I've heard this a little from people recently - but I haven't seen any change in his actions ... just that the press don't report on his antic quite as much, I presume because they're trying to convince people the race is 'close' by influencing people to make it so.

The CNBC interview the other morning included a LOT of offensive stuff, but a lot of the media generally only jumped on the more positive things he said ..

Trump on CNBC

Well, there's probably my LOL for the day.

Election Update: Has Clinton’s ‘Bad Weekend’ Moved The Polls? | FiveThirtyEight

I am all-in with Nate Silver here. Trump has clear momentum in a race with a ton of undecided voters. I'm still seeing what I believe to be unwarranted optimism from the pro-Clinton crowd.

I love how Trump is claiming to be the first person to ever think about child care expenses. Maybe later he can come up with a plan to offer pensions for people over 65 and with disabilities.

That all well and good, but none of it is as incendiary as a fair bit of his past rhetoric.

Here's what I suspect is happening--and will continue to happen--in the minds of many "undecided" people who never vote Democrat (as long as he doesn't let his outrageousness rise to the level that it has previously):

AUGUST: "I don't want her putting anyone on the Supreme Court, but Trump sounds scary. He might be even worse."

OCTOBER: "I *still* don't want her putting anyone on the Supreme Court, but Trump doesn't sound as scary any more. I'll vote for him."

I suspect that the above has started to happen, and that's a major part of his upward trend. Now, I have no idea if there enough people fitting that profile to put him ahead of HRC, but common sense says that they're out there and at some point (maybe still now) they outnumbered those thinking similarly on the D side.

In other words, HRC at her worst has been less off-putting to the average D voter than DJT at his worst has been to the average R voter. So as a result, he had/has more of those "easier-to-convince" voters than she. These are people who *want* to vote Republican, but when Trump's antics are at their craziest, it makes them "undecided."

Heh. CNN Breaking News: Trump has released the results of his physical.

Pointing back to our (encouragingly increasingly popular, cause I think it means we're getting smarter at the FOFC) recurring theme of "it's the turnout, stupid".

Among the things Trump has to do for a while here is avoid giving Hilary back her "deplorables" gift.

I'll stick to my belief that he has to continue to "be Trump" to keep his existing voters BUT he doesn't need to create a new catch phrase for a while.

Yeah, I've been pretty much won over to that line of thinking regarding this election.

Yeah, pretty big unforced error there.

If Trump he wins all the states 538 says he has a 50%+ chance to win at the moment - which includes Ohio and Florida, he has 260 electoral votes (including 1 in the 2nd district of Maine). If he also wins Nevada (current 47% chance), he'd be up to 266. Then there's a bit of a wall, his next best states odds-wise is New Hampshire at a 35% chance and Pennsylvania where they have him at a 29% chance.

The reason they still see him as significant underdog (though rising, up to a 37.7% chance overall), is because a slight-to-moderate dip from here would hurt him a lot more than a slight-to-moderate gain would help him. And the slight-to-moderate dip seems much more likely, if this truly is Clinton's "worst week" of the campaign.

that's not how statistics works

It's how estimating probability based on a range of odds of the likelihood of future events works.

Edit: If Trump gains in the polls, his likelihood of winning any new states that he doesn't already have a strong chance to win, is very low. If Trump goes down in the polls, his likelihood of losing states he currently has a 50% chance to win goes way up. In other words, from here, a Trump gain doesn't change the map, a Clinton gain does. That's absolutely relevant in 538's probability estimates, they talk about it all the time.

I'm willing to trust Nate Silver & 538 when it comes to statistics.

Classic Trump quote re: the test results.Btw, I didn't realize he was 6'3 236... That definitely explains some of his in person charisma.

Intruiged but confused by that statement - so he's not a midget (he's still short in my eyes ... I'm 6'5'' ;) ) and somewhat overweight (my 'normal' weight at my height is 210lbs) .... how does that translate to charisma? ....

Santa Claus?

So...

...wait for it...

Something you wanna tell us about your tax returns, Donald?

I'm not a big "needs validation" kinda guy but I'll admit that it's kind of uplifting to see someone else independently tackle one of my more common sermons.

Independent Voters Are Overrated | FiveThirtyEight

So Trump has indicated that Hillary started birtherism (total lie). He's also going to give a speech today where it is expected that he will say that Obama was born in the U.S. and that he helped to settle the issue by getting him to release his birth certificate. And the media will write glowing stories about his moderation and pivot.

He is a much, much better politician than I gave him credit for when this all started.

Remember that Ailes is on his team now and he joined right before the pivot. I think he's been the single biggest addition to the campaign. He understands how to manipulate the media.

Tallest Candidate Wins Majority of US Presidential Elections

Why Tall People Make More Money - The Atlantic It is interesting that this also coincided with his replacing Manafort with the Breitbart guy since the media thought that would lead to a much more combative tone. Maybe Ailes is the explanation.

Yeah, Bannon has been invisible. My guess is he's working with Stone and Bossie on the dirty tricks side of things, but who knows. Somebody has gotten Trump to calm down, and my guess is Ailes is the only guy with the stature to make that happen. I think Conway has been solid as the face of the campaign on TV. She's struggled with some of Trump's most outlandish bullshit, but generally she's done a very good job.

"I used to think the world was flat, but I did some research, changed my opinion and settled the issue. You should thank me!"

Fixed.

The more he talks about how complicated his taxes are, the more likely it is that he has "virtually" no money of his own. Someone wrote some article about 6-8 months ago about how he was possibly nowhere close to as rich as most people thought he was. I bet he's not a billionaire on paper, and it's possible he might only be worth a few hundred million or less and is heavily leveraged.

Well of course he is heavily leveraged.
He is a real estate guy at heart.
The way the tax code is written he'd be a fool to not be heavily leveraged. Depreciation and such compounded by interest write offs 1031s...you build an empire that spits out millions per month in cash flow but you always owe more than the property is worth so you are "broke" lower taxed, and have a mult million dollar income.

Makes him my hero and me jealous.

I should have added heavily leveraged to "unknown and questionable foreign sources".

I guess i do like the part where he's routinely ripped off the Ivy League kiddos and continued to only pay back dimes to quarters on the dollars he owes. I don't like the part where he claims to be super wealthy when he's not. And I'm not sure how I feel if our president is several hundred million(billion?) dollars in debt to a variety of foreign sources.

I'm not a finance guy at all but he reminds me a lot of the shell game they were running around Sears when i was employed there with all of the holding companies, etc. Read a bunch up on that cause I was curious.

I mean, something came out the other day that the most cash his charity ever had on hand was something like 3.5million dollars. For someone who is allegedly worth 4-10billion dollars that seems like a joke amount of money.

The bigger problem is that his debt, especially to foreign banks and investors, is a real conflict of interest. If the U.S. were a corporation there's no way legal would let him serve until his conflicts had been cleared up. It's a serious question as to how should a candidate with at minimum hundreds of millions of foreign debt be handled.

So I must have missed it...was all this stuff that came out today just an attempt at a strategic move by Trump or did something happen in the past couple days that led to this being scheduled?

Except the US itself is a carbon copy of that, with our debt.

I love that Trump believes Obama was born in the US now that most people seem to agree that his place of birth wouldn't affect his eligibility.

So he got all the mileage out of the birther fiasco that he could, So Trump today was back to another favorite-Clinton is going to take away all our guns.

I think he and his team wanted it "dealt with" before the debate. Stiffing the media like he did probably ensures they won't let him forget it.

I honestly have no idea what your point you're making.

That the country has its own "leverages" but that hasn't stopped it from doing whatever it pleases. Not to mention, how much money again is the Clinton foundation getting from Saudi Arabia or wherever else?

My point is, there is a lot more to worry about with Trump besides this. If you really think this is an issue, you're grasping at straws so hard, your knuckles are white.

There's a rather big difference between if you do this I'll stop donating to your charity and if you do this I'll call in the remaining balance of your loans.

There isn't a corporate board in America that would accept this level of conflict. There's a reason that we've expected politicians to step away from their businesses when they run for office.

I don't get what he means by "I finished it". Does he mean that he was the last birther and now the issue is gone now?

So I'm looking at the electoral map. It would seem that it'd be really difficult for Trump to win without Pennsylvania.

Considering he has tweeted about it as recently as 2014, when did he consider it closed?

He thinks he got the President to cave on the issue and show his birth certificate.

And he brought it up again in Jan of this year in an interview with Wolf on CNN. He's milked it for all he can so he's given up on it and moved on.

It's true that Hillary didn't start it, but her supporters were the first ones to really bring it up in 2008. Her campaign started a whisper campaign about it and sent out that photo of Obama in Somali garb. The head of campaign wrote about attacking his lack of "American roots". The PUMA group was all over it as well.

So while Trump went too far with that claim, he's not wrong in that Hillary's campaign and supporters were spreading this info long before Republican nuts got a hold of it.

Maybe Hillary started this with rumors during the 2008 primary (I haven't researched this enough to determine either way ) but he held a press conference saying his people were finding unbelievable things in Hawaii and kept pushing it after Obama produced the long form in 2011, Trump has zero high ground here.

Great news for everyone, Trump will keep his tax cut plan to help small businesses but drop the plan to not increase nation debt. Everyone wins.

Log In - The New York Times

Yeah, yeah, this is the POTUS thread, but since part of the stakes for the Presidential election are who gets to nominate Scalia's replacement, and the ideological tenor of that replacement hinges on who controls the Senate, I feel like this merits attention.

Background Checks - YouTube

I'm sorry, but what does that have to do with being a good legislator? I know at least three near brain-dead guys who can do that. Mad respect for your service and all, but it doesn't mean you should be elected to anything.

Somewhere up the thread was discussion about the various "ground games" for the campaigns. And somebody mentioned Trump having an operation in a supposedly secure state like Georgia.

Fairly fluff article today from the AJC but it mentioned something that, honestly, I hadn't thought much about: just how early "early voting" begins. Counties will start to mail out absentee ballots next week and advance in-person voting starts on Oct. 17. It makes a little more sense to me now, I've preached the importance of turnout lately, and the surest turnout of all is to get the vote submitted and done a.s.a.p.

Neither does playing the saxophone. No matter, this is what we all inexplicable like to see from our candidates.

Stop.

The ad is about identity, which is a big driver for voters. They want to vote for the person like them. The ad isn't about the mechanics of the rifle, it's about saying that I'm a gun guy like you.

Why do you think the drink a beer with candidate X is a decent predictor of votes?

What does that have to do with being a good legislature?

Nothing, but don't act like these is unique. Every candidate advertises that they are a part of the tribe. Those that only engage on policy almost always lose. Persuadable voters generally don't know or care about policy.

They do care about who seems to be like them.

I have no idea how my mentioning others doing the same is equivalent to me saying it's unique.

I'm sure we'll hear a lot from Trump today now that they've identified that the NY/NJ bombings were foreign operatives.

For Trump, I suppose this is fairly reserved.

The elder George Bush looking like he's voting for Hillary:

George H.W. Bush to vote for Hillary Clinton - POLITICO

Two thoughts:

I wonder if Trump will go off on him ("I like Presidents who get re-elected!")

I don't think that this will move the needle. I think that the only person whose endorsement could matter at this point is George W. Bush.

Third point:

TRUMP: Let's see what would happen if we took former President's security details away. Let's just see.

I do think he will go off on him as he can't resist going after those who criticize him. He called the Chicago Cubs one of the worst run organizations after the guy who owns them gave money to a Never-Trump campaign in Illinois. The same Cubs with one of the best records in baseball, going to the playoffs, and at least one minor league team (Myrtle Beach Pelicans) who won their minor league title.

Maybe this gets some older Repubs to vote Hillary.. My Trump supporters on Facebook wrote off the Bush's a long time ago.

well given what he's said about Clinton in this vein, I wouldn't put it past him to do it here either. You would think this would piss off Texans and Republicans though. But in this election, who knows?

People are willing to overlook all sorts of things, as long as the guy in question is on their team. Just like in sports.

This election proves this more than any election in the modern era, perhaps ever.

Pretty much this.

Laura was still reasonably well regarded afaik, as was/is the dad.

Shrub? Not so much.

Though this Hillary-vote IS from the dad.

My bad, misread it.

In that case senility is a horrible thing to watch happen to people.
(Both his and perhaps mine too ;) )

Random question:

What are the odds that the first debate does not happen? What odds would you have to be getting to bet that it won't?

No insight or news inspiring this question. Just wondering about how sure one can be of anything in this strange election.

:)

Given Trump's history with debates, I would have said there was a chance of him skipping this one, if he was clearly behind in polls, and most Republicans were supporting a vote for Hillary. Since this is not happening now, can't see him skipping the debates and losing his last chance to reach out to independents and minorities.

I think that the debates will happen. But I actually take the opposite view. Trump's team has seen him do very well since they have started controlling his message. No press conferences. No unscripted speeches. No interviews (I think) other than Fox News and Dr. Oz. I could see his team (not him) really worried about the debates.

If he was still down by 5+, maybe they throw the hail mary. But now I see them looking at those trendlines and thinking "if we can just stay the course and keep this about Hillary, we can eek this one out."

All that said, I wouldn't think about taking the "no debate" bet until the odds were at least 95% or better.

I think there's a little more value than that in a NO DEBATE bet, but not much upper single digits to 10% maybe. Based almost solely on the fact that Trump did skip a primary debate.

Teh Donald has been tweeting today...

Crooked Hillary has been fighting ISIS, or whatever she has been doing, for years. Now she has new ideas. It is time for change.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2016

Do people notice Hillary is copying my airplane rallies - she puts the plane behind her like I have been doing from the beginning.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2016

Hillary Clinton is taking the day off again, she needs the rest. Sleep well Hillary - see you at the debate!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2016

PredictIt for the 1st debate...

Will it happen: .96
Basket of Deplorables: .33 (seems low)
Pneumonia: .23
Benghazi: .40
Crooked Hillary: .40
Third Party: .08
Most Watched Ever: .60

I like that Trump thinks he is the first person ever to have a speech in front of an airplane.

There are a bunch of replies to that tweet with pics of Presidents/tickets/candidates in front of airplanes, going back to Ike and Dick.

LOL. I missed this one the first time...

@anamariecox "I actually gave President Bill Pullman the idea to do his Independence Day speech in front of the jet. Never thanked me. Sad." pic.twitter.com/6CTueyUn8Q

— Mike Polk Jr. (@mikepolkjr) September 20, 2016

Amazing that this guy is dumb enough to:

a) post these questions on public message boards
b) try to delete them and assume people wouldn't immediately start pulling the archived copies

Clinton email wiper appears to have asked online how to hide 'VIP' info | Fox News

:lol:

Everything is a con.

He's a VIP running for office, it's cool. Hillary used that defense weeks ago.

Don King, a man whose legacy will be remembered far more fondly than was ever deserved. A man who has made his life running the hustle and con. No question he'd be a Trump supporter.

Cleveland didn't just name a street after him, they named the street he stomped a man to death on after him. :( Only in America!

Is it just me or is it really inappropriate for the white guys to be wholeheartedly laughing in the background at a story of black people always being looked down on, held back, regardless of success?

Nodding the head would likely be more suitable, not seeming to chortle "yeah, he's right, we DO do that!"

Rumors are starting to float that Cruz is going to endorse Trump. Seems like a dumb move to me. At this point, I'd think his best bet is to hope Trump flames out spectacularly, allowing Cruz to stand up as some sort of "knight in shining armor" who stood up to Trump and fought for conservatism while just about every other* prominent strongly-conservative Republican capitulated.

But endorsing now after taking such a strong stance in and immediately after Cleveland is going to look like "oh crap...he actually has a chance of winning...better get on board to try to save my own butt!"


*--Notable exception = Ben "I'm Taking My Kids To Watch a Dumpster Fire" Sasse.

I think almost all white people think that OTHER white people are the problem.

Surely the NRA will go bananas over what Trump said on Fox:

I'm not really surprised if this happens. He's a big opportunist, and now that Trump is doing better in the polls, he's setting himself up for what might happen in November and beyond. If Trump loses, he will be sure to remind everyone how he stood up to him.

OTOH, you've got Preibus out there making noises about candidates who don't endorse the nominee potentially not being allowed to run for the Republican nomination in the future.

So there's Ted Cruz's conundrum: he can be The Guy Who Stood Up To Trump, and potentially find himself unable to run for President in 2020 (as a Republican) if Trump loses. Sure, he'd have that "toldja so" cred, but he might not be able to do anything with it.

The alternative would be a third party run that tries to calve off as much of the TrueConservative(tm) wing of the GOP as it can, but you're not winning a Presidential election that way. Running hard right as a third-party candidate isn't going to get you crossover support, and even if you leave behind a rump Republican Party, that 10%, 15%, 35%, whatever it is you can't bring along is going to materially harm your chances in the purple states.

Or he can be The Guy Who Caved while still privately banking on Trump losing and then run in 2020 with the focus on the "toldja so" while playing down the fact that he ultimately DID endorse.

You know, kind of like how Ron Johnson's re-election campaign is trying to party like it's 2010 by painting Feingold as the sitting Senator and himself as the outsider challenging that out-of-touch incumbent.

A) There is a chance Preibus won't even be around 4 years from now.
B) How is he going to prevent anyone from running for the Republican nomination? If he could have that power, Trump wouldn't be the nominee right now.

It's probably just that they grew up in a time where there was no racism.

A Trump campaign chair in Ohio says there was 'no racism' before Obama | US news | The Guardian

THANKS OBAMA.

"There wasn't any" = "We weren't being called out on it"

He already showed his complete lack of character by attacking Trump on points where Trump was right.

If this doesn't work out I imagine he'll find a way to run as a (D) or an (L) or a (G) or just make something up.

The pressures of a national campaign -- and his lust for power -- pretty much sunk Cruz, it either crushed whatever character he had or revealed the absence of it.

I thought this was a humorous response from the Libertarian Party about Gary Johnson being left out of the debates...

Not surprisingly, complete bullshit from the (L)s.

There's been no moving of the benchmark for making the debates that I'm aware of. Those were available in advance and have even been posted here.

Unfortunately for these nutjobs (and fortunately for the rest of the nation) they simply aren't able to meet even those rather low standards.

Yes the Democrats and Republicans getting together and deciding that being on the ballot in all 50 states isn't enough but you also need a completely arbitrary number of 15%. I'm glad there will be no substance to the debate just Hillary attacking Trump and Trump telling how bad Hillary is. I yearn for the days where I could just drink Coke or Pepsi!

You are a smart guy, you do realize this was set up by the two party system to never allow a Ross Perot type guy in the debates again right?

Actually, Ross Perot would be in these debates according to the criteria.

Dola post...

Wouldn't it be great that the "nutjobs" would show how poor of a choice they are and how Donald Trump really is the best option out there Jon?

If you can't pull 15% against a field this unpopular, exactly how relevant are you?

There is a consistent & repeated rejection of the bizarre policies proposed by the (L)unatic Party. By virtually everyone. Candidates from the KKK Party and the Black Panther Party would have more relevance at this point.

Nope. Not the 1996 Ross Perot. Which is exactly why the rules were created right around that time. Even funnier is the 2000 Reform Party primary candidate Donald Trump making basically the same argument about the "rigged system".

Yes because the parties you mention are polling in the 8-12% range. :confused:

QFT. Historically unpopular candidates from the two major parties and both your POTUS and VP candidates not only have held elective office before, they're also not particularly fringe on policy. This was the Libertarian Party's opportunity to go over 15%.

Of course, if the two major parties go forward with nominating reality show candidates and the Libertarians go forward with nominating former governors, then maybe it wasn't the last chance.

1992 Ross Perot would. So you just like moving the goalposts, or just complaining or what?