Last Call For The Defeated

I've been mentioning this for a while now here and on Twitter, but Foreign Policy magazine writer Sarah Kendzior asks a very important question: what happens to Trump-supporting losers when Trump loses in November?  Her answer is a very real warning.

If Trump loses, neither he nor his followers will take it well. Some pundits wonder whether Trump will even concede. On August 1, Trump declared that the election will be “rigged”: a preemptive move to delegitimize a possible loss as his poll numbers fall. The next day, Trump’s advisor, Roger Stone, proclaimed there will be a “bloodbath” if the election is “stolen.” When I interviewed Trump’s supporters in March, several told me they would form militias if he did not get the nomination, and other reporters have heard the same. Trump’s loss could be the cause that unites disparate hate groups across the country, potentially leading to standoffs against the government like that of the Bundys in Oregon, or to violent clashes like the neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento. 

The second major challenge is that, thanks to Trump, economic discontent has become linked to white populism. In an attempt to diagnose the Trump phenomenon, D.C. wonks have written profiles of imaginary Trump fans, as if his fan base were a monolith. In fact, the Americans voting for Trump are as diverse in their reasoning — open bigotry, economic agony, hatred of Clinton, vague longing for change — as the supporters of any other candidate. 

Where they are not diverse is race: Trump’s fan base is almost uniformly white. It includes the militia and hate organizations described above. But many Trump fans are simply down-and-out white male workers. This faction’s primary concerns are jobs, trade, and a feeling that the government has abandoned them while crowing aboutmisleading statistics of low unemployment. 

The problem is that, while not always openly racist, these voters implicitly condone racism through their support for Trump, contributing to the mainstreaming of white supremacy. The appeal of Trump’s racialist version of the economic discontent argument is so great that it has extended to surprising audiences. A small but vocal contingent of the Bernie Sanders fan base seems to have migrated to the Trump camp. Ideologically, this switch makes no sense, but given the precedent set in the primaries, it is not surprising. The Democratic primaries were the most racially divided in U.S. history — states with black or Latino populations of over 10 percent almost always went to Clinton. 

As white men with disparate ideological perspectives unite under the Trump banner, many of them have come to espouse or condone his racist views, tainting their legitimate economic grievances with an ugly nativist edge. Meanwhile, America’s much-vaunted economic recovery is still failing to create enough well-paying jobs. As a result, white populism is set not only to keep growing, but to become further incorporated into mainstream American politics. 

If the broken white male workers out there decide they can be talked into resistance or something far worse when Clinton wins, it's going to be awful.  As I keep saying, the 60 million people who will end up voting for Donald Trump aren't going to shrug and say "Well, good fight, we'll see you in 2020" and walk away.

If you thought America's white supremacist domestic terror problem was bad before, wait until 2017.

The Coming Av-Hill-Lanche

And if you see his election in the snow-colored hicks
Well her landslide will bring it down
Yes her landslide will bring it down

With all apologies to Fleetwood Mac, it's looking like the Trump campaign's collapse into flaming slag over the last two weeks may have dealt a mortal blow to his chances to become president.  Sure, there's three months left in the election, but we're at the point now where the polls are solidly starting to show a Clinton victory, and in some cases a Clinton blowout.

The best polling news for Donald Trump on Thursday was that an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll had him down only nine points to Hillary Clinton. 

That survey was released a little while after a poll from McClatchy/Marist that showed Trump down 15 points, pulling only 33 percent of the vote. Those numbers are, to put it bluntly, shocking. Mitt Romney was never down by that much to President Obama in 2012; his worst poll was a survey in June from Bloomberg that had him down 13, with 40 percent of the vote. 

In only one of the four major polls released this week is Trump over 40 percent, which is itself remarkable. Each of the four had Clinton gaining ground since the last time the same outlet released a poll, by an average of about five points. Three of the four showed Trump losing ground, by a little more than three points. 

The two new polls show a pattern that's consistent with other recent surveys, including at the state level. Clinton is getting more support from Democrats than Trump is from Republicans, and his advantage among men and white voters has diminished. In both of the new polls, Clinton leads with men, which has not been the trend over the course of this election.

Oh, but as we start looking at the state polls things are getting even worse for The Donald.

Democrat Hillary Clinton has built a slim lead over Donald Trump in Georgia after one of the worst weeks of the Republican’s campaign, according to a new Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll. 

The poll released Friday shows Clinton at 44 percent and Trump at 40 percent, within the poll’s margin of error. It is the latest showing a close race between the two candidates in Georgia, a state that has voted for the GOP nominee since 1996. 

Clinton maintains a lead when third-party candidates are included. In a four-way race, Clinton led Trump 41-38, but Libertarian Gary Johnson cracked double-digits, with 11 percent of the support, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein notched 2 percent. 

The findings come after both conventions ended and a particularly rough patch for Trump, who engaged in a war of words with the family of a slain Muslim U.S. soldier and infuriated many Republicans when he refused to endorse two of the party’s top elected officials. 

Friday’s survey marks a change from the last AJC poll, commissioned in May, which gave Trump a 45-41 lead over Clinton. It also shows the former secretary of state besting Trump among independents, an influential Georgia voting bloc that typically votes Republican.

If things have gotten so bad for Trump that states like Georgia are moving into purple swing state status, joining North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada, then he's done, folks.

Clinton's Husker Do

So I overlooked this story on Monday: Hillary Clinton went to see Warren Buffet in his (and my) home state (I was born there) of Nebraska (Go Huskers!) on Monday but honestly when's the last time you can recall a Democratic presidential candidate making a campaign stop in Nebraska?

Barbara Carlson waited in the sun for more than two hours to attend Hillary Clinton’s rally in Omaha on Monday, but she never made it inside the gym.

Carlson was one of hundreds of people steered into overflow rooms at Clinton’s rally, after authorities shut down the gymnasium at Omaha North High School where the Democratic presidential candidate spoke.

The crowd that came to see Clinton exceeded the capacity of the gym where she spoke. A story in Tuesday’s Omaha World-Herald incorrectly reported that the turnout was not an “overflow” crowd, based on the fact that the gym still had room for more people.

But that was because authorities had diverted some people into overflow rooms. In addition, others who had come to the rally may not have been able to get through security and enter the building at all before the event began.

Officials with Clinton’s campaign said there were 3,300 people in the gym alone. There was no estimate given on how many people were in the overflow rooms or were not allowed into the school.

Anne Henderson, 71, of Omaha was one of those diverted into an overflow room. “I guess there were maybe 200 or more people in there. Most of them were sitting on the floor,” said Henderson. “The video was good but the audio went in and out.”

Neither Henderson nor Carlson was complaining. Both were happy they attended, even though they didn’t get into the gym for the rally.

But Carlson, 65, of Omaha, did get to see Clinton after the candidate stopped briefly outside the door of her overflow room to thank everyone for coming.

And Carlson said she will never forget arriving at the school before the rally and seeing thousands of people in line, waiting in the sun.

“When I saw all of those people — men, women and children of all ages and walks of life — it made my heart burst with pride,” said Carlson.

Yes, I know the trip was all about Buffett, but it could have been a video endorsement, or Buffett could have come to the convention and spoken.  There wasn't really a ironclad need for Clinton to make a campaign stop in a state that at best will give her a single electoral vote thanks to the state's laws that split electoral votes among congressional districts.

But she went anyway and 3,300 people showed up.

In Nebraska.  Not even her husband bothered to campaign there as far as I can find.  Obama never made any stops either as a candidate.

Clinton did.  I respect the effort.

StupidiNews!

• At least 12 are dead after attackers opened fire in an Indian market in New Delhi, authorities believe the attackers were from a Christian separatist group.
• Professors at the University of Texas are suing the state over campus open carry laws, saying college instructors have the right to ban guns from individual classrooms.
• US Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Turkey later this month, tensions are high between the two countries over last month's failed coup and an exiled Muslim cleric living in the US.
• Mercedes-Benz will reportedly be taking on Tesla and BMW as the German automaker will enter the electric vehicle market with an as-yet unnamed sub-brand.
• Apple will start up a bug bounty program similar to other tech giants that will offer up to $200,000 for finding security flaws in their hardware and software.