Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

[Mongrel]

I was saying boo-liani

[Thad]

I wish there were some reporters who would just damn the consequences and longterm access and just yell out "That's bullshit and you know it! Answer the question!" A good portion of why they get away with answers like that is being too scared to challenge the government or whoever because they might not get let in anymore so they can be lied to directly.

I feel like I am hearing "you didn't answer the question" more often than I used to.

I would suggest raising it to "You know, by not answering the question, you've still answered the question."

[Mongrel]

So is this missing Melania stuff getting genuinely weird for anyone else?

I suppose that it might be a yard too far to jump to the more extreme theories (i.e. any that claim she's dead), but I think it's very easily possible that some garden variety domestic violence was or is going on and that Trump beat her badly enough that she has to stay invisible for a few weeks.

[Lottel]

Sadly, if Trump came out and said Melania didnt come to a press conference due to a black eye from not listening to him or whatever, he'd probably get a big jump in the polls for however long until the next horrible thing he says and does.

I honestly think if the news came out he beat his wife, his fans would like him more and it's not like we'd be surprised or would like him less.

[François]

He could stagger out of the White House naked, covered in blood, holding a hatchet in one hand and Melania's head in the other, shouting "I DID IT! I KILLED HER!", and immediately there'd be a panel of shitheads on Fox going "bitch had it coming".

[hngkong]

It's astounding how quickly his awful behavior has made his supporters being openly awful and bigoted acceptable. I was in DC last night and I heard a couple start talking about "those dumb n-words" out loud and with no shame. I've been scared in the past about things in this country, but open (and loud) racism in the middle of DC terrifies me about what is still coming at this rate...

[mharr]

It's all been bubbling away waiting for an excuse to break out for years. I feel like this random anarcho-socialist guy put it best:

America had this bad red, swelling lump that was itching during the Bush years.

Then we went to Dr. Obama and he gave us some Neoliberol and we felt a lot better, a few of us tried to point out it was a placebo, the lump was obviously still growing, but the Left insisted on going to Dr. Hillary to renew the prescription.

In 2016, that shit broke open, leaked pus everywhere and turned out to be cancer.

It wasn't the election that broke us. We were already sick.

Code: Select all

The red swelling isn't actually conservatives, exactly. It's abuse.

The way I see it, the Left in this country is stuck in a text book abusive relationship with the Right.

The Right's whole platform has become about the legitimization about various forms of abuse, the denial that that abuse is harmful, the shielding of it's perpetrators from consequences. Whether they're abusing the environment, the economy, women (cis or transgendered), immigrants, gays, whatever. The pushback against political correctness is an ask to keep using abusive language. The push for less government regulation is an ask to abuse and take advantage of consumers, workers and the environment. Across the board, the hard line right and the moneyed right are telling us they think they're entitled to smack around and use anything that's less Rich, White, Alpha, Male, Heterosexual, Christian (read powerful - but that's subconscious) than they are. Thus, in cause, they are actually united, even if they seem like they shouldn't be.

So this is a great history lesson you've given us in the politicians who were and are the symptom of this attitude, but the real problem is that we've been working hard for decades to suppress and shame abusive behavior and the abusers are furious and suddenly feel empowered. We can get rid of Trump. . . it won't matter. Impeaching him is like having your tumor removed with no chemo.

Here's the real problem: Unlike an abusive marriage, the Left can't leave, or file for divorce, or get a restraining order. We have these people, they're not going to change, they're not going to take responsibility for their abusive behavior, they're not going to acknowledge that they are a problem. In abusive marriage, they actually don't recommend couple's counseling because the abuser usually will not take responsibility for their actions.

This Larson guy is the perfect personification of this trend. But there's a lot of these people, they're ganging up together, getting more and more angry and emboldened and, honestly, they have a whole lot more guns than we do. So I don't know what we do about them.

But the history lesson doesn't help. Neo-liberalism has nothing useful to add, platitudes and business-as-usual are not working.

When you're stuck with an abuser and you can't get out and no help is coming you have two options. . . surrender to them, completely or become strong enough to make them sit down and stop abusing. I'm not sure how we do that. . . I have a feeling it has something to do with politically empowering the poor, traumatized, wounded and slowly recovering young people that have fled to the coastal cities where they struggle to survive and make ends meet. Because those people (and I seem to know an awful lot of them) know exactly what I'm talking about. They were raised in it and they ran away from it.

[Grath]

He could stagger out of the White House naked, covered in blood, holding a hatchet in one hand and Melania's head in the other, shouting "I DID IT! I KILLED HER!", and immediately there'd be a panel of shitheads on Fox going "bitch had it coming".

I mean...

I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.

That's twofold: 1) He wouldn't kill anyone who voted for him, and 2) nobody who was going to vote for him would care.

[Thad]

It bears remembering, always, that a majority of people don't like Trump -- but I'm also very worried about whether that's going to be enough.

He won office while losing the popular vote, and I've been disturbed by seeing his approval ratings (and his party's) revert to the mean. This shit is being normalized.

There's still some hope. Here's a headline from Fox News from March 2010: Obama's Job Approval Rating Sinks to All-Time Low. That low is 46%. Trump's all-time high is 45.5%.

It's clear Trump has a core of supporters who will never turn on him. I think he's also got a lot of opportunists who, once he becomes more of a liability than an asset, will turn on him just like they turned on George W. I don't know what the breakdown is, but I note that his approval rating has never gone lower than 36.5%. (W bottomed out at 24%, though his low at this point in his presidency was 46%; Nixon was at 24.8% when he resigned, but was a lot more popular in his first year than Trump, with a low of 53%.)

We've got some rulings on gerrymandering coming up; SCOTUS has chosen a broad range of gerrymandering cases, and I think we're likely to see some clear delimitations of what's allowed and what's not. Most of the press has focused on Kennedy as swing vote, but as Paco reminded us following last year's gerrymandering ruling, Thomas may be the guy to watch.

The gerrymandering rulings won't affect November (except in Pennsylvania, where the decision was made by the state Supreme Court and SCOTUS declined the appeal), and won't affect the presidency. But they could help reduce the Republican Party's advantage in the House.

The question of impeachment is a complicated one. Public opinion is currently against it. That could change depending on the outcome of the Mueller investigation; let's not forget, public opinion was against impeachment at this point in the Watergate investigation, too. But we're living in a very different world now than we were in 1974. Nixon didn't have Fox News. Giuliani's as much as given the game away; the Trump team's strategy is to do everything it can to discredit the Mueller investigation so that no matter what it finds, Republicans won't care. So far, it's working. Is it possible that Mueller could come up with such a thorough and damning report that that will change? I think it's possible, but I have no idea how likely it is. There are no Barry Goldwaters in the Republican Party anymore.

But there are rats who would leave a sinking ship. It's going to come down to public opinion and which stance is likelier to cost them their jobs.

I think a successful impeachment is possible, given the right confluence of factors: a Blue Wave in November and a particularly damning report from Mueller. But we also need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that Trump's supporters, both among the public and in Congress, will dig in their heels and support him no matter what he does. We need to focus our attention on elections, 2018 and 2020. There are more people opposed to Trump than in favor of him; we need to do what we can to get them out to vote.

[Mongrel]

Oh my God Guiliani just referred to the '16 Election probe and related events as "Our long nightmare".

[Mongrel]

It's a pretty morbid joke, but I can't help but share:

Weekend at Melanie's

[Metal Slime]

He could stagger out of the White House naked, covered in blood, holding a hatchet in one hand and Melania's head in the other, shouting "I DID IT! I KILLED HER!", and immediately there'd be a panel of shitheads on Fox going "bitch had it coming".

I mean...

I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.

That's twofold: 1) He wouldn't kill anyone who voted for him, and 2) nobody who was going to vote for him would care.

Giuliani: Trump Could Have Shot Comey And Still Couldn’t Be Indicted For It

No joke, they are going to take that line of reasoning and use it to justify things. They are trying to move that needle all the way to "Yeah, we did it. What are you gonna do about it? Impeach us with that 2/3s of the Senate you won't get?"

They are just gonna bank on the GOP doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on this shitstorm of covering for Trump all the way to the bitter end no matter how bad he gets.

[Thad]

I still think impeachment is the Democrats' best move, even without the Senate votes for removal. Think how the Clinton impeachment tied him up for a good solid chunk of his second term, and greatly limited his effectiveness -- and Clinton was a lot more popular than Trump, and public support for impeachment was a lot lower. (Plus, it had knock-on effects on the 2000 and 2016 races. Al Gore and Hillary Clinton both won the popular vote, but, popular as Bill was, I think their association with him hurt them enough in swing states that it's part of why they lost the electoral vote.)

Get Republicans on record as supporting and defending Trump and see how that goes for them, in 2020 and beyond.

Granted, even a simple majority in the House is going to be enough to curtail a lot of the GOP's worst excesses. (Hell, even without a majority the Democrats have been able to stop most of the Republican agenda; I'm still furious about the tax cuts but that's the only real legislative success the GOP's had this term.)

I...don't want to think about the potential for any more Supreme Court vacancies. Gorsuch got confirmed with Heitkamp, Manchin, and Donnelly voting Aye, and if the Democrats get a majority in November, it's likely going to be with those three still in office. The Dems' best shot at keeping another Trump nominee out would be to take a page from McConnell's playbook and not let the nomination out of committee, which would require every Democrat on the Judiciary Committee to agree. That's a tough row to hoe, but if the Dems take the Senate they may have the good sense to understand that's a mandate against Trump.

[Yoji]

Hate to sound like a broken record, but hardly a week goes by without me asking: Could you imagine if Obama did anything half as bad as <current Trump controversy>?


And that abusive relationship metaphor is a bit too spot-on.

[Mongrel]

[beatbandito]

I'm thinking of an episode of Doug or old bad movie that got replayed a lot on T.V. where a character is being blackmailed by multiple people to bark or do something weird when the other person coughs, says their name, etc.

And the worst part is that's not just a weird dumb connection in my head, I think that most likely the actual story is pretty close.

[Yoji]

Considering we have an FCC who literally joked about being a Manchurian Candidate puppet, I can't say I'm surprised. Horrified and disgusted, sure, but not surprised.

[Grath]

Justin Trudeau trolls Trump with framed photo of his grandfather's Canadian brothel

I keep hearing things about Trudeau not necessarily being that great of a person/leader, but this is hilarious.

[François]

Yeah, I don't think too highly of him, but compared to his predecessor Stephen "The Yawning Abyss" Harper, the man who, if he looks you in the eye, makes you unable to laugh or cry until the next new moon, he's definitely a step up.

[Mongrel]

I keep hearing things about Trudeau not necessarily being that great of a person/leader

Twenty years and people are still underestimating him. He may come off like a puff pastry, but it's one hiding a bunch of of razor blades. So many people have figured they'd take a bite right out of him and whooo boy have they been surprised.