Last Call For The New Guy In The Race

The "Never Trump" branch of the GOP (the ones smart enough to know they're going to lose in a Goldwaterslide(tm) with Trump) are trying to recruit an independent centrist candidate for November, for whatever that effort is going to be worth, as it's far too late to get him on the ballot in several key states. 

Evan McMullin, a former CIA counterterrorism officer, will run for president as a third-party conservative alternative to Donald Trump, he said today.

"With the stakes so high for our nation and at this late stage in the process, I can no longer stand on the sidelines," McMullin said in a statement. "Our country needs leaders who are in it for the right reasons and who actually understand what makes this country the greatest on earth. Leaders who will unite us and guide us to a prosperous, secure future, beyond the dysfunction of a broken political system."

He took aim at both major-party presidential nominees.

"Hillary Clinton is a corrupt career politician who has recklessly handled classified information in an attempt to avoid accountability and put American lives at risk, including those of my former colleagues," he said. "She fails the basic tests of judgment and ethics any candidate for president must meet."

As for Donald Trump, he "appeals to the worst fears of Americans at a time we need unity, not division," McMullin said. "Republicans are deeply divided by a man who is perilously close to gaining the most powerful position in the world, and many rightly see him as a real threat to our republic."

People working on McMullin's bid resigned from Better for America — a 501(c)(4) organization that may not officially endorse or back any candidate — in order to push his candidacy. The group has been working for months to select a candidate and get on ballots throughout the country. In some states, like Texas, they will likely have to sue to get on the ballot. A 501(c)(4) group is an issue-based nonprofit that may raise unlimited funds and does not have to disclose its donors.

"Just as the American Revolution required men and women devoted to liberty and freedom to stand up and be counted, this moment calls a new generation to the same sacred task." McMullin said in the statement. "With that in mind, I have decided to pursue the cause of American renewal and the presidency of the United States of America."

It's an extreme uphill climb, but his supporters are confident that McMullin, 40, can act as a disrupter and peel off some red states in a race in which some Republicans are still resistant to Trump.

Hey, if the GOP wants to Nader themselves into losing a dozen red states in three months, I say go for it. But I can't imagine this guy getting even a fraction of the attention that even Jill Stein is getting right now.

Like David French, I'm betting this guy fizzles out before too long.

The Coming Av-Hill-Lanche, Con't

Monmouth University's latest presidential poll shows Hillary Clinton at the all-important 50% mark in their likely voter model, but a whopping 13 points ahead of The Donald.

 

Currently, 46% of registered voters support Clinton and 34% back Trump, with 7% supporting Libertarian Gary Johnson, and 2% backing Jill Stein of the Green Party. Support among likely voters stands at 50% Clinton, 37% Trump, 7% Johnson, and 2% Stein. In a poll taken days before the Republican convention in mid-July, Clinton held a narrow 43% to 40% lead among registered voters and a 45% to 43% lead among likely voters. 

Clinton has solidified support among her partisan base since the conventions while Trump struggles to lock in his. More than 9-in-10 Democrats (92%) say they will vote for Clinton, up from 88% in July and 85% in June. Just 79% of Republicans are backing Trump, which is virtually unchanged from prior polls (81% in July and 79% in June).
Independents are divided between Trump (32%) and Clinton (30%). In the Monmouth poll taken before the two parties' conventions Trump held a 40% to 31% lead among this group. Johnson the Libertarian has picked up independent voter support in the past month, now at 16% (up from 9%) with this group, while the Green Party's Stein has remained stable at 4% (compared to 3% last month). 

Importantly, Clinton continues to maintain a lead in the swing states - ten states that were decided by less than seven points in the 2012 election. She holds a 42% to 34% edge over Trump in these states, which is similar to her 46% to 39% swing state lead last month. 

"The dust is starting to settle on the tag-team conventions, with the net advantage going to Clinton," said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

Not only does Monmouth's polling have an A+ rating from FiveThirtyEight for accuracy, but the crosstabs (PDF) show exactly where Trump is getting obliterated.  Clinton has a whopping 55-27% lead among women, and it's nearly as bad for Trump among college graduates, 53-29%.

To put into perspective what a Clinton +13 national race would mean, we're talking LBJ vs Barry Goldwater in 1964, a map where the Republicans would be lucky to win five or six states, and where Clinton would get 500+ electoral votes.

I don't think that November will be that bad for Trump.

Yet.

That's Real White Of You, Don

You have to admire the honesty of white supremacists in America, who correctly see Donald Trump as the best shot they've had yet of "cleansing" America of those people and making the country a lot paler than it is now.

The effort to plant the seeds of white nationalism in the political mainstream, where they might blossom into pro-white political coalitions that appeal to a broader swath of Caucasian voters, will not be easy, according to the chairman of the American Nazi Party.

But Rocky Suhayda thinks there is one political figure who presents a “real opportunity” to lessen the load.

Who is it? Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president.

“Now, if Trump does win, okay, it’s going to be a real opportunity for people like white nationalists, acting intelligently to build upon that, and to go and start — you know how you have the black political caucus and what not in Congress and everything — to start building on something like that,” Suhayda declared on his radio program last month.

“It doesn’t have to be anti-, like the movement’s been for decades, so much as it has to be pro-white,” he added. “You know what I’m saying? It’s kinda hard to go and call us bigots if we don’t go around and act like a bigot. That’s what the movement should contemplate. All right.”

Actual Nazis, guys.  Actual "we identify as the America Nazi Party" people are behind Trump.  And why not? And the Nazis have company.

Suhayda is far from the first avowed white supremacist to publicize his support and enthusiasm for Trump.

Earlier this year, Rachel Pendergraft — the national organizer for the Knights Party, a standard-bearer for the Ku Klux Klan — told The Washington Post that the KKK had begun using Trump’s candidacy as a new conversation starter to recruit followers.

She said this has been discussed on a private, members-only website and in “e-news, stuff that goes out to members.”

In addition to opening “a door to conversation,” she said, Trump’s candidacy had electrified some members of the movement.

“They like the overall momentum of his rallies and his campaign,” Pendergraft said. “They like that he’s not willing to back down. He says what he believes, and he stands on that.”

Actual Klansmen, guys.  Actual Nazis and actual Klansmen backing Trump.

On his radio show in February, David Duke — a former Ku Klux Klan leader and a current U.S. Senate candidate from Louisiana — encouraged listeners to cast their ballots for Trump, saying that “voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage.”

This week, Duke told NPR that he is “100 percent behind” Trump’s political agenda.

“As a United States senator, nobody will be more supportive of his legislative agenda, his Supreme Court agenda, than I will,” Duke said.

“Donald Trump is not a racist,” he added. “And the truth is — in this country, if you simply defend the heritage of European American people, then you’re automatically a racist.

Gosh I wonder where they might have gotten that idea?

But remember there's no difference between the two candidates, right?   Keep supporting the racist, and get support from racists, and people might think you're a racist too, Trump voters.

StupidiNews!

• Day 2 of the Rio Games was dominated by American swimmers, with Michael Phelps winning his 19th gold and Katie Ledecky breaking her own 400m freestyle world record.
• Donald Trump will give what is being billed as a "major economic address" in Detroit today, he is expected to call for making child care expenses tax-deductible, among other things.
• Turkish President Erdogan is promising the country will be rebuilt stronger after last month's failed coup as he spoke to a massive rally of more than a million in Istanbul on Sunday.
• Delta Airlines has grounded all global departures as a computer outage has affected all the carrier's flights worldwide on Monday.
• The United States has dodged yet another hurricane as named storm Earl has spun out over the Yucatan, the odds of the US dodging major hurricanes for 11 years at we have is 1 in 2,300.

Where's The Fake "Iran Ransom" Story Going?

Republicans have been bringing up the "Obama administration paid ransom to Iran" lie a lot in the last two weeks, and I've wondered what the next step is.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says his Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was responsible for negotiations that led to a $400 million U.S. payment to Iran. Reacting to a Wall Street Journal story published Wednesday that described the delivery of the cash to Tehran in January, Trump accused Clinton on Twitter of having opened talks to give Iran the money.

Trump expanded on his remarks later, saying the money was a ransom payment for four Americans detained in Iran, that Iran released a video of the cash being unloaded from a plane in Tehran and that Iran only released a group of U.S. sailors it had captured in the Persian Gulf because it was about to be paid. These claims range from the incorrect to the unsupported.

TRUMP, in a tweet Wednesday: "Our incompetent Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was the one who started talks to give 400 million dollars, in cash, to Iran. Scandal!"

THE FACTS: Trump is wrong about Clinton's involvement. The $400 million payment - plus $1.3 billion in interest to be paid later - is a separate issue from the Iran nuclear deal that Clinton initiated. The process that resulted in the payout started decades before she became secretary of state. 

This was all made public as part of the Iran nuclear deal negotiations last year.  So again, why are Republicans bringing it up now and so obviously lying about Clinton somehow being in charge of the State Department in 1979?  Why are Republicans so desparate to tie Clinton to Iranian "wrongdoing"?

Here's the answer to your question.

An Iranian scientist accused of providing information on his country's nuclear program to the United States has been executed for treason, an Iranian judiciary spokesman said Sunday.

Shahram Amiri was charged with spying for enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, spokesman Gholamhosein Mohseni-Ejei said in his weekly news conference, the Iranian Student News Agency reported.

"Amiri had access to confidential military secrets and was connected to our No. 1 enemy, the Great Satan,” Mohseni-Ejei said. "He was sentenced to death in primary court, and the sentence was confirmed by Supreme Court" after Amiri appealed.

Mohseni-Ejei said U.S. officials had been unaware that Iran was monitoring Amiri's efforts for the West.

"The CIA thought that its movements were kept away from the eye of Iranian Intelligence Ministry," Mohseni-Ejei said. "They took Amiri to Saudi Arabia."

Amiri, 38, disappeared while on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in 2009. He re-emerged a year later in the U.S., claiming in a video that he had been abducted, interrogated, tortured and offered millions in bribes while under "intense psychological pressure" by the CIA. He said he rejected the U.S. effort to break him.

The U.S. said in 2010 that Amiri had defected voluntarily and was paid millions of dollars for providing "useful information."

The Iranian regime executing scientists as "Western spies" is nothing new.  What's new is Republicans blaming Clinton for it.

An Iranian nuclear scientist has been hanged for treason for providing secrets to the US, Tehran has confirmed, less than a year after emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server were released apparently referencing Shahram Amiri as “our friend.”

Amiri had once claimed to be abducted by the CIA, but emails on the Clinton email server released last summer seemed to have confirmed what US officials had been saying at the time: Amiri helped the United States learn about Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities but then had second thoughts.

Amiri went missing in 2009 after going on religious pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. He emerged in the United States in 2010 and eventually had gone to Iran’s special interest section at the Pakistan embassy seeking help to get back Iran.

In one email exchange dated in July 2010, Clinton’s lead foreign affairs advisor, Jake Sullivan, flagged Clinton to unwanted media attention regarding Amiri’s desire to go back.

“The gentleman you have talked to Bill Burns about has apparently gone to his country’s interests section because he is unhappy with how much time it has taken to facilitate his departure,” Sullivan wrote. “This could lead to problematic news stories in the next 24 hours. Will keep you posted.”

A day after the email exchange, Clinton made a public statement July 13, 2010, that Amiri was under no pressure. “He’s free to go. He was free to come. Those decisions are his alone to make.”

The emails were part of some 30,000 released by the State Department.

In other words, the Republicans are dead sure that they've got Clinton cold here.  You know, just like Benghazi!

Right?

The October Suprise This Year Is That There Is None

If Julian Assange has been hand-delivered evidence from Putin and Russian intelligence that will "put Hillary Clinton away" the fear now is that he's waiting until the last two weeks of the election to use it to bury her and assure a Trump victory. I don't buy it at all and think it's hogwash, especially since all the DNC leaks have done so far is gotten rid of the bad apples in the DNC and has done the Democrats a favor. The larger point is given so much evidence that Russia is behind this, what can the Obama administration actually do?

The administration insists it has improved its ability to respond quickly to cyberattacks, and officials increasingly say they support publicly calling out foreign nations that hack the United States. One administration official noted that it took just five weeks for President Barack Obama to impose economic sanctions against North Korea in response to the destructive late-2014 hacking of Sony Pictures.

Yet current and former officials acknowledge that constructing a public response isn't an instant task. Merely preparing a declassified explanation of who perpetrated an attack or readying economic sanctions takes weeks. Bringing criminal charges — as the Justice Department has done with state-backed hacking suspects in Iran and China — can require years.

And the U.S. has never leveled any official public reprisal for hacking by Russia, despite years of evidence that hackers linked to Vladimir Putin’s regime have carried out intrusions of the White House, State Department and Pentagon.

Obama himself preached caution at a news conference this week. Imposing penalties, he said, “requires us to really be able to pin down and know what we’re talking about.”

The prospect of a lengthy wait is unnerving for Clinton supporters, who see potential repeats of last month’s mass release of Democratic National Committee emails as one of a handful of unpredictable curveballs that could still toss the White House to Donald Trump. Democrats have charged that the website WikiLeaks dumped the emails as part of a Russian effort to aid Trump, who has praised Putin and expressed doubts about U.S. commitments to allies in Eastern Europe.

Russia has denied having anything to do with the DNC hacks or a separate breach aimed at donors to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But if the U.S. concludes that Putin’s regime is to blame, a growing chorus of security hawks says the White House must make it clear that such meddling in the U.S. political system cannot stand.

“If in fact you could definitively or strongly develop a case for attribution against Russia, that in fact the Russians should be confronted with it and we should confront them publicly with it,” former Obama administration National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said Thursday during a POLITICO Playbook breakfast.

“I don’t think countries are paying a price for this kind of activities,” Stephen Hadley, who held the same post under George W. Bush, said at the same event.

Calls for action have also come from several congressional Democrats and Republicans who serve on defense, law enforcement or intelligence committees, as well as a bipartisan group of 31 security and counterterrorism experts who urged Obama to “take prompt actions” that would “deter foreign actors from pursuing such tactics in the future.”

“This is not a partisan issue,” wrote the experts from the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group, who included Bush Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and former CIA directors Michael Hayden and William Webster. They added: “Our president should be chosen by American citizens, not by foreign adversaries or interests.”

The prospect of Trump winning with Russian help has even gotten Republicans scared enough to back the Obama administration on this. That to me says everything, that there is actually somebody they hate more than Obama and Clinton: Putin and Trump.

Sunday Long Read: Unraveling The Sweater

Vanity Fair's Mark Seal takes a look at the case against Bill Cosby, and the sexual assault charges from 2004 that ended up opening the floodgate and strengthened the push to extend statute of limitations laws on sexual assault crimes.

It began with a young woman screaming in her sleep.

Andrea Constand, then 31, had left her job as director of operations of the women’s basketball team at Temple University, in Philadelphia, to return home outside of Toronto to live with her parents. She planned to begin studies to become a massage therapist. Six feet tall, her red hair a mass of curls, she was, her father would say, “the most truthful, honest, and faithful kid I’ve ever met.” Her prowess on the basketball court had attracted scholarship offers from dozens of colleges, and later she played professionally in Sicily before finding a job at Temple University, the alma mater of Bill Cosby. But when she returned home her upbeat personality had dimmed into darkness. She suffered from nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, sleeplessness, and depression, and she isolated herself from her friends and her family.

When her mother, Gianna, asked her what was wrong, Andrea wouldn’t answer. Then, on January 12, 2005, after experiencing a “flashback,” she told her mother that Bill Cosby had sexually assaulted her. Cosby had been attracted to Andrea the first time he saw her, at a Temple basketball game. “Before he acted upon that interest, he needed to develop a friendship with her,” according to a police affidavit. He courted her with his stardom, power, and influence, inviting her to dinners with academics and entertainment-industry professionals, and offering her fatherly advice about her life and career plans. She had no romantic interest in the television star, 36 years her senior, and she has said she twice rebuffed what she called his embarrassing sexual advances, once when he unbuttoned her pants and began touching her. Still, she trusted him, so when he called in January 2004, offering to discuss her life and career and telling her that they would be alone and to “dress in comfortable clothing,” she accepted.

Arriving at 8:45 P.M. at his sprawling home on five lush acres in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, one of his three residences (the other two are in rural Massachusetts and Los Angeles), “she came in through the kitchen door,” Cosby would later say. She told him that she was considering changing jobs, leaving her demanding position at Temple, and that making the decision had drained her. After pouring her a glass of wine, she said, Cosby went upstairs and returned with what he called “three friends,” three blue pills which, he said, “will make you feel good. The blue things will take the edge off.”

Constand asked if they were herbal.

“Yes,” said Cosby, according to her account. “Down them. Put them down. Put them in your mouth.”

She did. He urged her to taste the wine, but she protested that she hadn’t eaten all day. “Just taste the wine,” he pressed.

So she did. They continued to talk, but after 20 or 30 minutes her vision blurred, and she found it difficult to speak.

“I can’t even talk, Mr. Cosby,” she told him.

Her legs were “rubbery and like jelly.” She had lost any sense of place and time, was “in and out” of awareness, “frozen” and “paralyzed.” “Everything was blurry and dizzy,” she told the police. “I couldn’t keep my eyes open.”

Cosby said he was going to lay her down on the couch. “I’m going to let you relax,” he said, leading her to the couch. Suddenly, she felt him behind her. “I was aware that his hands were on my breasts,” she said. “His hands were in my pants and his fingers in my vagina . . . . I also remember him taking my right hand and placing my hand on his penis . . . . I was unable to move my body. I was pretty much frozen.”

Seal does a pretty good job here exploring the case, the history, the stories of the women who came forward, and the difficulty in proving assault in a courtroom.  I can understand people being uncomfortable reading it, but it's something that I believe you should do.

The Economy Is Too Good Apparently

Because Ben White at Politico is making the case that July's awesome job numbers will doom the Clinton campaign.

Friday’s surprisingly strong jobs numbers could carry an unwelcome September surprise for Hillary Clinton, courtesy of Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve.

The July employment report showed a gain of 255,000 jobs, outstripping analysts' forecasts and offering a short-term boost to the Democratic nominee’s presidential hopes after a dismal reading last month on economic growth.

But it also raises the politically dangerous prospect that the Fed could boost interest rates in September, in the heart of the campaign. That could spook markets, slow already tepid growth and complicate Clinton’s path to the White House.

“No question this jobs report along with June has raised the likelihood of a September rate hike,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS. “If the next jobs report right before the Fed’s September meeting is also very strong, I would pull the trigger and say they are going to move in September.”

Though they will never say it publicly, Fed governors generally try to avoid inserting themselves into the heart of political campaigns with major policy decisions. That consideration has many economists assuming the central bank will wait until December to raise rates again. The Fed hiked rates by a quarter point in December of last year, the first increase in nearly a decade.

But if jobs and wage growth continue to climb, and the unemployment rate falls below what the central bank considers full employment, Yellen and her colleagues may decide they have no choice but to move in September to avoid falling behind inflation. Rates remain extraordinarily low and the central bank is eager to return to a more normal footing. It is far easier for central bankers to snuff out inflation before it starts then to fight it once it takes hold.

The decision in September could be an excruciating one both for the Fed and the Clinton campaign. “Every central banker worth their salt will tell you politics means nothing in their decisions. But in fact they would like to avoid moving so close to the election,” said David Page, senior economist at AXA Investment Managers. “If the August number comes in somewhere around 280,000 jobs, it could become quite awkward for the Fed.”

If we're producing too many jobs then the Fed will have to step in and raise rates, hurt the markets, slow down growth, and the Trump wins or something.

This is an argument that someone was paid to make.

Sure.  The economy is always going to hurt Democrats.

Deadbeat Newt

I guess if your political career is already over, and has been for years, it's okay if you decide to welsh on you campaign debt (if you're a Republican, that is.)

Newt Gingrich apparently has no plans to pay back dozens of small businesses that made yard signs and TV ads for his 2012 presidential campaign.

Gingrich filed a document with the Federal Election Commission this week detailing a debt settlement plan to finally terminate his 2012 presidential campaign committee. The document shows that “Newt 2012” plans to stiff 114 businesses and consultants that are altogether owed $4.6 million.

The former House speaker, failed presidential candidate and Donald Trump vice president runner-up was forced to file the debt settlement plan with the FEC as part of its alternative dispute resolution process. Gingrich was the subject of a complaint alleging that his campaign had illegally commingled campaign funds with corporate funds from a company controlled by Gingrich and his wife Callista.

While the FEC general counsel found reason to believe the allegations in the complaint, the six commissioners split along ideological lines in a 3-3 vote, it did not penalize Gingrich. Instead, the campaign agreed to file a debt settlement plan and terminate in 2016. The plan was originally due on May 23, but Gingrich was granted an extension until August 1.

The debt settlement plan document indicates the “total amount to be paid to creditors” is zero dollars.

Gingrich did not respond to a request for comment made through two spokespeople.

So that's how Republicans really feel about America's small businesses. Hoocoodanode, right?

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.

Last Call For The Real Trumpies

The NY Times collected the unfiltered comments and voices of Trump supporters to hear what they had to say, and what they had to say should scare the living daylights out of you.  Needless to say, this is extremely NSFW language used here.



 

These folks are pretty awful.  And these folks will definitely vote in November.

The View From Detroit And Derry

Donald Trump hasn't been doing the GOP brand any favors in Michigan, where GOP Gov. Rick Snyder still hasn't lifted a finger as far as a real solution to the ongoing Flint water crisis, and a new Detroit News/WDIV-TV poll shows Hillary Clinton with a 9-point lead in the Wolverine State.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has widened her lead over Republican Donald Trump in Michigan as 3-in-5 likely voters say the New York businessman is not qualified to be president, according to a new poll conducted for The Detroit News and WDIV-TV. 

Clinton led Trump 41 percent to 32 percent in the statewide survey of 600 likely voters conducted Saturday through Monday following Clinton’s formal nomination at last week’s Democratic National Convention. 

The poll contains many troubling signs for Trump’s White House campaign, including a “shocking” lead for Clinton in the Republican strongholds of west and southwest Michigan, pollster Richard Czuba said. 

Sixty-one percent of likely general election voters said Trump is ill-prepared to be the nation’s commander-in-chief. The figure grows to 67 percent among women, a group with whom Trump performs poorly. Clinton has a commanding 21-percentage-point lead among female voters. 

“He’s sitting in the cellar right now, and they’re going to have to do something to dramatically turn this around,” said Czuba, president of the Glengariff Group Inc. polling firm. “If I were a Republican running on this ticket right now, I’d be beyond nervous.”

If Trump is losing in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, he's done.  That would be the equivalent in Ohio of Trump losing in Cincinnati's northern suburbs or here in northern KY.  Most of all, the realization is setting in among Michigan Republicans that Trump is going to drag them to hell along with him.

Some 61% of Michiganders find Trump unqalified for the White House, while 57% find Clinton fit for the job..  Still, there's more than a quarter of voters in the state either still undecided or otherwise not voting for either Trump or Clinton, so there's still ground to be made up.

Still, these numbers are initially good for Clinton.  Trump isn't nearly as competitive in Rust Belt states as people seem so think he is.

And here's the rub: coming off the conventions, Clinton is doing even better in New Hampshire.

Hillary Clinton has opened up a 15-point advantage over Donald Trump in the battleground state of New Hampshire, according to the results of the latest WBUR poll released Thursday, which also found the state’s Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan with a double-digit lead over incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte. 

The survey, conducted in the days immediately following the Democratic National Convention, found Clinton with 47 percent support among likely voters. Trump has the backing of 32 percent of voters, while Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson finished a distant third with 8 percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein took 3 percent. Another 2 percent indicated support for another candidate, while 7 percent did not know or refused to answer. 

Clinton held a much narrower two-point edge over Trump in a WMUR/University of New Hampshire poll taken before the convention. National polls taken after both conventions showed Clinton erasing any bounce Trump gained from the previous week when he briefly surged following the Republican National Convention.

Maggie Hassan is up by 10 over Kelly "The Third Amigo" Ayotte too.  Maybe America isn't as screwed as we thought.