A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

That's what makes this so amazing. That's absolutely what they need to do, but they can't. They have to resign themselves to watching him desperately flail around on stage and make everything worse and their best hope is getting started on planning the damage control early.

Tom Guycot posted:

Even in the weird situation where the GOP requested an extension (never mind the laws in place regarding the date), why on earth should the democrats agree? "Preserving the Republic" my rear end, a bunch of racist, mysoginist idiots made their bed and they should have to sleep in it. They shouldn't get to claim a do over because they don't like how its going.

Antti posted:

As to what Hillary is doing right now, she's preparing furiously, of course.

Ego-bot posted:

Plus Trump still has Secret Service protection, any GOP goons physically trying to stop Trump would be arrested or worse.

Geostomp posted:

Exactly. Trump shows that even now, you can be a total incompetent fool with no redeeming qualities, but still get dangerously close to the presidency so long as you tap into the white rage of the electorate and decades of smear campaigns against your opponent. That is what should be terrifying.

Tom Guycot posted:

Even in the weird situation where the GOP requested an extension (never mind the laws in place regarding the date), why on earth should the democrats agree? "Preserving the Republic" my rear end, a bunch of racist, mysoginist idiots made their bed and they should have to sleep in it. They shouldn't get to claim a do over because they don't like how its going.

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

Also, I just noticed I failed to purge one of the Trots I knew in college from Facebook. She's still furiously defending Trump and claiming Hillary is the one who's really anti-woman. It will never stop being bizarre seeing supposed socialists defend Trump, doubly so when it's a woman.

foobardog posted:

This too, honestly. In an area where my expectations for what Americans would accept from their candidates was subterranean, we've moved through the Earth and come out on the other side in Wonderland.

Maybe Obama was right, the waters have begun receding, but it's revealing all the alligators we thought were no longer in the swamp.

WeAreTheRomans posted:

what kind of fuckedup bizarro Trots did you associate with

Eschers Basement posted:

Jesus Christ, people, it's The Igrab-Cuntra Affair, keep it straight

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

It was just the campus socialist organization at the college I went to, I swear they weren't this insane back in like '08. It's like this election collectively broke them.

SpaceDrake posted:

As much as I know a lot of people in this thread will be relieved that Clinton is going to sail into the White House with a comfortable win and possibly working majorities in both houses of Congress, America having only one real functional political party is a dangerous position for the country to be in.

WeAreTheRomans posted:

what kind of fuckedup bizarro Trots did you associate with

Banana Man posted:

Wait so has more things happened since he said the thing about grabbing women? This poo poo is moving too fast for me

Bushiz posted:

What do you suppose Hillary has been doing for the last twelve hours.

Like in my head I have a picture of her in a mud bath with cucumber slices over her eyes listening to beethoven and an aide walks in and shows her the front page of the NYDN and she just flatly says "good" and goes back to her mud bath.

SpaceDrake posted:

Somehow I'd forgotten about the SS guys assigned to Trump, and I blame the nap I just woke up from. My god, he's actually going to be allowed on camera on Sunday if he wishes.

I do suspect what little GOP leadership there still is will be looking for some way to disassociate him from the party and perhaps have him disqualified from the debate on Sunday on the grounds of him "not being a Republican", even though NBC will say "lol, no". In some form or another, it's pure damage control from here on out, and I suspect this weekend will see the GOP throwing Trump under the train.


This is also the wider point. The simple fact that Trump crushed all his primary challengers - Cruz is the only one who even came within real striking distance - needs to give us all pause. One of the parties in America's two-party system is essentially hostage to demagogues at this point, and perhaps can only operate on demagoguery right now. As much as I know a lot of people in this thread will be relieved that Clinton is going to sail into the White House with a comfortable win and possibly working majorities in both houses of Congress, America having only one real functional political party is a dangerous position for the country to be in.

If this isn't the darkest timeline, 2016 to 2020 need to be about either somehow "fixing" the GOP or facilitating some kind of functional replacement that isn't run by white-power demagoguery.

e:


The bolded was actually my point, if it didn't come across - even if the GOP wanted to ask for such, the sheer power of coming from the Democratic leadership would be intense enough to power the nation for days. They have no reason to be accommodating at this point. This is purely a bed the GOP made for itself.

(Though see above for my thoughts w/r/t more than one functioning party & more than one actual, electable candidate for President being important to the health of our government)

Banana Man posted:

Wait so has more things happened since he said the thing about grabbing women? This poo poo is moving too fast for me

VirtualStranger posted:

I honestly believe that the House is fully in play now.

Clinton is at 87% on the 538 now-cast and still rising rapidly, and most of that is just a result the 1st debate and its aftermath. The current poll numbers don't even take into account the past several days yet, let alone the clusterfuck that just happened in the past 12 hours.

The election is one month away, there are still two more debates for Trump to humiliate himself in, and Clinton campaign is going to dump all of the opposition research they've kept in reserve over the past year before election day hits.

If I remember correctly, the Dems need a 7 or 8 point popular vote victory in order to overcome gerrymandering and capture the House.

Nessus posted:

I keep seeing this as an aphorism.

Why? Is it more 'the GOP is deranged but still has power' or is there some concern that the Democrats will become mega wikkid, instead of fissioning after a period of liberal darkness.

negativeneil posted:

The Clinton camp kept their powder dry and held this tape through SO many negative media cycles. They managed to time it to nullify the Wikileaks drop, remove any moral high ground Donald might pretend to stand on in the next debate, and completely embarrass the Speaker of the House hours after he signed a bill protecting victims of sexual assault SIMULTANEOUSLY. That's maybe the best play I've ever seen in politics. Holy poo poo.

Ego-bot posted:

Bip Roberts posted:

It's not clear that this came from the Clinton campaign and it didn't directly come from them (in the sense of release and timing). They are spurring a lot of coverage from their opposition research but there are a ton of other people in on the feeding frenzy all by themselves.

negativeneil posted:

The Clinton camp kept their powder dry and held this tape through SO many negative media cycles. They managed to time it to nullify the Wikileaks drop, remove any moral high ground Donald might pretend to stand on in the next debate, and completely embarrass the Speaker of the House hours after he signed a bill protecting victims of sexual assault SIMULTANEOUSLY. That's maybe the best play I've ever seen in politics. Holy poo poo.

Crazy Ted posted:

She's been cackling like Mallory Archer and sipping on mixed drinks with her heels up on the desk in her main office.

I really think she understands at this point that a race against literally anybody else would have been anything from a to-the-last-day dogfight to a likely loss, and instead she gets put up against a candidate who pretty much started out by running for President ironically.

ErIog posted:

She should get a mandate from it.

WeAreTheRomans posted:

Downballot GOP is gonna jettison Trump like the saucer section of the Enterprise, and the rest of the month is going to be getting the message out about split-ticket voting

Nessus posted:

Yeah, like the saucer section, alright

Nessus posted:

Yeah, like the saucer section, alright

VirtualStranger posted:

I honestly believe that the House is fully in play now.

Clinton is at 87% on the 538 now-cast and still rising rapidly, and most of that is just a result the 1st debate and its aftermath. The current poll numbers don't even take into account the past several days yet, let alone the clusterfuck that just happened in the past 12 hours.

The election is one month away, there are still two more debates for Trump to humiliate himself in, and Clinton campaign is going to dump all of the opposition research they've kept in reserve over the past year before election day hits.

If I remember correctly, the Dems need a 7 or 8 point popular vote victory in order to overcome gerrymandering and capture the House.

Antti posted:

Apparently multiple outlets including Access Hollywood (?!), Fahrenthold at WaPo and MSNBC were working on the tape story simultaneously. Now it doesn't preclude the idea that some Clinton ally had their hands on the tape and pressed a button somewhere, but even so it means they couldn't have been able to perfectly orchestrate the timing.

While Clinton's done a very good campaign Trump is making it look so, so easy.

Play of the Election for me still goes to dropping Machado at the end of the debate. It was a little hamfisted but it was a smartbomb and Trump walked into the trap like Sideshow Bob into rakes.

quote:

Reporter David Fahrenthold got a phone call around 11 a.m. Friday from a source with a tip about Donald Trump. The source asked: Would Fahrenthold be interested in seeing some previously unaired video of Trump?

Fahrenthold didn’t hesitate. Within a few moments of watching an outtake of footage from a 2005 segment on “Access Hollywood,” the Washington Post reporter was on the phone, calling Trump’s campaign, “Access Hollywood” and NBC for reaction.

By 4 p.m., his story was causing shock waves.

The recording, of course, was of Trump’s vulgar comments about women as he rode on an “Access Hollywood” bus with the show’s then-host, Billy Bush. With Bush’s encouragement, and an open microphone recording him, Trump describes in crude terms his unsuccessful attempt to seduce a woman named Nancy and brags that his celebrity status enables him to grope women.

[Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005]

Fahrenthold’s story about the recording — which some observers said might deal a death blow to Trump’s presidential campaign — was the second major revelation, or “October surprise,” that came courtesy of an anonymous source. The New York Times last week revealed that Trump took a $916 million loss on his 1995 taxes, which could have relieved him from paying federal income taxes for as many as 18 years. The Times’ story was based on tax returns supplied by a source whose identity is unknown even to the Times.

Fahrenthold, a 16-year veteran of The Post, said he knows who pointed him to the “Access Hollywood” video, but he will not reveal the identity because he promised anonymity to his tipster. But like many readers, he said he was surprised and shocked by what he saw on the tape.

“It’s rare to find out something new about Donald Trump,” said Fahrenthold, who has produced scoops about Trump’s charitable foundation this year. “So much of his past and his history is well known.”

But this was new, he noted: “It’s not just, ‘Look at her; she’s a 10,’ the kind of thing he used to say on the ‘Howard Stern Show.’ It was more than that. He tells you about his behavior.”

As it happens, Fahrenthold was racing to produce his story in competition with “Access Hollywood” itself. The syndicated show, owned by NBC Universal, had found the Trump recording in its archives and was preparing its own story. NBC News, tipped by “Access Hollywood,” was also aware of the tape and was preparing a story, which it intended to broadcast after the entertainment show aired the recording. It was not clear, however, when “Access Hollywood” and NBC News were planning to go ahead with their stories.

Fahrenthold’s calls to NBC and “Access Hollywood” on Friday sped up their timetables. MSNBC reporter Katy Tur reported on the tape about seven minutes after The Post broke the story online.

Fahrenthold’s story proved to be the most concurrently viewed article in the history of The Post’s website; more than 100,000 people read it simultaneously at one point on Friday. The interest was so heavy that it briefly crashed the servers of the newspaper’s internal tracking system.

The recording’s profane language forced media organizations to decide whether to air it unexpurgated. CNN, among others, left several of Trump’s crude references intact, although it bleeped out an f-word. The Post used dashes to represent two profanities and one crude reference to female anatomy in the text but left Trump’s reference to “tits” uncensored. The newspaper did not bleep or dash out anything in the accompanying video’s audio and subtitles.

Post executive editor Marty Baron said the newspaper’s concerns about the story were “pretty simple. Was the video authentic, and was it relevant? There was never a question about the latter, and David Fahrenthold quickly verified the video’s authenticity.”

As for the recording’s language, he said, “We make our best judgments in weighing taste against clarity about what was said. I think we accomplished that in our approach.”

The story not only damaged Trump but also elicited intense criticism of Bush on social media. Bush, 44, a cousin of former president George W. Bush, is now a co-host of NBC’s “Today” show. Noting that “Today” has a huge following among women, some critics called for Bush’s resignation.

[Billy Bush was already polarizing. His lewd Donald Trump conversation makes things much worse.]

In a statement issued by NBC News late Friday, Bush said, “Obviously I’m embarrassed and ashamed. It’s no excuse, but this happened eleven years ago. I was younger, less mature, and acted foolishly in playing along. I’m very sorry.”

NBC News produces the “Today” show and oversees MSNBC. “Access Hollywood” is part of a separate division, NBC Entertainment.

NBC News declined to comment on Friday. People at the network said there has been no discussion yet about what, if any, discipline Bush may face.

NBC News also delayed action last year when media accounts revealed that lead anchor Brian Williams had told distorted accounts of his reporting on the Iraq War in 2003. (Williams was eventually forced to resign as anchor of “NBC Nightly News” and is now an anchor on MSNBC.)

A spokeswoman for “Access Hollywood” did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

The quick succession of events left several questions unanswered, among them: Why did a 2005 recording of Trump remain in the “Access Hollywood” archives for so long before becoming public? And what other damaging outtakes, if any, remain in the archives of NBC’s “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice,” the reality shows in which Trump starred?

In a statement, Trump did not deny the recording but called it “locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago.” He added, “Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course, not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”

JosefStalinator posted:

And maybe, if by SOME MIRACLE, the Democrats take the house. There's always the Senate filibuster. And Dems ain't getting 60 senate seats unless a bunch of Republican senators keel over before election day.