I guess the typical US rightwing lizardbrain will go "serve the gays right for fraternizing with muslims". Which is not a motivation for action and thus is not that good for campaining.

If it had been a stadium or something things would be different. But as it is, it has openings for both sides to put their spin on it and thus i guess in the end it does not make much difference.

Presumably, but none of them were going to vote for a Democrat anyway. Remember, if Trump simply sweeps the right, then Clinton wins. Trump has to make inroads with people who don't normally vote Republican, and this is not a very good way to do it.

The evangelicals weren't going to vote Democratic anyway many of them were repulsed enough by Trump to vote third party.

But anyway, I'm not too worried about Trump winning. There's no realistic mathematical scenario where he wins by turning out the angry, fearful Republican vote. Unless he simultaneously depresses the Democratic vote and manages to dredge up a whole lot of low-information hardly-ever-voters. Not going to happen.

I've been fascinated/horrified by the pretzels Ryan is tying himself into regarding his endorsement of Trump:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/us/po ... .html?_r=0


http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/14/politics/ ... -reaction/


http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/ ... ndorsement



As far as the evangelicals in general, it shows the religious shallowness of the politicalization of that movement. There are a number of people who claimed for years to be "values voters" who seem ready to abandon all moral principle on the flimsiest of pretexts. Hopefully it will be a "Come to Jesus" moment for the more substantial members of the movement.

He's pandering to the evangelicals in the cheapest way. Conservative supreme court nominees! No more tax-exempt restrictions on churches doing political lobbying! Make store employees say Merry Christmas! (How??)

Everyone can relax. Trump isn't serious about running for president after all:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump ... 00497.html

I'm starting to think that he's been cribbing all of his campaign strategy off of Mel Brooks.

2 things:
The only people besides Trump supporters who are excited about the Trump campaign are political scientists, who will finally get to see what happens when one candidate unilaterally disarms. They've long held the theory that voters ultimately choose presidents based on fundamentals like the economy and the unemployment rate, the candidates and their campaigns don't matter. But it was thought that this was because campaigns are usually equally matched and cancel each other out. So what happens when one candidate doesn't bother to campaign?

I am not sure how political scientists will be able to statistically separate out the effect of "Trump not campaigning" from "Trump being a loathsome troll", but they're smarter than me, I'm sure they'll figure it out.

The second thing is that Trump's new campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is a lobbyist specializing in representing and rebranding dictators. Yes, you read that right, and it isn't a euphemism. I was worried about that, but knowing that Trump's campaign is less organized than a school bake sale gives me comfort.

Cracked.com did pretty much the same premise.

And the latest polls just came in. We have hit Peak Racist. Trump is down. Faith in humanity restored.

Yeah, the guy who destroyed an entire CIA ring by outing Valerie Plame, in order to score partisan Republican points against her husband, thinks Trump is beyond the pale. His appeal apparently isn't very broad based.

Hank Paulson, Bush's old treasury secretary, has also said he'll be voting for Clinton. His reasons, in descending order of importance are 1) Trump's an idiot, 2) he's not pro-business enough, and 3) oh yeah he's also a divisive bigot.

Sigh.

You take what you can get.

On the other hand, there is apparently such thing as a reluctant Trump supporter (see Exhibit A). People who hate Clinton so much that they'll hold their nose and vote for a guy they admit is a nasty, bloviating, sycophant-seeking buffoon. But at least he's not a politically correct progressive, amirite?

...this, I think, is a symptom of a severe problem in American politics.

Many people are not electing the leader you think would be best for your country. They're electing the idiot they think will be least damaging. This means that you end up with a leader who is not representative of the views of a majority of his voters.

Over here, we're still electing more for charisma than anything else, but at least we're electing politicians who people actually want to vote for (and not merely the one they don't want to vote against).

I do not think that is the problem. I think the problem is that American politics has become so tribalistic that people will choose somebody who they think is a complete arsewipe unfit for office just because he's on their "side".

Well, sure. Some of my friends and I routinely tout the 'Can of Beans' candidate and note that it's outpolling God. The only thing that ever needs to change from place to place is the brand of the beans.