Give the Donald credit. He not only has driven a deep divide within his own party, he has also done his best to heal the divisions in the opposing party. Quite the feat.
Of course, it’s all in a day’s work for Trump, who is, I think we can safely say, a candidate like no other. At least, that’s the way to root.
We know all about Trump v. Ryan and Trump v. Erickson, Trump v. National Review, Trump v. Romney, Trump v. All the Bushes (even Barbara), Trump v. Will/Krauthammer/Rubin/Brooks/Parker et al.
There’s a headline in Politico that sort of sums up the situation: “Trump, pivoting to general, lashes out at everyone.” But none of that may compare to the heavyweight matchup everyone has been awaiting — Trump v. Warren, Bully v. Goofy, Twitter champ v. Twitter challenger.
It’s on. And don’t expect it to end until at least November, Trump hitting Warren on the Native American charge that failed Scott Brown, Warren hitting Trump for being, well, Trump.
Goofy Elizabeth Warren is weak and ineffective. Does nothing. All talk, no action — maybe her Native American name?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2016
“Goofy,” @realDonaldTrump? For a guy with “the best words” that’s a pretty lame nickname. Weak!
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) May 7, 2016
I called out @realDonaldTrump on Tuesday. 45 million saw it. He’s so confident about his “counter punch” he waited until Friday night. Lame.
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) May 7, 2016
This is bad for Trump, bad for Bernie — who had long hoped for Warren’s support — and a gift to Hillary, who doesn’t need Warren to defend her. She needs Warren to attack Trump and make it clear where the political energy for all right-thinking (and a significant part of right-wing thinking) must go.
Once upon a time, Warren, liberal firebrand beloved of the anti-Wall-Street left, dominated the presidential campaign by not getting in. She could have saved the party, the thinking went, from Clinton and all her baggage, except that Warren, a first-term senator, decided to sit things out. She thought about it — she thought hard about it — but left it to Bernie, who began as a message candidate and watched in disbelief, as we all did, as his social-democratic message morphed into a cause attracting millions.
But you know how it is with causes. It may be all over but the counting, but Bernie, now reduced to wooing establishment-driven super delegates who will never support him, can’t quite bring himself to leave the race, and his millions of Bernie boosters don’t want him to go. And after his shocking success, you can hardly blame Sanders for thinking the race is also about him, or at least about everything he stands for. Because it has been.
But Warren, or as my friend Charlie Pierce calls her, Senator Professor Warren, has changed the rules.
In a series of tweets – the Trumpian communication of choice — she has changed all the cause factors. The race is now about stopping Trump, who is just that noxious, and if you believe the latest swing-state polls, just that dangerous. The betting in this race is that Clinton should win easily. The betting, however, seems to ignore recent history, in which Trump proved you don’t need money to win, or pollsters to win, or demographics to win, or policy to win, but, rather, just some old-fashioned misogynistic, xenophobic, authoritarian demagogy (and some other big words they use at the really good schools) with a little love for Putin and a taste of Mussolini thrown in.
It’s no wonder the long line line of Republicans couldn’t touch him (or that another long line is walking away from him). The media, when not celebrating him, couldn’t do any better. The fact-checkers routinely called him a liar, but, once again, facts have failed us. That’s the anti-fact era in which we live and one in which a Trump could thrive.
Can Warren do better? (Quick answer: Um, yes.) Just look how she uses Trump Twitter language to mock him. Sad.
If you’d ever seen her in action as a law professor, you’d know what Trump is up against. If you’ve watched or read The Paper Chase, you have some idea. My daughter the law professor (who, full disclosure, was once Warren’s student and who graduated to become a Warren mentee) once called Warren’s class “a cold intellectual shower first thing in the morning.” She’s not surly like Cruz or low energy like Bush or he-should-keep-his-hands-in-his-pockets like Rubio. She’s the high-energy, high-intellect interrogator who already has Trump’s full attention.
And what she has effectively said is that it’s time to move past whatever is left of the Democratic primary and concentrate on the Donald, because stopping Trump is all that really matters.
You’ve already seen it working. While Trump should be prepping for the big meeting with Paul Ryan, he’s drunk-tweeting (that’s drunk-with-power; Donald doesn’t drink) with Warren. I read in The New York Times that one Trump ally said he had to stop chasing whatever shiny object goes down the rabbit hole. And another said he had to stop punching down.
But Warren is irresistible. She hits Trump where he lives. Trump has no choice but to hit back. And Warren, who loves the rough and tumble, will counter-counter-punch. This thing will definitely go the full 15 rounds.
Maybe it’s Warren’s audition for a Clinton vice-presidential role, although it’s far from certain she’d take it. Maybe it’s to force Clinton and possibly a newly Democratic Senate to focus on income inequality and Wall Street excess and a stagnant middle class and the other progressive issues that matter. Or maybe it’s because she thinks Trump represents everything that’s not great about America.
Photo credit: Edward Kimmel, Creative Commons, Flickr.
Donald Trump has managed to become the “clown” who is getting all of the attention of the media literally all of the time. What the hell happened to real news? Where did all of the real reporters go? Is this a way of getting some attention, because the dumbing down of America worked so well, that we as Americans really don’t give a flying (you know what) and a rolling donut about what’s really important in our country and the world? There’s this question; how could Trump get the Republican nomination? Isn’t he just a joke? Who actually helped him? Here’s the answer, it was the idiots in the media. Had the media ignored his “unhinged behavior” and focused on authentic candidates the results would be completely different. But what fun is it to cover authentic candidates? There is no stage antics to cover, just boring old substantive issues, and who can get good ratings from that? This guy was a laughable joke, now he has become a dangerous sociopath that may have access to weapons of mass destruction. All for a few extra ratings. If by some chance, we come to our senses, and defeat this idiot, we as a country need to take a good hard look at what we have become, who we are willing to elect as our leaders, and how long we want to exist as a nation that is respected in the world.
Elizabeth Warren the true Indian. Oh is she still claiming to be an Indian? No matter in this world of political correctness she can self identify as an Indian. Silly libs.
Elizabeth Warren= NO JOBS, with free welfare and college. LOL !
And plenty of free welfare for Muslim invaders
(WHO OPENLY SUPPORTED HITLER DURING WWII WHEN MY GRANDFATHER FOUGHT HITLER)
Optimistically, there will be a group of people like Sen. Warren who will take on the role of tweeting in response to the twit Trump.
Clinton and her existing campaign rarely demonstrated the skill to mix it up with Sanders or with any of the Republican candidates who criticized her. She campaigns best as a policy wonk with consistent, mainstream values. Developing a focus for the campaign of ONLY clarifying what needs should be addressed and explaining how the needs can best be met by a unified Democratic party would be in her (somewhat limited) political skills.
Leave the interaction with Trump and co. to Warren, Franken, and others who have a gift for it.
I’m with Clinton. Why would you argue with a mad cretin? There is absolutely no substance to what he says. He has vacated reality to live in Trumpland, where only he is right and everyone else exists for him to verbally abuse. I’m not willing to listen to someone for hours, who lives in his own fantasy world, can’t get beyond telling me “many,many” times how great he is and how stupid everyone else seems to be in his demented mind. And the Republican party seems to be bowing to him. What does he have on these guy? Let’s talk Hitler Gabe. Notice any comparisons with DT?
I’ve been disappointed that my hero Ms. Warren has been trading silly barbs with that obstreperous buffoon. She’s better than that.
I am a woman and I’m a Donald Trump supporter. Elizabeth Warren is working for Hillary Clinton. She’s trying to win the race for Hillary Clinton. She lied that she’s Indian and she’s trying to destroy Donald Trump with the “Woman card”. It won’t work, you phony witch.
Women aren’t as dumb as you think, and yes, women like the things Donald Trump stands for, like a safe USA, jobs for the USA people, make the borders safer by building a wall and keeping illegal immigrants and terrorists from entering this country, fair trade deals, many more things that women want, not just men. Women want a job, women want a safe country for their family, and safety from illegal immigrants and terrorists who would destroy this country. Stop using the women as your weapon to destroy Donald Trump.
Women and men all want the same things and Hillary Clinton is getting desperate, that’s why she’s playing the woman card, and she’s using you to help her. It proves Hillary Clinton would make a terrible President if she can’t fight her battles herself and has to ask another woman to do it for her. How Pathetic!
Mike Littwin: Twitter Moderator (The Twitterator)
Considering his (lack of) marketable skills monitoring Twitter is not a bad place for the Colorado Independent to stick him. And if he proves to be competent (not a slam dunk) the CI may let him monitor Facebook and from there the sky’s the limit: Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, Vine, Reddit and maybe even the coveted title of (wait for it) Mike Littwin: Social Media Concierge. #whodathunkit.
Ironically, and in keeping with his proud and longstanding tradition of being wrong about, well, everything, Mr. Littwin felt Twitter was an idea that wouldn’t last six months. You could look it up.
Today, Senator Warren finds herself in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance. She has yet to endorse a Democrat for president and she has to wonder what might have been had she been less timid and made a presidential run. Hard to believe a college professor didn’t know the future belongs to the bold.
That timidity finds her now filling her days responding to tweets. Gone are those halcyon days when she delivered cold intellectual liberal-centric morning showers to college students. She’s now the Democrat’s Tweeter-in-Charge (The TIC). Sad. But it could have been worse, she could have gone from the Denver Post to the Colorado Independent.
I’m assuming this (from Politico.com) is the poll Mr. Littwin was referring to when he says: “The race is now about stopping Trump, who is just that noxious, and if you believe the latest swing-state polls, just that dangerous.”
“Buckle up for the next six months: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are effectively tied in the swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to the results of a Quinnipiac University survey released Tuesday.”
Mr. Littwin doesn’t say whether he believes the Quinnipiac poll and he also doesn’t say whether being untrustworthy is more dangerous than being “noxious”.
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Pro-lifers condemned (Mrs. Clinton), as expected. As perhaps unexpected, she was also attacked by her pro-choice allies for uttering the words “unborn person.” Whatever position one takes on abortion, to say that the fetus is a person if the mother wants it and it’s not if she doesn’t is not science. It’s spin. – Wall Street Journal
When broken down further, Clinton’s negatives among female voters are vast. Among working women — a target of Clinton’s campaign — 59 percent find her unfavorable. Among white and Hispanic women the numbers are just as bad, with 65 percent unfavorable to 56 percent. The real kicker is that she has a 58 percent unfavorable rating among women younger than 55, a demographic she is supposed to have a monopoly on. – Lifezette.com
Fresh off a big win in the West Virginia primary, Sen. Bernard Sanders’ campaign said Wednesday the Democratic Party would be courting “disaster” if it nominates Hillary Clinton as its presidential nominee.
In a fundraising email to supporters, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver cited recent polls showing the Vermont senator performing better against Republican Donald Trump in general election match-ups. Recent surveys have shown Mrs. Clinton virtually tied with Mr. Trump in the key battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. – Washington Times
On Tuesday, Clinton lost the West Virginia primary to 74-year-old socialist Bernie Sanders 51% to 36%.
That’s a stark contrast to 2008, when she trounced Barack Obama, 66.9% to 25.7% (John Edwards received 7.3%).
But perhaps what’s more shocking is the raw vote total.
In 2008, she received 240,890 votes. Yesterday, Clinton netted 84,176 votes, according to NBC — a 65% decline.
Other numbers show how the American landscape has shifted under Clinton’s feet.
According to data obtained at the polls yesterday, 33% of Democrats say they will vote for Donald Trump in November. Only 44% of Dems say they’ll vote Clinton. Twenty-one percent say they’ll support neither. – The American Mirror
Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users. – Gizmodo.co,
A new Quinnipiac poll tells the inconvenient truth. Trump and Hillary Clinton are tied in each of the three key swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.
The breakdown in Florida reveals how truly close the race is. As Politico puts it, Clinton has a 13-point advantage among women, 48 percent to 35 percent, while Trump’s lead among men is also 13 points, 49 percent to 36 percent. Each gets 39 percent of independent voters, while Trump wins big among whites, and Clinton wins big among nonwhites. The candidates have identical net negative approvals of minus 20 points, 37 percent to 57 percent. – New York Post
“’Cause I don’t have no use
For what you loosely call the truth” – Tina Turner
Greenlight a Vet
Folds of Honor
Memorial Day – May 30, 2016
But Warren is irresistible. She hits Trump where he lives. Trump has no choice but to hit back.
Mike must have missed the two or three Twitter-strokes she had about Trump before he finally acknowledged her existence.
Anomymous to quote your favorite candidate: “women like it when you treat them like shit.” Or “there has to be some kind of punishment for women who have an abortion.” what about the men..”no they should not be punished.”
What is wrong with you? Go the therapy and get a little self respect. No man ever would vote for someone who would make the same comments as this idiot has about women. And what about the very creepy thing he’s said about his own daughter. the guy should be in jail, not trying for the White House. And get over the Clinton thing, it’s not any ones business how the Clinton’s conduct their marriage. No one can tell you how to live with your spouse. He is the one using the woman card!