Nate Silver is teasing that FL party turnout might slightly be on the favors Biden side of his back of the envelope guess. Very decisive.
I guess we all stress in our own way, but allow me to recommend not checking any news or feeds tonight. If something decisive happens, someone will probably text or email you, and there's no reason to ride the rollercoaster of deciphering early reports.
The good thing about HST is that I'll probably know what happens before bedtime. The bad thing is that drinking hours come hours later.
I don't know if I can compartmentalize well enough to do that, and not compulsively hit the refresh pellet bar.
Based purely on people's apparent demographic markers when they get out of their cars, Gideon Missionary Baptist Church should be a Biden landslide.
I assume Trump is on a long slow slide to total repudiation, so I'll probably leave the news on.
3 is right. I asked somebody to send me the tables I'm supposed to check so I can't look at the news.
I don't think I can manage 3, so I'm hoping for 7.
Reading tea leaves, this seems like good news. A big part of 2016 was the large pool of undecided voters who swung to Trump in the last week.
The vast majority of voters in this year's election made up their mind well ahead of Election Day, early exit polling shows.
The earliest data shows that only 4 percent of voters said they opted for a presidential candidate over the past week, compared with 93 percent who decided earlier.
I'm working registering voters at the polls in NH and it seems like a whole bunch of people who never voted before are showing up to vote for Trump. Young people, even, who should know better.
Not to freak anyone out or anything. This is not a representative sample.
NH has same day registration, like Maine? There are some young people who want to open up the economy fast.
I've been distracting myself by reading the story of a some guys who came upon a guy who got eaten by a bear. They don't know if the bear killed him, but probably not.
Apparently, people are so delicious, that if a bear eats just one person, they have to put the bear down so it doesn't come back for more.
Yup, same day registration. I thinking most of the Dems already registered during the primary.
Yup, same day registration. I thinking most of the Dems already registered during the primary.
If you are crunchy on the outside, see a doctor.
What streams are people watching online? Preferably streams that are nice to get drunk on with friends
Being a hippie is not a medical condition, Moby.
They don't say which stream, but the bear had the guy in a stream.
Some days you're the bear, some days you're the stream. Some days you're the corpse.
Biden/ other/ Trump
From this precinct - 1121 / 45 / 564
Absentee - 704 / 3 / 144
Biden/ other/ Trump
From this precinct - 1121 / 45 / 564
Absentee - 704 / 3 / 144
Why would turn-out be low in Miami-Dade specifically?
I'm going to stay up and watch because the alternative is lying sleeplessly in bed, terrified. If things are looking good maybe I can sleep, but not paying attention is going to result in suffering.
fucking Florida. I'm having flashbacks.
I don't see how Biden can possibly make up for Miami-Dade elsewhere in Florida.
29: Biden wasn't really expected to win Florida.
Could Florida please just fall in the Atlantic already?
30: It is a bit more complicated. Far more Rs voted early in FL this yesr than 2016. So early Miami-Dade 2020 not directly compsrable to 2016. Still not great.
30: It is a bit more complicated. Far more Rs voted early in FL this yesr than 2016. So early Miami-Dade 2020 not directly compsrable to 2016. Still not great.
30: It is a bit more complicated. Far more Rs voted early in FL this yesr than 2016. So early Miami-Dade 2020 not directly compsrable to 2016. Still not great.
I thought it was faintly blue or toss up. I wish the NYT needle was closer on it, just for canary-coalmine-ness.
Are they still doing that bullshit where "60% reporting" means "60% of precincts reporting at any level of completeness"?
You made me look at the needle; now I'm depressed (NC is going to be really important and should start reporting soon)
AP calls VA to Biden. I remember when it used to be a swing state.
35: I guess you're right, but the campaigns both clearly thought Florida favored Trump.
Biden got fucked in demographics of Miami Dade but is overperforming 2016 in other parts of FL, specifically older whites. Not enough to save the state but a good sign for the rest of the country- there are older whites everywhere, Cubans not so much.
40: I appreciate the attempt at reassurance.
Youngstown OH and surrounding county early vote (half of estimated total) has Biden +25. Clinton was +3. Biden will come down with Election Day votes but I think he's got a clear improvement in Midwestern demographics.
40: I hope your read is right.
BBC coverage was surprisingly shit (Andrew Neill is a much better interviewer than a commentator) so we're watching Sky News. Thy have Omarosa as an analyst, which is hilarious. There's a degree to which the British media really don't get us.
GA needle is leaning Trump but no one is saying any reason why.
31: That will just leave the panhandle with a few thousand people and two senators.
Does anyone remember why Clinton apparently did super-well with Cuban-American FL voters in 2016?
Update: drinking hours here begin at 5pm PST today.
Biden over performing Clinton in DFW area by 10-20 points, not entirely due to early vote. If Texas goes blue and FL red it will be hilarious.
Houston 83% early vote Biden 4 points over Clinton.
Austin area swings 12 points to Biden vs Hillary. He will win the county outright.
46: She wasn't a communist, unlike Biden.
How does it feel living in a swing state heebie?
Polls are almost closed in most of the east coast and nobody's been shot at one, right? Color me pleasantly surprised.
It looks like there are still a bunch of Dem-leaning mail-in votes yet to be counted in Miami-Dade.
Omarosa's hilarious. She can sound like a polished politician for about a sentence, and then then information content reduces to zero. It turns into complete babble. The Sky News people seem to have just realized what they're dealing with.
(Also, she L-vocalizes--"rules" becomes "ruse"--which I do inconsistently, so I find kinda endearing?)
They also have a reporter in Pittsburgh, in some bar that's too upscale to be yinzer but is pretending to it anyway. Looked like Buford's or maybe whatever the Tipsy Cow is called now, but not sure. Oh, maybe it's one of the expensive ones on the North Shore, she's on Allegheny Ave. now.
Trump won by 9% vs. Clinton in Texas, so Biden needs a big swing.
I was almost on tv in Israel this morning. At least that's what this guy said. He was going to have be be interviewed by his brother over the phone camera. But it took too long and I went back to knocking on doors
38: Or even mostly Republican. Northern VA had a moderate- liberal Republican rep as recently as 2003.
Just once I'd like one of those fucking needles to move towards blue as the night goes on.
I really loathe these fucking needles.
I'm depressed that we live in a country that's not decisively throwing the motherfucker out in a landslide.
Now they're saying TX margins aren't enough. Better luck next time.
I'm honestly impressed at how much of Texas is only light red.
71: I am also in blue MA and nevertheless, was surrounded by MAGA hats at the polls tonight.
Thank all of you for being here. Some days it is the only site I can stand to see the news.
You're on the South Shore, aren't you?
CNN is reporting Biden having 80.5% in Lehigh County with 95% reporting, but they're saying there was 351k votes. 2019 Census estimate was 369k people. What the hell is going on? Something has to be bogus, right? (I hope not--it'd be really good and would agree with that one weird DeSales poll.)
And the rotting corpse of Mitch McConnell wins re-election, a solemn promise to never, ever actually serve the citizens of Kentucky issuing from its cold, dead heart.
74: No, Berkshire hills. Far from Covid but also from many peers. Thus, much lurking here.
I was out for a drive in one of the less well off areas there and saw a bunch of Trump signs.
I did not want to be this scared now. I knew chances of a blowout weren't what they should be, but I wanted to start clawing back some hope for my fellow citizens.
how has not a single state flipped yet?!
84: Me too. Especially when there are parts of Texas where Biden is underperforming Hillary.
Is he underperforming in the Hispanic border areas in Texas? It looked like he gained significantly in the metro areas.
Yes. He is underperforming on the border.
Family who served as election workers in Montco (PA) say vote there was 57% for Biden when tallied, NOT counting early/mail in ballots.
Friend who served as election worker in Delco (PA) says voting was smooth all day (she worked 7-4) and no hiccups despite deeply divided area (old-guard white working class very pro-Trump, newer white residents and multicultural assortment of peers Biden). She actually got sent home at 4:15 due to a surfeit of volunteers (!).
Good luck, PA. We're all counting on you.
Friend in Western Mass reports that voting was 1600-400 Biden-Trump. Her quote: "Who are those 400?"
(She knows they exist; they disrupt BLM protests regularly)
Uggghhhhhhh. The creepy Nazi-lover with multiple sexual-misconduct allegations against him got elected to the US House from NC. Ewwwwwww.
Well shit Milwaukee isn't going to report until 6am.
I was really hoping that this race wasn't going to come down to PA. Nothing against the fine folks (and commenters doing GOTV) but, really . . .
Oh, cool, I forgot that one difference between now and 2016 is that I've started getting panic attacks, and I'm getting all the early symptoms of one. I'm tapping out. I hope the night gets better.
Collins is doing way better than I was expecting in Maine. Damn. I gave to Gideon.
I feel like I can't go to bed without getting one piece of good news, like a state that has flipped. This is freaking me out.
AZ has very likely flipped to Biden. Just too big a lead from early vote for Trump to make it up based on party registration of Election Day vote.
Philly mail-on ballots won't be reported today.
96: Arizona looks ok. If Trump wins tonight, it will feel so much worse than it did the last time. Mark Kelly leading in the Senate race there too.
I let myself get optimistic again. How did I do that? How did I possibly get calmly confident that this was going to be a blowout?
How were the polls so misleadingly optimistic?! I feel like Charlie Brown.
Weren't we expecting Trump to be maybe up on Election Day, and for late-counted mail-ins to swing things back? Wasn't that the reason we were worried about Trump declaring victory and demanding absentee ballots not be counted? I have no idea how the count actually works, obvs, and am too lazy to google - I'd be interested to know where I'm confused.
Just woke up, 4:30am local. Damn it. What the hell, Florida?
Please tell me, in other words, that there will be a blue backwash crushing everything in its path.
103: We've been focusing on FL, GA, NC where more of the count gets released quicker, but i think we'll have to wait at least a day for clarity for PA. I'm turning off internet for a while.
Weren't we expecting Trump to be maybe up on Election Day, and for late-counted mail-ins to swing things back? Wasn't that the reason we were worried about Trump declaring victory and demanding absentee ballots not be counted?
Yes. This exact scenario has been widely predicted for weeks.
Trump overperforming with Cubans in Miami specifically is a surprise, but Florida has been close in all the projections so him winning it is not a huge surprise overall.
I was thinking his policy of "lets kill all the olds" might bring him down in Florida but I guess not.
Nate the Lesser says ignore the needles for NC and GA because there are some errors regarding counting of absentee ballots in their model.
I hope one lesson people take out of this is that models tend to fuck up from time to time.
108: Thank you. Blood-pressure easing slightly...
NC needle has moved back to 85% Trump. Do we have a link to Cohn's discussion?
I really, really, really wanted Elizabeth Warren. But if this were a Warren-Trump race and it were this close, I'd be hating myself for the risk-taking.
Answering my own question in 114: Here's Cohn on Twitter.
Its such bullshit though. Why can't we have nice things?
USPS still sitting on 300,000 ballots.
In violation of a court order where they went with a Bartleby response to judge Sullivan.
AZ called for Biden. Need to keep an eye on NV Hispanic vote, but that gives him a PA-less path to exactly 270.
Say that again but with different words please.
120: Where's that call for Arizona? I'm not seeing it reflected at NYT or W. Post...
Fox has been calling states a lot faster than the other outlets.
123, 124: Thanks. Not gonna buy it yet, though that would put Biden on a tantalizingly close glide to 269.
This is a fucking disaster:
409,000 counted in #MESEN, and Susan Collins up 52-42. Biden currently up 52-45.
Republicans are going to hold the Senate and Biden won't even be able to appoint a cabinet much less judges.
Who has called AZ? Msnbc isn't saying that yet
127: That's with like 25% reporting. She may still pull out the win, but it's very early.
Amadea dealt with the stress by baking a delicious chocolate cake, so we're going to deliver pieces to various people who helped with the campaign then we're going to the Important Person's party.
132- I'd agree if it was just the Sen vote, but she's running 17(!) behind Biden in the same set of ballots?
130- IRV doesn't come into play if Collins wins an outright majority on the first ballot.
I (in a very normy beige Accord with no bumper stickers) got surrounded by a scarily aggressive Trump caravan on my way back from the cancer center this afternoon and felt relieved and lucky to be able turn off the road before a long exitless stretch. My fear-o-meter for random and uncontrolled violence, with no discernible correlation to election results or other markers of reality, has skyrocketed.
well, time for bed! I can't tell if I'll get up in a few hours to start trolling the results again or not.
115: Me too. In the primary I wasn't convinced the Biden had an electoral advantage but the way the night is going (with PA the key state) Biden really does seem like the candidate with the best chance to win.
I got stuck in traffic yesterday behind a caravan for... Shiva, the perennial no-hope MA senate candidate who claims to be the inventor of email and frequently sues people over it. Last week he sued the MA SecState for One Billion Dollars! because a couple of his staff reported a Shiva tweet to Twitter for a TOS violation.
Georgia needle has swung back to Biden weak advantage.
People are deliberately splitting tickets to block court packing. That's about the only explanation I can figure.
Except for when they got their wings cut off.
140: Saw Carville on MSNBC saying that he had been talking to quants who thought Georgia was still in play for the Dems. Thought he was bullshitting, but maybe not, eh?
There are an enormous number of votes not reported in Atlanta and suburbs and the rest of the state is done. Only question is whether it's enough to overcome Trump's lead.
Just woke up, this looks a lot closer than I thought it would be. Do o need to go back to sleep, like forever?
Looks bad for Devin Nunes and that's worth a lot to me.
Also, local asshole Steve Maviglio may be defeated in a minor local race. You guys almost certainly don't remember Maviglio, but when that awesome dude in D.C. sheltered BLM protestors overnight in his house, asshole Maviglio took to twitter to say that he was the landlord and the awesome dude shouldnta done that. Anyway, he looks likely to lose.
So those would both be great outcomes.
Whelp, Fox News has now retracted that AZ call. I need to go find a paper bag to breath into.
My back of the envelope math says Biden will overtake him.
Current margin in DeKalb and Fulton is about 60 points, and if these are early votes that's a low estimate.
500k estimated outstanding votes.
300k Trump lead statewide.
500k votes with a 60 point margin brings Biden right back, and there are still 60k more absentees outstanding that favor Biden.
My poll observer shift went fourteen hours and we really did help a lot of people find their polling places and demand provisional ballots and so on (no deliberate malice anywhere, just human error sorting out the ludicrous patchwork electoral system), and it will be very gratifying if Arizona really does flip; BUT I am exhausted and labile, seeing what a year without monsoons did to the native vegetation is kind of breaking my heart on a 36-hour-delayed trigger, and I need to quit this conscious plane right now. Maybe I'll wake up in 2000 and know not to vote for Nader this time.
Silver offers what I would describe as reassurance:
A lot of states have been called on some networks and not on others. If you plug in all the states where any network has called the state for Biden or Trump, it shows Biden at 88 percent to win the Electoral College, Trump at 6 percent, and a 6 percent chance of a tie. But that depends on Biden winning Arizona and Minnesota, which ABC News hasn't projected yet.
Little Nate agrees with my premise- most of the remaining 500k in Georgia are early votes so should be even more favorable to Biden.
Problem is, in the current count, Trump leads by a fair amount. Little Nate's needle only gives Biden a 57% shot. But hey, he doesn't actually need Georgia.
Like McConnell is going to burn the country down.
153: At this point they have called Minnesota for Biden haven't they, but I think only Fox has called Arizona for Biden.
What the fuck did we even expect from an election in the year 2020?
I'm not watching any of it. The county I was monitoring went as red as expected, and because there were two of us, I got sent home before the counting is finished.
Interesting drama with the counting machines -- the whole mechanics of the thing are so complicated -- but it's good to be done. We're not going to have any marquee races in 2022, so this is it for me for a while.
The attempt to recall that small town mayor that I worked on seems to have fallen short.
My friends in the Social Democratic Party reform faction chat group are shocked (as I am) that this isn't a blowout.
I know this shouldn't be surprising -- except for Florida and the senate this is basically as predicted -- but there's something deeply shocking anyway about it (even if Biden still wins comfortably when it's all counted). It's one thing to say you love him to a pollster, or even go to a rally, but after 4 years of this, so many people decided they were going to use their one small lever of power to ask for another helping.
Appropriately enough, my appointment at the PT consulate to apply for citizenship is this week.
Well, I'm calling it a night. Senate looks like a lost cause, but I think Biden still has a better shot at this than Trump. We'll see what it looks like when I wake up.
Anyway, my predictions now, before I try to stop doomscrolling for the day: Biden wins by 5% in popular vote, and narrowly in EV, but Republicans hold the Senate, so Biden is unable to take serious action against the COVID recession; Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare; Republicans simply refuse to confirm any court nominees above district level -- so when President Ivanka Trump comes to power in 2025 on the back of voter outrage over the never-ending recession and gridlock, she gets to appoint at least 3 supreme court justices and about a million circuit court judges.
Quick glance at the WaPo, man this is bad.
Not that I particularly care, but how on earth do the pollsters come back from this?
From 538: "ABC News is projecting that Proposition 22 has passed in California. The ballot measure classifies drivers and delivery people for app-based companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash as independent contractors rather than employees, but also guarantees them certain benefits in exchange. Those companies spent $200 million in support of the proposition." ARRRGH WTF PEOPLE.
We voted to legalize marijuana, which seems like a pretty good idea just about now.
Important Person's party was kind of underwhelming, but at least they had a good setup with fires and heaters so it wasn't too cold outside in seven degree weather. The cake delivery thing was a good call to make the whole trip feel more worthwhile.
Not that I particularly care, but how on earth do the pollsters come back from this?
What? Florida was a bit off, but otherwise this is all pretty consistent with what polls have been showing.
Well this wasn't what I'd hoped to wake up to. I think the thing that really gets to me is that I had been assuming that people voted for Trump out of fear/ignorance and that after 4 years of his nonsense they would be rightfully horrified. I also thought the 2018 election suggested that people had seen through him. So no matter who wins, to realize that such a large group of Americans would actively chose Trump after what has happened... it's horrifying. And sad.
Yeah, we -- a whole lot of us anyway -- really are the people he thinks we are.
Trump's fans really do still love him. He delivered exactly what they wanted him to, and now they want more.
Alaska is currently reporting 55% of the election day vote, but we won't know final results for a long time. They don't even start counting the mail ballots for another week.
170 I'm not paying close enough attention that have said what I said, but I had gotten the impression that our shot at the Senate wasn't an illusion.
I'll note that it's after 2 am, and the results from the county I worked haven't been updated since 8:30, and do not include any of the votes cast or dropped off either Monday or Tuesday.
This shouldn't have even been close. WTF is wrong with half of all Americans? I'm crushed about the Senate. Fuck.
I'm not paying close enough attention that have said what I said, but I had gotten the impression that our shot at the Senate wasn't an illusion.
It wasn't an illusion, and it could just barely still happen, but it was never a sure thing either. Polls in several of the senate races had shown significant movement toward the GOP in the last couple weeks.
Polling looks fairly wrong in WI but much better in AZ.
I still think Biden has the upper hand, though it's much closer than I'd hoped, obviously.
Not that I particularly care, but how on earth do the pollsters come back from this?
So far, there hasn't been a single state called in one direction where the polls were pointing in the other direction outside margin of error. Trump could take every state where he was ahead, and every state where Biden was three points or less ahead, and still lose. And he hasn't even done that, assuming that the AZ call is right.
I slept for two hours and here's the status if anyone is actually using unfogged.com as their breaking news source:
AZ done to Biden
NV close but looks like the worst ballots for Biden are done (same day, rural) and He holds a 9k leas with Clark mail ballots to come which should expand his lead
WI Biden moved ahead with Milwaukee mail. Only outstanding is Green Bay which should be net 0 at worst and Biden leads about 20k statewide.
MI Trump still leads 70k but several hundred thousand in Detroit should easily erase that. Don't know what else is out. Flint area was bad for Biden.
PA Trump has a big lead but almost all of Philly mail not yet in. Irrelevant if Biden holds MI WI NV.
GA I have no idea. Fulton still counting. Needle still weakly to Biden.
There's an outside chance the electoral vote could be an exact flip of 2016.
As it stands, following the FT chart, Biden has 238 votes. Trump has 213. There are 87 votes still to come in from six states - NV WI MI PA NC GA. All of those are states where Biden was leading in the polls, most are states where he was well ahead, and Trump has to get 57 of them. PA and almost any other, or almost any three without PA, will get Biden in.
Sorry, seven states still to be called - I forgot Alaska. But, realistically, that's Trump's. So he has 216, and 54 to get.
The scenario of an exact EV flip from 2016 is if Biden wins all remaining close states (GA but not NC). Unlikely but possible. The Fulton county vote is wildcard. As someone said it would be totally appropriate for a late lead to be blown in the home of the Atlanta Falcons.
I think the pollsters fucked up royally. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan were all consistently well over 5% Biden. Outside the margin of error, it was not supposed to be close. Same with Pennsylvannia - I thought it was outside the margin of error for Biden.
But the thing that's really pissing me off is the NYT bit about which groups increased their voteshare for Trump since 2016. We knew Hispanics had warmed to him. But the motherfucking suburbs?? We've been told for the past year that the suburbs have grown cold on him. Majority college grad areas moved towards Trump? What the fuck.
I'm really angry that we were set up to feel mildly complacent again, even though I tried my damnedest not to.
Or this, from Nate Cohn:
I don't think people have fully internalized how Democratic these mail and absentee ballots will be in MI/PA/WI. It's close, but these ballots will be overwhelmingly blue.
Yes, why the fuck should I internalize that? How on earth would you be so confident about that at this moment?
And the fucking senate. What the fuck. They were saying it looked good ahead of time.
The last batch of Detroit ballots, 150k, were 93% Biden and erased 2/3 of Trump's lead in the state. There are still 200-300k more from Detroit and surrounding region.
The polls fucked the Senate because people were probably so confident of a Biden win they split the ticket to prevent him from doing things like court packing. Mainers are idiots to fall for Collins' I'm a moderate bullshit again.
186: I stopped trusting a lot of the polls. (1.) I suspect that people have called to poll me, and I don't answer the phone. (2.) i think there are a lot of people ho are disgustingly Trumpy who are embarrassed to admit it to pollsters.
And if we pull this out, Trump is going to start a civil war on his way out.
He said ahead of time he would announce himself the winner and not necessarily abide by the official count. And yet that he did it makes me so angry that I can't see straight. And that so many people live in that world where they want that to happen.
You know what I'm feeling? You remember that op-ed, "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people"? That's the fucking nut of it. Everything else is just moving the deck chairs around.
Like, I thought we were attuned roughly to what's been going on in the Fox News bubble half of the country. But what the fuck has actually been going on that their reach is so seductive to all these people that we thought were rejecting it?!
Good lord the young people need to redeem us. We suck so hard.
Trump leas in MI down to 56k with estimated 800k ballots left that will mostly be blue. Final MI results might not be that far below polls, which were Biden by 8. Might end up Biden by 4 or 5.
I have no idea why my phone keeps changing lead to leas.
I'm distraught about the Senate. How bad is it?
200: that's what I'm calling starting a civil war.
200: that's what I'm calling starting a civil war.
I don't understand how pollsters are drawing conclusions from exit polls, when the massive number and *non-random selection* of early voters seems like it would enormously bias the results. How can you correct for that? Even once you have the totals in, just weighting by vote choice won't help if the early/mail voters voted for different reasons, and we already know they're different because they voted early/by mail, during an election where that was weirdly politicized!
I think we'll have to wait for NES data to know anything micro-level.
I'm just mad about the amount of certainty that was baked into the pre-election day polls.
Did Cunningham's personal behavior in NC cost him? Also, Maine, damn it.
Somebody I know on Facebook said that the country completely repudiated Nixon and the Republicans. It is embarrassing and worrying for us as a country that we did not do that this time.
207: Except of course they didn't. Ten years later, plenty of people still thought Nixon got shafted. And there was an even larger slice that thought, "Well yeah, he was a crooked SOB but a least he got things done."
A significant chunk of the country is actively using politics as a way to spite the elite and upper middle class liberals (broadly speaking in political philosophy way). It's not "in spite of" the obvious crimes that the election is close. It's "because".
Looking over MA, Cambridge was 92.2 for Biden. My town was 82.9 which is less than Brookline which was 87.6%. Manchester though is as high as 71.2%. That town has huge mansions and private clubs where there are people who will benefit from the Trump tax cuts. There were a lot of Republicans there in the past, so it's remarkable how big that majority is now.
107: Trump lead in MI is only 12K with virtually no mail in ballots counted. I don't know how it's going to end, but I think MI will be OK. WI looks OK, too, this morning.
I'm not hopeful, but also haven't completely given up yet. I think the Senate is not going to flip, though.
There are a lot of stupid sounding things coming out of voter analysis- eg a majority of Trump voters somewhere favor masks and safety restrictions but voted for Trump because they think he also supports them. But I don't know how you can use polls to explain how the polls were messed up. Or what 203 said.
I was so hoping for a blowout. We needed to thoroughly repudiate Trump.
At least MI and WI are looking good. PA too.
My mother-in-law wanted to get everyone matching xmas shirts this year. Some of my brother-in-laws responded like jerks so she's surprising everyone with Christmas Vacation themed shirts, but she let me pick mine on the side, because she's nice. Anyway: I picked on that says "We're on the threshold of hell" and I stand by my choice. I think I'll be able to wear it on other occasions.
Also our state rejected IRV because people are too stupid to understand anything more complicated than the number two.
Tim's worksite birders 2 towns. One went for Trump 63.2%, the other 61.7% for Biden. So weird.
Some dumbass mathematician from maybe Princeton was making the rounds recently on my FB feed with why he will be voting for Trump. Basically "I come from an authoritarian dictatorship (somewear Eastern Europe I think) and so I know to fear socialists and line up behind Trump to avoid that."
As LB says, how smart you are and how dumb you are are two independent axes.
The state of the nation hinges on how honestly Fox reports this election.
215: I'm pissed about that. Baker came out against it, saying that it would make voting more expensive. Someone I knew felt that she wasn't provided enough information. I wasn't sure whether 1 would pass but it went that way by wide margins.
A friend at camp once called me the dumbest smart person he knew.
NPR has Arizona officially blue, at least.
217 was the explanation I saw for Central American/South American/Cuban voters. I cannot understand how (factual) putting asylum-seeking children in cages and family separation did not outweigh (not factual) concerns about socialism.
The remaining triple bank shot for 50 Dem senators:
-ME-2 is having some weird reporting that suggests undercounting of dem mail ballots. If that pushes Collins under 50 IRV comes into play.
-GA remaining votes push the second seat to a runoff as well
-Trump loses and burns down the country
-GA special repudiates Trump by giving both special elections to dems.
223: Because the lesson the kids learned wasn't "authoritarian governments are bad" but "don't be the bunny."
Isn't it a case of I got mine fuck you? Too bad you weren't born a citizen kid, hope you like the cage.
I think it's becoming clear that the average person of Hispanic background who isn't of Mexican/Central American peasant background is just as likely to identify with someone of that peasant background as a white American from rural Pennsylvania.
225 reminds me of SlaughterHouse 5 ans how the lesson of the Bible is "don't kill nobodies because they might be secretly well-connected."
225 reminds me of SlaughterHouse 5 ans how the lesson of the Bible is "don't kill nobodies because they might be secretly well-connected."
Except that the moral lesson was horrible.
Anyway, W went out of his way to increase the number of Hispanic voters by being a bit more inclusive and failed. Trump tried by being cruel to poorer Hispanics and black people and he succeeded. Lots of stuff is still up in the air, but I don't see how that is.
That is W tried to increase the number of Republican, Hispanic voters.
Yeah, to 225-230, I mean, I know that's the case, but I don't understand it. I mean, poor dumb-as-shit white people voting for that mess I understand. I even sort of understand white people in general voting for him. But that's a demographic I just cannot wrap my head around.
OK, Wisconsin Dems just released a statement that Trump has no path to victory there. One down. Thanks, lurid.
Excruciating as this is, I feel like we are slowly getting good news. Yesterday didn't have armed militia at the polls. There were not riots last night. The media is acting responsibly about the long wait time. Still looks good for Biden to win the election.
It is possible the long wait time will diffuse the pro-Trump crowd, if it looks inevitable for a few days, by the time they want to protest, they'll have sat with the suckiness for a while.
I wanted a huge landslide too, but by Friday we might be pretty satisfied. 2018 was like this too and in the long run, it went great.
'Cept I can't believe it looks good for Susan Collins. Fuck Susan Collins.
235: I don't understand it either. But I think I understand that it isn't the kind of situation where policy arguments will help.
So for those of you who want to do the math, the NYT discusses the eight states that they haven't called as of 6 a.m. Eastern:
The eight states are Alaska (3 electoral votes), Arizona (11), Georgia (16), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), North Carolina (15), Pennsylvania (20), Wisconsin (10) and Maine's Second Congressional District (1). Joseph R. Biden Jr. has 227 confirmed electoral votes and would need 43 more to win. President Trump has 213 confirmed electoral votes and would need 57 more to win.
231 for Trump if you give him Alaska and North Carolina. 238 for Biden if you give him Arizona. So Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada would put Biden over the top, even without Pennsylvania, Georgia and ME2.
Geez. It's the day after the election.... again. Breakfast impulse.
225-230:
The latest I saw showed Trump increasing support in almost every demographic except white men, where it was already high. A worrying sign even if he loses.
On the upside, it looks like DC will pass the referendum legalizing psychedelic mushrooms. So spending the next 4 years hallucinating is a viable option.
Pollsters may be partially responsible for the Senate by giving so much confidence in the presidential outcome that more people split their ticket. (I can't think of another explanation for Maine.)
Also voting against Barrett. Low-information voters eat that shit up.
Mostly bad/stupid results for CA ballot measures. No property tax reform, Uber/Lyft bought themselves a new regulatory state, bail bonds companies back business (their measure possibly pushed over the top by advocates like Human Rights Watch foolishly making the perfect the enemy of the good).
At least I got plenty of sleep; I was right that there wouldn't be real news between 10 and 6.
I think all talk about court packing prior to the election was a tremendous mistake.
Oh, and we did at least go the right way on two other incarceration issues - gave the vote to parolees, and rejected a pro-incarceration measure.
239: so with 236 happening, and with Arizona (11) called for Biden for some time now (though not by NYT) it now looks like Biden has 248 votes? 22 more to go. Trump, on the other hand, has 213 plus AK (3) = 216, and so needs another 54 - GA plus NC plus PA wouldn't land it, he'd need NV or MI as well.
Some more good news - the UK has told doctors to be prepared to start COVID vaccinations in December. Over-85s and medical personnel first. Clinical trial data is due within three weeks for both the Pfizer and the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines. (report in Pulse, but registration required) https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/breaking-news/covid-vaccine-des-set-to-be-announced-imminently-for-december-start/
245: Uber/Lyft - Seriously? That's the only one I was invested in, because it could go that way here if it went that way in CA.
247: But nobody really talked about it other than Ed Markey.
250: Our airwaves were blanketed with ads with drivers telling the audience how important being able to have this "flexibility" was for them. It's the most money any campaign has spent on any proposition to date.
But I think I understand that it isn't the kind of situation where policy arguments will help.
I don't know, I spent yesterday afternoon registering new voters who mostly seemed to be going for Trump. They generally struck me as a bunch of sad sacks without a whole lot going for them. Trump was offering them some kind of social solidarity against a defined enemy, but I'm not sure what Biden was offering them. He built a campaign around "decency" when this crowd does not appear to give a shit about decency, and if you are running on decency vs. indecency you are still playing on Trumps field. But maybe if he had also run on, I don't know, "everybody gets dental insurance" or even "legalize weed," maybe that would have expanded his appeal.
Dave Wasserman (one of the best numbers guys but whom i generally do not like his non-numbers takes*):
1) Biden is well on his way to flipping MI & WI (in addition to AZ & #NE02) and is doing well enough in PA's completed counties to be on track to win there.
2) Polls (esp. at district-level) have rarely led us more astray & it's going to take a long time to unpack.
Good morning. Things are not so bad. Biden will win with the states listed in 239. He's ahead in all of them and the uncounted votes are expected to favor him (see Talkngpointsmemo.com). Pennsylvania is not needed although it is still possible.
Senate doesn't look so good, but Michigan is within reach, and if Ossoff/Perdue goes to run off (Fulton County still not fully reported, I think), we might in theory reach 50 in January.
Biden's margin of the popular vote will be well above Hillary's.
The House will have a net Democratic gain.
And even if none of these go right, I can still relax, since recreational marijuana is now legal in New jersey!
256:
If Biden had come out aggressively in favor of DC's psychedelic mushrooms referendum, they'd have called the election for him already.
256: Decency is definitely overrated as a winning argument. We have dental insurance on the ACA here. Do you not have that in NH?
247: Moby continues his streak as most astute Unfogged political commentator. I'm not sure how that makes me feel..
But yes, I think the suburban mirage (OK, there were some gains, but at least a semi-mirage) was people looking for a moderating response to Trumpian extremism, not "radical" Dems doing things.
I even sort of understand white people in general voting for him. But that's a demographic I just cannot wrap my head around.
I don't understand it either. But I think I understand that it isn't the kind of situation where policy arguments will help.
Is it not understanding it, or understanding it but finding it icky to even describe? I find it icky to describe too, but will take one for the team.
Here goes:
A large part of wingery is not about your own welfare in any material sense, but about putting people in their 'naturally ordained place' when they get 'uppity'. Sure, Trump wants to put people of colour 'in their place', but some Hispanic men are going to find it a big plus that Trump's also cool with men putting women 'in their place'. And that sort of guy is not even so much against the first thing if the colour is black.
I'm certainly not cheering myself up, even though I still Biden will win.
So if they embark on some kind of lawless action to stop vote counting in PA, how/when will we know?
(Remember the "Count Every Vote" rallies today, I think usually at noon.)
257*: Did not complete my footnote.
In part I do not like his non-numbers takes because they do not comport with my priors and desires. Am considering that he is more right, and me more wrong on those.
Come to think of it I used to get dental insurance through the ACA but I dropped it because it cost a ton of money and didn't actually cover my wife's various root canals. So maybe I'm not thinking so much of dental insurance, per say as, "offer people a realistic way they can get their tooth pain taken care of" which is where the ACA insurance model falls short.
More generally, what I mean is "offer the voters something that will concretely improve their lives" which is something I think that particularly the Biden wing of the Democratic party didn't really embrace. Sure, Republicans will complain about "giving away free stuff" but people like free stuff.
I went to bad last night thinking, among other things, "Trump hasn't declared victory yet - the dog that didn't bark?"
I guess he did this morning.
262: but about putting people in their 'naturally ordained place' when they get 'uppity'.
I have only heard several interviews/discussions of it buy from them Isabel Wilkerson's (The Warmth of Other Suns) new book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents appears to be a good treatment of that topic.
Some dude on Twitter named Will Roscoe:
And this is the way it ends.
Not with a bang but with a WI/MI/PA
262 is something like my thought. I also realize that with a some nice clothes and calm demeanor regardless of how I feel, I can project a higher naturally ordained place than nearly all white rural voters. But I'm a little short to do it really well.
I kinda forgot about TPM this election cycle. I seem to have only a fixed number of websites I check regularly, and if one gains traction in my attention, then it displaces another.
I'm mostly Twitter and this place, I regularly check in on Josh Marshall's twitter feed though only go to TPM if he tweets and interesting story.
I slept for two hours and here's the status if anyone is actually using unfogged.com as their breaking news source:
Thanks. I went to bed at a reasonable time and have started the day by catching up on this thread (to ease my way into the news).
Moby Hick has arguably been the unfogged commenter most correct about this election.
I think all talk about court packing prior to the election was a tremendous mistake.
A) I don't it mattered - this is the kind of thing political junkies care about but not voters.
B) Would "we will meekly accept decades of domination by a Republican-controlled Supreme Court" have been a stronger message?
A large part of wingery is not about your own welfare in any material sense, but about putting people in their 'naturally ordained place' when they get 'uppity'. Sure, Trump wants to put people of colour 'in their place', but some Hispanic men are going to find it a big plus that Trump's also cool with men putting women 'in their place'. And that sort of guy is not even so much against the first thing if the colour is black.
This is right. And in addition, a major part of it is putting those pointy-headed liberal whiners in their place. There is a genuine loathing of this kind of person, and serving them their come-uppance is delicious.
It doesn't fit neatly into traditional -isms, but it's there and it needs a name.
Moby Hick has arguably been the unfogged commenter most correct about this election.
I noticed this too.
271: my election distraction "weighty" reads have been Middlemarch (re-read) and Demons (formerly known as The Possessed) and some have been immersed in nuances of "naturally ordained place" in dimly understood social hierarchies. It does seem to be a primary impulse in we half-bright monkeys.
Biden's going to win, but it's hard not to feel incredibly discouraged about this country anyway.
Further to 277: Not only is serving the pointy-headed liberals their come-uppance a plus, the idea of aligning with them on an issue is nauseating and a a total anathema.
I am not saying that we should change or rebrand to coddle this unnamed-ism. Fuck them. I'm so angry. But I would like it named and described at least.
It's a merging of anti-semitism, anti-intellectualism, misogyny, and racism into a single distasteful uncool mushpot of people that didn't play football in high school, except for the black guys, which was okay ...as long as they knew their place.
I don't really disagree with the reasons and explanations in this thread, but I feel like the alternate fact universe isn't getting its due; a huge swath of Trump voters live in another world. There's a question of how much of that is willful (they like it in there) and how much is just the effectiveness of propaganda once it gets a little claw in you. Either way, it's a huge problem. They were able to spin a pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of people as some kind of hoax.
WTF, America. It looks like the republic survives, but it also expands on 2004 and 2016 in demonstrating that we're much worse people than we thought we were.
Local elections here mostly went ok, although our local politicos are a sad bunch generally and the Republican-leaning guy who won the mayoral election is probably worse than the amiable doof who lost it.
277 Adam Serwer called it: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/
266: I get the general gist. I know MA is a solidly Democratic state and NH has not, but I always have the sense that people feel that the "ACA" has made life better and that people feel safer. I don't know how much of that people think of as the ACA; it did expand things for the middle income folks. Up to $30k you were doing pretty good (like premium-free insurance) under Romney care as of 2006. But only political junkies know that that was made possible through a Medicaid waiver. So we have 8 more years of living with an exchange. People here voted overwhelmingly for Biden, but I don't know how many of them think they could lose their insurance after a Trump victory/ if the ACA goes down.
276.last: Yes, but I would phrase it as "Trump and the Senate won you the Supreme Court for decades so now you are free to vote based on things like governing ability."
Also depressing that this was a historically huge-turnout election (67% of eligible voters, highest since 1900), as it implies a significant number of infrequent or new voters came out for Trump too.
I also agree with 284. That rubicon into the alternate reality was crossed by many people years ago, and getting out ain't easy.
284: They were able to spin a pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of people as some kind of hoax.
This is truly mind boggling to me. And when you are gas-lighted by a narcissist it is a disorienting experience, even when you cling on to your belief in the facts.
With the all red sweep of everything, Democrats here will be awash with 'socialism would have won' which in an all mail huge turnout election is too silly to even bother arguing about. No one is in any doubt about what team red is going to do wrt health insurance, public/higher education, and all the rest. This was a repudiation of antifa and sanctuary cities -- which is what the mailers Republicans sent on legislative races said my guys wanted. And knocking down Mt Rushmore. And, of course, taking! away! your! guns!
Contrary to 266, people like to deny other people free stuff more than they want free stuff themselves. Especially if they already have stuff.
Agreeing with the recent comments, my thoughts overnight were:
1) It looks like a (mostly) fair high-turnout election. I'm a little surprised that didn't benefit the Dems more.
2) The map looks a lot like what I would have expected if the election had been held pre-covid. It means something, and I'm not sure what, that the pandemic didn't make more of a difference.
292: I think it depends some on where you are. How do we regroup? I was hopeful that someone like Bullock could carry Montana.
271: Get yourself some lifts and you're golden.
But seriously, the genius of the 'naturally ordained place' thing is that it's genuinely egalitarian within the in-group, and designed to allow for contingent variations of wealth. So you get Herrenvolk egalitarianism.
Poor and black: naturally ordained place. Poor and white: fallen on hard times, still worth of respect (i.e. contingently unequal but essentially equal).
Something similar goes for women vs men. Like this beautiful bit of irony (from Middlemarch):
A man's mind--what there is of it--has always the advantage of being masculine,--as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,--and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality.
Here's another optimistic spin: the longer the time that passes between the final six states announcing their tallies, the less water Trump's claim to win last night carries. Like if everyone was grabbing at the pie, shit would fly everywhere. But if it's nothing but a waiting game, and the breathless newscasters can't do anything to hurry it along, then his proclamation just begins to deflate. There, that's my most optimistic take possible.
I'm not surprised with the results so far - I was pretty cynical. Even with that though , I'm finding this confirmation more depressing than 2016.
'socialism would have won'...is too silly to even bother arguing about...This was a repudiation of antifa and sanctuary cities
I guess the question is whether people's ethnic or tribal or cultural identity can ever be supplanted by their economic identity. A lot of elections are about "people like me" or "people not like me" having power over me, and the socialists hope that class becomes the criterion by which "like me" is determined, and I'm super sympathetic to this view, but I have to admit it doesn't have a great track record of success as an electoral strategy.
295: I was thinking of projecting "I work and live in a 'Democrat-Run' city and which one of us is begging for government handouts?" look amongst the farmers.
294 -- I thought Bullock could win. Well known and well liked. But here this was a repudiation of team blue.
We don't have any big races in 2022 -- our new congressman is even more of a jerk than our last one, but it's hard to see who really will have a shot at him. There'll be national money for that race, I guess, if it looks like Republicans might win the House in 22.
I don't know if our new red overlords are going to repeal Medicaid expansion, or just scale it down to uselessness. Can they pass the statute that leads to Roe getting overturned? Why not.
All that said, a lot of tsuris today is a result of the polls having gotten hopes up. By the end of the week, Biden will have won and the Senate will have been super close, which is what we expected. I put on some cable news for the boys (first CNN, then Fox) and the degree to which they're turning literal counting into some kind of dramatic horse race is comical.
297: Yes, and no. It's depressing as hell that Trump's mismanagement of the pandemic didn't change the result more. But if Biden wins, that's still better than Hillary losing.
I'm finding this confirmation more depressing than 2016
Oh God yes.
284: but I feel like the alternate fact universe isn't getting its due; a huge swath of Trump voters live in another world
1) Good point. My daughter this morning: It is more important to destroy Fox News than to destroy the Republican Party. The second cannot happen with the first.
2) Although that is violating her other wise dictum of the day: One anxiety at a time. (Attempting to forestall my bemoaning, no Biden cabinet or judicial picks as McConnell goes full obstruction on steroids.)
Combining 1) and 2) her current take is that it is more important right now if Fox News "contests" the election rather than Trump.
It is worth saying that Biden will have won despite incumbency, massive voter suppression, massive media disinformation, illegally using every agency in the federal government to campaign, and post office cheating.
300: I'm pushing my local legislators to expand abortion access in MA by legislation. We currently do not have the right to abort after 24 weeks for lethal fetal abnormality, only if the life of the mother is endangered. Also getting rid of the parental consent/ judicial bypass requirement for minors. I feel like NY and MA are going to have to be prepared to have people from other states come here for abortions.
This from Bree Newsome Bass:
It's always white leftists who scream the loudest to deny that racism remains the greatest barrier to mobilizing a working class uprising in US. And it's not b/c the powerful bamboozle white working class communities but b/c white ppl prioritize the preservation of racial caste.
Still, it does look good for Biden.
It doesn't fit neatly into traditional -isms, but it's there and it needs a name.
But I would like it named and described at least.
I know what you mean, but in some ways it's the oldest and most traditional 'ism' there is: belief in a hierarchical Order of Nature, the Great Chain of Being, applied to different classes of people.
What distinguishes the current alt-right is that they're relatively self-consciously aware that they believe in natural human inequality. Other right-wingers believe it, but are not always as aware that they do.
I think Stormcrow's daughter is wise.
297, 303: Third that.
When I came home exhausted from poll work last night, I walked in and said: "The country is lost." Probably not he presidential election but just, you know everything. Utterly dispiriting day for me (more below).
I then went upstairs put my phone in Airplane Mode and read myself to sleep with Dostoevsky. Spent some time early this morning when I woke up trying to figure out how to best engage the news. This thread was a candidate, butin the end I first checked the national maps. My two primary shocks were how big a gap he had to overcome in my dear fucked up adopted Commonwealth and the size of the deficit in Texas will that one close at all; I know there will be no overtaking there).
In local news, I've been working in an official capacity with a special district candidate who's challenging an incumbent. (This comment will end with good news.)
Yesterday I sent a close-of-campaign email to her saying she'd run a great campaign, I bet she'd win, but admitted I didn't have a lot of concrete info to base this bet on. It's a large district to reach, and I thought there could be shy centrists who'd prefer the incumbent's maleness and staid occupation. But she got all the endorsements and he barely seemed to campaign.
In last night's results, mostly from the mail-in vote, she got 76%.
301 notwithstanding, Trump is now all-in on the stolen election narrative, so god help us.
299: Sure, but that's just like a black man getting rich during the Reconstruction and 'lording it over honest white folk who'd lost everything' - i.e. a 'monstrous inversion' of the natural order.
After years of "cry, cry, masturbate, cry," I have to say that the crying is much more cathartic than the masturbation.
That NC dude who likes to summer at Berchtesgaden's victory is my nomination for low point of the evening. I can feel his nazi breath from a state away.
299: "Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down."
I am de-toxing from my Poll Working (which I've done since spring 2017). Not sure I will consent to do it again at that location (or maybe anywhere). Nothing about it was bad or unpleasant or objectionable or what-have-you in the moment (I'll explain my toxic reaction below). It did its work of exhausting and distracting me through 16 hours and generally everyone was pleasant. and all that. We had a very unusual pattern (admittedly I had not been for a previous Presidential). Big rush first thing with up to a 1 hour wait. A little slow with need for spoiling mail-ins and provisionals (did have someone dedicated to that so the main line could keep moving). After that a few short bursts with uncharacteristic lines (lunch, late afternoon) but then it went *totally* dead after about 5:30. No typical after work rush which in retrospect makes sense given so many people working from home and therefore physically close to the polling place so they could slip out during the day. After the morning I thought it was going to be a massive increase over 2016 turnout but in the end about a 6% increase.
The kicker came when we printed the tape and it was about 2/3ds for Trump. I sort of expected that as it was 60% Trump in 2016 (and with mail-ins it looks like it will be about 56% Trump this time*). But somehow in conjunction with the overall national results I am finding myself choking back utter revulsion at my courteously engaging with these "nice" but utterly, depraved, deluded, and sociopathic monsters to help them in carrying out their monstrosity. So maybe better that I disengage. I viscerally hate them all. This is neither healthy nor good but it has been my overwhelming emotion for the past 16 hours or so.
*Not all mail-ins counted so not sure of the actual swing but that is my extrapolation of current percentages and mail-ins remaining. Additionally we had 4% E-day ballots as provisionals, most not of the typical "this ain't gonna count because you really aren't registered here but if you insist" kind, but rather "was sent a mail-in but does not have it with them to spoil sso gotta give you a provisional." So better chance of counting, and since mail-in, probably heavily Biden. So that "swing" is in line with what Biden needs/seems to be getting in many places in PA. More worrisome was the other more 50-50 Clinton/Trump precinct that shares my space. They will at best get back to 50-50 again with mail-ins. It is a slightly more "professional and older area.
In conclusion; it is I who am the monster.
316: Your rules in PA are messed up. I was sent a mail in and chose to vote early in person. I was explicitly told not to bring it to the polls, because mail ins were to be rejected if you came in person and they did not want you to accidentally mark the wrong ballot and have it rejected. And I can go on my Secretary of State's website and see that that is what happened to my ballot. It's a provisional ballot if you don't bring in your mail-in.
Tim asked me why there are so many different rules for counting ballots in this country. He just could not understand how that could be fair.
312: 301 notwithstanding, Trump is now all-in on the stolen election narrative, so god help us.
Yes. I have had the thought that Trump is surely internalizing and processing that it if anyone was "rejected" it was pretty much he alone, and not Republicans in general. This thought was briefly absolutely satisfying in a nasty kind of way, but that was quickly replaced by dread of how that will add to the rage fire of his response.
I'm feeling tentatively relieved (that the absolute worst won't happen *knock on wood*), depressed about the Senate, pissed about Susan Collins, and generally cranky.
I wanted Trump to be rejected and to have a clear sense that at least some of what's happened in the last 4 years needs to change, and I don't feel like there was a consensus on that.
To 316, I heard a lot of people saying before the election that it's important for Democrats to be committed to making it easy and encouraging people to vote because it's the right thing to do, not just for partisan advantage. I think people saying that believed (as I believed) that it _was_ a partisan advantage. But I think it's worth sticking to the position of, "voting good." But, as I said up-thread, I'm puzzled that high turnout wasn't more of a pro-Dem factor.
American politics are disgusting, infuriating, and most of all exhausting right now -- and, at the same time, I wake up trying to figure out what I could be doing to help push American politics in a better direction.
It doesn't fit neatly into traditional -isms, but it's there and it needs a name.
Corey Robin's thesis from 9 years ago was that, no, it has a name, that's the core of conservatism. And I'd say his claim is looking better all the time.
The mail processing rates are very concerning. I am so very mad.
Anyone know what's going on in Arizona? It looks like it's close but the early calls haven't been retracted?
Wisconsin says they're all counted, with a high enough margin for Biden that it would almost certainly survive a recount.
Definitely good that Charley chose not to take even a single day off from hippie punching, because there's no election postmortem that's going to be more astute than the one that's been marinating in confirmation bias for months or even years and that then gets handed down while the votes are still be counted.
Here's my confirmation bias: Charley, you got your old, white, moderate presidential candidate, and he seems to have BARELY won an election during a once-in-a-century pandemic that his opponent bungled worse than literally any other head of state on earth. But yes, the problem was rhetoric about court-packing and BLM and a Green New Deal. Steve Bullock was all in on those things, right?
Also, my half-baked big-picture thoughts. Over my political lifetime both American politics and life have become more nationalized (and internationalized).
I remember hearing stories about how the spread of Radio (and then TV) eroded regional accents and cultures and built a national pop-culture. I think the internet has also had an impact on de-localizing culture.
Politically, I think this increases the feeling that nobody knows who's in charge but everybody's sure that it isn't them (or isn't anybody visible), and that's part of what makes everybody feel under siege.
I think, sometimes, about an exchange I had with Timothy Burke, in which he said
I found Moises Naim's The End of Power interesting and useful to explain some of my feelings and why they're trending as you describe. Naim's analysis argues that people are increasingly feeling that they have no input into the systems that control their lives except a sort of refusal: they can block or stop or inhibit action by an institution or government or system, but they cannot initiate or propose or see an idea come to fruition. I see that certainly in my own working life: almost all interesting proposals that have some sharp or original objective or mission get ground down into a kind of procedural soup and grind slowly to a halt. I think even people in powerful positions feel this way, that they can have clear insights which are impossible to do anything about, and this is one reason that the "California Ideology" types like Elon Musk are so enamored of framing their actions as outside any imaginable form of collective action or collaboration, because they feel that to work with others or work inside organizations is to lose all hope of doing something dramatic in scale and impact. Naim basically observes that people are right to feel powerless at the same time that they're missing just how inclusive many organizations are.
[I also recommend this post]
I was skeptical of that claim at the time, but I know think trying to figure out how to alleviate that sense of frustration and powerlessness is a key element to fixing American politics.
In retrospect, outsourcing the Democrats messaging operation to the Lincoln Rockwell Project may have been a bad idea.
Whoa, Ezra Klein just tweeted out 304.last.
323: Arizona is close but the calls haven't been retracted. It looks like Edison Research (which provides data to the networks) reported that 98-99% of the vote was counted, then just found a mistake and took it down to 86%. That makes it tighter since those to-be-counted votes are Election Day votes that break toward Trump. The news outlets are still talking as if it's decided, but I'm now unsure.
327: People keep saying that, but I don't think they did.
306: As with so many other things at the MA State House, Robert DeLeo is the problem. The effort to pass the "Roe Bill" has been thwarted by him multiple times.
321: This may be our pithier definition of conservatism --
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
329: That is part of what is so confusing this election. Arizona was notoriously slow to count mail-ins to the extent that McSally went from winning to losing, but I guess now it counts the mail-ins early. So my (Aaarrrgghhh!) the reverse...
321: Hadn't seen that interview or read the book (though I've seen references to Robin and the idea that hierarchy animates conservatism). Looks interesting. People have been making connections in this ballpark for a long time, though. E.g.:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10417946009371561?journalCode=rsjc18
I feel like the alternate fact universe isn't getting its due
That's right. As James Carville might say: It's the epistemology, stupid.
331: I hate that man so much. How exactly did he get elected Speaker? Voters have voted out people in leadership positions who blindly followed what he said. How can we get that passed and him booted out of leadership. I signed an online petition, but I don't know how seriously people take that stuff.
That's fair, von.
The Republicans acted as if Bullock and everyone else was all in on those things. I don't think the fact that they were not cost them any votes at all that they might have gotten if they had been all in on them, certainly not enough to make up for our Fox loving fellow citizens. It's a solid repudiation for moderation here. There's no reason not to let the leftists see if they can't do better. I very strongly doubt they can, but I'll vote for the nominees.
336: The previous three Speakers resigned due to "allegations" of all sorts of bad things. Perjury, conspiracy, fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice. DeLeo was elected on a platform of being a bland, non-ideological consensus-builder; i.e., no drama. He also had the advantage of being DiMasi's bagman. He knows where the bodies are buried and his constituency is never going to vote him out.
Thanks for that vote of confidence Charley! I think if I feel up to memorizing a difficult book it will be the Quran and not Roberts' Rules of Order, but hopefully there will be some takers. From my perspective the top Democrats seem to have been trying really hard to lose this election, but not as hard as they would have if Bernie had been the nominee. He would have gotten the Corbyn treatment times 10. I hope I'm wrong.
339 Gov Bullock was not trying to lose, and neither were our other truly excellent state-wide candidates.
329: Are we sure exactly what kind of votes they are? Do I understand right that it's election day mail/drop-off votes? Not as clear where that lands relative to in-person or early mail.
Florida is so crazy. How is it that Floridians vote overwhelmingly for liberal ballot measures like the one in 2018 allowing felons to vote and this time raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and also vote for Republican candidates that oppose anything of the sort, and will do everything to prevent their implementation?
And then here in Illinois we voted overwhelmingly for Biden but also voted against making our state taxes fairer.
So many thoughts and no computer (by design!) so it will have to wait until I am back in my house. I can tap-type that I'm mad as fuck about prop 22 though. How is it even legal?
333, 341: I think it's mostly Election Day ballots (either dropped off or completed at the polling place), probably also mail-in that arrived in the last handful of days. Arizona is slow to count its mail ballots but this time they were allowed to start counting early.
Last I saw, Biden was up 3 points with 14% of the vote uncounted, so you figure it would have to break about 60-40 Trump to pull even. Hard to know what the odds are without knowing how many of those are absentee and which precincts we're waiting on (going by county doesn't help because Arizona's population is all in two counties.)
ME voting is so weird. Not only is there a huge gap between president and senate, there's a huge gap *in the opposite direction* between president and house in ME-02.
In the midst of this disgrace in Ohio, Franklin County (Columbus and surrounding suburbs) is now a place where any association with the Republican party guarantees defeat. The long-time incumbent Republican County Prosecutor lost to a Democrat who is recovering from a stroke. All the Republican-endorsed trial court judges -- including long-time incumbents - lost decisively.
343: There was a ton of misleading advertising from the opposition. I'm assuming that the primary problem was that voters weren't adequately educated as to what the amendment really did.
Charlie- I'm sure it looks that way to you and them. Did they all: 1. Show pugnacity sufficient to make everyone believe they would relish fighting Republican to the end; 2 Articulate a positive vision of the future people could believe in; 3 Promise real tangible benefits to the multiracial working class?
Because I think that if they didn't do all of those things in a way that people could understand, they were playing to lose.
From my perspective the top Democrats seem to have been trying really hard to lose this election
Who the fuck are you talking about?
340: Roger is someone who cannot be communicated with.
The shocking thing about the election was that it seems like it wasn't about events at all. I don't think COVID, BLM, or the economy made any difference. If we ran the election last November, it would have turned out basically the same.
1. Show pugnacity sufficient to make everyone believe they would relish fighting Republican to the end; 2 Articulate a positive vision of the future people could believe in; 3 Promise real tangible benefits to the multiracial working class
Doesn't this just set up a "no true Scotsman" situation. You could always claim that somebody who lost wasn't "sufficiently" pugnacious, or articulated a vision but not one people could believe in.
352- I think it's pretty obvious to everyone when someone does those 3 things.
The Bullock loss was one of the worst shames of the night. I have no idea what might have helped or hurt.
I'm not saying you always win when you do them, or always lose when you don't, but without vision the people perish.
Oh I know, DK, there's no mystery about how it passed. It's still impressively bad. Are you in CA too? I never knew.
Roger, you know the list of candidates who do all those things and still lose is miles long! It is a no true Scotsman fallacy.
Oops, simul-post. I am about to take off, so ...
349 Ok, well, thanks for clarifying. I don't think you have that good a grasp on Montana politics, but, as noted, my team got shellacked. I voted left in the primaries, and for Warren, so certainly a candidate who follows that formula won't have any trouble getting my vote. I just don't think there's any good reason to think that this is an approach that wins in most parts of our state. (Here, we went hard for Biden, Bullock, and all the rest. Our turnout was huge. There are people who aren't registered, here and in other places, but I don't think there's much reason to think that statewide the unregistered left is big enough to beat the enthusiastic cultural Trumpians.)
AZ SoS says: "Most of those votes were early-voting ballots that were received Monday or dropped off at voting centers Tuesday." Presumably that's somewhere in between the heavily D early early-vote and the heavily R day-of vote, so really hard to say much at all.
358- I'm sure Montana is a very heavy lift.
The shocking thing about the election was that it seems like it wasn't about events at all. I don't think COVID, BLM, or the economy made any difference. If we ran the election last November, it would have turned out basically the same.
It's just unreal. It really speaks to the two-different-realities thing. In the other world, BLM is scary and Covid is this flu that liberals are getting their panties in a twist over, and wrecking the economy because of it.
A friend on Facebook coined a poignant phrase for the current situation: "nauseously optimistic."
358- I'm sure Montana is a very heavy lift.
The Senate is a heavy list. The 25 reddest states are: WY, WV, OK, AR, ID, ND, AL, LA, KY, NE, SD, TN, MS, UT, KS, IN, MO, AK, SC, MT, TX, IA, OH, GA, NC (note 19 of them are redder than MT)
The emotional appeal of Trumpism has swept all before it. Again.
We're coming off 16 years of Dem governors, and the other statewides were often blue before the red sweep (other than governor) 2016.
i'm not optimistic with mcconnell continuing to control the senate. more just relieved it wasn't as bad as 2016.
I like how Timothy Burke's blog post applies not only to countries across the world but also to California, where the Democratic dominance belies a strong unwillingness by much of the middle-to-upper-middle class to rethink, well, anything about their privilege, and aptitude to be fooled into thinking that they are the main beneficiaries of the property-and-business system which should be protected at all costs. (Applies to Props 15, 21, and 22.)
Provided Biden wins, I will not be as wrecked as I was in 2016. Even if this reflects worse on humanity, it's a better hand to work from. It feels more like my 2004 disappointment (which was crushing, because I had not yet met 2016.)
I'm less afraid this time, but more despairing. If the last 4 years didn't pop the Fox News bubble, what could ever do it?
Having gotten over the initial shock, and with the assumption that the election plays out in Biden's favor, I'm feeling a lot of relief. I mean, there's still a lot that can happen between now and January. (There's a lot that can happen between now and the end of the week.) But having that worthless fuck out of office is going to make life so much better, if we can manage it.
I have no particular confidence in Biden pursuing justice, but I hope Cy Vance Jr. locks him up.
More toward 359: looks like in addition to the late-arriving and dropped-off early voting ballots, there's also some number of provisional Election Day ballots; but the regular ballots from Election Day are mostly in. That's hopeful, I think.
369: Lots of things. The hard part is finding one that happens without killing hundreds of thousands more Americans.
368: I don't think the Democrats have put Fox News itself in their crosshairs. Like JPS's daughter says, destroy them and drive their pulpy faces into the carnage they have wrought. Maybe I'm paraphrasing.
370: Yeah, with that more info it looks like Biden is more favored in AZ than he is in PA or GA (which are much closer to 50/50 though Biden is definitely favored in PA and probably favored in GA).
NPR gave Wisconsin to Biden, officially.
"Snatching despair from the jaws of victory" has never felt more literal.
I have a crank theory about the election. It's sufficiently facile that Tom Friedman would probably agree to it. Remember when "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" both came out at the same time, with the same basic premise? Armageddon was a dumb movie about men doing man things like drilling. Deep Impact was a girly movie about your feelings, about how upsetting and traumatic it would be if the world ended. Deep Impact is marginally more realistic, while Armageddon is more fun.
The Democrats are the Deep Impact party, while Trump is Armageddon.
The phrase in 362 may have been borrowed from Robert Reich.
What a strange election. The results feel a lot like 2018, but the reaction feels more like 2016 or 2004. I guess a lot of people expected from the polling that it would be more like 2008 or 2006, but it was always showing a pretty close race. In Senate especially, where there was less polling overall, many of the more recent and/or higher-quality polls showed GOP leads in the key states. (I'm thinking especially of Selzer in Iowa and NYT/Siena in most of them.)
I genuinely thought that uninformed Americans had gotten a bit bored of the Trump Reality Show and were ready to change the channel out of sheer base novelty.
I will say that I still think charisma is the most important thing and that neither of them have it, and that it's just not a feature in this election at all. I think Biden used to probably be charming, but this election called for more somber tones and anger.
There is no plausible facade left, no pretending Trump was a weird anomaly or some "blue wave" would make it easy to get some meaningful work done.
Instead the practical scenario to hope for here is that Biden actually wins and can spend the next four years doing his middle-of-the-road best to redress a fraction of the institutional damage done in the last few, working with a hostile and undermining Senate for at least 1/2 of it. There is some reason to be optimistic then, that some lost ground can be recovered. And if he does a decent job of it, perhaps regain some more in a second term. If you are feeling really optimistic, maybe even gain a little?
But really addressing the underlying dynamic looks like a multi generational project if it can be done at all. This is what can more depressing about Nov 4 now vs. 2016 - not that "WTF" aspect, but the compelling confirmation that either way, the brokenness is bone deep.
378: 538 was giving the Dems a 75 percent chance of winning the Senate. I think it's reasonable to feel disappointed in the results and some despair about what that will mean for policy going forward.
381: For sure, and I'm plenty disappointed about the Senate and anxious about the future. But, like, a 25% chance isn't trivial at all. This outcome was always well within the range that models like 538's were projecting.
378: see also: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/huddle/2020/11/04/the-gops-stunningly-good-night-490804
It doesn't feel equivalent to 2018 to me.
Cross-posted.
I agree, it's a normal scale of bad news, with very high stakes.
380 seems pretty right to me, especially this part:
But really addressing the underlying dynamic looks like a multi generational project if it can be done at all. This is what can more depressing about Nov 4 now vs. 2016 - not that "WTF" aspect, but the compelling confirmation that either way, the brokenness is bone deep.
This is why it feels in some ways more like 2004 than 2016.
376: The asteroid is flat.
I also admit to a bit of the "Gambler's Fallacy." After RBG's death, I expected to get some breaks, and wasn't ready to deal with a bunch of predictable concerns (almost) all breaking against progress.
380 was me.
Let's hope 385 doesn't prove out in terms of court involvement...
Today more than any other day during the quarantine it would so nice to hang out with friends, not talking much, just hanging out.
385 Well, maybe it's more like actual 2008, as opposed to hoped for 2008. Having control of the executive is a big damn deal for the climate. Even if we're not going to have a new Civil Rights movement, we can have a civil rights division that puts punishing police brutality back on the agenda.
I'm feeling pretty beat down but, as Walt says, it's not unlike the results we'd have seen in November 2019, and at that point in time, I thought that Sen. Daines was a shoo-in to keep his seat.
Whoever it is in Maine who thinks that another term for Collins makes sense -- I guess I don't even want to know what they were thinking.
: For sure, and I'm plenty disappointed about the Senate and anxious about the future. But, like, a 25% chance isn't trivial at all. This outcome was always well within the range that models like 538's were projecting.
But it's more than that. The "likely blue" states all had margins of 5-8% - supposedly outside the margin of error. The toss-up states have all been in fact solidly Trump. This is yet another instance of correlated failures adding up to quite a different picture than was being portrayed.
385: Except, maybe, worse. It's also not just about hating Hillary Clinton.
I'm not giving up on the Senate yet (not that it matters). We need three of the remaining seats. Peters just toook the lead in Michigan. Georgia special is definitely going to a runoff, and the other Georgia seat will also if the remaining uncounted votes are heavily Dem. Granted, Dems pretty much never win runoffs in Georgia, but it's time for a change.
The parallels with 2004 are notable -- an election that basically is a referendum on a first-term president that was elected while losing the popular vote. Also a very energized electorate -- the sense that the more worked up our side got, the more the other side got worked up in response. What seems so crazily different is that while W. was very popular at times and very popular at other times depending on what was going on, Trump has stayed between 40 and 50 percent approval his whole term. It's like with Trump, we're just on different teams, and nothing changes that.
I guess I don't even want to know what they were thinking
Goes for way more than the Collins voters.
392: Polling a representative sample seems to be harder and harder. I don't answer the phone if people don't leave a message. Who are they reaching, and how many people answer honestly?
Meainng it doesn't matter whether I personally remain hopeful. Who controls the Senate definitely matters.
while W. was very popular at times and very popular at other times
Oy! Left out a crucial "un" prefix.
Abolish the Electoral College to make democracy safe for psephologists!
400: I feel like it would make it too easy. Also, the name 538 wouldn't make any sense.
Another version of the sentiment in 380: https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1324089241496915968
I'm not saying Democrats or liberals or lefists should just resign themselves to these anti-democratic institutions or to narrow national victories and big losses in larger parts of the country - quite the opposite.
But it's worth really reassessing the analytical foundations of the idea that there is some big, enduring New Deal-level Democratic coalition out there for taking if Dems would just Do It The Right Way.
389 missing a reference to 2000 election that's hopefully obvious , whups
402: There's something in the perpetual state-level victories for marijuana and Medicaid we're missing, I feel pretty sure. I suppose that might turn out to be herrenvolk socialism, but we have to try to find it.
With NE-2 called for Biden, the 269-269 scenario is precluded and even losing PA (which seems less and less likely) would bring Biden down to 270-268, as long as AZ doesn't change.
Another hypothesis with some data on why weighting for education wasn't enough this time.
There also appears still to be an outside chance that we end this with a 50-48 R Senate and two runoffs in Georgia.
Although probably the truer answer to 402 is that there is no underlying truth about what set of policies voters want. Most voters want many incompatible things at once.
"What do you care? You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a disaffected racist with entitlement issues."
Legal update: Apparently Republicans has filed or may file lawsuits complaining that they have inadequate access to watch vote tabulators in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Not a problem -- the remedy would be a recount with different rules for watchers. It would almost certainly not change the outcome. From a look at the Michigan Complaint, I am looking forward to the argument that the framers of the Constitution intended that Due Process requires that vote counting be videotaped.
The dispute in Pennsylvania about mailed ballots received after election day remains, but I'm guessing it will involve very small numbers, and wouldn't necessarily favor one side over the other. The dispute about people who were contacted to permit them to fix problems in absentee ballots seems to involve less than 50 people, so forget it.
Even Trump's own lawyers couldn't figure out a basis to go to court to stop the counting of all ballots that weren't counted before Trump's bedtime last night, so it's not going to happen.
Bush v. Gore only worked because Bush had an infinitessimal lead after the count and the first recount. Doesn't seem to be happening that way this time.
406: My wife and I were discussing the spreading lack of trust. If pollsters are now lumped with the media and "left elitists", polls might not be useful until that's purged -- both due to avoidance, and conscious lying to "own the pollsters".
Does anyone know which sources _have_ called AZ for Biden? I know that Fox and AP have. Are there any holdouts? I don't know why but I am really concerned about them having that one wrong.
Fox has to be pretty close to calling the whole election, right? Just need NV.
Yeah Fox just called Michigan, so they have just NV, PA, NC, and GA outstanding I think.
Fox has no interest in a world where the Republican Party can win power without elections. Whatever Tucker wants, the people who sell ads count the money.
412: NPR has. You mean which sources they use?
It's like with Trump, we're just on different teams, and nothing changes that.
Because we have exactly 2 parties no matter what happens, it has now evolved into complete negative partisanship. In Britain if you hate the Tories and you will always vote against them, you still have different options for who to vote FOR. It doesn't work over there either because they don't have proportional representation, but it's a start.
Getting rid of Stephen Miller is worth a hell of a lot to me. I am not sure I believe yet that all Trump's machinations will be futile, but maybe. I really did appreciate this one:
https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/1322275075068989442
It's like with Trump, we're just on different teams, and nothing changes that.
Because we have exactly 2 parties no matter what happens, it has now evolved into complete negative partisanship. In Britain if you hate the Tories and you will always vote against them, you still have different options for who to vote FOR. It doesn't work over there either because they don't have proportional representation, but it's a start. Over here your options are to vote for the party you don't hate, or to not vote.
NH appears to be losing its Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and Chris Sununu got re-elected Governor in a walk. So now we are to be a GOP trifecta.
I'm annoyed that the state democratic party put so much effort into the Biden campaign while I guess the local reps were left out to dry. At my house we recieved multiple mailers paid for by the NH Dems promoting Biden, and all the local Biden/Harris signs were printed with state party money. Why this came from state party coffers, rather than the Biden campaign I don't understand. We could have used those resources in State House races.
Theoretically, places like California could have a Democratic Party, a lefty party, and a vestigial Republican Party playing the Liberal Democrat role while other states could have the Democratic Party and a Republican Party as the only competitive ones.
Or somebody could start a right-wing but decidedly anti-racist party (calling themselves centrists) in Texas and the like and probably stand a chance at making the Democratic Party into the left wing party people keep shouting about.
To the extent there's ideological room for another party in the US, the ideological space it would occupy is cultural conservatism plus economic populism. Herrenvolk socialism would be one particularly extreme manifestation of that mix, but it's not the only one imaginable.
Trump's 2016 campaign seemed to be trying to claim that space, but then he totally abandoned it once he got elected.
The Dems lost NH's Executive Council, too, so its a GOP quadfecta.
To the extent there's ideological room for another party in the US, the ideological space it would occupy is cultural conservatism plus economic populism
Would it be accurate to call this the Joe Rogan party? (The wikipedia summary of his political positions is unclear. He supports UBI and universal healthcare but supported Trump over Biden)
427: Yeah, I think he's a great example of the type of person with that mix of positions.
Even Trump's own lawyers couldn't figure out a basis to go to court to stop the counting of all ballots that weren't counted before Trump's bedtime last night, so it's not going to happen.
Bush v. Gore only worked because Bush had an infinitessimal lead after the count and the first recount. Doesn't seem to be happening that way this time.
I'm guessing that since the Republicans held the Senate, the Supreme Court and the rest of the Republican legal establishment are not going to try super hard to steal the election for Trump anymore, because they hate Trump just like everyone else who has ever met him and they figure the Democrats still won't be able to do anything in the short term.
Results on many/most outstanding ballots from the Phoenix area will be announced in about four hours, 7pm local time. If Biden's lead holds, the media calls on AZ should follow immediately. If not, the remaining results should come out later in the night.
Local time = Unfogged timestamp time plus about eight minutes.
I think the Democrats need to work on governing through interstate compacts.
Hey, Colorado voters just ratified the NPV Compact! I didn't know that was up there.
432: the next political issue I invest anything in will be the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Who's with me?
Holy shit, 434 before seeing 433, I swear.
NPV is a good idea and I support it. But i think concurrently Congress should start the ball rolling on a constitutional amendment. Just let states ratify it slowly over the decades so we can get rid of it officially. If you allow enough time it would pass eventually. The EC screws everyone eventually.
Some states I could imagine passing it next, from their website, are VA, NH, ME, MN, MI, NV.
Maybe Florida voters would pass it as a citizen initiative on the basis that it reduces their quadrennial campaign ad load.
A very lolsob couple of grafs:
One of the central (and, frankly, more insufferable) tenets of improv is the principle of "yes, and" -- essentially, agreeing to everything your scene partner suggests and then building on it. The purpose of this is to free you up to be as flexible and responsive to your partner's suggestions as possible: If they establish, for instance, you're at a pontoon boat salesmen's convention in Akron, you should affirm that and add that the ghost of Abraham Lincoln is also present and that he is in the market for a new Sun Tracker.
Believing in QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory suggesting that President Donald Trump is lying in wait to bust up a deep state pedophile ring, is a bit like being good at improv. No matter what obstacles others may throw your way, and no matter how challenging the circumstances, you have to do your best to justify and make sense of them in context. Over the past 24 hours, QAnon believers have found themselves in the position of having to say "yes, and" quite a bit.
Some states I could imagine passing it next, from their website, are VA, NH, ME, MN, MI, NV.
It's interesting to consider that as changes in demographics and the national political landscape move states out of swing-state status they become more receptive to this sort of thing. Of course, the same changes are also moving other states into the swing, so I don't know what the net effect would be.
I guess from now on, the presidential popular vote is just going to be reported as an afterthought. Seems to me that used to play a pretty important role in media coverage.
420: That is really annoying. Why wasn't Biden/Harris willing to foot the bill for that?
440: Yes. When I got on the sites this morning it took me a bit to notice where it was.
439: That pattern of states moving into and out of swing-state status is exactly why I'd prefer a constitutional amendment to lock them in. As it stands now, states can leave the compact as their demographics change. Even worse, you could imagine a state leaving the compact after an election was already concluded...
With California not fully reported, the margin if made front and center right now would look rather skinny for Biden.
At one intermediate update CNN reported Biden's raw vote total as 69,696,969 which I have to think was some intern having a laugh.
- To the extent there's ideological room for another party in the US, the ideological space it would occupy is cultural conservatism plus economic populism
Would it be accurate to call this the Joe Rogan party?
As teofilo said, there are a variety of positions in this space. Add American-style racism and you get 'palaeoconservatism' (Pat Buchanan). But the pure form (as in Catholic bodies like the old Demo/cratic Labour Party and Nat/ional Civic Council in Australia or Christian Democracy in Europe) is a very natural combination - more natural than the combination of cultural conservatism and (in the European sense) economic liberalism of Reagan and the Bushes. It's really American lassez-faire movement conservatism that's the aberration.
I haven't listened to Joe Rogan but from what I read about him I don't think he falls into any form of this category, because not culturally conservative. It sounds to me more like one form of what they call 'alt-lite': originally culturally liberal and economically conservative 'libertarians' who've come to believe that pure libertarianism is unworkable because only the class of white men contains enough natural talent to make it work.
If Biden does flip Georgia, he'll have Stacey Abrams to thank. I'd sure love to see her in charge of important things.
I haven't listened to Joe Rogan but from what I read about him I don't think he falls into any form of this category, because not culturally conservative.
Well, "culturally conservative" covers a wide range of views in the American context. I think Rogan represents a version similar to Trump: irreligious and sexually libertine but firmly committed to traditional gender roles and racial hierarchies.
448: I think she should run for Governor of Georgia again.
Sure - though I think that the wide sense of "culturally conservative" invites confusion here. It's a bit like calling Nazi strength-through-joy "culturally conservative". A better phrase would be "neo-Pagan" or something.
451: Perhaps, but I think a hypothetical third party along these lines would more likely be a uniquely American thing drawing heavily on Rogan/Trump types than a typical European-style Christian Democratic party. I can also see the potential for a more traditional CD party focused on Catholics, though. I do agree that it's hard to imagine the same party appealing to both.
449:. I'm pretty sure that is her plan.
I was joined in count monitoring for a while last night by a crazy-red state rep, now a state senator-elect. She's completely convinced that our just-passed marijuana legalization propositions are going to be invalidated on technical grounds.
452: Oh, I see, my bad - looking back, you were talking about new combinations that would fly in the American context rather than the space of possible positions. I was distracted by the mention of herrenvolk socialism, which made me think of non-American contexts like South Africa under apartheid: "Capitalism for the English, Socialism for the Boers, and Fascism for the Blacks." (The old SA was socially conservative not just in the broad sense of affirming hierarchy but also in the narrow sense involving discouraging libertinism in white men.) But yes, a combination of populist on economics and neo-pagan on social issues might be successful in America in a way that Christian Democracy would not be.
I see space here for a Comity Emoji.
in the narrow sense involving discouraging libertinism in white men
Presumably w/r/t white women only.
459: In practice, I don't know how much enforcement there was if white men were sexually exploiting non-white women, but in theory there was the Race Relations Act.
I feel the need to offer condolences to Charley and Spike and anybody else who has worked for Democrats or democracy and watched their states sink into the Republican muck.
Why wasn't Biden/Harris willing to foot the bill for that?
I don't know, but apparently sticking state parties with the bill for signs was an innovation of the 2016 Clinton campaign.
Maricopa dump was right around the % that would bring it weven (59% Trump). Not sure the whole batch will be like that. By far the most are from Maricopa.
Gary Peters squeaked out a win in Michigan! He was the incumbent Senator whose name I didn't know until yesterday.
I feel the need to offer condolences to Charley and Spike and anybody else who has worked for Democrats or democracy and watched their states sink into the Republican muck.
Thanks, I thought we were in good shape - except for the Governor's race - so it really came as a surprise. Particularly weird given that Biden is winning here by 7 percentage points.
Yeah, AZ and GA are both very very close, but it looks like Biden is a slight favorite in each (but probably not a favorite to win both). PA and NV look to be easier Biden wins.
The 538 liveblog has implications right:
we just got a batch of about 74,000 Maricopa County votes that split 59-41 for Trump. This narrowed Biden's statewide lead to about 79,000 votes. To close that gap, with about 418,000 ballots left to count statewide, Trump would have to win the remaining ballots ... 59-41. One silver lining for Biden, though: A fair number of those remaining 418,000 ballots are in Pima County, which is bluer then Maricopa.
Pima County is Tucson, which still has fewer outstanding than Phoenix, but maybe enough to squeak by. Fuck it's going to be close though. Calling the state yesterday was an error.
firmly committed to traditional gender roles and racial hierarchies.
Have you listened to Rogan at all?
273 is terrifying. I've been living in the reality that Biden will eke it out because the alternative is too terrible.
474: Nothing says opposition to gender hierarchy like being jacked and into mixed martial arts.
477: Is weight lifting and martial arts right wing now? I don't have a Twitter account to tell me these things.
I liked him on Newsradio, but that was a while ago.
479: I've followed him a long time via UFC and the podcast. He's a huge female MMA booster and recently footed the medical bills for fighter Miriam Nakamoto.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miriam_Nakamoto
Good for him, but that's neither here nor there regarding his overall views on gender and race. I have a general impression of him as anti-wokeness, but it's true that I don't actually listen to his show.
Well then what the hell are you basing your "firmly committed to traditional gender roles and racial hierarchies" on?
Rogan is equal parts dumb, banal, offensive, and dangerous. As is his audience.
Dangerous! Pushes UBI, drug legalization, and endorsed Sanders for President.
Well then what the hell are you basing your "firmly committed to traditional gender roles and racial hierarchies" on?
His anti-wokeness, which is the exact same thing.
I feel slightly badly for introducing the Joe Rogan topic, but I remembered the conversation around his endorsement of Sanders, and it made me think of him as someone who didn't fit comfortably in either of the current parties.
485: FFS, no it's not. God, and you people are baffled how Trump made inroads with minorities.
gswift himself is another great example of the kind of guy I think this theoretical party would appeal to. He seems to think I'm accusing these guys of being right-wingers despite their progressive economic views, but I'm really not. The whole point is that they're cross-pressured and don't fit neatly into either party coalition.
Gaslighting, arguing rudely in bad faith. Glad we got this valuable perspective that's so hard to find elsewhere on the Internet.
488: Am I also invested in racial hierarchy and traditional gender roles?
490: Yes, as abundantly documented in your comments here.
491: I'll put my personal and professional life up against yours in this regard any day. You mean well, I just think you're wrong. I'm not looking for another 1000K thread. I'll just leave it at that.
OK, so I did the due diligence and googled for some snippets about feminism from his podcast. We've got:
Jordan Peterson on Women's Studies
This is what you've been warning against, and this is where I completely agree with you... I love the way you've outlined all the steps... they say it's social change, it's social justice - it's not.
Male Feminists are Weasels
[Male feminists] can't run fast, they can't pick things up, they're unattractive - they're little weasels aka "Do you even lift, bro?".
Feminism is sexist towards women
I have a friend who has to pay alimony for the rest of his life.
The Power Hot Women Have Over Ugly Men
Some people, they have a ... unearned tyranny on sexual affection..."
It fits my prior impression, which is that he's more or less on the self-consciously "rationalist" end of MRA, or is at least MRA-adjacent. The feel is: "I'm not saying they're right about everything, but they make a lot of good points". He wants legal equality, but is very intrigued by Jordan Peterson-style gender essentialism. I'd describe this as being okay with highly differentiated gender roles. YMMV.
Gaslighting, arguing rudely in bad faith.
I know people are annoyed both by gswift and by meta-conversations, but no, this isn't right. I wish I knew more about Rogan (I know a little) because it's a conversation I'd like to engage.
(But I have to admit, I'm a little surprised that gswift in 492 disagrees with teo in 491. Surely 491 is more-or-less self-evidently correct, and this is not a thing that gswift conceals. No?)
On less utterly boring topics, it appears that Trump gained ground across all voting demographics, including doubling his support among Black women from 4-8... except among white men, apparently his only relative loss.
This challenges my priors.
466 Thanks for that.
It's not clear what a path forward looks like. The legislative session runs from early January to late April -- we normally trying to stay in touch with the delegation, and help wrangle support on particular bills, but the whole thing is just going to be a bloodbath start to finish. My term in leadership ends in May, and I've said since before the start of my current term that I wasn't going to serve another. So, the way forward isn't for me to play much of a role in -- I've hoped that someone 20 years (at least) younger would take up my position.
I guess the next question is whether Trump fucked us with the census. We were on track to get a second congressional seat, which be reliably blue. Say we were filling the seat in 2024 -- the bench is thin-ish. No statewide Dem will have been in office since 2016. There'll be a dozen. maybe 15, Dems in the western district with some legislative experience, most of whom will have no interest whatsoever. It's too far away to really be on anyone's radar, but I guess if someone really wants to play for it, next year is not too early to start thinking about what one would want as a final resume entry before trying the race. Then again, maybe our bad census response will wreck it.
495 I'm not an expert on the validity of polling, but if those figures are from the exit polls, you really have to account for how skewed the sample is.
Definitely exit polls, and that industry is rightly getting some comeuppance now, but I guess I'd figure their 2016 and 2020 numbers would be sampled similarly, so the deltas mean something.
I'm a little surprised that gswift in 492 disagrees with teo in 491
I watched my daughters during the day and worked night shifts to put my wife through school for two science degrees. I have two daughters I put through years of MMA training, camping, outdoor survival, shooting, etc. I helped coach and train my older daughter for multiple amateur Muay Thai fights. I've spent 12 years of my professional life in a 90+ minority 90+ low income part of the city. If this is what anyone thinks dedication to traditional gender roles and racial hierarchies looks like there's probably not much else for us to talk about.
trump train people are currently circling girl x's campus in the thoroughly blue NE, honking their horns at, yelling serious threats (like rape) towards, and spitting on students walking at the edge of campus. no one has had their car/truck even stopped, much less been arrested. I thought it was illegal to spit on people, maybe a law from the fear of HIV-AIDS? I do remember people who spit on the cops during an arrest being charged with an additional crime in many cases. and particularly in the time of covid? gswift hook me up with knowledge here.
I told girl x to go out there and take pictures of people's license plates, but I'm not sure what that'll do and honestly it might be dangerous for a 5 foot tall girl to do alone, as she pointed out. one hates to be all "what if blm supporters..." but seriously, what if minority blm demonstrators? are the police that in the tank for white people? never mind.
Josh Marshall articulates something I've been struggling with. I know everything is awful, and I don't mean to dismiss the legitimate concerns people have. But I'm pretty happy.*
It's clear now that the democratic/Democratic opposition isn't going to be jailed. There's an opportunity now to start at least thinking about how to deal with the pandemic or the transition to clean energy or fascist cops. And there are some really awful political fights ahead in which decency has a legit chance at success.
Joe Biden ran an entirely admirable and effective campaign. The shortcomings in the results had nothing to do with him. (The same is true of Hillary, but I have given up on trying to persuade people of that.)
Folks are rightly concerned about the objective awfulness of the American people and the US political system. But we are all thinking in terms of the last couple of months of Nate Silver projections. There was a moment back in, say, March, where Trump could have opted to be stupid about the pandemic -- instead of absolutely fucking insane -- and people would have loved him for it. It would have been GW Bush and 9/11 all over again! Rally 'round the moron!
But Trump only has one trick: Denial. And that still could have worked!
There are huge challenges ahead, and we're going to continue to fuck things up. But four more years of Trump would have been a series of calamities.
*With the caveat, of course, that Biden has to win.
If this is what anyone thinks dedication to traditional gender roles and racial hierarchies looks like there's probably not much else for us to talk about.
I don't disagree.
500: The code in Utah for propelling a bodily substance.
https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title76/Chapter5/76-5-S102.9.html?v=C76-5-S102.9_1800010118000101
Pictures are better than nothing, but video is what will enable you to press charges on a misdemeanor without the police present. An adult wants to do it with a gun as backup? Maybe. Your tiny unarmed daughter? No.
Looks like Trump is leading in Georgia by 23k votes. Half a percent. They're close to done, I guess.
Going back to the idea of additional political spaces that could/should appear in the American scheme of things, do Christian Democratic parties happen anywhere without established churches?
I don't think the RCs are the established church of Italy. Wiki has a huge list of Christian Democratic parties:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_democratic_parties
A lot of Latin American countries have one, and very few of those have an established church.
510: I hadn't realized that about Italy. Sometimes it helps to ask!
I don't know Latin America well enough to say off-hand whether those CD parties are important or not.
I do think that the incredible diversity of American churches would be an obstacle to building a CD party. Back when I worked for a Munich think tank, someone from the foundation sponsoring our project asked whether our next conference would have a representative of the church. I blinked for a few moments and said, "The?" What I thought but managed not to say was "My dear boy [he was at least 25 years older than I was at the time] where I come from we have probably 37 different flavors of Baptists. And that's just among the white people."
I don't know Latin America well enough to say off-hand whether those CD parties are important or not.
Nor do I but a quick skim indicates that most of them are pretty minor except for the Chilean one.
I notice though that there are a lot on that list that are called something other than "Christian Democratic Party". ND in Greece, for example.
I do think that the incredible diversity of American churches would be an obstacle to building a CD party.
Yes, three hundred and sixty-five religions and only one sauce, etc, but US churches do seem to be quite good at building political coalitions and conferences and so on when they want to get stuff done. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference might be one example - it wasn't a traditional political party because the whole point of it was that it wasn't operating in a traditional democratic environment.
The subthread about whether gswift and Joe Rogan are sexist and racist is not productive. Sexism and racism are not monolithic, and it's not helpful to treat them like they're a toggle switch, because if you want to argue "yes" or "no" you can always find plenty of evidence to support that.
For the record, I suspect that gswift has more evidence of treating women fairly and respectfully than not. I suspect Rogan believes women are capable of being extremely smart and competent and that a major portion of their value resides in how hot they are.
I get that Nick and Teo were both trying to make the point that Rogan is a grab bag of beliefs and not a clear cut rightwing archtype, but the whole thing started to deteriorate.
More importantly: can someone please reassure me that Arizona will in fact be certified for Biden and that it was not premature to call it earlier? I am feeling very tense that the presidency itself is still in jeopardy.
Maybe I'll start a new politics thread. This one is long.
514: I cannot reassure you completely, but I do have some "data" that I gleaned from seemingly knowledgeable people on the internet .... (actually, there do seem to be in almost every state a few folks who really track and get it right. Maybe not the polling beforehand, but analysis during the process based voter/precinct and canvassing info. Jon Ralston in Nevada is an example, and his track record is part of why most people are not huffing about Nevada).
First let me say all of this extra prolonged anxiety could almost certainly avoided but for Rep. legislators in PA not agreeing to let mail vote counting get started early (more on PA in a subsequent comment). PA should end up not super close rendering all of this moot, but see subsequent comment for takes and caveats. Fuck my life.
1) It will probably be very close in Arizona. And a caveat on all of this is that the patterns of counting (and partisan voting behavior) has changed in Arizona so there is added uncertainty.
2) What has been coming in since Eday in AZ have been late-arriving mail ballots mixed with a few final Eday results. Mostly in Maricopa (Phoenix) and they have been quite R-leaning ~59-41. If you extrapolate that % to remaining votes it is nearly a dead heat.
3) But several differences in composition of remaining ballot (this mostly is from a couple of AZ data guys on twitter who Nate Silver and Taniel seemed to be deferring to, so will give them some credence-- and one is a data analyst for local TV station there).
a) Maricopa still the bulk but a fair number from other counties (most notably Pima (Tucson) which is a fair bit "bluer" than Maricopa) so should be somewhat better for Biden,
b) The Maricopa ones to be counted are now moving into very late mail ballots or ones dropped off on Eday vs sort of late-arriving by mail and they have stats on Party registration and they are somewhat less R. (early mail votes were heavily D)
b.data analysis Maricopa arriving 10/29 to 11/02: D25/R45/O30 arriving 11/02 to 11/04: D26/R39/O36 . The 59-41 Trump %s have been from the 25/45/30 days. So margin with the super late ones will probably be more like 55-45 or so. Still trumpy but does not extrapolate to him catching up as continuing 59-41 does (warning still some of first batch to be posted...)
c) And then there are a much smaller (but some 10s of thousands) left that are provisionals. I suspect many/most will not end up passing muster, but IIRC a number of them do in Arizona (the late count thing is not new to AZ, McSally was ahead on Eday in '18 and subsequently lost, but that was with a much larger pool of uncounted votes... I think there counting rules were like PA then; they allow earlier counting now.)
4) There is some less firm claims about location of the various drops *within* Maricopa county. The one I might give some credence to is congressman Raul Grijvala saying a a good chunk of late0arricvers in his district's part of Maricopa were not yet counted (and it is of course heavily gerrymandered so his portion is much more blue).
One person attempted to calculate "conservatively" and came up with ~12-15K Biden in the end. Currently 69K so not a lot of room for error, and any wrong assumption could be material.
Reassuring ain't it! (PA, PA, PA)
I do think the early callers erred (I had heard mentioned that there was confusion on #of ballots outstanding and they used a smaller number), but I suspect there analysis still has Biden squeaking it out and they are loath to retract it. (The fact they have not is mildly reassuring at about three degrees of removal from actual comfort...) Apparently Trump got into it with Fox/Murdoch on election night.
And it was to avoid rabbit hole's like this that I went to bed early on election night with my Dostoevsky. And should have last night (I still woke up middle of the night and read a chunk and I'm up now just chillin').
514, 517 -- It's probably sleep deprivation, but I started to feel like Trump probably is going to pull this out late last night. I appreciate the work that went into 517, and all its sources, but we are where we are because human nature, in our defiantly racist misogynist society, is not as amenable to scientific prediction as we keep deluding ourselves into thinking.
I also appreciate all the great detail of 517 - thank you for spelling it all out for me.
On my commute to work just now, I was truly steeling myself to live within Trump's presidency for the next four years. He seems to fail upwards in every other way, why stop now.
looking at things from Britain or Sweden, the belief that wokeness is the only true form of leftism, and all who are anti-woke are in favour of oppression and of the present system is both absurd and doomed to electoral failure. There will never be a winning coalition of the woke, I think partly for psychological reasons: to be woke is to be part of the enlightened elite, the vanguard, and they are by definition a minority.
In retrospect almost the oddest thing about European social democracy was that it managed to harness patriotism and middle class intellectual enthusiasm to the service of the decidedly unwoke working class. Even then the harness creaked: you need only read Orwell on Hampstead cranks to see the earliest precursors to the woke wars. But the whole of my politically active life I have seen, and sometimes consciously watched, the detachment of urban progressives from their former allies within the movement. The cracks into which the Right inserted their wedge issues were first made from within the movement.
509:
all the Scandiwegian countries have state churches (or had until very recently). None have a Christian democratic party in the sense that those exist further to the south. (Swedish KD started off as a confessional anti-abortion party and was never significant; is now a generalised nice centrist grouping).
Germany, admittedly, has two established churches. Buthaving two is contrary to the point of establishment, and that arrangement is the result of unifying a patchwork of small states who each had only one, but not the same one. I can't think of any country which has only one established church and a Christian Democratic party.
the belief that wokeness is the only true form of leftism
I can't speak to European attitudes about this, but I'm generally suspicious about this sort of formulation when you see it in the US. Basic respect for minorities, for example, pretty much has to be part of the Democratic program -- the same way that catering to overt racists has to be part of the Republican program -- but even Barack Obama wasn't all that "woke," and nobody here ever makes wokeness an important part of a national campaign; it's unusual to see it in a statewide campaign.
What you've got in the US is individuals -- college professors and blog commenters and whatnot -- occupying the vanguard you describe and operating according to the program you lay out. Fox News hunts them down and gives them a platform to piss off the viewers, but there's nothing that can be done about that. In a nation of several hundred million, or in a polity where politicians are talking all the time to a variety of audiences, you're always going to be able to find red meat for the deplorables.
"Germany, admittedly, has two established churches. But having two is contrary to the point of establishment, and that arrangement is the result of unifying a patchwork of small states..."
Fixt.
Is there an established church in the Netherlands? Wiki was not instructive.
Woke is one of those words that's become a lot less useful than it might have been.
There's no winning Democratic coalition that isn't affirmatively pro-choice, pro-racial-equality, pro-LGBTQ rights. There just isn't. These positions aren't enough, by themselves, to win -- you also have to have a decent message on health care, and some other issues. There are people -- a huge number of people -- who might be interested in a progressive economic message, but cannot be part of a pro-choice/pro-LGBT/pro-considering people of color to be actual human beings coalition. It was Trump himself who won his 2016 primary race by demonstrating just how flexible the cultural right was on economics. But then realized that there wasn't going to be enough support to govern this way (if he'd wanted to) because the cultural right needs to be dissing Nancy Pelosi all the time, so he couldn't make deals with her even if he wanted.
The CD party I know best - the CDU - was explicitly founded as an expression of political Catholicism, a post-Nazi refounding of the old and intensely Catholic Zentrumpartei.
In France a lot of people from the same kind of intellectual tradition as the CDU founders ("Le Sillon" and similar) gravitated to Gaullism if they hadn't disgraced themselves during the war, while a few like Mitterrand ended up on the Left - one way of looking at the distinction between the Gaullists and the "droite classique" is that it's two different eras of Catholic political thought, old-school reactionary in the classical right and midcentury social-Catholic centrist in the Gaullists. That got welded together by Jacques Chirac in 2002 but the split has re-emerged with LR going more and more "supercatho" and Macron's lot absorbing the centre.
Moral vanguardism does not have to be the belief system of the leaders to be electorally damaging. When it is, even in the modified form of Corbynism, it is utterly disastrous both inside and outside the party. But if a sufficiently large bloc of activists feel that way they will tend to push the internal party dynamics in an electorally bad way even when the leaders are trying to build coalitions.
Related to this is an inability to understand the attractions of hierarchy. The point about a hierarchy is that it has numerous levels; not just one ingroup and one outgroup. The sheer number of levels in which one might be placed gives rise, paradoxically, to much greater chances of success than if everyone had equal chances but all were forced to play in the same competition.
So, when everyone accepts their place, and the limits to which they can hope to rise, their chances of rising to the top of the group that matters to them (the one they are in) are actually much higher than in a supposed meritocracy where everyone is competing for the same prizes.
To be clear, this is not the only disadvantage that the breakdown of hierarchy brings to those who have positions to defend. The other one, just as important, is much more obvious to the Left -- this is where you are forced to compete against people who were previously on the level below you: men have to compete for jobs on equal terms with women; French plumbers must compete with Polish one; American workers with Indonesian ones; white workers with black ones, and so on. And you can confidently say -- at least until it's your own job or position at risk -- that this is on balance a good thing and an increase in fairness.
But the disadvantage I was getting at was not the effect of competing with those who were previously in the bubble below you, but the opposite one of being forced to compete with those who were previously on the level above you in the knowledge that you will almost certainly fail. Instead of being a large fish in a small pond, you become one of a million small fry in a vast lake. And that kind of social or cultural unease -- though it can also be economic loss -- is a powerful driver of political resentment. It seems to me -- and I may be quite wrong -- that Republican elites are much better at faking a parity of esteem for the pleasures and rewards of low status life than Democrats are. Someone once said that Trump was a poor person's idea of how a rich person should behave, and that's an excellent example of what I mean.
OK -- Germany has two state-supported churches. And I think the original formulation was "state churches". I don't know about the situation in the Netherlands; it did at one stage have a very confessional political system, but I think that broke down about thirty or forty years ago. Scotland has an established church.The Swedish church, though no longer established, is still state supported through a voluntary tax.
Charley, I think of woke as an attitude rather than a policy position. And I agree that that the word is a lot less useful than it might be. The politics of American health care are completely incomprehensible to me. I mean that literally. How can socialised medicine, and the nationalisation of risk not be a self-evident good rather than a bogey phrase? The only explanation I've ever heard that's remotely convincing is simple racism. But I do find that hard to believe as a complete explanation.
526 is a really excellent comment that seems to have been buried in thread-shift. You should make it an article, NW, if you haven't already.
Why not? Racism explains a whole lot of American politics. I guess there's greed too -- rich people would rather buy insurance for their own risks and leave poorer people on their own. Especially poor people of color, what with their bad habits and bad health. Hmm, maybe there's a racist part of that one too. At the margins, there are supply and demand considerations: if everyone can see a doctor when they need, doesn't that mean I might have to wait in line? Behind people who are poorer, darker, possibly not legally in the country. Oh, racism again.
Republicans and the elderly have been pretty open about how improving health care coverage for the poor will make it harder for Medicare recipients (i.e. the elderly) to see a doctor.
I would also point out the way employer-provided health coverage provides a very good tool to encourage people to keep their jobs as opposed to striking out for higher salaries on their own or with smaller start-ups. It works even better when there's no protection for pre-existing conditions.
531: Even a business-y management consultant talked about how MA guaranteed issue was great for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
It wouldn't be so damn hard if we paid doctors a little less, had more primary care doctors and had some more of them.
One more for 528. At least in the US, I pretty strongly feel that democrats need at least new ways to communicate with people who don't like like technocrats, and probably genuinely new ideas as well.
One thing that seems straightforward to me is the idea that policies like the ACA or good transit or rent support where costs are high and there's good work are all ways to give people flexibility to help themselves rather than being handouts. A functioning postal service is also-- fedex to rural anywhere is $15 minimum.
A couple of counting updates:
1) Very good news from Georgia. Gwinnet County in with actually somewhat more absentees than thought. Biden lead over 4,000.
2) Mixed on Pennsylvania. I think Dem estimates from the other day appear to be a bit overstated. Biggest thing seems to be confusion on remaining mail ballots particularly in Philly.
Plus apparently less Biden lean than expected in "mail ballot election day provisionals" compared to the very large Biden lean in returned Mail ballots. (I think it may be due rejected ballots, probably mostly due to inner secrecy envelope.)
So it may get to 50K (or maybe even less---auto recount happens about 38K) but I do not think to 100K.
Kornacki was hyping these things as to why no PA call (over-hyping and having some wrong info actually) but its somewhat less rosy than some of us were thinking.
He is saying the "mail ballot no surrender eday provisionals" are "trending Trump." Very, very few have been counted and those are in very, very red small rural counties and overall they have been red. But not excessively so
I am thinking 25K to 75K as probable range. Sorry to inject this worry bomb into the discussion.
Thanks for the update. I have been worrying about PA today, so mixed news is more or less what I was expecting, and more ballots counted without actively bad news isn't too scary.
The inconsistency between info from state sites and the counties is the most frustrating. Especially with Philly. Are there or are there not 23K Philly mail-ins left? That would be at least 15K margin difference.
Nate Silver still looks fairly optimistic about PA.
And even if the provisionals were red relative to their counties (which they aren't so far; they almost exactly match the overall Trump vs. Biden percentages in the counties), the fact that you're adding far more ballots in blue counties makes it very hard for them to help Trump.
And the provisionals were strong for Biden in my home county of York, which is generally heavily Republican. PA is done, the only thing people are arguing about is whether there's like a 1/100000 chance something could happen or no chance at all. That is, it's not about who will win, it's about whether the networks should call it already.
538: Yes. I am pretty sure it is all over. But the margin not as high as may have been expected. And a good dump of +4k ballots form Allegheny just came in; they were ones that had various "issues" so i did not dare count on them. But most were counted.
On the York thing, I think tha tmay have been some confusion on the way reported in the Times. There were two types of mail-requester votes on eday.
1) If no surrender they got a provisional. But they should not have been counted until today (to make sure the actual mail ballot did not arrive for a double count). And as a result on the PA website it only shows 8 smallish (very red) counties reporting any provisionals). York is not one of them.
2) What they may have reported to the Times (and I suspect this is what it was) were *surrendered* mail-ins who get regular ballots. These are not broken out on the websites like provisionals and showed up in the regular eday vote but were kept track of at the precincts and could have been broken. Alternatively York may have counted them ahead but not officially posted until know not a double and that is what they told the Times. In any case, I think Nate (nad Dave Wasserman) are right that although they may be somewhat Trumpier than the actual mail-ins, not enough to move the needle appreciably. (and I suspect still a net gain for Biden.)
So yes. My 67% confidence range on PA margin is 35K to 75K. Asymmetric with a long tail to the right, and almost none to the left.
I do think Kornacki et al overdramatized it a bit. Also probably not aware of the nature of the few counties that reported the provisionals quickly.
I understand that the "no Surrender" votes must be for the Orange Man. But I don't see how the Provisionals are voting against the Republicans. "Republican" is just a traitor Lundy's word for "Provo"
529: Charley lists a lot of good and convincing reasons why some people might be opposed to socialised medicine. And I think you'll find that a lot of the same arguments were made against the NHS in 1947 although the racist angle was lacking. What I don't, understand, though, is why these views should cut through with the majority.
Some years ago the gdn was visited by an American journalist who is identified in my notes simply as "Hiram J Pipesucker" (a Private Eye name) because he was such a caricature of an establishment east coast liberal pundit. He gave us a really convincing exposition of the demographic inevitability of a Democratic majority. The poor and the non-white were going to swamp the rich and white, inevitably, he explained. Leaving aside the other problems with this prognosis, this would surely consititute a huge majority for a sane health care system. Yet no such thing is in sight.
The best expalanation I can come up with for the failure of this majority to act in its own interests is a combination of specifically anti-Black racism shared among white and other-minority populations [Does this exist? It certainly does among UK Asians] and the existence of Medicaid, which - if I understand it correctly -- is socialised medicine for the over 65s, or some limited form thereof. That immediately takes ot of the votes a huge chunk of the people who most need to be protected against doctors' bills. We've seen in this country how enormously difficult, politically, it has been to socialise dementia care, because the people who must vote for it are not those who would benefit from it. Similarly, if it is only people of working age who are wholly exposed to the rapacity and cruelty -- and inefficiency -- of the present US system, most of them, most of the time, won't think the problem is urgent for them. They will be susceptible to arguments - however bogus - about the increased costs and decreased benefits of something they hope will remain hypothetical.
Those two factors would carve huge slices out of my theoretical majority for health care reform. Have I missed something?
Biden gained ~2800 in GA overnight on 5510 votes. Were those the overseas ballots people thought might save Trump?
Medicare is partially socialized medicine for 65+. Medicaid is socialized insurance for low income people.
I actually should know more about the structure of Medicare than I do but there are still costs associated with it that in any other country would be considered rapacious capitalism. Roughly there are four parts covering hospital insurance, standard medical insurance, an option for private alternative/supplemental insurance, and most recently added under Bush 2 drug insurance.
A- Hospital insurance with premium covered by employment taxes paid throughout working years but has an annual deductible. If you didn't work long enough to pay enough taxes you also pay a premium.
B- More routine outpatient medical care insurance. Monthly premium of about 150 to 500 depending on income, then has limits on coverage for some services.
C- Medicare advantage, an option to have a private company receive premiums from the government to provide your part A, B, and D insurance that you can further supplement for wider coverage. Plans vary widely by additional premium and out of pocket costs and services covered.
D- Drug benefit. Also various premiums- about 33-100/month- and various deductibles and medications covered.
(If any of our more seasoned commentariat with direct experience in the system have corrections please say so.)
I looked all that up to make the point that if you proposed this version of "socialized medicine" somewhere like the UK or Canada you'd be so far off the right side of the political spectrum the geese would envy how you walk.
The additional votes were last report from Fulton county.
543: Not sure. Did not find any knowledgeable commentary on it. (I've not yet found the good local knowledge people in Georgia, haven't really looked.)
People keep glossing overseas/military as "military" so they are surprised. That group in Allegheny went almost 4 to 1 for Biden (hi dalriata!).
544: Medicare Advantage is a lot like employer-sponsored coverage.
Medicare also covers people who have worked and are disabled. Medicaid also covers low income low asset elderly people and covers their Medicare premiums and wrap around prescription benefits, plus things like personal aids.
People in traditional Medicare often buy Medigap coverage. This used to be allowed to cover prescription drugs, but it covers the 20% co-insurance. Unlike in the ACA there is no out of pocket max, so you need that supplemental coverage.
With Medicare Advantage around, a lot of private insurers could support a Medicare for All plan, because they could make money off of administration, showing that they have sicker than average beneficiaries that they are able to make money off of through care coordination etc., and they would be able to pay Medicare benchmarked-rates. It's (some of) the hospitals who would cry bloody murder.
Thanks for the additions. That reminds me that Medicaid for elderly who can't afford Medicare has these insane requirements about how poor you have to be- draconian limits on assets (like
Thanks for the additions. That reminds me that Medicaid for elderly who can't afford Medicare has these insane requirements about how poor you have to be- draconian limits on assets (like <$2000 I think?) and income. They recently modified the law so that the government will look back several years to see if you transferred assets to someone else, like divorcing your spouse so they could keep some money, and will reject coverage based on that.
549: There was always a look-back rule for 64 plus Medicaid. It was 3 years, when I was dealing with it in 2012, it was 5 years. Has it been extended since? There are some exceptions for frail elders who did not understand the situation, but the whole thing is cruel.
The UK has similarly draconian rules for some of these elder care programs which are provided outside of the NHS.
Dental care and elder care/ care for people with disabilities is bad in many parts of the world.
The Medicaid look-back rules were slightly different if you were applying for a community based program vs a nursing home. I spent 2-3 hours every day working on these issues for about a year. People should not have to expend so much time and energy in these things.
543, 546: It appears those were provisionals from Fulton Co (Atlanta).
Apologies if this has been covered above, but this is bugging me: are the media outlets using a much higher standard to call PA and Georgia at this point than they use on most states in a normal election? What kind of certainty does AP/etc usually require before calling a state? (Arizona notwithstanding)
In other words, are they just being nervous because the implication is now the whole election, and a whole different news cycle, and they are more comfortable staying with the horse race?
They say they're nervous because they have zero history with an election with so many mail-in ballots in PA. Georgia is legit really close.
Nate the greater link to AP explainer:
In several states, recounts are mandated if the margin between the top two candidates falls inside a set range established by law. AP will not call a race if the margin is within such a mandatory recount range -- or if it could fall into that range as final votes are counted.
In some states, recounts may be requested if the margin falls inside of a set range. In others, candidates can request a recount regardless of the margin between the top two candidates. In these states, AP will not call a race if the margin between the top two candidates is 0.5 percentage points or less, or if the margin could fall inside that range once all ballots cast are counted.
AP may call the race if the trailing candidate confirms they will not seek a recount or if the candidate publicly concedes the election.
Do you think that Trump would seek a recount?
Is he a calm sort of guy about these things?
Georgia is not that close. Trump would have to win the overseas about 95-5; assuming they're even 60-40 and he's still losing by 5k+. The biggest shift a recount ever caused was FL2000, Bush losing ~1400 before they stopped counting. Gore probably would have overtaken him so say 2500 is the largest lead shift conceivable. And voting technologies and designs really have improved since then- I'm pretty sure no one uses punch cards any more.
No one knows what Trump and his unhinged minions are actually going to do once PA is called for Biden. Possible scenarios range from mild but annoying to actually pretty scary, in ways absolutely never seen before in the country. In my view, they are under-estimating the damage of waiting, but you can see them being very hesitant about setting the chain in motion without being absolutely sure.
The people who are now convinced that this thing is over were pretty smug 10 days ago about how Senate races were going to go. (I include myself in that, but also the smart people who actually know shit too.)
There's a difference extrapolating the outcome from polls with 1000 samples out of millions and extrapolating the outcome of 100k remaining votes from 6M samples.
I see from my link above that NY doesn't even use their lever and pulley voting booths any more. Those things were ridiculous.
To that point, Nate the lesser says initial counts of the PA provisions, based on matched location and ballot types, are going to be about Biden +50. To Moby's point above, they're going to be similar to other vote by mail ballots because they're people who wanted to vote by mail but the post office lost it.
The AP explainer still doesn't explain why they won't call NV. Biden is up by almost 2% and there's no indication Trump will even gain anything with the outstanding provisionals and mail.
563: Was Arizona called too early?
I loved the old lever electro-mechanical booths. You swung that big lever back over to the left and watched your votes click back up with a loud 'chunk' noise, you were exercising your goddamn franchise.
But there wasn't anyone making parts to fix them with anymore.
I only voted on those machines maybe once. They were pretty great.
The people who are now convinced that this thing is over were pretty smug 10 days ago about how Senate races were going to go.
Fair point. 2020 is not the year to err on overconfidence about anything good.
AP and Fox were a separate team from the rest of the news election analysis consortium and did a their own in depth study into mail ballots in states like AZ. So they do actually have a separate model they claim shows more confidence in their AZ call. I think of all the remaining states AZ is actually the one most justified in not calling. I think the early AZ call is inhibiting a NV call by others because even though no one org will have called a full 270, across organizations there would be a winner declared. Although one org did already call PA so a declaration of a winner is already out there.
Didn't Fox used to have Barone? Or still does?
Anyway, I've been assuming Fox has the right number people because of that.
Nearly final Maricopa county supposedly coming at 11ET.
562: That is too broad a statement. And I think he was referring to Allegheny for the +50 which is probably correct but is absolutely not the case elsewhere.
And both my experience and the data from the really red counties suggest 562.last is overstated.
Some the people lost, some did not get in the mail, and some were surprised /mad they had gotten a mail ballot (I think by default, if they signed up for the primary, they were signed up for all elections.) And the demonization of mail ballots by Trump really only ramped up after the primary.
Will provide numbers in next tweet from the few counties that have counted provisionals in a the next comment.
Ok, I did misread his comment and the +50 was specifically Allegheny and Philly. But since those have a higher percentage of provisionals than other parts of the state there's no reason to think Trump will even win them statewide much less win them by the 50 point margin he needs to catch up.
I see from my link above that NY doesn't even use their lever and pulley voting booths any more. Those things were ridiculous.
Those booths were the best. So satisfying to use.
574: Right. I agree with that. And now that the universe of remaining ballots is better known (SoS site does not report remaining provisionals, and there was confusion on Philly), I am moving my confidence range back up to 50K to 100K from 35K to 75K yesterday..
Anyway, in the really red counties at least the provos are a very different universe from the counted mail-ins.
For the 8 counites that had counted provos as of last night (all small red counties) the percentages for Biden are:
Overall EDay Mail-in Provisionals
29.6% 18.5% 61.0% 24.1%
"confidence range iis where I expect the margin to end up within.
BTW, it is the numbers in 577 that spooked Kornacki yesterday.
Maricopa just underperformance for Trump but still close enough that he has a chance. Of course.
58% but he needed 60%.
7k more Allegheny mail in coming soon, net to Biden about +4k.
Huh, Michigan turned out to not even be close (130,000 votes). Wisconsin was still pretty close (20,000 votes).
580. Yes. Saw that. And this dump did not follow the assumption in 517.3.b which was that subsequent dumps would be increasingly Biden (prior one had been 53% Trump).
Now Philadelphia is further behind than Allegheny County. Jesus Christ, Philly, get your shit together.
I think PA, like MI, is going to end up not so close in the end. But WI and AZ will both end up quite close, and one of them will be the tipping point state.
NBC calls PA and election for President Biden.
NBC calls the election for Biden.
CNN. Bunch of lemmings.
It looks like a 30k margin, 0.5%, was the trigger.
Did a thread appear and disappear?
He hasn't reached 0.5%, though? That would be like a 33k vote margin.
Seems like a completely arbitrary moment to call it, unless they've heard about another batch of PA data that hasn't been updated on the big table website.
Decision Desk has one that takes it to 34K.
I see, the big table website is behind. Dammit, big table, I've been relying on you.
Could it really be that, some day in the future, the front page of the newspaper will not feature either the word "Trump" or the word "tweet"?
All I want is as many "AMERICA TO TRUMP: YOU'RE FIRED" headlines as possible, as huge as possible, as much in Trump's face as possible.
Yeah. GFor some reason they have not scraped for 14 minutes. Bad time to fall off the pace. Maybe heavy load on NYT website.
591: this is so dumb that I hesitate to even say it, but the call happened when it hit .46, which rounds to .5 on the TV.
They were waiting til he was out playing golf.
Fox calls NV for Biden which reinforces the claim they were just holding that because of their early call of AZ.
599: Or they knew about the one that took it to 34K. And Fox has now called PA and added Nevada, so basically admitting they were only holding on nevada because they had stupidly stuck with the Arizona call.
Seconding 597. If we don't get at least one I will be very disappoint
597: the Drudge Report has one. I don't know if any less awful news outlets will do it.
Oh, I'll settle for someone photoshopping it onto the fake Time Person of the Year covers. How do we think the president's golf game is this morning? For the first time in my life, I'm curious to know if he's on par.
I'm out driving kids home from soccer. As soon as I'm home I'll post a victory/aftermath thread.
Fox calling Nevada is a big deal, I think, because it's the signal that litigation isn't going to work to overturn this. Georgia will take it to 306, right? A 'landslide of epic proportion' as it was described the last time someone got that many.
For a brief second, I thought someone was firing into the air in celebration. Then I remembered where I was and it was infact probably skeet shooting.
All of you need to enjoy this Twitter thread about the attempted Trump press conference at the Four Seasons Landscaping Company, an unexpected participant in U.S. history.
I see now that Trump is emphasizing that Biden hasn't been certified as the winner of any states. Duh. Someone should tell him about the guy who was saying a week ago that the whole thing would -- must -- be finished by Nov 4.
608: And Nevada continuing to release above 2%/25K now (as we--and the networks all knew).
