Now that the party conventions are over, the next major focus of media attention are the debates. There will be three presidential debates (Monday, September 26; Sunday, October 9; and Wednesday, October 19) and one vice-presidential debate (Tuesday, October 4) all lasting from 9:00pm-10:30pm Eastern time.
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On his show Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver said Donald Trump risks facing humiliating defeat in his campaign for a job that he would be bad at and that he should seek a face-saving way out. He says that his campaign made four good points and now the best thing he could do is drop out of the race, and he gives suggestions for how to do so in a memorable way.
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This presidential election is quite extraordinary in the level of dissatisfaction that the members of one party, the Republicans, have with their presidential nominee and the number of defections that it has spurred, with conservative thought leaders and elected officials staying silent or lukewarm about Donald Trump and others abandoning him and some actively campaigning for his opponent Hillary Clinton. By any reasonable measure, Trump should be heading for a crushing defeat.
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Michele Bachmann, who while in Congress vied with Louis Gohmer and Steve King for the title of the stupidest person to ever serve in that capacity and whose 2008 run for the presidency was a total laugh-fest before it went down in flames, says that she is now advising Donald Trump on foreign policy.
I am not a big fan of swimming and had never heard of Ryan Lochte before the bizarre story that emerged from the Rio Olympics about how he and three team mates said that their taxi had been pulled over by an unmarked car and some people flashed police badges and guns, one of them pointing at Lochte’s forehead, and robbed them.
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One of the fascinating things about the Trump campaign has been the number of theories that it has spawned about the man himself, his supporters, and what that combination says about the nature of American politics today. What has triggered this is a sense of incredulity that someone so seemingly vain, shallow, ignorant, childish, and boastful could generate such enthusiasm in so many people that he could possibly be elected president. Even if he loses, we can expect about 50 million Americans to have chosen him. That’s an extraordinary number and cannot be dismissed as fringe elements.
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On July 30, I was driving my daughter from Boston to New Hampshire to attend a wedding when we noticed a long convoy going in the opposite direction. The convoy consisted of large vehicles, trucks and SUVs and the like, all flying American and Confederate and ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags, never a good sign because it signaled that they were hyper-patriots and likely white supremacists and xenophobes.
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There has been a shake-up in the campaign of Donald Trump with Steve Bannon coming on a chief executive and Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway as campaign manager and the seeming demotion of Paul Manafort who will retain his job title. Such changes so late in the game are rare and are usually taken as signs that things are not going well in a campaign, so the Trump campaign has taken some pains to paint these changes as mere trifles.
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This clip where Triumph the Insult Comic Dog stages a fake focus group in which supporters of Donald Trump are assembled to give feedback on proposed campaign ads has got wide play. The ads that the Trump supporters are shown are, of course, fake and are increasingly outrageous.
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As a result of Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination and his subsequent behavior and pronouncements, we are seeing a great deal of uncertainty amongst Republicans on what to do, with over one hundred of them signing a letter calling on the party to abandon Trump. The Los Angeles Times has published a list of traditionally Republican supporters under various shades of support: those actively campaigning for Trump, those issuing a clear endorsement of Trump but not campaigning, those saying they support ‘the party nominee’ but won’t be campaigning, those wavering or backing Trump with caveats, those not saying they will vote for Trump but saying they definitely will not vote for Hillary Clinton, those who are staying quiet altogether, those who reject both Trump and Clinton, those who reject Trump but are not backing Clinton, and those who have rejected Trump and are voting for Clinton.
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