And, no, I'm not being sarcastic/ironic/tongue-in-cheek or anything else.

Hillary will obliterate him in a debate. It's one of the areas she's extremely good at. She made Obama look bad in 2008 during them.

If I was her I'd want as many debates as possible and in as open as format as possible. Trump is limited in what he knows about policy and international politics. Any chance to showcase that is a win for her.

There's also a very good chance that he'll try to bully and insult her which won't play well.

That is a certainty and with his obvious limited vocabulary I bet he drops a "shut up" or f bomb during a debate:-)

Depends upon the audience he's playing to.

For his likely voters -- who HAVE to remain motivated enough to show up & vote if he's to have a chance -- there really isn't anything bad he could do to her that won't play well. About the biggest mistake he could make with them would be to treat her with anything other contempt.

And how that plays quite possibly depends on what sort of research they're getting about the surety/softness of those votes.

His base will eat it up. His base isn't going to win him the election though. The people he needs in order to win the election aren't going to like it.

I think that's the problem the GOP runs into nowadays. What they need to do in order to secure their base and what they need to do to get enough independents/moderates to win the election are completely different.

But he can't win -- zero percent chance -- if he doesn't hold that base AND get them to show up.

It's one of the dicier propositions his candidacy faces IMO. This isn't a candidate that has years or even decades of people that will show up to vote for him out of habit. (Look how quickly he lost me, the same could happen with every voter than isn't purely a not-Hilary voter) He caught lightning in a bottle to get this far ... but can he manage to put the cap on the bottle?

It seems at least reasonable to think we might see record low turnout in November, all things considered. Is there a risk that he pushes the turnout up & in the wrong direction? Sure. But if the numbers are low then you have GOT to hold onto that base to have any chance at all.

There's certainly a legit question to ask about how many votes #NeverHilary is worth for him. It might even be a majority of his votes, but I don't believe it's enough to win with. I just don't see a way to keep the rest of the pro-Trump support around if he tries to be anything other than himself.

He can't win unless he gets moderates to vote for him. And suburban housewives probably don't like his act.

Hillary is terrible but imagine electing this guy.

The Gallup polling on the convention shows Trump's problem going all anti-Hillary.

He can if they stay home.
(see my comment about total turnout)

So far, he's gotten at least a nominal lead in national polling by keeping up the aggression. I don't know that he holds that if he does anything else. He may very well not hold it if he continues, but I don't think changing course now makes a helluva lot of sense either.

Let's be very realistic: If you're willing to vote for HRC now, the odds of you changing sides because there's suddenly a kinder, gentler Trump are so small as to be unmeasurable. If you're voting for him now, then there's not much he can do in terms of being rough that is going to change that either, but he can lose those votes by being soft.

There's a chance, for sure, that he takes people out of the non-voting column and pushes them into the wrong camp. I acknowledge that, no problem. How many of those there actually are, and whether they're meaningful in the outcome, that's a lot murkier to me.

I've never heard of him either, but the Constitution Party is usually on my ballot in Michigan.

I think low turnout is the best way for him to win. That's why I don't think I'd be doing a bunch of crazy stuff at debates where you get people who normally don't care to get out and vote because they don't want Donald Trump as their President.

Kind of a tough line for him to walk. He has to keep his base motivated but not piss off casual voters.

Trump's starting to complain about debate scheduling. He does not want to be up there 1 on 1 with her. Not his strength. He thrives in the media setting, not a 1 on 1 setting.

Pence: 'Name Calling' Has No Place in Politics | NBC Bay Area

Wow, can't believe a VP candidate would call out his running mate like that...


...oh.

If it's a purely base election, he can win. The problem is, Clinton has been in the limelight for so long, and had so much dirt hurled at her, that I think a smoking gun (and possibly a literal one) is the only way he can pull off the two-step of being so odious the moderates won't vote for him while also damaging Clinton so badly that the moderates won't vote for her.


Put another way, if you're disgusted by his antics now, you aren't going to be fooled, and if you've crossed the Rubicon to support him after all the shit he's said and done, those bridges done been burnt already and you're not crossing back over.


How many there are is a fair question, but remember that people in the non-voting camp tend to be either the sort of moderates we discussed above or traditionally Democratic demographics who don't turn out as reliably as the Republican base in the first place - youth and minorities. The youth vote especially.

And that's his problem - I'm not sure there's such a thing as Republicans currently inclined to sit this out who would "come home" absent that aforementioned smoking gun. Anybody he pushes from inactivity to voting is almost certainly going to be someone who isn't pulling the lever for him.

I don't think that makes the difference in the election one way or another but it could be the difference from the "expected" map and states like Arizona, and Georgia turning unexpectedly blue.

yeah I saw that and wondering how much pot he had smoked before he said that. If there is a king of name calling, its his running mate. Demagogue is such a harsh word too :)

What an ass...

Donald Trump to Father of Fallen Soldier: 'I’ve Made a Lot of Sacrifices' - ABC News

He's made a lot of sacrifices and then couldn't name one sacrifice.

Then, of course, he had to take a shot at the guy by accusing him of not letting his wife speak because of their religion.

You know, Pence might scare me even more than Trump does. He has the face of a man who would kill his mother to get a leg up.

Sounds like Trump is trying to get out of the debates. Not surprising since Hillary is really good at them.

Log In - The New York Times


Shocking Trump would lie and make something like that up while trying to weasel out of the debates.

I love how Trump is using the fact that NFL games are up against two of them-he said he got a letter from the NFL saying it was "ridiculous" to have the debates scheduled then. And obviously Hillary was to blame for the schedule.

1. The debates are decided on by a non-partisan group with no input from the campaigns...and were decided on in Sept 2015.

2. The NFL never sent Trump a letter.

Don't let the truth bite you in the ass, Donald.

oops sorry did not see your post mckerney.

Just a note on the Koch brothers.

Koch brothers network rules out anti-Clinton ads | Politics - WMTW Home

I know his supporters don't care but it's crazy how you can just blatantly lie about stuff that is easily verifiable like that. I think he's got a personality disorder.

yeah its crazy the lies he gets away with. I think its going to come back to bite him in ads and the debates (well if he participates in them)

Just so that I'm clear on something ... the same NFL that people here rant about being so awfully run is the same one that gets the immediate "oh well they said they didn't, so obviously they didn't " benefit of the doubt?

How ... interesting.

Considering the debate schedule was set before the NFL schedule was, yeah.

What is the motivation for the NFL to lie about something like this? Especially something Trump could prove by just showing the letter they sent him?

If everything he said around that statement about the NFL letter involves him blatantly lying about easily verifiable information, I'm going to tend to think he's lying about that too. Doesn't really matter what the other entity is.

Okay, THAT part is pretty easy. I mean, how silly would the NFL look complaining to Trump about something like that? I don't figure their ratings are going to get clipped THAT hard as long as the games are decently close.


That kinda requires him to have bothered to keep it. Does it really seem like a stretch to think it was read & trashed?

I'm going to go with a pathological liar got caught in another lie.

Some pictures of the GOP Candidates wife (and potential first lady). Probably shouldn't matter but in a way, it does to me.

Melania Trump like you’ve never seen her before | New York Post

I'm pro-Trump but that's starting to get degraded to "reluctantly pro-Trump". The way he's running his campaign it's almost as if "I want to see how many ways I can be my own worst enemy and still win". Any other candidate with all this uncertainty about Clinton would've walked away with the presidency by now even before elections. I do happen to think there's a bit of "pathological liar" in him, but not in the way ppl will just call someone "psycho" or "sociopath", I'm rooting for him but something clearly seems to be off with him. What started off as "cute" or "trump being trump" is now "ok something seems wrong about this guy." To lie about something that can be easily proved is stupid. Also not sure why NFL games being on at the same time is an issue for a presidential candidate - is he implying he's pissed cuz he wants to watch football or is it a ratings thing? If it's for ratings that further goes to tie him to his "reality star" roots, which is what he should be distancing himself from.

Very odd man. Not so sure about him these days.

It's sad because I like some of Trump's ideas. He's right on the H1-B visas and our trade partners taking advantage of us. I like his corporate tax plan a lot as well. And while I'm not for building some giant wall on the border, I do think we should take illegal immigration more seriously.

But he doesn't have the temperament to be President. He is so thin-skinned that he can get drawn into childish insults with ease. Going after Khizr Khan is pathetic. You can't win that battle, just ignore it or do what Hillary did with Pat Smith.

And the lying is a huge problem. Now all politicians lie, but he lies about stuff that is easily verifiable. The NFL lie was unnecessary and a phone call away for most reporters. It wasn't something that would even help him politically. That makes me think he's just a pathological liar.

Also the stuff about not wanting to use phones or e-mail to communicate in the military. I understand security issues and you want to make sure you have that nailed down. But carrier pigeon stuff is like going back to the Civil War. Imagine fighting terrorism the way he thinks it should be fought.

I don't think he wants to debate. Say what you will about her, but she's a highly skilled debater. Hammered Obama in 2008 and I think she was much better than Bernie in most of their debates.

Also one-on-one debates are not good for Trump. He held his own in the primary debates where it was a bunch of people on stage because they aren't really much of a debate. You can prepare some canned answers to the few questions you get but you can also spend most of the time just throwing out attacks at the others on the stage which he did. He's going to be pressed in these debates to actually know things which I don't think he does.

I will differ on some of your points of agreement with Trump but I also agree with Trump on some issues vs Hillary.

With that said, I do think how he has conducted himself will not work well in the world stage and will get us into trouble. He is unstable, unfiltered and too full of himself.

On top of that, he just doesn't know enough stuff about the world. He was just on TV a few minutes ago saying that Russia will never invade Ukraine.

From Mark Cuban's endorsement of Hillary yesterday in Pittsburgh,


and the Dallas News definition is fantastic:

For somebody who is such a stickler for paperwork, like, oh I don't know, fucking BIRTH CERTIFICATES, then yes I sure as shit expect to see proof if he expects anyone outside his most ardent supporters to believe that.

Trump isn't a stickler for paperwork; he's a stickler for publicity.

Trump said he wanted that mother to speak if her religion was keeping her quiet, well she has spoken now:

Ghazala Khan: Trump criticized my silence. He knows nothing about true sacrifice. - The Washington Post

If Trump had had the good sense to have said nothing or, if asked, "it's terrible that they lost their son. I appreciate his sacrifice and can't imagine what it's like to lose a son," the impact of Khan's speech is minimized, and pretty much forgotten in a couple of weeks or so. Instead, the longer him attacking this family stays in the news, the more potential votes he loses from undecideds and conservatives who were lukewarm about him.

I've never seen a candidate where you had to fact check every little thing he says. Even the most easily verifiable stuff has to be fact checked.

He claimed he opposed the Iraq war so many times and has used details of his opposition so much on the campaign trail that I assumed he was telling the truth. It turns out there's no record of his opposition to the war until after it started and no record of his claims of addressing the white house because his opposition was getting so much publicity (as he's claimed). The only thing anywhere where he publicly commented on the war was 6 months prior to the war on Howard's Stern's show he said he guesses he supports an invasion of Iraq.

I don't think he's going make anywhere near the impact he feels he'll make and most on the left fear he'll make when it comes to policy. It is downright frightening to picture a guy that can't avoid calling people that disagree with him names and lies about the smallest of things meeting with foreign leaders.

I'm not as worried about Trump's domestic ideas because of Congress, but his foreign policy would be catastrophic.

I wonder if the NFL holds any sort of grudge towards him after the whole USFL thing.

They shouldn't. He almost singlehandedly destroyed their biggest competitor.