FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2016
Today’s Good News And Bad News
From Our Local Political Junkie We’ll Call “Cincy Dave”

ELECTION BEGINS TODAY
Well, Boys and Girls, the election has begun. Early voting began today in Minnesota, 46 days before November 8. Even better, tomorrow, 2 more states, Virginia and Vermont begin to vote. Many more states allow early voting “as soon as ballots are available” whenever that may be, but as far as we can determine, Minnesota has the earliest official date for voting. Campaigns love early voting and encourage it because once a voter casts his ballot, it is “in the bank” – they don’t have to contact him or her anymore and they can concentrate on other voters. Campaigns now have gigantic databases and know who almost every voter is, where they live and whether they are likely to vote and usually for whom they are likely to vote. This makes getting out the vote a lot easier. Workers don’t have to knock on every door, only those that might help their candidate and who have not already voted. Mail-in ballots are another matter, and some states may have already started voting that way also.

GOOD NEWS FOR TRUMP
A New York judge has rejected a request by the New York Times to unseal the Donald Trump/Ivana Trump divorce records. The judge said that doing so would “impermissibly inject itself into the political process”. That was, no doubt, exactly the point of the Times’ request. The judge was correct however, because it’s nobody’s business if Trump was an abusive and philandering husband. Besides, we knew that anyway.

TRUMP – “DON’T FACT-CHECK ME”
Trump is still working the refs in advance of Monday’s debate. He warned Lester Holt, moderator of the first debate, not to try to do any fact-checking. Either The Donald plans to lie a lot or knows he has a weak grasp of reality – probably both – but he definitely wants to be able to say anything he wants without correction. It will be interesting to see if Lester accepts Trump’s warning and lets Trump (and/or Hillary) lie with impunity.

OHIO TRUMP CAMPAIGN LEADER RESIGNS
Kathy Miller, the chair of Trump’s campaign in Mahoning County, Ohio resigned Thursday, after she made racially-charged remarks to The Guardian. On Thursday morning, Miller said that there was “no racism” before Obama. She also said “If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you.” She further charged, “You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to. You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. You had all the advantages and didn’t take advantage of it. It’s not our fault, certainly.” Miller also referred to the Black Lives Matter movement as “a stupid waste of time” and suggested lower voter turnout among blacks has to do with “the way they were raised.” It almost sounds like she set out to prove that Hillary’s comment about Trump’s “deplorables” was correct.

‘DONALD TRUMP IS NOT A PATRIOT,’ SAYS FORMER ACTING CIA CHIEF MICHAEL MORELL
Former acting CIA director and Hillary Clinton supporter Michael Morell said Thursday that he does not believe that Donald Trump is acting with the best interest of the country in mind. “He cares more about himself than anything else, including his nation,” Morell said on a conference call with reporters about Trump’s ties to Russia. “The definition of a patriot is someone who puts his nation above everything else in his life. In that regard, Donald Trump is not a patriot.”Also speaking on the call to raise the alarm about Trump’s business stakes was former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who called Trump a “gift to Putin.” “I am worried that Donald Trump, were he to win, would be the first president to have personal interests that could interfere with our country’s interest,” Albright said. “Putin could not have dreamed up a better candidate than Donald Trump.” According to Albright, Trump’s affinity for Russia helps explain why he denies that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and also why he did not meet with Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko this week during the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York. Clinton met with Poroshenko on Monday. 

CRUZ BEING PRESSURED TO ENDORSE TRUMP
Backstabbing Ted Cruz, who is running for president in 2020, is being pressured by Republicans to endorse The Donald. Cruz may come around eventually, but he won’t like it. He knows that it would be a lot easier for him to run in 2020 if Trump loses, so he is reluctant to take that step. On the other hand, he is going to burn a lot of bridges by not endorsing Trump. Also, the RNC has threatened retaliation against people like Cruz and Kasich who won’t go along with the party. A likely outcome in this tug of war is for Cruz to wait until almost the last minute, when it won’t make much difference, and then endorse. That way, he can have it both ways – He can claim he supported the party’s nominee and also help his own cause, which is for Trump to be defeated. 

TODAY’S MEANINGLESS POLLS
All polls are meaningless but some are less meaningless than others, at least in the candidate’s eyes. For example, polls in Virginia have consistently shown Hillary ahead, often by comfortable margins. Consequently, she is no longer wasting time or money there. Once a solid Republican state, Virginia has gradually transitioned to a “leans Democratic” state. This year, it also helps Hillary that her VP is the popular former governor of Virginia and current senator. Hillary also pulled resources out of Colorado because her campaign believes she will definitely win there without spending more time or money, although some say that may have been premature. You have to figure that her campaign knows what they are doing in those kind of decisions because she has a lot of staff from Obama’s two successful campaigns and the Big Dog’s successful campaigns.

— More Good News And Bad News Tomorrow —