BloggeRhythms

The NYPD has made rapid progress in identifying a suspect in the tragic bombing, tweeting this morning: “28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami was sought by authorities. He is a naturalized citizen from Afghanistan.” At this point, little else is known for certain.

As for the rest of the news, the upcoming election continues to attract coverage.

According to today’s USC Dornsife/LA Times Presidential Election Daybreak Poll, Trump continues to gain. He’s now at 47.8%, while his rival stands at 41.1%, a 6.7% margin for him.

While the polls show mathematical probabilities of election, they’re often incorrect for a variety of reasons. However, there are other, often subtle, indicators of potential outcomes.

In that regard, an article this morning by Shane Goldmacher @politico.com/story, illustrates that much like the Republican presidential campaign, new and dramatically different paradigms are evident in Trump’s fundraising results to date.  

“All told, Trump is approaching, and has possibly already passed, $100 million from donors who have given less than $200, according to an analysis of available Federal Election Commission filings, the campaign’s public statements and people familiar with his fundraising operation. It is a threshold no previous Republican has ever achieved in a single campaign. And Trump has done so less than three months after signing his first email solicitation for donors on June 21 — a staggering speed to collect such a vast sum.” 

A senior Republican operative who has worked closely with the campaign’s small-dollar fundraising operation said: “I’ve never seen anything like this. He’s the Republican Obama in terms of online fundraising.” 

As far as the statistics are concerned: “Clinton counted 2.3 million donors as of the end of August, the result of decades of campaigning, a previous presidential bid and allies who painstakingly built her an email file of supporters even before she formally announced her second run. But Trump had zoomed to 2.1 million donors in the last three months alone, his campaign has said.” 

Further evidence of Trump’s rising popularity can be seen in an article from Anthony Salvanto @cbsnews.com, who writes: “The race across the combined battlegrounds is as tight as can be, tied 42 percent to 42 percent. 

“Clinton was up one point last week, and was up two points back on Labor Day weekend. Voters in these states are still looking for change, while the partisan divide remains particularly deep.” 

Here again, equally or perhaps even more important, are the factors underlying the current poll results.  

“Fifty-five percent of battleground voters want to see “big changes” in the nation’s politics and economy in the next few years. Forty-three percent want “some changes” and only 2 percent think things are fine and not in need of much change. Trump leads by a wide margin on being trusted to change Washington: Forty-seven percent trust Trump to do it, 20 percent trust that Clinton can do it. Nine percent of independents trust Clinton can change Washington. Only 47 percent of Democrats trust Clinton to change Washington. A similar 41 percent of Democrats trust neither candidate to do it.” 

Whereas the leading issue remains the economy, Mr. Salvanto reports: “This is over other factors such as availability of jobs, globalization, and technological changes. Asked who they think has gained since the last recession, voters say banks (64 percent say so) and large businesses. Who has lost? Blue-collar workers, and – a majority 52 percent - say “people like me.” 

“Fifty-five percent say the economy’s in bad shape. The reason, on the whole, is that many voters don’t feel the gains are going to them, specifically, nor that opportunity is available for all. 

“Sixty percent outright call the economy unfairly “rigged” in that only “certain people” get advantages that others don’t. Only one third think it works fairly to reward hard work. In response to reports that things are better, 42 percent say “maybe for some people, but not for people like me.” 

Thus, regardless of the specific reason for dissatisfaction with the economy’s current status, a majority desire change to be made which can only be accomplished by a change in national leadership.  

And then, while most of the nation’s electorate hopes for an economic turnaround, current foreign policy took another major blow yesterday, according to AFP @yahoo.com/news. 

“Iran's supreme leader said the Islamic republic must stand strong against Washington on the region's conflicts, in an address Sunday to commanders of the elite Republican Guards force. 

"The Americans insist we negotiate with them on regional issues, especially on Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in the speech published on his official website. 

"What is their main goal for requesting these talks? They have no aim but to prevent the presence in the region of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the main factor of America's failures," said Khamenei. 

“Major generals Mohammad Ali Jafari, the Revolutionary Guards chief, and Qassem Suleimani, head of its foreign operations wing, the Quds Force, were among hundreds of members who attended the speech. 

“Khamenei, whose country has not had diplomatic relations with Washington since 1980, stressed that military power and intimidation were the most effective means to keep foreign threats at bay. 

"In past years, some officials have said the removal of military threat and war were due to certain measures, but it's not true," he said. 

"The sole factor of removing military threats has been and will remain military and defence power and the creation of fear in the enemy." 

So, two top issues of voter concern demonstrate extremely poor performance to date by the current administration. Both the economy and foreign policy present significant hurdles for any Democrat  to overcome among the electorate. Which may be why the following article appeared this morning and also serves as today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife.  

Quite surprising because it came so early, nonetheless, it’s a referendum on why Bill’s wife lost the election. 

Written by Howard Fineman, Jason Linkins and  Lauren Weber, Editors @huffingtonpost.com, the title is: “Why Hillary Lost: A Premature Obit”

“If Donald Trump does sack the fortress, no one who lost the battle will want to admit it was Hillary Clinton’s fault. It will have had nothing to do with, say, “transparency” or calling bearded villagers “deplorables” or the Iraq War vote or the simple fact that middle-of-the-road Clintonism ran out of gas as a public philosophy. 

“No, other individuals, groups and forces will have to be blamed. In fact, they already are, pre-emptively. If Trump wins, we’re all going to be too busy moving to Canada to read the postmortems (or write them), so we offer them to you now:  

1-THE MEDIA: “Everyone’s piñata. Trump will blame the media. Gary Johnson will blame the media. Jill Stein will blame the media. (The media will ask, “Wait, which one was Jill Stein?”)

2- THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING: Actually, they arrived long ago and got into her phone.

3- MILLENNIALS: Ugh. F**cking idealists, right?

4- BERNIE SANDERS: Remember when people worried that running unopposed in the primary would hurt Clinton? It's going to be an endless wail about how Sanders should have withdrawn sooner.

5- BILL CLINTON:  You know how this will go down: Best campaigner of all time and he couldn’t close the sale. He lost his mojo.

6- SEXISTS: Ugh. F**cking glass ceiling.

7- OBAMA PEOPLE:  If they could delete all of David Axelrod's tweets, they would.

8- JAMES COMEY: He might as well have indicted her for real, like he did in the court of public opinion. Extremely careless.

9- DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ AND THE DNC: Her Soviet-style approach to boosting Clinton was something that Hillary’s campaign was happy to countenance. But the former DNC chair should have left room for dissent rather than let it bottle up.”

In summation, the writers' list of errors says it all quite accurately and succinctly, despite the unneeded vulgarity's. And whereas the prediction of quite possible loss is certainly valid, the ongoing question needs asking once more: Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Jerry Brown, and Starbucks chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz; are you guys reading this?     

That's it for today folks.

  

Adios