what does that have to do with what I’m writing?) take a closer read at what I’m saying. I’m with fladem, neon alert [also replying to centerfield]
I have no idea why you want to evade the very well known facts here. Trump’s entire business career and public brand are built on dominance. Pragmatism implies that he’s willing to accept deals where both parties win. That’s not his history; he rips people off and when he does so particularly egregiously they try to enforce the law in civil or criminal court, at which point Trump buries them with bankruptcies and other offensive legal and public relations maneuvers.
Trump’s biography is that of a person elevated to arrogant power at birth, a person who is about as far from a pragmatist as can be imagined, despite his occasional, paper-thin rhetorical claims.
btw, I am not willfully ignorant – no need to insult me, I’m sure i know a lot more about this than you do
I don’t claim to know anything special, or that I’m a political scientist, or that I’m deep political operative with decades of experience in electoral politics. I’m nobody. All I know is what Trump has publicly said he wants to do on multiple occasions, and I take him at his word that he would at least attempt to accomplish at least some of these things. Just attempting any one of those things I listed would would be horrifically internationally “destabilizing”.
I’m not trying to insult anyone, but your statement willfully discounts everything Trump has said he’s going to do if he becomes President, and I can’t let that slide. If you want to say he tries to pose as a pragmatist, then I can grant you that Trump calls himself a pragmatist “deal-maker”, regardless of the actual deals he has made or would make. If you want to say that HRC’s foreign policy will be unacceptably destabilizing, I respect that opinion; I’m no fan of HRC’s foreign policy instincts. But buying that Trump would be less destabilizing than HRC for even a nanosecond is being willfully delusional.
I just don’t understand people who listen to Trump and assume that he doesn’t mean all of the horrible things he says.
well, what I meant to say, but evidently was unclear, is that Trump may be much worse domestically, for the USA – and I certainly think he would be – but from the outside HRC appears to be worse for the international situation as she has clearly stated her animosity to Iran, Russia and also see her previous involvement in Libya and statements re: Syria. as I said before, I take most of Trump’s “foreign policy” related statements to be off the cuff ramblings. do you really think, if he were elected, he wouldn’t be stopped before nuclear bombing Iran? and the fence? ok he wants a fence; I consider that as likely as abolishing Obamacare except insofaras they’re already building a fence – it’s panels you can walk around. but, if Trump wins, rest assured the rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, the middle class will continue to lose and racial tensions will be inflame further, infrastructure will decay further etc etc. but because Trump sells himself as a dealmaker, internationally he may be more willing to deal, hence less destabilizing than HRC, who has a track record of belligerence towards Iran et al.
Everything you say could be true about HRC (as I’ve said, her FP instincts worry me quite a bit), and the fact is that the odds still overwhelmingly support the idea that Trump would be much, much worse internationally. I think that when one starts discounting what people say they want to do, multiple times, in public, they’re making a huge mistake. You could just as easily say that HRC doesn’t mean what she says about Iran or Syria or Russia etc. and that she has to be more bellicose to protect her right flank, especially since she’s a woman. This would be wrong too.
Having an erratic President who’s priorities are at completely odds with others in the administration is destabilizing on its own. And having a President who is always, always lying and can’t be trusted to honor existing agreements would be pretty destabilizing as well.
If Donald Trump becomes President, the United States of America will absolutely torture and murder the families of suspected enemies, particularly in the Middle East. 100% certainty.
You’re also putting an awful lot of faith in the people in the government who are basically much closer to HRC’s thinking preventing Trump from implementing his vision. This both overestimates their power against the priorities of the political appointees of a crazy President and places faith in pretty much the exact place that you are so skeptical of. The unfortunate truth is that HRC isn’t a radical in foreign policy circles; the petition of the people in the State Department trying to get the US to send troops into Syria demonstrates this. Trump will appoint people who agree with his vision and work to implement it. They will be at least somewhat successful, with disastrous consequences.
Also, this idea of “deal-making” fixing every problem with Trump is fantasy. We have no evidence that the deals he makes are actually any good since he often walks away from them. What gives you confidence that Trump would make good deals? I’ve seen nothing, absolutely nothing, to make me even wonder on that score. We do have ample evidence that he’s an ignorant con-man. How do you think his neocon appointees (and they will be neocons because that’s almost all that’s left in the Republican Party and Trump doesn’t care enough to look around for anything else) will affect US foreign policy?
The potential damage, internationally, of a Trump Administration is limited only by the imagination. The best you can say is that “it might not be a complete and total disaster.” But all evidence to date is that it would be.
trying to estimate on the basis of track record and feasibility. If HRC says, she wants more support for a faction of the Syrian rebels, that aligns with what she’s advocated previously, plus it’s feasible. Trump saying we’ll ban all Muslims from entering the USA – that will inflame intolerance but it’s not feasible; also, does not impact trouble spots outside the usa. ppl outside the USA compare the two and conclude HRC more likely to cause international problems, Trump – maybe a mess at home but doesn’t look like he’ll exacerbate the conflict in Syria, for example. that’s what I’m trying to explain.
Well, this:
“Trump saying we’ll ban all Muslims from entering the USA – that will inflame intolerance but it’s not feasible; also, does not impact trouble spots outside the usa.”
It sure would be valuable if you were to think this through and defend this claim. We’ve seen that inflaming intolerance in the Middle East is enormously destabilizing, particularly in trouble spots outside our Nation.
wildly off, too.
I’m a HRC critic when it comes to foreign policy. I will say that if you are satisfied with Obama’s foreign policy then HRC is the closest to continuity on that front.
Trump is a wild card and can’t be trusted. For any sane thing he’s said there’s something he’s said that is utterly insane. He’s not stable. What scares me is the burn it all down folks who are intrigued by him winning. Some of them comment here.
Sorry, hard for me to imagine how you arrived at that conclusion.
Explicate, please, if so motivated.
her statements vs. Iran; taking sides in Syria;statements vs Russia come to mind, all counter to what Obama has accomplished so far and appears to have on his todo list to accomplish before next Jan
considering all that to be accurately attributed to Clinton, negative, and destabilizing, the “more” in “more destabilizing” seems a clear comparison to Trump.
Given that, I still find your statement unconvincing (to put it mildly). In saying that, I am trying to imagine how each candidate’s statements are probably perceived by foreign leaders and even populaces (those perceptions being, to my thinking, an important element of whether or to what degree their statements/proposals are “destabilizing”).
The only way I can even conceive of Trump’s positions being less destabilizing would be under an assumption that they are so ludicrous they’re just not taken seriously by anyone who matters to “destabilization”; but I see no reason to think that. (Terrorists seem to be demonstrating lately that there’s no such person who DOESN’T matter anyway.)
yes, I understand. it was kind of an eye-opener to me when I started hearing observations along the lines of my comments today from non – USAians since I tend to think of HRC as a serious candidate and Trump as a buffoon.
A rather extreme declaration of IOKIYAR:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/17/politics/donald-trump-iraq-war-vote-mike-pence-hillary-clinton/
Trump on Pence’s Iraq war vote: ‘I don’t care’
By Jeremy Diamond, CNN
Updated 8:10 PM ET, Sun July 17, 2016
“…He’s entitled to make a mistake every once in a while,” Trump said of Pence, who was a congressman from Indiana at the time.
“But she’s not?” CBS interviewer Lesley Stahl pressed.
“No. She’s not,” Trump replied.
Still, Trump insisted that Pence voted to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq because he, like others, were “misled.”
The presumptive Republican nominee also continued to insist in the interview that he “was against the war in Iraq from the beginning,” despite evidence to the contrary.
Trump has continued to claim on the campaign trail that he was opposed to the Iraq War before the U.S. launched its invasion — and the “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday once again raised the specter of that contradiction.
But Trump signaled his support for the war a month before both Clinton and Pence voted to authorize it, in an interview on Howard Stern’s radio program.
And in the early months of the war, when it appeared to most to be a military success, Trump agreed with that analysis.
“It looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint,” Trump said in a March 2003 interview.
It wasn’t until later that year that Trump began expressing his opposition to the war.
re:
Were they credible? (Ancillary questions: Who were they? Of what bloc/faction were they representative? What was the source of the info? Is it credible? Etc.)
You can “hear” virtually any “observation” you want, about anything, if you choose (or even just stumble into) the right places to go listening.
very well informed thoughtful and concerned people, actually, that’s why I paid attention to their observations.
related to earlier topic): just heard Daines is skipping convention to go flyfishing here in MT.
I basically never agree with Daines about anything. Until this now.
very funny!! flyfishing is good!
funny meme, in fact: GOP excuses for skipping convention (see slideshow below linked Dionne column). Flake even managed to top Daines — has to mow his lawn!
I also heard within the last day or so someone using “I have to wash my hair” as an excuse for missing something. Coulda been the convention! I don’t remember, so I can’t swear that it wasn’t!
love it!! mow lawn! wash hair!
maybe I’m unclear what I mean by destabilizing – what I mean is HRC is more likely to engage in hostilities abroad and is perceived that way; Trump, despite his bluster, may restrict his damage mostly to making trouble for us at home.
Trump would commit genocide and in the Middle East and torture Arabs and Persians. He has made that absurdly clear, despite his “the Iraq War was a disaster” dodge. The President has enormous, unaccountable power to conduct hostile, immoral foreign and military policies. Congress could not be counted on to stop a President Trump, certainly not preemptively.
Anyone who would dislike Clinton’s foreign and military policies would dislike Trump’s FP and MP much, much, much, much, much more.
There it is, that’s the crux: the assumption Trump “may” not be as awful as he has forthrightly and repeatedly stated he fully intends to be.
Thought experiment:
Trump is elected and is successful at implementing everything he has declared he will do (na ga ha pen, I know, but it’s a thought experiment!).
Alternatively, Clinton is elected and is successful at implementing everything she has declared she will attempt (right, na ga ha pen either).
Which is the worse outcome? (Yes, clearly, this is a “lesser-of-evils” argument. That’s the alternative before us, for fuck’s sake! Have you ever had the option of voting for your ideal candidate? Me, neither!)
well I voted for Obama, I guess that’s enough for one lifetime.
Of course I’ll vote for Clinton, I brought this topic up because it’s not at all clear how even the campaign is going to play out. I know nothing about polling to speak of, except reading the results and discussions of it, but sort of wondering if the trajectory of this election will be a little different.
If that’s the way it actually turns out, it tells me that the number of Republicans/Republican-leaning independents with any threshold at all for not supporting the Republican nominee is vanishingly small. That’s certainly the case in Kansas. I’m hoping that come November we’ll find that the rest of the country is not anywhere near as as nihilist as the Sunflower State.
Trump is a level of transparent awfulness that makes the Democratic nominee almost irrelevant. If someone tries to say that they support Donald Trump “reluctantly” because “Hillary’s worse”, that’s simply an excuse to allow that person to do what they wanted to do anyway. No one should be fooled by that and think that with some magic unicorn candidate, the Democrats would be 30 points ahead. Support for Trump is an excellent litmus test of who a person actually is, and when a person tells you who they are, believe them.
An parallel aspect of sdhays’ point here is that anyone who truly shares the values of the Democratic Party platform which will be finalized at the Convention would never think of voting for Trump.
If a Democrat is thinking about voting for Trump, they’re a Democrat who does not support taking the Party where just about every single person on this blog wants it to go.
Op-Ed The Democrats’ demographic firewall is under attack
to conclude that all these so-called “voter ID” requirements are, quite transparently, actually anti-(small d)emocratic vote suppression measures:
The implied assumption that people attending college or living in public housing are more likely to be doing so under false, fraudulent identities than those applying for concealed-carry permits is obviously baseless, arguably patently absurd.
Leaving the conclusion from your linked piece utterly bulletproof (within the Reality-Based Community, that is, which I sadly suppose is a necessary caveat):
“These guys have to work together on the stump for the next four months…”
Actually they don’t. They could address disjoint audiences, even with disjoint (though probably not flatly contradictory) messages. Pence will be broadly in charge of keeping the Xtians onside. He seems to be a very poor improviser, but he will probably not need to improvise much.
There was only one potentially really dangerous scenario with Trump’s VP pick and that would have been if it was a Deep State minder, like Cheney was for Bush 43. (Mrs. Clinton doesn’t need a minder. Take that any way you wish. I take it rather as I take the existence of things like mosquitos, beets, and the polar vortex: purely unpleasant, yet totally intractable.)
I’ll take your share of the beets if you’ll take my share of mosquitoes and Hillary Clinton. Thanks.