Clinton: Half of Trump’s supporters fit in ‘basket of deplorables’

[afleitch]

The reason why the media and many others have indulged in talking about 'e-mails' is that it acts as a welcome white noise machine. It's easier to talk about because it seems so mainstream. It deals with a professional 'misdemeanor' by a professional person. They like talking about it and her not talking about it. It's comfortable. Like a 'Choose Your Own Adventure: Woodward and Bernstein' for journalists.

Turn that noise machine down and you're faced with Trump who you can't debate on usual terms. You can't even interview on usual terms. So yes, they do end up having to 'normalise' his rhetoric and his support base because journalists must be seen to balance, at least on the surface and if not 'balance' give due air to the other side.

But sometimes the other side is dangerous and saying dangerous things. And sometimes that is all that it is. And a free press never, ever knows what to do with that when dangerous ideas become mainstream. Trump is the ultimate GOP chimera; a beast made up of all the worst, most cancerous bits of Republican rhetoric since the Gingrich era that have been hurled at the left and at minorities, and used against both Clintons and all Democrats since, sewn together and made flesh.

This is actually the chance for the centre-right to kill that cancer. For the sake of American democracy, for the sake of breaking congressional deadlock and reversing political polarisation, Trump needs to be whipped and pummelled at the polls. 'Trumpism' needs to be flayed open and publicly bleed to death, because only that way can the GOP actually start anew and halt it's rightward drift. Hell it's not even a rightward drift; it's a drift towards the dark corner of conspiracy and innuendo. And for those people, Trump is a useful idiot; a handmaiden of the 'alt-right'. He has to be bloodied at the ballot for the sake of the next few decades of political discourse and in order to make up for the last few.