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

BAD NEWS FOR TRUMP
Participants in the Sunday morning talk shows, including Republicans, all pretty much agreed today that Trump is going to lose. The only exceptions to this consensus are members of the Trump campaign. The conversation has thus shifted to the questions of “will the red team be able to hold the Senate and/or the House.” The odds now favor a Democratic Senate but the Republicans should be able to hold the House. Trump himself has for the last few days made statements which include the phrase, “if I lose”, indicating that he is preparing himself for a loss. He still holds out hope for a “Brexit” type surprise in the voting, where the polls, the pundits and even the bookmakers were wrong. This is not a good analogy because the vote on Brexit was supposed to be close – not anywhere near the 10 to 12 point deficit his campaign now faces. Many of Trump’s supporters, as enthusiastic as they once were, are beginning to face reality. The odds of a Hillary win are now between 80 and 90 percent on various betting sites in the U.S. and the U.K. Nate Silver’s website, Fivethirtyeight.com, considered the gold standard of political predicting, has the probability of Hillary winning at 87.4 percent. As it looks now, it’s going to take an October surprise of biblical proportions to change things in his favor.

TRUMP GIVES GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
On Saturday, The Donald made a speech in Gettysburg, Pa. which was billed as a policy speech about his first 100 days in office. But before getting to the policy part, he brought up the matter of all the women accusing him of sexual misconduct, threatening or promising to sue them after the election. This is obviously an idle threat. It would be very unseemly to have a president elect suing a whole bunch of women over allegations of events that happened 10 or 20 years ago. In the likely even that Trump loses, it would be pointless to sue them because he has no evidence that they lied, and they have corroborating witnesses – friends, relatives and co-workers, who the supposed victims told of the events at the time they occurred. As for the rest of the speech, there were some good things in there such as breaking up monopolies, including the proposed AT&T-Time Warner-CNN merger. He also proposed a mandatory 2-year prison term for people who are caught illegally entering this country for the second time. It might have been a good speech except for the part about suing his accusers, which is all that anyone will remember about it. Also, the imagery of Trump as Lincoln doesn’t really fit, not only because Lincoln, unlike Trump, emerged from poor circumstances but also because he was presiding over a war against the rebelling southern states, who are now the core of the Republican Party. There are probably still some folks in Dixie who don’t really want to be reminded of the Battle of Gettysburg which, along with the concurrent fall of Vicksburg, which marked the turning point of that war.

Before the speech, some smart-ass wrote the following parody of what a Trump Gettysburg address might sound like:
Four score and seven women have accused me of groping them in a certain location. Babies. It is hardly conceivable that I would proposition them, as none of them are even close to a four, or equal. Now we are engaged in a great campaign, which I will challenge, unless I win, whether or not this nation, or any nation, long endures. Especially Mexico. Fat, horrible, disgusting nation, that one. I’m going to sue Mexico for fatness, believe me. I met Hillary–Crooked Hillary!–on three battlefields of that campaign, and all the polls were wrong. Wrong! Except Rasmussen, gotta love them. We met and I loomed behind her, I stood menacingly behind her, I dominated behind her, in order that my eggshell-thin narcissistic fragility might long endure. It was totally fitting and proper, totally, that I might do this. But in a larger sense–and I mean big, big league, gigantic–we cannot loom, we cannot menace threateningly, we cannot dominate this stage. Without good hair. And sniffing, lots of sniffing. And interrupting– a lot. And gradually losing one’s entire sense of equilibrium, until one is shouting, screaming & insulting their opponent in an inevitable eruption of narcissistic rage. The world will forever note, will always remember what I say here. If they forget, I’ll remind them, constantly, until I receive the constant drip of praise & admiration that I need like life’s blood itself. It is for me to receive this praise, & for you to give it–the great task remaining before you, to give to me your last full measure of devotion. So that I will not have left my six-foot self-portrait at Doral in vain, so that I will awaken to a new birth of grandiosity, and that my ego–by my ego, for my ego–will be honored as our nation’s last President, before I become bored and engage in some vain impulsive act to cause all of us to perish from the Earth.

A LITTLE MORE BAD NEWS FOR TRUMP
The Log Cabin Republicans, the Gay Republican faction, have decided not to endorse Trump. However, they didn’t endorse Hillary either. This is the second time the group has withheld their endorsement of a Republican presidential candidate, having done so when Dubya ran for reelection in 2004. The group has been around for about 40 years and claims to represent the interests of LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer) citizens.

MELANIA DEFENDS THE DONALD
A great Late Show spoof of Melania defending Donald on his locker room talk, where she bumbles into an unfortunate endorsement.

TODAY’S STATE POLLS
In the two swing states in this batch, Hillary is ahead. Virginia has long been in the bank for her. If she wins Florida, then she should win it all. If the map stays as it is now, the Electoral Vote count will be 334 Hillary to 204 Trump, an easy Hillary win. If Trump can manage to pick off every one of the states which are close, (white with blue borders) the count will still be 273 Hillary to 265 Trump. Close but still a Hillary victory.