Behind Woodward’s September surprise: White House aides saw a train wreck coming, then jumped aboard

[AdamSmith]

Trump loves brands, and Woodward has been the gold standard for 50 years of investigative journalism around the presidency, so it's the same reason why he likes the Gray Lady, he likes The New York Times. It's the paper of record traditionally in his hometown, so even though both excoriate him, he's attracted to them the way a low-IQ small moth would be to a flame,” said Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as White House communications director under Trump. “Trump is always convinced that if he talks to the person, he is going to elucidate and enlighten that person and get them to like him.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/09/trump-bob-woodward-book-411225

[TotallyOz]

I don't get it. Truly. How could his aides allow him this access?  Mind you, I'm thrilled they did. But, does anyone around him have an ID over 80?

[AdamSmith]

9 minutes ago, TotallyOz said:

I don't get it. Truly. How could his aides allow him this access?  Mind you, I'm thrilled they did. But, does anyone around him have an ID over 80?

Well, they all say, in essence, ‘How can you control him?’

[JKane]

 

 

 

 

[JKane]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Buddy2]

Donald Trump must believe he is a hero for playing down the true danger of covid19.

 

Well, he also believes finishing at the top of his class at the University of Pennsylvania where he "dated" Candice Bergen more attractive girls were busy.

 

Now he is blaming Bob Woodward for waiting so long to publish their conversations. On that, Mr. Trump has a valid point.

[stevenkesslar]

6 hours ago, TotallyOz said:

I don't get it. Truly. How could his aides allow him this access?  Mind you, I'm thrilled they did. But, does anyone around him have an ID over 80?

Claire nailed several things.

It's just stupidity.  President Toxic was the one who gave Woodward access to his staff.  The interesting question is not why some of the staff gave Woodward access to Trump.  It's why they gave Woodward access to themselves.  Most of them had to know better than their stupid boss.  But it fills in the picture.  These are not men and women of honor.  They know what they have to do to be able to come to work the next day.

Claire is a politician.  So I think she nailed how the political reaction to this and the military betrayal works.  It's not like a train wreck, in the sense of sudden and devastating impact.  Although you can see that it already stopped and possibly reversed the modest recovery in Trump's approval ratings since the RNC.  This is more like COVID-19.  It blows around everywhere, and gradually settles in.  So I think Claire is right.  This will reinforce the way a lot of older voters who have been moving away from President Toxic feel.  And the way a lot of active military, vets, and people who honor military service feel.  It settles in and further cements the judgment people are gradually making.

That said, it's more than just stupidity.  Claire is not a psychiatrist.  But one of the most interesting phrases in her rant was, "Who in their right mind ....?"  That's a very good question. 

As a political hack, she was smart to leave it at stupidity.  But you have to add either narcissism, or dementia, or both.  Why you don't tell Woodward this stuff on tape right before an election is not difficult to figure out.  So how could President Toxic have such a distorted view of reality?  This would be the equivalent of Nixon never having secretly taped the conversations that destroyed him.  It would be like Nixon instead calling up Woodward and Bernstein and saying, "Hey guys.  Got a tape recorder?  Let's talk for 18 hours."  No sane President would do that.

I won't drag all the stuff about authoritarianism into this thread.  But I'll make one point.  This gift President Toxic has given to the American political psyche is going to keep giving after he loses.  The reaction already from Trumpians, and the reporters that know them best, is that this isn't really news.  It's just more Deep State bullshit.  We knew that this was dangerous.  We're glad he didn't want us to panic.  Yawn. 

Almost 200,000 dead Americans, and many more on the way.  But, no.  Their leader can do no wrong.

All the TV I watched about this story focused, correctly, on what President Toxic said.  But I'll end by reposting what President Toxic's enablers were saying at the time.  And the impact it had on real people.  Who suffered horribly.  And died horribly. 

Claire's right.  People did not know they were in a burning building.  They were not protected, or told what to do to protect themselves.  They were lied to and lulled into not caring.  They were told it was a Democratic hoax.  And being good authoritarian followers, many of them will choose not to remember that now.

 

 

Edited September 10, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[stevenkesslar]

It's not clear to me at this point that President Toxic needs yet another nail in his political coffin.  But it's hard not to imagine this won't be a huge political nail in his coffin with this somewhat amorphous group of Independent/Undecided voters.

People like me who despise President Toxic don't need more reasons.  We're rabidly waiting to vote him out.  And the true Trumpians will react to this by yawning.  Or arguing it just goes to show what a good leader he is by not wanting to panic us. 

So this post is mostly about where the Independent/Undecided folks are now.  And partly this is going to take a dive into polling, and prognosticating.  Including whether the polls were wrong in 2016.

This is from an article in Rasmussen about which voters are being quiet about their support for or opposition to President Toxic:

Quote

Sixteen percent (16%) of Republicans are less likely to tell others how they intend to vote, compared to 12% of Democrats. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of GOP voters and 60% of Democrats are more likely to tell this year. Again this cycle, the quietest voters are those not affiliated with either major political party. Twenty-one percent (21%) say they are less likely to let others know how they intend to vote; 45% are more likely to tell.

I don't take this to mean that anyone is lying to pollsters about who they support.  I take it to mean they are simply being quiet because they know they'll get push back.  If 21 % of Independents aren't saying much, it's probably because they don't particularly care.  About 1 in 5 Independents are truly undecided, or at least still open-minded, according to the mountain of poll data about Independents I've commented on.  They're not very tuned in.  And they don't much like either choice.  In a close election, like 2016, these are the voters that can and did determine  the outcome.  I won't post the video again.  But on Election Night 2016 Karl Rove argued, correctly I think, that Trump won because voters who disliked both candidates broke decisively for President Toxic, who represented change.

Politico has had a series of articles going for the last year where they interview four Republican political hacks who ran the campaigns or Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, and Bush in 2016.  On the big questions, their consensus has been on the money:  1)  Biden would be the strongest nominee for Democrats to choose, and 2) Harris would be his best pick as VP.  This final article in the series is an interesting read in its entirety.  The consensus is that the outcome could range from a repeat of 2016 - a popular vote loss for President Toxic coupled with a narrow win in the electoral college - to a landslide for Biden.  No one thinks President Toxic can actually win the popular vote.

Of the four, the most optimistic case for Trump was made by Jeff Roe, who ran Ted Cruz's campaign.  The single most interesting statement he made was this one:

Quote

ROE: Here’s [Trump's] problem, and I believe there is a solution to it. The problem is, he’s losing among people that don’t like either candidate. He’s losing by about 12 points there, and he won it, I think, by about 12 points last time. That’s why you run a campaign. This is going to be the most negative campaign you’ve ever seen, and negativity and money is what drives turnout. Trump has got more to gain in a negative, sustained, expensive campaign than Biden does. And I don’t think Biden’s got the stomach for it, either.

There's probably several ways to interpret what he means.  Maybe he means negativity drives getting Trumpians out to vote.  Maybe he means negativity could depress Black turnout, like in 2016.  Most likely, he's probably saying that President Toxic could end up winning the "hold your nose and vote" crowd like he did in 2016 by a relentlessly negative attack that smears Biden with all the shit in creation.

This is where all this toxic stuff hanging in the air comes in:  like COVID-19, and President Toxic's "downplaying" or "misleading" statements about it, as well as his betrayals of the military.  What Roe said is consistent with the polls I've seen.  The group that handed the electoral college to Trump in 2016 is back again.  Like in 2016, they don't like either President Toxic or Biden.  Like in 2016, they are leaning toward change being better than more of the same.  Unlike me, they are not particularly tuned in.  Many of them won't know how they vote pretty much until they vote. 

In an environment like that, it seems like having all this toxic stuff hanging in the air is just fatal to President Toxic. I think Claire McCaskill is dead right about how politics works for this slice of Independent/Undecided voters.  They're not watching MSNBC or listening to Rush Limbaugh.  This stuff just hangs in the air, like COVID-19 will be all Fall.  As it settles in, it will likely reinforce that change is better than more of the same.

I think it's worth a paragraph to review how this translated into poll data in 2016, and then an update on what it could mean in 2020.

In 2016, on this date, the RCP poll averages showed Hillary had a 3.1 % lead over President Toxic.  In about a week, September 16th, she had a lead of exactly 0.9 % over Trump.  In other words, Hillary outperformed her mid-September polling in the final November election result, when she won the popular vote by 2.1 %.  So anyone who says she had it in the bag, or that the polling was wrong, is just plain wrong.  And all along the way, there were of course undecided voters.  So the final poll average on Election Day was Clinton 46.8 % and Trump 43.6 %.  They both outperformed.  Clinton ended up with 48.2 % of the votes, or 1.4 % above what the final poll averages showed.  President Toxic ended up with 46.1 % of the vote, or 2.5 % above what the final poll averages showed.  All of that was within the margins of error of the polls used to create the average, anyway.  But there's two factors that obviously drove these numbers.  First, Independent/Undecided voters had to decide.  And they voted disproportionately for Trump.  Second, the turnout assumptions were slightly off.  President Toxic was able to grow the tent by a few millions voters compared to what Romney got in 2012.  He still lost the popular vote by 3 million.  But it was the 77,774 votes in the Rust Belt that counted.

Compare the trend with Clinton/Trump in 2016 to the trend with Biden/Trump in 2020.  Unlike in 2016, it's not close.  And it's never been close.  Let's assume President Toxic does exactly the same thing as 2016.  He shaves 1.1 % more off his losing popular vote margin, compared to what the poll averages showed.  Based on current polling, he'd cut a 7.5 % loss to a 6.4 % loss.  Again, that's based on the people who are decided and willing to state their voter preference.  A margin like that rules out a narrow electoral college win, as the current state polls clearly show.

When you add in these undecided or "hold my nose and vote" voters, I think it just gets worse for President Toxic.  That 7.5 % margin today is based on 50.5 % for Biden, and 43.0 % for President Toxic.  So today there are 6.5 % of voters who are in the undecided/someone else/hold my nose bucket.  In 2016 it was 9.5 % of all voters.  Even if President Toxic won all 6.5 % of those voters, he would still be one point behind Biden today.  But what the polls point to, as Roe understands, is that these undecided/someone else/hold my nose voters are already saying they lean toward Biden.

There's another thing about this worth mentioning.  If Biden can hold the lead he has today, and more undecideds break for Biden than Trump, Biden ends up with well over 50 % of the vote.  If what we expect to happen happens, I like that number.  Yeah, you can argue millions of the ballots are fake votes.  But if Biden gets 52 % or 53 % of the vote, which seems possible, it's very hard to argue that the majority of America did not tell President Toxic he is fired.

Like in 2016, the polls will be up and down until November.  That said, it's not likely that the wide lead Biden has enjoyed since last year will just go away - unless something really huge changes things.  Roe probably thinks that if a strong man like President Toxic just hammers the shit out of a weak guy like Biden every single day, he can turn the undecided/hold my nose crowd around.  The only problem with this seemingly wishful thinking is there is no evidence in the real world to support it.

The evidence in the real world is that President Toxic will be hammering the shit out of himself every day this Fall.  And if he somehow forgets his hammer, Bob Woodward or some anonymous General or God knows who else will be kind enough to use their hammer to pound those nails in the coffin shut.  President Toxic's contempt for the military and his willful misleading about a plague that killed 200,000 Americans are not small things.  they are toxic.  They will hang in the air every day.  Especially given that the pace of COVID-19 deaths is more likely to pick up than slow down this Fall.

There's a huge irony in how history will look back at these recordings.  With 20/20 hindsight, I'd guess that historians will say President Toxic wasn't only talking about COVID-19 here:

Quote

"It goes through the air," Trump said. "...you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. This is deadly stuff."

I'm pretty sure President Toxic was describing his own political demise.  And why these people who haven't made up their mind or don't like either Biden or Trump will ultimately decide that change is better than more of this horror story.

Edited September 10, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[stevenkesslar]

UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE

Transcript: Kim Jong Un's letters to President Trump

Quote

Your Excellency Mr. President,

 

Like the brief time we had together a year ago in Singapore, every minute we shared 103 days ago in Hanoi was also a moment of glory that remains a precious memory. Such a precious memory that I have in my unwavering respect for you will provide impetus for me to take my steps when we walk toward each other again someday in the future.

 

I also believe that the deep and special friendship between us will work as a magical force that leads the progress of the DPRK-US relations, clearing all the hurdles we face in the process of bringing about the developments we seek to achieve.

 

Your Excellency Mr. President, I still respect and lay my hopes on the will and determination that you showed in our first meeting to resolve the issue of our unique style that nobody had ever tried, and to write a new history. Today's reality is that without a new approach and the courage it takes, the prospects for resolution of the issue will only be bleak.

 

I believe the one day will come sooner or later when we sit down together to make great things happen, with the will to give another chance to our mutual trust. Such a day should come again. It may well be recorded as yet another fantastic moment in history.

 

I assure Your Excellency that my respect for you will never change.

 

Sincerely yours,

Kim Jong Un

June 10, 2019

 

Edited September 10, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[JKane]