love it

Yeah, he doesn't want to win. I think he realizes now that the next 4 years are going to be hell and he doesn't want the burden.

Trump refuses to support Paul Ryan, John McCain in upcoming Republican primaries - The Washington Post

Whenever Trump doubles and triples back on the same statement over and over again to make it seem longer, it reminds me of the 1988 SNL sketch where Carvey's Bush kept desperately trying to fill his speaking time at the debate.

He's just daring McCain to withdraw his support, isn't he? I mean there is plenty of time after the AZ primary on Aug 30 for McCain to do it and make it sting for Trump.

I'm open to the theory Trump doesn't really want to win, but, why doesn't he just quit? He doesn't seem like a guy who's willing to tough it out just out of loyalty to the Republican party. He could make up some bullshit about how he know he could win but his family is being hurt by all the bad media. That would sound fake, but so does this whole campaign.

Maybe he thinks he´s going to be Emperor ... Our last one in Germany basically spent 3/4 of his time either on hunting trips or travelling around the world in his private ocean liner (not for meeting other leaders, for pleasure ;) ). Then this silly First World War business happened and alas, no more emperors ...


This whole primary thing seems like an utterly insane process anyway, no offense. (as does, to some extent, the whole campaign process before the real election).

In light of Obama basically saying what most can acknowledge (even people who´d vote him often seem to hope he will be a mere figure head, no ? ) today i was wondering: Wouldn´t the republican party at some point not also profit from cutting their losses, earning some goodwill and then regroup for the next time around ?


He can´t technically be pulled from the race by the party anymore, can he ? And why would he quit instead of just loose (and claim he was swindled out of the job somehow) ? I mean, this now is the fun part for a guy like him i´d wager.

Yes, and on the day Obama said that Republicans should stop backing Trump. It's absolutely perfect.

I'm starting to wonder if he got the nomination and realized being president is a lot of fucking work and he'd rather not deal with it. Regardless of what happens from here he's going to have more media attention and higher television ratings for anything he does.

Trump can't be this stupid, can he? This is Trump. There has to be an end game that benefits him somehow.

I still have the urge to check that these aren't links to The Onion when they're posted. I think that's a bad sign. :D


I am too, sorta, but I think Occam's Razor tells us that all Trump is doing is continuing the behavior that won him the nomination. All he's gotten from his behavior so far is positive reinforcement (in the form of winning the nomination) and stuff we would normally see as negative response either can't penetrate his ego or echo chamber.

I don't think he changes until it becomes obvious (like a sustained double-digit deficit to Clinton) that he's going to lose, and even then he might just "try harder" and double down.

We can't be too far away from skewed polls talk.

Yeah, when I saw that this morning, the first thing I thought was why would any Democrat comment on Trump unless absolutely necessary? Just let Trump be Trump and he'll tear apart the Republican vote on his own.

I've been waiting for this. In the 2008 and 2012 threads, we had endless talk of bad weightings and Nate Silver bias. Have people finally given up that nonsense?

I still feel bad for Romney because his people fed him this crap and made him sincerely think he was going to win.

I had a coworker who just KNEW Romney was going to win. She could barely contain her gloating all day long about how the pollsters were wrong, and that people on the ground were reporting good things for Romney. And then he lost. It was priceless to watch her. (She's one of those insufferable types who can never stop talking about her political views to anyone within earshot.)

Apparently Roger Stone is laying the groundwork, saying that since Trump led in a poll in FL, if he loses that means the election was stolen.

If anything, this actually makes sense to attract those who have issues with Trump's lack of consistent conservatism.

Why would ANYONE that hoped to have legitimate conservative credentials back either of those worse-than-useless pseudocon frauds?

longtime ally of Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager: "Manafort not challenging Trump anymore. Mailing it in. Staff suicidal."

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) August 3, 2016

A Trump campaign source, in reax to this, tells me "it's all true" and "way worse than people realize." https://t.co/nvioNcjMCJ

— Ali Vitali (@alivitali) August 3, 2016

Top republican: @Reince is 'apoplectic' over Trump's refusal to back Ryan. He called several Trump staffers to express his displeasure.

— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) August 3, 2016

More from same source: The next 24 to 72 hours are crucial. There is serious talk about key Republicans coming out hard against Trump.

— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) August 3, 2016

How does attacking a "pseudocon" make oneself any less of a "pseudocon"? Trump's past is more liberal than McCain and Ryan put together.

If you're accused of being a communist, it doesn't seem like a great idea to get all gung-ho backing another commie does it?

If you're, I dunno, accused of being a pedophile, do you immediately rush out to offer your support for a couple of pedophiles?

So then why on Earth would he endorse either of those guys?

If he wins, then their days are surely numbered.
If he loses, then neither of them are his problem.

There's no need for him to lose credibility by backing them.

The current state of the GOP is no better illustrated than calling Paul Ryan, the guy that wrote and is still trying to pass the most conservative budget post WW2, a pseudo-con fraud.

Think that ship already sailed.

That an eager to capitulate fraud like Ryan is still IN the GOP is illustrative of the current state of a party that has done little in recent memory. He's a poster child for why it's time to turn them out, turn them over, or if need be start over entirely.

Conservative voters spoke clearly about the need for change at the top during a long primary season. The uselessness of Ryan's ilk is a major reason Trump was able to win, at least with him there was some reason for hope instead of hopelessness.

Sounds like one of the most obstructionist members of the Tea Party has been primaried from the center, and lost.

Huelskamp loses GOP primary after ideological battle - POLITICO

Ideally, the nomination (and hopefully massive defeat) of Trump was the breaking point for the Tea Party wave.

(and oh, just to counteract the idea above:

Marshall backers hoped their victory in Kansas would send a message to frequent “no” voters among House Republicans: that obstructionism has its limits.

“Every member should remember this the next time they see a Club for Growth or Heritage Action vote alert,” said a national Republican strategist. “Never put their interests before your district or the country, or there will be a price to pay.”

Oh, and a Ryan spokesman fired back

""Neither Speaker Ryan nor anyone on his team has ever asked for Donald Trump's endorsement," campaign spokesman Zack Roday said in an email to reporters Tuesday. "And we are confident in a victory next week regardless."

This is a reporter from the Washington Post who is tasked with covering the Clinton campaign. This is something you'd see from someone working for the campaign, not as a supposed neutral journalist.

What the hell kind of conclusion is that? Those pictures are clearly taken at different times. You proved nothing.

Check out the beginning of this Youtube video. Clearly more people than in that second picture.

Oh and uh......

I am wrong. This is why I should not trust things I see on Twitter. It looks like from the other pictures she filled most of the gymnasium up.

Meg Whitman came out yesterday against him. Says she'll vote for Hillary. I'm sure Trump will have some insult about her looks or something. McCain bashed him for his Khan statements.

At some point you have to imagine things will break. How long are people like Ryan going to allow themselves to be dragged through the mud by him? Rubio and Christie are already laughing stocks. The heads of the party have to realize it's a longshot that Trump wins the Presidency. At some point they have to cut bait and try to save the House and Senate. It feels like if a couple high profile members of the GOP come out strongly against Trump, the rest of the dominos will fall.

Then again maybe they'll just hold their nose and pretend nothing is wrong. Then after the election hope the voting public forgets about this race by the next election.

We also have Trump's spokesperson Katrina Pierson blaming Obama for Khan's death in 2004 when Obama was just a State Senator. And former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski going birther on CNN during a segment.

Trump is going down too fast. Maybe I'm just a worried liberal, but I can see GOP somehow getting Pence on top of ballot and changing the game. Lots of folks I know itching to vote against Hillary.

:popcorn: pass the popcorn please

Maybe his ego won't let him do it. He'd be a quitter in his mind and deserving of ridicule. So he has to become so outrageous as to force people to vote for HRC.

I don't know how his mind works....but doesn't seem to need much more than that to me.

I think he wanted to lose in the primary and claim the GOP screwed him over.

I'll start. We've already had indications (from both primaries, really) that some percentage of people are telling pollsters one thing and voting another as well as instances where the polls were wrong (usually with Sanders) because they missed demographics that came out strongly to vote.

I would not be surprised if there's a meaningful percentage of Trump voters who won't admit to a pollster they're going to vote for him. Maybe worth 1-2%?

To be clear, I'm not going crazy and getting on the unskewed polls bus. I'm just saying there's some potential for models to show Trump slightly under where he should be.

Also, there's still 100 days to go. Who the fuck knows what's going to happen.


I remember a time when Paul Ryan was one of the guys on the outer fringe of the GOP, tossing economic ideas into the mix that made GOP leadership cringe.


At this point, it's probably too late to make this happen, functionally. The following two scenarios are more likely (not that they're very likely, just more likely):

1. Trump ends up signaling that he'll resign immediately after inauguration, and basically starts campaigning for Pence. It would be weird, yes, and they'd probably lose as a result, but what about this campaign season hasn't been weird?

2. By Labor Day a critical mass of polls show Clinton with a solid double-digit lead and a base that's been energized by watching (in horror) the Trump Show all summer. Key Republicans (elected, pundits, etc...) who can't bring themselves to vote Clinton decide to give Johnson a look and throw their weight behind him. You end up with something that looks like the 1992 result.

I'm not sure what will happen in November, but it's likely that Trump will underperform his polling because he has literally no infrastructure at this point. We've never seen a modern campaign without so much as field staff in every state. He isn't working on GOTV efforts at all.

Meanwhile Hillary has Obama's great data and GOTV operation and has been building on that foundation.

And to Jon's point, the majority of GOP voters may think the party isn't pure enough, but the majority of the country thinks they have gone too far. There are no national election wins to the right of Paul Ryan.

So speaking of weird shit, how about a conspiracy of epic proportions? What if we find out that Hillary and Trump were in cahoots the whole time, then what?

We've never seen a campaign, post-convention, in actual danger of imploding: Mass Defections Expected as Donald Trump’s Campaign Implodes | Vanity Fair

Usually by this point there's sufficient momentum that that kind of existential crisis has passed.

This has always seemed too far-fetched to be true. To be true, they'd have had to make these plans last summer, when Trump's victory was a pipe dream at best. Would Clinton risk the fallout from people finding out about this on a very, very small change that Trump would win the nomination? Clinton may be a lot of things, but she's plenty calculating when it comes to winning.

There is no way that is possible. I think a much more likely situation is that Trump is in the early stages of dementia. My mother turned into a combative person as dementia started taking hold of her. She started regularly picking fights with her friends and my father. I wouldn't be surprised to find out a few years from now that Trump is suffering from dementia too. I'm not being flippant at all. Trump's behavior really reminds me of what happened to her.

I know, but since we're all just spit-ballin', I figured I'd chime in with my own what-if's. :)

Not only will be she vote for Clinton, but she plans on campaigning for her among her GOP friends and raising money for her. That, especially the latter two thing is pretty big. Trump already is losing the money raising race; this is only going to make it harder.

Jonathan Swan on Twitter: "Just got off the phone with a top Trump donor and fundraiser. At wit's end. Expletive after expletive. Can't fathom what Trump is doing."


"I would break his f---ing thumbs if I could" - top Trump donor/fundraiser to me just now.

why let facts get in the way of a good Obama jab? I really really hope that for the next general election they get rid of these useless spokesmen/women on both sides-and just let someone official from the campaign like a campaign manager or press secretary talk to the press if the candidate/VP is not available.

It's getting harder by the day to tell which headlines are real.

Katrina Pierson: Obama likely caused Khan's death (before he was elected)
For Trump, a new ‘rigged’ system: The election itself
Report: Trump Kept Asking During Foreign Policy Briefing Why He Can’t Just Use Nukes
Trump Campaign Ponders Going Negative
Trump blasts New York Times: ‘They don’t write good’
Trump Pauses Washington Post Interview Five Times to Watch TV
Donald Trump isn't crazy

I think we have tor remember with him that he was a celebrity for a long time before he became a politician, and at times still acts like one. He clearly loves the adulation/applause and is probably reluctant to give that up any time soon. He's a business man too, so losing would be like losing out on a big deal. He acts too much like the godfather or mafia kingpin too.

I did hear this morning on Morning Joe that Bill Clinton and Trump talked on the phone before he announced he'd run and Bill urged him to do so... :)

what a minute, is that supposed to be a serious article from the Onion? what is this world coming to? :)

I kept looking for an indication that this one was a spoof. Outside of the source being one I'm not familiar with, I didn't find any.

How much money would it take for Donald to walk away? 10 mil? 100 mil? 1 billion?

And how much would it be worth to GOP donors to make him walk away? I'm thinking a billion to get him out would be worth it for all parties.

Seems like Joe Scarborough is the source of this story. It'll be interesting to see if this gets picked up or if it's just a rumor.

Trump asks "Why can't we use nuclear weapons" - YouTube

Senior GOP Officials Exploring Options if Trump Drops Out - ABC News

It's so bad right now the GOP is starting to make contingency plans in case he drops out. It sounds like it would have to happen in the next month or Hillary would basically end up running unopposed in November.

Trump Allies Plot Candidate Intervention After Disastrous 48 Hours - NBC News

Yeah I saw it live this morning when he mentioned the story.

Not that Scarborough has an ax to grind with Trump, but it's always questionable when you hear a story relayed from an unnamed source. Though it is concerning if true.

Which would be a saavy move by Bill, if true.

Worst case, Trump adds a bit of crazy to the early nomination process that taints an eventual nominee.

Middle case, he stays in the primary race for a while and turns it into a circus (and not in a good way).

Best case, he becomes the nominee, and what we're seeing happen, happens.


Say you have a friend who's a misogynist who thinks he has game with the ladies but really, really, does not. At a bar, he says he should go over and chat up that group of hot ladies. You tell him he should definitely do it because of the hilarity when he crashes and burns.

Trump managed to do all this in just 24 hours.

List of controversial moments surrounding Trump and his campaign in the last 24 hours. https://t.co/dwrgBotCI0 pic.twitter.com/Cxch2FJdas

— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) August 3, 2016

Imagine what he could manage to accomplish in the next 97 days. :popcorn:

Gary Johnson has to be loving this. He could get a real boost from people looking for an option outside of Hillary. Comes at a great time too where he could get into the debates with a small boost.

I'm far from knowledgeable in this stuff, but it would seem to me that Johnson needs money, something to get him some time somewhere to really get his name out there. I'd figured that we'd already reached a point with the internet/social media etc. that it would be much easier for a fringe candidate to get recognition but I'm not seeing it yet.

In my opinion we are close to Mitt Romney endorsing the Libertarian ticket. (The VP candidate and Romney are close from their days as governors in Massachusetts).

Mitt Romney: I wish Bill Weld were at the top of the Libertarian ticket

This will likely cause two things...

1. A big swing in the polls from Trump and big donors coming board.
2. The end of the libertarian party as we know it. I would guess not many people that voted for Johnson in 2012 would vote in 2016 with Romneys endorsement.

It's interesting that nobody has flipped from Trump to a basically social liberal republican lite. I think it says as much about the despiration for some to hold onto the two party system at all costs. Why else would they endorse Clinton for president who holds basically none of their views? (Maybe I'm naive and the war mongers would prefer Clinton even if that is the only view she has in common with them?)

So NBC goes to the trouble of putting together that list ... and the most troubling thing on it is, what, the crying baby? Which should have been taken out of the room by a responsible parent in the first place.

If the list is that laughable to someone who isn't going to vote for the guy, imagine how comical it seems to people that are.

Perhaps the issue isn't the medium(s) but rather, oh ... the message?

At some point it should seem rather obvious that the issue with our fringe parties isn't "the system" or tactics but rather that they are taking positions that are simply not appealing to the vast majority of the U.S. voters.

It'll be obvious when the playing field is anything near equal and nothing changes. Then I'll concede your point.

I think he's been too nice. Running the typical smaller party just happy to be here campaign. He's got a platform tonight on CNN. I hope he goes hard at both candidates. Actually try to look like a serious candidate in the election and not just a protest vote.

I think the Libertarian Party hampers his campaign though. Would be better if a candidate was just an Independent.

I have two thoughts...

1) I'm not going to claim there is some sort of silent majority of Libertarian minded people being held down in this country by the two party system that would somehow make up 40-50% of the electorate. But by the same token its a load of shit to think that only a fraction of one percent hold their views on smaller government, ending the drug war, etc. It's clearly a lessor of two evils system.

2) Which brings me to point #2. You are the poster child for why the two party system is so effective. It is so much easier for somebody to view the world as black and white and say "look at JiMGa that's why I vote Democrat" or "look at Steve Bollea/Mrs. Bigglsworth and thats why I vote Republican". You are likely the most replied to poster on this board and it's not because you hold some interesting nuanced view on politcal topics. You are extreme and people feel good thinking you represent "the other side" Start throwing in 4-5 choices and now it doesn't have to be Jon vs nol, but actual real choices. They do it in both parties primaries and weed out candidates it's insane that they refuse to do it in the general election.

This comes from Jeb Bush's national security guy. He's no moderate either. Staunch conservative and very hawkish.

Ballot access is the hardest part of being a non-two party candidate in the US and we make it harder with the myriad rules, systems and deterrents to letting more people into the race.

So the best bet is to align with a third party that's already got ballot access or a ground game to make such access possible. And in contrast to say, Bob Barr, Johnson is actually plausibly Libertarian in some of his stances so it's not exactly an odd fit.

{shakes head} If that fantasy makes you happy, by all means, stick with it.

But reality is that 80-90 percent of the U.S. (and even more of the likely voters) are neither neo-anarchists like the damned fool Johnson nor utterly batshit crazy like Stein.

I actually doubt that. I don't think Romney is going to back someone who is for same-sex marriage and legalizing weed, regardless of how much he doesn't like Trump.

And yes, for Libertarians and Greens the message is holding them back. If their message was more appealing to people, they'd be prominent Republicans (and Johnson was a minor stature Republican at some point) or Democrats, not running on a third party. The fact is that there isn't much mainstream support for those views - it would have been adopted by the major parties if there was.

If nothing else, Trump really has exposed how little support there is for the libertarian republican message of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism.

As I posted before, a system that would let someone win 34-33-32 or 22-21-20-19-18 is an incredibly stupid system. We need electoral reform if we want that many parties involved. Our system is dumb enough with the two parties we have. I like that Maine ranked candidate initiative.

Also, we really need to overturn Citizens United if we want that many parties. With it in place, the corporate parties will always rise to the top.

I would say they hold a lot of views the majority of Americans hold there are just gutless politicians on both sides who need a landslide of Americans to voice those views before they jump in and claim them as new and fresh...

Open border immigration policies?
Campaign finance reform?
Gay marriage?
Ending bailouts?
Consumption tax?
Privacy from government spy agencies?
Marijuana legalization?
Staying clear of the Middle East?

Libertarian Party members booed Johnson for saying he supported the Civil Rights Act and the concept of Drivers Licenses.

Sure they might support some things the public likes, but they also support a bunch of batshit crazy stuff the public doesn't like.

You're kind of leaving out the big ones of eliminating Social Security, Medicare and the IRS.

In the GOP primaries, you had a candidate who, yes, didn't back all of these, but was definitely very pro-libertarian on a lot of these in Rand Paul. He got destroyed.

Also eliminating the minimum wage.

And Johnson might not want to fight a war in the Middle East but he said he wants to go to war with North Korea. So he isn't an isolationist by any measure.

I could be mistaken but I believe the Libertairian party is the only party that actually would keep social security out of the general fund. People don't seem to have a problem with labor union employees having their own retirement system why can't smaller less politically connected individuals make the same choice?

So what? Every party has nut cases. The GOP has Donald Trump running for president!

How popular do you think semi-privatizing social security is?

That's the problem when Libertarians say lots of people like their platform; for the really unpopular stuff they shift goalposts REAL FAST.

I worked on one Libertarian campaign when I was in college. It's probably telling that the weirdness of the party turned me off, as I'm hardly normal. But there were just some crazy ass kooks. I can get along with a good chunk of the libertarian philosophy but the rest is just so completely off the rails that they are no longer even a consideration for me.

Platform | Libertarian Party


Uh uh. I'm SURE that would happen.

I think he just wants a declaration of war from Congress. (Who are too gutless to risk relegation) Instead of some emperor like statement that every military action in the Middle East falls under some end around of the war powers act.

I loved the story from last week where William Weld said that Johnson would appoint justices like Merrick Garland and Stephen Breyer. Breyer's entire judicial philosophy is almost the direct opposite of Libertarian.

Johnson himself has said he would favor someone with an "original intent" approach, which makes Johnson a non starter for me, even if I didn't already disagree with him on a number of other issues.

Again, lol. I don't know -- a lot of this platform seems to rely on people and corporations self-policing for the cause of the common good. That's...rather pollyanna.

You don't say.




Of course it would, just like the free market would have ended segregation, business discrimination, and ensured minority voting rights.

I mean we have direct evidence that it works when the financial industry self-policed themselves after many of their regulations were loosened. Why wouldn't it work everywhere else?

And on the other side pro-choice and anti-death penalty eliminates a good 30-40% of the population.

This would be better if he poured raw milk over himself.

Johnson is also against net neutrality and mandatory vaccinations.

Letting companies police themselves trusting them to do what's best for the people is naive.

Allowing stupid people to not vaccinate their kids so that mostly dead viruses can reach their highest outbreak levels in 100 years is criminal.

Of all the stupid things in this stupid election, only having one candidate be unequivocally pro-vaccination is the stupidest.

Why would they when the D's and R's will bend over backwards to bail them out?

Psh, I think you guys are just trying to drag down Gary Johnson's strong FOFC polling numbers with your negative attacks.

I did see my first Jill Stein ad this morning, where she spent most of the time bashing Clinton and saying you didn't have to pick the lesser of two evils.