CalvinBall wrote:when is the last time something ted cruz made sense?

td11 wrote:@willmenaker
LOL, what's the worst that can happen? Trump doesn't concede and a few dozen rascal scooters shut down traffic on the beltway? https://t.co/zoaJ5yTlwa

@theseantcollins
@willmenaker I get what you mean, but the worst that can happen is he riles up some lone-wolf gun nuts, or drunk frat boys beat up a Sikh

@armandjeff
@theseantcollins @willmenaker that is happening and will continue to happen regardless of whether he 'concedes' or not

@willmenaker
@theseantcollins Ugly shit could certainly happen, and mostly already does, but this is a play for media types to cast themselves as heroes.

Menaker is of chapo trap house fame, Armand is his friend I guess. So these guys are now calling out reporters (jamelle bouie in this case) for writing articles about how it would be bad if Trump continues his rigged bullshit. Amazing how full of themselves lefty twitter can be

JFLNYC wrote:

The usual suspects are already coalescing around an answer — namely, that she just got lucky. If only the Republicans hadn’t nominated Donald Trump, the story goes, she’d be losing badly.

But here’s a contrarian thought: Maybe Mrs. Clinton is winning because she possesses some fundamental political strengths — strengths that fall into many pundits’ blind spots.

First of all, who was this other, stronger candidate that the G.O.P. might have chosen? Remember, Mr. Trump won the nomination because he gave his party’s base what it wanted, channeling the racial antagonism that has been the driving force for Republican electoral success for decades. All he did was say out loud what his rivals were trying to convey with dog whistles, which explains why they were so ineffective in opposing him.

And those establishment candidates were much more Trumpian than those fantasizing about a different history — say, one in which the G.O.P. nominated Marco Rubio — acknowledge. Many people remember Mr. Rubio’s brain glitch: the canned lines about “let’s dispel with this fiction” that he kept repeating in a disastrous debate performance. Fewer seem aware that those lines actually enunciated a crazy conspiracy theory, essentially accusing President Obama of deliberately weakening America. Is that really much better than the things Mr. Trump says? Only if you imagine that Mr. Rubio didn’t believe what he was saying — yet his insincerity, the obvious way he was trying to play a part, was surely part of his weakness.

That is, in fact, a general problem for establishment Republicans. How many of them really believe that tax cuts have magical powers, that climate change is a giant hoax, that saying the words “Islamic terrorism” will somehow defeat ISIS? Yet pretending to believe these things is the price of admission to the club — and the falsity of that pretense shines through.

And one more point about Mr. Rubio: why imagine that a man who collapsed in the face of childish needling from Mr. Trump would have triumphed over the woman who kept her cool during 11 hours of grilling over Benghazi, and made her interrogators look like fools? Which brings us to the question of Mrs. Clinton’s strengths.

Yet the person tens of millions of viewers saw in this fall’s debates was hugely impressive all the same: self-possessed, almost preternaturally calm under pressure, deeply prepared, clearly in command of policy issues. And she was also working to a strategic plan: Each debate victory looked much bigger after a couple of days, once the implications had time to sink in, than it may have seemed on the night.

Oh, and the strengths she showed in the debates are also strengths that would serve her well as president. Just thought I should mention that. And maybe ordinary citizens noticed the same thing; maybe obvious competence and poise in stressful situations can add up to a kind of star quality, even if it doesn’t fit conventional notions of charisma.

So let’s dispel with this fiction that Hillary Clinton is only where she is through a random stroke of good luck. She’s a formidable figure, and has been all along.

Krugman

pacino wrote:she should smile more/less

Bucky wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:

...

So let’s dispel with this fiction that Hillary Clinton is only where she is through a random stroke of good luck. She’s a formidable figure, and has been all along.

Krugman

guessing that link is actually to hugetinymistake.blogspot.com

The Dude wrote:

Youseff wrote:after the hostility of the campaign, I find this roast to be a weird spectacle and more than a bit unsettling.

not sure if you saw the live feed (which was still available on youtube last night), but they just had a camera set up recording everything when people weren't speaking, so you were mostly watching people eating dinner. But watching Clinton and Trump small talking to each other during that was really annoying, just shows how much of an entertainment thing the debates are.

Soren wrote:I have a friend who is voting Trump over Clinton because he is "a proud anti-war voter."

pacino wrote:i didnt watch that stupid dinner, that's a winning line. makes us all happy, jh and werthless included.

John Harwood ‏@JohnJHarwood
Texas GOP Rep Brian Babin, backing Trump, to Fox News radio: "sometimes a lady needs to be told when she's being nasty"

Nate Cohn ‏@Nate_Cohn
The first day of in-person early voting in North Carolina:
Dem 52.7, Rep 24.3
White 67, Black 27.8
Female 55.1, Male 43.5

SEDER: But you can debunk that by releasing that video. Why wouldn’t you release all the video?

O’KEEFE: Because no journalist in their right mind would ever release their raw notebooks and if they did, Sam--

SEDER: Well, it’s not a notebook. It is caught on camera.

O’KEEFE: Let me tell you something: No journalist ever releases the raw, and the reason, and if they did, if all these journalists released the raw, you would see a different story. They piece words together to paint a specific portrait.

SEDER: So you paste the words together to paint--

O’KEEFE: No. I have video. I don’t just have words. I have video.
[...]

SEDER: Are you saying you did piece it together to paint a picture?

O’KEEFE: That’s what journalism is. Journalism is telling a story. And I will stand by every single edit. I will go to -- I will be in contempt of court to protect my undercover reporters because I’m standing for something greater than myself. I’m standing for the right of citizen journalists. No one here would ever dare release their raw. No one

CalvinBall wrote:

pacino wrote:she should smile more/less

smile more.

talk less.

dont let them know what you are against or what you are for.