We Were Promised Punch & Pie

No Fleetwood Mac for you!

Well, that didn’t take long.

A couple of weeks ago, champagne corks were popping as we were duly instructed to celebrate shamelessly over Trump’s effective nomination. Republicans in disarray! Congressional rats deserting the ship! Better confirm that moderate Justice now, cuz Hillary’s gonna appoint Raul Castro soon as she gets back from the Inaugural!

And then the post-nomination national polls started coming out. Whoops!

We still consider national polls next to worthless, but they do have a value in getting folks to shut the fuck up.

To be sure, early electoral-vote guesses show Hillary with a profoundly comfy lead over Trump (and Bernie with a profoundly comfier one). But it’s too early for actual state numbers — especially trends of actual state numbers — so meaningless national numbers are all we have until the primary smoke clears.

And — right on cue — we’re being told to ignore them, just like we were told to ignore early Trump polling, until we were told we shouldn’t have ignored early Trump polling, and the people who told us said they wouldn’t make that mistake again. At least that week.

Rather than recount the Rationalizations du Jour, let’s look at an interesting pair of numbers from Gallup: Donald Trump is viewed unfavorably by 60 percent of American adults. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, only counts 55 percent of adults who hate her guts.

Not exactly the recipe for a high-turnout election. And, so far, Trump voters have shown themselves to be a passionate lot, while Hillary voters have proven she can beat a European Democratic Socialist among adults over 35.

In other words: We hope you didn’t break out the good champagne. You might still need it this fall to drown your sorrows.

nojo
1:53 am • Saturday • May 21, 2016
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10 Comments

¡Andrew!

10:48 am • Sunday • May 22, 2016

Grab the Valium:

Clinton’s Lead Over Trump Shrinks to 3 Points

Democratic voters are severely underestimating how much people completely freaking loathe the Clintons, yet they’re so sure she’s the electable one. Meanwhile, her once 11 point lead has crashed into the margin of error. Face it, she’s box office poison.

nojo

12:40 pm • Sunday • May 22, 2016

@¡Andrew!: That’s just the Republicans consolidating behind Trump, Hillary will do fine after Bernie drops out, the polls are skewed, it’s Bernie’s fault if Hillary loses.

In case you’ve missed the past two weeks. Keep calm. Listen to authority. Trust the system.

2:57 pm • Sunday • May 22, 2016

Oooh! Josh at TPM has a new one today: Trump isn’t that close to Hillary, since technically she’s still fighting off Bernie.

I like Josh. A lot. But he’s really big on consolidating behind the Establishment, and he’s shown little if any awareness about how poor a campaigner Hillary is. And, well, he’s now on the verge of Blaming Bernie for Hillary’s weakness.

I’ve seen umpteen Technocrat Democrats in my adult life, and three who were inspiring at the time. Carter, Clinton and Obama won. The rest failed. Hillary is Al Gore For Our Time.

blogenfreude

7:08 pm • Tuesday • May 24, 2016

@nojo: I am going to ignore a lot of things in the runup to this election. A lot.

SanFranLefty

5:38 pm • Saturday • May 28, 2016

@nojo: Were you in London recently?

Someone has been driving a giant hamster around London today

5:59 pm • Saturday • May 28, 2016

@SanFranLefty: It’s my cameo for the new Sherlock episode “The Giant Hamster of Sumatra”. They promised me it wouldn’t leak.

JNOV

3:45 pm • Thursday • June 2, 2016

@nojo: Hey – what’s this?
GOOGLE TOLD US
NOT TO CALL THIS
“NOT THE MSNBC AD”