It seems like different articles are saying different things about the
polls. Every article I've read says that Clinton is ahead, although not by a
huge amount. Her lead did increase, however, after the video with Billy Bush
was released. The Clinton surrogates, however, do keep saying that Trump
might win. They have a reason for doing that. It is to scare people who are
thinking about not voting for her. But polls reflect what the pollsters have
writtn into the questions and subjective interpretations of statistics. Of
course, there's voter intimidation, unreliable machines, and the fact that
Republicans have stolen the Ohio vote twice before. Who knows?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Frank Ventura
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2016 5:29 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Outrageous False Trump-Clinton Equivalencies
Dominate Corporate Media and Are Distorting the Election
Trump is in a very good position to win. Here are a few ways:
a. He can win straight out. He is slightly ahead in national polls but the
lead is within the margin of error.
b. He doesn't have to beat Clinton but has to get close in at least one
swing state that is located within a right leaning federal court district.
For Trump this scenario is like playing hand grenades. He doesn't have to
hit Clinton but has to come close enough to blow her up. In a close race he
can challenge the results in any swing state and any right leaning federal
court will rule in his favor. With a 4 to 4 split supreme court the decision
will stand and he will take the oval office. This is why the republicans in
the Senate blocked a supreme court nomination. This strategy didn't work for
the Republicans in 2008 and 2012 because Obama was too far in the lead to
have a smaller enough margin of victory to get a court challenge.
c. This is the scenario that has gotten very little airplay. If Clinton and
Trump split the election with the exact number of electoral votes each the
law (constitution) requires Congress to vote to decide the president. With a
Republican Congress as it is now Trump will take the Oval Office.
So as you can see, as it stands now Trump has about a 75 percent chance of
ultimately winning.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of S. Kashdan
Sent: Wednesday, November 2, 2016 10:47 AM
To: Blind Democracy List <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Outrageous False Trump-Clinton Equivalencies
Dominate Corporate Media and Are Distorting the Election
Outrageous False Trump-Clinton Equivalencies Dominate Corporate Media and
Are Distorting the Election
By Steven Rosenfeld [1]
AlterNet [2], November 1, 2016
http://www.alternet.org/print/election-2016/outrageous-false-trump-clinton-e
quivalencies-dominate-corporate-media-and-are
As national polls released Tuesday show a tightening or virtually tied
presidential race, voters are being deluged with new revelations about
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that are far from equivalent measures of
their characters and fitness for office.
On the Democratic side, the solo and apparently illegal decision by FBI
Director James Comey to alert Congress that the agency wants to examine
newly discovered emails from the ex-secretary of state has become a
gut-punch to a campaign that was rising in the polls. There is no recent
precedent for Comey's action, which violates FBI rules of not commenting on
investigations and interfering in elections. Yet Comey's letter to Congress
last Friday has cut into voter enthusiasm for Clinton, polls released
Tuesday found [3], even though it is long on innuendo and short on
substance.
On the Republican side, in contrast, a string of new evidence-based
revelations about Trump this week reinforce a lifelong pattern of
self-centered and deviant behavior that questions his fitness for any public
office. There's his refusal to pay a top campaign consultant nearly
three-quarters of a million dollars owed, just as Trump didn't pay hundreds
of contractors when building his casinos. There's Trump using now-banned
tax-avoidance tactics to evade tens of millions of dollars in federal taxes,
basically claiming his investors' losses--other people's money--as his own.
There is Trump destroying emails and other legal records over decades of
litigation, even as he hits Clinton for erasing personal emails. And most
insidiously, there is a series of reports saying he has longstanding links
to Russia's government, which is seen as overtly and covertly helping
Trump's
presidential campaign.
The biggest double standard is that the FBI has been investigating links
between Trump and Russia--apparently going beyond this year's hack into
Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails. Yet astoundingly, Comey has
said he did not want [4] to tell Congress about that probe on the eve of an
election, even though it raises serious national security questions; namely,
what are Trump's loyalties and debts to his Russian backers?
Let's go through these false equivalencies and loose ends.
1. The 'Comey Effect' tightens race, cuts enthusiasm for Clinton. The
bombshell about the investigation broke last Friday, just before the latest
Washington Post/ABC News tracking poll was conducted. That poll, whose
results were released Tuesday, found [3] Trump with a one-point lead (46 to
45 percent), which is a statistical tie. More insidious was its finding that
Clinton's base suffered a 10-point drop in supporters who are "very
enthusiastic." While no single poll can be seen as definitive--especially
when 25 million people have already voted nationally--the unambiguous
takeaway is that Comey's disclosure has impacted the race and hurt a
presidential frontrunner's campaign.
It's important to note that just because the FBI is examining emails from
Clinton found on former congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop, there is no
indication the agency will announce anything before Election Day. It's very
likely the FBI has already seen most of these emails, as it has examined the
computers of Weiner's estranged wife, Huma Abedin, who is a top Clinton
aide. Should the FBI find previously unseen emails, there's no indication
that any would contain classified material and not personal banter.
Nonetheless, this new investigation is letting Republicans talk about
something other than [5] Trump, which is helping them.
2. There is an FBI investigation of Trump's ties to Russia. There is,
without dispute, an FBI investigation into Trump's ties to Russia. The
question is not if one exists, but what is its scope? Major newspapers such
as the New York Times have reported [6] the FBI is looking into ties between
top Trump advisers and Russian financial interests, as well as Russian-led
hacking into Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails. Other breaking
news reports this week have pointed to potentially deeper ties. On Monday,
Slate.com published a lengthy report [7] based on an investigation by
computer scientists who traced a server that was sending messages between
Trump's offices and Russia, although they could not tell what its purpose
was. Also Monday, MotherJones.com's David Corn wrote a report [8] quoting
notes an ex-spy from a U.S. ally gave the FBI about how Russia has for years
"tried to co-opt and assist Trump."
In response to MoJo's story, Matthew Miller, a former Department of Justice
spokesman, tweeted [9], "No other conclusion can be drawn from this story
but that the FBI is officially investigating Trump for coordination with
Moscow." That is not a far-fetched conclusion, considering that Paul
Manafort, Trump's ex-campaign manager, was forced to resign last summer over
reports he was paid millions in cash while working for pro-Russia candidates
in Ukraine.
But let's be clear: There is no equivalency between these probes. On the
campaign trail, Trump has called Clinton's use of a private email server,
"the biggest scandal since Watergate." That is another huge distortion, as
the Watergate scandal involved a presidential conspiracy to target enemies,
spy on them, steal their private files, and cover it up. If anything, it is
Trump's weird, unexplained links to Russia, and Comey's one-sided decision
to talk about Clinton and not Trump, that may be the biggest presidential
campaign scandal since Watergate.
3. While Trump assails Clinton over emails, he's destroyed records defying
court orders. Also Monday, Newsweek published a report [10] by Kurt
Eichenwald tracing Trump's decades-long record of destroying and hiding
"thousands" of emails, records and other documents in ongoing lawsuits.
"Over the course of decades, Donald Trump's companies have systematically
destroyed or hidden thousands of emails, digital records and paper documents
demanded in official proceedings, often in defiance of court orders," the
report [11] begins. "These tactics--exposed by a Newsweek review of
thousands of pages of court filings, judicial orders and affidavits from an
array of court cases--have enraged judges, prosecutors, opposing lawyers and
the many ordinary citizens entangled in litigation with Trump. In each
instance, Trump and entities he controlled also erected numerous hurdles
that made lawsuits drag on for years, forcing courtroom opponents to spend
huge sums of money in legal fees as they struggled--sometimes in vain--to
obtain records."
Trump's brazen hypocrisy is nothing new. But the false equivalency here is
that Clinton has said the 30,000 emails her legal team erased were personal,
whereas Trump's missing document trail was business-related and connected to
disputes resulting in litigation.
4. More evidence of 'crooked Donald,' the boss who doesn't pay his bills or
taxes. There was more evidence as the week began that Trump's word cannot be
trusted, adding to his long track record of doing whatever is best for him.
It's been widely reported that Trump has stiffed [12] hundreds of small
businesses that built his resorts, pushing many into bankruptcy or financial
hardship. Now a top Republican pollster hired by the campaign is feeling the
same pain, according to the Washington Post.
"The Trump campaign's latest Federal Election Commission report shows that
it is disputing nearly $767,000 that Fabrizio's firm says it is still owed,"
the Post reported [13] Monday. "Fabrizio was an ally of former campaign
chairman Paul Manafort, who persuaded a skeptical Trump in the spring that
he needed a professional pollster. The abrupt departure of Manafort in
August and Trump's hiring of pollster Kellyanne Conway to be his campaign
manager raised questions about whether Fabrizio would stay on. There have
also been multiple reports that Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner,
have rejected Fabrizio's advice."
This pattern of doing whatever is best for Trump at everyone else's expense
was also displayed in a New York Times report [14] Tuesday, which described
how Trump used "a tax avoidance measure so legally dubious his own lawyers
advised him that the Internal Revenue Service would most likely declare it
improper if he was audited. Thanks to this one maneuver, which was later
outlawed by Congress, Mr. Trump potentially escaped paying tens of millions
of dollars in federal personal income taxes."
Simply said, Trump claimed the losses his investors suffered in a New Jersey
casino project as his own--meaning he used other people's money to avoid
paying taxes. He disguised that move by giving his banks and investors
shares in a worthless casino partnership. That covered up that he wasn't
relieved of that debt (which is taxable) by his investors. "He deducted
someone else's losses," a former congressional tax expert told [14] the
Times. "He is double-dipping big time."
False Equivalencies, Loose Ends
These new disclosures about Trump--the FBI investigating his ties with
Russia; his long record of destroying legal documents related to ongoing
lawsuits; not paying in full for agreed-upon services; not paying tens of
millions in income taxes--cannot be compared in any substantive way to
whatever mistakes Clinton made while using a private email server as
secretary of state.
And yet, because FBI director Comey told Congress he wants to look at some
more Clinton emails found in a related case, a pall has been cast on her
campaign, and its effect is being seen in the latest polls in the form of
declining voter enthusiasm and tightening presidential and Senate races.
Meanwhile, Comey doesn't think he needs to say anything [4] to Congress
about the FBI investigation into the ties between Trump and the Russian
government because it might unduly affect the election's outcome. On
Tuesday, Clinton's campaign manager, Robbie Mook, accused [15] Comey of a
"double standard," but that is an understatement.
It's worth pondering the concluding thoughts in Eichenwald's Newsweek
investigation about Trump's real-life behavior. Voters who are having second
thoughts about Clinton because of the FBI director's one-sided intrusion
into the campaign's finale need to be clear-eyed if they don't vote for her.
"This review of Trump's many decades of abusing the judicial system,
ignoring judges, disregarding rules, destroying documents and lying about it
is not simply a sordid history lesson," Eichenwald wrote. "Rather, it helps
explain his behavior since he declared his candidacy. He promised to turn
over his tax returns and his health records--just as he promised to comply
with document discovery requirements in so many lawsuits--then reneged. As a
result, he has left a sparse evidentiary trail that can be used to assess
his wealth, his qualifications for the presidency or even his fitness.
Should voters choose him to be the next U.S. president, he will enter the
Oval Office as a mystery, a man who has repeatedly flouted the rules. He has
solemnly told the country to trust him while refusing to produce any records
to prove whether he speaks the truth or has utter contempt for it."
Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including
America's retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and
elections. He is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting"
(AlterNet Books, 2008).
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/outrageous-false-trump-clinton-equival
encies-dominate-corporate-media-and-are
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-rosenfeld
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/01/post-abc-tracking-
poll-clinton-falls-behind-trump-in-enthusiasm-but-has-edge-in-early-voting/?
tid=pm_politics_pop_b
[4]
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/31/fbis-comey-opposed-naming-russians-citing-ele
ction-timing-source.html
[5]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clintons-email-is-a-conversation-sta
rter-for-republicans-in-tight-races/2016/11/01/c300454a-a033-11e6-8832-23a00
7c77bb4_story.html
[6]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-tru
mp.html?ref=politics&_r=0
[7]
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_se
rver_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
[8]
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-allegi
ng-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump
[9] https://twitter.com/matthewamiller/status/793250102714437632
[10]
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/11/11/donald-trump-companies-destroyed-emails-d
ocuments-515120.html
[11]
http://http://www.newsweek.com/2016/11/11/donald-trump-companies-destroyed-e
mails-documents-515120.html
[12]
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/09/donald-trum
p-unpaid-bills-republican-president-laswuits/85297274/
[13]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/10/31/donald-trump
-is-refusing-to-pay-his-campaign-pollster-nearly-three-quarters-of-a-million
-dollars/?postshare=7601477933633852&tid=ss_tw
[14]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/donald-trump-tax.html?hp&a
ction=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=fir
st-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
[15]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/new-clinton-ad-revisits-famous-daisy
-ad-as-democrats-try-to-move-past-damaging-fbi-news/2016/10/31/294a9be0-9f6f
-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html
[16] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Outrageous False ;
Trump-Clinton Equivalencies Dominate Corporate Media and Are Distorting the
Election
[17] http://www.alternet.org/
[18] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
