Last Call For Voter Suppression, Ohio Style

Republicans will do anything to win in 2016, and in all-important swing state Ohio, that means throwing tens of thousands of black voters off the rolls for the "crime" of not voting since 2008.

As the Nov. 8 elections loom, officials in Ohio have removed tens of thousands of voters from registration lists because they have not cast a ballot since 2008. 

All U.S. states periodically cleanse their voter rolls, but only a handful remove voters simply because they don’t vote on a regular basis. And nowhere could the practice have a greater potential impact in the state-by-state battle for the White House than Ohio, a swing state that has backed the winner in every presidential election since 1960.

Voters of all stripes in Ohio are affected, but the policy appears to be helping Republicans in the state's largest metropolitan areas, according to a Reuters survey of voter lists. In the state’s three largest counties that include Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus, voters have been struck from the rolls in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods at roughly twice the rate as in Republican neighborhoods.

If Ohio is a swing state, then the state pivots on Cincinnati and Hamilton County, and taking a closer look at who Ohio GOP Secretary of State Jon Husted has thrown off the voter rolls makes this entire move much more heinous:

 

In other words, anyone who last voted in 2008 (like, say, tens of thousands of newly registered black voters) and who didn't vote in 2012, now cannot vote in 2016.

If you wonder how Trump is going to keep Ohio close?  You just found it.

I'm hoping Ohio Democrats are moving to get folks registered to vote again, because a whole lot of people lost their right to vote thanks to Ohio Republicans.

Trump Cards, Con't

At this point even William Saletan over at Slate has figured out that Donald Trump is a racist slimeball.

Since announcing his candidacy, Trump has tested our tolerance. He has insinuated that Cuban Americans, Mexican Americans, and Seventh-day Adventists can’t be trusted. He has proposed a ban on Muslims. These statements have thrilled his crowds, and they haven’t cost him the support of Republican leaders. In general election polls, he has pulled even with Hillary Clinton.

So the assault continues. On Friday, at a rally in San Diego, Trump claimed that the federal judge who is hearing the fraud case against Trump’s real-estate “university” isbiased and corrupt—in part, apparently, because the judge is “Mexican.”

Trump has previously portrayed people as biased or untrustworthy, based purely on Latino ancestry, on at least four occasions. Last summer, after retweeting an allegation that Jeb Bush “has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife,” Trump defended this claim on the grounds that Bush’s wife—who had been an American citizen for more than 35 years—was “from Mexico.” On Dec. 12 and Dec. 29, Trump suggested to Republican audiences in Iowa that they shouldn’t vote for Sen. Ted Cruz because “not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba.” In February, Trump accused Gonzalo Curiel, the judge in the Trump University case, of conspiring against him, calling Curiel “Spanish” and “Hispanic.” When Trump was asked to explain the connection between the judge’s alleged bias and his ethnicity, Trump said: “I think it has to do with perhaps the fact that I’m very, very strong on the border.”

Trump’s attack on Friday continued in this vein. “I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump,” he told a crowd in San Diego. “His name is”— at this point, Trump, having raised his voice like a drum roll, held up a piece of paper and pronounced the name carefully, gesturing for effect—“Gonzalo Curiel.” The audience booed, and Trump let the moment soak in, shaking his head in solidarity. Trump told the audience two things about Curiel: that he “was appointed by Barack Obama” and that he “happens to be, we believe, Mexican.” After railing against Curiel and the lawsuit for more than 10 minutes, Trump concluded: “The judges in this court system, federal court—they ought to look into Judge Curiel.”

Flat-out, no-holds-barred racism, guys.  This is now what the Republican party stands for. in 2016. And our media is too frightened of Trump and his goons to call them out on it.  Everyone is pretending this is all normal and acceptably behavior, because after all if we have a open racist as president, that would be bad for the country, right?

So instead we hear how about this is probably Al Sharpton's fault or something.

Guys, Trump has to lose by double digits and the GOP along with him.

How To Succeed At Trumping Without Really Trying

CNBC's Jake Novak is now convinced Trump is going to win because Awesome Business Acumen.

A few months ago, I wrote that Donald Trump would win the GOP presidential nomination – but that would be the end of the line for him. I was sure that Trump just couldn't shore up enough of the already too small Republican base to win in November, thus nearly guaranteeing not only a loss but a big loss to Hillary Clinton in the general election. 

Well, I was wrong.

In the 80-odd days since I wrote that piece, I've been seeing more and more evidence of why my predictions for Trump's demise were wrong — and that his chances of winning in the general election look pretty decent.

OK, I'll bite.  How you figure there, champ?

Base? Trump doesn't need no stinking base.

And it hasn't ended there. Trump is still breaking conventional rules by recently insulting New Mexico Governor Susan Martinez, a GOP "golden child," because all the conventional wisdom says Republicans need more women and Latino voters to have a future. But remember, Trump is trying to make sure you don't primarily identify him as a "team player" Republican anyway. That team is a losing team and Trump wants little part of it. And he's probably also aware that it's a waste of time for any non-Democrat to run after elusive female and Latino voters anyway. It sounds crazy to slam Martinez, but as Trump is proving over and over again, Trump's campaign is crazy like a fox. 

It also sounds crazy to a lot of people that Trump has been actively going after the white vote. Why does a non-Democrat ever have to do that? Because white voter turnout has been down in recent elections. Trump knows he needs to energize lots of white voters who have recently stopped voting. He did that in the primaries and it's all still working now.

This is something that's been tossed around before: that demographic changes in states have nothing to do with voting, it's not that there's now more voters of color and more women voting, it's that there's a huge pool of conservative white, male, working-class voters (probably at a Home Depot in Pennsylvania or hanging out at an American Legion baseball field in Ohio, just tens of millions of them, man) that have dropped out of the political process over the last 25 years or so, and if they just simply voted again, Trump would win easily.  They're just disconnected because Republicans are loser cucks and Democrats are pussy SJWs and if they all came out to vote, and turnout nationally would be like 75%, these hero bros would crush those people for good.

It's the notion that with enough while men voting, it relegates everyone else in the country meaningless in a presidential election and in everything else. Make America Great Again, indeed.

Did I mention Jake Novak is a white guy?

Oh it gets better, kids.

The second biggest mistake I made about Trump is something else the CNBC audience should appreciate: I didn't think his incredible abilities and experience at self-promotion would translate very well from the business and entertainment media world to the political arena. But I forgot that Trump has been a master business marketer for decades and has also been working closely with some of the best writers in reality TV for more than 15 years. And probably the best talent those writers have is making events and comments sound truly off the cuff and natural even when they are really completely planned and strategically weighed. 

I don't think Trump has said one thing or sent out even one tweet during this campaign that didn't sound like something he truly believed and would naturally say or write. Even if you've hated 100 percent of the things Trump has said and written, it's important to understand that Trump has won a crucial marketing and persuasive victory simply by convincing you that what he's saying and writing is his genuine voice and authentic personality. It's called building a clear and identifiable brand. Winning an election is still very much about connecting personally with key voters and you can only do that if you present a clear personality or brand to the voters in the first place. If you're the person who sees Trump's personality/brand and have decided you hate everything about it, I have news for you: You're not the target audience. But you're still proof that Trump's messaging is at least very clear and that's often more than half the battle in business and politics.

Trump am sooper smart business guy brain man!  You know, because Andrew Carnegie totally would have tweeted that people were losers.  It's because the orange little peckerhead can slap his name on everything, and that makes him the perfect president for 'Murica.

And that brings me to my last mistake about Trump's chances: I underestimated how bad Hillary Clinton's campaign would be. To be fair, I never thought Clinton was a particularly strong candidate. But at every essential task of marketing and messaging, the Clinton campaign has been surprisingly bad. 

We all know Trump's key slogan/promise is "Make America Great Again." I'm still not sure what Hillary Clinton's key slogan/promise is and I follow her campaign very closely. Is it "I'm with Her?" If so, it's not very good in that it doesn't seem to have anything in it for the person who isn't "her."

Chicks are dumb! You don't need them to win an election, and they suck as candidates, especially when you brand yourself well!

We might as well hang it up, squad.  We can't possibly beat such mastery of politics as salesmanship, and we certainly can't stop this many white guys from winning outright.

Right?

StupidiNews!

• An apparent murder-suicide at UCLA's College of Engineering has resulted in the death of Prof. William Klug and a student as the campus was locked down for 3 hours Wednesday.
• Massachusetts GOP Gov. Charlie Baker says he will sign the state's new anti-discrimination legislation that expands protection to transgender residents.
• The US Treasury Department has instituted further sanctions on transactions from North Korean bank accounts, calling the country a "primary money laundering concern".
• Heavy rain and flooding continue in southern Germany as the river Inn crested several feet over flood stage, at least four are dead in Bavaria and several more are missing.
• Summer air pollution in Paris has led to new restrictions on cars more than twenty years old to be banned from city streets on weekdays, and no cars built before 2011 by 2020.