Trump talks like my grandma, who has advanced dementia.

RIP Sen. Slade (aka Slippery Slade).
He did save the Mariners, after all.
Although as bad as they have been the last decade or so, you gotta wonder.

@1
The only thing Trump is capable of saving is QAnon.

It's been pretty obvious for a while now that Trump's accusations and insults are nothing but projection. Crooked Hilary? No surprise, Trump is crooked. Biden isn't all there? That's Trump. So Democrats are running a satanic pedophile ring? Gee, Trump was close to Epstein!

I saw Slade Gorton walking off the ferry at Clinton on Whidbey Island. Must have been almost 20 years ago. Just there he was, Slade Gorton, a disembarking walk on passenger wearing a backpack.

Still resentful about something he'd done as a senator, I briefly considered flipping him off but he noticed me looking and waved. I was glad I hadn't been so graceless.

The GOPnazi base of Despicables have always been spiteful, glassy-eyed, tongue-talking, snake-handling, lunatic morons.

I can’t even fathom how broken, rabid, and deranged they must be to believe that QAsshole hogslop, especially considering that their messiah Prezinazi AntiChrist is a lifelong sexual predator and a rapist that was thick as thieves with Jeffrey Epstein, but no matter how repulsive and loathsome they’ve become, these lumpenproletariot trash always find a way to go lower in the social media sewers.

I can't even imagine how stupid a person would be to think a journalist would be prohibited from writing about a public park. Good for Chase for publicly calling them out on their bullshit. How utterly embarrassied they must be.

I'm actually at a point where I like hearing our idiot president talk. It's funny. He's almost like monty python stupid. I laugh a lot whenever he says anything. And it's ineptitude laughing. Like, he can't even put his pants on in the morning. But it's funny. I really honestly laugh a lot at anything he says.

God this country is in the shitter.

Biden / Harris 2020!!!! Time to end the TRUMPVID-19 pandemic. Death to the GOP.

And Hooray that Elliott Bay Books is open!!

From today's NYT:

“This president and those in power — those who benefit from keeping things the way they are — they are counting on your cynicism,” Mr. Obama said, addressing voters. “They know they can’t win you over with their policies. So they’re hoping to make it as hard as possible for you to vote, and to convince you that your vote doesn’t matter. That’s how they win.”

Mr. Obama has largely held his fire for three and a half years as Mr. Trump has gone after him relentlessly with fierce attacks and baseless smears.

And the former president has mostly stayed out of American politics, other than occasionally offering advice and endorsements to Democratic candidates. Many supporters have long wished that he would speak out against Mr. Trump; on Wednesday he did, focusing chiefly on the Republican’s approach to the pandemic, leadership and democracy.

More at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/us/politics/democratic-national-convention-recap.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage&login=smartlock&auth=login-smartlock

Slade Gorton did his best to keep a viable Republican Party in W Washington, but the task was overwhelming.
We see the results of his ineffectiveness when a failed small-town Sheriff, wracked by scandal, from the most impoverished county in the State, gets the nod to run for Governor.

Well, to be fair to the Q-Anon idiots, there IS a vast conspiracy headed by a sex offender and including lots of the global elite that is trying to control the government and destroy our institutions. They are just a little misinformed about who it actually is.

@9,

I think it's funny as shit too. When that Sarah Cooper video of him breaking down his cognitive test first went viral I kept seeing it posted random places and watching it. I didn't even think it was the funniest one of these type of videos, but it's certainly entertaining and well done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8oaaP68i4s

Then a few days ago she was guest hosting an episode of Jimmy Kimmell and they were using it as a promo video and I inadvertently wound up watching it like 3 more times over a couple hours. Took my dog out for a walk later that evening and I swear I had the "person woman man camera TV" refrain stuck in my head the way you get like a catchy pop song chorus or melodic guitar riff in there. I think it was actually oddly soothing.

Why would anyone be surprised that Trump would refuse to denounce the idiot Q people? He wouldn't denounce David "Grand Wizard of the KKK" Duke, nor the Nazis that murdered Heather Heyer. Can the bar be set any lower?

huh!
trumpf'll Bury that bar

Senator Slade Gorton was (un)affectionately known in the '80s as "Senator Skeletor" both for his uncanny resemblance, and for his support for Reagan administration policies which would make the "real" Skeletor cackle.

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

Reagan Republicans, for the youngsters among us, began the project to dismantle US government institutions and infrastructure unless it was profit-driven (insidiously naming their movement "conservatism" to activate the emotions of selfish voters who identified with the mythical "heartland"). They were hardly better than those we have today; just a little more polite about it.

The added tragedy is that the Democratic administrations that followed the Reagan years didn't push back to correct the course of "conservatism" when they had the chance (thanks, Clinton), but accepted the right-wing rhetorical framing, and so drew both parties ever further to the right.

Morning In America -> The Third Way -> Contract With America -> Tea Party -> and now here we are in Nazitown. Vote.

Some tragedy, Clinton was decisively reelected in 1996 mostly by democrats who applauded his Reaganesque policies that helped facilitate the tech boom. The democratic party changed, for the better.

@17 The Democratic Party of the mid 20th century had been built around organized labor. But as the economy de-industrialized, Labor's power declined as a consequence. Clinton's coalition was a rational response to conditions - peel off educated professionals (a traditionally Republican constituency) alienated by the growing influence of the bible thumpers.

This process continues to this day - every election, GOP share of college educated voters declines, replaced by a smaller number of whites without. And while there's fewer of them, they are more efficiently distributed for purposes of electoral control under our ramshackle constitution.

The current generation of Democratic bigshots are too old and too set in their ways to find an escape from this trap. Probably. Certainly the way they ran the recent convention indicates an unshaken faith in the Clinton coalition. But its success will hinge on black turnout - for all the talk about Obama to Trump voters in 2016, they were only decisive because of the Obama to Stay Home voters - a larger group by orders of magnitude.

@ 20,

You’d think that in light of #MeToo, they’d have enough sense not to stick Slick Willie in our faces.

@21 He really does seem like a relic. But I found all the Republicans on Monday more obnoxious. Meg Whitman ffs.

Do you think Trump even knows anything about QAnon? My guess is he just knows they like him and is not curious or smart enough to seek any other info. He talks about them the way he does about the white supremacists, the boaters, the bikers, etc- no evidence that he knows a thing about the conspiracy theory nor cares.

@20 This is accurate. Setting aside the obvious criticism that long term their current voter base will die out and they are actively alienating younger people (who are also less and less likely to make up that professional class base), there are a few problems I see with this strategy short term. The first is that they have always bolstered that professional class base with people who must vote for Dems due to cultural reasons- namely people who aren't white and must vote against Republicans as well as pro-choice women. You talk about black voters and I agree with you - they will continue to vote Dem of course but whether or not they do so in large enough numbers (or stay home) is key. But black people are not the majority of non-white people, hispanic people are. And for some bizarre reason, the DNC doesn't seem to realize how many of them hate Biden, especially in the SW and especially where Obama escalated ICE raids and detentions. Plus many of them are conservative, especially those who have been here a few generations or who vote strictly on abortion. Biden has done nothing at all to reach out to this group- it's a massive blind spot. Then there are a sizeable minority of Asians who are becoming increasingly conservative but I don't think that's a big enough bloc to make a difference now.

Second, the Dems are actively pursuing Rep voters who dislike Trump, but in doing so they are alienating many people in their own base. It's an alignment shift beyond the one brought in by in by Clinton's third way strategy that you accurately describe. They are now actively courting people who supported the Bush admin and parading about their support of neocons even giving some of them slots at the convention and accepting GOP superPACs.

So the question is, will the votes they gain from this strategy outweigh the votes they lose? My own guess is that it will not. I think it's appearing more and more likely that they are setting themselves up for another defeat. Of course, the most likely scenario is that it will be very close and shrouded in controversy, perhaps even not a clear winner.

Regardless, even if they pull it off, this is the last hoorah for that particular coalition.

Which brings me to my own theory that the Democrats- the mainstream figures in their party which we can call "corporate funded" or the "Clinton/Obama coalition" or whatever you like- that these people don't see winning as their first priority. They need to stay relevant enough to maintain control over their own party and funding apparatus and also to block out any internal forces that might take the party in a different direction. If they can win office this way as well, good, but if not, that's OK too so long as they personally stay in power. You can see evidence of this with the current sabotage of Morse as well as their support of McGrath over Booker (in fact, they blacklisted anyone who would work with Booker) and of course the attempts to primary Tlaib and Omar plus the coordinated drop outs during the primary to rally behind Biden.

Now I'm not saying that Booker or Bernie or Morse had more or less chance of winning as their corporate-backed opponents, only that winning these elections is not the first priority of the Dem party establishment. I honestly believe it doesn't matter to them if Biden wins or if they take the Senate so long as they stay close enough to power to claim they are an opposition party to maintain their own fundraising and lobbying networks. If they have any intention of actually doing anything, I have not seen evidence of it.

@23 I'd much rather see Biden win with a coalition of working people - and I mean the actual "working class" and not "white guys with high school diploma, an $80,000 pickup truck and a boat". But at the same time, I can understand the party's reluctance to go all in on these voters because you can't really count on them to show up at the polls. Not without the unions doing the work of turning out the vote. That, I think, is really what's missing: a comparable set of organizations.

@24: "I'd much rather see Biden win"

Good grief yes. It's almost as if EmmaLiz is hoping for a Biden loss to validate her cynicism.

@Raindrop, you took Alden's comment out of context by deleting the second half of the sentence. My criticism does not need validating beyond reality. It's not the reality that's in question but the motivations and/or strategies behind it. We all agree on how they are behaving. The questions are only A) why? and B) what will the outcome be? On the first measure, I have offered an analysis though I'm open to new ones. On the second measure, only time will tell. The only prediction I've made is that the election will be very close and probably contested. I personally see pros and cons about each possible outcome so a Biden loss or win will offer not offer me validation either way, though that was not the topic in the first place.

@Alden I dont disagree that the Dem party can't count on those voters to show up at the polls, but that's an effect of choices they've made in the past, not a permanent condition of society. We actually don't know what would have happened (or what would happen in the future) if they had a concerted effort to build a movement with these voters as the reality (which you outlined accurately) is that they actively moved away from them and are now realigning themselves- consciously and by design- with professional class voters in coalition with Republican suburbanites. This project started decades ago. It's worth noting that Bill Clinton won his first term because a third party took 20% of the vote in 1992. More recently, Johnson took 10% of the vote in some states. And Bernie - according to the primary- has about 35% of Dem votes. This on top of the fact that 50% of the country doesn't vote at all. So there's very clear discontent with both parties and we actually don't know what the country would look like if a major party were to spend the time/effort embracing positions that were not beholden to corporate interests as that has never happened before. The question is why, and it's a cause/effect mix up to say the answer is that coalition doesnt show up when there have been so few (and relatively recent) efforts to build it, at least in the last 50 years.

But even given the case of immediate need, I must again point out that the strategy Biden is trying now failed last time. It was close, so it might work this time or it might be a repeat of last time. Regardless though, it failed last time and the Democrats for some bizarre ass reason that baffles me, are not even attempting to improve upon it. Like yet again, Biden is not campaigning in key states. He's doing nada to outreach to the Latino vote- nothing at all. He didn't even pick a running mate from a swing state or that could increase the black southern turnout. It's shocking actually- that's what leaves me to wonder if they really even want to win? They're literally just campaigning on "not Trump" with no attempt at anything else. So I'm not saying they should try a radically new approach (they rejected that possibility before Super Tuesday). I'm just wondering why they aren't even trying WITHIN their realligned coalition to win?

Be real about what will happen if Biden wins. Republicans are going to suddenly become fiscally conservative and won't vote for anything that isn't a Marine Corps recruiting office. Then they will shit all over Joe and blame him for the full 1/2 million dead Americans (we can do it keep them masks off) and 1/3 of the country will believe them. Probably a lot of socialism talk too.

If Donald wins shit will get worse (unless you own 3 yachts) and the Presidents will be on tv telling us how great a job he's doing. He'll probably use the Social security fund to buy a samurai sword collection.