The new Ipsos poll is the first out to reflect the way Kamala humiliated Trump in the debate— and the Taylor Swift endorsement. That poll now shows her with a 5 point lead— 47-42%. Republican pollster and strategist Frank Luntz seems to think it’s just the tip of the iceberg headed towards the SS Trumpanzee. On <> with Piers Morgan<> after the debate, Luntz said “This is not the worst debate performance I’ve seen in my career, but it’s very close to it. The conversations about people eating dogs and cats, calling the leader of Hungary one of the greatest world leaders, repeatedly missing the opportunity to focus on inflation and affordability, and the complete inability to present his point of view without completely tearing into her, into Joe Biden, into whomever was in his sights. It was a pretty negative performance, pretty pessimistic, cynical, contemptuous. And I think that this will cost him, yes. I’m trying to decide if I wanna go on record, and the answer’s yes. I think that he loses because of this debate performance.”
Even worse news for Señor T comes from Fox News, which now shows both Georgia and North Carolina moving towards Kamala and away from him. There overall forecast shows Kamala with 241 of the 270 electoral votes in the bag, while Trump has just 219. There are 78 votes in the toss up category— Arizona, Georgia (where Cornel West was just removed from the ballot), Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Trump keeps stepping into giant piles of shit that continue to chip away at his standing with voters. When was pushing his IVF lie again Tuesday, there he was infuriating part of his own base. Calling himself a “leader” on in vitro fertilization during the debate “is alienating two pillars of the Republican Party: small-government deficit hawks outraged by the idea of a sweeping new federal mandate and religious conservatives who oppose IVF as commonly practiced in the U.S… [Trump’s] embrace of IVF comes as he and other Republicans grapple with an issue that has plagued them since the fall of Roe two years ago. He has tried to pitch himself as moderate by arguing that abortion should be decided by states— leaving the procedure accessible in some of the country, and banned in other parts— while stressing his support for rape and incest exceptions, IVF and, more broadly, ‘reproductive rights.’”
Many conservatives are outraged— or at least highly skeptical— of his free IVF plan because of its potential cost to taxpayers, what it would mean for the expansion of government involvement in health care, and what they see as an implicit endorsement of practices like the disposal of embryos that they see as morally abhorrent. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, wrote the forward to a 2017 collection of essays from the Heritage Foundation that, among other things, raised concerns about IVF. He also joined earlier this year with nearly all Senate Republicans in blocking consideration of a bill to federally protect access to IVF and other fertility treatments.
The Pro-Life Action League and other anti-abortion groups are calling on Trump “to walk back this IVF funding scheme,” while the editor of National Review Online is arguing that it’s hypocritical for the party that went after the Affordable Care Act to now support additional federal health care mandates. Some conservatives liken Trump’s IVF proposal to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 contraceptive mandate, which was broadly panned by the same conservatives and repeatedly challenged in court.
…According to a person familiar with the plans, Senate Democrats plan to highlight these divisions in the coming weeks by holding another vote on legislation from Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), who had two children through IVF, that would federally protect access to fertility treatments and guarantee public and private insurance coverage.
Nearly all Senate Republicans voted to block the bill when it first came to the floor in June, arguing that it was too sweeping in its scope. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) drafted an alternative bill that would strip federal Medicaid funding from states that ban IVF services but allow restrictions on how embryos are stored, implanted and disposed, but it has yet to move forward.
…Many social conservatives see opposing the procedure as the next frontier of the “pro-life movement.” The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest and most politically powerful Protestant denomination, voted at their convention in June to oppose IVF, a move that could open the door for other denominations to follow suit.
“Listen, I’m a realist here. I know my position is so unpopular. … But what I found myself just scratching my head at was this idea that there would now be an IVF mandate required by insurers,” said Andrew Walker, a professor of Christian ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who opposes IVF and co-authored the resolution Southern Baptists voted on. “I mean, that’s basically somewhat of a facsimile from what Obama was doing with the HHS mandate. You’re going to require faith-based organizations to carry insurance that covers IVF against their conscience?”
“Even if you are for IVF, you ought to be able to say you shouldn’t force an organization to carry insurance coverage that they don’t want to carry,” he added.
Strategists from both parties estimate Trump can’t win without the support of 80 percent of white evangelicals nationally. In 2020, Biden won the second-highest percentage of white evangelicals of any Democrat of this century, behind only Obama in 2008, according to CNN exit polls— and in a close race, those votes could be the difference.
Prominent evangelical leaders have warned that despite Trump’s seeming course corrections after his recent abortion stumbles— particularly his declaration that he would vote against a Florida ballot measure that would expand access— he remains on thin ice with many rank-and-file voters as the Republican Party increasingly abandons socially conservative issues, like abortion and gay marriage. While white evangelicals have for decades been a core Republican constituency, those leaders argue there’s no guarantee that Christians will remain as engaged in politics as they have been in the past.
“Maybe he pays a political price for November,” Brown said. “It’s going to be a tight election, and even a handful of demotivated pro-lifers in key swing states can make a difference.”
Schumer plans to help that process along with the revote within the next two weeks on the IVF bill that will put all the Republicans on record again. Will Trump “lead” on this? Will he demand GOP senators back it. His own proposal is even “further left” than Duckworth’s, which only Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, among Republicans, voted for in June when it first came to the floor (and Trump said nothing about it). Though this could theoretically damage Ted Cruz and Rick Scott, neither Texas nor Florida is really in play. But Nebraska is and Republican Deb Fischer actually could lose to pro-Choice independent Dan Osborn over this.
The Orange Menace has no real positions on anything and is just a narcissistic ignorant stupid pile of crap. It’s a waste of time to slice and dice anything he says.
It’s hard to believe he is a presidential candidate and that he is even able to run after trying to overthrow the last election and democracy.
"You’re going to require faith-based organizations to carry insurance that covers IVF against their conscience?" An organization doesn't have a conscience. A concience is the little voice in an individual's head that says something is morally wrong. Any individual may find the actions of an organization immoral, but the remedy to that is to disassociate from that organization. The Constitution gives you the right to join organizations, not the privilege of exporting your morals to an organization. You might as well say, "As member of the armed forces, I object to being required to use deadly physical force as a condition of my employment." The remedy to that objection is not a pacifist army, its the individual leaving the military. But of course,…
Hey guestcrapper! You always talk about people not having epiphanies but you still haven't had the epiphany that that tells you the real reason you get censored. You just can't see the obvious reason. Is it because your narcissistic personality disorder won't let you or is it just the personal choice of a self-hating nihilist tortured by deep insecurities that cause you to constantly try to convince yourself that you are smarter and superior to everyone you encounter.
3 self-evident truths at this point:
The SS Trump hit an iceberg on Tuesday night and is visibly taking on water. It's not like it was smooth sailing for that ship before that.
Team Harris 2024 is essentially trying to replicate Team Obama 2008 and is doing a decent job of it thus far.
No one had much of a clue as to what Obama might actually do as president then, and we really don't know what Harris might do now. I'd settle for her dumping Blinken and Garland and keeping Lina Khan, but I suspect that she herself hasn't given such questions much thought yet.
Silver is still warning about the electoral counts. Even after the debate sinkhole.
I guess when one becomes dumber than shit, one loses the ability to step back and look at the big picture. The big picture is this: this shithole is now offering a more stark choice than ever (w vs. gore was fairly close) between someone who is a total disaster and someone who is remarkably unimpressive if still lucid. And it's still within the realm that the disaster can win. Voters could actually elect THAT!
How can any society auger in like this?
Naturally, since nobody seems capable of this epiphany, nobody is asking WTF went wrong. And because nobody is asking WTF went wrong, nobody i…