Still I have wondered, from time to time, whether the Republican (check spelling -- RepugnantCon?) nominee might be a closet Democrat on a self-appointed mission to throw the election, hand Congress back to the Dems, and demolish his adopted party. He was once a registered Democrat, and he claims to be "a really smart person" -- no wait, he said he was LIKE a really smart person -- Oh, hang on. That was a plot for a possible novel, not a realistic possibility. My bad.

I do think he saw some potential financial benefit in putting on this whole show, though. He is apparently planning to start a Trump TV network, heir apparent to the alienated wingnut segment of the audience of the damaged Faux News. Then again, could be all he really wanted was to get into a position to eliminate his own future tax bills (now that his 18 years of deductions are running out) and the inheritance tax possibly due to be paid by his children. Or maybe, when New York banks stopped lending to him after his bankruptcies, he started borrowing heavily from the Russian mob and lost that money too, and they told him they'd cancel the debt if he would co-operate in their plan to overthrow the US government. Or maybe I'm wandering off into fiction territory again. It's so hard to tell the difference these days . . .

I don't think he had enough smarts, even with I'm sure lots of professional advice, to consider how his run would open him up to a level of scrutiny he's never seen before. As a result, all of the long, long list of foibles, errors, bad business judgments, bankruptcies, sexual assaults and more have now come to light. The result has been, so far, a massive loss of the Trump brand in so, so many ways we've all read about.

Still, things are bound to get worse as multiple state and federal investigations (campaign spending, Trump U, Russian loans and influences and more) are launched. Then, I do suspect some of the women we've recently seen come forward will also sue. He'll need to spend even more money on more lawyers from now until kingdom come!

The real beauty of his run though is the near total destruction of his brands. This will absolutely kill his empire, drain his cash and keep any sane business entity from ever joining with him in any ventures. It will take his rude children down as well, although we can only hope they end up in a trailer park......down by the river!

Schadenfreude to the extreme, I say!

Let's not jinx it or get complacent. We have 3 weeks left.

I want the fat lady to sing and that will be me on November 8th. hopefully going to bed early. Don't jinx this.

During the 1948 campaign, the Democratic Party had a three-way split, with a substantial number of both the far left (Wallace's Progressive Party) and far right (Thurmond's Dixiecrats) of the party running third-party campaigns, siphoning off much needed votes.

Additionally, Truman had been gaining quite a bit of momentum in the final three months of the campaign-- polling had illustrated a dramatic rise of Truman's numbers from down 17 at the beginning of the previous month to within the margin of error by the day of the election.

Since then, the electorate has rejected such simplistic devices used at the time, such as Farley's Law which predicted Dewey's win, in favor of more mathematically precise polling methods used today.

(Source: Zach Karabell, The Last Campaign)

None of the above applies with any real relevance to the here and now. History is complex, rather than a headline subject to "jinxes".

and local elections. We need our people to vote and not be complacent by thinking it's an easy win so no point voting.

We do NOT need republicans winning those other races.

Sort of just a colorful way of saying it's always hazardous to get overconfident.
Thanks for the history lesson all the same though.

What is their motivation to pay out early? Why not invest the money until Nov 9?

Or, are there shenanigans?

risk anyway, so it won't cost them much, if anything.

Especially if a billionaire bets $5 million to make a quick half mil