The Conserva-Schism Comes

I'm not RNC chair Reince Priebus but I'm thinking this is not the story he wanted to wake up to this morning four weeks before a presidential election, and that he probably should consider going back to bed.

The Republican Party tumbled toward anarchy Monday over its presidential nominee, as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) cut Donald Trump loose in an emergency maneuver to preserve the party’s endangered congressional majorities.

Ryan’s announcement that he would no longer defend or campaign with Trump prompted biting condemnations from within his caucus and from Trump himself, who publicly lashed out at the speaker.

It was an extraordinary display of personal animus just four weeks before the election, destroying any semblance of party unity behind a nominee who many GOP leaders said they could no longer stomach because of his character traits and tawdry campaign tactics.

New national and battleground-state polls showed Trump sliding since Friday’s publication of a 2005 video of him bragging about sexual assault, putting Clinton in position for a possible electoral landslide. Clinton surged to an 11 percentage point lead nationally in an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll conducted over the weekend.

“It’s every person for himself or herself right now,” former senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said. “The nominee for president is so destructive to everyday Republicans.”

The situation that I've long predicted has finally arrived.  The dangerously bigoted, ignorant, and vengeful GOP rump that lurked during the Bush years (and destroyed the party's immigration reform plan) has only grown in malignancy during the Obama years, until it metastasized into the Trump Train.  Now the rest of the GOP is bodily hurling themselves from it as the tracks lead off the cliff.

Paul Ryan giving leave to House Republicans to bail on Trump is the climax of our little tragic play, the point where everything collapses and the only question is whose career survives the disaster.

Hillary Clinton is smartly moving to bring mattresses for a softer landing for those jumping off the bandwagon as the rest of the GOP is now in full panic mode.

With Republicans at war amongst themselves, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton moved swiftly Monday to pry away moderate Republican-leaning voters who are turned off by Trump. Her campaign launched an advertising blitz featuring testimonials from ordinary Republicans explaining why they were voting for Clinton.

“She is reaching out to voters that may well have supported Mitt Romney in 2012 and in a normal year might also be inclined to support the Republican nominee but are so troubled by Donald Trump they are open to supporting Hillary Clinton,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said. He added that nasty personal attacks by Trump at Sunday’s second presidential debate in St. Louis “only helped us close the sale.”

Ryan’s move, announced on a contentious conference call with House GOP members, was seen as a concession that Trump could no longer win the presidency and that the party must devote itself to retaining its majorities in the House and Senate.

Unlike Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was rendered mute on the subject Monday. He told a business group in Kentucky that if they wanted to hear his thoughts on Trump, they “might as well go ahead and leave,” according to the Associated Press.

Still, there was no wave of defections Monday from Trump, who in an aggressive performance in Sunday night’s debate reassured the conservative base that he would be a relentless aggressor against the party’s shared enemies: Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Trump leveled a stream of harsh charges at Hillary Clinton during the event, claiming she attacked women who accused her husband of sexual abuse and promising to send the former secretary of state to jail if he is president.

I'm pretty sure that wave of defections will come pretty soon after we start seeing the polls come in later this week.  Count on every Republican up for re-election in Congress to be looking at their internal polling from after this weekend and at the national numbers, already showing Clinton widening her lead.

As Donald Trump's campaign reels over tapes of the presidential candidate's sexually aggressive comments about women in 2005, the Republican nominee now trails Hillary Clinton by double digits among likely voters, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

The poll, conducted on Saturday and Sunday but before the second presidential debate, shows Clinton with 46 percent support among likely voters in a four-way matchup, compared to 35 percent for Trump.

The dam is broken, the boil has burst, the volcano has erupted, and everyone is scrambling to get out of the path of devastation.  If a double-digit lead holds for Clinton, this really will be the Av-Hill-Lanche I've been saying was possible all along.  It's not going to be a Goldwater, McGovern or Mondale level beatdown, but it could look a lot like 1980, where Reagan won 51-41 over Carter and John Anderson got 7% of the vote.  That turned into 489 electoral votes for St. Ronaldo.  I don't see Clinton getting that many EVs, but 450 is certainly possible if the state polls follow suit in places like Georgia, Arizona, and South Carolina.  Hell, with a lead like that Clinton could challenge Kansas, Alaska, Montana, and the spine-breaker for the GOP, Texas.

Texas, guys.  An 11-point Clinton lead puts Texas in play.

Four weeks to go.

StupidiNews!

• After corrections to its battery process failed to halt new units from catching fire while charging, tech maker Samsung is permanently shelving production of its troubled Galaxy Note 7 smartphone.
• A Democratic party lawsuit filed in Florida has convinced a judge to extend the state's voter registration through Wednesday as residents return from Hurricane Matthew evacuations.
• At least ten are dead after a suicide bomber struck in a northern Syria village, 20 more have been reported injured in the blast near the city of Manbij, currently controlled by US-backed rebels.
• UK PM Theresa May will go to court this week to make the case that she should be the one to trigger Britain's exit from the EU rather than Parliament.
• German lawmakers have made a non-binding resolution to ban the internal combustion engine in the country by 2030 as a statement against man-made climate change.

Last Call For A Policy Most Foreign

Foreign Policy magazine (not exactly the Obama administration's biggest fans) nevertheless finds itself in a situation they haven't been in before: making a clear endorsement of a presidential candidate because her opponent is so singularly unfit for the office of President of the United States and commander-in-chief of its military and nuclear forces.

In the nearly half century history of Foreign Policy, the editors of this publication have never endorsed a candidate for political office. We cherish and fiercely protect this publication’s independence and its reputation for objectivity, and we deeply value our relationship with all of our readers, regardless of political orientation. 

It is for all these reasons that FP’s editors are now breaking with tradition to endorse Hillary Clinton for the next president of the United States. 

Our readers depend on FP for insight and analysis into issues of national security and foreign policy. We feel that our obligation to our readers thus extends now to making clear the great magnitude of the threat that a Donald Trump presidency would pose to the United States. The dangers Trump presents as president stretch beyond the United States to the international economy, to global security, to America’s allies, as well as to countless innocents everywhere who would be the victims of hisinexperience, his perverse policy views, and the profound unsuitability of his temperament for the office he seeks. 

The litany of reasons Trump poses such a threat is so long that it is, in fact, shocking that he is a major party’s candidate for the presidency. The recent furor over his vile behavior with women illustrates the extraordinary nature of his unsuitability, as does his repudiation by so many members of his own party — who have so many reasons to reflexively support their nominee. 

And that would be a brutal and fair summary judgment of the man.  FP however brings the receipts.

Beyond this, however, in the areas in which we at FP specialize, he has repeatedly demonstrated his ignorance of the most basic facts of international affairs, let alone the nuances so crucial to the responsibilities of diplomacy inherent in the U.S. president’s daily responsibilities. Trump has not only promoted the leadership of a tyrant and menace like Vladimir Putin, but he has welcomed Russian meddling in the current U.S. election. He has alternatively forgiven then defended Russia’s invasion of Crimea and employed advisors with close ties to the Russian president and his cronies. Trump has spoken so cavalierly about the use of nuclear weapons, including a repeated willingness to use them against terrorists, that it has become clear he understands little if anything about America's nuclear policies — not to mention the moral, legal, and human consequences of such actions. He has embraced the use of torture and the violation of international law against it. He has suggested he would ignore America’s treaty obligations and would only conditionally support allies in need. He has repeatedly insulted Mexico and proposed policies that would inflame and damage one of America’s most vital trading relationships with that country. 

Trump has played into the hands of terrorists with his fearmongering, with his sweeping and unwarranted vilification of Muslims, and by sensationalizing the threat they pose. He has promised to take punitive actions against America’s Pacific trading partners that would be devastating to the world economy and in violation of our legal obligations. He has dismissed the science of climate change and denied its looming and dangerous reality. He has promoted a delusional and narcissistic view of the world, one in which he seems to feel that the power of his personality in negotiations could redirect the course of other nations, remake or supplant treaties, and contain those tyrants he does not actually embrace. 

He has repeatedly denigrated the U.S. military — its leadership, service members, veterans, and the families who stand behind them. He has also derided the intelligence community. Many of the most prominent Republican national security and foreign-policy specialists have repudiated him publicly. Indeed, he is not simply seen as a dangerous candidate by members of the Democratic Party, but virtually no single credible GOP foreign-policy advisor has joined his team. This is because Trump either undercuts or has placed himself in opposition to the best foreign-policy traditions of the Republican Party and to the standards and ideals of every GOP administration in modern history.

And yes, FP is definitely a GOP shop.  But they understand that as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton at least has diplomatic experience and isn't likely to say, nuke Cameroon because she misspelled former UK PM David Cameron's last name in a tweet.

Clinton is the sane choice in an insane election.

Dispatches From Bevinstan

I may have given Dinosaur Steve Beshear a lot of crap for his conservative Democrat views as Kentucky governor, but his administration did put an end to private prisons in the state back in 2013 as the state chose not to renew its contract with Corrections Corporation of America and shuttered three prisons as a result.  One of those prisons, Otter Creek, was a women's prison rife with abuses and neglect.  It was the first to be closed in the state and CCA's two other facilities were mothballed soon after.

But that was under Steve Beshear.  Gov. Matt Bevin wants to reopen those facilities and plans to put more taxpayer money in CCA's pockets.

As Kentucky’s prison population rises and county jails become overcrowded, the state may reopen a pair of private prisons to temporarily take in more than 1,600 inmates.

The state stopped housing inmates in private prisons in 2013, but there has been unexpected growth in the number of state prisoners over the last seven months, Justice and Public Safety Cabinet Secretary John Tilley said. State prisons are at capacity, and county jails are housing a record number of state inmates.

Over 11,000 of Kentucky’s roughly 23,600 state inmates are being held in those facilities, and many county jailers say they can’t handle any more, Tilley said. In the short run, only one option seems viable: the temporary use of private prisons.

The state could transfer around 1,642 inmates to the Marion Adjustment Center in St. Mary and the Lee Adjustment Center in Beattyville, which are owned by the Corrections Corp. of America (CCA), Tilley said. Those facilities are closed but still are being maintained.

"This doesn’t represent a change in philosophy," he said. "This is simply a pragmatic approach to a problem of capacity that we have at the moment."

A capacity problem of course cause by Matt Bevin reversing many of the executive orders Steve beshear made on criminal justice reform, including turning thousands of felons back into disenfranchised citizens who cannot vote even after serving their time.   That decision was made back in June.  In August it was all but assured this was going to happen including reopening Otter Creek.

Because of the overcrowding of jails throughout Kentucky, the state is looking toward private facilities to alleviate some of the stress. According to Marion County Jailer Barry Brady, that means the Marion Adjustment Center will open sometime in the near future. 

“The contract with CCA will be resigned for all three private prisons,” Brady told the Marion County Fiscal Court during its regular monthly meeting Aug. 18. “I’m not sure when, but it’s on short order. The communication to me is that it’s a done deal and they are working on the contracts right now.” 

He said that in addition to opening MAC, the state will also work with CCA to open Otter Creek and the Lee Adjustment Center. This will free up 2,327 beds. 

Barry said he wasn’t sure why the DOC and CCA were being so secretive about the jails reopening. 

The state ended its contract with MAC in 2013 based on House Bill 463. The bill introduced policy changes that would allow more inmates to be released and, in turn, allow the DOC to house all of the Kentucky inmates. Overpopulation, however, has forced their hand, and they are now planning to open more private facilities.

Now we find out that the plan is moving ahead as the opioid epidemic in the Midwest is rapidly filling up jails again because of drug-related arrests.

As jails across the commonwealth run out of beds amid a logjam of state prisoners, Kentucky officials are considering a controversial return to private prisons.

"This is not a decision we can make overnight," said Corrections Commissioner Rodney Ballard, who toured Kentucky's vacant private prisons this summer. "All our options are still on the table."

Kentucky is grappling with an 18 percent rise in its prison population since 2013, according to a recent Pew Charitable Trusts presentation, which has helped overwhelm jails around the state, including Jefferson County’s. The state says its roughly 11,700-bed prison system has been coping with around 23,640 prisoners - about half of whom are held in county jails.

State officials see private prisons as a potential, temporary fix, but experts say those institutions entail significant risks even when used only as a short-term solution.

So we're right back to where we were in 2012, about to reopen private prisons that we know were abusive and corrupt .

Welcome to Bevinstan.

The Master Debaters, Con't

The second presidential debate this year was a town hall forum in St. Louis, and given the weekend's previous events, fireworks flew from the get-go.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton got straight to the point after taking the presidential debate stage Sunday night -- the Republican calling her a "devil" and the Democrat saying her opponent owes all Americans an apology for a campaign driven by insulting, degrading comments about women, African-Americans and others. 

The debate, coming little more than 48 hours after the release of a recording in which Trump boasted about sexually assaulting women, caps off a weekend that saw senior Republican elected officials, including Sens. John McCain, Kelly Ayotte and John Thune, rescind their support for Trump. Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Trump’s own running mate, Mike Pence, condemned the remarks. 

But Trump remained defiant. After stating he will never drop out of the race, and slamming Republican defectors, he has sought to focus on accusations of sexual assault levied at Bill Clinton, who is not running for president. 

The town hall style debate is moderated by ABC’s Martha Raddatz and CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

Clinton did get in a couple body blows on Trump's video, but Trump went completely off the rails near the end.

If Trump is elected, he said, he will appoint a special prosecutor with the aim of putting Clinton in prison for her actions related to keeping a private email server during her time as secretary of state. The use of the server was investigated by the FBI, which decided not to press charges. 

“I didn't know I would say this, but I'm going to and I hate to say it,” Trump said. “If I win, I am going to instruct my Attorney General to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. There has never been so many lies, so much exception. There has never been anything like it. We will have a special prosecutor.” 

“You should be ashamed,” Trump repeated. 

Clinton called Trump’s accusations “absolutely false.” 

“It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Clinton said. 

Trump fired back: "Because you would be in jail.”

I mean openly threatening to jail your political opponent at a town hall debate is the stuff of nightmares if you're Trump's handlers.  If he hadn't somehow lost the campaign with the video of him happily describing how good he is at sexual assault, this finished him in the long run.

In the short run, it actually serves the purpose of keeping him in the race by serving as red meat to vacillating supporters.  The calls for him to drop out will almost certainly stop.  And that's what Democrats should be salivating over.

I don't want Trump to drop out on his terms.  I want him to get smashed flat by the enraged giant of the body politic and take GOP control of Congress with him.

29 days to go and the odds of a landslide are better than ever.  And Trump has another debate and four more weeks of reminding people how petty, awful, abusive, bellicose and intemperate he is. Trump, as BuzzFeed's Rosie Gray finds, has gone the Full Breitbart.

On Sunday night, Trump signaled that his objective now is to fight to the end as the champion of the populist nationalist movement he has spearheaded and which propelled him to the Republican nomination. Trump’s revanchist positioning is a sign he’s retreated to pleasing the hard core of his base, despite the fact that they cannot deliver him the White House; a performance like this won’t bring on board the voters Trump must persuade in order to win.

I like Clinton's chances here.  Trump's going to lose, the question is by how much, and how many downticket races he can wreck before it's all said and done. He did a good job of starting that process this weekend and continued in the debate and made it very clear his goal is now to try to punish anyone in America who doesn't support him, and to try to bully the rest of us into doing that.

Not only will that fail, it's going to crack the GOP like an egg fired from a railgun.  When that goes splat all over his face, it will most likely take the GOP with it, because now they are stuck between supporting him and losing swing voters, and not supporting him and losing the base.  It's not going to hold anymore.

And it's going to be amazing when this detonates in four weeks. All Trump did was trade in his support floor for a support ceiling.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton clashed at a town hall debate last night in St. Louis, where Trump at one point promised to put Clinton in jail if he was elected.
• Major flooding in southeastern North Carolina from Hurricane Matthew will continue this week as waters continue to rise along the Cape Fear and Lumber Rivers, several dams have been breached.
• The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded to Brit Oliver Hart and Finn Bengt Holmstrom for their work on contract theory affecting everything from CEO pay to public-private partnerships.
• The US Navy says two missiles were fired by Yemeni rebels in the Persian Gulf at a US destroyer, the warheads missed and nobody was injured in the failed attempt.
• Drug company Mylan, maker of EpiPens, will pay the Obama administration $465 million to settle allegations of Medicare fraud over rebates, something the company has been tagged for since 2007.

Last Call For Orange, Crushed Con't

As you watch tonight's debate fireworks, keep in mind that Donald Trump is most likely finished outside of the biggest comeback in US political history. He was going to lose anyway, but the GOP was going to definitely keep the House and the Senate would be at worst case a 51-49 Democratic party lead (with that 51st Democrat being Evan F'ckin Bayh).

That was before this weekend, as Ezra Klein explains.

Since Trump won the GOP primary, his party has been working to normalize an abnormal, unpopular, and frankly bizarre candidate. Trump has always had the support of his hardcore fans — but he needed more than that. He needed the mainstream Republicans who didn’t vote in the GOP primaries, or voted for someone else; he needed the independents who didn’t like Clinton, but didn’t trust Trump; he needed the movement conservatives who had entered politics to ban abortion and shrink the government, and who saw little of their crusade reflected in Trump’s history.

And so the party began to coalesce. Mitch McConnell endorsed Donald Trump, and so, eventually, did Paul Ryan. Fox News ended its brief feud with the Republican nominee and closed ranks around his campaign. Reince Priebus dispatched top RNC staffers to work for Trump’s campaign. Marco Rubio offered his support. The messaging was simple, and sober: better Trump than Hillary, better the lunatic who will nominate our judges and sign our tax bills than the liberal who won’t, and even if you don’t believe in any of that, better to support Trump and keep the House then to abandon him and witness the return of Speaker Pelosi.

The process took on its own momentum. To be a Republican in good standing, in recent months, has meant accepting Trump as the party’s nominee, and working to see him elected. As more Republicans backed Trump, the rest had to follow suit. John McCain endorsed Trump, even though Trump had mocked his war heroism. Ted Cruz endorsed Trump, even though Trump tied his father to JFK’s assassination and mocked his wife’s looks.

The effect of all this has been to build a floor under Trump’s vote share, and his media coverage. He might lose the election, but so long as Republicans were able to signal that he’s the guy you vote for if you don’t want Hillary Clinton, he couldn’t lose it that badly — and a three-or-four point loss would probably mean Republicans kept the House and Senate. By the same token, Trump gets plenty of bad press, but so long as the Republican Party stood behind him, he had to be covered as a basically normal candidate, not as a dangerous virus that had somehow infected American politics.

Trump’s army of validators protected him from feeling the force of his own abnormality, of his bizarre comments, of his frequent gaffes, of his erratic behavior. It was a permission structure for voters who didn’t like Trump to vote for him anyway, and it worked. Polls routinely showed that the number of people supporting Trump was larger than the number of people who thought him qualified for the presidency. Voting for Trump, in this context, became what you did if you were a Republican, or if you didn’t like Hillary Clinton. Why? Well, that’s what everyone else like you was doing, too.

And now that’s crumbling. The wave of Republican defections from Trump’s side is the same process that normalized him, but in reverse. Just as Republicans felt more and more pressure to support his candidacy as other Republicans signed on, Republicans — and everyone else — will feel more and more pressure to abandon his candidacy as their co-partisans defect.

We're now at the point where major Republicans are saying "I do not support Trump anymore".  It's a no-win situation for them, as his base still plans to vote for the guy in droves.  But not quite as many people will vote for Trump now when he was already losing by about five points, and not quite as many people will vote for his party down ballot either.

In other words, a three or four point shift against you when you're up five points (which is what happened to Clinton over the course of September) is a problem.  She stopped the bleeding and pushed Trump's gains back.  But a swing like then when you're down five points turns a solid but not party-wide loss into an avalanche. (See the Republicans in 2006 and 2008, Democrats, 2010 and 2014.)

That's where we are with Trump.  It's John McCain's "The fundamentals of our economy are strong" moment in Florida in September 2008 with the Dow falling 300 points during the course of his speech, the moment everyone realized that the entire Republican party was done eight years ago, and they got stomped for it.

The polls were already bad for Trump.  That was before Trump's floor was demolished. His campaign and the entire GOP are in freefall now, and it's only a matter of time before they go splat.

Dispatching The Donald

Joining a long line of conservative newspapers across the country, the Columbus Dispatch has for the first time in a century endorsed a Democrat in this year's White House race, entirely because the Republican is one orange piece of garbage.

For us, the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is not pleasant, but it isn’t difficult. Republican candidate Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States. Democrat Hillary Clinton, despite her flaws, is well-equipped for the job.

The Dispatch traditionally has endorsed Republican presidential candidates, but Trump does not espouse or support traditional Republican values, such as fiscal prudence, limited government and free trade, not to mention civility and decency. We are disappointed that so many Republican leaders have accommodated a narcissistic, morally bankrupt candidate who is so clearly out of step with those values.

While third parties offer a tempting way out of the dilemma, votes cast for the Libertarian or Green Party tickets could have the effect of helping Trump win the White House.

Clinton has spent a career spanning decades in politics as First Lady, U.S. senator and U.S. secretary of state, and has a long record of service to families, women and children.

The art of compromise, which once was respected by Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and which allowed for progress rather than gridlock, is one that Clinton understands and practices. She demonstrated that not only in the Senate, but as the nation’s chief diplomat.

She is well-known to foreign leaders and understands that world order depends upon a U.S. foreign policy that is committed to its international obligations. The United States is the most stabilizing force in a world prone to chaos, and she knows that role is not something to be trifled with on a whim, as Trump’s reckless pronouncements would do.

Yes, Clinton has faced controversy: These include allegations of corruption; convenient memory lapses, particularly while being questioned during investigations; lies such as the one about coming under sniper fire in Bosnia; and difficulty in admitting when she is wrong. Her use of a private email server that exposed secret State Department communications to interception was reckless, and her attempts to minimize and cover up the scandal damaged her further.

Preferring Clinton to Trump does not mean the Dispatch embraces all elements of her platform. Her calls for higher taxes, unsustainable spending and the likelihood that she will try to stack the U.S. Supreme Court with a left-leaning majority are unwelcome.

But her negatives pale when measured against the dangers posed by Trump.

This is straight up the nicest thing I can recall the Dispatch saying about a Clinton in the last decade or so. "We're not in love with her but Jesus Jumped-Up Christ on a pogo stick have you seen the other guy?"

That's as good as it's going to get for these guys.  I hope Ohioans listen.

Sunday Long Read: The Democrats' Nevada Gambit

Fusion's Ester Wang visits Nevada and talks to the voters that will most likely decide the swing state next month and in elections to come: the state's large Asian voting-eligible population.  But will they finally turn out?

2016 was supposed to be the Year of the Asian American Voter, the year that a swelling electorate finally turned out in massive numbers in November’s presidential election and provides the margin of victory not just in Hawaii or California but in swing states as disparate as Virginia, North Carolina, and Nevada. Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the country, and the size of this voting bloc has doubled since George W. Bush entered the White House. Already, one of every four Congressional districts has a population that’s more than 5% Asian American, numbers high enough where these voters can be the decisive force in tight races that are sometimes won by mere decimal points.

It’s not just changing demographics. Asian Americans, advocates say, care more about this election than the last—more than half, according to a recent national survey. In the same survey, a full 85% of Asian American and Pacific Islander voters reported they plan on turning out in November.

This all paints a rosy picture. Silent, docile and passive no more, in 2016, Asian Americans are, in the words of one advocate’s op-ed, “ready to be heard!”

Not so fast. Asian Americans are also traditionally the most disengaged racial group in America, with only 56% of eligible Asian Americans even registered to vote, the lowest percentage out of all racial groups. Of those, less than half tend to come out on election day, lagging far behind black and white voters.

This leaves Asian Americans like Michelle Chen in a curious position: a fattening slice of the electoral pie, widely seen as crucial to victory, yet also the voting bloc with the least interest in political participation. As Election Day nears, the question remains: Will a record number of Asian Americans actually vote, or will the majority, as in previous years, stay home?

I know we've talked about the black and Latino vote around here at length, but by 2020 Nevada will join Hawaii, California and New Mexico as majority-minority states and that will be largely due to the state's major Asian population growth.

The Democrats aren't stupid here.  They know they will have to have these votes and these voters and are working to get them, but there's a LOT of work that has to be done.

It’s easy to understand why, despite voting for Obama twice, Michelle Chen is going to sit this election out. Their lives haven’t improved as much as she would have hoped. Her husband, who works for a car service as a driver and used to be able to make $3,000 a month, now faces stiff competition from Uber and Lyft drivers and his income has dropped sharply. A self-described member of the working poor (she makes $1,300 a month at her job), it was largely Obamacare, which she says she and her husband can’t really afford, that turned her off of politics.

In a different world, one where the Bernie Sanders campaign had prioritized reaching out to immigrant voters, she might have been a Bernie fan. I asked if she’d heard of him, using the Chinese transliteration of his name and describing him as the “old white guy with the messy hair.”

“Who? Do you mean Trump?” Nevermind.

Of the presidential election, she repeated firmly: “It has nothing to do with my life.” She then went back to work, hawking steamed pork buns to a steady stream of customers.

Chen clearly feels no loyalty to the Democratic Party, and she’s not alone; 46% of Asian American registered voters are independents. Despite the general tilt towards Democratic candidates—in 1992, Bill Clinton only captured about a third of Asian American voters, yet by 2012, 73% of all Asian American voters cast a ballot for Barack Obama—voters remain stubbornly unaffiliated, due largely to the fact that two out of every three AAPI voters are immigrants. (Without a family history of voting for one party or the other—one of the greatest predictors of party affiliation—immigrants tend to register as independents.)

To build any sort of majority in the future, Democrats need to make the case to Asian voters that America's politics actually do matter to people.  So far that has been a lukewarm case at best.  Donald Trump's awful politics can only go so far.

The Orange Martyrs Brigade

Republicans are now in full and complete crisis mode as a result of the Washington Post/NBC story on Trump's awful misogynist 2005 interview.  Several Republicans have withdrawn their endorsements in the wake of the revelations, including GOP Sens. Mike Crapo, Kelly Ayotte, and Lisa Murkowski.  Others are now calling for Trump to drop out of the race entirely and let Mike Pence be the nominee.

The party's past nominees were unflinching in their condemnation.

“Hitting on married women? Condoning assault? Such vile degradations demean our wives and daughters and corrupt America's face to the world,” Mitt Romney, the party’s last GOP presidential nominee, wrote on Twitter. And Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 nominee, said Trump could have no excuse: "No woman should ever be victimized by this kind of inappropriate behavior. He alone bears the burden of his conduct and alone should suffer the consequences.”

Even within Trump’s own campaign, there was an overriding sense of doom. One aide expressed doubt that the GOP nominee, who has successfully weathered a number of scandals, would be able to ride the current firestorm.

There's "absolutely no excuse to ever talk about women in such a crude and demeaning way," Trump’s Texas chair, Dan Patrick, was quoted as saying.

As the hours passed, some Republicans began to call for Trump to step aside, leaving the presidential race to vice presidential nominee Mike Pence. Rob Engstrom, the Chamber of Commerce’s national political director, was the first to call for Trump to quit, followed by Rep. Mike Coffman, former N.Y. Gov. George Pataki, Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock and Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee said: “You are the distraction... I respectfully ask you, with all due respect, to step aside.”

Trump of course has no plans to drop out and is meeting this afternoon with his "brain trust" to decide a course of action.

Meanwhile Reince Preibus and the RNC are apparently cutting Trump off.

The Republican National Committee on Saturday appeared to at least temporarily halt the operations of some of the “Victory” program that is devoted to electing Donald Trump.

The move comes as the GOP nominee is under mounting pressure from elected Republicans to step aside after he was caught on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women.

In an email from the RNC to a victory program mail vendor, with the subject line “Hold on all projects,” the committee asked the vendor to “put a hold” on mail production.

“Please put a hold/stop on all mail projects right now. If something is in production or print it needs to stop. Will update you when to proceed,” Lauren Toomey, a staffer in the RNC’s political department, wrote in an email that was obtained by POLITICO.

The email was sent to at least one RNC victory program vendor. Rick Wiley, a top RNC official, was cc’d on the email.

At this point the Trump campaign is in total and complete freefall.  And please note all the people who were cool with Trump through his racism, misogyny, bigotry and white supremacist garbage, what actually pissed them off was realizing he was going to most likely lose a ton of working-class white women over this.  It didn't affect any of these newly-minted converts to women's rights until it was Trump offending people that were going to vote GOP and looked like them.

So no, zero sympathy.

When these same Republicans looked the other way and allowed Trump to be the nominee, they did nothing.

They did nothing for months when the target was "Mexican rapists" or "The blacks living in hell" or "China" or Clinton herself.

Now that Trump blew it so badly that they are going to be hurt by it, only now is it a problem to them.  Only now is Trump unacceptable.  Only now do they care.

They can burn along with him and the party in the dumpster fire they made.

Tell 'Em Bobby D Sent You To Vote

Robert De Niro takes a minute out of his busy schedule of being awesome to read Donald Trump like a book and slams it shut in his face.

Robert De Niro on Donald Trump: 'He's a punk, he's a dog, he's a pig ...' pic.twitter.com/avaZOB4vW9

— David Lewis (@davidclewis) October 8, 2016

I think we're done here.

Orange, Crushed

Donald Trump continues to be an awful human being in every sense of the word, and he's been that way for decades, folks. No wonder then that somebody did enough actual opposition research to catch this gem of an interview with the man in 2005 where he basically admits to sexually assaulting a woman.

Donald Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a 2005 conversation caught on a hot microphone, saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it,” according to a video obtained by The Washington Post.

The video captures Trump talking with Billy Bush, then of “Access Hollywood,” on a bus with the show’s name written across the side. They were arriving on the set of “Days of Our Lives” to tape a segment about Trump’s cameo on the soap opera.

The tape includes audio of Bush and Trump talking inside the bus, as well as audio and video once they emerge from it to begin shooting the segment.

In that audio, Trump discusses a failed attempt to seduce a woman, whose full name is not given in the video.

“I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it,” Trump is heard saying. It was unclear when the events he was describing took place. The tape was recorded several months after he married his third wife, Melania.

“Whoa,” another voice said.

“I did try and f--- her. She was married,” Trump says.

Trump continues: “And I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, ‘I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.’”

“I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there. And she was married,” Trump says. “Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”

At that point in the audio, Trump and Bush appear to notice Arianne Zucker, the actress who is waiting to escort them into the soap-opera set.

“Your girl’s hot as s---, in the purple,” says Bush, who’s now a co-host of NBC’s “Today” show.

“Whoa!” Trump says. “Whoa!”

“I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her,” Trump says. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”

“And when you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

“Whatever you want,” says another voice, apparently Bush’s.

“Grab them by the p---y,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

And America, about sixty million of you are gonna vote for this guy for president. What the hell is wrong with you?  Oh, and just so you know, Billy Bush?  Dubya's cousin. Billy's dad is Jonathan Bush, Poppy Bush's younger brother. Isn't that just perfect?

Seriously though, if this isn't the end of Trump's run, then there's no hope for the country.  We're done.  There are some indications that this may be the event Republicans needed to jettison the man, but as I have said countless times, Trump is merely the symptom of a diseased and debased Republican party that is frankly headed for the dumpster fire of their own making.

Racism, bigotry, misogyny were all problems with the party and with its supporters long before Trump, and the ugly truth is that the real problem has long been the "moderate Republicans" who looked the other way and allowed that hatred to take root in order to gain ephemeral political power, especially in the last eight years.

Your white sheets were showing long before Trump was your candidate, guys.  I have no sympathy for you now that you finally disagree with your standard-bearer. You voted for him in the primaries, you still plan to vote for him for president, and the rest of your party still looks the other way as your elderly frat boy pig of a candidate hoots and hollers because you still want to "Trump That Bitch".

No.  Take the loss.  Take the Goldwater/Dukakis level loss in November and rebuild into a party that Lincoln founded and America needs in order to keep the Democrats honest.  People are already voting and there's no way you can get him off the ballot now.  Frankly, most Republicans don't care anyway, because Trump That Bitch, right?

And the best part is that Republicans are wishing Mike Pence was at the top of the ticket, himself a vile, bigoted misogynist who signed into law making LGBTQ folks into second-class citizens and forcing women to pay for funerary services for their own aborted fetuses just to shame them for having an abortion.

Finally, how did Trump's primary opponents, ONE OF WHOM WAS THE COUSIN OF THE MAN TRUMP WAS TALKING TO IN THIS INTERVIEW miss this as a possible way to stop him from becoming the nominee?

Take the L, GOP.

Do that or stay in the trash where you belong.

Last Call For Putin On The Fritz

In what has to be a pointed response to Putin's latest nonsense in Syria as Russia has now deployed its top anti-air missiles to stop any US or EU interference with Moscow's plans to help the Assad regime, the US intelligence community is no longer playing nice and is flat out accusing Russia of trying to influence US elections through cyberwarfare.

The denunciation, made by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security, came as pressure was growing from within the administration and some lawmakers to hold Moscow accountable for a set of actions apparently aimed at sowing discord around the election.

“The U.S. intelligence community is confident that the Russian government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations,” said a joint statement from the two agencies. “These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.”

The DNC publicly disclosed the intrusions in June, saying its investigation determined that Russian government hackers were behind the breach. That was followed shortly after by a major leak of DNC emails, some so embarrassing that they forced the resignation of the DNC chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), on the eve of the Democratic National Convention.

The administration also blamed Moscow for the hack of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the subsequent leak of private email addresses and cellphone numbers of Democratic lawmakers.

So yeah, things just got serious (and about time).  There's no doubt in my mind that Putin and his boys are trying to help Trump win for a number of reasons.  If Assange and his crew wasn't going to drop their little October surprise before, they are certainly going to do so after this.

Stay tuned.

The Truth Hits Like A Hurricane

We now live in a world where the Republican party has so pervasively spread mistrust and hatred towards the idea of any government body controlled by the Democrats (and in particular the nation's first black president) that we have idiots like Matt Drudge screaming that the Obama administration is lying about Hurricane Matthew in order to keep up the "myth of global warming".

Hours ahead of Hurricane Matthews’ landfall on Florida’s Atlantic coast, some climate change skeptics downplayed the danger of what meteorologists say could be the worst such storm since Hurricane Katrina.

Public officials and meteorologists have repeatedly stressed the strength of the storm, especially to those living in the evacuation zones on Florida’s Atlantic coast.

“This storm will kill you. Time is running out,” Gov. Rick Scott (R) said in a press conference Thursday. “There are no excuses. You need to leave. Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate. Are you willing to take a change to risk your life? Are you willing to take a gamble? That’s what you’re doing.”

Yet in the face of those pleas conservative aggregator Matt Drudge, who has a house in Florida, tweeted that “The deplorables are starting to wonder if govt has been lying to them about Hurricane Matthew intensity to make exaggerated point on climate,” and“Hurricane Center has monopoly on data. No way of verifying claims. Nassau ground observations DID NOT match statements! 165mph gusts? WHERE?”

Drudge later posted the web address of a NOAA buoy and encouraged readers to monitor the storm on their own, to see if “observations match the Hurricane Center’s claimed 140 mph sustained winds."

That's right.  Obama Derangement Syndrome has gotten so bad that we now have friggin hurricane truthers who believe the National Hurricane Center is in on a massive plot to lie to America about global warming, and that somehow data on Hurricane Matthew is being manipulated in order to play up the "hoax" of climate change.

That's where we are in America in 2016.  One party is systematically dismantling the integrity of government itself and has been for decades in order to convince America that they are the only ones who should be legally allowed to run that government, and that the very concept of the other party ever being in charge should be automatically considered an invalid, corrupt, and illegal administration, to the point where Americans should consider armed revolution if that happens.

Unfortunately, a major hurricane one month before the election could very well lead to chaos if Florida is close.

Meanwhile the government is lying to you about hurricanes, Matt Drudge says, so you should ignore them on safety. They're totally illegitimate you know.

That's Donald Trump's America, folks.  I'm not going to be a part of it.

Jobapalooza

The September jobs numbers are in and things are still looking pretty good, just not quite as good as this time last year.

U.S. employment growth unexpectedly slowed for the third straight month in September, which could make the Federal Reserve more cautious about raising interest rates. 

Nonfarm payrolls rose 156,000, down from a revised gain of 167,000 jobs in August, the Labor Department said on Friday. 

Economists polled by Reuters had expected employers to add 175,000 jobs last month.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said the economy needs to create less than 100,000 jobs a month to keep up with population growth.Average monthly job gains have been about 180,000 this year, which Yellen has described as "unsustainable." 

The unemployment rate ticked up a tenth of a percentage point to 5.0 percent last month, though the increase was driven by Americans rejoining the labor force. 

Friday's employment report will be the last before the Fed's Nov. 1-2 policy meeting. Investors see almost no chance of a rate increase at that meeting given how close it is to the Nov. 8 presidential election. 

Yellen said last month that the Fed will likely raise rates once this year, but prices on fed funds futures suggest just above even odds the hike will come at the Fed's last policy meeting for the year in December.

Hourly wages for private sector workers rose 2.6 percent in September from the same month a year earlier, in line with economists' expectations. The annual growth rate has shown signs of accelerating over the last year although it remains slower than before the 2007-2009 recession.

So people are coming back to the labor force, wages are increasing, but new job growth is slowing a bit.  Again, you would have to wonder what kind of recovery we'd be having if Republicans hadn't killed the American Jobs Act five years ago.  And despite the GOP doing everything it could to sabotage the economy, it has still managed to create 11 million jobs compared to Dubya's 1.3 million.

But we need Trump to fix it?  OK, sure.

Here's the reality: this now means we're in a 72-month private sector job growth streak.

Six straight years.  Best in US history.

But Obama disappointed you?

Yeah. Sure he did.