The Trump campaign posted this ridiculous meme yesterday:
Ignoring the proofreading problems the Stupid Party has (Skittles is capitalized, comma after “you”, no capital “w” on “would”), and the layout problems (why doesn’t the right side margin line up?), let’s address instead the absurdity of this claim.
First of all, based actual odds of getting killed by terrorist refugee, you’d need 10.8 billion skittles to find three killers.
Then let’s consider what this is saying. Three of these skittles could be dangerous. So therefore, let’s let the hundreds of others die so we can be safe. Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of heroism we of the United States are known for. It’s exactly what Superman, who stands for Truth, Justice, and the American Way would say, right? “Can’t save that trainload of people because there may be three of them who want to hurt me and the other people.”
This is something they never seem to mention. The Syrian refugees are refugees from terrorism. They need our help. Yes, some evil terrorist may sneak in at the same time, but if the terrorists really want to sneak in, they can do it anyway. The Trump campaign clearly believes in the “Bad Samaritan” policy.
If this were the 1930s, I suppose you could replace “Syrian refugee problem” with “Jews” and this would be a great ad for Germany.
The Trump campaign believes turning away refugees running from terrorists will “make America great again” because if there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Come on folks, Skittles won’t kill you.
Unless you meet George Zimmerman.
Although polls show the race tightening, as every political scientist worth his or her salt told you would happen months ago, Hillary is still predicted to be the winner by anyone who studies these things. Nate Silver has her chances at 70%.
The “worst case scenario” map
But there’s still one problem, and that’s the enthusiasm gap.
The Tea Party people are thrilled. For years, they’ve been portrayed as outsiders, crazy, on the fringe — racists, bigots, ignorant people that possibly could win a few House seats every now and then but clearly could never get into the big leagues. Trump has been their standard bearer, and this has emboldened them to be angrier, meaner, more public, and more violent.
These people will vote.
We were able to hold them back in the past partially because there are more of us than them and when we come out and vote in equal percentage, math works to benefit us.
And our enthusiasm was great, too, when we had Obama running. Young voters came out like never before, and minorities voted in almost equal percentages as whites for the first time ever.
But now? Hillary’s enthusiastic supporters are primarily women my age and older who grew up with terrible sexism and discrimination and identify with the candidate and want the first female President. They’ll come out and vote, but will they be enough to counter the Trump fanatics?
This is why I still say that we would have been better off with Bernie. Sure, they’d be attacking him left and right for being a socialist, but I think he’d probably be doing better than Hillary because his support was enthusiastic (and even conservatives admired him for his honesty in the same way liberals used to admire McCain without agreeing with his politics). Young people especially would be out working for him and would be voting for him. Many of these people will instead be staying home in November like they usually do or else wasting their vote on Stein or Johnson.
So while I still predict a Hillary victory, I think it will be closer than expected given that our candidate may suffer in the “enthusiasm gap.”
For many years now, ISIS and other similar radical Islamic groups have caused problems for the world. But Donald Trump knows how to deal with them. When asked recently what to do, he made a bold promise:
“Me have plan. Plan good. Me solve problem.”
“I will convene my top generals and give them a simple instruction to, in 30 days, submit to the Oval Office a plan for soundly and quickly defeating ISIS.”
“Of course!” the generals said, slapping their foreheads like David Byrne. “A plan! Why didn’t we think of that?”
Donald Trump knows more about ISIS than the generals. We know this because he told us so. (“Believe me.”)
“It’s why we no longer have to give him national security briefings as a candidate,” stated a White House spokesperson. “Instead, we just listen to him, since he knows more about it than those of us in the military and intelligence community who have dedicated our lives to just this thing.”
The White House and the generals assembled were pleased for the guidance Trump was providing. “A plan!” they said. “Dammit. If only we had considered that years ago.”
I am not a Gary Johnson fan by a long shot. And I don’t like setting a precedent of allowing candidates who are getting less than 10% be in the debates.
However, there would be two advantages to having Johnson participate in the debates.
First: It might make it more substantial. I can just imagine a debate moderator asking stupid questions about email servers and taco trucks and so on instead of real issues that Presidential candidates should be asked. With Johnson up there, perhaps the moderators will ignore some of the non-issues and ask real things just so he can be included.
Second: I am sure that the more that conservatives find out about Johnson, the more appealing he will be to them — and the more liberals find out about him, the less appealing he will be. Already, one major newspaper has endorsed him (The Richmond Times-Dispatch, my hometown paper, and one of the most conservative papers around). This can only help to split the Republican vote, and for a Democrat like me, that’s a very good thing.
So sure, I’ve changed my mind. Let Johnson debate. It will only help Hillary.
Hillary is ahead in all the polls, and pretty much has been except for one week right after the Republican convention where Trump enjoyed the traditional convention bump.
Nate Silver has her with a 70% chance of winning, and, as I pointed out two years ago, the Democrats begin any Presidential election with a large advantage in the electoral college.
The problem is in being complacent, because we Democrats have done a very good job of losing elections we should have won. And there are reasons for that:
We don’t get out and vote. These Trump supporters are maniacs. I see their signs all over the place, and they are not shy about yelling their support. At a recent county fair where I live, they yelled obscenities at the Democratic booth (with their kids watching — how pleasant!), punched a cardboard stand-up of Hillary Clinton next to the booth, and acted like the bullies that you would expect most Trump supporters would act like.
These people will vote. They are convinced that the white male Christian privileges they are used to (and which they think are “patriotic”) are disappearing, and they’re right. That’s what they mean when they say they want to “take America back” and “make America great again.” They are angry, and angry people vote.
There are more of us than there are of them, but they always vote in huge numbers and we don’t. And then we lose.
We split our vote because we think we’re being “pure.” Instead of being pragmatic, we’d rather shoot ourselves in the foot, watch the country go down the drain, and then say, “Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for him.” Well, sure, but not voting for the person who could stop him and wasting your vote on someone else has the same effect, so you might as well have voted for him.
Republicans do that too, of course, and some this year are going for Johnson as their protest vote. We should encourage this while not falling into the same trap.
We don’t always nominate the best candidate. One of the differences between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats tend to vote with the head and Republicans with the heart. We nominate the smartest nerd in the class and they nominate the most popular jock. Hillary is quite unpopular. Some of that is due to thirty years of meaningless smear attacks from the GOP but, let’s face it, she doesn’t have the charisma of her husband or of Barack Obama. If we had nominated someone with some charisma (or even Bernie Sanders, in my opinion) we’d be doing even better in the polls.
It is tremendously important this year that we come out to vote and vote down all the Republicans, including those in state races. Having a Democratic president who can get nothing accomplished because she’s fighting against Republicans doesn’t get us anywhere. But mostly, we need to send a signal. We need to destroy the current GOP so hugely that they finally reorganize themselves and do something to kick out the crazies and once more become a reasonable conservative party. We need to make sure they know that America will not stand for a candidate who preaches hate, divisiveness, and racism.
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