November 5, 2016

Friday Talking Points (414) -- Special Election Edition

Welcome back to Friday Talking Points. We went on our annual hiatus last Friday, to bring everyone two chilling Hallowe'en nightmares, but we found that it was actually quite hard this year to come up with anything more terrifying than "the other candidate wins" -- for either side of the aisle. Such has been the 2016 election season.

However, regular readers of this column are going to have to wait yet another week for a standard Friday Talking Points offering. This week we are throwing out our format entirely, and instead providing an explanation of who we're voting for, followed by a call for reform in an effort to inject a possible silver lining to what promises to be a very contentious Election Day (no matter who wins). Yes, there will be optimism at the end of this column, specifically provided for people who are tired of the apocalyptic tone of the final pre-election week. So there's that to look forward to.

As we sat down today to write our usual talking points, we realized that it would be an almost pointless exercise. By this point, Democrats already know what to say about Donald Trump -- and they've been loudly saying so to anyone who will listen. Our attempts to add to this cacophony would be virtually meaningless now. So too would rehashing the past two weeks, since America has been breathlessly following this storyline on an almost hourly basis.

Instead, we're going to first explain who we're personally voting for, and then we're going to attempt to interject a little optimism for the near future at the end. We promise that next week we'll return to our usual format (either in triumph or in sorrow), after the election is over. And we didn't want to disappoint regular readers, so we have managed to fill roughly the same amount of pages as we normally do on Fridays (translation: get ready for an insanely long column, as always).



Why I'm voting for Hillary Clinton

This column has always had a rather obvious partisan bias. It's not actually in the title, but it has always been understood that these are weekly Democratic talking points, to put it another way. So it should come to no surprise to anyone that I'm voting for Hillary Clinton next Tuesday.

{Editor's note: we are eschewing our traditional use (abuse?) of the editorial "we" for the rest of this particular section, because it solely concerns one man's vote, and is not an editorial endorsement or anything.}

The choice seems pretty obvious, and can be summed up as: Hillary Clinton is not Donald Trump. No matter what you think of Hillary, she is not a dangerously unstable individual with a propensity for obsessing about her enemies and wreaking vengeance. That right there is all I really needed to contemplate in order to make my choice.

Hillary Clinton might disappoint, but she probably won't launch nuclear weapons if some other country's leader personally insults her. The same cannot be said with any degree of confidence about her opponent.

Eight years ago, I voted for Barack Obama knowing full well he was going to disappoint me on at least a few issues. His craven vote on government surveillance during the 2008 campaign was an omen for how he'd govern, I thought at the time. Since then, the Obama administration has brought more criminal cases using the Espionage Act (passed during World War I) than all other presidents combined, so it looks like that was a fair assumption.

Obama has disappointed me in plenty of other ways as well, some of them quite shocking. Who would have ever expected that Obama's biggest weakness would have been his inability to communicate well -- with either the public or with members of Congress (including those from his own party)? And yet, that's exactly what happened. Obama hasn't played the Washington game very well when it comes to relations with Capitol Hill, and he has never used the "bully pulpit" anywhere near as well as some people expected him to (me included). His negotiating skills with Republicans in Congress were also atrocious, and consisted of giving away half the store before the bargaining even began. Thankfully, the radical Right shot down his most egregious giveaways to the GOP, because they wanted 100 percent of their agenda and were perfectly content to hold out on any compromise the GOP leadership came up with which fell short of their absolutist goal. This saved Social Security from drastic cuts, so it is no small thing. Obama's close ties to Wall Street were also evident from the moment he announced his economic team, and his disdain for the Left was vocally expressed by Rahm Emanuel for years. However, having said all of that, I'm pretty satisfied overall with what he's managed to accomplish. On a scale of ten, I'd give his presidency an eight or nine, personally.

My eyes are even wider open with Hillary Clinton. I know she's going to disappoint me in a number of ways. I can pretty much guarantee that her foreign policy will lead to a big disappointment, although I couldn't say where this will take place. I could easily see Clinton marching America off to a new war somewhere, just to prove she's as tough as Maggie Thatcher, for instance.

I think Hillary Clinton will be even more disappointing than Barack Obama in two big areas. I think she'll also be way too close to Wall Street -- even more so than Obama. So if she's elected, I am already prepared to cringe when I hear who her economic team will consist of. To put this another way, I don't expect Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to have a whole lot of influence on Clinton's economic agenda. The other area I fully expect Hillary to disappoint me on is bargaining with Congress. Bill Clinton had the same problem, which is where we got "end welfare as we know it" and all the rest of his dealmaking with Newt Gingrich and company. Hillary even campaigned on being "pragmatic," which I read as: "willing to give Republicans a whole lot more than they deserve when negotiating on the budget," for example.

All of that I fully expect. I suspect I am not alone in these concerns, either. Ask any Bernie Sanders primary voter, and they'll probably echo the same worries. But what may be more surprising (to a whole lot of folks) is that I also fully expect Clinton to pretty much ignore (or just give the most minimal lip service) to a long list of her campaign promises -- specifically the ones where Bernie forced her to a more progressive position.

Hillary bills herself as a politician who can "get things done," but I just don't see her fighting very hard for (to name just one) free college for all. Or doing anything more than slapping a Band-Aid on the problem of income inequality. I'd be willing to bet that at the end of her term, Warren Buffett's secretary will still pay a higher income tax rate than he does, to put this another way.

In short, I expect Hillary Clinton to become very good at explaining why the progressive agenda just isn't possible at the moment, and that she fought as hard as she knew how but it just isn't going to happen. She will toss some breadcrumbs to the Left, but they will likely be very small and miserly indeed. I also fully expect Hillary Clinton to do not much of anything that improves the lives of the millions of average Joes who voted for her. She'll become an expert at explaining why their needs are impossible to fill at the present time, because she will get so much practice at doing so.

I just re-read all of that, and it sounds a heck of a lot more like a list of reasons why not to vote for Clinton. Except, you know, for that whole "President Trump" nightmare scenario. I should really attempt to be more positive, so the following are the real reasons I am voting for Clinton (and not throwing my vote away on a write-in candidate).

The Supreme Court is first and foremost on this list. The next president (unless the Senate confirms Merrick Garland in the lame-duck session) will get to nominate a Supreme Court justice on their first day in office. I fully trust Hillary Clinton to make a much better choice than Donald Trump ever would. I even trust her to make a better choice than Obama's Merrick Garland nomination. I trust she'll nominate someone a lot younger, for one, which will bode well for the next few decades. It has already been decades since liberals had a clear majority on the Supreme Court, and I for one am ready for that to change for the better. Of course, in order to do this, Democrats also will need to win control of the Senate, otherwise Republicans will block any Clinton nominee for the next four years. But assuming Democrats do take back control, Hillary could shift the court to a 5-4 or even a 6-3 liberal majority. The older I get, the more I see the importance of the Supreme Court in actually bringing about concrete change to average Americans' lives. The power of Congress and the president actually pales in comparison to what the court can accomplish, with just one test case. Look no further than marriage equality, if you need proof of this. How long would it have realistically taken to get to where we are now, if gay marriage had been left up to the states? Twenty more years? Thirty?

So that's the biggest reason I will have to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton. In a normal election cycle, it's always sort of a background issue, but not a pressing one -- because nobody knows when Supreme Court justices are going to either die or retire. This time around it is different, because not only is there an open seat, but the open seat will change the balance of power on the court -- for the first time in a very long time. I want a future with a liberal Supreme Court, and I would vote for just about any Democrat to make it a reality.

The second big reason I'm willingly voting for Hillary Clinton is that she will preserve, protect, and improve upon Barack Obama's legacy. Clinton is not going to stand for repealing Obamacare, just to state the most obvious. Clinton will not roll back any of Obama's major achievements, and she will actively seek to build upon Obama's legacy in multiple ways. In fact, I could even see Clinton being more forceful on her use of the power of the pen to reform the executive branch than Obama was. Also, I don't think Clinton will have the unrealistic expectations for bipartisanship which so hobbled Obama for his entire first term in office. Clinton knows what she can expect, and I think she'll act more decisively as a direct result.

I also trust Hillary Clinton will do the right thing in all sorts of policy areas, for the most part. Obama disappointed me, but at the same time I knew that in general he was genuinely on the right side of history (with a few very notable exceptions). I also trust Hillary in the same limited way. I think she will be an absolute champion on issues she has cared deeply about for her whole adult life (women's rights, to name the most obvious), and I think she'll be persuadable on a number of issues she has only recently gotten behind, as well. I expect incremental progress, at best (a minimum wage hike far short of $15 an hour, for instance), but progress in the right direction, at least.

Part of this is trusting that Progressives will not make the same mistake they made with Obama. The Left is not going to give Hillary Clinton any sort of benefit of the doubt. They're going to bring all the pressure they are able to bear to keep her campaign promises -- even the ones Bernie forced her to make. They won't always be successful at doing so, but the Left is not just going to take a big vacation after the election's over (the way they kind of did with Obama).

While both Clintons have been living with a sort of "bunker mentality" for decades, I truly think the whole email episode has taught Hillary a lesson. I sincerely hope she's learned from her mistake. I think if the email scandal hadn't happened she would have been a lot less transparent in the White House than she will now be forced to be. All in all, I think that's a good thing.

Do I think Hillary Clinton will make mistakes as president? Yes, I do. But then I'd say that about anyone, really. Nobody's perfect. Will Hillary be hounded from her first day in office by Republicans in Congress? Yes, she will. But perhaps if both she and her husband work hard to open better lines of communication with Congress, in the end she'll be able to accomplish some things. Nowhere near what she is now promising, but a lot more than total and absolute gridlock.

If Obama's presidency rated an eight or nine from me, I think I'd be happy if Hillary Clinton left office only scoring a six or a seven. If she does the right thing more times than not, then I will not wind up regretting my vote, to put it another way. Actually, to be honest, I don't foresee anything (short of World War III breaking out over Ukraine) that could cause me to have second thoughts about voting for Clinton over the alternative. So I end where I began -- Hillary Clinton is a sane and intelligent individual. She is, in fact, the only sane and intelligent choice for president. And that's enough reason right there to vote for her. Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, at the end of the day she is not Donald Trump. Case closed.



A bit of optimism

As promised, today we'd like to end on a somewhat positive note. It's a wonky idea, but no matter how the election comes out, we fully believe it is a possibility. So if you're tired of all the steaming piles of negativity from this election cycle, here's something to (possibly) look forward to.

Without a doubt, 2016 will go down in American history as one of the ugliest election years we've ever had. After eight years of Barack Obama, most people will be voting this time against a candidate, rather than wholeheartedly for their candidate of choice. It's impossible to even count how many traditions and norms have been tossed out the window in the wake of Donald Trump's candidacy. Will America revert back to these norms the next time around, or will the Trumpian campaign truly become he new normal? It's impossible to predict.

No matter who wins on Tuesday night, roughly half the country is going to be enraged (or just terrified) by the result. The normal feelings of defeat will be amplified beyond anything the country's seen, at least since Bush v. Gore. The invective directed towards both candidates has been downright apocalyptic, and nobody has any idea how the endgame is going to play out. Will there be violence at the polls? It's a real possibility, this time around. Will the loser graciously concede? Hard to tell. The most frightening nightmare scenario yet is that several states (enough to flip the race in the Electoral College) are so close that recounts are demanded, court cases are filed, and two such cases both make it to the Supreme Court -- which is divided 4-4, meaning they cannot issue a ruling which is binding on the entire country. It'll depend on what the appellate courts have ruled -- even if there are two rulings which contradict each other. If even the Supreme Court is powerless to step in and adjudicate the election (as they did in 2000), what happens next? Pitchforks and torches in the streets? "Nightmare scenario" doesn't adequately describe what could happen.

It's incredibly hard to paint a more optimistic outcome, but we're going to make the attempt. Because we can see a possible silver lining to how the 2016 election plays out. And this scenario could even happen no matter who wins -- which is why it's even a possibility to begin with.

This election could -- in much the same way as happened in 2000 -- put a spotlight on how antediluvian some of our election process has become. This has been exacerbated by the Supreme Court's decision a few years ago which nullified large sections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It's an astonishing fact, but while many rights are given an iron-clad guarantee by the United States Constitution, the right to vote is not actually among them. This is the foundation upon which a new voting rights act can be built, in a bipartisan way. Whichever party wins the White House and whichever party wins control of the houses of Congress should join together in a call to modernize and update our voting process, in every state. First and foremost among the reforms would be a clear statement in federal law that each citizen has the right to vote in federal elections. Period.

Upon this foundation, both parties could address their concerns with the voting process. Minimum federal elections standards should be clearly spelled out, forcing every state to come into compliance before the 2020 election (at the very least). The first and foremost of these should be a requirement that a paper trail be generated for each and every vote. Currently, there are still several states who cannot perform any sort of accurate recount because there simply is no paper trail for each vote. Pennsylvania is one of these. The entire election could come down to who wins in Pennsylvania. If this is the case, and if the vote is very close, there is sure to be a good deal of outrage when everyone realizes that a "recount" just means reading the totals off all the voting machines, and trusting that they're right. This is, in a word, unacceptable.

Start with a requirement that every vote be recorded on paper in some fashion, and build from there. We are halfway through the second decade of the twenty-first century, and technology exists which can solve all sorts of problems, both real and perceived. So mandate the use of such technology! Republicans have only themselves to blame for Trump's insistence that the vote will be "rigged," because they've been chasing the phantom fear of "voter fraud" for a long time now. They've instituted "voter ID" laws to counter this supposed rampant cheating, and it is sure to be a big item on the Republicans' wish list, if a new federal voting rights act is drawn up. So go one step further -- mandate some sort of biological record for registration. When you register, a thumbprint should be provided (using an electronic thumbprint reader -- this is the twenty-first century, after all), and then require thumbprints at the polls or a thumbprint on an absentee ballot. This not only removes all question of voting multiple times, it also means non-citizens will not even attempt to vote (thumbprints are already on file for all legal immigrants -- and any undocumented immigrant would be told that they would never be allowed to apply for legal residence if they ever attempt to vote illegally).

All voters should be registered automatically every time they interact with their state's motor vehicles department, unless they specifically state they don't want to be registered to vote. A few states have already passed such laws, and they have been working wonderfully. Registration rolls are up, and people's information is updated automatically (when most people move house, they'll usually update their drivers' license or vehicle registration but many forget to update their voter registration too). Tie in the voter registration rolls to death records as well -- so that anyone who dies is automatically removed from the voter rolls. This stuff ain't rocket science, it just involves modernizing each state's computer networks.

Speaking of computers, federal law should dictate that no voting machine anywhere be plugged into the internet at any time. None. Ever. Votes from each machine should be recorded locally, and then phoned in to the state capitol. This precludes any and all attempts to hack voting machines via the internet, permanently. It's a pathetically easy fix to make, in fact.

A new federal voting right act should also mandate that absentee ballots are each citizen's right, if they choose to vote this way -- for any reason under the sun. All they should have to do is request a mail-in ballot, and they should be automatically provided with one. It's a little-known fact (outside of such states) that many states tightly restrict who may use an absentee or mail-in ballot. In some states, the voter must actually prove they will be physically absent from their precinct on Election Day in order to qualify for an absentee ballot. This is ridiculous. It should be each and every citizen's right to make their own mind up about how they want to cast their ballot -- in person on Election Day, or sitting at home in their pajamas, a week earlier. The state should have no say in this decision whatsoever. Period.

Likewise, there should be federal standards for provisional ballots. If you show up to vote and your name (for some reason) isn't on the voter rolls, you should be able to cast a provisional ballot and then prove later on that you have indeed registered to vote. Such rules should be uniform, across all states.

Election Day needs to become Election Days. The reason we vote on Tuesdays is a historical hangover we have long since outgrown. Back in the eighteenth century, when the date was set in stone, America was rural and the fastest transportation available was the horse. Instant communications did not exist. Time have changed. The workweek has changed. There simply is no problem with farmers getting to market anymore (one big reason Tuesday was chosen). All states should be required to open polling sites on both the Saturday and the Sunday immediately preceding the traditional Tuesday. There is no reason not to expand the election in such a fashion except to make it harder for many citizens to vote. States could continue to have early voting on other days before the election, but the weekend before the traditional date would also be set in stone -- everyone should be able to vote on Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday.

Polling sites should be convenient, as well. Federal minimum standards should be set which dictate the number of polling stations for all population densities. If there are X many people per square mile, then there need to be Y polling sites in that precinct. This requirement should even dictate how many polling booths are available at each site, based on population density. Take the decision for where to locate polling stations out of the hands of partisan election officials, and we will never again see 4-hour lines in precincts full of the opposite party's voters.

The right to vote should be absolute. States should be forbidden from permanently barring anyone from voting unless that person is currently in prison or on parole -- in other words, still serving out a sentence for a crime. Once the sentence is over, they should automatically be allowed to vote once again. When their debt to society has been paid, it should be paid in full. The only people who deserve to have their voting rights taken away from them forever should be people serving life sentences. Period. When a felon's time is served, they should become a full member of society again, with a vested interest in who represents them in government, and not relegated to some permanent non-represented underclass for the rest of their lives.

Some of these ideas (that last one, in particular) will generate some partisan opposition. But most of them shouldn't. Voting should be every citizen's right, and that should be guaranteed in an iron-clad federal law. State-level hanky-panky with polling sites or absentee ballots or early voting should be done away with forever. Every citizen should also be fully confident that their vote will be accurately counted, and documented on paper. They should also be confident that nobody who isn't a citizen in good standing will be able to vote, and that each citizen will only have one vote counted.

These are basic guarantees that really should already exist. For the most part, building confidence in the election process and the election's result should be wholeheartedly supported by both parties. The voting process should be easy and convenient, with as few hoops to jump through as possible. Everyone should be confident that the process is in no way "rigged" at all.

This is probably too optimistic to hope for. Partisanship will undoubtedly rear its ugly head. But it really shouldn't. If half the country is outraged over the result of an election, the obvious answer is to reform the election process so that in the future everyone will at least be confident the process is fair and transparent. The impetus for proposing legislation to guarantee this will probably come from whichever party loses next Tuesday. But even the winning party should have valid concerns over how creaky and outdated our election process as been allowed to become. If both parties come together with a list of problems they want to see fixed forever, then perhaps compromise legislation could actually be possible.

No matter which half of America is outraged at the result next Tuesday, Congress should immediately begin work on reforming the election system so that, in the future, the only outrage even possible will be over who won and who lost. There simply should not be any concerns over the voting process at all. No candidate should ever again be able to plausibly warn of a "rigged" election, period.

Ironically, the messier the results next Tuesday, the easier it might be to pass such legislation. If there are recounts and court challenges, it will only serve to expose how outdated and insufficient federal election laws have become. Government is always the last to adopt technology (because it's expensive, and often easier to use older machines), but in this case reform should be mandated by Washington no matter what the cost (the federal government should help defray such costs, it almost goes without saying). We went through a spate of such reforms after the 2000 election, and many states got rid of voting systems that didn't work very well. Unfortunately, many of them turned to paperless electronic voting as a result -- and some of these haven't changed since.

Having another close election -- one guaranteed to outrage millions -- would open the door for enacting a new voting rights act for the twenty-first century. It would be the silver lining on a very contentious race, and it would allow the losers to at least be convinced that any problems -- real or perceived -- are being addressed and dealt with before the next presidential election happens. Such an outcome would at the very least provide even the losers with some optimism for the future. No matter who wins, bipartisan legislation is going to be very tough to put together on all sorts of pressing issues. Passions are still going to run very high in Congress. But fixing the flaws in our voting system should be an opportunity for Congress to actually do some good. If both parties' concerns are addressed, it could be the biggest bipartisan reform effort undertaken in a very long time. After such a vicious election, it could indeed be the only thing that the parties could possibly agree upon. Which is why we're cautiously optimistic that some good could actually come out of the 2016 election.



[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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October 22, 2016

Friday Talking Points (413) -- Bad Hombres And Nasty Women Unite!

So we had the final presidential debate this week, and Donald Trump went right on being Donald Trump, which should have surprised precisely no one by now. Our subtitle today, of course, refers to the two most amusing (or horrifying, take your pick...) things Trump said during the debate. Since then, both "bad hombres" and "nasty women" are trending online. Hey, when bad hombres and nasty women unite, anything could happen, right?

Maybe this, together with all the dark talk of "rigged elections" from Trump will finally provide a dash of enthusiasm for Clinton, here at the homestretch -- it'd certainly be a fitting end to the most bizarre presidential campaign of everyone's lifetimes. From the New York Times:

Nastiness aside, last week had to be divided into "pre-debate" and "post-debate." The most prophetic article of the week came from Aaron Blake at the Washington Post, who -- before the debate, mind you -- was already noticing all of Trump's "rigged" talk. In an article titled "The GOP Is Trying To Put Out A Rigged Election Fire That It Helped Start," Blake placed the blame for this phenomenon exactly where it belongs: at the feet of the entire Republican Party.



Blake then discusses the charges of media bias, concluding: "Trump's argument today is merely taking that idea to its logical extreme." The piece finishes with:



We wrote more than a week ago on a similar theme (although using different examples). Republicans truly have no one to blame but themselves for Trump and all he stands for.

But to get back to the pre-debate wrap-up, last week the Post ran a story about possible voter intimidation (and even suppression) happening under the guise of a voter fraud investigation in Mike Pence's home state of Indiana:



Astoundingly, Pence then made the round of all the Sunday morning talk shows -- mere days after this article ran, and none of the hosts asked him a single question about it. Want to know why people think the mainstream media is pathetic? Exhibit A. This wasn't a story from some fringe website or even from a biased news source -- it was from the Washington-freakin'-Post, and yet nobody brought it up when they had the chance. Pathetic.

Trump, out on the campaign trail before the debate, spent his time calling for Hillary Clinton to be drug tested before debating, and tearing up a TelePrompTer for fun and exercise. We are truly through the looking glass, folks. More and more women keep publicly accusing Trump of sexual misconduct, as well. Trump supporters, though, are still confident, perhaps dangerously so.

Let's see, how is Trump's campaign team doing? Well, they just lost their political director, who is going to "step back" from the campaign "for personal reasons." His job "was to focus on Trump's efforts on the ground in those battleground states," so that's probably going to hurt.

How is Trump's campaign team doing out in those battleground states? Well, they just severed ties with the state Republican Party chairman in Ohio, and they had to get rid of one of their own in Virginia as well. So, the battleground states seem to be going swimmingly for Trump.

Let's see, what else? Hillary Clinton has a huge cash advantage, heading into the homestretch. So she's going to spend some of it in Arizona, where Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders just appeared for her. She's got dozens of offices in the state already, the polls show her in the lead in this very red state, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio is polling down 15 points against his Democratic opponent. So Team Clinton smells a possible pickup, which would be historic.

Senator John McCain, already seeing "Madam President Clinton" on the horizon, casually admitted this week that of course Republicans would be united against any Clinton Supreme Court pick. This will make it so much easier for Chuck Schumer to get rid of the filibuster for such appointments next January, should the Democrats take the Senate back.

President Obama has decided what he's going to focus on after he leaves office, and it's a pretty worthy idea. He and Eric Holder are going to fight gerrymandering. This includes such things as pushing for redistricting reform and improving Democrats' position in statehouses across the country in anticipation of the 2020 Census and House of Representatives reapportionment. Democrats got their clocks cleaned in 2010, which is a big reason why Republicans have such a stranglehold on the House. Don't believe this is true? From the article: "In 2014, Republicans got 52 percent of the votes but won 57 percent of the seats." In many states that voted for Obama, the majority of the House delegation is Republicans, as well. Fighting such gerrymandering will be Obama's main political objective for the next few years, with an organization dedicated solely to redistricting reform. As noted, a worthy cause indeed.

OK, enough of that. On to the debate. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump debated for the final time in Las Vegas Wednesday night, and it was simultaneously the best night for Clinton and the best night for Trump. However, because Clinton's best is so obviously far, far beyond anything Trump could manage, she emerged the clear winner. Other than the "hombre/nasty woman" quotable lines from Trump, the debate boiled down to one simple statement Trump made: he was taking back his commitment (given in a previous debate with Clinton) that he'd abide by the election results. So, looks like no entertaining concession speech will be forthcoming late on the night of November 8th!

Condemnation of Trump's comments was swift, and came from all corners. Leading the pack are Republicans worried about their election chances, naturally, including Senators John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, Rob Portman, and Ron Johnson. McCain had the most pertinent experience to draw upon, of course, and his voice was the clearest: "A concession isn't just an exercise in graciousness. It is an act of respect for the will of the American people, a respect that is every American leader's first responsibility." Also important: keeping Sarah Palin away from the microphone during the concession speech, of course.

Notably absent in this chorus was either GOP congressional leader, as Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell went into bunker mode, and kept their heads down all week. For Ryan it was probably a wise choice, as he had already been booed (with a "Paul Ryan sucks!" chant, no less) at a campaign event he did recently with Trump in Green Bay.

But perhaps the most stunning voice to denounce Trump was Maine's governor, Paul LePage. This is a guy who, previous to Trump's arrival on the Republican political scene, had been in the running for "craziest GOP elected official in the country" -- in fact, he almost seems to be proud of this dubious honor. LePage, after seeing the debate, said:



Wow. When you've lost Paul LePage -- when even he's saying "get over yourself" -- then your campaign is in a world of trouble.

Also bailing on Donald Trump was Michael Steele, who told an audience celebrating (!) the 40th anniversary of Mother Jones magazine: "I will not be voting for Trump." He becomes the third ex-GOP chairman to refuse to support Trump. As well as all their living ex-presidents. But inquiring minds want to know, what the heck was Michael Steele doing at a Mother Jones celebration? Doesn't seem like his type of bash, if you've ever read the magazine.

Steele didn't mince any words, either, saying that Trump had "captured that racist underbelly, that frustration, that angry underbelly of American life and gave voice to that," and admitting "I was damn near puking during the debates." Boy, with party-members like these, who needs Democratic enemies?

OK, let's check in with the experts. Steve Schmidt, one of the most savvy Republican Party strategists around, is predicting Trump won't have a leg to stand on if he decides to call the election rigged. Why not? Because:



Hoo boy. This is a Republican strategist saying this, with two whole weeks to go. Non-partisan election-watchers are predicting pretty much the same thing. The well-respected Stu Rothenberg just wrote an opinion piece titled: "Trump's Path To An Electoral College Victory Isn't Narrow. It's Non-Existent."

The mocking has even begun, from the left. Want to bet who Trump's going to blame his epic loss on? Keep this link handy, because it has a dandy little chart of all of Trump's conspiracies (and this was drawn before the debate, mind you) to pick from. Why, it could be anybody! Because as we all know, Trump's not going to take one iota of the blame himself.

Is the election depressing you? You certainly aren't alone. So here are two final items to cheer everyone up. First, legalization of recreational marijuana has hit the highest point in public opinion polling that it ever has -- a full 6 out of 10 Americans think the War On Weed should end now, totally and completely. This is an election issue, the article helpfully explains, for a big reason. Full legalization is on the ballot in California (with 40 million residents) as well as four other states:



So get out and vote, stoners!

Finally, for everyone depressed at the depth of nastiness this election has sunk to, we have a cheerful and uplifting message from our neighbors to the north. Check out the video Canadians just sent us all, to convince us that America is already great. We think we speak for all Americans in saying: "Thanks, eh? That was just what we needed!"



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There was one grim piece of news this week, as a Republican campaign office in North Carolina got firebombed this week. Anyone -- from any political persuasion -- needs to condemn such acts of political terrorism strongly, of course, and you can add our voice to that chorus. Violence is simply unacceptable in the political arena, no matter how nasty it gets.

But we did want to give an Honorable Mention to a group of Democrats who took it upon themselves to raise some money to help pay for repairs. They set a goal of $10,000, which they reached within a few hours, and turned off the donations after hitting $13,000. This is Democrats helping Republicans in the spirit of condemning violence, so it was a silver lining to a very ugly incident.

But the rest of this section is going to be pretty short and sweet, because we are handing Hillary Clinton our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week for her debate performance, which was superb. The reason this section's going to be short is that the entire talking points section is a recap of the debate, so there's not much else to say about it here.

{It is our standing policy not to provide links to candidate web pages, so you'll have to search Hillary Clinton's site on your own to let her know you appreciate her efforts.}



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Hillary Clinton deserves at least a (Dis-)Honorable Mention this week as well, if the WikiLeaked account of her talking about environmentalists (whom she snarkily told: "Get a life&quot and Bernie Sanders supporters turns out to be accurate.

We really don't think all the leaks have damaged Clinton with the voters so far, and our best guess why this is so is either that Trump is sucking all the oxygen from the room (as he's been doing all along) with scandals that are much juicier and more prurient, or that opinions about Clinton are already "baked in the cake" and aren't going to change anyone's vote at this point. Clinton-lovers will discount the stories as Russian lies, Clinton-haters weren't going to vote for her anyway, and the Bernie Sanders supporters already suspected Clinton has held this attitude all along -- the emails are nothing more than confirmation of these long-held suspicions. With no evidence to back this claim up, though, we think that the Bernie people who are ready to vote for Hillary went through the process of accepting Clinton for who she is during and just after the national convention.

Of course, if Donald Trump weren't being such a clown on a daily basis, the email leaks might have hurt Hillary more -- if they were the only thing the press had to talk about, in other words. But again, that's just speculation.

But our true winners of the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week are Scott Foval and Robert Creamer. Nope, we had never heard of them, either. Here's the story about how they got stung:



For getting caught talking about dirty tricks, both men deserve this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, at the very least.

{Since they just got fired and are now private citizens, our policy is not to provide contact information for such persons, sorry.}



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Before we dig in to the talking points, we have a program note for everyone. This column will not appear next weekend, because even though we're deep into election season, it will also be the last calendar day I'll be posting before Hallowe'en. Since Mondays are now "Electoral Math" column days, I can't actually post my yearly spooky column on Hallowe'en itself, so that's what you've got to look forward to next Friday. Fair warning, and prepare to be scared silly by next week's column. And I've already done last year's Hallowe'en column on Trump and Hillary, so I'm going to have to get extra-creative this year. Stay tuned! Since it's Hallowe'en and all, I can ironically say: "Same bat time, same bat channel!"

Speaking of amusing slogans from television shows, we do have one note to add to the excerpts from Clinton's debate performance, simply because we have a rather juvenile sense of humor. Clinton, talking about the economy, said the following: "So now we've dug ourselves out of it, we're standing, but we're not yet running. So what I am proposing is that we invest from the middle out and the ground up, not the top down." This immediately brought to mind the scene from The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror VII" where one of the aliens (Kang and Kodos), disguised as Hillary's husband Bill, during a presidential debate, uttered the immortal line: "I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!" Hey, we warned you we were about to get juvenile....

With that out of the way (ahem), let's get to the more serious parts of the debate. Hillary Clinton brought her chef's knives to this debate, and promptly filleted Trump up one side and down the other, which is why we're running such an extended amount of the transcript today. Hillary had her best debate night yet this week, and it's worth taking a look back at all the different ways she sliced Trump up.



Hillary Clinton's Best Debate Moments

Clinton started off with an excellent answer on what she'd look for in a Supreme Court justice, which is certainly worth reading for anyone who intends to vote for her for that very reason. But we've already got a ton of material here to work with, so you'll have to look it up yourself on the debate transcript (which takes far less time to read than watching the whole debate).

The first truly notable moment was when Hillary made a case she should have been strongly making from the start: Donald Trump uses undocumented workers, so how can anyone believe anything he says on the issue?



Trump, tellingly, didn't even attempt to answer this charge, likely because he knows it is both true and easily provable.

In the segment on the economy, Chris Wallace tossed both candidates a softball, essentially asking them why their economic plan would create more jobs than their opponent's. Now, for some context, for the past week or so, a certain groupthink had been emerging from the punditocracy. All the inside-the-Beltway types decided that what Clinton needed to do during this debate was to "make the case" for why she wanted to be president. This is rather jaw-dropping, because that's exactly what she's been doing for months, out on the campaign trail, but whatever. In any case, I thought her answer to the jobs question was her best summation of why she wants to be president, and (hopefully) will shut up all those loose lips at the Georgetown cocktail parties. (This was just previous to the amusing Simpsons-like quote, we should mention.)



At the end of the back-and-forth on the economy, Clinton scored a great shot, in a line she should have been using prominently in all the debates. Make it personal!



Once again, Trump had no answer to any of these charges, because he knows they are true. Instead, his argument devolved into: "You should have stopped me by changing all the laws!" He fundamentally misunderstands the role of First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State, and insisted that Hillary Clinton should have singlehandedly revamped the tax laws during her "30 years" in public life. Clinton was ready for this, and pounced. This was one of the best moments in the entire debate for her, in fact.



Hillary Clinton obviously watched the recent PBS documentary, which presented both her life and Donald Trump's in exactly the same format -- switching back and forth on the timeline to show what each was doing during each decade. The documentary was well worth watching, but Clinton's answer distilled it into a few paragraphs. Nicely done!

Wallace then asked Trump directly about all those women who had been making sexual misconduct and sexual assault charges against him. Trump insisted that they had all been "debunked," despite having no evidence whatsoever to back this claim up.

Clinton was obviously ready for this exchange, too. Once again, the most effective weapon to use against Trump is his own words, quoted back to him.



This led to the most-mocked moment of the night, when Donald Trump stated: "Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody." The crowd responded with: &quot LAUGHTER)" prompting Wallace to shush them.

Clinton then spiked the football in the end zone and did a dance. She tied Trump's treatment of women to his treatment of, well, everyone.



Wallace then prompted Trump's biggest mistake of the evening -- one that is still reverberating throughout the country -- when he responded: "What I'm saying is that I will tell you at the time. I'll keep you in suspense." after being asked whether he'd accept the election's results. Since Trump had been focusing on many claims that the election was about to be "rigged," Clinton was once again ready to pounce.



This may have been the moment when Hillary Clinton absolutely put the election away, folks. But there were two final zingers that are also worth pointing out. The first came when Trump tried to use his "Bernie Sanders said you have bad judgment" line, in an attempt to woo Bernie voters to his side. Clinton answered back with the answer she really should have had ready all along.



And finally, the biggest jaw-dropping moment ever witnessed in a modern presidential debate by a Republican. Sure, the whole "election's going to be stolen from me" thing was astonishing, but this was downright shocking. Hillary got Trump to admit something no Republican has ever (to our knowledge) said in a debate since at least 1980. Clinton teed it up:



And then Trump, a few responses later, just flat-out admitted something that will surely guarantee to keep a large number of Republicans from voting for him:



Badmouthing Saint Ronald of Reagan? With tens of millions of Republican voters watching? Somebody please explain why, exactly, some Democrats were afraid to let Hillary Clinton debate so much during the primaries? If she can get a Republican to admit he disagreed with Ronald Reagan on national television, then we have to conclude she's one of the best debaters we've ever seen.

{That's it for this week, for anyone who made it all the way to the end of this tome -- see you all again in two weeks, for our final Friday Talking Points before the election!}



[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank[/center]

October 15, 2016

Friday Talking Points (412) -- Trump Unshackled

Donald Trump has a new answer for why he's about to lose in a landslide. It's all a vast left-wing conspiracy. No, really. Well, he didn't actually use that term, but he did indeed go full-on conspiracy theorist at a recent rally. He blamed the Obamas, the Clintons, the world banking cabal (no dog-whistles there, right?), corporations, and anyone else he could think of. In other words, we seriously doubt Donald Trump is going to give a polite and respectful concession speech on Election Night. This is Trump, unshackled (to use his own term). Trump unchained. Trump off the leash. And it ain't pretty.

This entire election has already been a rollercoaster of historic proportions. Each and every time you think: "Well, it certainly can't get much worse," it does. Over and over again. And (a frightening thought if ever there was one) we still have over three weeks to go.

Last week was a textbook example of why political observers always say "a week is an eternity in politics." As was the week before it, come to think. And the week before that. Donald Trump simply crams so much bizarreness into such a short stretch of time, that it is now hard to remember a time before what is now being called "pussygate" had happened. Remember those quaint days of yore when the biggest news was Trump hadn't paid any federal income taxes for two decades? Seems like months ago, now. Remember when Trump was on the offensive against Bill Clinton's sexual past? That was only a week ago, when he tried to seat four Clinton accusers in his family box at the town hall debate.

The most delicious irony of the past week came from Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. Last week, she tweeted a link to a Hillary Clinton quote: "Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported." Conway even highlighted the word "every" in her own tweet, to drive the point home. This week, she's been fully occupied by explaining that every single one of the women who are now accusing Trump of sexual harassment, misconduct, and assault -- and this list is now growing by the day -- are all liars. "Every" last one of them. The phrase "hoist on her own petard" doesn't even begin to describe her flailings.

The second-most delicious bit of tasty, tasty irony was seeing Gayle King on the CBS morning show, asking Conway about Melania Trump's fashion choice for the outfit she wore to the debate, which (you just can't make this stuff up, folks) is properly called a "pussy-bow blouse." Hoo boy.

There's been so much Trump news this week that we're going to have to just run it down without a whole lot of commentary. The week started off last Friday (our weeks are measured Friday-to-Friday, of course) with the Washington Post bombshell release of the Billy Bush Access Hollywood tape. Next up was the second presidential debate, which most news commenters reported using either the word "brutal" or the phrase "scorched Earth." And we've still got one debate to go, next week.

Then Paul Ryan told his House caucus that it was, essentially, every Republican for themselves. He was essentially conceding that Hillary Clinton will be our next president, and that all GOP House members should now concentrate on winning their own races rather than get dragged down by Trump. This came in the midst of an exodus of Republicans jumping off the Trump train, hoping that they'd made the leap before the train headed over the cliff. USA Today tallied this tsunami of "dump Trump-ers" and came up with a whopping one-in-four GOP governors and members of Congress who are refusing to support their own party's presidential nominee. This is unprecedented, folks.

Stunningly, this was followed by a handful of Republicans flip-flopping back to supporting Trump, after hearing from their own pro-Trump constituents. When the history of this election is written, they will surely be grouped under the heading "Profiles in Cowardice."

Team Trump tried to go on the offense again, but wound up being just downright offensive, with a new ad on Hillary Clinton's health that is so sleazy it makes you want to wash your eyeballs after viewing it. Yeah, that's the way to get women voters back!

This was about the point when women started publicly accusing Trump of sexual misconduct, all of whom have stated that what drove them to go public was Trump's flat-out statement during the debate (when asked about the Billy Bush tape) that it was "just words" and he had never actually done anything like what he was caught bragging about. Trump has called them all liars, and is now actually making the argument that he would never have forced himself on any of these women because (are you sitting down?) they simply weren't hot enough to merit his attention. Headlines like "Trump Isn't Just A Pig. He's A Predator" began appearing to describe the ongoing meltdown. Time magazine updated their "Trump meltdown" cover, but The Economist probably had the best cover of the week, with a profile of Trump's face as the Republican elephant's ass.

Maine Governor Paul LePage keeps trying to compete with Trump's craziness (since LePage prides himself on being the craziest Republican around, of course), and came up with the following gem:

Got that? Obama's an autocrat, and that's bad, so we've got to elect our kind of autocrat in order to make everything better. But LePage just doesn't raise the eyebrows all that much these days, since he's got Trump himself to compete with.

Meanwhile, down at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, the students are protesting -- in a school not generally known for student protest (to put it mildly). Who are they protesting? Their university's own president, Falwell's son. Here's what they had to say:



Falwell Jr. shot back, completely incoherently:



Yeah, Jesus said not to judge lest ye be judged! So please don't interrupt me judging the heck out of Hillary Clinton -- because that is not "judging," but rather "expressing my personal opinion about who I believe is best suited to lead our nation in a time of crisis." BIG difference... NOT. On top of that, he's completely misunderstanding the whole render-unto-Caesar thing, which was actually about paying taxes you didn't like.

Nate Silver sent a shiver of excitement through Trump World this week, by pointing out that there is a stark gender divide in the election. Silver published two electoral maps, showing that if only women voted, Hillary Clinton would win with one of the biggest landslides in American history, capturing 458 Electoral College votes, to Trump's 80. But if only men's votes were counted, Trump would win 350 to Clinton's 188. This was cause for celebration for one of Trump's offspring, who tweeted the men-only map as if it were an actual reflection of current polls of all voters. Whoops! On Twitter, the hashtag #RepealThe19th appeared, because the obvious answer to Trump's problem with women voters is just to not let them vote (the 19th Amendment, passed almost a century ago, gave women the right to vote). Again: how's that outreach to women voters going, Republicans?

By the end of the week, big Republican donors were rumored to be pressuring the Republican National Committee to just cut Trump loose for good, and spend all their money on salvaging what they could in the House and Senate. Former George W. Bush speechwriter (turned Republican pundit) Michael Gerson even rang the death knell of the Republican Party in an extraordinary article that concluded:



In the state-by-state horserace, Trump's supposed "path to victory" has almost completely disappeared. Want to get under a Republican voter's skin? Just point out the following: "Hey, remember back when Trump was saying he was going to win in places like New York, Connecticut, and Oregon? Those were the days... now he'll be lucky if he even wins Georgia, Texas, or Utah!" That's right -- a poll from Utah just showed Trump and Clinton tied. A poll from Texas showed Clinton within striking distance of Trump. Among all this cheery news, Team Trump has decided to concede Virginia, and pulled staff and money out of the state. If Hillary Clinton wins Texas, she's almost certain to beat Barack Obama's 2008 landslide numbers, since Texas has the second-largest total in the Electoral College (38 votes, second only to California's 55).

Let's see, what else? A bunch of people who used to -- literally -- have their fingers on the nuclear launch button (the "missileers" who sit in the silos waiting for the order to launch) wrote a letter stating in no uncertain terms that Donald Trump's finger should never be within reach of the nuclear button. Which isn't all that surprising, really, given the hordes of others who have said exactly the same thing.

All of that happened in one week's time. And Trump is now increasingly resembling a wounded animal, whom everyone knows are the most dangerous, because with nothing left to lose they can viciously lash out in their death throes.

And we've got over three weeks to go. Think we've hit bottom? Doubtful. Things can always go lower, folks. Next week will be the final debate, and it will likely be one for the ages.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, was surprised by Barack Obama unexpectedly entering the Oval Office. Her response? "Oh, hi Barack -- hey can you help me by holding up this tape measure? I want to get the window size right for the drapes I'm ordering."

We certainly look forward to seeing this week's Saturday Night Live, that's for sure.



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When we attended this year's Democratic National Convention, we rated all the speeches given -- on a purely subjective scale -- on how effective and heartfelt we felt all the speeches were. Vice President Joe Biden gave the best speech we've ever seen him give, and we immediately wrote an article begging Team Clinton to send him out on the campaign trail as a surrogate to trail Trump around the country. Biden's speech was that good.

But we had to rank one speech -- out of the entire four nights -- above Biden's speech. Because First Lady Michelle Obama gave a downright extraordinary speech that no other speaker managed to top. We judged it the best of the whole convention -- better than Hillary Clinton's speech, better than Bill Clinton's speech, and better than Barack Obama's speech.

Which is why we're not too surprised to be awarding Michelle Obama this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. Obama was out on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton in Manchester, New Hampshire, and she delivered the most authentic and heartfelt repudiation of Donald Trump's attitude towards (and remarks about, and actions towards) women that has yet been heard.

Obama reportedly had a lot to do with crafting this speech, which is obvious when you watch it. At times, she struggles to contain her emotions. She apparently was adamant about not just giving a standard "vote for Hillary" speech, but instead wanted to share her very personal thoughts about the disastrous week Trump has been having.

She started by noting that earlier in the week she had helped celebrate "International Day of the Girl" at the White House. She then, without once mentioning him by name, ripped into Donald Trump:



The entire speech is worth reading (or, even better, watching on video). Michelle Obama is one of the most-respected people in politics today, and her outrage was palpable and very personal. She certainly minced no words in denouncing Trump's so-called locker-room banter:



Review after review after review reached the same conclusion: Michelle Obama just gave one of the most powerful speeches of this entire election cycle. She deserves our thanks for doing so, and she has more than earned this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week for giving such a heartfelt speech and for standing up for women, for decency, and against Donald Trump and his antediluvian attitudes towards women.

{Congratulate First Lady Michelle Obama via her official White House contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.}



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Julian Assange has been busily trying his best to torpedo Hillary Clinton's chances of becoming president, by leaking (on a daily basis) thousands of emails purportedly hacked from Hillary Clinton's campaign team. The likelihood that Russian hackers were the source of this information is high, and none of these leaked emails have been verified in any way.

Assange must be spitting nails, though, because nobody's paying the slightest bit of attention. None of what has been revealed is any sort of smoking gun, which likely means he doesn't have anything worse than what he's already WikiLeaked. The leaked emails are swimming against a very powerful tide -- that of Donald Trump's absolute meltdown into misogyny.

Even so, there have been embarrassing tidbits released, which is why we're giving the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Podesta's emails (if accurate) are little more than how political insiders and consultants actually talk, behind closed doors. Opposition research is performed, Clinton's weaknesses are discussed in detail, and mildly offensive language is used, at times. Nothing really shocking about any of it, but then the public rarely sees such a peek behind the political curtain.

If Trump hadn't been doing his impression of the Hindenburg this week, then maybe some of this might have captured the public's attention. However, given the scandalous competition, it barely even registered. Trump's woes are just so much more entertaining, after all.

So John Podesta will likely survive the leaks, but he certainly didn't have a very happy week this week. Which makes him the obvious candidate for our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

{John Podesta is running a political campaign right now, and our blanket policy is not to provide candidate website contact information, sorry.}



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While we did award the prestigious MIDOTW award to Michelle Obama for her powerful speech this week, we also have to take note of a speech given by her husband in Columbus, Ohio. Because while Michelle's speech is certainly worth reading (or watching) and is one of the most heartfelt political speeches we've ever heard, Barack's speech was more appropriate to excerpt today as an extended talking point.

Barack Obama has always been at his best giving political speeches out on the campaign trail. So it's no surprise he's been particularly good at it in support of Hillary Clinton this year. But yesterday's Columbus speech -- which many are already calling his "Swamp Of Crazy" speech -- not only tore into Donald Trump's obvious unfitness for the job, but also widely condemned the entire Republican Party for opportunistically fanning the flames of crazy for his entire term in office. Obama is bluntly placing all the blame for Trump squarely at the feet of Republicans who have benefited from the craziness without ever expecting it to come back to bite them. It is the most scathing takedown we've heard this entire election season, and that includes the Democratic National Convention speeches.

Two technical notes are necessary, for context, before we get to the extended speech excerpt from Barack Obama. The first is that he was speaking in Ohio, in support not only of Hillary Clinton, but also in support of Ted Strickland, the Democrat running for U.S. Senate there. Obama, at one point, slams Strickland's opponent, Rob Portman. The second note is an editorial one -- we've removed what we felt were the extraneous &quot Applause.)" and &quot Laughter.)" notations from the transcript, although we left in the ones we felt were necessary to provide context for Obama's phrasing and rhythm. The full speech transcript (with all of the notations intact) can be read at Time magazine's website.



President Barack Obama, speaking in Columbus, Ohio

Look, we know that most Republicans don't think the way Donald Trump does. Even in a banquet like this, full of hard-core Democrats. We have Republican friends, we've got Republican neighbors -- at the Little League game, soccer game. At the parent-teachers conference, we meet them. Some great people. We don't even think that most Republican politicians actually really believe that Donald Trump is qualified to be President. I know because they -- I talk to them. (Laughter.) They're all like, "Man, this is really bad." (Laughter.) "We're just trying to get through this." (Laughter.)

But so the problem is not that all Republicans think the way this guy does. The problem is, is that they've been riding this tiger for a long time. They've been feeding their base all kinds of crazy for years -- primarily for political expedience. So if Trump was running around saying I wasn't born here, they were okay with that as long as it helped them with votes. If some of these folks on talk radio started talking about how I was the anti-Christ, you know, it's just politics. (Laughter.) You think I'm joking. (Laughter.)

If somebody completely denies climate change, or is filled up with all kinds of conspiracy theories about how me and Hillary started ISIL, or that we were plotting to declare martial law and take away everybody's guns.

We did a military exercise -- the Pentagon does these periodically in Texas, and suddenly all the folks in Texas were all like, "They're going to take over right now!" (Laughter.) I'm serious. And then the senator down there said, "Yeah, we better look into that." (Laughter.) And the governor says, "Well, I don't know." What do you mean you don't know? (Laughter.) What does that mean? (Applause.) Really? You think that like the entire Pentagon said: "Oh, really, you want to declare martial law and take over Texas? Let's do it under the guise of routine training missions" (Laughter.) -- and everybody is going to be -- but they took it seriously.

This is in the swamp of crazy that has been fed over and over and over and over again. Look, I -- and there's sort of a spectrum, right -- it's a whole kind of ecosystem. And look, if I watched Fox News I wouldn't vote for me. (Laughter.) I understand. If I was listening to Rush Limbaugh, I'd say, "Man, that's terrible." (Laughter.) Fortunately, I have more diverse sources of information.

And I want to make a serious point here -- because I'm really not exaggerating. Everything I'm saying are actual things that have been said and that people -- a fairly sizable number of people in the Republican primaries believe. And the people who knew better didn't say anything. They didn't say, "Well, you know what, I disagree with his economic policies, but that goes too far." They didn't say, "Well, I'm not sure if his foreign policy is the right one for America, but we can't allow our politics to descend into the gutter."

People like Ted {Strickland}'s opponent -- they stood by while this happened. And Donald Trump, as he's prone to do, he didn't build the building himself, but he just slapped his name on it and took credit for it.

And that's what's happened in their party. All that bile, all the exaggeration, all the stuff that was not grounded in fact just kind of bubbled up, started surfacing. They know better, a lot of these folks who ran, and they didn't say anything. And so they don't get credit for, at the very last minute, when finally the guy that they nominated and they endorsed and they supported is caught on tape saying things that no decent person would even think, much less say, much less brag about, much less laugh about or joke about, much less act on -- you can't wait until that finally happens and then say, "Oh, that's too much, that's enough." And think that somehow you are showing any kind of leadership and deserve to be elected to the United States Senate.

You don't get points for that. In fact, I'm more forgiving of the people who actually believe it than the people who know better and stood silently by, out of political expediency, because it was politically convenient.

And if your only organizing principle has been to block progress and block what we've tried to do to help the American people every step of the way, so you're not even consistent anymore -- you claim the mantle of the party of family values, and this is the guy you nominate? And stand by, and endorse, and campaign with until, finally, at the 11th hour you withdraw your nomination? You don't get credit for that.

You're the party that is tough on foreign policy and opposes Russia -- and then you nominate this guy, whose role model is Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB? I'm sorry, what happened? (Laughter.) It's disappointing. It really is. Because, yes, I'm a Democrat, but I'm an American first. (Applause.) And I actually believe in a strong two-party system. And I think that the marketplace of ideas should have a reasonable, common-sense Republican Party debating a reasonable, common-sense Democratic Party. But that is not what we have right now.



[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank[/center]

October 8, 2016

Friday Talking Points (411) -- Women Up For Grabs

Hoo boy. Every Friday morning, we sit down and review all the news stories from the past week, in preparation for writing this column. After spending a few hours reading and taking notes and copying URLs, the writing begins. But we've learned, over the years, to do a last-minute check on the headlines right before we stop reading the news and start typing. Because every so often, a big bombshell lands that simply cannot be ignored. This is, to put it mildly, one of those times we're glad we checked, because a bombshell just exploded all over the presidential race.

Donald Trump may be toast. We know, we know -- plenty of other people have made that prediction plenty of times over the past year and a half, but it has never actually come true. This time, we really think it might (we weren't among those predicting Trump's demise early on, we should mention -- we took Trump's campaign seriously all along, because we actually read the polls and believed them). But the old clip that somehow made its way to the Washington Post this afternoon might just be the gaffe that sinks Trump's ship for good.

To set the stage: Donald Trump and Billy Bush were both wearing microphones, in a bus that was bringing Trump to a soap opera show's taping, over a decade ago. Trump was going to do a cameo on a soap opera (playing himself), and Bush had either just interviewed Trump, or was about to, for Entertainment Tonight. But the microphones were still hot, and they caught some locker-room talk about some of the women walking around (assumably outside the bus). Trump just finished telling the story of being turned down by a married woman he had tried to hit on (with some disparaging comments about her "big phony tits&quot , when Bush and Trump got in a back-and-forth about one particular woman walking by who had just caught Trump's eye. Here's the transcript:

Hoo boy. Even without that last line, Trump's horrendous attitude towards women is on full display. He just sexually assaults random women because he knows he can get away with it? Wow. How presidential!

Suburban women who are still undecided about which candidate to vote for -- are you listening?

This is why we're wondering if this might just be the final straw for Donald Trump's chances of victory. The last time we wondered this -- even in private -- was when Trump objected to John McCain being called a hero "because he was captured." That was way back in the summer of 2015, we should mention. Trump not only did not collapse, his popularity actually went up, afterwards. This is when we realized that normal political rules just simply did not apply to Trump. It's why we ignored all the calls of "Trump's finished!" since, because when the rules don't apply then anything's possible.

This time, however, we're roughly one month away from Election Day. Trump has had a bad few weeks already, so this might be the point historians later look back on as when Trump's campaign really collapsed. Before the first debate, Trump looked like he was within reach of beating Hillary Clinton in the polling. He hadn't actually led yet, but he had narrowed the gap almost to a tie. Since then, Clinton has steadily pulled away from him by winning over women and independents.

Trump's vulgarities will quite likely not harm him among his strongest demographic, because white men who back Trump probably aren't going to be all that offended. They've been in a locker room or two themselves, to put this another way. But a lot of women are going to flee Trump's campaign, that's our guess. Especially those in the suburbs who normally vote Republican. This could be the edge of victory in a large number of states, in fact. So we'll just have to wait and see if Trump truly is toast this time around, but we'd put the chances of it being true higher than ever right now. To put it another way, a lot of women are now going to be "up for grabs." And not just because of the foul language -- more for the attitude towards women that Trump revealed.

There were plenty of other Trump gaffes and revelations during the week as well, but our guess is the Billy Bush comments are going to overshadow everything else for a while. During the course of the week, Trump's taxes were leaked, showing a billion-dollar loss. Trump implied soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder were weak. Trump's namesake foundation was ordered to stop raising money in New York (where it is headquartered) because it was not a registered charity. Trump was hit by a dozen women who worked on The Apprentice for his piggish behavior towards women in general. In Nevada, he instructed the local crowd how to pronounce their state's name correctly -- and he got it wrong. Trump held a practice town hall stuffed with his own supporters, and still couldn't put together a focused answer to a softball question.

On that last one, here's one write-up of how Trump did:



Oh, and Trump insisted that his warmup town hall was not in any way "debate prep," just for good measure. That was Trump's week, even before the Post released the bombshell on him. Though it all, Trump keeps falling in the polls.

The other big political news of the week was the vice-presidential debate. Few minds are made up while watching the veeps debate, so even the media proclaiming Mike Pence the winner is probably not going to help Trump stop his slide in the polls much, if at all. But we'll get to all that in a moment.

Before we move along, there were two other bits of news worth pointing out. Julian Assange "pulled a Trump" on the media, by breathlessly building anticipation that he was about to drop a big document leak chock-full of embarrassment for Hillary Clinton, and then doing nothing of the sort, even though he had a huge media audience in the middle of the night in America (he was broadcasting from London):



Maybe "pulling a Trump" will become a phrase people use in the future to describe the media getting played like a fiddle in this fashion -- who knows?

And finally, on a somewhat sad note, it seems that the Libertarian presidential ticket has all but thrown in the towel. Gary Johnson just keeps forgetting things while being interviewed, and last week his running mate William Weld said on camera that he's "not sure anybody is more qualified than Hillary Clinton to be president of the United States." Ouch.

Since vice presidents were in the news this week, the Boston Globe wrote an article about Weld. It was pretty eyebrow-raising, since it reports that Weld is no longer even focused on the Libertarian ticket at all. Instead, he's committed to beating Trump however possible. And then bailing on the whole Libertarian thing altogether, afterwards:



In other words, look for Johnson's support in the polls to start crumbling.

All told, we're now rounding the final turn and coming into the homestretch, folks. And from where I sit, Hillary Clinton seems to be leading the race and even pulling away. Which is a good way to transition to our weekly awards, in fact.



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For the second week in a row, Hillary Clinton wins the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

Hillary herself didn't do anything overly impressive this week, but then she didn't have to. This week brought the full reaction in the polls to her first debate performance last week, with a little reaction to Trump's leaked tax returns added in. Hillary has turned the entire campaign narrative around this week, because she has turned the polling trendlines around so successfully.

In national polling, Hillary is up by roughly five points. But even down at the state level, Hillary is firming up support across the map. A recent poll just put her up in Arizona, even. The best way to gauge a candidate's solid support is to take all the states where they have opened a lead of five points or better and add all their Electoral College votes together. This completely ignores all the battleground states and also ignores all the states where the polls are so close either candidate could win -- instead, it shows how strong a candidate's base support currently is. Take a look at the recent past to see how well Clinton is now doing: in 2012, exactly this many days out from the election, Barack Obama had 257 electoral votes in his pocket -- 13 short of the 270 needed to win. In 2008, Obama was doing even better and had 264 electoral votes sewn up. Right now, Hillary Clinton is doing better than Obama in either campaign, with 265 Electoral College votes currently in her column. Just before the debate, this number stood at only 206 for Clinton -- that's the magnitude of the shift we've seen this week.

Here's another measure of how dramatic this shift has become, which uses polling numbers from Quinnipiac:



That is nothing short of stunning, mostly because it happened so fast. And the trend should continue, since vice-presidential debates rarely change anyone's mind. The only thing that could either accelerate this trend or turn it back towards Trump would be if he turned in a brilliant and calm debate performance on Sunday night. Since the chances of that happening are (to be polite) quite low, Clinton might just be on the brink of putting the entire election away.

That is impressive indeed. Two weeks ago, Democrats were getting awfully nervous about Hillary Clinton's poll numbers. Now, Democrats are getting more and more confident of her chances for victory. All week long, as the polling just got better and better, Hillary Clinton showed she was indeed the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week, in fact.

{It is our longstanding policy not to provide contact information for campaign sites, so you'll have to find the Clinton/Kaine website on your own, sorry.}



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While Hillary had an impressive week, her running mate didn't. Tim Kaine's appearance in the only vice-presidential debate easily wins him the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. But before we get to that, one side note is necessary.

From the hysterical headlines he generated this week, you might have thought Bill Clinton was in the running for the MDDOTW award, but you'd be wrong. Clinton made a long and cogent argument about one particular portion of Obamacare, and one quote from this was taken wildly out of context: "It's the craziest thing in the world." The headlines immediately screamed "Bill Clinton calls Obamacare crazy!" but this was not, in fact, the case. Read the full transcript of his remarks to see why. Clinton was talking about one particular group who were falling into one of those "doughnut holes" in coverage, and explaining how his wife would fix the problem. He was not talking about Obamacare as a whole, and he was explaining how to make it better -- a point most of the headline-writers chose to ignore. So we feel Bill doesn't even deserve a (Dis-)Honorable Mention, because when you read his remarks in context, there is nothing disappointing about them at all, no matter what headlines one cherry-picked phrase generated.

But back to the MDDOTW winner, Tim Kaine. This Tuesday we had the only vice-presidential debate of the season, and it was pretty hard to watch. We dutifully watched to the very end, but doubt many others made it that far. The entire thing had the flavor of two yappy little dogs going after each other at a dog park, in fact.

Both Tim Kaine and Mike Pence were selected for their boring qualities. Both the candidates at the top of the tickets did not want to be overshadowed by their running mates, so they both made ultra-conventional picks of ultra-conventional politicians. Seriously, outside of Indiana and Virginia, how many people even knew these guys' names before this summer?

To Kaine's credit, he did achieve the biggest goal he had for the night: tie Mike Pence to everything crazy Trump has ever said, and get Pence to deny reality. He scored a clean victory on both fronts. But he still "lost" the debate, according to the pundits.

Now, we don't even like the whole "won/lost" construct for debates, because the hair-splitting some pundits do in figuring these victories is so laughable, at times. But it does matter what the media says about the debate, because that is the storyline most people hear for the following week. And, according to this consensus, Kaine lost on style points. Oh, everyone agreed that Pence was in an alternate reality about the things that actually have come out of Trump's mouth, and the fact-checkers the next day were brutal.

But Kaine interrupted too much, the media mavens decreed. That handed the victory to Pence, who used to host a radio talk show (meaning he knows his way around a microphone better than Kaine).

Kaine, to put this another way, caused a lot of disappointment from a lot of sources this week. We wouldn't let that influence our MDDOTW selection all that much, but we're giving the award to Kaine anyway because he failed to attack Pence on a number of issues where Pence is quite weak -- such as gay rights (to name just one). Pence has a record in Indiana, but Kaine largely ignored it. The most cutting thing Kaine could have (and should have) said would have been: "You were overjoyed to become Trump's running mate, because everyone knows you would have lost if you had run for re-election as Indiana's governor."

We do understand that Kaine's strategy was to focus solely on Trump. But Pence wasn't just appearing as a vice-presidential candidate, but also as a possible 2020 candidate for president. Kaine could have done some serious damage to Pence's 2020 hopes, but didn't. That's what really disappointed us about his debate performance, and that's why Tim Kaine is our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

{It is our longstanding policy not to provide contact information for campaign sites, so you'll have to find the Clinton/Kaine website on your own, sorry.}



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[center]Volume 411 (10/7/16)[/center]

We've got kind of a mixed bag this week, with some debate reactions and some general reactions to Trump's flailing around on the campaign trail. Then at the end, some good news from polls that haven't gotten a whole lot of media attention at all (not yet, at least). Without further ado, here are this week's Democratic talking points.



A nightmare indeed

Looking back on the week that happened before the debate, some Republicans are getting pretty desperate.

"Did you hear what the chairman of the Republican Party in the swing state of Ohio had to say after watching Trump's first debate and all the rest of Trump's bizarre behavior immediately afterward? Here's a direct quote on what Matt Borges thinks of this election season: 'Can this thing just end -- please? My God, what a nightmare.' And that's from a Trump supporter, mind you."



Pence 2020?

We had to pick the snarkiest quip tweeted during the veep debate, just because.

"What I saw on stage Tuesday night was Mike Pence beginning his 2020 presidential run. To achieve this goal, he had to pretend that he wasn't actually currently running as Donald Trump's running mate. The best comment from debate night came from Katherine Miller, political editor for BuzzFeed, who tweeted: 'Mike Pence turning in a great performance for his imaginary running mate Mitt Romney.' That about summed it up, don't you think?"



Pry his phone out of his hand! Quick!

Too, too funny.

"Did you hear that Donald Trump had to watch the veep debate surrounded by four aides? I guess it took four of them to grapple the phone out of Trump's hands before he could tweet some idiotic comment or another. Can you imagine how many Secret Service aides it would take to do the same thing on a daily basis, should he become president?"



Tell us what you really feel!

As usual, we have a full anti-Trump talking point provided by Republicans. This week, it is from a letter 30 former GOP members of Congress signed, explaining why they cannot support their party's presidential nominee. Add them to the growing list of other Republicans bailing on Trump. Here's what they had to say:





You can say it, Ted!

Too, too funny (part 2)

"Ted Cruz is now calling voters up to convince them to vote. The only problem is, he can't seem to bring himself to even say Donald Trump's name. That's pretty sad, really. Cruz left his own credibility in tatters by backing Trump, and now he can't even say Trump's name in a call to voters to try to convince them to vote for a man he obviously hates with a passion. Cruz is essentially saying 'Please vote, for, you know, that guy. That guy that I despise.' It's pretty pathetic, really."



How's that women's outreach going?

Let's hear from a regular voter, shall we?

"So how's Trump doing among women voters? Even before the embarrassing locker-room banter was released today, here's what one 56-year-old Republican voter had to say about Trump's attitudes towards women: 'You just want to smack him.' This is a woman who happily voted for Mitt Romney last time around, and she pretty much sums up Trump's enormous problem with women voters -- which certainly doesn't seem to be getting any better."



Some good news

And finally, some good news to end on.

"In all five states where recreational marijuana legalization is on the ballot (and where polling exists), legalization is winning with the public. If it passes in all of them, the entire West Coast of the continental United States will have legal recreational marijuana sales -- from San Diego all the way up to Alaska. Two states on the East Coast -- Maine and Massachusetts -- will join them as well. I'm still waiting for the national politicians to wake up and smell the burning roach, because the message is quite clear. The people are sick and tired of the monstrous and wasteful War On Weed, and they want it to end, right now. Four states and the seat of our national government have already legalized marijuana for all adults, and the sky has not fallen. Five more states are on the brink of following this path, too. Sooner or later the politicians in Washington are going to have to start listening to what millions and millions of voters are trying to tell them. Either that, or we'll vote in some people who do get it."



[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank[/center]

October 1, 2016

Friday Talking Points (410) -- Trump Backs Up Titanic, Hits Iceberg Again

Our subtitle today is not original, so we've got to start by giving credit where credit is due. David French, a writer for the ultraconservative National Review (and a man once so horrified by Donald Trump's candidacy that he considered running himself), had the funniest metaphor for Trump's performance in Monday's first presidential debate:

The extraordinary thing about this is not that a conservative is ridiculing a debate performance of the Republican candidate for president, since he's not the only one who did so this week (more on this in the talking points), and also since the list of Republicans who support Hillary Clinton is growing by the day. No, the extraordinary thing is that the author wrote this before Trump started actually fighting back against former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. French was just talking about the debate itself, but for the entire rest of the week, Trump backed his personal Titanic up again and again, and tried to just ram through the iceberg, over and over. He was even up early this morning, providing yet another day's legs for this story.

The most extraordinary thing about all of this is that Trump is so incensed at Machado, and so wrapped up in his hissy fit, that he absolutely ignored Rosie O'Donnell, who this week tweeted that Trump was nothing more than an "orange anus." Even vicious insults from Rosie didn't get a rise from Trump (which is, indeed, extraordinary -- because it likely has never happened before), because he was so focused on badmouthing Machado.

Before we get to all the debate reactions, though, there was plenty of other bad news for Trump this week. His namesake foundation is generating all sorts of bad press for Trump, and this week's harvest included the fact that Trump seems to be using his foundation to shield his own income from income taxes (which is illegal, if true), and also the bombshell that Trump failed to properly register his foundation in New York. So the Trump Foundation is looking more and more like an unlicensed slush fund Trump uses any way he sees fit. Maybe that's why he didn't bring up the Clinton Foundation in Monday night's debate?

The other bad news for Trump might hurt him in one particular battleground state that he truly needs to win if he's got any chance at all to win the election. It turns out Trump's business traveled down to Cuba a while back, because they thought U.S. relations might be thawing (this was long before Obama became president and made this dream reality, we should point out). Trump wanted to get a foot in the door, in case the chance for making money from Havana luxury hotels became possible. But in doing so, his business spent $68,000 in Cuba itself -- which is a violation of U.S. law.

Now, in most of America, this news won't generate much interest. After all, Obama started the very process Trump was preparing for -- opening up Cuba and ending the Cold War for good. So what does it matter now? Well, for most Americans, it doesn't matter. Not so for the Cuban-Americans living in Florida. Cuban-Americans are unlike most other Latinos in the United States, because they've always been staunch Republicans. Up until recently, Republicans' strong anti-Communist and anti-Castro positions have won them the support of most Cuban-Americans in Florida (and elsewhere). Spending money in the Castro regime could blunt this support more than it already has been blunted by time. Younger Cuban-Americans just want to travel to Cuba to see relatives they've never met -- they're not as concerned about the Castro brothers. But if this new revelation weakens Trump support among the older Cuban-American demographic, that could actually tip the state over to Clinton in November. So while this is a minor story for the rest of us, we'll be closely watching the Florida polling to see if Trump getting caught spending money in Cuba has an effect or not, that's for sure.

In so-common-it's-barely-news this week, another staunch Republican newspaper endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. The Arizona Republic is especially notable since it has never endorsed a single Democrat since the paper began in 1890. Donald Trump still has yet to win one single major newspaper endorsement anywhere in the country, and USA Today -- which has never endorsed any candidate -- came out with an "un-endorsement" (disendorsement?) of Trump, stating he would be too reckless and dangerous a man to elect president. In the midst of all this, Trump has still not held a press conference or appeared on any non-Fox network in over two months.

Other bad news for Team Trump: the Trump children fondly remember being introduced to capitalism when their parents provided money for a lemonade stand -- which had to be paid back (they had to turn a profit, in other words). Unfortunately for them, they set up their stand on the lawn of a Trump house in a very wealthy neighborhood's cul-de-sac, meaning there was pretty much zero foot traffic for them to pitch their wares to. Being Trumps, the kids solved their problem -- by browbeating the help into digging deep in their pockets to buy lemonade from them. No, seriously, you just can't make this stuff up. Their charming story might even have been an offering at Trump University, in fact: "How to grift those with less money than you, 101."

Since there's so much material from the campaign trail this week, we have decided we're not even going to make an attempt to run down any of the other political news -- which included Obama's first veto override and Congress actually avoiding a government shutdown (by doing the work on the Zika funding and Flint's water crisis they should have done almost a year ago, but still...). It's been that sort of week -- the campaign has just overwhelmed all the other political news. So let's move along to the awards, and then we'll have some of those conservative reactions to Trump's debate performance, as promised.



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There's really no question who won this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. Hillary Clinton turned in the debate performance Democrats had been waiting for this Monday, and the rest of the week was filled with stories of Donald Trump shooting himself in the foot. That's an impressive week for a presidential candidate.

Her debate performance was seen as a clear win by the public and by the pundits, giving her a whole week of good news. The polls (the real ones, not the meaningless "vote early, vote often" internet polls) are now starting to come in, and so far they show movement towards Clinton almost across the board. Clinton's up in Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. The one we're personally waiting to see is Florida, after the aforementioned Cuba story broke. That might just change a few voters' minds about Trump in and around Miami, to put it mildly.

But back to Hillary's debate performance. Hillary, as she pointed out herself on Monday, prepared for the debate. Donald (as she amusingly called him throughout the debate) did not. It wasn't just that she knew what to say and how to say it, either. She also was ready to spring the traps she laid for Trump. While Trump has been playing the media like a fiddle for over a year now, Clinton showed she knows a thing or two about a media rollout herself. Consider the details about the prep work done by Team Clinton on the Alicia Machado story alone:



That is what preparation looks like, folks. Not only do you wave a red flag in front of the bull, you have a full media rollout of the red flag's history ready to go, which you know full well is just going to further enrage the bull. And it worked like a charm. Trump stepped right into the trap, Clinton snapped it shut, and Trump's been wailing and whining ever since. As the Guinness ads used to say: "Brilliant!"

Hillary Clinton used just this one Trump-baiting episode to strengthen her support among women in general, suburban women in particular, and Latinos and Latinas across the board. And that was just one of the traps Trump stepped right into Monday night. By week's end, Team Clinton was expressing outright glee over Trump's overreactions. Brian Fallon just tweeted the snarkiest comment I've seen all week: "Oh look, Trump is dominating the news cycle again. Whatever will we do." Heh. Cracking jokes like that simply wasn't possible this time last week, it bears mentioning.

So for turning around her polling slide, for clearly winning the debate, for getting under Trump's skin in a way no previous debate opponent has, for provoking gaffe after gaffe without once stumbling herself, for getting Trump to all but admit that the big secret in his tax returns is that he pays no taxes, for her overall preparation and for her stamina, Hillary Clinton is easily this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week winner. In fact (to end on a groaner of a pun), it is beyond debate.

{It is our longstanding policy not to provide contact information for political campaigns, so you'll have to find Hillary Clinton's campaign site on your own to congratulate her, sorry.}



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There's a clear candidate for Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week, but after consideration, we've decided that his strong poll numbers disqualify him for the award. After all, if the voters he's trying to woo aren't disappointed in him, who are we to say otherwise?

Joe Morrissey used to be a Virginia state lawmaker. Then he got caught in an inappropriate relationship (to say the least) with his 17-year-old receptionist (Morrissey was 55 at the time). Morrissey went to jail for this relationship, after texting nude photos of her to a friend, bragging that he had had sex with her (while she was underage). Morrissey had previously raised eyebrows with other antics, "including an eight-year disbarment that prevented him from practicing law until 2011; two fistfights that resulted in jail time; brandishing an unloaded AK-47 to the alarm of legislative colleagues during a gun debate in the House of Delegates." Fun guy, right?

Well, now he's running to be mayor of Richmond (an office Tim Kaine used to hold, incidentally). And he's actually using his wife and children (he married the intern after doing his jail time, and has two children with her) on the campaign trail as the reason he's running. No, really. That takes a lot of chutzpah, but the astonishing thing is that he's leading the polls in a seven-way race. Or six, now -- one candidate just dropped out in fear that the wide field would split the vote and allow Morrissey to win.

All of that is pretty disappointing, but like Marion Barry before him, Morrissey is walking the path to redemption with the voters supporting him. Nobody would really care about his candidacy if he weren't leading the pack, to put this another way. And who are we to argue with the voters of Richmond? So his voter support has saved him from this week's MDDOTW award.

This leaves a thin field to choose from, so we're going to go ahead and hand the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award to Chelsea Clinton, who got her facts wrong about marijuana, while out on the campaign trail for her mother. We also have to thank Tom Angell, marijuana-rights crusader extraordinaire, for bringing this to everyone's attention.

Chelsea was campaigning in Ohio, and was asked about what her mom thought about the D.E.A. refusing to reclassify marijuana to a lower level (rather than Schedule I, where it currently sits). Hillary Clinton has been notably reluctant to embrace marijuana legalization in any way, although she has incrementally moved her position since she first began her run. She now "supports more research," which is a pretty Caspar Milquetoast-ish position to take in 2016, when over half the United States have already legalized medicinal marijuana and when recreational legalization will be on the ballot in multiple states this November. But Clinton has indeed stated that she now supports rescheduling marijuana -- again, a fairly weak position on the issue, considering how far the window has shifted in the general public.

But then Chelsea just started makin' stuff up, continuing a century-long streak of anti-marijuana propaganda, by stating:



When challenged by ThinkProgress, a Chelsea Clinton spokesperson had to walk this statement back:



While we do appreciate the fact that she did walk her inaccurate statement back, the fact that she made it in the first place still makes Chelsea Clinton our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week.

Maybe this is a "teachable moment" for her mother? Let's see, Team Clinton is extremely worried that she is not generating much enthusiasm from Millennials. The young folks haven't flocked from backing Bernie Sanders over to her side, and many of them may vote for a third-party candidate or even stay home. Hmm... that's a problem. Now what could Hillary Clinton possibly do to fix that problem? How could she entice young Gary Johnson and Jill Stein voters over to her side? If only there were one simple issue -- an issue that the public has already completely shifted on -- that Hillary could champion in order to fix her problem with young voters. If only such an issue could be found... if only....

Sooner or later, Democratic politicians are going to realize that they are flat-out not being leaders on the issue of marijuana reform, and further realize the political benefits they could easily be reaping by getting out in front of the issue. Sooner or later, but not yet -- from Team Clinton, at any rate.

{Chelsea Clinton is a public political figure, but not an actual officeholder, and it is our longstanding policy not to provide contact information for private individuals, so you'll have to let the Hillary Clinton team know what you think of Chelsea's actions on your own, sorry.}



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[center]Volume 410 (9/30/16)[/center]

While most of this week's talking points are nothing more than conservative reactions to Trump's debate performance, we do have to apologize in advance for our first talking point, because we fully admit it is not only sexist, but appearance-ist (or whatever P.C. term should be used, there), and downright juvenile. Hey, it's been that sort of election, folks.

Normally, we wouldn't stoop to insults a fifth-grader might hurl on a playground here, because even if we are dedicated to the proposition that Democrats can effectively use taunting as talking points -- as effectively as Republicans, even! -- we usually try to keep at least one foot out of the gutter while doing so.

However, Donald Trump has proven this week beyond a shadow of a doubt that one of his sorest sore spots is his well-documented history of misogynistic statements. For some bizarre reason, Trump seems to want to deny that he has said any of the vast collection of put-downs against women he's used in the past. After all, who in their right mind would have thought that during the first 2016 presidential debate, there would be name-drops of Howard Stern, a former Miss Universe, and Rosie O'Donnell (who "deserved" all the things Trump said about her)? Seriously, who could have predicted any of that?

So our first talking point is specifically designed as a taunt to make Trump seethe. It's not even really necessary -- he's already boiling over about the whole Miss Universe thing. We had another talking point ready to go (Bill Kristol: "I'm not positive Hillary actually won the debate. But I'm sure Trump lost it. He choked.&quot , but in the end we decided that getting under Trump's skin even more was a worthy enough goal for us to use language we would normally consider unworthy for these august pages. So with that caveat under our belts, let's get right to it, shall we?



Beaten like a cheap rug

Ideally, we'd select Chris Matthews to utter this line. Somehow he seems like the most likely candidate to uncork this particular insult to Trump, don't ask us why.

"Trump got beaten up pretty badly by a girl on Monday night, and then all week long he got beaten like a big brass drum by a beauty queen. No wonder he's so upset."



It's 3:00 A.M....

Many people are pointing this one out. It's a no-brainer, really, after this morning's tweetstorm from Trump.

"If I were giving the Republican National Committee advice, I would tell them to immediately find out who exactly gave Donald Trump his phone back? They had successfully hidden it from him for weeks, but this morning he started spewing conspiracy theories in the middle of the night, once again. It's so embarrassing even John Podesta was offering Trump advice, for when he gets up in the middle of the night: 'safety tip: don't reach for your phone.' Hillary Clinton's response should be an obvious one, since she's already got the footage ready to go -- all it would need would be about five seconds of updating. Yes, I think it's high time for Clinton to re-run her '3:00 A.M. ad' from 2008, don't you? Because Trump is -- obviously -- not the guy you'd want anywhere near a phone in the wee hours."



20 minutes of material

The next few talking points are all from conservatives reviewing Trump's debate performance. We have to say, it's been a rather extraordinary presidential campaign, because over and over again we don't even have to create Democratic talking points, since the conservatives are offering up better ones on their own -- against their own candidate. All any of these need is a Democrat leading in with: "Did you hear what X just said about Trump?" In this case, X would be Mitt Romney's chief strategist from his 2012 campaign:





Vanity and laziness

Our next conservative debate review comes from John Podhoretz of the New York Post.





Big mistake

Here is Charles Krauthammer on Trump's debate performance. Ah, vanity, thy name is Trump!





Fireworks train hits nuclear plant

To absolve him of being insensitive, we are duty-bound to point out that Michael Gerson wrote this Homer Simpson-esque metaphor before the New Jersey train derailment happened. It's a metaphor almost as good as the image of the Titanic backing up to take another shot at the berg, though.





That's the ticket!

And finally, we close with a fairly obvious observation that more people need to be saying out loud.

"It's now rumored that Chris Christie will be taking charge of the effort to prepare Donald Trump for his next debate. The next debate, I might point out, will have a 'town hall' format. So, really, what could go wrong with Chris Christie sharing his wisdom about how to cope with town halls with Trump? Christie is known for his patience with audience questions and also known for never shouting at citizens during such events or belittling them at all. Oh, wait, my mistake -- all of that is exactly what Christie is known for! Maybe Christie can play Trump some clips of Christie screaming at a teacher or telling someone to sit down and shut up -- that'll definitely help Trump keep his cool at the next debate! So I heartily encourage Donald to listen to Christie very closely and to follow Christie's example as much as possible, because who doesn't want to see Trump act like Christie during a town hall debate? I mean -- what could possibly go wrong with that?"



[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank[/center]

September 24, 2016

Friday Talking Points (409) -- The Debate Wait

This past week, normal Americans went about their daily lives. Children endured school once again, the birds twittered merrily, and lovers everywhere fell in love. Life went on for hundreds of millions. Lucky them.

In the world of wonkcraft, though, political observers everywhere are caught in a waiting game, ticking off the moments until the first presidential debate (which happens this Monday night -- which you probably already knew, if you're reading this sort of article). What will happen? Will Donald Trump melt down? Will he strain his "presidential" muscle? Will he storm off the stage in a tantrum, halfway through? Will Hillary Clinton make it through the evening without stumbling (either metaphorically or physically, one might add)? Will Lester Holt redeem NBC News after the fiasco named Matt Lauer? Will Trump reference body parts (his own, his opponent's, or perhaps even the moderator's)? It's certainly happened before.

The audience, when the debate actually happens, will be huge. Tremendous, in fact. Some (we won't say who) are even predicting it could be a bigger television event worldwide than the 1969 moon landing. We aren't sure we'd go that far, but it certainly will be popular television, that's for sure. But while the vast majority of Americans won't be thinking about the debate until it actually happens, the rest of us in the world of political obsession have been thinking about little else all week long.

Hillary Clinton is spending a lot of time on debate preparation, but Team Hillary has managed to keep quiet who is "playing Trump" in her practice debate sessions. Donald Trump, on the other hand, appears to be comfortable just winging it -- which, it must be admitted, worked pretty well for him in the primaries.

Both candidates are being given conflicting advice on how tough to be. Clinton is being told to essentially ignore Trump and just "be presidential" the whole time, but another faction is urging her to whip out a verbal switchblade and plunge it into her opponent. Hey, why not? Even the Dalai Lama's now mocking Trump! Trump's natural inclination, of course, is to toss verbal hand grenades willy-nilly, but he is being urged by many Republicans to forgo the pleasure of doing so and (again) just to "look presidential" the whole time. Both sides are working the media refs, and will continue to do so right up to Monday night. Trump's team insists that if Trump just refrains from cursing (and/or being vicious), then he'll have "won" the night. Clinton's team has already worked the refs to its advantage, because the spectre of Matt Lauer's fiasco will be hanging over Lester Holt in a big way.

But no matter what happens, and no matter what is said about it afterwards, we've all still got a few days left to wait. To fill the time, let's take a look back at the past week.

One thing we do know for certain about Monday's debate -- there will only be two candidates on stage. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein didn't make the official cut (of polling 15 percent or better nationally), even though this race could indeed be affected by third-party voting in a big way.

A fun fact that few have noticed: Donald Trump hasn't given a press conference in almost two months. What's up with that? Trump used to love sparring with (and taunting) the press, so the absence is notable.

Perhaps there's a reason for this, since yet another conservative newspaper broke a century-old tradition by endorsing Hillary Clinton rather than the Republican candidate (as they usually do). It's getting so this barely even qualifies as news anymore. Trump may go down in history with the fewest newspaper endorsements ever, but (to be fair) that might not matter too much at all.

As we were writing this, there was some breaking news on the Trump endorsement front, as Senator Ted Cruz swallowed the remaining shreds of whatever dignity he possessed, and went ahead and endorsed Donald Trump. For handy reference, the Washington Post put together a list of just some of the nasty things Cruz and Trump have said about each other. Cruz has called Trump: "a narcissist at a level I don't think this country's ever seen," "a serial philanderer," "utterly amoral," "a bully", and "a sniveling coward." That last one was right before he defended his wife by saying: "Leave Heidi the hell alone."

Cruz was booed at the Republican National Convention for not openly supporting Trump during his speech, after which he explained why he couldn't honor the pledge all the GOP candidates made to support the eventual nominee: "I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father. That pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander my wife that I am going to come like a servile puppy dog for maligning my wife and maligning my father." Today, servile puppy dog Ted Cruz came crawling to Trump. It'll be interesting to see what Trump has to say about it, because back during the convention Trump had pledged, about a Cruz endorsement: "If he gives it, I will not accept it. I don't want his endorsement. Just, Ted, stay home, relax, enjoy yourself."

Speaking of spineless Republicans who have endorsed Trump, Chris Christie had a pretty bad week, because it came out in court that he probably did know all about the bridge closure while it was happening. Whoops! The New Jersey state congress is now reportedly considering impeaching him, which might guarantee that he'd never get to be Trump's attorney general. To convict Christie, Democrats would need to convince three state GOP senators to vote to convict, though, so it's not a sure thing.

One quick note from the other side of the campaign aisle (if that metaphor isn't too mixed) that few have yet noticed: Hillary Clinton seems to be recovering somewhat in the polls. Now, this trend is recent and could just be statistical noise, and no matter what happens the credit or blame will likely go to her debate performance, but while most pundits are still going with "Clinton down in the polls!" the reality is that she's been doing better for at least a week -- while Trump's numbers have topped out and started to slide backwards. If she does well in the debate, she'll already have a tailwind at her back, to put this another way.

And finally, a last item unrelated to the campaign. Not to be outdone by hating on Obamacare, a whole bunch of mostly-Republican states have now sued the Obama administration to try to stop the new overtime rule from going into effect this December. Obama announced the new rule a while back, which will double the threshold where employees can be called "salaried" -- thereby avoiding pesky overtime payments for their employers. The old limit was decades old, whereas the new limit of $47,500 is much more in line with today's working reality. As it turns out, greedy corporations aren't the only ones abusing low-paid workers by working them 50 or 60 hours a week with no extra pay -- state governments have been exploiting the same loophole! And now they're sad, because they are going to have to stop the practice. What was interesting was what one of the attorneys general suing predicted, should the new rule take effect: "it may lead to disastrous consequences for our economy." Um, yeah, because giving workers more money or more time to enjoy it would certainly be a disaster, right? Yet another difference between the two parties that Democrats out on the campaign trail really should be exploiting.



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This week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award was pretty easy to pick, as Senator Elizabeth Warren proved once again what a bang-up choice she would have been for Hillary Clinton's veep.

Warren excels at raking Wall Street executives over the coals in Senate hearings, of course, and this week was no different. Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf was on the hot seat this time around, for running a scam for five years and then "cleaning it up" by firing a bunch of low-level employees and giving all the executives (himself included) fat multi-million-dollar bonuses.

Warren was scathing in her indictment not only of Stumpf, but of the culture that allows such things to happen. She lit into him with barely-concealed disgust, saying to his face: "You should resign. You should give back the money you took while this scam was going on and you should be criminally investigated." She had plenty of other things to say, as well:

Amen to that, sister. Elizabeth Warren continues to be the worst scourge Wall Street has seen since Teddy Roosevelt, and she more than earned her eleventh MIDOTW award this week. Since the veep slot is already taken, might we suggest Secretary of the Treasury Elizabeth Warren?

{Congratulate Senator Elizabeth Warren on her Senate contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.}



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For the second time inside the same month, our obvious winner of the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award is none other than serial peter-tweeter Anthony "Most Appropriate Last Name Ever" Weiner.

This one may be a whole lot more serious than all the other times he got caught "sexting" with women who were not currently married to him. Because this time, Weiner was reportedly committing digital hanky-panky with a 15-year-old girl. Wow. We really thought he had already hit the lowest part of the gutter, but it turns out he has sunk even further into the slime down there. So far into the slime that he is now facing a criminal investigation, because getting raunchy with underage high school students online is actually against the law (which wasn't true for all his other exploits with adult women).

In fact, we can't even bring ourselves to rake through the sordid details, so we'll just provide one link to an overview story with nothing but the broad details, as well as a link to the original story, which comes complete with all the naughty texts and the eyebrow-raising details (which include rape fantasies and an actual schoolgirl dressing up like a schoolgirl). Choose which link to read, based on the strength of your intestinal fortitude, we suppose.

One thing that didn't give us a moment's pause, however, was to hand Anthony Weiner his sixth Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week -- all given out for his amorous online behavior. Four weeks ago, when we gave him his fifth award, we wrote: "Hopefully, three strikes means he will forever be out of the public eye, and we'll never have to give him another MDDOTW award ever again. Hopefully, at any rate."

Our hopes, as it turned out, were dashed -- within a single month's time.

{We do not provide people's contact info who are not currently in public office as a rule, but as it turns out it appears you can send Anthony Weiner a text message quite easily. I mean, it must be pretty easy because it has happened so often, right?}



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[center]Volume 409 (9/23/16)[/center]

After typing in this week's volume number, we were reminded of a time when music and automotive enthusiasm were one and the same. Yes, we speak of the Beach Boys, and the immortal lines:



These were simpler times, back when a band could include a line like: "My four-speed dual-quad Posi-Traction 409" and everyone knew what they were talking about (without having to have Marisa Tomei explain it in My Cousin Vinny, either). Good times, indeed. Seriously, given the choice between that and the brand name of a household cleaner, we'll choose the Beach Boys every time. Truer words were never spoken: "Giddy up, giddy up, 409."

Ahem. Where were we? Oh, right, politics. Somehow we got distracted there for a moment. We do apologize, it won't happen again.

The business at hand is, of course, attempting to create some zingers for Hillary Clinton to use in Monday's debate. We tried to pick just the things that will really get under Trump's orange skin. He's awfully touchy about certain subjects, so if the moderator isn't hitting them hard enough, Clinton should step in and do so herself. Given the fact that she'll have a couple of minutes for each response, the talking points came out longer than normal this week. But if Clinton even says anything close to any of them, we'll be happy enough.

Trump is pretty easy to bait, and if he hasn't melted down by (say) halfway through, then Clinton should start needling him to provoke the "Mr. Hyde" version of Trump millions of people will be tuning in to see. So here are our seven suggestions to be included in Hillary's debate prep sessions.



Whose hands?

No, that's not a lead-in to a "tiny hands" joke. Sure, it'd be amusing if Hillary went there, but we seriously doubt she will. Instead, it's an answer to a riff Trump let loose earlier this week.

"Donald, you said earlier this week, and I quote: American hands will rebuild our nation, not the hands of people from other nations. Unquote. I find this a little laughable, because it's a well-known fact that Trump Tower was built using Polish laborers, some of whom were illegal immigrants at the time. Your new D.C. hotel was built with lots of Central American construction workers, also including some undocumented immigrants. Down in Mar-a-Lago, you import foreign workers every summer rather than hire American workers who according to you should have jobs made available to them before any foreigners are even considered. And don't even get me started on all the products -- your signature ties, your suits -- which are made in China and elsewhere overseas. So why should anyone believe you when you say you'll make sure 'American hands' are put to work? After all, you certainly have never operated any of your own business that way."



Ever? Really?

This one is such an easy shot, we'd be downright surprised if Clinton doesn't take it.

"Last week, you said the following: 'our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape they've ever been in before. Ever, ever, ever.' Wow -- that's pretty definite, isn't it? 'Ever, ever, ever.' Really? Can you not even think of one single period of American history where African-American communities were in worse shape? Not even one? Do any of these words mean anything to you at all? Jim Crow. Segregation. Slavery. Lynchings. Race riots. Dred Scott. Separate but equal. Any of these ringing a bell? But according to you, the current situation is worse than all of those bygone eras. I mean, have you ever taken an American history class? Ever? Ever? Ever?"



Why should anyone believe you?

This subject is going to come up, obviously.

"You know, Donald, you are asking American voters to take a whole lot on nothing but your word. You say you're worth billions -- but you won't let anyone look at your taxes. You say you give millions to charity, but won't prove it in any way. You say you hate all the influence-buying in politics, but it turns out your campaign is handing millions of dollars that other people have donated to you over to your own businesses -- seven percent of all the money you've recently spent went to your own businesses. Now, I've released decades of my tax returns so the public can see how much I give to charity, how much money I make, and where it comes from. You refuse to do the same. You say you're under audit, but you won't even release older tax returns which are not covered by the audit. Why won't you show the public your tax returns for 2006? Or 2005? Or 2001? Or any year before that? What do you have to hide? What are you scared the public will figure out? That you're nowhere near as wealthy as you pretend to be? That you don't pay any taxes at all? I'll even make it easy for you, so you can keep your big secret hidden in every tax return you've ever filed -- just answer me one simple question: how much money did you personally donate to charity last year? How much? Just a ballpark figure -- that won't affect your audit in any way, shape, or form. So how much did you give last year, Donald -- out of your own pocket? It's a pretty easy question, after all."



Cracks in the foundation

Clinton, of course, will be asked about her family foundation. After answering the question, she should demand equal time from Trump.

"The Clinton Foundation has consistently earned the highest ratings from independent organizations who carefully examine non-profit records. We just earned four stars out of four, as a matter of fact. Meanwhile, the Donald J. Trump foundation has been operated like a personal slush fund by Mr. Trump. He hasn't donated one thin dime to his namesake foundation in over six years, which is rather astonishing. The Trump Foundation just got caught giving a political donation to an attorney general who was thinking about filing charges against the Trump University scam. That's illegal, and led to a fine from the I.R.S. But there's plenty of other questionable activities the Trump Foundation has been caught doing -- like spending tens of thousands of dollars on paintings of Donald Trump that were then hung in his for-profit businesses. That's illegal, too. The Trump Foundation has even been exposed for paying off Donald Trump's personal legal obligations, in court, to the tune of over a quarter-million dollars. Donald, you stiffed a guy who thought he had won a million bucks by hitting a hole-in-one -- since you promised this amount during the tournament -- and then after he had to sue you, you paid the man off by donating to his charity from your own charity, instead of out of your own pocket like you should have. Which is, once again, illegal. My charity does good work all over the globe. Yours seems to be nothing more than a cookie jar for you to dip into whenever you feel like."



Show me the money!

I considering going with "Where's the beef?" but that's even staler than Jerry Maguire.

"You know, Donald, I hear a whole lot of ideas from you about what you're going to do as president. You make all kinds of promises, but the one thing that you won't admit is that all the things you say you're going to do -- walls, deportations, stuff like that -- cost money. And you never seem to get around to saying how you're going to pay for any of it. Your plans would add trillions of dollars to the national debt, something you say you disapprove of. When I propose a plan, I say how I'm going to pay for it. You don't. Plain and simple. What are you going to do if you actually do pass some of these things into law, and it blows a trillion-dollar hole in the budget? In the real world, things have to be paid for. I know this might be a foreign concept to you, since you're used to stiffing people who work for you and daring them to sue you if they want more than pennies on the dollar of what you promised you'd pay them, and you're also used to just declaring one of your companies bankrupt and walking away from all your debt, but the government doesn't work that way. So I ask you, Donald, for all of these supposedly-wonderful things you're promising you'll do: Where's the money going to come from? Show me the money!"



Hundreds of millions?

Getting back to those tax returns....

"Why should America trust Donald Trump to set our foreign policy when he won't even tell us how much he owes foreign banks? Rumor has it that Trump has a tough time getting American banks to lend him any money anymore, because he's stiffed them so many times in his convenient bankruptcies. They've learned their lesson -- lending money to Trump is a bad bet. So he had to go overseas to get funding. He finally found some banks in China and Russia that would lend him money, and now I've seen estimates that he owes hundreds of millions of dollars to banks in both countries. So again, because you have such a big secret in your tax returns that we aren't even going to get a chance to see them, let me ask you point-blank: How much money do you owe Chinese and Russian bankers, Donald? It's an easy question, and one that anyone auditioning for commander-in-chief needs to clearly answer. Because you'd better believe that's going to influence our entire country's foreign policy if Donald Trump is elected."



C'mon, you can say it!

Perhaps it's all the talk of "Where's the beef?" and Beach Boys songs, but I couldn't resist the urge to reach way back for this one. Those who recognize it will immediately get the joke. Those who don't, ask someone over the age of 45 to explain it to you.

"Can you even say the words 'I was wrong,' Donald? Is it even physically possible for you to utter that phrase? So far, there's been no evidence of it. You spent how many years stating Barack Obama was hiding something in his birth certificate, or was perhaps born elsewhere. Then, last week, I guess your political handlers and donors made you dance like a puppet on a string and admit that Barack Obama was indeed born in Hawai'i, just like he had been saying all along. So, he was right. You were wrong. Man up, Donald. Admit it. Just say the words 'I was wrong' once, to prove you can. Otherwise, we'll all just have to believe you've got the same speech impediment that so famously afflicted the Fonz."



[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank[/center]

September 16, 2016

Friday Talking Points (408) -- Media Gets Played By Trump, Again

The media got played by Donald Trump this morning, once again. Picture Charlie Brown lying flat on his back, wondering why he keeps falling for the old kick-the-football bit. That was cable television, after they had carried -- live -- a full hour of an empty podium (Trump didn't start on time), then a full-on advertisement for Trump's new D.C. hotel, then some surrogates saying how wonderful Trump was. At the very end, Trump uttered the 30 seconds of soundbite the cable channels had been waiting for, and then even though it was billed as a press conference, Trump walked off and refused to answer any questions.

Here's a hint, for the clueless cable networks: if you don't want to feel cheap and dirty afterwards, then don't get in bed with Trump again. If you don't want to hear: "Oh, and there's some money on the dresser, why don't you buy something nice for yourself..." then don't put yourself into that situation in the first place.

Of course, the networks were outraged. They'll be outraged right up until Trump pulls the exact same trick on them in a few days. Rinse and repeat. Trump did almost exactly the same thing with his Dr. Oz appearance, a few days earlier. First, he was going to release his medical report. Then he wasn't. Then, he let Dr. Oz have a peek at a one-page summary. The media ate it up with a spoon, breathlessly reporting on each twist and turn. No wonder the Trump campaign isn't buying many ads -- they really don't have to when they can play the media like a fiddle, week after week.

Perhaps there's a silver lining to this story. Perhaps this will finally be the straw that breaks the camel's back. After Matt Lauer's disastrous performance with Trump and Clinton, the media has gotten noticeably tougher on challenging Trump's blithe claims and shifting positions. Harder questions are being asked, and non-answers (and outright lies) are being challenged. Nobody wants the scorn that was heaped on Lauer. Well, except for Jimmy Fallon, but he's a comedian and doesn't call himself a journalist. The ones that do consider themselves journalists all seem to be coming out of their daze in the past week or so, and waking up to their responsibilities to separate fact from fiction on the campaign trail. So perhaps Trump blatantly playing them this morning will stiffen their spines even further. Hey, anything's possible, right?

In other news from the campaign trail, Trump once again failed badly in a photo-op event reaching out to African-Americans. No surprise there, really. After being chastised by the pastor who invited Trump to Flint to speak about their water crisis, Trump was on television the next day picking a fight with her. Chalk up another fail on the Trump minority outreach tote board, folks!

In similar news, Donald Trump Jr. insulted Jewish voters by making an offhanded Holocaust joke. Junior also admitted that Dad isn't going to release his tax returns at all, because then people might say mean things about his finances. A chip off the old block!

Let's see, what else? Yet another newspaper that routinely (for the past century, in fact) endorses Republican candidates could not bring themselves to endorse Trump. So far, there have been precisely zero major newspapers to back Trump. More papers have endorsed Gary Johnson than have endorsed Trump, in fact. Embarrassing!

Hillary Clinton had a pretty dismal week as well, beginning by not admitting she had been diagnosed with pneumonia last Friday. She then pigeonholed half of Donald Trump supporters into a "basket of deplorables," and refused to back down (except for the part about "half&quot . While attending a 9/11 memorial service, Clinton was overcome by the heat and stumbled badly getting into a van. It took her campaign hours to admit she actually was sick, which certainly didn't do her any good on the transparency front. Also, all week long her poll numbers have been falling.

It isn't exactly time for Democrats to panic, but Clinton surely does need to turn things around soon. Her best chance will be at the first of the three televised presidential debates, for which she's been preparing for weeks now. Now, if (hypothetically speaking) Clinton physically collapses on stage during the debate, that would be the time for Democrats to panic, because that might guarantee President Trump. But if Clinton confidently shreds Trump in the first debate, her campaign can get back onto the right track in an instant. To put it another way, there's a lot riding on this debate, and it will doubtlessly be the most-watched presidential debate of all time.

And finally, we got a whole bunch of excellent economic news this week, not that most of the media was paying much attention. I wrote about this good news in more detail on Wednesday:

All of these facts should be highlighted by Hillary Clinton during the debate, because they all paint exactly the opposite picture as what Trump's been saying during his entire campaign. Things are getting better out there, mostly because of Obamacare and hiking the minimum wage -- two prime issues for a Democrat to campaign on.



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President Obama earned at least an Honorable Mention this week, for appearing solo on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton. He was back to his old campaigning form, but the real reason it's worth a mention here is because an event like this hasn't happened in almost thirty years. An incumbent president is normally expected to campaign for his party's nominee, but it hasn't actually happened since Ronald Reagan did so for George H. W. Bush in 1988. Both times it could have happened since then, it didn't. The first was in 2000, when Al Gore didn't want Bill Clinton to campaign for him, because the Monica Lewinsky impeachment scandal was still so fresh. Many pundits later wondered whether Clinton making appearances (say, in urban environments) for Gore could have pushed him over the top. The second time this might have happened, neither John McCain nor any other Republican candidate wanted anything to do with George W. Bush, whose approval ratings had sunk into the 20s. Bush was roughly as popular as Richard Nixon was, just before he resigned, so he didn't get any invitations to campaign (to say the least). So Obama's appearance this week really should have been a normal thing for a second-term president to do, but this hasn't actually happened for a very long time.

But our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award instead goes to five senators, led by Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who are attempting to bring back the public option for health insurance. Merkley was joined by Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, and Patty Murray, and soon dozens of other Senate Democrats were flocking to co-sponsor the measure.

They realize they have an uphill climb in front of them. They are really hoping to build support so they can pass a bill in the next Congress, with a new president. These things take time, in other words, but that shouldn't detract from beginning the effort now. The public option is supported by Hillary Clinton and by millions of Americans, so raising the issue now means it will be talked about during the campaign.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has already succeeded in reducing the uninsured rate of the American public by half -- from 18 percent down to 9 percent. Introducing a public option will only make the marketplaces better and more competitive. Now that the two biggest Democratic foes of the public option (Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman) are both gone from the Senate, it is time for the debate to begin anew.

For reintroducing the measure, we have five Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week awards this week, for Senators Jeff Merkley, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, and Patty Murray. If Democrats manage to take back the Senate, we can expect a full-throated debate early next year on the issue. For getting this particular ball rolling, these senators deserve recognition and support, so handing them MIDOTW awards is the least we can do.

{Rather than congratulating the five winners directly, instead we'd encourage you to take a minute to sign the petition supporting a public option for health insurance.}



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The obvious choice for Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week is none other than Hillary Clinton. While she was resting up, perhaps a fitting punishment would have been to write 100 times on a chalkboard (Bart Simpson-style): "It's not the crime but the coverup that gets you."

Sigh.

There was no real "crime" here, of course. Not telling the public and the media that you are sick is not even remotely against the law, even for presidential candidates. And, once again, you can fully sympathize with Clinton's motivation for keeping a lid on her personal information -- there was already a lot of wild and unfounded speculation running around the darker corners of the right-wing echo chamber that she had some deathly disease. Admitting that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia would, obviously, just feed into that whole rumor mill.

Still, the penchant for secrecy when none is really necessary is a definite pattern of behavior for Clinton, and one she would do well to change in the future. Imagine the following scenario, instead of what happened: Clinton publicly announces she's got pneumonia on the same day she is diagnosed (last Friday), and shows the media a letter from her doctor explaining what she's got and how she's treating it. Then she boldly announces that while she will be taking a little time off from normal campaign events, she will make the effort to go to the 9/11 memorial service, since she was so intimately involved in the aftermath (being one of New York's senators, at the time). She attends the event and then has to leave early for medical reasons. She staggers getting into her vehicle, and is caught on video.

That would be a much more sympathetic scenario than what took place, wouldn't it? Rising from her sickbed to honor the fallen, but being overcome and having to be helped away. That's a sympathetic portrait of a dedicated politician. Instead, what we got was a whole lot of unnecessary secrecy and a very bad photo op.

Instead of the story being defused before it happened, it becomes a story about Clinton not being fully transparent and choosing secrecy when it really wasn't even warranted. That feeds into a negative image of her that plenty of voters already hold.

So for not being upfront with the state of her health while running for president, Hillary Clinton is indeed our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. Repeat after me: It's not the crime, it's the coverup that gets you. It's not the crime, it's the coverup that gets you. It's not the crime, it's the coverup....

{Hillary Clinton is currently running for office, and it is our standing policy not to provide contact information to campaign websites, sorry.}



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[center]Volume 408 (9/16/16)[/center]

Lost in all the circus acts the media has been blindly chasing, the Washington Post has quietly been doing a bang-up job digging into the namesake charity of Donald Trump. They've spent months and months combing through public records and phoning up hundreds of charities to discover the truths behind the Donald J. Trump Foundation scam. What they've found so far is pretty astounding, even if the entire rest of the media world has largely ignored it while chasing Trump's shiny distractions and eruptions.

The Post -- in the past week alone -- has published story after story after story after story after story on the Trump Foundation's shenanigans, and we can only hope some bright researcher puts these stories on Lester Holt's desk so he can brush up on the facts before the first presidential debate.

We have to thank the Washington Post for committing these acts of real journalism in the midst of the presidential campaign. Nobody else has bothered to track this stuff down, and now the only thing left to do is to ask Trump to his face about what has been uncovered. This would require television "journalists" to do their homework and boldly confront Trump, though, so we're not exactly holding our breath in anticipation of it happening.

Still, it gives us plenty of fodder for this week's talking points. Our theme today comes from Hillary Clinton. We had to scratch our heads a bit about the whole "baskets" thing, but we did appreciate her calling out the Trump campaign's deplorable appeal. So each of these is presented as a response that can be used any time the word "deplorable" pops up in a political conversation.



Where's the $10,000,000, Donald?

Saying stuff is easy. Writing checks, not so easy, apparently.

"You know what's deplorable? Telling the public you've given 'tens of millions of dollars' to charity when you haven't even given your own namesake charity one thin dime in years. Or refusing to prove that you've given any money to charity at all. We've already seen Trump do this earlier in the campaign, when reporters began asking about the money Trump promised to donate to veterans -- and none of it had actually been donated. Donald Trump loves saying he'll donate to charity, but he rarely follows through with the actual money. And that's pretty deplorable."



Political slush fund

This is the only one that is actually getting some attention from the rest of the media. But it needs to be hammered as many times as possible.

"You know what's deplorable? Using your own charity as a slush fund to make campaign donations to bribe an attorney general into not investigating your fraudulent university scam. That's truly deplorable."



Lying about donations

This one is just straight-up lying. Lying about donations given to charity. So far, I don't think Trump has ever been asked about it by anyone.

"You know what else is deplorable? Telling the I.R.S. you've given money to charities when you didn't. The Washington Post has been digging through the Trump charity's financial statements, and has found multiple examples of false donation claims. Trump's paperwork says he gave a certain amount to a certain charity, but when the Post calls them up and asks them to verify, the charities say they've never received a penny from either Trump's foundation or Trump himself. That's not only deplorable, it also could be tax fraud."



It's yuuuuge!

This one has been picked up, not by journalists, but by late-night comedians. Hey, it's a start, we suppose.

"You know what's really deplorable? Paying $20,000 to a charity to buy a six-foot painting of yourself, that you then hang in the boardroom of one of your golf courses. That even reaches beyond deplorable into downright narcissism, folks."



Birtherism non-apology

Trump tried to weasel his way out of leading the birther movement today. Without apologizing, and bizarrely blaming Clinton for it all.

"You know what's deplorable? Spending years championing a conspiracy theory that America's first black president wasn't born in the United States, based on absolutely nothing. Then refusing for an entire year to dispute your birtherism on the campaign trail. And when you are finally forced to admit you were wrong, refusing to apologize for it and blaming someone else for your deplorable behavior."



The KKK is deplorable, Mike

Trump's running mate refuses to say mean things about a former wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. There's a word for that, Mike.

"You know who is deplorable? David Duke, former Klan leader, is deplorable. It's not even all that close a call, really, which is why it is astounding that Mike Pence couldn't bring himself to say it. Not only is David Duke deplorable, but not clearly saying so is also pretty deplorable."



Gas chamber jokes are...

Donald Trump Junior made a jaw-dropping reference to "gas chambers" the other day. Now he says he didn't mean what everyone thinks he meant by it. Because, apparently, nobody in the Trump family ever apologizes for anything.

"You know what's deplorable? Making jokes about the Holocaust. That is unbelievably deplorable. And despicable, just for good measure."



[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank[/center]

September 10, 2016

Friday Talking Points (407) -- Two Promises Hillary Clinton Should Make

Before we begin, we promise we'll get to that rather-provocative subtitle later, as we turn this week's talking points section over to an attempt at providing campaign advice for Team Clinton. We've been long wondering why Hillary hasn't made some sort of effort to put these two large issues behind her on the campaign trail, and our frustration has led us to offering up what she should say in order to achieve this goal.

But we'll get to all of that in a moment. First, let's take a look at this week's political news. Conservative anti-feminist hero Phyllis Schlafly died this week, guaranteeing nobody will ever have to type her name again (we are always respectful of those with difficult last names to type, personally, since our own gets misspelled so often). Schlafly rose to prominence fighting the Equal Rights Amendment and was an unreconstructed "keep 'em barefoot and pregnant" type of gal (being an anti-feminist, we're sure she wouldn't take offense to being called a "gal&quot . Think this is exaggeration? Salon helpfully put together a list of her most cringeworthy quotes on the role of women in society, in case anyone's liable to forget just how odious her views were.

Speaking of odious views, the Vast Right-Wing Anti-Clinton Conspiracy is now operating at full steam, pushing the theory that Hillary Clinton is liable to drop dead before she can even take office, because she is so ill. How do they know this? They don't. But how do they think they know this? Because Clinton has coughing fits every so often. You see, if someone travels around the country breathing airplane air for weeks and weeks on end, shaking the hands of thousands of people in dozens of cities, they are not allowed to cough even once. Clinton herself blamed allergies -- she's allergic to mentions of Donald Trump. Heh. Nice one.

But the conspiracy kind of had the rug yanked out from under it this week when lil' Newtie Gingrich (remember him?) tried to launch into his own doctorly diagnosis of what was so obviously wrong with Clinton having a coughing fit, but then had to stop -- because he had a coughing fit. No really -- you just can't make this stuff up, folks! Gingrich blamed airplane air for his dry throat, but in doing so undermined the entire conspiracy theory altogether. Note to other conservatives pushing the "Hillary so sick" meme: take a drink of water before you do. Ask Marco Rubio about the importance of staying hydrated, perhaps.

Enough of the minor stuff, though, Last week's political news was clearly dominated by one event: the non-debate debate orchestrated by NBC News. NBC thought they'd scored a real coup by setting this event up, since it was the first time Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were on the same stage for the same event in the general election season. They weren't simultaneously on the same stage, which is what made it a "non-debate debate." But it was supposed to be a big preview of the real debate season, scheduled for kickoff later this month. What it turned into, in the words of one anonymous NBC News executive afterwards, was a "disaster."

It's not like anyone couldn't see the disaster coming. It was akin to the Titanic seeing an iceberg in broad daylight -- with plenty of time to maneuver the ship -- and then inexplicably turning directly towards the iceberg and ordering: "Full speed ahead!" Seriously, what network genius was it who looked over the entire roster of NBC News and MSNBC and decided: "Matt Lauer is the obvious choice"? Was it the same genius who kept David Gregory as the host of Meet The Press long after his due date had expired? Inquiring minds want to know.

Matt Lauer? I mean, seriously, Matt Lauer?!? The guy who just interviewed Ryan Lochte? That guy? That's who you think can handle Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton best? Really?

Sigh. The results were predictable, although the scorn heaped on Lauer was a lot more scathing and widespread than we had expected. NBC "Lauered the bar," there is no doubt about that. But we choose to remain optimistic, which is why we are hopeful that all of the ridicule will have a big silver lining. Lauer's disaster might be the most effective warning for all the real debates' moderators, in fact, beginning with NBC's own Lester Holt. Lauer was a very good bad example, to be blunt. He showed in painful detail what not to do.

This whole episode should put the debate moderators on notice: don't make the same mistakes Lauer made. Be prepared to ask followup questions. Know when to ask followup questions. Do some fact-checking on the spot when bald-faced lies are uttered. Press for details when none are forthcoming. And let the candidate answer the question before jumping all over them.

One can only hope that the four official debate moderators (three presidential debates, one for the veep candidates) learn the lesson that Lauer just painfully taught. Being entrusted with hosting a candidate debate (or forum) is serious business (which should not be handed to political lightweights, of course). Don't embarrass yourself -- instead, do your homework!



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This week, the government issued a record fine on a big bank, for essentially running a scam operation at the expense of its own customers. Just like cops writing lots of traffic tickets at the end of the month to fill their quota, employees of the bank were found to have created thousands of customer accounts that the customer never actually applied for. They were judged on how many new accounts were opened, which is why the employees had such a strong incentive to create them.

This widespread gross chicanery was brought to the attention of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who just levied the record $100 million fine against Wells Fargo (you can read their own press release for all the details). The Bureau, which was the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren, is now headed by Richard Cordray, who is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

Republicans have fought the very idea of the C.F.P.B. from the very beginning. They still fight tooth and nail to either defund or disband altogether this government agency whose sole purpose is to stand up for the little guy against Wall Street. Nothing could further define the parties' stance towards the big banks than support for this department, in fact. Democrats, on the side of the consumer; Republicans on the side of the banks. It's a wonder more Democrats don't make this a campaign issue, in fact, because it seems like "consumers don't deserve protection against getting screwed by their banks" should be a losing position for a politician to take, these days. Hint to Democrats running for Congress: "My opponent stands firmly against consumers having any advocate against the big banks on Wall Street running roughshod over them and their rights. How can anyone support that position with their vote?"

Politics aside, Richard Cordray is the obvious MIDOTW choice this week, not just for exposing Wells Fargo's bogus account scheme and for levying such a hefty fine, but for his ongoing work heading the agency Elizabeth Warren created. Without doubt, Richard Cordray is this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

{Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray doesn't have direct contact information on his official webpage, but the White House does have a link stating he wants to hear from you, if you'd like to congratulate him and let him know you appreciate his efforts.}



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We have no Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week, because nobody disappointed us all that much. Instead, we have to heap some scorn on the media.

Gary Johnson was finally -- finally! -- in the national political news this week. Despite polling higher than any third-party presidential candidate since H. Ross Perot, Johnson has been almost completely absent from the political news. Until this week, when he made a gaffe.

The gaffe was indeed a doozy, but what was more repellant was the way the media treated it. All of a sudden Johnson's in the news, because: "Hey look, this third-party guy just disqualified himself!"

The media's had a pretty bad week, all around. First, there was Matt Lauer. Everyone in the punditocracy jumped all over Lauer for not fact-checking Donald Trump. What was left unsaid was that none of the people heaping scorn on Lauer has done a much better job at prying facts (or admissions of error or untruthfulness) out of The Donald, so far. It certainly had a pot-kettle-black odor about it, at least to us.

But Aleppogate was even worse, at least for the venerable New York Times. Right after Johnson gave his deer-in-the-headlights admission that he was unclear on what Aleppo even was, everyone in the media universe began writing articles gleefully pointing out his ignorance. The only problem was that in doing so, a whole lot of media ignorance was uncovered as well.

Now, to be fair, Syria is a complicated mess. It is not "us versus them." There are no clearly defined black hats and white hats. There are (at the least, mind you, just by our count) eight major groups warring in Syria. There is the United States and Russia, of course. Recently, Turkey actively entered the fight, too. There is the Assad government's forces. There are the Kurds, who are fighting the Islamic State both in Syria and in Iraq. There are rebels that we have backed which are not Islamist in nature. There are also rebels that are Islamist in nature, but are not part of the Islamic State. And then there is the Islamic State itself.

In other words, it's complicated. Much much too complicated for the average American -- and the average American journalist -- to even comprehend. Such complexity might excuse minor errors in determining who is fighting whom in each city or region.

But none of that excuses the mistakes the New York Times made, in their article sneering at Gary Johnson's ignorance of what Aleppo was. Their story, in fact, had to go through five public revisions before they got it right, and their whoppers were a lot more embarrassing than Johnson just admitting he didn't immediately recognize the city's name. The facts: Aleppo is a large city in Syria, where the government forces of Assad have been fighting rebel forces -- completely unaffiliated with the Islamic State -- for years, now. The city is a disaster zone because the fight has been so fierce. Those are the facts about Aleppo.

The Times, however, got it badly wrong. Here was their first correction notice:

Got that? The first thing written was that Aleppo was the Islamic State's capital. Then the article was updated to call Aleppo "a stronghold of the Islamic State." This wasn't even remotely true, either. This is why the article had to go through five revisions, because they kept getting their facts wrong in an article making fun of a politician's ignorance on the issue.

The icing on the cake, however, was that that correction notice above also had to be corrected. So not only was the author of the article and their initial editor at fault, the first time it was fact-checked, the author made a further mistake, and so did the editor. This necessitated a further correction notice:



They weren't the only ones with egg on their face, merely the most embarrassing example. Christopher Hill, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, was quoted on MSNBC also identifying Aleppo as the "capital of ISIS."

Let this be a lesson to all who gleefully point out the ignorance of politicians: when writing a story poking fun at some hapless politician getting his facts wrong, it certainly would behoove you to make damn sure that your facts are correct before publishing it. The ten minutes you spend on Wikipedia looking up some basic facts will be well-spent.

So while we don't actually have an award category for it, the New York Times certainly deserves some sort of Razzie-type award for trying to ride a high horse and instead winding up face-down in the mud of the very ignorance they're denouncing. Five times in a row.



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Hillary Clinton gave a press conference this week. This was big news, because it was the first one she'd given since December.

We personally don't understand Clinton's reluctance to appear in press conferences. It's as mystifying as her apparent reluctance to debate Bernie Sanders in the primary season. The reason both of these are mystifying is that Clinton's actually pretty good in either format. She's a confident debater, and she's pretty good at answering questions from the press, as well. Clinton participated in a non-debate debate this week, and she gave a press conference. This is good news, because both these prepare her for the upcoming first real debate. She should use press conferences to sharpen up her answers -- it's really the best debate prep there is, in fact.

There's another big reason why Clinton should hold more press conferences. She's allowed to give a short introduction to these events, and if she's smart she can thus drive the entire day's media cycle. This is something every other candidate (in the primaries) almost universally failed to do when facing Donald Trump. Trump is the media cycle, or at least he was up until he started reading everything off a TelePrompTer. No matter what anyone else said that day, the big question on every reporter's mind was: "What is your reaction to what Donald Trump just said/tweeted?"

Hillary needs to get out in front of that, and one way to do it is to use an opening statement at a press conference to introduce her own game-changing ideas. What follows is a proposal for how she could easily do so in the next few days. Hillary's got baggage, we all know that. She has struggled to get by this baggage for months. She's got to find a way of putting it behind her, and fast. So she should directly address two outstanding issues that she's so far been fairly timid about. Here are our suggestions for two big promises Clinton should make to utterly change the conversation about two of her biggest pieces of political baggage. Both have a finality to them: "this will be the last word on the subject, period." Which is precisely what Clinton really needs right now.



Proposed Hillary Clinton statement

I want to address the American people today about what I will do if I become president. I have two promises to make today so that voters will know exactly what I'll do if they entrust me with the highest office in the land.

My first promise is on the subject of email. Now, you may have heard a story or two in the media with my name and the word "email" in the headline {pause for laughter}. Because this has been such an obsession for so many for so long -- I've lost count of the times I've been investigated over my emails, in fact -- that I feel it is time to now make the following iron-clad promise: I will not send anyone an official email, as president. I just won't use email at all for official business. There are plenty of ways to contact people in today's world, and forswearing the use of one of these will in no way impact my ability to do the job or communicate with anyone I wish.

If an issue is raised over email that I need to respond to, I will either pick up the phone and call that person to tell him or her what I think, I will write a letter on a piece of paper and send it to them, or if it is a more minor issue I will direct one of my aides to answer via their own official email. But I will send no official emails myself. Records will be properly preserved -- whether phone records, physical copies of a paper letter, or email records of my staff.

I made a mistake when I became Secretary of State. I admit that mistake, but what's more important than admitting a mistake -- something my opponent has yet to do on any subject, I might point out -- is making sure it never happens again. I feel the best way to do this is by promising I will never use email for official business as President of the United States. Problem solved -- no one will ever have to worry about my emails ever again. Period.

My second promise concerns the Clinton Foundation. This charitable organization was set up by my husband after he left office, and has performed good works that have positively affected millions upon millions of lives. Both Bill and I are proud of the Foundation, and the works that it does. We just received the highest rating possible from an independent organization that rates charities, and we're proud that over 80 cents of every dollar donated goes to charitable good works. We try to keep the overhead to an absolute minimum to ensure that the Foundation is able to do the most good for the most people, all over the world.

Some have suggested that, should I become president, it would be best to just shut the Clinton Foundation's doors. They say that's the only way to avoid any hint of any conflict of interest. The problem with that is that many of the good works the Foundation does are ongoing, and to just pull the plug would mean great hardship for too many people.

One solution suggested would be to hand the foundation over to some third party to run, if I am elected. But anyone even slightly connected to our family would still be suspected of somehow having undue influence. So Bill and I have decided that there is a perfect steward out there which we can trust to continue the Clinton Foundation's good works -- because they do such a great job on their own. If I am elected, I will immediately direct the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to take full control and have full oversight of the Clinton Foundation for the duration of my presidency.

Until I leave office, neither I nor Bill nor Chelsea nor anyone else in my family or circle of close advisors will have anything whatsoever to do with Bill's namesake charitable organization. We will not run it, we will not be on the board, and we will relinquish full control to Bill and Melinda Gates. What happens after I leave office, should I be elected, is a subject for another day. Perhaps Bill and I will want to get involved with the Clinton Foundation again, or perhaps we'll just let it permanently be absorbed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation forever. Either way, all Americans can be confident that nothing that happens to the Foundation will have the slightest influence on my presidency in any way, shape, or form. Period.

Both of the promises I've made today are hard for me to make, on a personal level. I love the convenience of email, for one {pause for laughter}. Perhaps the most famous photo of me is one where I'm checking my Blackberry, in fact. It'll be hard, but I will quit -- cold-turkey -- using email for anything with even a hint of official business in it. There are other ways to communicate, and I will use them instead. No American will have to wonder what might be contained in my presidential emails, because they will not exist.

Secondly, I personally love the Clinton Foundation, first and foremost because it is a big part of Bill's legacy. I also love all the good we've been able to do for so many people all over the world. I would love to continue doing such good while president, but I fully understand the conflict of interest that would set up. Even handing it off to Bill or Chelsea wouldn't solve that problem, and neither would (as the Foundation has already promised to do) merely refusing donations from corporations and foreign governments. But what would be the most painful for me would be to just shut the doors of the Foundation, instead of making good on programs already in place or promises for more good works that have already been made.

I trust Bill and Melinda Gates to continue these good works. I trust them so fully that I promise that neither I nor anyone close to me will have anything to do with the Clinton Foundation for the entire time I am in office.

I think that both of these issues are distractions from the issues that most American voters care most about in this election. People want good jobs, a decent future, and America to be kept safe. People want the real problems this country faces addressed, and not just used as political footballs. People want things to happen in Washington rather than the absolute gridlock that reigns supreme these days.

But at the same time, people need to be able to trust the candidate they vote for. I realize that. This is why I am making these two promises today -- because I want the American people to trust that neither my emails nor the Clinton Foundation will be a part of my presidency. There will be no email problems if I am elected president, and there will be no questions about my husband's namesake Foundation. Instead, let people cast their votes based on more important issues, without these distractions.

Thank you. I will now take your questions.



[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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September 3, 2016

Friday Talking Points (406) -- Deportation Clarification

Donald Trump going to Mexico could have had a certain "Nixon goes to China" flavor about it, and he actually was getting some good reviews for crossing the very low bar of "not totally embarrassing himself or his country" -- at least for the first few hours. Then he went to Phoenix, and Mr. Hyde came back out.

Trump gave what was billed as a major speech on immigration, which turned out to be exactly what he'd been saying all along on the subject. The big difference? It was in (gasp!) a numbered list read off a TelePrompTer. As for the policies, there wasn't much difference at all from what he's been saying throughout the campaign so far.

Deportation force? Check! (Trump called it a "deportation task force" which was about the only real change.) Big, beautiful wall? Check! (It will now have magic tunnel sensors!) Mexico pays for the wall? Yep! ("They don't know it yet, but they're going to pay for it.&quot Deportation for all? Oh, you bet! (Only change seems to be that some will have to wait a little longer to be deported.) Dreamer kids? Deport 'em all! Two million "criminal aliens" deported in the first hour he's in office? Count on it! Softening? Pivot? Nope! (Fooled ya again, suckers!)

No word on whether Trump enjoyed a taco bowl at any point during his big Mexico/immigration day. The fallout from his hardliner speech in Phoenix was swift, as several of the "Latino advisors" Trump had recently met with quit the effort in disgust and publicly renounced their support for Trump's campaign. So, it looks like that whole minority outreach thing is going swimmingly, folks!

Tomorrow, Trump is apparently planning the same sort of minority outreach to African-Americans. That should be interesting, to put it mildly.

If it even happens, that is. The negotiations for this visit have been pretty convoluted, so far. Ben Carson was apparently the instigator of this trip, designed to introduce Donald Trump to some actual African-Americans in Detroit (where Carson grew up). Not a bad idea, on the face of it. But the Trump campaign is about as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs about what could happen.

At first, Trump was supposed to address the congregation at a Great Faith Ministries International service. This was then changed to just an interview with the pastor, held in private, to be broadcast publicly a week later. Just to be certain there wouldn't be any surprises, the Trump campaign demanded all questions be submitted in advance, in writing. Then Team Trump carefully wrote out answers for Trump to parrot back. No word on whether a TelePrompTer would be allowed, or if Trump would be allowed to just read from prepared notes. And the icing on the cake: Trump's campaign would be allowed to edit the interview after it happened, "so that the final version reflected the campaign's wishes." You can see what we mean about that cat nervously eying all the rocking chairs, right?

The New York Times helpfully provided excerpts from the prepared answers Trump was supposed to read. Most of it is commonplace progressive-bashing Republican boilerplate, with faint overtones of racial condescension: "If you want a better America, you must break from the historical hold that Democrats have had on people of color and move to options that allow you to achieve your potential." The most amusing part of the script was the answer Trump's handlers prepared for the first question: "Are you a Christian and do you believe the Bible is an inspired word of God?"

Translation: "My family's religious! Didn't you see my wonderful kids at the convention? All their religious faith has got to have rubbed off on me a little bit, right?" You've got to love that last term: "an ever-wonderful God," which was obviously included in a pathetic attempt to make all of this sound like something Trump would spontaneously say. Now that the prepared script has been leaked, it will be interesting to see how far Trump actually strays from the words he's been told to say, that's for sure.

Trump's campaign did go into some frenetic damage control after the New York Times exposed all their careful preparation. They now say they will refrain from editing the interview themselves (awfully big of them, don't you think?). They also have promised that Trump will actually speak to more than just one person, and "would indeed address the congregation for a few minutes and would spend a half-hour casually speaking with church members individually." So it looks like there will still be plenty of room for a few monstrous gaffes after all....

At the very least, though, Donald Trump is putting himself out there. Hillary Clinton seems to have largely disappeared in the meantime, which has coincided with a noticeable drop in the polls for her. She's still beating Trump, mind you, just by a thinner margin. But the trendline should be worrisome for Democrats. Hillary has slipped a point or two from the bounce she got after the Democratic National Convention, but is still in relatively healthy shape. Donald Trump hasn't really benefited much from this slip, as most of the restless voters have moved instead to third-party candidates. This is also a worrisome trend, since up until now the Libertarian and Green candidates seem to have drained votes from both major candidates in equal proportion. Hillary Clinton is doing a much better job than Trump of running ads and setting up her ground game, but it is time for her to stop appearing only in front of well-heeled donors and return to campaigning in earnest. Especially after the F.B.I. released another document dump on the subject of her email server today.

In other amusing news from the Republican campaign trail (down-ballot), John McCain and Marco Rubio handily won their respective GOP primaries this Tuesday. McCain wasted no time in running very quickly away from Donald Trump afterwards, releasing a web video where he warns of the dangers of the upcoming Hillary Clinton presidency.

It was revealed this week that Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, also running for re-election, would cut his own children off from receiving their inheritance if they committed more than one felony, or had (or sired) more than one child out of wedlock. Nothing like family values, eh? I mean, it's not like Republicans are usually big fans of providing incentives for family members to get abortions or anything, right?

What else... Sarah Palin did a face-plant it on a rock-running trail, causing herself a head injury. From what she posted afterwards, it's really kind of hard to tell the difference between Palin ranting with a concussion and all of Palin's previous mangling of the English language. Oh, and Iowa Republicans running for Senate all seem to be using exactly the same kids in all their campaign ads. That should be interesting, when their television ads run right after each other!

And finally, we conclude this introductory section with a plug for an election information site that caught our eye. It's called "ProCon" and it lists in detail all the candidates' positions on all kinds of specific issues. Complete with quotes and history, it is a valuable resource to compare all the presidential candidates (even some from primary season who didn't make the cut) on whatever issue matters most to you. So check it out!



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Three Democrats were mildly impressive this week: Debbie Wasserman Schultz won the primary for her House seat, Joe Biden compassionately dealt with a heckler at a campaign speech, and Hillary Clinton actually reacted quickly to a news story and introduced a new policy idea to combat rampant greed and price-gouging among drug companies with monopolies on common medications. That last one, in particular, is worth at least an Honorable Mention because it showed leadership and showed Team Clinton could react quicker than they usually do to a big news story. Is her plan workable? Hard to tell, but it's notable for being just about the only plan out there to directly attack companies who jack up the price of medication by hundreds of percent just because they can.

But this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award goes to President Obama, for setting a record that will forever be part of his legacy. Last week, Obama commuted the sentences of 111 offenders, some of them serving life in prison for heinous crimes such as selling LSD at a Grateful Dead show. Obama is using the power of the pen to bring relief to people who were sentenced at the height of the "mandatory minimum" Drug War craze -- people who would get far less punishment for the same crimes today.

Obama's total for August alone was 325 commutations -- the most of any U.S. president in a single month, ever. His overall record is equally impressive, now standing at 673 commutations, which is more than the previous 10 presidents combined.

With Obama entering his final months in office, we can probably expect to see hundreds more federal prisoners obtain either commutations of their sentences or outright pardons. This is normal for the end of any president's term, in fact (although Obama's numbers are a lot higher).

Now, even 673 commutations is nowhere near enough. Tens of thousands of people were sentenced under Draconian drug laws in the 1990s and 2000s who should also have a chance to be freed or fully pardoned. But Obama has made great strides towards dismantling the worst excesses of the era, as the Drug War slowly winds down after roughly a century of political exploitation.

For doing what he can -- more than any previous president in a single month, in fact -- President Obama has certainly earned another Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

{Congratulate President Barack Obama via the White House contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.}



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To use a baseball metaphor, Anthony Weiner just got his third strike and is now out -- of his marriage.

Yes, our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week is none other than "Carlos Danger" himself, Anthony "Let Me Show You My" Weiner.

Weiner's first foray into getting publicly caught sexting pictures of his... um... last name, to women he was not actually married to, cost him his House seat. His second public humiliation for doing exactly the same stupid thing cost him any slim chance he might have had at becoming mayor of New York City.

His third boneheaded sexting adventure is already proving to be the costliest one for Weiner yet, as it has already cost him his marriage (to Hillary Clinton's closest advisor), and put him under investigation from the local child welfare agency. This was because he actually (shudder) sent one of his sexts to yet another woman who was not actually his wife, which included his young son on the bed with him.

That's really about all that needs to be said about that. Hopefully, three strikes means he will forever be out of the public eye, and we'll never have to give him another MDDOTW award ever again. Hopefully, at any rate.

For being a serial peter-tweeter, Anthony Weiner is easily (we were going to say "hands down" but then we reconsidered that imagery) this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. Three strikes, you're out... as Carlos Danger rides sadly off into the sunset.

{Anthony Weiner is actually a private citizen, and our blanket policy is not to provide contact information for such persons.}



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Today's talking points have a theme. The theme is: "When reaching out to minority voters, it's best if you don't then smack them in the face." Three of these come straight from prominent Latinos who previously (right up until he gave his Phoenix speech) supported Donald Trump. The first two deal with Trump's much-ballyhooed African-American outreach. As always, enjoy and use these talking points responsibly (heh).



Not funny at all

It is 2016, but apparently some people's sense of humor is stuck in about the 1950s, it seems.

"I see the Trump campaign's outreach to minority voters is going about as well as anyone really should have expected. While much attention was paid to Trump's speech about immigration, Team Trump was also out there trying to woo the African-American vote. By tweeting a cartoon depicting Hillary Clinton in blackface. No really -- that's their idea of what constitutes acceptable humor in this day and age. And I guess that's their idea of how to reach out to minority voters, too. Seems more like a smack in the face than any definition of 'outreach' I've seen."



What is Trump scared of?

This one is just too, too funny.

"Donald Trump is heading to the wilderness known as 'Detroit,' but don't worry, he'll have Ben Carson there to explain stuff to him. Trump will also grant an interview to a second actual African-American, a pastor at a church there. But it seems Team Trump is absolutely terrified by the prospect. First they decided that Trump wouldn't actually be speaking to the congregation. Then they demanded that all the questions be submitted in advance. The original plan was also that 'aides would... edit the taped interview so that the final version reflected the campaign's wishes.' Even that wasn't enough cotton padding, they also decided to write out Trump's answers in advance, in the hopes that he wouldn't say something outrageous. When this all was exposed by the media, Trump's campaign quickly backtracked and said they wouldn't actually be editing the interview themselves, and that Trump will speak for 'at least 10 minutes' to the congregation. Gee, I wonder why they're worried? Donald Trump speaking in front of the biggest African-American audience he's ever faced, about his supposed deep religious feelings? What could possibly go wrong?"



Beautiful outreach

Trump apparently has his own convenient place to shop for new wives. No surprise, really.

"Donald Trump, among his other business enterprises, runs Trump Model Management, an agency for foreign models to work through in New York. But to listen to actual models who used to work for Trump's agency, the place was nothing more than a multi-layered scam. The biggest revelation was, according to more than one model, that Trump was 'bringing in all of these girls from all over the world and they’re working illegally.' No work permits were ever even applied for, and the models were told precisely how to lie to immigration agents when entering the country. I guess it's not all that surprising that Trump would completely ignore immigration law to his own profit, since we're still waiting to find out exactly how his current wife entered the country. What she described, in fact, was precisely what a model in New York would have to do to fool the immigration folks by working here on a tourist visa, stating: 'Every few months you need to fly back to Europe and stamp your visa.' Trump promised there'd be a press conference to explain Melania's immigration history, but I'm not exactly holding my breath waiting for that to happen. If Trump were truly serious about cracking down on employers for immigration violations, he'd have to start with his own company, and what are the chances of that happening?"



A big fight

These next three are all from prominent Latinos who used to support Trump but now can't anymore (from two separate articles about Latinos fleeing the Trump campaign). The first is from "leading Latino conservative" and "prominent surrogate for Trump" Alfonso Aguilar, on hoping for a Trump pivot, and on why he can no longer support Trump:





No time for being scammed

The next two are from former members of Trump's "National Hispanic Advisory Council" who can no longer live with supporting Trump (there are others who have fled the council, it's worth mentioning, but due to space limitations we're only going to quote two of them). The first is from Ramiro Pena, a pastor at Waco's Christ the King Church.





Coming soon -- Trump TV?

Texas lawyer Jacob Monty was telling anyone who would listen what his reaction to the speech was, as he also exited Trump's Latino outreach council.





Foul play?

This last one comes from David Kochel, former campaign strategist for Jeb Bush, on the subject of who exactly Trump's speech was supposed to impress.





[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank[/center]

August 27, 2016

Friday Talking Points (405) -- End Of The Silly Season

It's still only August, but already the predictions that this would be an exceedingly banal presidential election campaign look like they've already come true. This week's campaign news might be summed up as an elementary school playground shouting match: "You're a bigot!" "No, you're a bigot!" Sigh. We've still got over two months of this to get through, folks. And nobody sane expects things are going to get any better any time soon -- quite the opposite, in fact.

Now, normally August is the official "Silly Season" of politics, where reporters get so bored with the lack of actual political news (Congress having larked off on vacation for the entire month) that they write speculative pieces pondering ideas only one step removed from conspiracy theories. Like whether Donald Trump's real Machiavellian plan all along has been to start up his own alt-right media empire after he loses to Hillary Clinton. That's pretty much par for the August course. Over on the right, Rudy Giuliani is conspiracy-mongering the "Hillary is dangerously ill" storyline, which is also something you'd expect in August. Thankfully, we've only got less than a week to go until September, when pundits will all begin obsessing over the upcoming first presidential debate. So there's that to look forward to.

Speaking of the debate preparation, word is that Hillary Clinton hasn't yet decided who will "play Trump" in her debate prep sessions. Possible names floated: Joe Biden, Terry McAuliffe, Ed Rendell, and Alan Dershowitz. Then there are a few who probably could achieve the proper Trumpian levels of spontaneity: James Carville and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Our favorite suggestion, however, has to be Senator Al Franken. Franken has a lightning-quick wit and would likely be an incredibly caustic Trump stand-in, so we have to say he'd be one of the better candidates for the job.

Donald Trump is (mostly, so far) sticking to the "read the damn speech as it's written" strategy his new campaign managers have imposed upon him, although he did emerge from the bunker of Fox News to give Anderson Cooper an interview this week -- the first non-Fox interview he seems to have given all month long. It didn't go real well, mostly because nobody has been able to figure out what Trump's position on immigration is at any particular moment. And that includes Trump himself, who was all over the map this week on what to do about the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently residing in the United States. Trump's always been a big fan of just rounding them all up and deporting them, which he has espoused too many times to count during his campaign. Now, apparently, someone told him that he actually needs a few minority voters to have any prayer of winning, so he's "softening" (his word) on the deportation force he's previously promised. Or maybe he isn't. Maybe they'll have to leave, maybe they won't -- it all depends on what day Trump is asked the question, because his answers keep radically flip-flopping. His campaign had earlier scheduled a big speech on the issue where he'd roll out his detailed deportation plans, but the speech had to be cancelled (assumably after the speechwriters had a nervous breakdown trying to figure out Trump's actual position). Or maybe it's a high-level fight within the campaign between the hardliners and those who have the ability to read a poll, who knows?

Trump is also finally trying to put together some semblance of a ground game, and he's surrounding himself with the best people, as promised. In a key Colorado district, this means a 12-year-old is running Trump's campaign effort. You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried, folks.

But back to Trump's newfound appreciation of minorities. After continuously bragging during the primaries about his poll numbers (including claims to be "winning" among Latinos and African-Americans), Trump finally seems to have realized that he is not, in fact, convincing many people of color to support him. So he's got a new message to them -- one he's delivering in front of lily-white crowds in multiple states. Trump's message? "Your life sucks, so vote for me because I couldn't possibly be any worse!" No, really -- that's his idea of outreach. That's not an actual quote, though, merely a summary. Here's an actual quote from one of his rallies this week:

Later, he promised that if he becomes president, no black children would be shot while walking down the street -- a pretty sweeping promise! But what Trump doesn't seem to realize is that not every single black or brown American lives in an inner city, and furthermore that there actually are black and brown people with good jobs and living situations. Trump doesn't seem worried about his minority appeal, though, stating boldly that when he is re-elected in 2020, he'll get "95 percent" of the African-American vote. When asked about this tidbit of insanity, Trump running mate Mike Pence burst out laughing, on camera.

All of that was just the beginning of Trump's week of minority outreach, mind you. By the end of the week, he was telling anyone who would listen that Hillary Clinton was a bigot. Anderson Cooper even helpfully defined the term to Trump ("Bigotry is having hatred towards a particular group&quot , but Trump refused to change his mind, when Cooper directly asked whether he still thought she was bigoted:



This was all an effort to pre-empt Hillary Clinton's speech this week, where she laid out in painful detail why Donald Trump is, in fact, a bigot (more on this in a moment). But if anyone is wondering why the audiences at Trump's rallies are so startlingly non-minority in nature, perhaps it's because the campaign staff seem to be going out of their way to assure this homogeneity. A previous supporter of Trump (who now says he can't bring himself to vote for the man) wrote a first-person account for the Washington Post about how he was kicked out of a Trump rally:



So, in other words, that minority outreach thingie seems to be going swimmingly! Maybe 95 percent of all minorities will be voting for Trump this year -- at least in Donald Trump's fevered imagination.

Things have gotten so bad that it's hard for other racially-insensitive Republicans to even get attention. Maine's governor Paul LePage gave it the old college try this week, when he asserted that nine out of ten drug dealers arrested in his state were people of color, which he knew because he kept a binder full of all their mug shots. He then doubled down -- when asked whether this might be because of racial profiling, LePage stated:



Good thing he doesn't have to worry about minority outreach up there (Maine is 95 percent white). Maine's governor also -- for good measure -- left a profanity-laden tirade on a lawmaker's voice mail, just in case that whole "black/brown people are the enemy" thing wasn't enough to get him in the news. A local paper even wrote an editorial apologizing to the rest of the country for him, entitled: "Message To America: Sorry We Gave You LePage."

LePage wasn't the only Republican caught on tape cursing like a sailor, though. A guy who lost two elections in Maryland moved to Florida and is running for a House district miles from where he actually lives. This serial campaigner was outraged that a journalist exposed the fact that virtually all of his donations have come from outside his district as well, so he dropped multiple F-bombs even though he knew full well he was being recorded. Is this a new trend, due to Donald Trump's candidacy? It's too soon to tell, really.

But there was actually some good news out of Maine this week, as President Obama created a new National Monument in the north woods. We heartily applaud such conservation efforts, no less because we may have actually been to this land before (it'd be impossible to tell without a really good topo map), when we visited Baxter State Park, home of the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail and the highest point in Maine, Mount Katahdin. The newly-created Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument abuts Baxter State Park, and was President Obama's 100th birthday present to the National Park Service. So, like we said, not all the news out of Maine this week was bad.



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Hillary Clinton gave us all a preview of what the presidential debates are going to be like this week, with a speech given at a community college in Reno, Nevada. The entire speech was a point-by-point takedown of Donald Trump's character and unfitness for office. This week's talking points section is comprised of excerpts from this speech, which truly pulled no punches. For taking on Trump so directly and forcefully, Hillary Clinton is easily our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

Donald Trump has spent the last two weeks desperately trying to convince white suburbanites that he isn't as scary and bigoted as they think. His floundering around in weak attempts at minority outreach were not really designed to appeal to minorities (since that boat has largely sailed already), but instead they were designed to soften his image among the demographic groups that normally vote Republican pretty reliably, but this year have been recoiling from Trump in horror.

Clinton's speech was a necessary reminder that Trump is precisely as scary and bigoted as everyone thinks. All that Clinton really needed to do, in fact, was to stand up and read off some of the hundreds of things Donald Trump has said about how he sees (and how he would treat) minorities in America. His own words condemn him -- nothing else is even really necessary.

Clinton's speech went even further, however. The broad theme she's been campaigning on recently has been: "What you see is what you get with Donald Trump." There will be no pivot, because there simply is nothing to pivot to. He is who he is, as even he will cheerfully admit. All Clinton did was to remind everyone of who Donald Trump is, as opposed to who he's now desperately pretending to be.

Trump has had a message for minorities which has been pretty consistent throughout his campaign. Minorities, to him and his supporters, are "The Other." They are not us, they are outsiders to be feared, investigated, arrested, jailed, deported, and barred from entry to the United States. That's his minority message in a nutshell, and no amount of "outreach" now is going to change it.

Hillary Clinton just reminded everyone of this fact. She did so in great detail, giving us a preview of some of the issues she'll be hitting Trump on during the upcoming debates. She is signaling that she will not shy away from taking Trump on directly, which is a relief. Trump is so vulnerable on so many issues that even Clinton's speech had to be confined only to his bigotry. Even so, there's so much to choose from that Clinton had the luxury of only providing the low points of Trump's campaign -- plenty of other offensive things he has said or done weren't even included.

For taking Trump on in such a bold fashion, Hillary Clinton easily wins this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

{It is our standing policy not to provide contact information for political campaign websites, so you'll have to look Hillary Clinton up yourself to let her know you appreciate her efforts this week.}



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We actually don't have a Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award to hand out. We had two possibilities, but both of them are, at best, only "guilt by association with family members" scandals, which don't really qualify.

The first of these was the exposure of yet another drug company using profiteering off of sick people as their business model. The price of EpiPens was hiked hundreds of dollars, just because the company thought it could get away with it. This company is led by Heather Bresch, whose multi-million-dollar salary also exploded during the same time period. The woman in question is the daughter of West Virginia's Senator Joe Manchin, who has been trying to lay low on the issue while many of his fellow senators are calling for an investigation. But Manchin himself bears no real blame for having a money-grubbing daughter, so no award is possible here.

The second was a little bit more relevant to the politician. A House member from California, Ami Bera, got over $200,000 in campaign donations over two separate election cycles that were funneled to him by his father, Babulal Bera. When confronted by the evidence that he had financed the illegal campaign donation scheme, Babulal admitted it. He's now going to serve a year and a day in jail for doing so. But his son apparently had nothing to do with the scheme, so even having his father convicted of campaign money-laundering for his own benefit doesn't quite rise to the level of earning a Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. Guilt by association, even with a close family member, doesn't really qualify.

So we're not giving a MDDOTW award out this week, unless we missed someone obvious you'd like to nominate for the award (down in the comments, as usual).



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[center]Volume 405 (8/26/16)[/center]

What follows are seven excerpts from Hillary Clinton's Reno speech on Donald Trump, presented in the order they appeared in the speech. Clinton has a pretty easy job, as we've mentioned, because attacking Trump is so easy -- just review his record of statements and actions. Trump's response was, predictably, to play the childish game of: "I know you are but what am I?" Or, perhaps, the more-adult version: "Who are you going to believe, me or your lyin' eyes?"

As the presidential campaign moves into its final two months, more and more American voters are starting to pay close attention. Sadly, for many of them, this is the first time they've really done so. What this means is that everything that has happened so far has flown under the radar of millions of voters. Hillary Clinton needs to remind these folks of what Trump has already said and done as a candidate, every chance she gets. Most people have already formed an opinion about Trump, but not everyone. For those still open to persuasion (one way or the other), reviewing what has gone before is absolutely necessary. Trump's new campaign team is trying to reposition Trump as a friend and champion of minority rights in America. No, don't laugh -- that's exactly what they're now attempting. Clinton can't just sit back and hope everyone knows how laughable this is, she's got to make that case herself, repeatedly. The speech in Reno did an admirable job of doing precisely this, which is why we're turning over the whole talking points section to extended excerpts from this speech. No introductions are necessary for these talking points, we should also add -- Clinton's words alone are enough.



Prejudice and paranoia

From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. He is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party. His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.

In just this past week, under the guise of "outreach" to African-Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in such insulting and ignorant terms:

"Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing. No homes. No ownership. Crime at levels nobody has seen." Right now," he said, "you walk down the street and get shot."



Not qualified for the job

Now, Trump's lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough. But what he's doing here is more sinister. Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters. It's a disturbing preview of what kind of president he'd be.

And that's what I want to make clear today: A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far, dark reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military.



The pattern continued

Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. We should believe him.

When Trump was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants. Their applications would be marked with a "C" -- "C" for "colored" -- and then rejected. Three years later, the Justice Department took Trump back to court because he hadn't changed.

And the pattern continued through the decades. State regulators fined one of Trump's casinos for repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor. No wonder the turn-over rate for his minority employees was way above average.

And let's not forget Trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called "Birthers." He promoted the racist lie that President Obama is not really an American citizen – part of a sustained effort to delegitimize America's first black president.



Textbook definition

We all remember when Trump said a distinguished federal judge born in Indiana couldn't be trusted to do his job because, quote, "He's a Mexican."

Think about that.

The man who today is the standard-bearer of the Republican Party said a federal judge -- who by the way had a distinguished record as U.S. attorney, had to go in hiding because Mexican drug gangs were after him, who has Mexican heritage but just like me was born in this country -- is somehow incapable of doing his job solely because of his heritage. Even the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, described that -- and I quote -- as "the textbook definition of a racist comment."

To this day, Trump has never apologized to Judge Curiel.



Dream on, Donald

Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones. You remember he said that thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn't.

He suggested that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Now perhaps in Trump's mind, because Mr. Cruz was a Cuban immigrant, he must have had something to do with it. And there is absolutely, of course, no evidence of that.

Just recently, Trump claimed that President Obama founded ISIS. And he has repeated that over and over again.

His latest paranoid fever dream is about my health. All I can say is, Donald, dream on. This is what happens when you treat the National Enquirer like Gospel.



How would they prove it?

And he'd ban Muslims around the world, billions of them, from entering our country just because of their religion. Think about that for a minute. How would it actually work? So people landing in U.S. airports would line up to get their passports stamped, just like they do now. But in Trump's America, when they step up to the counter, the immigration officer would ask every single person, "What is your religion?"

And then what? What if someone says, "I'm a Christian," but the agent doesn't believe him? Do they have to prove it? How would they do that?

Really, ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, America has distinguished itself as a haven for people fleeing religious persecution, believing in religious freedom and religious liberty. Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border.

Come to think of it, there actually may be one other place that does that. The so-called Islamic State. The territory that ISIS controls. What a would be a cruel irony that someone running for president would equate us with them.



More cowbell!

Trump likes to say he only hires the "best people." But he's had to fire so many campaign managers it's like an episode from The Apprentice. The latest shake-up was designed to -- quote -- "Let Trump be Trump." To do that, he hired Stephen Bannon, the head of a right-wing website called Breitbart.com, as campaign CEO.

To give you a flavor of his work, here are a few headlines they've published:

"Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy."

"Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?"

"Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement's Human Shield"

"Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage."

That one came shortly after the Charleston massacre, when Democrats and Republicans alike were doing everything they could to heal racial divides. Breitbart tried to enflame them further.

Just imagine -- Donald Trump reading that and thinking: "This is what I need more of in my campaign."



[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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