Steve Benen

Every pollster or prognosticator who concludes that Trump has no path to victory says something to the effect of "but it's a long time until November 3 and things can change." Well, things will change. You don't have to be Nostradamus to figure out that if Trump keeps doing what he's been doing or his whole life, Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Mississippi will eventually be battleground states. Yes, things change but there is no reason to imagine that they will change in favor of Trump and the GOP.

Yesterday, in his Washington Post column, Greg Sargent wrote that ever since Señor Trumpanzee "launched his candidacy by declaring Mexicans to be 'rapists,' Trump's public racism has often included two additional important elements: an adamant refusal to apologize for it in the face of outrage, and an equally adamant denial that the offending language was racist in any way. Central to Trump’s racism-- and more broadly to Trumpism writ large-- is not just the content of the racism itself.

Señor Trumpanzee seems to think he's a better president than Reagan was.

Did anyone ever really believe Trump's idiotic campaign promises to drain the swamp that he personifies or hold Wall Street-- which now runs his regime-- accountable? If so... how tragic! Late Tuesday evening Trump had Mike Pence break the 50-50 tie in the Senate that will now allow banks more leeway to prey on their customers without fear of sanctions. That it even got to a point where the GOP-controlled Senate needed a tie-breaking vote from Pence was strange.

This week NBC News and the Wall Street Journal released a poll showing Trump with an unfavorable rating from 46% of Americans and a favorable rating with 40%, an improvement for him since last month, but the lowest favorability rating of any president-elect about to take office ever.

Wednesday Ken delved into the costly and meaningless farce of the Benghazi! report from the failed Trey Gowdy witch-hunt. Gowdy doesn't want to give away any of the suspense so he just answers any questions with a request that people read the 800 pages of drivel. At a press conference he admitted he doesn't wear a "Hillary Clinton Lied, People Died" tee-shirt.

When New York lost two House seats after the 2010 census, the 24th CD morphed into a slightly redder 22nd CD that includes not just Utica and Rome, but also Binghamton way down south, which used to be part of Maurice Hinchey's very blue district. In 2010 Republican multimillionaire Richard Hanna ran-- for a second time-- against cowardly freshman Blue Dog Richard Arcuri, who lost much of the district's progressive base by voting against the Affordable Care Act and obsessively carrying water for Wall Street.

The ugly face of Isis in AmericaOn June 28, 2012, House Witch Hunt Committee chair, Darrell Isis (R-CA) introduced H.RES 711:

Peter King, Steve Israel-- Princesses: Long IslandMonday, Steve Benen, set out to define exactly what progressives mean when they say Republicans are sabotaging the Affordable Health Act. Their nihilism and class war are unlike anything since the Civil War.

Sunday on Meet The Press, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid basically told the Republicans to "bring it on" if they want to try passing more abortion banning laws. It's easy for someone like Marco Rubio to act like a big shot around crazy Hate Talk Radio hosts and demand a vote to ban women's Choice when he thinks there'll never be a vote. But now...