Welcome to End Game -- a breaking compendium of information regarding the possibility that Donald Trump's presidency is coming to an end. We are dealing with history for which there is no precedent. It is scary. It is for many their basic entertainment, better than whatever was their favorite before. For your reporter, it is making do with a political situation that is distasteful, harmful and profoundly risky.
On to our first revelations of the day.
The 90 electoral vote threshold
The information below requires a bit of attention. If you want to take my word for it, the suggestion is that Trump is sure of winning an electoral majority in seventeen states -- whose votes would add up to a mere 90. Even if you doubled that total, it would be far below what is needed to achieve Trump's thin margin of 2016. Being president has not helped Donald Trump politically. But it has raised the risk for millions of Americans.
The correlation that will keep GOP folk up at night wondering whether to jump off the Trump train, is between these stats and the likelihood of losing the presidency.
It has correlated in the past.
The aggrieved sibling factor
It is unquestionable that the NY Times is on the end game trail. It has the feel of an aggrieved and envious sibling who cannot help himself when he sees his older brother getting away with murder. Today's installment is by a worthy journalist named Peter Baker.
Where is the anger?
The article turns the word "outrage" in the Web headline into a question. It essentially argues that Trump has changed everything to the point that there really is not much outrage at all. But there is a dogged opposition in search of an actional basis for being rid of shock jock politics. It comes down to whether, with things changed, they will ever be the same.
The answer is probably no. Future candidates will tweet and otherwise be media savvy. Trump may go into the woodwork less as a disruptor and more as a sign of the Philistine having a place at the American table.
Trump is not very good at math
So hateful of Obama is Trump that his exaggeration meter runs full tilt as in the following:
The author of the tweet is responding to the faulty math below:
The exact degree of Trump projection is that the havoc he speaks of is precisely what the GOP and Trump will wreak on innocent, hard-working Americans. Trump is nothing if not accurate in his self-revelations even if he is loose with the truth and ugly in his motivations.
Bumpy ride
Today we are likely to learn more about the Trump power to create news. It is not always fake or false, but it does keep the media busy and allows us, underlings, to scour the hinterlands for what gets lost as the Trump train chugs along.