Jordan Klepper Asks Mississippi Trump Supporters About Brett Kavanaugh's Sexual Assault Allegations

I think the hype about Kavanaugh / Ford helping the GOP enthusiasm is noise

Two days ago 538 showed very little if any movement to the GOP in house races and a slight shift in the Senate race but mostly because of some polling in ND where we were going to lose anyways. Now that Kavanaugh has been confirmed, if anything there will probably be a shift in our favor.

Snip:

From a 35,000-foot view, the story in the generic ballot numbers is largely one of stability.1 If you want to be more precise, however, the trend in the generic ballot now depends on what point in time you’re comparing against. The GOP’s current deficit on the generic ballot, 8.0 percentage points, is a bit worse than it was before Kavanaugh was nominated, when it was 7.4 percentage points. It’s slightly better than it was when Ford’s name was disclosed, however, when it was 9.1 percentage points, or since just before last week’s hearings, when it was 8.6 percentage points.

Link: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-kavanaugh-helping-republicans-midterm-chances/

Trump's political base is weaker than it seems, our new study finds - Washington Post

Snip:

Here’s how we did our research:

During the first two weeks of July, we fielded a nationally representative survey of 1,379 likely voters. Conducted online and on the phone by the National Opinion Research Center, we included only respondents who reported a high likelihood of voting in this year’s midterms. The survey was funded by Cornell’s Center for the Study of Inequality.

In our survey, Trump’s approval rating was 85 percent among Republicans. That’s consistent with other polls. On the surface, the president’s support among his fellow Republicans is overwhelming.

But the key to our analysis was to divide Republicans into three groups: those who say they identify strongly with the Republican Party; those who identify as Republicans but not strongly; and those who call themselves independents but say they lean toward the Republican Party. These distinctions, often obscured in media coverage, are important because research shows that the strength of a voter’s partisan identity has an important effect on their political attitudes.

Among strong Republicans, Trump’s overall approval rating is 93 percent, with 78 percent “strongly” approving of the president. The problem for Trump, however, is that these voters make up less than half of the Republican electorate — and 18 percent of likely voters.

Among the larger number of Republicans who identify less strongly with their party, Trump is much less popular. For example, Trump’s overall approval rating among not-so-strong Republicans is 72 percent, with 38 percent saying they strongly approve. Thirty-four percent say they only “somewhat” approve of Trump. Those numbers are similar among independent-leaning Republicans.

More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/08/07/trumps-base-is-weaker-than-it-seems-our-new-study-finds/?utm_term=.2ef485a5c305



Adding up Trump's Strongly Approve in this chart (Republicans to Dems) = 184
Adding up Trump's Strongly Disapprove in this chart (Republicans to Dems) = 296

Democrats have been over performing in special elections by 8%

Any reason that trend would not carry over to the House and Senate in Nov? I guess the biggest obstacle is most of the upcoming races are against incumbents.

538 Republicans Really Could Lose That Tennessee Senate Seat

The Senate race in Tennessee between former Gov. Phil Bredesen and Rep. Marsha Blackburn has flown largely under the radar this year. It’s no wonder, given all the hype about turning Texas blue and how Democratic senators in red states might be imperiled by their Kavanaugh confirmation votes. But Tennessee could be one of the pivotal contests come November.

FiveThirtyEight’s model is slightly split on the race. The polls-only version says the race is a toss-up, but when you factor in the fundamentals — including fundraising and the political climate of the state — the race leans toward Blackburn. My boss, Nate Silver, wrote about this funny little split from the model’s vantage and included lots of juicy historical data. (Is there any other kind??)

But day to day, there’s also a visible strategic difference between the two campaigns. Bredesen, an avowed centrist in the old Southern Democrat tradition, is trying to keep things local and low key — no big-name endorsements, please, unless they’re from Republicans. (Tennessee’s outgoing Republican Sen. Bob Corker all but endorsed Bredesen: “I think he’s got real appeal — I don’t think it, I know it.”) Blackburn, meanwhile, is running a very 2018 game, hoping her fealty to the Trump agenda will earn her votes in a state that the president won with nearly 61 percent of the vote. While the race might be undercovered nationally, it’s one of the most important for partisans, holding outsized power to tip the balance of the Senate. So, best for us to get to know the two principals.

More:https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/republicans-really-could-lose-that-tennessee-senate-seat/

Trump Repeatedly Wrong on Ford's Testimony - Factcheck.org

By Eugene Kiely, Robert Farley and Lori Robertson

Posted on October 4, 2018

Speaking to supporters in Mississippi, President Donald Trump made a series of false statements about Christine Blasey Ford’s sworn testimony about an alleged sexual assault.

Ford told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her when the two were in high school 36 years ago. In mocking Ford’s memory of the event, the president wrongly quoted her as saying, “I had one beer, that’s the only thing I remember.” But Ford provided many details of the alleged attack.

Specifically, Trump falsely claimed that, during her Sept. 27 testimony, Ford did not know what year the alleged attack occurred (she said the summer of 1982), whether the alleged attack happened upstairs or downstairs (she said in a bedroom upstairs) and the neighborhood where it occurred (she said in the Bethesda area).

Trump’s remarks came at a Make America Great Again rally in Southaven, Mississippi. The president accused the Democrats of “trying to destroy Judge Kavanaugh since the very first second he was announced,” and then he went on to make a series of false claims about Kavanaugh’s accuser.


Link: https://www.factcheck.org/2018/10/trump-repeatedly-wrong-on-fords-testimony/

If Brett Kavanaugh makes it through, women's anger will be unstoppable Suzanne Moore

Do you want to be arrested?” the cop asks Amy Schumer. “Yes” she says simply. She was one of the 302 women held after protesting at a Senate office building against the likely confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the US supreme court. They were arrested for “unlawfully demonstrating”. One of the chants in the crowd was: “This is what democracy looks like.” Indeed, this is what democracy looks like when trust in its institutions has been shattered and civil disobedience appears to be the only option. Women’s silence explodes into anger. Anger and disbelief. What does it take to be listened to many asked, after Dr Christine Blasey Ford, the “perfect victim”, gave her testimony in what was a job interview, not a trial.

What does it take to be believed?

The FBI did not believe it needed to speak to her again. It produced a 1,000-page report and senators had an hour to read it. Republicans are now reassured there was no hint of sexual misconduct. Indeed Kavanaugh got to write his own op-ed in the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, where he self-servingly made his case again. He may have been too emotional he says. He may have “said a few things I should not have said. I hope everyone can understand that I was there as a son, husband and dad”. Yes we understand very well, us daughters, wives and mothers. We understand now exactly who is allowed to be emotional and who isn’t.


We understand that it is entirely permissible these days for the president of America to parade his disrespect at rallies, to mock Ford’s testimony, to insult female reporters as a row of silent men stand behind him. As the US mid-term elections approach, he is mobilising his base once more. It’s a difficult and scary time to be a young man in America, he has told us. It is indeed difficult and scary to be accused of sexual assault. He should know.

More: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/05/trump-assault-abortion-kavanaugh-women-voices-bodies

Newsweek: REPUBLICANS JUST LOST WOMEN FOR GOOD OPINION

When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, he reportedly told an aide that the Democratic Party had “lost the South for a generation.”

On September 27, in a daylong, nationally televised hearing on whether accused sexual abuser Brett Kavanaugh should be put on the Supreme Court of the United States, the Republicans lost the women. But a generation will look like a short sentence and a region like the South a small setback in comparison to 52 percent of the voters in every congressional district who watched in horror and are now prepared to turn the Republicans out of office over it.

At the insistence of the Republican leadership, there was no FBI investigation. Professor Christine Blasey Ford agreed to testify and answer questions. Once she started to talk it was clear she didn't need that lie detector—we know truth when we see it. Kavanaugh then sealed his own doom. His carefully-cultivated veneer of geniality was gone, replaced by a snarling, entitled bully whom we could easily picture doing precisely what Ford described, and bragging about it in the yearbook too.

Yet the all-white, all-male Republican Senators still did not seem to understand their mistake. Apparently egged on by Kavanaugh’s angry outbursts, they began trying to outdo each other with shouted indignation. They shoved aside their prop, a sex-crimes prosecutor brought in to do the dirty work of discrediting Ford. She failed at that job, and they didn’t need her anymore.

More: https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-just-lost-women-good-opinion-1143284?spJobID=1111478194

Can you imagine if Obama had....

Can you imagine if Obama had won his election getting 3 million less votes than McCain, was caught saying he can grab women by the pussy, was married to a woman who had posed naked in lesbian photo shoots who was an immigrant from another country and the Democrats had gone nuclear like Republicans did so Dems would only need a majority and not 60 votes to get a Dem onto the Supreme Court. Then he put on an ultra left wing pick who screamed that the GOP was out to get him who had several sexual assault allegations and claimed his talk about (just one of many examples) devil's triangles in college was about a drinking game and not a threesome (perjury). Not to mention he or she would probably tip the balance of the Supreme Court for as long as 40 years. Then Obama went out and said "Men are the real victims" and mocked the woman who was making the accusations against his pick? Here are a few other dandy's and the list is far, far, far longer than this: Had used his foundation to steel from children's charities, lied about his income taxes and wealth (his rich daddy gave him 400 million and bailed him out numerous times from bankruptcies), had a good chunk of his cabinet indicted and found guilty, praised Putin and Kim Jong Un and attacked the FBI and CIA. Try to fathom that. Really put the image in your brain of Obama having done all this and what the reaction would be right now.

Republicans would be ready to NUKE the Supreme Court right now!

Screams as Kavanaugh is confirmed

Not just one or two screams. This is pretty powerful:

https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1048661252426407936