As Donald Trump and his rabid followers try to deal with the sudden flood of new stories about his sexual predations, raw language and continual search for self-gratification, I offer three different perspectives on the meltdown that point to the fact (at long last) that Trump is truly toast as far as the coming election: Red State, Reddit and direct mail:
RED STATE:
Erik Erickson, founder of Red State blog and fervent conservative was among the early members of the right wing to call Trump a phony conservative and a moral reprobate. Say what you will about Erik and you could say plenty, but he has for most of this long 2016 campaign, been a thorn in Trump’s side. Erickson has left Red State’s active management, but the site has continued to be highly critical of Trump and this morning called BS on Trump’s lame apologies.
In the blog’s daily mailing to subscribers (always fun to see what they are thinking), Caleb Howe tears into Trump’s efforts with the following powerful points:
Locker Room Talk:
Today will be full of thinkpieces, but even more, at least on the right, it will be jam packed with hot takes and hot tweets about how this is how guys talk in the locker room, that aren't Hillary's crimes as bad or worse, that private conversations should remain private, that people are sick of political correctness. (snip)
Seriously, stop saying that. Bragging about trying to suborn adultery isn't locker room talk. I was in the Marine Corps for 6 years. I've heard plenty of guy talk. Let me tell you that talking about trying to seduce a married woman would not have been received well in the barracks I knew. Military members worry a great deal about infidelity due to long deployments. It ruins lives. It's not a laughing matter and it's sure as hell not "locker room talk. (sniip)
And finally, grabbing them by the p***y? I see you, so-called conservatives. I see you on Twitter. You know who you are. You're talking about this being just the way guys talk. No. Guys that talk that way make you uncomfortable, and you know it. You end up avoiding them. You don't want them around your mother, your sister, your wife, or, God forbid, your daughters.
Aren't Hillary's crimes as bad or worse?
Yes. Yes they are. So? If Hillary jumped off a cliff would you?
Aren't Private Conversations Private?
You can't just say "it was private" and expect the jury to disregard. Be real. Not to mention the fact that, contrary to his Trumpology, this merely confirms who we already know he really is. Who you know he is.
Shouldn't We Abolish Political Correctness?
There is actual political correctness, which is used to silence free speech, and there is simply being a decent freaking human being, which conservatives have somehow abandoned as being a PC bootlicker. I can't understand it. Remember the party of values? Didn't we used to make that argument? (snip)
In the adrenaline of political combat, in the competitive world of an election year, you probably think you'll feel fine in the future about what you're saying now. But I think you won't. Because you know what?
That's locker room thinking. And some day, you have to grow out of it.
Red State isn’t buying Trump supporters’ rationales for continuing to cling to him and they are asking his followers to engage in some critical self-examination. Unfortunately, neither they...nor the man they fervently support are capable of doing so.
REDDIT:
The Trump Reddit has been one of the major fever swamps where his rabid supporters gather to share “facts”, swear their allegiance, attack the liberal media and GOP opponents and shovel forth every imaginable piece of anti-Hillary gossip they can find. It is what fuels their willful ignorance of reality despite the growing mountain of evidence that their “leader” has no clothes, no ethics, no compassion, no ideas and no soul.
As examples of the kinds of slime you will find if you dare to enter, here are just a few of the latest tropes:
Wikileaks:
True to form, Julian Assange managed to time his promised release of more hacked Democratic e-mail documents so they hit the blogosphere just as Trump’s raw bus conversations were exploding.
Leaving aside the fact that such timing was too stupid to believe since much of the potential impact is being overshadowed by the media focus on Trump’s latest statements and lame apologies.
But the zealots at Reddit quickly seized on the leaked documents and are fervently sharing them with each other while they wail that the press isn’t paying any attention to them because they surely will be the final weapon needed to bring down Hillary the hateful liar. Along with that you will find literally hundreds of postings as they bring up every conceivable Hillary “fact” they can think of, coupled with claims that this HAS to spell HER doom.
Some of the stuff is truly gagging: An apparent cross posting of a Drudge item (who else) quoting Geniffer Flowers as saying Bill Clinton told her that (warning….really nasty) “Hillary has eaten more p...y than I have.”
And others are delusional: Numerous references to an article in The Christian News (not to be confused with the reputable Christian News) claiming that Ohio officials were investigating the discovery of dozens of crates “filled with ballot forms already filled out for Clinton.” Researchers, including the folks at Snopes, quickly labeled the story bogus. The photo used with the story, appeared to show someone rolling dozens of crates labeled “Ballot Box” out of a truck, but it was soon determined that the photo was a photoshopped version of a picture from British Elections and it had been doctored in an effort to make it harder to locate. Go here for the full story including the original and the doctored photo.
FOX:
Hotfooted it over to FOX last night as the story was exploding and Hannity was on. I could only stand about three minutes of it, but the content was clear. Sean, who has been Trump’s butt boy for months, was commiserating with his guests, Including slime lawyer Jay Sukolow, that the media was focusing on this story while continually ignoring all the awful things Hillary was doing and had done.
Sukolow wailed that if it weren’t for the latest explosion, the media would absolutely be fixated on Benghazi, E mails and Bill’s ifidelities, and he’d be soaring in the polls. Today it appears the network is suddenly fixated on Hurricane Matthew.
DIRECT MAIL:
What does Direct Mail have to do with all of this? Plenty it appears because recent actions by the Trump campaign provide ever more evidence that it is an effort being run by morans.
The fact that the Trump campaign is short of cash, that its management team is constantly at odds and unable to control Trump’s whims and Tweet rants, and that they have virtually no ground game or voter registration have been continually noted from many vantage points. If this election were to become a close one (and I am increasingly of the belief right now that this could turn into a Clinton rout after yesterday’s disclosures) those shortcomings would doom Trump in the election.
Evidence of that disarray appeared in our area of Western PA with a story in this morning’s Pittsburgh Post Gazette, noting that the Trump campaign is sending out mailers to voters in Western PA seeking their support, but the recipients in large numbers, are mirthfully bewildered by the move:
Yes, OK, just about anything can happen this election. And sure, Donald Trump’s hopes depend on appealing to disaffected Pennsylvania Democrats. Even so, Gabe Kramer isn’t exactly a swing voter: He’s a registered Democrat in Squirrel Hill, one of the state’s most liberal enclaves. He’s also a union organizer whose wife, Erin, is a progressive activist.
So he was surprised to get a mailer — all the way from the New York Republican State Committee — urging him to support Donald Trump. The mailer laments failing schools and dangerous neighborhoods while warning, “Hillary won’t change a thing.”
I’ve never seen that before,” Sam Hens-Greco, the Democratic ward chairman representing Mr. Kramer’s neighborhood, said of the out-of-state party mailing. Mr. Hens-Greco said he hadn’t received one but knew of another voter in his ward who had.
Dave Scholnick was also surprised to get a mailer. He’s not just a registered Democrat but a South Philadelphia activist whose organization, For Pennsylvania’s Future, aids efforts to elect Ms. Clinton.
“My area of Philadelphia is home to African-Americans, Hispanics — a lot of immigrants,” he said. “It’s absolutely not a hotbed of Trump support.”
They were among several loyal Democrats who told the Post-Gazette this week that they, and some of their friends, were mystified to receive the mailers
Yet another sign that a campaign that is short on resources is going through the motions of things like direct mail, but with total lack of targeting. They are simply buying lists and wasting their hard won dollars trying to wallpaper districts that are heavily supportive of Hillary. You might argue that they have to try and win those voters, but as with so much of what they do, the Trump organization has never really tried to do that, focusing instead of those who attend his rallies to undertake registration drives rather than reaching out widely.
No ground organization, weak registration efforts (by one report, Democrats have registered close to 500,000 new voters vs. 67,000 for Trump), and clearly wasteful spending using wallpapering mail vs. very targeted messages to voters the campaign KNOWS intimately. A recent Tweet which I think was from David Plouffe but can’t locate, said that Hillary’s team has EVERY swing state voter identified so they can precisely focus their efforts to each one based on their known leanings, interests, etc. By all accounts, the Clinton database and its ability to segment the electorate is the state of the art and a further enhancement of the system that helped Obama win his elections.
And yesterday on MSNBC’s With All Due Respect, a guest expert on campaign advertising told hosts Mark Halperin and John Heilemann were told that the Trump campaign is shifting ad buys in key swing states:
Donald Trump's presidential campaign is pulling previously planned advertising orders in select markets in some key battleground states next week and adding others elsewhere, according to ad tracking sources.
The previously planned spots are being pulled from stations in states that include Maine, Ohio, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, said Steve Passwaiter, a vice president and general manager at Kantar Media/CMAG.
"It seems to be mostly smaller markets," he said, adding that the changes started to be reported by media buyers late Friday morning and were ongoing. (snip)
"The Trump calculation is apparently to hope that national forces put him over the top in Florida and North Carolina and Ohio and that his campaign can make a difference in Pennsylvania," said Ken Goldstein, a advertising and polling analyst for Bloomberg Politics. "If the race ends up being competitive, Pennsylvania is a pivot point."
Before the changes were made, data from Kantar Media/CMAG had showed Trump's campaign spending about $7.5 million next week on broadcast, cable and satellite television. The company's ad tracking software has reporting delays associated with orders being placed or cancelled, so that number is likely to change. As of late Friday afternoon, it showed just more than $6 million.
Even if Trump could somehow manage to extricate himself from the cess pool of sexual harassment, sexist statements and failed efforts to try and pivot the argument to Hillary, he looks ahead to the following bleak landscape:
- The upcoming second debate tomorrow night in a town hall format that is the worst possible for what he really wants to do, which is try and attack Hillary and Bill
- His continued failure to produce any substantive programs and policies to back up his claims that “only I can make America Great Again.”
- A campaign organization in absolute disarray with dwindling resources, backers steadily disavowing him and others who refuse to do so facing their own election challenges down ticket that could well lead to a Democratic takeover of the Senate and even (unlikely but we can hope) the House.
- A media now increasingly recognizing how their failures to dig into Trump’s past early, and focused on more digging into every part of his background.
- A total lack of endorsements from major newspapers nationwide.
- Growing lists of foreign policy and security experts, former GOP members of Congress and even former GOP Presidents who have announced they cannot support him.
- Continual gaffes by Trump that further alienate key constituencies he MUST have to win including minorities and especially women.
In my view Trump is absolutely toast at this point and the most important question to be answered election night is whether he will emerge merely crispy or absolutely charred. Let us pray for the latter.