Our Dark Orange Future, Con't

Should Donald Trump win and Republicans retain Congress in November, GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan is promising massive, draconian austerity cuts across the board and plans to make sure the Democrats have no power to stop him.

Typically, party leaders offer at least the pretense of seeking bipartisanship when discussing their policy plans. But Ryan is saying frankly that Republicans would use budget reconciliation — a powerful procedural tool — to bypass Democrats entirely. It’s the same tool Republicans slammed Democrats for using to pass the 2010 health care law over their objections.

While GOP leaders have made empty threats to use reconciliation to repeal Obamacare in the past, Ryan is making it clear that this time he plans to use it when it counts. And he would likely have support from a Trump White House. Larry Kudlow, an economic adviser to the GOP presidential nominee, said he is also strongly urging Trump to embrace reconciliation in order to pass sweeping tax cuts. 

Ryan peeled back the curtain on his strategy at a news conference after a reporter suggested he would struggle to implement his ambitious agenda next year. After all, it was noted, Republicans are certain to lack the 60 votes needed in the Senate to break Democratic filibusters on legislation. So Ryan gave a minitutorial on congressional rules and the bazooka in his pocket for the assembled reporters. 

“This is our plan for 2017,” Ryan said, waving a copy of his “Better Way” policy agenda. “Much of this you can do through budget reconciliation.” He explained that key pieces are “fiscal in nature,” meaning they can be moved quickly through a budget maneuver that requires a simple majority in the Senate and House. “This is our game plan for 2017,” Ryan said again to the seemingly unconvinced press.

Now granted, Ryan has made promises before and he's fallen on his face.  But a Trump administration would remove the final obstacle to a Ryan budget, and you can kiss Obamacare, Medicare and Social Security goodbye if that happens.

I suggest we don't find out if Ryan's telling the truth or not.

That's Real White Of You, Con't

Five Thirty Eight's Harry Enten breaks the bad news to Trump fans: he just doesn't have the numbers with white voters in order to win in November.

Four years ago, Romney beat President Obama among white voters by 17 percentage points, according to pre-election polls. That was the largest winning margin among white voters for any losing presidential candidate since at least 1948. Of course, even if Trump did just as well as Romney did, it would help him less, given that the 2016 electorate will probably be more diverse that 2012’s. And to win — even if the electorate remained as white as it was four years ago — Trump would need a margin of 22 percentage points or more among white voters.

But Trump isn’t even doing as well as Romney. Trump is winning white voters by just 13 percentage points, according to an average of the last five live-interviewer national surveys.1 He doesn’t reach the magic 22 percentage point margin in a single one of these polls.

So if he's doing worse than Romney, why is Clinton still only predicted to have a modest win?  Third party support from Millennials.

Trump’s less-than-overwhelming margins among white voters in the polls listed above are a big reason why all five surveys showed him trailing Hillary Clinton overall. In fact, Trump would be losing by a larger margin, but third-party candidates are getting support from younger and minority voters, so that Clinton is slightly underperforming Obama among these groups. But the magnitude of Clinton’s struggles with young and nonwhite voters isn’t anywhere big enough to cancel out Trump’s relatively poor showing among white voters.

In other words, Clinton winning by four or five points would be something like eight or nine if Johnson and Stein were out of the picture and those voters made a Clinton v. Trump choice in November instead.  Not saying that will happen, but that's why this race isn't a blowout.

To be more specific, Trump is trading one type of white voter for another. Even as he piles up support among white men without a college degree, he’s on track for a record poor performance for a Republican among white voters with a degree. And right now, that tradeoff is a net negative for Trump, compared with Romney. If a ton of new white voters without a degree flooded into the electorate, that could change the math for Trump. But such a surge doesn’t look like it’s in the offing. 

So yes, at this point you can expect a Clinton win.  It's looking more and more likely every day as Trump continues to lose more voters than he gains with his racist rhetoric.

StupidiNews!

• As many as two million in Florida, South Carolina and Georgia have been asked to evacuate out of the path of Hurricane Matthew as the storm is expected to gouge the southern coast this weekend.
• A Maryland government contractor has been arrested and charged with stealing classified material from the NSA in what could be a second Edward Snowden style document theft.
• Poland's parliament rejected legislation that would have all but outlawed abortions after tens of thousands of women demonstrated against the measure in rallies around the country.
• Embattled medical testing startup Theranos will close its testing labs and fire 340 as CEO Liz Holmes restructures to focus on testing devices.
• Cable giant Charter is joining AT&T to sue the city of Louisville over blocking access to utility poles to prevent competition from Google Fiber in what could be a battle with national implications.