Friday, June 17, 2016

From yuge to yawn - updated

The pervasive narrative -- and we live in a media environment dominated by narrative... just ask Somerby -- is that Trump is on the way down. One small data point in that: After Orlando, Trump said he was going to "meet with" the NRA to persuade them to accept no-fly/no-buy. One would think that departure from GOP orthodoxy would have attracted media attention. Instead, the filibuster by Chris Murphy dominated the cycle. In fact, the Senate GOP effectively gave Murphy, hence the Dems, ownership of victory on this.

Everybody, and I mean everybody, is jumping off this ship. Trump has gone straight from gruesome object of fascination to yesterday's boring news, without a stop at schaudenfreudian contemplation.

Update: Of course Trump is a horror -- but Egan's Times op-ed is silly in its melodramatic overreach. History will not remember this week. Trump may make it into a history book as a bizarro-world footnote, but it's the winners who write the history, and Trump is already what he most despises -- a loser. If he does make it into a history book, it will be because that history book is recounting the Whigging-out of the GOP, not because Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are cowards.

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