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Stuff at TPM becomes such a rush and we’re so busy just before an election that I often don’t even know we’re working on a story until I see it on the site. I was glad we got on this one. We told you yesterday how there was an ecstatic white woman holding a “Blacks for Trump” sign behind Trump as he spoke in Florida. But the guy who runs “Blacks for Trump” (he’s black at least) is the former member of a violent cult who runs a bizarre extremist group (how many members over one is not clear) which mixes your standard extremist right wing crazy with his own mini-cult with obscurantist religious views. And this guy has managed to get placed behind Trump in a number of major speeches! Here’s the story.
As I’ve been writing my Trump mini-book, one of the themes I’ve been writing about is the increasing apocalypticism of politics on the American right. I think this is tied to a deep degree to the narrowing of the GOP electoral base and the relative demographic decline of white Christian America. If you look at politics through the prism of the political dominance and cultural centrality of white Christians, this may really be the ‘last election.’ Perhaps the last was 2012. Maybe it will be 2024. But it is important to recognize that if you are looking at politics through that prism, this isn’t a fantasy. There is a demographic and political reality behind it.
Florida has moved back into the Toss-Up category on the TPM Electoral Scoreboard today. What’s happening? Not totally clear.
I’m going to answer your questions in the next episode of my podcast. Got a question? Send your questions to our main comments email address talk at talkingpointsmemo dot com. Use the subject line “Question for Josh”.
“Mr. Trump and his son Donald came into the office. I asked what I should do with this application because she’s calling constantly and his response to me was, ‘You know I don’t rent to the N-word. Put it in a drawer and forget about it.” Retired Trump rental agent explains how it worked.
It’s October 26 and the PollTracker Average stands at Clinton 49.5 percent, Trump 42.5 percent, a 7 percentage-point spread
The TPM Electoral Scoreboard stands at Clinton 294, Trump 195. Evan McMullin is leading in Utah, worth six electoral votes. Alaska, Arizona, and Florida are in the Toss Up category.
At a Trump rally in Florida a few moments ago, as Trump spoke, an excited white woman waved a “Blacks for Trump” sign immediately behind Trump.
Email from Wisconsin city clerk cited student “leaning more toward the democrats” as reason not to open a polling station on a local campus.
As I’ve been going back and writing this Trump mini-book I’ve been talking about, I’ve realized the story in many ways starts or at least a part of the identification of the story starts in 2002 with the publication of a book called The Emerging Democratic Majority by John Judis (now TPM Editor-at-Large) and Ruy Teixeira. The book essentially predicted the ascendence of what we now call the Obama coalition. The book itself had something of a cursed history or cursed timing because it came out in the lead up to the 2002 mid-term where Republicans did unexpectedly well. Of course, George W. Bush was reelected two years later. That blunted a lot of the discussion of the book and its argument.