Once again we have a day that knocks into pieces everything we think is within the realm of the possibly normal or conceivable in our politics. Republicans half cut Trump loose over the weekend, only to see a rapid and brutal backlash from Trump’s supporters who make up the bulk of the base of the Republican party. That they didn’t anticipate this is a measure of how much, at this late date, they still don’t quite grasp the nature of the person they are dealing with or the moment they are operating in. By Monday, the few Republicans who had explicitly jumped ship were starting to jump back on the ship. Now over the course of a single evening we have as many as a dozen new accusers – women from various walks of life, different parts of the country, different historical eras. By any remotely reasonable political, moral logic, Trump’s whole party would now desert him en masse. But it’s less than four weeks before the election. And the process of endorsing, de-endorsing, re-endorsing and more has become too much of a dark comedy to go through yet again. As I noted earlier this week, Trump is now at war with Hillary, the media and the GOP. But the GOP is the only one of those three he’s in a position to hurt. And bullies prey on the weak.
Re-watch the critical debate exchange between Anderson Cooper and Donald Trump Sunday night that opened the floodgates.
It’s October 13 and the PollTracker Average stands at Clinton 45.4 percent, Trump 37.9 percent, an 7.5 percentage-point spread
The TPM Electoral Scoreboard stands at Clinton 341, Trump 186. Only Arizona is in the Toss Up category
And we now have the fifth or maybe sixth story of the night with a new accusation of sexual assault against Donald Trump.
I was planning to take the night off to get some distance from the rush of events. But alas, no. In the last couple of hours there have been three new stories about Donald Trump groping women at various points in the last three decades, in different parts of the country. There are a total of four women in three stories. Then there’s an additional story that is not abuse per se but shows a rather creepy and certainly inappropriate way of talking about and thinking about 10 year old girls.
This one is from TPM Reader EW about his circle of white male millennial friends and Trump. A lot to consider here.
I read this thread about the unsolicited violence we are starting to see in ordinary life as a consequence of this election. I wanted to add another anecdote that ties with this, not because it’s one about violence, but because it’s about those enabling the violence, which in my mind, is far worse.
As part of putting together and writing my Trump book, I’ve been going back through the seemingly limitless number of posts I’ve written about him over the last eighteen months. And what’s jumped out at me today is how longstanding the feud with Paul Ryan is.
It’s blown up into a major story a few times. But it’s been a recurrent feature of the campaign going back almost to the beginning. Obviously Trump had his feuds with Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz (almost everyone up on the debate stage at some point or other). But while the intensity and crudeness of Trump’s primary battles was notable, we expect primary candidates to fight and feud. After all, only one candidate can win. It’s all zero sum in the final analysis.
I don’t know how to describe this email from TPM Reader DC other than to say it’s deeply disturbing and you should read it.
I’ve been wanting to discuss this. But so much has been happening it keeps getting pushed back to the next day or the next post. Quite simply, everybody needs to be paying close attention to what happens on November 9th.