Unkindest Cuts

Pennsylvania goes for Trump.
Yikes.
Who saw that coming?
Michigan, Wisconsin. 
Who saw that coming?
Florida, North Carolina, Ohio: okay, knew those would be close. 

Make America White Again.
Make America Hate Again.

Fact is, this is still the country we have.  This is who we are. Whites are still the majority and they are here to tell you, they are still in charge, not some coalition of Hispanics, Blacks and hippy Whites.

One third of Hispanic males voted for Trump.
"Hispanics love me," he said. Guess he was right.

What will this Brave New World be like?
Actually, one might expect it to be like the sad old world, when Whites ruled, the America of the 1950's. Except those factory workers going off to work in the morning, to their union jobs, while their wives stayed home to raise the kids--not gonna bring that back. Ozzie and Harriet are both working now. The factory jobs belong to robots, not White men with high school educations.

The Cleavers lived in a world of segregated schools and bathrooms, of considerably less wealth than people have come to expect. 

I can think of every face I have seen, screwed up in rage, ignorant, angry faces belonging to people determined to vote for Trump. 

Close those borders to Muslims and refugees. Build the wall. 
Are we great again yet?
Remember that Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. 

Case Studies: Election Day

Talking to people on Election Day is fraught with concern about starting an unpleasant conversation, so we are careful not to ask how others voted, but that doesn't mean we're not interested to know.


Of course, we all are looking for an indication of how the election will turn out from sampling the few people we can sample, as if one or even 10 people can tell you how millions are voting.
On the other hand, as they say in medicine, sometimes a single careful case study can tell you more than a study of a thousand patients who you do not know much about.
Just now I spoke with a man who is very rich, well educated, lives in North Hampton, flies his own airplane and he said, "Well, some people you just have to keep down." Of course, I immediately assumed he was talking about the raucous crowds we see frothing at Trump rallies. But then he said, "I worked at a construction site once. Those union guys tried to run me out of town because I wouldn't join the union."
So, I assume, he's voting for Trump because Trump will know how to keep those union guys down.
Of course, the union guys will vote for Trump because he's convinced them he'll bring back those great factory jobs once he's renegotiated all those terrible, horrible, no good trade deals.
So Hillary loses from both ends. The union guys hate her because she is single handedly responsible for all the bad trade deals going back to NAFTA. And the rich guys hate her because she supports the working man and his unions.

Children Listening to Trump

A little late, but finally and good.
This ad should have been running daily for weeks.
But it is finally out there, if anyone is watching at this point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrX3Ql31URA

The Big Lie: A Simple Truth in Philadelphia

Watching a reporter interviewing a Black man in Philadelphia yesterday, I was stunned and delighted to hear this guy say, "Well, they think if they just say the biggest lie they can think of over and over, if they say it often enough, they get people to believe it." 
This guy sounded like Rocky Balboa, but, being Black, he didn't look a whole lot like Rocky.

The reporter was doing a story about Republican claims of voter fraud in Philadelphia, where in some districts (of a few hundred people) not a single vote was cast for Romney over Obama in the last election. The Republican claim was that zero vote was ipso facto proof of Democratic voter fraud and rigged elections. But a Republican member of the Philadelphia election commission later went by the district, interviewing everyone he could and he could not find a single Romney voter, and he concluded--nobody in this entirely Black twelve block area had voted for anyone but Obama. 

There were in fact similar zero vote for Obama districts in Utah where not a single vote was cast for Obama, but somehow the Republicans never claimed that was ipso facto proof of a rigged election in Utah.
Fact is, who would bother to rig an election in Utah or Philadelphia, where the opposition is not a factor? You want to rig an election, go rig it where the outcome is in doubt.

And none of these districts is large enough to matter much in the grand total.

The current big lie is Hillary is a criminal and belongs in prison.
That's the big lie Hillary has not answered, failing to learn what her husband learned--when they start trumpeting the big lie, you have to get out there with a brass band and blow hard against it.

The effect of not calling Trump out on the lie--Just exactly what is the crime I've committed? And he replies, "Oh, so many." And she retorts, "Well, you don't go to jail for oh so many. You actually have to had done something real and specific, little Donald. That's what's called 'justice.' But we wouldn't expect you to know about that. Of course,my major crime is calling you out. Mr. Trump U fraudster."
And all like that. 
But as Donald's idol once observed: Lie Big. It's harder to debase a big lie than a small one.

The Rat's Nest At the FBI

Eliot Ness

Two sources told Reuters that investigators in the FBI’s New York field office are “known to be hostile” to Clinton. On Thursday, The Guardian reported its sources described the FBI as a “Trumpland,” where agents have “deep antipathy” toward Clinton

The FBI has come a long way since Eliot Ness and the heroes of TV and film. I used to have FBI agents as patients when I practiced in Washington, DC and they struck me as being, for the most part, bored bureaucrats. They tended to be less explosive personalities than my policemen; if anything, they seemed a little dull, sort of Joe Friday detective types, if you remember "Dragnet, " world weary, a bit ground down.

More recently, the agents I've met are younger, often ex military, looking for adventure, guys who like to hang out at bars and tell war stories for the amusement of any females who might be impressed.

Now, we have the Huffington Post telling the tale of restlessness in the ranks, lower level agents who threatened to call Fox News if the innuendo story about Hillary Clinton was not released.

Hot Dog TV FBI: The hero of the new young Turks

"And there's more to come before the election," Rudolph Guliani, who has FBI connections, assures us.

So, we've come to this. The secret police, the Gestapo, intent on damaging a political rival to their own choice. 

Yikes!

Is this still America? Or is this Amerika?

Ground Game vs Air Attack

When I was a kid,  football was my favorite game. I was too little to play running back or fullback, but was fast enough to play receiver.


There were the coaches, adults, authorities, at my schools who would say, "When you throw the ball, three things can happen and two of them are bad."
I knew I would never play for them. All they would do was run the ball, usually up the middle.
Of course, when coaches arrived who knew how to use the passing game, those dinosaurs who did not believe in passing were quickly forgotten.  They simply were mired in old thinking and in sports, you have a final score. You win or you lose, so you can judge the truth of certain propositions.


Politics is like that now.  There are those in the know who claim the ground game will serve to propel Hillary Clinton to the Presidency.

I hope they are right, but I suspect they are like those old time coaches who just didn't have enough imagination, even nerve, enough willingness to risk.


I have been doing "ground game" for Hillary, canvassing, and I'm here to tell you: It looks pretty ineffective to me.

On a good day, we go to 40 doors and only 5 or 6 will even answer the knock or the ring. Most people at home on a weekend are annoyed, not inspired by a visit from a canvasser. Those who do answer saw our Hillary pins and answered because they are voting for her and it's like a group hug. About half, which is to say 3 or 4, are not going to vote for Hillary and try to end the conversation as quickly as possible.


We do not persuade anybody to vote for Hillary who would have voted for Trump.
Even if we did and even if you multiply the number of people we persuade by the total number of canvassers, we have changed only, at best, 100 minds, and God only knows how many of those will actually act on their new found embrace of Hillary and vote. How many later talk to their husbands who say, "What? Don't you know Hillary is a Crook?!" and so the visit changed nothing in the end vote.


There is a second reason to canvass: to be sure people actually go vote. Again, I can't see any data which shows a visit from a person they did not know, even if that person is a neighbor, really gets that voter to the polls.  I'd love to see a study showing comparisons of comparable neighborhoods where one was canvassed and one not and the outcome of how many voted from each. Of course, what you really want to know is how many voted the way you wanted them to vote.


I'd love to believe Politico and all the conventional academics who think people power can overcome the loud voice on the TV and the air game of a Donald Trump.


Having labored in the trenches, however, I don't believe the ground game makes a difference.

Hillary Haters: Invasion of the Brain Snatchers

They seem quite normal. Talk to them about the weather, the price of gas, how Winnacunnet High School's football season is going, about the drought and how it has killed all the lawns in town, and they seem quite normal.
But mention Hillary's name, and it happens.
It's like pressing on the abdomen of someone with appendicitis and they hit the chandelier.
It's like one of those horror movies where that lovely housewife next door who brings you a fruitcake suddenly opens her mouth to reveal dagger shaped incisors dripping with blood and her eyes turn red and she emits a roar like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The monster within explodes out.

"She should not even be allowed to run. She belongs in jail. She is the most corrupt person to ever run for office."

And, stepping back a step or two, if you don't fly from the room, you ask, "Well, but how do you know all this?

If they can site a source--like the wikileaks conversations between Podesta and Mook or whatnot--they have no real idea of where those came from or what they actually mean . They mean what the monster thinks they should mean.  They mean what Rush and Sean say they mean.
And they are just so certain. As Bertrand Russell observed: The trouble with life is the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubts.
Their opinions are more than baked in. Their opinions are etched in stone.

Oh, she is just so corrupt. Very, very corrupt. (Mr. Trump has such good words.)
And they get pretty upset if you pursue, patiently, well how do you know. Oh, you heard it from him? Oh, you read it there. And how does he know? And how did it get there? That really sets them off. You are questioning their deeply held belief. If they cannot be sure of what they are most sure of, what can they be sure of?

It's not Hillary, the most examined person in public life, whose unleashed this horror.
It's the invasion of the brain snatchers. They are all around us.