I'm neither a Trump or Clinton supporter, but here are my beliefs:

No one gives a crap--outside of liberals and Clinton supporters--about his tax returns (unless he committed a crime). Think about it...they sent one year of a tax return--from 1995--which happens to be the year that he recorded a $918 million lost, from Trump Tower. The NY Times goes giddy over it--which I suspected Trump anticipated that they would. Doesn't this strike you as odd?

His baggage is already out on the table. Trump will turn around and attack Clinton with something more damaging. Trump has said a lot of shitty things, and lies like crazy, but nothing he has done comes across the way Clinton's dealings and her role in government. Clinton has the body of work as the "established" career politician, and it doesn't bode well for her. Trump doesn't--it works to his advantage as the outsider. Yep, he's got his bad business record, but his supporters don't care, and the "swing" voters don't seem to really get themselves worked up over it either.

The media and liberals jump all over these things that Trump does, such as the tax returns, but it only plays into the smug arrogance and distrust of the media, and that the media is in the bag for Clinton. The voters see him as the bull that's going to shake the system that people have come to loathe and distrust, and they're willing to bite their tongues to do it even if they are uneasy about Trump.

Now you got Clinton supporters going after Johnson supporters, which is a bad move--particularly since New Mexico just had a poll that shows it be a rather close three-way race there. It makes Johnson viable and gives him credibility, and you may disagree with his policies or his "gaffes," but he has views that appeal to the moderate voters, is generally likable, and doesn't have the baggage. Those supporting or looking at Johnson aren't buying the "A vote for Johnson is a vote for Trump." line. That's all Clinton has going for her. These voters don't care. People are armed with smartphones, social media, Google, ect. these days. Word spreads fast and the traditional media and information-sharing outlets are no longer in the power of the traditional media outlets. I believe that is the year people are finally feed up and are willing to go against the traditional voting mindset.

I agree with Michael Moore on his views on this year's election and his election prediction that Trump will win. I see some of the Brexit vote and feeling parallel here (including that the polls are underestimating Trump's numbers due to the "hidden" voters).

Dola...

I think one interesting thing to watch will be Deutsche Bank over the next few weeks. If it goes south for them, it could spook global markets.

Republicans thought Romney's voters were underestimated in the last election too.

True, but this time, there is some reason to believe that voters will not admit to supporting Trump even though they intend to vote for him. The disconnect between the polling and the outcome of the Brexit vote might be a harbinger of what will happen in November.

If this is a Trump plant he's a moron. I'm assuming he doesn't lose a billion each year, so these returns are likely the worst his taxes looked. He could have picked any other year and presented a more favorable picture of his business skills.

Now I'll grant that I'm not sure it makes a big difference in the race. Most of the right and right leaners are committed to Trump at this point and I don't think there are a lot of persuadable voters left.

I mean, I understand the point in that it only helps Trump supporters that this was released. He never showed that he did not pay subsequent taxes, the whole thing about avoiding taxes for 15 years is speculative (he could have used the losses is what everyone is saying). So this helps his narrative among the people who don't really care about policies or statistics, in that he's an outsider getting railroaded by the libral elites.

I mean, most of these people voting for him are just straight ticket folks who will vote for any R, or people who do not care about actual facts. I mean, my MIL keeps talking about his business success and how much he built from nothing. I try to remind her that there are people like Bill Gates and others who actually started businesses with products and innovated from nothing who are worth a lot more. That if he had just taken his 14M and invested it wisely he could be much better off. But she does not care, she just knows the name and associates it with business success. Even if I tell her that you can't run a country like a business, she just tells me how Hillary is evil.

So, it would not surprise me at all if it was a calculated leak.

So much so that Romney didn't even prepare a concession speech. We had tons of these comments here on FOFC about how the polls were wrong in 2008 and 2012. I love that we're getting it again.

Reference: Log In - The New York Times

So it looked like WikiLeaks was about to publish something very damaging to Hillary Clinton, so much so that Trump supporter Roger Stone tweeted that she would be "done" after this came out. But now due to "security concerns" (at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he's released stuff before), the announcement has been cancelled:

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Wik.../02/id/751294/

Until there's a flattened tax code and better utilization of the revenue, you're going to have a tough time finding all that many Trump voters who'd be overly bothered by him finding a way to avoid handing over cash.

Assuming it was done legally, it's one of the bigger atta boys I've seen regarding him in a while frankly.

I had a very smug coworker who was so sure that the polls were all wrong. All day long, she insisted that Romney was going to win. Oops.

In 2004 we all thought Kerry was going to win, based on early-day exit polling. Comes and goes around.

Trump and Romney are two completely different characters.

For example, if you're voting or supporting Trump, and you say that to a group of liberal/Clinton voters, it will get pretty ugly and maybe even violent. Not worth it going around telling people who you're voting for

Trump has been trolling the MSM his entire life, but especially this election cycle. This election cycle, after every time Trump takes a hit, it usually comes back with something that comes out on Clinton that hurts her just as much (if not more).

This release has him dominating the media for a few days, gets the media worked up over it (which he can then attacked), off the issues, off the recent Twitter/Miss Universe thing, and the debate performance, and primed for the next cycle. It's the 24-hours news cycle that Trump knows how to play well.

Like I said, I don't think non-Clinton/liberal supporters care too much about this. Trump said he lost a billion dollars, and he has "trumped' up not paying taxes. The moderate and Trump supporters won't necessarily find the idea of trying to minimize your taxes to be such a turn-off, because they do the same thing.

If by play well you mean losing the whole time. He has to do something to convince undecideds to break for him. Trolling the media isn't enough.

You seem to love the hyperbole like Trump...

Your broad strokes you are painting each side leaves little room for normality. While I can't stand Trump, my neighbor who loves him also brings in our garbage in and placed light up pumpkins on everyone's door. Perhaps I should warn him of an impending San Francisco liberal mob! I guess, if all we know about someone is one thing, and we hate that one thing, then sure, we are awful to one another.

Also, you keep saying how Trump always hits back harder, don't the polls suggest otherwise? At the very least, this tax thing keeps the conversation on him and losing increasingly valuable news cycles.

I am not sure I understand why there is this belief that Trump is a political genius that would see some crazy long term benefit from releasing damaging tax returns. It keeps the news cycle on him and as we have seen in the general election so far bad news does take a toll on each candidate's polling numbers.

I also am not sure why people believe that Trump has shy supporters. It wasn't true in the primaries and I am not sure why it would be true now. Fivethirtyeight has a good post about his polling in the general election. I could argue that liberals are afraid to tell conservatives that they support Clinton because it could turn violent. I just don't think there is any proof that it is true either way.

There is also a Brexit polls were wrong myth that I see all the time now. The last month of polls leading up to Brexit showed a close race and many polls had leaving leading staying.(You can look at them here) The media failed at correctly pointing at how close the race had become and the narrative became that the polls were wrong.

If in the next couple of weeks the polls once again show a close race with Hillary leading by 1 or 2 points or Trump leading we can start preparing for a Trump Presidency. But the last week hasn't helped that and with only five weeks left he can't afford to have another week of unforced errors that ding him any further.

Tax stuff didn't do it for you? How about...

Trump on vet suicide: “they see things…a lot of folks in this room see & you’re strong & you can handle it, but some ppl can’t handle it.”

— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) October 3, 2016

BREAKING: Trump Foundation ordered to stop fundraising by N.Y. attorney general’s office https://t.co/UJtnoS7sVZ

— Hᴀʜɴ Aᴍᴇʀɪᴄᴀ (@HahnAmerica) October 3, 2016

There's obviously bad/embarrassing stuff in the Trump tax returns. I happen to think it centers around complete lack of charitable donations, but not 100% sure. So instead you leak something that's "bad" but really not (he runs a big business and lost a lot of money in one specific fiscal year?), and it gives you a reason to push the persecution narrative & an easy rebuttal if anyone continues demanding the release of all his records.

e.e. trump

:D

BUT THE CLINTON FOUNDATION.

Ummmm......

BREAKING: State Department: US suspends bilateral contacts with Russia over Syria.

— The Associated Press (@AP) October 3, 2016

No chance I'll vote for him, but he said that to other veterans. It seems to have been his attempt to butter them up by saying they're stronger than the ones who committed suicide.

Well, when you state department is run by an idiot & his boss is an idiot ... stuff happens.

OK. Just watched the veteran clip. Unfair to slam him on that one.

Its not like he was going to win the deceased person vote anyway, he's not a Democrat.

I hate Trump, make no bones about.

Hillary and Bill Clinton uses the same tax schemes/deductions that Trump does with carrying forward loses. They had a $699k capital gains lost that they carried forward.

The NY Times also uses tax schemes--having an effective negative tax rate despite a nice $29.9 million pretax profit in 2014, using the same tax rule that Trump and Clinton use.

Trump puts his stuff first, uses it, then baits everyone else into eating the meat. Then he'll hit back on their own stuff for doing the same thing.

This isn't a typical election, and Trump is an one-of-kind, unpredictable person that's running for President against an equally disliked opponent that the standard methods of campaigning, polling, and stuff aren't as reliable.

I could be completely wrong.

Did they carry it forward? I took a look at that tax return (someone brought it up on FB) and the Clintons had still paid some 3M in federal taxes that year. I don't know very much about tax rules, but I got the impression that the loss was outweighed by other gains. In any event, it wasn't being used to completely wipe out future tax burdens.

The Trump is just baiting everyone narrative really worked so well in the first Presidential debate ;).

It's still the same deduction/rule they used. If they earned less than $700k that year, they wouldn't have paid anything in taxes. You can carry your losses forward for 15 years (I think).

Wait. People are worried that liberal pollsters are going to beat them up over the phone? That's the argument we're going with?

It said the return address was from trump tower but do we have any reason to believe that was actually legitimate? I.e. does that place have it's own zip code or mailing exchange?

I know a fair number of people who swear they never give a straight answer on a telephone survey.

I suspect that group & Trump voters has a pretty good overlap on the ol' diagram.

I don't think it really moved the needle for either candidate; if anything, it just made people groan more at the two choices, and those who support either candidate will still support them.

Clinton is still struggling with the Bernie supporters (the leaked audio doesn't help) and younger voters, along with the indepdents; Trump needs to figure out how to pluck off a slightly bigger slice of the minority and female vote in the swing states. If Gary Johnson can hold on to his numbers, it could really make things interesting.

This tax stuff is good politics by Hillary but I can't get too up in arms about it as I take advantage of the same tax rules. 2015-16 will have some losses I'll be able to carry forward and we take advantage of depreciation and all that. It's pretty rare that my farm has to pay in taxes. Of course we have property taxes and all the my personal income is taxed.

But then we get around to folks saying that business have an overwhelming tax burden which I find to be a load of shit. While our corporate rate is high, there are enough loopholes that the I truly wonder what the effective tax rate is for American corporations.

I know for my own corporation, taxes are the least of my concerns.

We do need tax reform. How people see this being done is up to their own political beliefs.

How do you see merit of online polls vs. phone polls?

For those with smartphones, do you answer calls from unknown calls? A lot of people don't.

A good indicator, if the U.S. allowed it, would be the betting market. :)

My theory: He was going to leak an edited version of the Sanders Millennials living in their parent's basement and got beat to the punch, so he's got nothing.

Is there reason to believe that the subset of people with smart phones that don't answer unknown calls would skew in any particular political direction? I've never heard a stat on it, but my *first* guess would be that it would skew more liberal (younger people who are aghast that *anyone* would call them instead of text, let alone an unknown caller.) And I would think there are significantly fewer older people who are cell phone only anyway.

This is like House of Cards: The Reality Show.

So crazy and compelling. It is must see TV

I can't wait for this one! I wonder if it will be as big as the leak they had that would get Hillary indicted during the FBI investigation. Or it will even be like the one last month that was going to knock her out of the race before the first debate.

Everyone knew Trump didn't pay a full tax rate. The reason why this is a story and why Trump didn't leak it is the size of his loss in a single year. The reason why it irks him is because it fuels people like Cuban or Buffett calling him a business loser. It's totally an ego thing.

Again, we've been through this before. The same things you're arguing now are what people argued in 2012 and 2008.

This is why I trust Nate Silver. He has a formula that considers a lot of these factors by weighting polls by various factors, including their overall historical accuracy, their outlier status, and polling methods such as whether or not they call cell phones.

And we do have a betting market. Take a look at PredictIt. You can get in on Trump at .31 right now, better than 3-1 odds. Some good money to be made if you really think the polls are this bad.

FWIW this is my take. Any "the polls are wrong" talk leans in Clintons direction, not Trumps IMO

Young people and certain minorities are still massively hard to get a hold of no matter what the kind of poll and how hard they try to adjust for it.

Finally, a voice of reason.

This is true in the narrow sense that he didn't personally declare bankruptcy, but that's only because he declared bankruptcy for his businesses at least six times.

Or in Johnsons direction who I read somewhere is in second and even close to
Clinton with young people. Possibly keeping him from the debates type margin of error.

I think this is very dependent on company size.
I know when I first started my business and had 3-5 employees and "had" to take an income it was a major kick in the crotch as I got taxed on my income twice. Then as I grew and established and acquired assets to depreciate, I suddenly had no income and a lower tax burden.

All legal. All above board. But the tax code certainly favors larger business over smaller business.

But it gets into a philosophical debate, if an entity should owe any taxes.
I'd really like to see major tax reform where there is no incentive to hide personal assets inside a corp and corps dont pay taxes. Plus a much simplified and fairer tax code...but I'll die before I see it so...not holding my breath.

Apparently the WikiLeaks announcement is back on for Tuesday, in Berlin now instead of London

I should also acknowledge that farming is a different beast. When we do make money, we can either invest in very costly depreciable assets or prepay a lot of the next year's more costly expenses to avoid tax burden. Of course then we have those years like the past few where we just get our asses kicked and carry those losses forward.

I just remember about ten years ago when we had some pretty tremendous profits and my dad complained that he actually had to pay tax in.

It does turn eventually, as now my dad is divesting himself of a lot of the assets and is definitely having to pay taxes on that (while I'm starting to take more advantage the other way is I invest in the farm).

I think the Assange thing will disappoint like most of his stuff. Have a feeling it'll be some crazy conspiracy thing that has no actual sources. Noticed he was pushing some article off a nutty right-wing conspiracy site saying that Hillary called for a drone strike on Assange.

Turns out it was nothing but Assange getting his face back out there. Shocking. It's always been about building a brand and bring famous.

Just in time for the VP debate: Federal Court Blocks Gov. Pence's Attempt To Bar Syrian Refugees From Indiana : NPR

Choice quotes:

So this is mainly for JIMGA with regard to our previous discussions in here regarding evangelicals, Trump support, and the wide differences in our perceptions of how our personal evangelical contacts are feeling about him. But I thought I'd post it here in case anyone else might care. :p

Last night, Erick Erickson (noted Evangelical #NeverTrump guy, former head of RedState) went on a long Tweet storm about Christians and voting/not voting for Trump. The entirety of it is linked below, but the part that really made me think about these previous conversations was him commenting that Dispensationalists tend to be more frequently Trump supporters while those who are more Reformed/Covenantal, while typically being heavily Republican, are usually at most nose-holders when it comes to Trump.

I grew up in the faith in a non-denominational church that was pastored by an ex-Southern Baptist who became a full-on five-point Calvinist (weird story, that one). Basically it was like a PCA Church that didn't do infant baptism (immersion-only, by personal profession of faith), and essentially all of my evangelical contacts from my home town come out of that church/tradition. Since then, yeah, even though I've attended mostly non-denominational churches in my various locations since then, some of which have attracted some Dispensationalist thinkers, all of the church leadership and the people I gravitated toward as friends all tended to be more Covenantal. My church here in GSO is about as far from Arminian thinking as is possible: Anglican Church (ACNA denomination) and both the pastor and associate went to Reformed Theological Seminary.

So, uh, yeah. If Erickson's hypothesis is correct (and theologically, it makes *complete* sense,) that would explain the wide delta that JIMGA and I are seeing. I'd been scratching my head over that one for a while, actually.

My friend @stevengberman compiled all of last night’s tweets together. https://t.co/cCXJZozOyv

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) October 4, 2016

Being pretty much non-religious, the nuances of this are pretty opaque to me, so thanks for the thoughtful post, Ben.

Well honestly, it's a nuance that I hadn't thought of myself, but without getting *too* much into the weeds of theological thinking and the type of person who'd typically be drawn to one style versus the other, it makes perfect sense to me.

Now watch JIMGA come in here and say that all his evangelical friends are PCA and blow up that theory! :p

Maybe the fourth time is the charm for Wikileaks promising to end Hillary's campaign.

I hear he also likes Swedish women.

Huh. That's interesting. I can kind of see Dispensationalists being pro-Trump.. heck, he may be the one that brings about the rapture and tribulation (or on the other hand, they may be like, we'll be raptured anyways, have fun with your Trump ;)).

Assange promises election leaks but doesn’t drop October surprise - POLITICO

I don't think Hillary Clinton is quite done yet...

To be fair, a Trump presidency probably doesn't bode well for the chances of Assange surviving to see the next election cycle, even if Hilary did kick around assassinating him once already :D

Well if your country is multinational it's rather easy to avoid taxes. You can funnel money through countries with lower rates. You do have to pay if you want to bring that money back, but politicians usually offer up a tax holiday for that every decade or so (Hillary voted for one in the Senate). I personally think the corporate tax rate should be lowered a lot because getting 15% of a lot of money is better than 35% of nothing.

I still don't understand the attacks on Trump's taxes though. He didn't make the tax laws. No one is paying more in taxes than they owe. Blame the politicians for such loose tax laws when it comes to wealthy individuals.

On the same topic, I think pointing out that he doesn't seem to be a particularly good businessman is fair. That should be the takeaway from this. The guy running on his business record somehow lost $900 million in a bull market on casinos.

Is there any proof Hillary wanted him assassinated? I didn't follow the story that closely but the only report is from that TruePundit.com website. And that doesn't appear to be that credible. Just seems really odd that she'd ask about assassinating a guy with a drone strike in the UK or Sweden. That would be a huge international incident.

To add to that, Assange likes to play the martyr and talk about this stuff a lot. He was a socialite in Europe well after the leaks. He could have easily been killed at any time without the use of drones. He didn't seem that concerned for his safety until he was wanted for questioning in a rape investigation. The guy was giving speeches and attending swanky parties while supposedly fearing for his life.

Trump cleared that up by saying 1995 was worse than the great recession and almost as bad as the great depression.

On MSNBC today Gary Johnson said his lack of geography knowledge is a good thing because you can't get into a war with a country you can't find.

Fun toy

1,024 Ways

So per that, the only was Trump wins is if he wins all the states that the Times has listed as under 80% Dem, which I assume means there's an 80% chance the Dem wins that state.

That's pretty cool. It made me think of the WOPR trying to find the winning scenario before launching the missiles.

The real October surprise would be if my vagina didn't instantly dry up every time I saw a photo of Julian Assange.

— Jen Statsky (@jenstatsky) October 4, 2016

Yeah not exactly a convincing argument if he wants to leader of the free world.

It is right up there with his,"why worry about climate change when one day the Sun will burn up the Earth," take.

"My plan for ISIS is to wait. Eventually the Borg will assimilate them all."

What could possibly go wrong????

I will be watching the great Governor @Mike_Pence and live tweeting the VP debate tonight starting at 8:30pm est! Enjoy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 4, 2016

The RNC has declared Mike Pence the winner of the debate at 4:15 pm today

Philip Bump on Twitter: "This seems a smidge premature. (v @becket) https://t.co/wWGpawNyb0"

SportsDigs declared Mike Pence the winner two weeks ago.

OK, well glad to know who won. I just turned it to baseball. Between Kaine's interrupting and Pence's faux compassion squint, I'm out.

Honestly I think Kaine is winning only because Pence has to defend all the dumb shit Trump has said or done.

The moderator is doing a pretty good job of keeping things on track. For the most part. Better than Lester Holt did.

Or there lack of defending the dumb shit Trump says. Pence is in a no win situation. Sometimes the best thing is to own up to your screw up and squash the issue. But completely denying EVERYTHING just get old fast.

I think for the sort of person who has vague curiosity about these two candidates, but no serious command of the issues or the details of the media issues over the last weeks... Pence looks to be the better candidate here by a wide margin. He's clear, calm, and persuasive. He's just racking up points by not being an asshat.

Agreed....but you have to have lived in a freaking igloo for the past year to believe Pence. He looks and acts the part far better then Trump that's for sure.

This. No idea what Kaine is thinking. It's like he thinks he's debating Trump and trying to get him to go on a rant.

Okay, Kaine's response on religion and public service was a great one. Spot on what a politician should say.

Thats weird. Swear I was posting in the Mathew thread. But posted here. Im losing my mind.

Ugh, Kaine is really making rethink my decision to hold my nose and vote and Clinton. I'm getting more and more in the Johnson camp every time he interrupts.

Well, if you're still unsure if you are going to vote, or don't have enough knowledge that you're still deciding between the two major candidates that probably describes you. And Pence is cleaning up with those people vs Kaine tonight. He giving the appearance of a patient adult dealing with a petulant child.

Well done by both on abortion.

Wait, they couldn't even go a full 2 hours? Well given the past hour and a half it's probably for the best.

So stamina may be an issue for the VP's... ;)

CBS just had a focus group on and they overwhelmingly gave the debate to Pence - but virtually none of them (there was maybe one hand up) said that it would make them any more likely to vote for Trump.

Trump would be wise to develop a case of laryngitis between now and Sunday.

Or at least a car of wheezing.

(You edited, but I saw it!)

And CNN's focus group picked Kaine. So this might not have mattered at all. Like we would have guessed going in.

I don't know if this matters at all, but who did CNN's focus group consist of? CBS's group was undecided Ohio voters.

They were undecided voters from Virginia I believe. (I could be wrong about what state that they are from.)

How did Kaine get through the debate without going after Pence on LGBT issues?

Too busy attacking Donald Trump I guess

Except people don't base their vote for President on who the Vice-Presidential nominee is....people try to believe that's the case, but it never works out that way....because at the end of the day, people remember who's at the top.

There was a lady in the CNN crowd who put her hand up for "Kaine won" and "No clear winner". That's showing commitment to her undecided ideals.