Prediction: Trump 48, Clinton 45, Johnson 4, Stein 2, All Others 1

Heading down the home stretch, it's time to make a prediction.

I'm basing it solely off of the USC poll, which was the RAND poll in 2012. It's the only panel poll, following the same sample of individuals over time, so that any changes reflect true changes of heart and not a shift in the make-up of the respondents depending on who feels like participating. (See this earlier post for details.)

It's also an internet poll, which the Brexit results revealed were more accurate than phone polls. They even provide tablets and internet access to people without them, to get as representative of a slice of America as possible. And the sample is part of an ongoing, longer-term study independent of the election, so it won't be affected by who initially felt like joining an election-themed study during an election year.

Under its RAND branding in 2012, it was the most accurate -- more so than the IBD poll, which performed worse in 2012 than it did in '08 and '04. (IBD is not a panel but ad hoc sample, and is phone-based with about 65% being cell phones.)

The day-of estimates were Obama 49.4, Romney 46.8, for a spread of 2.6 points. Actual outcome was Obama 51.1, Romney 47.2, for a spread of 3.9. The RAND poll was off by just 1.3 points in the margin of victory, only 0.4 for the lesser candidate, and 1.7 points for the greater candidate.

I interpret the smaller error for the loser to reflect that fact that whoever admits to voting for the lesser candidate is all there is, while the greater candidate will enjoy some "everybody likes a winner" support among those who are not strongly decided.

When we look at the full series, an even more accurate picture emerges (click the earlier links for the interactive graphic):

After the summer stage was over, Obama clearly pulled away from Romney. Throughout the various ups and downs, Obama's ceiling was around 51-52, the peak being 51.2 on 10/27. That is only 0.1 point different from what he actually got. Romney's peaks throughout the series never broke 47, and that is what he ended up getting.

This indicates that the peaks are what the candidate will get -- a long-term maximum support level -- and the fluctuations below them are just people feeling wishy-washy from day to day.

Now we turn to the 2016 USC poll, which is the same methodology as before only in the present context:

After the summer conventions were over, Trump was slightly ahead or tied around Labor Day, after which he pulled clearly ahead. Trump is visibly the greater candidate, Clinton the lesser candidate.

Despite becoming tied again during the final phase of "uncertain about Trump," he's pulled away again. It's clear that his line has remained mostly above her line, and at worst tied. Unlike Obama in 2012, Trump is not the incumbent President and does not enjoy as decisive of an advantage. Other than that, its his line that obviously resembles Obama's line from last time.

So Trump will win, but by what margin?

Using the same insight of looking at peaks along the way, Trump's ceiling of support is 47-48, with the all-time peak of 47.8 on 9/18. Since Labor Day, Clinton's ceilings have been at 44-45, with a max at 45.1 on 10/23.

I'd say that makes the final outcome look like Trump 48, Clinton 45. I don't think Trump will get quite the last-minute bandwagon effect that Obama did because undecideds this time have consistently been uneasy about Trump the outsider, vs. Obama the incumbent. Even supposing he gets 49, I don't think that will come at the expense of Clinton's 45, but from the third party voters.

Speaking of whom, there are 7% left after Trump and Clinton. Stein has been polling around 2-3%, and her voters are going to be stickier because they're voting for her platform rather than merely against others or as an empty protest vote. Unlike her run in 2012, this time there was the Bernie phenomenon, many of whom are turning to her.

Johnson abandoned his campaign over a month ago, and his supporters cannot explain what he stands for, so he is just a vote-parking space for people who are uneasy about both Trump and Clinton. He polls at around 7%, but will be lucky to get half of that -- although probably close to it, given the wimpy cuckiness in the electorate about Trump the change agent. The other half just want to wash their hands of the election already and will simply abstain.

Final prediction, then: Trump 48, Clinton 45, Johnson 4, Stein 2, All Others 1. If the cucks for Johnson man up, it will shift 1 point from him to Trump (pretty iffy at this point, though).

Hope I'm wrong and it's a wider victory, but that's what the best poll suggests.

There's no evidence of a landslide, though, so please get that idea out of your head, lest you feel let down that we only won by 4 points. Remember: everyone said we were supposed to go down in flames during the primaries! Trump winning at all is a massive accomplishment for him and us the voters -- don't cry about it just because we're not going to win by 10 points!

But they say that conservatives have a lower tolerance for ambiguity, so it's either landslide or implosion in most of his supporters' minds, and we shouldn't take their claim about predicting a "landslide" literally, but simply meaning "we're going to win rather than lose".

Just one more week -- we got this!

One cheer for Obama (it could have been Hillary or McCain)

All the sordid stuff that has come to light since last year about Crooked Hillary really makes you appreciate how lucky we were that she did not win the 2008 primary and presidency (GOP was destined to lose that one). Obama has been a worse president than Bush, but he's turned out to have been a less ruinous placeholder between Neo-liberal-conservatism and the populist-nationalist revolution.

Obama's cabinet was crafted by Wall Street, but it would have been the same with Hillary "Goldman Sachs" Clinton. Obama has been the most pro-Wall Street president, but so would have Hillary.

Obama pushed less intensely for destabilizing the Middle Eastern strongmen, and bears less of the blame for Libya, Syria, etc., which were Hillary's pet causes. Obama has also been pretty lukewarm toward Israel, whereas Hillary would have been buddy-buddy with Bibi.

Obamacare was Hillarycare and Romneycare, no difference there.

The culture war stuff -- racial tension, crippling the cops, gay marriage, etc. -- came from the ground up on the liberal-to-moderate side, and would have pulled the president that way regardless of who it was.

Hillary is an inveterate panderer and would have gone along with whatever was trending in liberal identity politics circles. She wasn't a community organizer and prefers to keep out of sight, so she might not have tried to get out in front of these changes and stoked them like Obama did, but that's a second-order difference at best.

Obama is on the down-low, but so is Hillary. Obama at least hides whoever he gets sodomized by, while Hillary and Huma go everywhere together (maybe not so much anymore).

Both look down their noses on ordinary Americans, whom they consider culturally alien to their rootless cosmopolitan social circle.

Obama is a narcissist, but Hillary is a sociopath.

By far the most important difference, though, was that Obama the freshman senator was a total non-entity who brought nothing into the White House. He signed off on whatever Wall Street wanted for appointments, policy, and so on. But he didn't have an extensive network of wealthy, powerful, entrenched associates.

Hillary would have brought in everyone who was groomed into Clintonworld during Bill's presidency, as well as those who joined when she was in New York politics as senator. That includes aides, politicians, media figures, donors, the Clinton Foundation -- the whole sprawling enterprise of Clinton Inc.

Corruption and devastation (internal and external) would have been far more damaging and irreversible if Clinton Inc. had taken over the White House again, only this time with even greater wealth, power, and influence at their disposal. Look how bad it got when she was merely Secretary of State.

The 2008 Democrat primary was an incredibly close race -- never thought we'd have ghetto blacks and airheaded college students to thank for America's stay of execution (but you probably also never thought America's savior would be a guy from Queens). Now the white working class over the age of 40 can step in for a real candidate and put this broken country back in working order.

Ticketmaster -- another target for Trump the trustbuster to trigger progressives?

The home stretch of Crooked Hillary's failed campaign includes concerts by Jay Z, Bon Jovi, Katy Perry, and other things meant to connect with da kidz.

How great of a troll would it be for Trump to throw in a reference to Ticketmaster as another ripe target for breaking up a monopoly in the public interest?

Progressives have been complaining about the monopolistic fleecing of fans by Ticketmaster since the '90s, especially Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam. More recently in 2010, opposition arose to their merger with Live Nation, the biggest promoter of concerts.

Trump wouldn't have to go into any intricacies, just lay out the basic complaint that a monopoly in the ticket selling sector leads to sky-high prices for consumers. They turn an event that should be open to fans of all classes into elite-only affairs -- only a Hillary Clinton donor could afford it. Customer service also stinks when there's only one game in town.

He's already re-tweeted Michael Moore, why not drop a hint that "We're going to look into" what can be done about Ticketmaster?

The only trick is tying it into the news cycle (taco bowl on Cinco de Mayo). With all the big-name concerts coming up, that could do it.

"I notice all these performers are campaigning for Crooked Hillary, who says she wants to help the middle class. Why doesn't she ask them to refuse to use Ticketmaster for their concerts, and make tickets more affordable for middle class and working people? If they're that famous, they should have the clout to do it, right? If she is not willing, I will strongly look into the monopoly that Ticketmaster has become -- it's just another example of the rigged system that ordinary Americans face every day, and we cannot allow it to continue."

If any of the sell-outs get snarky with him on Twitter, he can easily fire back:

"John Cougar Mellancamp should go back to writing songs about the dignity of small town life instead of campaigning for Hillary "Wall Street" Clinton."

"I really liked Bruce Springsteen better back when he was a blue collar hero. Now just another limousine liberal pawn for Crooked Hillary. SAD."

When Hillary loses, will Dems go to Bernie or suicidally double down?

In 1992 the Republican party began to fly off the rails, pursuing a conservative culture war that only appealed to middle and upper-middle class residents of red states. With the abrupt takeover of the party by the Trump movement (not the man, but the millions who voted for him), it is once again viable and poised to win.

Will the Democrat Establishment and the base of its voters learn the lesson and gravitate toward Trump's appeal of populism and America-first, or will it double down on corporate elitism and globalism?

The past couple months suggest that it is committing even stronger to failed Clintonism. The war-mongering against Russia is ridiculous enough, and the stupidity is compounded by what the war would be fought over -- deposing Assad and controlling Syria. The entire Democrat mainstream is intensifying the plan for the United States foreign policy apparatus to be a globalist policeman / dictator.

Trump on the other hand favors detente with major powers and otherwise extricating ourselves from all these damn pointless entanglements. And so did Bernie.

While the Democrats have not been as rabid about pushing the TPP and other de-industrializing trade deals, they are still all on board and not bad-mouthing anything about them. Trump and Bernie are both staunchly against such policies, and have been for years -- the fact that the Democrat mainstream is staying silent amounts to running away from the direction the country as a whole wants to go in.

Trustbusting (especially in the media sector), re-instating Glass-Steagall, ending the revolving door between politicians and lobbyists, term limits on Congressmen -- on and on down the line, Trump and Bernie represent the changing direction of the voters, while Clinton and her ilk are either keeping mum or actively resisting the changes.

The only major policy that Trump and Bernie differ on is immigration, and Clinton is not pushing so hard on that issue because she knows there is minimal support for open borders and amnesty. Otherwise she would be hammering it over and over.

Instead, she and the rest of the mainstream Democrats have shifted to an intensified moralizing liberal crusade, akin to the shift in 1992 among Republicans. Remember that Reagan did not run on social and cultural topics, but on the economy, the government, and foreign policy. Obama likewise did not represent a triumph of a liberal culture war -- rather, the repudiation of neoconservative policies in the economy, government, and foreign policy.

The Democrats have misread what the Obama wins were all about, assuming they were an endorsement of hardcore liberal culture warring. The Republicans made that same mistake in 1992, and they would still be fighting that losing battle if it weren't for Trump.

That suggests that the Democrat party is in for a few decades of increasing irrelevance, until it is shaken up by an America-first populist.

Bernie went a decent length in that direction, but was bad on the crucial matter of population composition and citizenship -- and he and his supporters were weak on that issue because a piece of their brains was still stuck in liberal culture war mode. Deporting illegal immigrants will disproportionately affect non-white and non-American people, ergo racist and untenable.

The conventional wisdom among Democrats will become that Bernie was just a less racist version of Donald Trump, and since Trump = Hitler, we can't have Bernie or his movement. They just need to keep trying harder at pushing the liberal side of the culture war, and sometime they'll win back the White House.

Expect something as out-of-place as Bob Dole in the 1996 race -- when his best chance was closer to '76. I wouldn't be surprised if after Trump's 8 years in office, the Democrats nominate a geriatric Howard Dean, whose campaign anthem will be the Rock Against Bush soundtrack from 20 years earlier.

What concrete signs are there, if any, that the elite politicians, the large donors, and the solid base of the Democrat party has shifted toward Bernie rather than away from Bernie in the past month or so, realizing that's the only way to give Trump a run for his money? I don't see it.

I know people will say that the colossal failure of Crooked Hillary Clinton will sink that wing of the party, but that could be wishful thinking. Remember what happened when Bush got clobbered in '92 -- they doubled down and drove themselves further and further into irrelevancy.

Wear Trump gear every day in public until election is over

In order to push back against attempts at demoralization, particularly from the media, and to rally people heading down the home stretch, it's time to start wearing Trump markers in public every day until the election is over.

That will manifest our greater enthusiasm in an everyday setting, not just what people see from rallies on TV or comments on the internet. It puts a human face on the movement, which does not come across so much from a yard sign (although put up one of those too).

It is also more likely to have a contagious effect at the grassroots. Even if onlookers don't wear Trump gear of their own, at least they'll be more likely to talk positively about voting to others, assuming they were roughly on our side.

The goal is not to appear confrontational, as though we were about to man the barricades (that would come only if the Establishment tries to steal the election). Everyday people around you are not the immediate enemy. Those who are uncertain about turning out, or are genuinely undecided, are on the wimpy and cucky side -- they just want to be reassured that Trump voters are normal people.

I guarantee that no one from the enemy's side will try to shame or ostracize you in public, in order to send a message to undecided onlookers. Only paid activists bother attempting this, and they only concentrate at Trump rallies or on the internet. Even the strongly committed Hillary voters are too demoralized to confront a stranger. The only responses you will get will be from fellow travelers, especially ones who were uncertain whether they were the only one leaning toward Trump, and are relieved to see someone being the first to break the silence in public.

Trump has been taking so much public abuse, slander, and libel on our behalf -- the least we can do is put ourselves out there, too, whether we get a few sideways glances or not.

At this stage, giving our public support matters more than giving financial support. The polls are not so tight because of insufficient advertising. It's because a handful of people are still uneasy about either turning out, or choosing Trump if they do. Making those people feel more comfortable by seeing real-life support for Trump in public will go farther than hearing an ad on the drive to work.

And some of them truly have no preference other than joining the in-group. With no visible signs of support from Hillary voters, that only leaves the Trump side for the conformists to join. Who would want to join a group that is weakly held together, when there's a more emotionally connected group as the alternative?

You don't have to go all-out all day long, but at least wear a hat or shirt out for an hour or so in normal public places. High-traffic retail spaces are best, like a supermarket.

It's simple to find places selling Trump hats if you don't already have one.

There's no excuse to stay sitting on the sidelines with less than two weeks to go. We need to make our presence known -- not just as a warning to the enemy, but more importantly to motivate anyone who doesn't like Crooked Hillary to show up and vote Trump with the rest of the crowd.

Triggered by Trump the trustbuster

In his own Gettysburg Address, Trump announced his plans for breaking up monopolies, beginning with the tentative merger of AT&T and Time Warner, but also going back to Comcast and NBC Universal, and similar cases. Today just six corporations control all of the media, compared to 50 corporations back in 1983 -- and even that was already considered a "monopoly" by media researchers, compared to the days when every town had a thriving independently owned newspaper.

The new trustbusting agenda is yet another example of the Green meets Red re-alignment between the anti-globalization movement of 15-20 years ago and the Republican base (not the Establishment). To a former Nader 2000 voter like yours truly, this election truly is the gift that keeps on giving.

Not everyone is taking the re-alignment so joyfully, though. Here's The Young Turks: Politics reporter, Emma Vigeland:

Trump opposes #ATTTimeWarner. Hey, @HillaryClinton.. Why is a fascist more progressive on this than the "progressive who gets things done"? pic.twitter.com/yod0io9bUw

— Emma Vigeland (@EmmaVigeland) October 24, 2016

See also her video discussion of the merger ("live from my mom's kitchen" -- so cute), where she explains that Trump is "out-progressiving" Clinton, before getting triggered and moving on to more comfortable thoughts.

In contempo lefty lingo, "fascist" means a fan of law-and-order, as opposed to preferring anarchy for criminals. For the childlike mind of leftists, the fundamental political divide is between "Go to your room without dinner" vs. "I'll do what I want, Dad". So in her imagination, Trump is an authoritarian, wanting the police to crush the average citizens, and large corporations to have their way with the peon workers and consumers.

Vigeland doesn't get the underlying logic of populism, whose leaders want to protect the little people from destabilizing forces beyond their individual control. That includes roving criminals, as well as gigantic corporations. And voters who choose populist candidates are not seeking authoritarianism, but that kind of protection from destabilizing forces too unwieldy to fend against all by themselves.

To minimize the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance, lefties re-imagine Trump as only wanting to break up the media monopoly for selfish motives -- they screwed him over with biased coverage, now he'll make them pay. If true, that would make him less genuinely progressive, and not a threat to their worldview, where a Republican can never be anti-corporate.

No doubt getting revenge against his slanderers will be icing on the cake for Trump, but he's taken too many anti-corporate stands on too many topics that don't bear directly on character assassination. E.g., slamming a 35% tariff on off-shored manufactured goods, to keep the plants and jobs from moving outside the country.

If the left sees too many pieces of Trump's agenda all at the same time, they won't be able to unsee the populist gestalt -- they'll have to accept that he's not an authoritarian or fascist, who would be trying to centralize corporate control.

You can see them occasionally admit reality, when they chuckle at the "surreal" experience of a Republican out-progressiving a Democrat. They use the word "surreal" as a DOES NOT COMPUTE error message, prompting their mind to find a way to fix the problem -- he's just doing it for selfish reasons! (Never mind how much money and brand value he has sacrificed by taking all this abuse for over a year now.)

It remains to be seen whether they'll ultimately relent and join the cool people's party, or whether they'll be popping pills for cognitive dissonance reduction every day until he's left the White House. Either way, keep your eyes open for useful allies like these ones.

Lessons from Brexit

This is not just another presidential election season, since one of the candidates (Trump) has made the issues so black-and-white, so fundamental, and so urgent, that it is taking on the character of a national referendum on what direction we want the country to go in. The closest analog in time, theme, and cultural background, is the Brexit vote, and we would be foolish to ignore the outcome there when trying to predict what will happen in two weeks here.

First, the decision to Leave the EU was not geographically uniform -- there were entire areas like Scotland that went heavy toward Remain, as well as large urban areas throughout England. This will be akin to the red state vs. blue state pattern, as well as urban areas going blue in general.

That is to be expected from the past several elections, but it's worth emphasizing in order to make Trump voters realize that there will be no landslide akin to Nixon or Reagan. We (and the British) live in too polarized and partisan of a climate for there to be uniform support for any position throughout the country.

There also was not a landslide in the national vote -- 52 to 48, which is not unreasonable to assume for Trump beating Hillary. He will not win by 10-15 points.

The key region of support for Leave was the Midlands, which is whiter and more de-industrialized than other parts of England. Amazingly, a city here broke the pattern of urban areas voting to Remain, and in fact it is the second-largest metro area in all of England -- Birmingham voted to Leave. This is akin to the Rust Belt in America, which will be the key region for Trump. We may be in for a surprise where a major city will break the blue mold and vote Trump -- Pittsburgh or Cincinnati would be my guess.

Youth voting disappeared for the EU referendum, compared to the last two general elections: only 36% of 18-24 year-olds voted, and 58% of 25-34 year-olds.* It reached 83% for ages 65+. Younger voters were not only more toward Remain, but more extreme in the sense of farther away from the national average. Older voters were more toward Leave, but closer to the national average.

In other words, the climate turned off large chunks of normal people in the younger age groups, leaving only the hardcore extremists, while that same climate engaged an unusually high number of older people, including all normal people.

We're already seeing that among voters who are under 25 or 35 -- they could not be more disengaged, and viscerally repulsed by the election at this point. Polls have already found their desire to vote has fallen dramatically since 2012, but that was awhile ago. After the most combative debates in memory, most younger people are saying they hate both sides, there's nothing positive or uplifting on either side, they're feeling bullied into voting, and they can't wait for the whole election to just get over with, and they can get back to their regularly scheduled program of playing video games and watching Netflix. They have washed their hands of the election.

They were excited and talking non-stop way back when Bernie was still in the race, and they tried to fake enthusiasm for Gary Johnson after the Convention. But who's heard from him or seen him in the past month and a half, since "Aleppo"? His numbers are plummeting in the polls, from over 10% to just over 5%. Most of these will not bother voting on Election Day. Jill Stein will pick up the hardcore progressives, but they're not that numerous. And they all loathe Crooked Hillary Clinton, and have since the primaries, whose wounds have never closed (made fresh with each WikiLeaks revelation).

Young people have more or less gone back to fantasizing about "What if Bernie were still in the race?" or have checked out altogether emotionally. They're mostly not going to turn out, although those that do will be extremist SJWs supporting Hillary. Trump will get enough support among younger voters -- like Leave, it won't be a total blowout among young people -- but it won't end up making much of a difference.

Polls, polls, polls -- wrong, wrong, wrong. Here is a postmortem from YouGov about what aspects of polling made them better or worse. The main methodological finding is that phone polls did worse than online polls, and just about all of the public polling right now is done by phone (the USC / LA Times poll is a notable exception, and did much better than others in 2012, when it was known as the RAND poll).

Regarding turnout, apart from far fewer young people turning out than expected, the polls also missed how many less-than-highly educated voters would show up (even adjusting for the correlation of education and age). That is going to be a big surprise this time, too, particularly in certain white working-class areas in the Rust Belt where it will tip the balance in the state. As with Brexit, the non-college-educated are heavily in favor of Trump, where they would normally vote Democrat if at all (and their English counterparts would vote Labor).

We will undoubtedly be reading all kinds of spergery up through Election Day about what various poll aggregators are saying. How was their track record on Brexit? Here is quantitative tea-leaf-reader Sam Wang's summary on the very day of the EU referendum. He puts it at Remain +1, with a 95% confidence interval going only as far as Leave +2.6 on that side -- in reality, it was Leave +3.8. All that number crunching, and the outcome landed far outside his range of expected outcomes. Nobody has appreciated this failure, and everybody is going through the same motions with the polls on Trump vs. Clinton.

One under-appreciated source of error was what to do with people who said "don't know". No matter what pollsters did, their decision favored Remain and made them less accurate. I take that to mean that most people saying "don't know" at such a late date, on such a fundamentally important question, with polar opposite choices only, is simply unwilling to state their clearly held opinion. And that opinion will be whichever choice is less socially or otherwise acceptable to confess.

The entire financial and political Establishment, all of the media, educated elites, and even powerful foreign leaders like the President of the United States, were all bearing down on anyone thinking of voting Leave. While most of them could not have cared less what the elites thought, some small chunk was intimidated into public silence -- but privately voted enthusiastically for Leave.

I think that's what's going on with Americans who are answering "don't know" -- it's the "Shy Trump" voter. By now, you know pretty well who you're for, there is no middle ground for fence-sitting with such polar opposite choices, and the matters are of fundamental importance (immigration, trade, war, corruption, and so on).

The entire world is hammering you over the head to vote Clinton or be cast out of respectable society forever, so if that were your choice, why not proudly admit that you're going with the socially sanctioned choice? Some of these "don't know" voters could decide to vote third party (also not very acceptable in what you perceive to be a do-or-die election), but most are going to vote Trump. And of course some may wimp out of voting at the last minute, despite passing through the "likely voter" screen on the poll. At any rate, Clinton will get very few of these, and Trump will get the plurality.

That's all pretty good news for the Trump movement.

There are, however, a few things working against us that were not at play in Britain. They have to do with rigging the election. All ballots were paper and counted by hand in the EU referendum. We are using mostly electronic machines, and in many deep blue states the company making them is owned by George Soros. We will need good exit polling to see if they've been mechanically rigged -- if there's more than a 2-point difference between the exit polls and the reported result.

We also have more endemic corruption in our cities, specifically relating to elections, than they do in England. These cities with one-party rule and large non-white populations are the biggest threat to an honest and fair election, and unfortunately they are located in several states that we are looking to win -- Philadelphia and Detroit, for example.

I'd say that means a closer race than Brexit, as far as the initial reports are concerned. There could be voter fraud and election theft involved if we lose Pennsylvania or Michigan (definitely if we lose Ohio). That would take awhile to resolve. But with all the preparation Trump and others have been doing to deal with those contingencies, there's not much else we can do or worry about.

As far as last-minute shocks, the GOP Establishment launched a failed coup with the hot mic tape and coordinated desertion. That's why Trump's numbers have been holding more or less even over the past week or so, when they should be entering the final upward phase of the wishy-washy cycle. I don't know whether that's better or worse than some wacko on the Leave side killing a Remain MP a week before the vote. And yet the Leave side survived that last-minute crisis.

What else can we say but buckle up and enjoy the end of this very close race.

* A later poll done weeks after the vote found youth turnout that was nearly double the estimate of the day-of poll. I dismiss that as the respondents lying about having voted, in order to not appear that they had shirked their civic duty to keep Britain in the EU. Young people were widely blamed when their minimal turnout was reported, giving them quite an incentive to lie about it weeks later.

Cancel student debt to boost sagging family formation (Jill Stein)

Unlike the typical Democrat, here is the Green Party candidate framing it as a bad thing that we have a falling birth rate, delayed age at first marriage, and other signs of decaying family formation:

“There are 43 million young people and not-so-young people who are locked into predatory student loan debt,” Stein said. “The birth rate is plummeting in this country because we have a generation that’s basically become indentured servants. They don’t have a place to live, they don’t have relationships, they don’t have a future, they don’t have families, they don’t have a job. We really have a generational crisis right now that we’re in the midst of. And there’s one way that crisis can be solved with the stroke of a pen. That debt can be canceled, and I’m the only candidate who will do that. Those 43 million votes have only one place to go.”

Republican voters like the idea of "affordable family formation" (Sailer), but their politicians never discuss falling birth rates, delayed marriage, etc. -- unless to argue for why we need ramped up immigration, so they can make the babies that Americans just don't want to make.

At most, Republican politicians will pay lip service to the "culture of life" to appeal to the natalist voters and donors. But that is a values topic in the broader culture war, not a material matter of how young people are supposed to be able to afford starting a family, owning a home, and so on.

The Democrat base is increasingly veering off into sheer hedonism territory, where the voters actually desire to never get married, have any kids, or raise them personally if they ever did. Transplanting yourself to some careerist urban jungle where you can diddle yourself in total anonymity, and occasionally indulge in a random drunken hook-up from Tinder, is what the Democrat mainstream must appeal to.

Bernie brought up affordable family formation, which shows how his supporters are craving normality in their lives, but can't find it in our fucked up world. It's the opposite of the Democrat base, who seek to further destabilize society and encourage and celebrate abnormality -- or at the very least, who turn a blind non-judgmental eye toward falling birth rates, delayed marriage, and so on.

These people don't view family formation in ideological terms like the natalist Republicans. It's just something normal that you're supposed to get around to, and if you are not, it's because something is lacking in your material situation -- not your priorities, your morality, or whatever else, that the values-voter would blame for the Bernouts' minimal family formation.

Ivanka Trump, through her childcare plan, has started to lead the Republicans away from framing family formation in moralistic terms, and back to the material question of making it affordable.

Adding the debt angle as Stein does is a necessary further step, since it's not just expensive childcare that prevents family formation -- it's also starting off your 20s with $50-100K in debt.

This debt stems from a great big scam (higher ed bubble), where the loans are made in bad faith: they know the borrower won't be able to pay back in most cases -- crappy college, crappy major -- and if anything goes wrong, the bubble will be too big for the taxpayers not to bail it out. And the loans are made to people whose brains aren't mature enough to make decisions about borrowing tens of thousands of dollars. That alone is reason to cancel the debt, with the understanding that it be one-time-only and after that, there will be no more higher ed for all.

I favor raiding the universities to re-coup the losses from federal student loans that will never be paid back. They fattened themselves up with that free money, they ought to give all of that ill-gotten wealth right back. Seize their liquid assets, then take control (militarily if need be) of their high-value property and structures and start liquidating them. How many world-class stadiums and the like have been built during the higher ed boom with that ill-gotten wealth? Time to sell it off and pay the piper.

Apart from administering justice to a system that's gone completely outta whack, canceling student debt would also allow young people -- and now, not so young people -- to go through the normal milestones of social, kinship, and community integration. All that costs money, not just willpower.

By blindly defending the massive transfer of wealth from the taxpayer trough (student loans) to privately managed university endowments, salaries, building booms, and so on, so-called conservatives are not only encouraging the highest degree of rent-seeking, they are also preventing family formation from being achieved by average Americans.

I wonder how conservatively these people will vote, behave, and influence society, who have abandoned hope of starting a family and have resorted to rootless urban hedonism?

Conservative "intellectuals" are proving useless as usual. Greater common sense on these inter-related matters is coming from Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, and Ivanka and Donald Trump.

Half of Dems, too, would view Clinton as illegitimate, after rigged primary

Lost in the discussions about how Trump and his voters would respond to electoral fraud in the general election that appeared to indicate a win for Crooked Hillary, is how Democrats themselves would respond.

During the last hotly contested election in 2000, it was only one side vs. the other. Gore voters said Bush was "selected, not elected," "Hail to the Thief," and so on. But there was no dissent within the Republican camp, in particular not from those who voted for Bush's primary opponent John McCain. It was not a bitterly fought primary, and whatever minor wounds there were had healed by the general.

After a hypothetical Clinton win, however, half of her own party would be joining in with the other party in viewing her as illegitimate, and for similar reasons relating to "the rigged system".

There never really has been a healing process among Democrats since the primaries heated up last fall/winter during debate season. The contests themselves were fairly even in the popular vote, with Sanders getting somewhere between 45-50% of voters. By contrast, Trump smashed his nearest competitor in the popular vote, 45% to 25% in a field of many more candidates.

Because the Democrat battles were more evenly decided, it made the losers not feel like such losers, hence less inclined to concede and rally around the winner. Those who voted for Cruz or Rubio on the GOP side had to face the facts that they were vastly outnumbered and had no real leverage to stage a delegate revolt, bolt the party, or otherwise keep the battle going after the primaries were over.

The Bernie people were the victims of all sorts of attempts to rig the result in Crooked Hillary's favor -- most flagrantly, her having the superdelegates in her pocket from the outset (and you can only win the nomination without the superdelegates if you annihilate your opponent with nearly 70% of the popular vote).

Even sticking to just the popular vote, the media was conspiring against Bernie and in favor of Hillary the whole time, there were accusations of electoral fraud in the all-important primaries in New York and California (and Arizona), the debates were staged to hide her from public view, and we now know she was fed at least one and probably more questions to the debate by someone who was both a commentator at the network and a superdelegate for Clinton (Donna Brazile).

As the DNC emails were released by WikiLeaks leading up to the national Convention, the fresh wounds were torn farther open. There were massive protests by Democrats outside their own Convention, and more disturbingly a loud and visible revolt by Bernie delegates on the floor of the Convention. Bernie himself got booed by his own supporters when he gave a speech that included a line about having to help elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.

Tensions subsided temporarily, until Hillary collapsed and had her lifeless half-corpse dragged into the car on 9/11. That gave the Bernie people another focal point for returning to the battle lines -- "Gee, wouldn't it be great if the Democrats had nominated someone who wasn't already dead?!"

And now that WikiLeaks is releasing the emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, it's rubbing more salt in the Bernie people's wounds than even the DNC leaks. Since the DNC is a lesser entity to Clinton world, they didn't have too powerful of a role in rigging the primary against Bernie. Far more of those efforts were orchestrated by Clinton world and its campaign -- particularly the collusion with the media and so-called progressive think tanks.

With the Bernie voters continuing at this late date to sift through Clinton-related emails for signs of foul play, it cannot be overstated how deep the sense of a rigged primary election goes with them.

Nor will this end if even more damning emails are released, perhaps including the 30,000 that Hillary's top aides believed they had deleted without a trace. If a mainstream audience would be outraged by them, you can imagine how the Bernie voters will be howling for blood.

Of course, half of the Democrats would not be happy with a Trump presidency, but they could not blame it on a rigged system -- he overcame his own rigged primary, and would go on to win despite all the electoral malfeasance by the Clinton campaign.

But if the initial results suggested a win for Clinton, half the Democrats would view her as having only won by rigging the process. In that case, they would view Bernie as the rightful winner -- he should have won the primary, if it had been fair, and if Trump lost the general, then whoever is the rightful winner of the Democrat primary ought to be the winner of the general.

In a hypothetical scenario where Clinton was the apparent President-Elect, not only would she be viewed as illegitimate by half the country, who support her general opponent, but by a further one-quarter of the country, who support her primary opponent. It would be guaranteed that massive civil disobedience would break out if 75% of the country thought she rigged her way into the presidency, and that this was a bipartisan sentiment.

And there would be no worse sign of governability problems than massive demonstrations throughout the country where both Bernie Democrats and the Republicans were taking part. Presumably they would agree to a truce between themselves, and perhaps put it up to a popular vote between Bernie and Trump. The Bernie crowd have been convinced for months and months that Bernie was more electable than Clinton against Trump -- let's put that idea to a test! (Trump would crush, but they are too trusting of "favorability" polls, which also suggested that Kasich was the strongest Republican candidate -- LOL.)

The historical models (Norpoth, Lichtman) and the most accurate polls (IBD, USC) show that Trump is going to win. The point of going through these hypotheticals is to try to raise awareness of just how much civil unrest, anarchy, and prolonged violence would result if the Establishment tried to steal the election for Crooked Hillary at the last moment here. She would only have her primary voters "backing" her, who are not enthusiastic about her anyway -- compared to two angry and highly motivated mobs that she screwed over during the primary and then the general elections.

Trump adapts Hop-Frog for Weimerica

The Al Smith Dinner, held at the Waldorf Astoria, is typically an occasion for the two presidential candidates to put a little levity into the race, make some self-deprecating remarks, make a few light jabs at the opponent, and generally chum it up with fellow members of the elite.

This time, the time for yukking it up with the Establishment is over. Watch as Trump the court jester begins with his routine of juggling several glistening knives in the air, for the amusement of the white-tie audience, then calmly collects them one by one into his hands, and throws them straight into the chests of the plutocrats and the media.



The courtiers mocked him as a reality TV clown, and struck cruel blows against his little-people supporters whenever they felt like a little entertainment. So the jester decides to put on a show for the court where "Trump acts like Trump" and they're all laughing along with the act. He convinces them it would be a riot for them to put on wax masks showing elitist caricatures, then begins a fire-breathing routine -- only to spit the fire right onto their masks. As the courtiers scramble around the ballroom with their faces ablaze, the jester and his little-people companions storm out and burn down the rest of the palace.

Truly an adaptation of Hop-Frog worthy of 21st-century Weimerica.



YFW you show up to cheer in the stands of a public hanging, and the trap-door falls out under your seat instead.

2000 election was delegitimized by Congressmen, media, and pop culture -- for years

The latest attempt by the clueless Establishment is to make it sound like Trump is some kind of extremist by making his acceptance of the election results contingent on there being no shenanigans that deprive him of his rightful votes. According to a narrative that's only been created during the past week, the United States has a long glorious tradition of never questioning the outcome of a presidential election.

Time for a quick reminder.

The 2000 election not only saw the apparent loser refuse to concede -- sue, sue, sue -- but his supporters at all levels (voters, media, etc.) continue to call Bush illegitimate for a long time after.

They didn't obstruct his rule, probably only due to the post-9/11 climate, but they certainly did not consider him the legitimate winner.

As for the voters, I attended Bush's first inauguration with other anti-globalization activists, and there were yuge numbers of mainstream Gore voters from the DC metro area who were there protesting, holding up signs, shouting, etc., about how Bush didn't really win, the Florida voters were robbed, and so on. Estimated protest size: 20,000.

This was after he'd already been sworn in as President, not when his status was still in limbo.

The protests were not far removed from the event but right along the motorcade route, which flew by so fast we barely saw his car. If he'd come by at a regular waving-to-the-crowd pace, he would've gotten pelted with so many eggs, plastic bottles, and random debris.

It was raining, too -- such a dreary atmosphere, with over half the crowd being against the President, who they were still insisting was not really the President.

Don't believe me? Here is a clip from Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 911, whose pre-titles sequence focuses on the theft of Florida by Bush in 2000. At 6:00, they show the protests at the inauguration, just how I remember it. Hardly a frictionless, objection-free passing of power.



At around 3:30, a bunch of Congressional Representatives lodge objections to the official decision to make Bush the President-Elect. No Senators, though, as required.

Make an example of every one of those Reps, if they're still serving. Maxine Waters is there -- ask her about questioning the legitimacy of an election all the way through the official anointing by Congress.

And ask Michael Moore why he was still questioning Bush's legitimacy four years later: the protesters poured into the streets "in one last attempt to reclaim what had been taken from them".

This movie was released during the summer before the re-election, to try to unseat Bush in part by re-litigating the very legitimacy of his presidency. It was a smash hit, grossing $222 million (the most for any documentary ever), and winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Hardly a marginal example from popular culture -- four years later.

Those protests at the inauguration show signs with a common charge -- "Hail to the Thief". While googling to find some old-internet articles with that phrase, I learned that it's also the title of a (probably crappy) album by Radiohead from 2003, which was a top 5 album around the world. Three years after the election, and they still could not get over it. From Wikipedia's description (emphasis added):

Radiohead chose the title partly to "state the bleeding obvious ... that the most powerful country on earth is run by somebody who stole an election", but also in response to "the rise of doublethink and general intolerance and madness, and feeling very much like individuals were totally out of control of the situation that somehow it was a manifestation of something not really human."

I'm not going to mine the internet for further examples, since these are all sufficient to make the point. Anyone who didn't vote for Bush was convinced that the 2000 election was stolen, and were still bitterly vocal about it years and years later.

Every Establishment dicksucker who's whining about Trump breaking with ARE ELECTORAL CUSTOMS is covering up the truth about a presidential election from just four cycles ago.

If they try to steal this election, it'll be the Florida recount in a steel cage death match. Trump will have numerous Representatives to object to an attempt by Congress to anoint Crooked Hillary, and he would have at least one Senator this time -- Jeff Sessions.

Unlike wimpy Al Gore, Trump is a brawler and will not relent. More importantly, high-energy Trump voters would not just bitch and moan like the Gore voters. Unless the Establishment wants to see Bikers For Trump getting into a road war with the US Army right there on the steps of the Capitol Building, they'd better tighten the screws on the local election officials to make sure that there's not even a whiff of election theft.

The will of the people is for the incumbent party to be changed up. If they do not go the easy way, angry mobs will make them go the hard way. Let's hope there is enough residual sanity and survival instinct left in the decadent corrupt Establishment for them to transition peacefully.

Polar opposite candidates are not "equally bad": Green meets Red in 2016

Back in the early 2000s heyday of the anti-globalization movement, the Nader campaign urged voters not to choose among the "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum" of Al Gore and George Bush.

Both were corporate globalists, military interventionists and expansionists, and bought and controlled by the mega-donor class. They offered only cosmetic differences on social and cultural "hot button" issues to distract voters from their utter sameness on the truly important issues affecting the economy and the government.

As a volunteer for the Nader campaign on an uber-liberal college campus, most of the resistance I met was from the liberals for Gore. "Gore and Bush are the same? Ummm, what about ABORTION." "Ummm, what about THE ENVIRONMENT." "Ummm, what about RACISM." Bla bla bla.

They didn't care that the Clintons, and a potential Gore successor, were strangling Iraqi civilians back into the Stone Age with sanctions (and that was before the Iraq War). In response to the estimated 500,000 children's deaths caused by the sanctions, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told 60 Minutes in 1996 that "We think the price is worth it."

Worth what? To discredit and humiliate Saddam Hussein -- who as a secular nationalist was a better force for stability, peace, and moderate rule than the Islamic whackjobs who the United States would end up causing to come into power throughout the region.

With that as the consensus among the Democrat Establishment -- along with the enthusiasm for NAFTA, repeal of Glass-Steagall, and so on and so forth -- there was no reason to assume that Gore would have been any better than Bush on the major issues. He would only be throwing non-conservatives a handful of breadcrumbs about environmentalism.

You might as well vote for Nader in order to make visible the rising opposition to corporate globalization, rather than cast a vote for Gore that would be indistinguishable from an endorsement for NAFTA, the Iraqi sanctions and no-fly zones, and the rest of the Clintonite agenda.

In 2016, the situation has been reversed. Now the two major parties are offering polar opposite candidates on the major issues, with Trump representing populism and anti-globalization, and Crooked Hillary standing for corporate elitism and globalism. On the social and cultural hot-button topics, they are actually closer to each other since both are moderates, albeit one more to the right and the other more to the left. Gun control is the only culture war topic where they do not overlap, and where they have boasted about their stance during the campaign.

This time, the voters who are normally apathetic about choosing one variation or another on the theme of corporate globalization and endless pointless wars, suddenly have a real choice from a major party. If ethnic identity politics had not hindered the Bernie movement in the primaries, there would be two candidates offering a breath of fresh air on the major issues.

These are the people who have not voted much, if at all, for the past 10 to 20 years. There was no real choice, so why bother? Now there is a real choice, so where do we sign up?

In opposition to this trend is the sudden apathy among people who were regular voters over the past 10 to 20 years, who now find themselves with unappealing choices. They say that both are equally horrendous, that she's a corrupt liar and he's a narcissistic sociopath (who gave up his wealth and brand appeal in order to stick up for the forgotten little people). I don't think they mean what they say, they're just fumbling for a rationalization to articulate their gut-level distaste for the two main choices.

But when there is such variety separating the two, how can these voters be claiming that they're equally bad? They are the inversion of the major issues voters, seeking cosplay candidates who will play a certain role, cultivate a certain persona, and put on a certain performance while in office. They evaluate primarily on how "presidential" the candidate acts.

Clinton could not be a more wooden, phony, and terrible actress. And Trump could not be more breaking-the-fourth-wall. With neither choice putting on a West Wing-worthy performance, the "neither of the above" voters of 2016 will be looking elsewhere or staying home.

At first they were parking their vote with Gary Johnson, none of whose policies they knew about or shared if they did. He was wacky, and in such an absurd world -- judging by the presidentiality metric -- why not go absurd all the way?

But the summertime fling of uncommitted voting is done, and Johnson's polling has declined from over 10% to around 5%. The serious ones who want more of the status quo are going to Clinton, those who are unimpressed by the status quo are going to Trump, with the unserious voters resigning to stay home.

The other third party choice is Jill Stein, but by now the Trump platform overlaps 80% with hers -- and that which the Bernie activists tried to get into the Democrat platform, before getting crushed by the Clinton machine in committee. The only differences are climate change and gun control. Stein has endorsed Trump over Clinton in the two-way race, mostly due to their stances on globalist trade deals and especially war-mongering in the Middle East and against nuclear Russia.

The Green Party platform of the 21st century is primarily about populism and non-interventionism, which has made them strange bedfellows with the Trump movement. All of the good open-minded people on Twitter are at least tolerant of both Trump and Jill, while utterly despising Crooked Hillary, and kinda-just-meh about Johnson.

Who knows, maybe future historians will describe the Nader and Stein campaigns as initial disruptions that ultimately broke off the progressive populists from the old Democrats and into the new Republicans. They would be like the Dixiecrat and George Wallace movements that portended the loss of the "Solid South" to the Republicans, albeit over a different set of issues.

Toward that end, it would work wonders for Trump to make some appointments on the advice of Stein, Nader, Tulsi Gabbard, and even Bernie "deal with the Devil" Sanders. Not relating to climate change or gun control, but trust-busting, weakening Wall Street banks, ending the revolving door between lobbyists and politicians, and the like.

They and people they know have spent endless time and energy looking into who is bad and who is good, so they would know the right people to appoint -- more so than the typical Republican advising Trump, aside from a handful of populists like Jeff Sessions. Trump is all about hiring the best person for the job, and figuring out who knows who the best person for the job is.

It would also be worth it to see Michael Moore crying impotently as Ralph Nader and Bernie Sanders wind up campaigning for President Trump's re-election in 2020.

Hey, Eugene McCarthy endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980 -- who says it can't happen again?

Hispanics felt fine about Trump's hot mic brou-ha-ha

We've already seen that women actually warmed up to Trump when they heard him talking dirty to them (USC poll).

Here's another fun fact: Hispanic support also rose unfazed. They don't mind ambitious macho talk.

This demo is like a great big pussy, just waiting to get grabbed.

Hillary's campaign of voter intimidation means Trump should get those E.C. votes

Expanding on the theme of the previous post, that the media's merging with the Clinton campaign nullifies any claim that this is a fair election and that Trump ought not to concede if there is an apparent win for Clinton, what about other forms of electoral manipulation? The kinds of things we expect from backward thug regimes in third-world banana republics -- like violence and intimidation.

Here is an in-depth expose by James O'Keefe showing how various arms of the Clinton campaign recruit agitators to stir up violence at Trump events, straight from the (gay sociopathic) horse's mouth:



They are responsible for the violent mob that shut down the Trump rally in Chicago, both the agitators inside the venue as well as the thousands mobbing the streets surrounding it. That could not have been a more flagrant suppression of free speech and free assembly, to create a climate of fear that (they hoped) would ultimately suppress turnout on Election Day -- not just in Illinois, but across the country, among anyone who saw the widely broadcast images and stories.

They were responsible for shutting down the only highway leading into a Trump rally in Arizona, also another suppression of free speech and free assembly, directed only at Trump voters.

You can bet they were behind the blocking of the entrance to a business luncheon in San Francisco, where Trump's motorcade had to wind around the back, and Trump had to walk a good 20 minutes along a highway and across a dirt field. A mob also assaulted a Trump supporter on his way in.

They were also likely behind the prolonged and roving mob violence at Trump's rally in San Jose, where the police clearly had a stand-down order from the Mayor, as lines of them watched mob violence unfolding for hours and did absolutely nothing to intervene or prevent crimes a few feet away from them.

They must have been behind that guy who rushed Trump's stage at a rally in Dayton.

And more disturbingly, they were probably behind the attempted assassin who made his way into the arena at a Las Vegas rally and tried to steal a cop's gun.

It would not be surprising if they were also behind the recent firebombing of the GOP office in North Carolina, along with the graffiti warning "Nazi Republicans" to "leave town or else".

If any one of these acts of violence and intimidation had targeted Clinton rather than Trump voters, let alone if they turned out to be orchestrated by the Trump campaign, the RNC, affiliated PACs, etc., you can bet your ass that the elites would be howling about how a Trump victory in November was ill-gotten and only the result of a sustained campaign of violence and intimidation. There would be calls to nullify the outcome and hand it to Clinton.

Back on planet Earth, it has been the Clintons who have targeted Trump voters. If there is an apparent win for Crooked Hillary, that outcome ought to be nullified, so that the beneficiary and orchestrator of the crimes does not get rewarded electorally.

In fact, to punish her campaign for their wide-ranging and ongoing voter intimidation, I say she should pay with the Electoral College votes of the states in which the victims of these crimes live. The Clintons want to suppress Trump support in California -- then Trump gets California. They want to shut down a political gathering in Chicago -- then Trump gets Illinois.

The spergs are thinking up a more fine-tuned quantitative rather than black-or-white approach to fitting the punishment to the crime (a la how many yards penalized for what kind of foul in football). But that gets too bogged down in subjective perceptions of how serious a crime deserves how many forfeited E.C. votes. It's simpler and more objective to rule that a flagrant electoral crime forfeits the state whose voters were victimized.

That ought to provide a political campaign with a strong enough incentive not to organize such severe crimes against the voters.

Floating a bogus rumor, burning an effigy, hyperbole in stump speeches -- BFD. We're talking about a mob of hundreds or thousands swarming around isolated voters from the other side, stealing their political insignia, walloping them upside the head with a bag full of rocks, sucker-punching them unconscious, shutting down their gatherings, and so on and so forth. Any idiot can tell the difference with how far of a quantum leap the Clintons have made in 2016, unlike what we've seen in earlier elections.

(Although as for the mechanics of casting votes, the Republicans doctored the data for Ohio in 2004, which cost Kerry the election. Not to mention the shady shut-down of the recount in Florida in 2000. We would've done just fine if Gore/Kerry had won rather than Bush.)

The only hitch is what happens to electoral crimes committed in a safe state for the other side -- if the Clinton campaign had sent a violent mob to shut down a Trump rally in Houston instead of San Jose. We can't take away their E.C. votes from Texas, since we were already going to win that one. Maybe we just take away that number from Hillary's total and add it to our own.

Then the thug arms of the campaign would only feel like targeting states with small E.C. vote prizes, but what's the point of screwing around with rural voters in North Dakota, or blowing their reaction to a Trump rally in New Hampshire out of proportion? They would be hoping to sacrifice those tiny vote prizes for a larger nationwide vote suppression if news of the chaos were spread far and wide.

At that point, though, when they're sending in armies of outsiders to assault small-town citizens, we'll just give those citizens the right to execute the violent invaders on the spot. Let that message be spread far and wide.

Some kinds of assault have more severe societal ramifications (akin to the Left's theory of "hate crimes"), and ought to be punished more severely and publicly.

"Media is arm of Clinton campaign": Basis for contesting election?

The legitimacy of an election depends on more than just the absence of shenanigans relating to the process and mechanics of casting your vote.

Machines or data that have been tampered with, allowing non-citizens to vote, threatening voters -- certainly whenever these happen, the outcome should be contested.

But even assuming that these kinds of malfeasance are minimal, there is still plenty of room for electoral manipulation by those who control access to information, and those who create the content of the mass media. An election is meaningless when the voters have been lied to. Democracy requires an informed citizenry.

Consider that a referendum on the Iraq War would probably have passed back in 2003, on account of the widespread lies about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction, his willingness to use them against us, and his role in the 9/11 attack. All of these were pure fabrications, and any referendum by an electorate whose views stemmed from that disinformation would be invalid. Give them the correct information, and it would not have passed.

Presidential elections are always subject to rumors being spread, dirty tricks being played, and hyperbole being used on the campaign trail, by all sides. This is standard "politics as theater," meant to entertain the supporters of one side and rile up the supporters of the opposite side. It is not election-altering disinformation.

Something far beyond that has been unfolding this time, though, where the media have formally merged with one of the campaigns -- that of Crooked Hillary.

First they colluded with the Clinton campaign to sabotage her primary-stage obstacle, the Bernie Sanders movement. To take only one example, the WikiLeaks Podesta emails reveal that CNN provided the Clinton campaign with debate questions ahead of the event, through an intermediary (Donna Brazile) who was both a Clinton superdelegate and a CNN commentator.

I think Bernie still would have lost the primary, even if there had been no urban machine shenanigans and no media collusion, because populist progressivism does not appeal to blacks, who make up such a large chunk of the base of the party. But it would have been by a far narrower margin in the popular vote, at which point the superdelegates could be lobbied to side for either candidate on the basis of who is the most electable among Democrat voters.

Now in the general election phase, the media have dropped all pretense in trying to sabotage the next and more formidable opponent of the Clinton campaign, the Trump movement. No longer is there the cloak-and-dagger tactics of the primary. They are openly all colluding with one another in the media world -- and really only five mega-corporations control the entire media industry -- and with the Clinton campaign.

Every bogus hit job on Trump with no supporting evidence or corroborating testimony, every blind eye turned toward the damning revelations of WikiLeaks, every baseless charge that Putin is behind anything that benefits Trump over Clinton, and every pre-scripted "interview" with Clinton that gives her veto power before publication -- it all goes to show how dissolved the barriers are between the media and the Clinton campaign.

The smoking gun stuff is interesting -- seeing the same individuals play roles in both the media and the campaign, revealed by emails -- but the entire macro pattern speaks for itself.

And it is not merely the liberal media siding with the Democrat, and conservative media with the Republican. This election is not about liberal vs. conservative, but elitism vs. populism and globalism vs. nationalism. Naturally the multinational corporations that control the media side with the globalist elite candidate, leaving no media to balance for the America-first populist side.

However, it is not simply the media expressing agreement with, but actively merging themselves with the Clinton campaign, that cancels out any notion of fairness to this corrupted election.

By all signs, there will be victory for the Trump movement on November 8th. The historical-based data models show this (Norpoth, Lichtman), and the panel-based polls such as USC / LA Times are showing Trump with a solid lead in the final stage.

However, should the election be declared a win for Clinton, Trump will not concede the election if there are signs of unfairness. First would be clearing up all irregularities in the mechanics and process of voting -- busing the same person around to vote in multiple places, altering electronic data, and so on.

Even if correcting for various kinds of fraud still left Crooked Hillary with an apparent win, that would still leave the door open to litigation on the basis of the entire media having merged itself with the Clinton campaign so brazenly and so forcefully, thereby negating the assumption that the voters had unimpeded access to reliable information. Rather, they were hindered from finding out the basic truth, and fed bald-faced lies with no sources.

God willing, it won't come to that level of political crisis, and the disaffection with what the Democrat Establishment has done in office for the past eight years will provide more than enough votes to counteract all the certain irregularities that are about to be thrown at Trump voters. But if not, we have to buckle up and be ready to fight it out in court and in the streets with civil disobedience.

The media-Clinton(-Bush-Romney-Ryan) sabotage against the Trump campaign is not a fair trial but a witch hunt by the globalist elites against the forgotten American people, and we have no duty to respect the outcome of such a nakedly anti-democratic "election" season.

Hillary's worst offense for voters: selling American uranium to Russia (WikiLeaks)

Trump and his surrogates (including you) ought to put this issue more in the spotlight. It's only occasionally been discussed.

Anyone who has a hotline to the campaign, let them know about this, since he's in New Hampshire and Maine today.

Back in June 2015, the Clinton campaign tested a bunch of negatives about her, among New Hampshire primary voters. According to the internal results:

Secretary Clinton’s top vulnerability tested in this poll is the attack that claims as Secretary of State she signed off on a deal that gave the Russian government control over twenty percent of America's uranium production, after investors in the deal donated over one hundred and forty million dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Half of all likely voters (53%) are less likely to support Clinton after hearing that statement and 17% are much less likely to support her after that statement.

Source email from WikiLeaks.

Most voters probably don't know that fact about her record off the top of their head, and the media have scarcely covered it. It turns out that they don't appreciate our Secretary of State handing over 20% of our uranium to a rival nuclear superpower, let alone when she profits $140 million through her crooked foundation. Pay to play in a nutshell.

Americans still value a sense of fair play and honesty. Crooked Hillary could not be further from the ideal. Most Americans know this on a gut level, but the sale of uranium to Russia so the Clinton Foundation could bag over $100 million, gives them a concrete appalling example to dwell on.

This example left the worst impression, more so than other negatives they tested, like voting for the Iraq War, TPP stance, being from a dynasty, etc. The only other thing that scored close was being too buddy-buddy with Wall Street -- in particular, bailing out Wall Street and not wanting to touch the big banks still today.

Voters who were the most put off were her usual weak points -- younger people (under 60 in this survey) and poorer (under $50K income).

How broadly these New Hampshire voters generalize to other parts of the country, who knows? At least other blue states. At any rate, it would be nice to bump her off in New Hampshire and Maine.

It could be that over one year after the survey was done, people have come to understand that she engaged in a lot of pay for play, merging the State Dept with the Clinton Foundation. If so, hitting on this example wouldn't tell them something fundamentally new. But it doesn't seem like the pay to play stuff has gotten that much attention in concrete examples -- probably because the media was tipped off by the Clinton campaign about what her greatest vulnerability was.

So go and spread the word -- she sold out our safety to a nuclear superpower, just to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars for herself!

Also serves to throw cold water on the whole anti-Russian hysteria from the Democrat Establishment and the media -- she's the one who profited millions by cozying up to the Russian government, selling the nuclear state a whole shitload of uranium. Trump never did anything close to selling us out.

Block out media to avoid demoralization during home stretch

First the media immediately ignored the second debate, where Trump savaged Clinton on a range of substantive issues as well as her track record. Now they are ignoring the WikiLeaks emails revealing all sorts of goings-on from the Clinton campaign and other things -- such as Crooked Hillary knowing that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were supporting radical Islamic terrorist groups.

There is no discussion of any issue whatsoever -- trade, immigration, healthcare (big Dems now admitting Obamacare is a disaster), terrorism, foreign policy / war... absolutely nothing.

It is clear that for the entire rest of the election season, the media's intent is to focus solely on personal matters, and hoax stories at that, targeting only Trump. The goal is simply to demoralize the voters into staying home. Having to watch so much bullshit saps their energy, let alone having to debate pointless shit with others on social media or in person.

Even if a Trump voter scores on Hillary's personal track record, it's a Pyrrhic victory because debating which one is evil and which one is decent is not what people want to be thinking about as they collect their thoughts ahead of Election Day. It takes the focus off of the referendum nature of elections -- Obama for two terms has not been good, especially the past four years, and Crooked Hillary would be far worse than Obama. Trump is the change agent on trade, terrorism, foreign policy, corruption, healthcare, and more. "Make America Great Again."

The battle over personal stuff is not exciting or energizing, and we have the natural enthusiasm advantage big-league. We need to keep that for Election Day when turnout matters.

With that in mind, shut off any TV media and internet media from now until the election, and recommend others to do likewise. If you want to catch Trump rallies on YouTube or Facebook, or follow a handful of Twitter accounts, or check the Drudge Report for anything important, that's fine. But anything more than that is going to suck you out of issues mode and into character debate mode, which will be 100% full of bogus inanities.

You're not going to feel pumped up to go out and vote or spread the gospel about populist nationalism when all that your mind has been stewing in is related to the hoax du jour about Trump.

It seems like the thing that's in the news and could be more on people's minds right now is Syria and a potential war with Russia. No real American gives a damn what goes on in the Middle East, and we're supposed to hurtle ourselves toward nuclear war with Russia over Syria? I don't think so. Trump is for peace, Clinton is for endless and pointless war.

Also ties into the other newsworthy stories about WikiLeaks -- not just the revelations about what we've been doing over there, and what Clinton knew about the US being on the side of ISIS, but also the constant propaganda about how Russia is in charge of WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign. Normal people see that it's transparently crazy BS. The media narrative about Russia only discredits them further, and makes it clear to the people that it's Trump vs. the lying press.

It makes for a natural bridge to Independents, former Bernie voters, or even Stein voters. Stein herself has gone on the record saying that while she doesn't like either Trump or Clinton, Trump is clearly the peace candidate in this election, while Hillary would launch us toward nuclear war with Russia over Syria.

An intervention that would morph into yet another Iraq War, plus nuclear war with Russia? We'd have to be insane to choose that path. Let people know they can vote however else they want down the ballot, or in the future for President. But in 2016, it's either Trump and survival, or Clinton and extinction.

Moralizing reporters SHOCKED: Women wear shirts making light of #GrabThePussy hysteria

Another episode in the series of New York media bubbleheads encountering real-life Americans while covering Trump rallies:

"Hey TRUMP talk dirty to me!!!" reads the shirt of one woman standing behind him --> pic.twitter.com/7cCqJa5Uyy

— Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) October 14, 2016

This is a shirt pic.twitter.com/SjFNHpZlMi

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) October 14, 2016

Be sure to check out the comments from the self-appointed guardians of propriety.

B-B-But, how can these people possibly treat such a disgusting problematic thing like it's no big deal?!?! Hold on, my 7-inch butt dildo just accidentally got swallowed up into my colon, brb...

During the whole brou-ha-ha, it was men who bailed on Trump, while his support among women actually went up (USC poll). The average guy got fiercely envious of some rich alpha dude bragging about how easy it is for him to score with hot chicks. The average woman felt relieved and a little thrilled that she'd found a guy who doesn't pussyfoot around with approaching women, like the sheepish men around her in 21st-century life.

Not necessarily because they were hot for him -- although some were, too, judging from the shirts above -- but because he's the kind of old-school man who acts like a man, and they want someone who isn't going to make the Oval Office any more flaccid than it already is.

As the parties re-align toward the Republicans drawing in the working class, the elitist reporters are getting scandalized by the mores of people below the yuppies on the class pyramid. Even the women have a bawdy sense of humor!

That seems to provoke greater anxiety among the male reporters and commenters, since they're now realizing how effeminate they are, when women have an easier time of just letting it all hang out than a bunch of prissy pseudo-men.

Notably absent from the chorus of shock and denunciation -- gay men, whose Peter Pan minds never heard a bawdy joke they didn't like.

Repeal the 19th? It would be Bernie vs. Trump

The tongue-cluckers are spazzing out about #RepealThe19th trending on Twitter. I hope none were former Sanders supporters -- he would have crushed the wicked witch if only men had voted, according to the exit polls. Same if only whites had voted, or only young people had voted.

Only letting young people vote? That'll go nowhere, and society would collapse.

Only letting white people vote? Not realistic, since tribal politics would explode.

Only letting men vote? That's not so unrealistic. Women had to wait 50 years after black men to get the vote. Women didn't strike reformers as the more important group to let vote.

We've had good and bad presidents, and presidents of both major parties, before and after the 19th Amendment, but it would be nice to repeal.

As long as it doesn't substantially alter which party is in power, then who cares? Unlike blacks, who are solid Democrats, women do not form their own distinct voting bloc. If you're single, young, never married, no kids, urban professional, you vote totally opposite of middle-aged, married with children, living in the suburbs.

Women don't raise important new issues from what men would. Men care about health care, education, etc. They're not women's issues. And again where someone stands on those issues is not determined by their sex but other kinship factors like marital status, parental status, residence status, and so on.

Repealing the 19th would, however, greatly improve the quality of the political process -- far fewer roller-coasters of emotion among a fickle electorate. Not as much drama, hysteria, and bipolar meltdowns. We'll still have plenty of those coming from the wussy men anyway.

Campaigns would not have to cater to personal appeal so much, and could focus more on the issues themselves.

Women simply were not meant to take part in a large crowd of strangers who need to be herded into coalitions in order to govern the public sphere. They're meant for small intimate groups of familiar faces at a local level, such as the PTA.

Since women do not form their own distinct voting bloc, they are more of a redundant pool of voters, and could be safely removed if not needed. We'd still be left with tens of millions of men voting, so no, we don't need a redundant pool just in case the first pool fails to show up.

I know it's purely pie-in-the-sky, but it would make the electoral process itself so much better. Women could still raise issues, form advocacy groups, and the like. Prohibition was largely women-run, before they could vote (for whatever that's worth). Just not a group that campaigns, polling companies, and media organizations would have to devote much attention to.

Related post: Trump ushers in a re-masculinization of the electorate

Fans of Ricky Vaughn, follow this new Twitter account

TheRickyVaughn

Obama speechwriter: Bernie's class focus is racist and sexist (Wikileaks)

An earlier post looked at why populism triumphed in the Republican rather than the Democrat primary. In either party, the class orientation had to overcome its party's version of identity politics. That is mostly based on race and ethnicity in the Democrats, and Evangelical Christianity in the Republicans. Race is inherited, while religion is not, making race a stickier aspect of identity to get away from.

This email from the latest Wikileaks series on John Podesta includes a ranting memo by Obama's speechwriter Jon Favreau (Feb. 2016), in which he whines about Bernie's focus on class taking away from the identity politics that has been the Democrats' go-to red meat for at least a generation:

Far more effective has been what [Hillary has] been doing recently - saying that Bernie is a single issue voter and that there are a lot more issues at stake than Wall Street. This idea that class is the only divide and economic issues are all that matter is a very white male centric view of the world (a Bernie Bro view, if you will).

He doesn't really mean the "male" part -- it's just a standard cop-out buzzword that wasn't satisfied to just pile onto whites, why not add men too? Women are just as held down as men are by Wall Street dominating the economy, sending jobs overseas to boost corporate profits, and so on.

What he really means is class vs. race and ethnicity. Working-class people vote similarly, blacks vote similarly. But women do not vote similarly.

It also reminds me of the hilarious joke that Brian Buetler keeps making every time some asshole says something horribly racist about Obama or sexist about Hillary or prejudice about immigrants and Muslims - oh, let's not blame them, they're just economically anxious.

Here we see the "basket of deplorables" argument -- a patronizing view of people whose jobs have been sent overseas, and are duped into supporting someone like Trump. Also the dismissive tone toward class politics -- folks in the Rust Belt aren't living paycheck to paycheck, with no good jobs in sight. They're just economically anxious, another bullshit PC euphemism.

People are of course economically anxious, and Bernie is tapping into that very well. But that's only half the equation. They're also being told to blame other groups for all their problems - blacks, gays, immigrants, Muslims, women, political correctness, etc. Fighting that intolerance and divisiveness is just as important as fighting inequality - arguably more so in this election because Trump has made it the defining issue.

Who's blaming blacks, gays, and women for the de-industrialization of our economy and economic inequality? This is just kneejerk "intersectionality," where all identity politics topics are related to each other. In reality, Trump and Bernie only point to immigrants as a source of "economic anxiety" for Americans -- greater supply of labor, lower price of labor, lower wages and incomes.

Favreau is being a typical hysterical homosexual.

Still, that response does have an effect -- to make any discussion of class taboo because you won't only be seen as being skeptical of immigration, but of every kind of diversity -- racial, gender, sexuality, religious, whatever. Populism is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.

And they're not so wrong, since you are trying to turn the focus away from identity politics and toward class. You aren't anti-black or anti-woman -- you simply don't think national policy has to worry about how racial minorities feel about their identity, or whether men make cat-calls to women wearing revealing clothing. What will the president possibly do to affect those matters? Nothing, but he will affect how much power Wall Street has, whether manufacturing industries stay here or go abroad, and so on.

Favreau says the Democrats have to sideline class matters because Trump has made race, ethnicity, gender, etc., so central -- and yet he's only talked about immigration, not how blacks are ruining society, how women belong in the kitchen, how gays should not allowed to be married, or whatever else. That would be someone more in the mold of Ted Cruz, culture warrior. But again, to the identity-obsessed, anything that is class-oriented must therefore be rabidly against all identity groups.

Too bad he read the mood wrong, which is about populism and the related topic of immigration, rather than about identity politics, only taking the pro-white pro-man pro-hetero side. By misreading the mood, he misreads the roots of Trump's popularity, and misreads how to counteract it -- with a populist of their own, not the most corrupt elitist Establishmentarian they could have possibly run.

His is not an uncommon mistake, and is the reason why the Trump movement has so effortlessly bulldozed through the Establishment of one party and soon the other, the media, and the donor class.

Pay better attention for next time, or you're done for good.

Trumpenprole army anthem: "Balls To the Wall"

After such a bald-faced coup attempt by the GOP elite, it's time for the Trumpenprole army to get pumped up for a rebellion against the ringleaders of this prison of a political party.

Take no more beatings.

Break your chains.

Shiv the jailhouse guards.

Hang the warden from a lamppost, light the body on fire.

We the party now, BITCH.



* * * * *

Too many slaves in this world
Die by torture and pain
Too many people do not see
They're killing themselves, going insane

Too many people do not know
Bondage is over the human race
They believe slaves always lose
And this fear keeps them down

Watch the damned (God bless ya)
They're gonna break their chains (Hey)
No, you can't stop them (God bless ya)
They're coming to get you
And then you'll get your

Balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall
You'll get your balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall, balls to the wall

You may screw their brains
You may sacrifice them, too
You may mortify their flesh
You may rape them all

One day the tortured stand up
And revolt against the evil
They make you drink your blood
And tear yourself to pieces

You better watch the damned (God bless ya)
They're gonna break their chains (Hey)
No, you can't stop them (God bless ya)
They're coming to get you
And then you'll get your

Balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall
You'll get your balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall, balls to the wall

Come on man, let's stand up all over the world
Let's plug a bomb in everyone's arse
If they don't keep us alive, we're gonna fight for the right

Build a wall with the bodies of the dead, and you're saved
Make the world scared, come on, show me the sign of victory
Sign of victory, sign of victory

You better watch the damned (God bless ya)
They're gonna break their chains (Hey)
No, you can't stop them (God bless ya)
They're coming to get you
And then you'll get your

Balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall

Voters care about the past four years, not the past four days

The point of an earlier post about historical models has not gotten through, judging from how concerned people are about the latest campaign brou-ha-ha, worrying about the debates, and so on.

Whether the incumbent party will maintain control of the White House can be predicted months, sometimes years, in advance. Helmut Norpoth and Allan Lichtman, whose models were discussed, have been doing that for several decades, and their models work retrospectively over the past 100 years (Norpoth) to 150 years (Lichtman).

The verdict is in: the incumbent party will lose control, meaning Trump is going to win.

Now, these models do not forecast what the important topics will be during election season, nor which positions on those topics will be the most popular. They do not predict the Electoral College vote (other than to say that whoever wins the popular vote almost always wins the EC), nor do they predict which states will side with which party. They do not give any hint of what the zeitgeist will be like, according to contemporary observers or future historians. They don't even necessarily know who the candidates will be. They simply measure signs of stability vs. disruption.

The kinds of things that these models look at are macro-level conditions that apply over the past four to eight years. For example, there's first-term incumbent advantage -- but an incumbent penalty if the party is going for three or more in a row. Was there discontent with the incumbent Presidential party during the previous mid-term Congressional elections? Which party had the more evenly contested primary battle (weak candidate), and which one had the more lop-sided battle (strong candidate)? Are people happy with the direction the economy has been heading over the past four years? This may differ depending on which section of society is responding. Do people feel more protected or less protected from foreign threats? And so on and so forth.

These thoughts and feelings have been brewing throughout the past four years, largely unconsciously. By the time the election season kicks into high gear, it is too late to alter a person's gut-level intuition about whether they're going to vote for the same party or changing the guard.

This is why campaigns largely do not matter, at least once the primaries are over. People's minds are mostly made up before the general election season has even begun. They will only respond to the output of campaign season -- from the candidates themselves, from the media, from social buzz -- by accepting something if it is concordant with their already formed decision, or rejecting it if it is discordant.

Someone who already felt content with continuing the status quo will seize on Trump's latest problematic words about women from 20 years ago, and dismiss the latest in a long line of leaks proving how corrupt Crooked Hillary has been for her entire career. Someone who already felt fed up with the status quo will seize on the video of Hillary collapsing and being dragged lifelessly into the car, while they will dismiss leaked audio showing Trump to be a skirt-chaser in the past.

These are ad-hoc rationalizations of long-formed gut-level intuitions. Arguing over them will not alter the outcome of the election. People might as well just shut up and wait until Election Day to do what they were already planning to do -- but with the team-vs.-team spectacle that politics has become, voters cannot help themselves. The media cater to this demand for fighting it out over every micro-event in the campaigns.

Trump was onto this in the primaries when he said he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and still win. He was right because Republican primary voters were fed up with the status quo of the party, for a very long time in fact, and Trump was the only unorthodox and disruptive candidate. Voters who wanted change had only one choice. Of course, you have to be in a league of your own in the way that voters desire -- otherwise you're out immediately like Jim Webb during the Democrat primary.

Please, keep this in mind as we run the gauntlet of the final month of election season. Don't obsess over every nano-fart in the news cycle. And do not spazz out about WHAT TRUMP MUST DO to win. People are going into the voting booth thinking of the past four years, not the past four days.