Well, I got through all of yesterday without posting anything about the election. Give me some credit for that.
Matt Taibbi has a good essay up on how Trump is the by-product of a lot of tensions in our political system and especially in the Republican Party. Here's my favorite paragraph from it…
The House speaker [Paul Ryan] had held a conference call with elected Republicans, telling them they were free to yank support from Trump if they thought it would help them win in November. This sounds like a good decision, until you consider that it's one he should have made the moment Trump sealed the nomination. As always, the Republicans acted far too late in disavowing vicious and disgusting behavior in their ranks. Then again, it's hard to keep the loons out when you're scraping to find people willing to sell rich-friendly policies to a broke population. The reaction among hard-line legislators was predictable: You're telling us now we can't be pigs?
Nate Silver says that Hillary's lead is pretty solid, though not to be taken for granted. Frankly, I'm getting more interested in the chances of the Democrats recapturing the Senate, which Silver currently pegs as a 65.2% chance.
Hey, if you know any Bernie Sanders supporters who are still hesitant about voting for Hillary Clinton, remind them of this: Right now, the best thing that could happen to advance the positions on which Sanders campaigned would be for the Democrats to control the Senate. That would install Bernie as the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, a very powerful perch indeed. He and President H. Clinton could work together to pass the proposals of his that she has adopted and if she didn't push for them, he'd have the clout to retaliate. It's unlikely the Democrats can take the Senate if Hillary doesn't take the presidency.
I'm not looking forward to the Wednesday debate and I suspect even people who pay to see mud wrestling are asking, "Does there have to be a third one?" I have no idea what Trump should do or will do except that those will probably be contradictory choices. I keep looking for areas of agreement with him and I found a partial one in this tweet this morning…
He's wrong of course that the media is rigging the election, unless you think it's rigging to give him a little more air time than his opponent instead of a lot more, like they used to do. He's also wrong that the Alec Baldwin impression isn't good. But "the boring and unfunny show"? Hey, when the man's right, he's right.
And hasn't it been kind of interesting watching this election morph from a referendum on Immigration to a referendum on Women's Rights? In a sense, those are the same issues because they're both about controlling the power of white male privilege…or even acknowledging that there is such a thing.
Twenty-two days until the election. One of the less-important annoyances I want to have be over is the use of the word "meltdown" to describe any slight displeasure or lack of a smile on the part of anyone running for office or speaking on behalf of someone running for office. Remember the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy threw water on the Wicked Witch? How about the scene in The Terminator where the titanium skeleton of the title character turned into molten metal? Those were meltdowns. What we're seeing identified as such these days are someone getting a little flustered or pissed. And lately, we all have good reasons to be flustered or pissed.