Dead Cats and Lively Democrats
We are now in the post-convention portion of our program. Donald Trump received a mild convention bounce, during which Ted Cruz inadvertently brought some fence-sitters in on the Donald’s side by acting like a jerk on principle. This failed miserably, because he has no principles. Rather than fomenting a convention rebellion, permanently crippling the Trump campaign and cementing his status as a front-runner for 2020, Cruz merely proved that the only thing less popular among Republicans than a soulless, blatantly self-promoting demagogue is a soulless, blatantly self-promoting ideologue.
Schrödinger’s Candidate
I once had an astronomy teacher who disliked cats intensely – dead, dying, or imperiled cats often figured in his classroom badinage; his explanation for centripetal / centrifugal force began thus: “Let’s say I’m swinging a dead cat around my head by its tail…” I can only assume he or someone like him invented the term “dead cat bounce.” Usually said of stock trends, it is the term used for a brief, upward blip in a graph that is headed inexorably for the basement. The concept stems from the notion that even a dead cat will bounce if dropped from a great enough height (say, Trump Tower.)
Not only was Trump’s bounce a dead cat bounce, Trump actually threw the cat off the roof. While the Democratic National Convention was winning liberal fence-sitters with a brilliantly conceived and executed program that also reached out to centrists and even (gasp!) Republicans, Comrade Trumpski kept cozying up to Putin, and continued to do so in the wake of the convention, while simultaneously losing a running gun battle with the Khans, a sympathetic Muslim-American Gold Star family, the face of American Melting Pot Exceptionalism.
Trump’s numbers aren’t just headed for the basement. There’s Nine entire Circles of Hell preparing for a dead cat onslaught.
Despite the firming up of his support among the base, Trump is now in as deep a hole as he was pre-convention, and it only appears to be getting deeper, as the man is constitutionally unable (pun intended? Yes, I think so.) to Just. Stop. Digging. So what does this mean to the race?
What race?
Trump is already claiming the results will be illegitimate in November if he loses. He is already trying to get out of at least two debates, perhaps hoping he can bluster, brag and bullshit his way through the one closest to Election Day. He still has yet to build up his air game – his campaign has run virtually no ads – or his ground game – his campaign is relying on the Republican Party. He is getting caught in lie after lie, and they are STUPID lies, I mean, real stinkers that are false on their face and/or easily debunked by videotape of the candidate himself, saying the exact opposite. Or by his running mate, whose job seems to be to walk behind this circus elephant/clown hybrid, shoveling up steaming piles of dung while intoning “What Donald REALLY meant was…”
So, clearly, both Trump and Pence know that Trump/Pence is losing and is likely to keep losing. Trump’s “Mourning in America” convention speech actually lost him votes. Meanwhile, Clinton’s favorability rose and her negatives fell. Her lead is back up around 5 points nationally. The state polling data has yet to catch up with the national polling data, but even that will not be a true measure of how badly Trump is losing.
See, Trump may be polling at a 5-point lead in someplace like Utah, but there is still no way to account for how likely a Trump supporter on the phone is to 1) continue to stick by Trump over the next 3 months 2) continue to stick by Republicans, but vote Johnson come November 8, or 3) just simply stay home out of disgust.
Without a strong GOTV effort in ANY state, the Trump “Campaign” (and I use that word VERY loosely) has no way of solidifying weak support and moving folks to the polls. If he continues to be a complete idiot – very likely, no? – and continues to plumb new depths of whiny, (dead) catty, thin-skinned bullying, traditional Republicans who dislike Hillary and/or Democrats in general are likely to just stay home, or indeed switch to Johnson, putting many more states into play to turn blue on a one-time-only, special circumstances basis.
Democrats could have fielded an actual dead cat, this year, and still won in a landslide.
All this is true; it is also true that as Progressives or Democrats we mustn’t stop trying to win.
There’s been more than one race lost because the leader quit trying too soon.
Go, HRC!
1Bravo Primo!
Compared to Donnie, Mike Pence was almost cute wielding his pooper scooper to clean up after Donnie’s Khan debacle. Facing the Donnie inspired festering hordes, Mike said repeatedly to the Donnie throng that it was OK to allow the lady to speak in defense of the Khans and families of the fallen.
Even Mike seemed to have an epiphany. Realizing the rabid audience he faced, he issued his next “it’s ok” in the same tones we have heard from the Jonestown documentaries. That is the Donnie Drumpf base requiring the ‘soothing’ tones of a Jim Jones to tame them. Will you remain until Labor Day, Mike?
In the Hilz or Hell decision, good words and reminders from the Lincoln-Douglass days by Nicholas Buccola. http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/02/what-is-my-duty-as-a-progressive-voter/
2Earlier today Mrs. Clinton was polling ahead of Trump in Utah.
3“Campaign” is the wrong word. “Scampaign” works.
There is a risk in the Gary Johnson scenario, though probably a small one. If Johnson won enough electoral votes to throw the election into the House, the Repubs would pick the new President. Unlikely, but let’s not get complacent. And try to discourage anyone who is considering voting for Johnson.
4Annabelle Lee, you got me all excited, then bummed: That was errant reporting of an older poll from June that KUTV failed to properly date and also misreported: the result was a tie at 35%.
But it does make my point as 13% were going for Johnson and 16% were undecided. KUTV has since updated their coverage.
Utah is an example of the Trump effect under a strong leader – for a snacilbupeR, anyway – Mitt Romney who has spoken out against him.
I expect this pattern to reflect in several other typically red states as well.
5Primo: The most stand-out phrase from your post:
What race?
6“Democrats could have fielded an actual dead cat, this year, and still won in a landslide.”
Since dead cats are not eligible to run for president, our next best test case for your theory is HRC, the most disliked Democratic nominee in (modern?) history.
I hope you are right.
7The Rude Pundit is in Ireland this week and he has invited millenials to guest write in his absence. Today’s post is great. Give it a read: rudepundit.com.
WARNING! Rude is not averse to the free and easy use of swear words, four or more letters. Neither are his guests. Tread lightly.
8Gary Johnson is a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch bros.
9While watching Tevor Noah a bunch of Trump convention goers were interviewed by the D.S. Minaj. The folks said they loved how Trump said what he meant etc. But when Minaj said Trump wants to deport thousands of people they said, oh no, that wouldn’t happen.Maybe it was because they were on TV? Or they’re crazy.
*Shhhhhhh* Let’s not jinx this, and let’s keep on working right up until the last ballot is cast and counted. If we want to keep score, let’s keep score of how many people we can register to vote, and how many disenfranchised voters we can return to the voting roles.
10When I was a small boy my Dad told me the worse thing about a man that lies is not that no one can believe a word he says. But that he can not believe a word any one else says.
11Drumpf is a text book case of what I think is called projection.
He is every thing he calls others. He has the low IQ bigot vote locked up. So we have our work cut out for us. Don’t think for one second that this is a slam dunk. When you have a lead make it as big as you can. No one was ever sorry they won by too much.
I enjoyed this article about people’s reaction to Trump’s convention speech, especially the graphics. “See that little cowflop on the end of the first one, Donald? That’s you. And so is the yuuuge loser on the end of the second one.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/01/more-people-watched-donald-trumps-convention-speech-than-hillary-clintons-and-hated-it/
12Actually, Primo, Trump is doing poorly in Utah. There is no 5-point lead there. Utah, a bastion of Republicanism since I don’t know when, voted for Cruz as their #1 boy, but even Kasich had more votes than Trump in the primaries. It turns out Mormons are not happy with Trump’s yap about banning Muslims from entering the country. They do not like talk about blatant discrimination against a religion, being as how that was a problem for them back in 1840. There’s talk in the papers about Utah going for the Libertarian candidate, whose campaign manager lives in Salt Lake, according to accounts I’ve read. It’s pretty delicious, really.
13I’m pretty much sticking signs for the Dem orgs in the two counties I live and work in every day and my truck bed has plenty of room and a fairly secure cover.
14Pence “…shoveling up steaming piles of dung…” is another visual I won’t forget, along with Drumpf “…stopping Hillary’s punches with his face…”. Thanks, Primo for providing the “Donnie Drumpf Visual History, 2016”.
15Much as I want to be assured that Hillary will win, I can’t help but worry about the millions of mentally impaired Americans who voted for him in the primary and continue to think he should win. To quote Michael Bloomberg, “God help us!”
It seems inconceivable that the short fingered vulgarian could win…but I never thought people would be dumb enough to vote for Reagan, and look how that turned out. We need to be on this till the bitter end, and make sure he is not just defeated but ground into the proverbial dust, so he can’t come back to cause more trouble.
16Wapo has 2 articles today that suppose Scumpf is actually truly mentally ill. Um, yeah.
https://goo.gl/CCQnkX
https://goo.gl/LxPuHG
17If Trump is mentally ill, the stress of the campaign and debates could trigger a dangerous breakdown. I do not wish this on anyone, but hope his handlers recognize the symptoms and can get him to bow out due to “exhaustion”. The chances are just about nonexistent he would agree to it though.
18He does seem to be separating from reality, not conducting his campaign on the issues, just insults, lashing out more and more with ever increasing venom, increased ridiculous lying which is so transparently false. Debbo, you have raised an important point and I think it may not be far from the truth. This man needs psychiatric help, sooner rather than later.
Not much you can do with an Axis II (old but meaningful diagnostic category), a personality disorder.
19JillAnn-
I agree. I’m generally not vindictive, but both personally and as someone concerned about the country, I want Trump to be CRUSHED. To end up as the worst LOOOZZZERRR in US electoral history!
20Axis II, KellyC? Is that, like, the FOURTH Reich?
21I watched after-Trump-rally interviews in our area of Virginia, and was saddened by the otherwise articulate women blazing with zeal over their candidate’s wonderful business acumen, etc, derp, durr … did they stop reading the news, etc, after the word “Trump”?
22Sorry to disagree on one point, but a major one, in such an excellent article. But I have seen too many Democrats lose, especially down-ballot, in supposed land-slide years when Democrats decide to stay home.
You cannot predict a landslide until you’ve seen the turnout.
23Agreed. Don’t rest, work for the election. I honestly hope he stays in so that the country can truly bask in a republic (yeah, I know) “come to Jesus” election. It is the only way their “autopsy” will work. Priebus has supporteded DT right up until now, and that puppy’s nose needs to be in the poop.
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