The effect of online interviews on the University of Michigan Survey of Consumer Sentiment
We analyze the University of Michigan's (UMich) Consumer Sentiment survey's ("sentiment") recent change in survey methodology from collecting interviews via phone to collection via the Internet. We document several features of this new sample that we believe are materially affecting the results of the survey. While we agree with UMich's own analysis that the online interviews themselves display similar trends across time as phone interviews, we believe online respondents are resulting in the level of the overall sentiment and current conditions indices being meaningfully lower, making more recent UMich data points inconsistent with pre-April 2024 data points. Specifically, we use a simple statistical model to estimate that the effect of the methodological switch from phone to online is currently resulting in sentiment being 8.9 index points -or more than 11 percent-lower than it would be if interviews were still collected through the phone.
I'm not sure what to make of this. Bleakness is rampant?
2: Certainly among those who are online. Perhaps this blog should switch to being over the phone.
Surprisingly, I thought this LGM post about mentally preparing for the election was fairly good: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/10/the-current-voting-rate-is-about-275000-ballots-per-hour-24-7
I'm not really preparing myself. I was really shocked when scheduling some things in two weeks that the election is *that* close. That said, it wouldn't be like 2016, both because we've already gone through it once, and because it just wouldn't be so shocking this time.
I do think a lot of the extreme doom around how it'd be worse than last time is off base. I'm sure some things will be worse, but at the end of the day he doesn't know how to run a bureaucracy, and he just wants to yell at the TV and not actually do things other than grift people for money. And the enthusiasm around him has really died down, so I'm less concerned about mass violence. It'll be bad for sure, but basically the same as last time, and living in red state there's not much he can do to make things worse here than the new governor is already going to do. (Though, boy, if the Democrat wins governor here, which is very unlikely but not completely impossible, that would completely change my life for the better (new trustees!).)
I already detailed my Go Die in the Woods fantasies.
My biggest "real" mental and emotional thing for now is gaming out my interactions with people in my life who for various reasons will be potentially more problematic after a T win. I am trying to pre-rage so as to maybe lessen the chance of actual rage in the event. I have increasingly removed myself from interactions with various groups and people over the last 8 years so there are already fewer friction points.
I do think a lit of pre-election malaise is not just bed-wetting Dems, but people thinking about things like this, but even more so despair and sorrow that even with a close Harris win so many in the country have revealed themselves so clearly.
As for how to actually prepare for effective actionI have no idea what he/Reps will actually do (and I think neither do they).I agree that there is probably a lot of over-catastrophisizing on our side (and by me). But then again I have a spouse who reminds me weekly that the only family she has were the ones who hot out early and their descendants.Exceptionalism of any kind always comes to bad end, and American Exceptionalism is the ocean we swim in.
But more likely just an incrementally worse country. Age adds to the sadness, the SC will not be unfucked in my lifetime (but probably not even with a Harris win).
I did apply for one job in a blue state. I don't think I'll get it though. Maybe I should have applied for more, but at the end of the day I'm pretty happy living where I do, and a lot of other places have similar problems. (Even in blue states! VA got a Republican governor and UVA administration is super evil.)
ftfnyt.com seems to be available if I want to engage my rage in a vanity project I wish I had started years ago ( that's 'fuck the fucking New York Times").
Is there an actual useful way to try to begin the first steps of fixing of our utterly crazed information space? Do not know.
(One important caveat to 6.2 is that Ukraine-related concerns are real and really would be bad and worse than last time, and I hope European leaders have been doing something to prepare for a president who supports Putin.)
As for actual prognostications I do think I fell into delusions that there would a 5-10% peal off of former Rs that would become evident before the election. Charlie Brown here about to really whack the hell out of the football.
Polling is whack, but an actual poll I am waiting for is the Seltzer poll of Iowa. Of course T will win the state but the poll has been a very good bellwether of WWC. In September it had Harris surpassingly close, but that was also the case against Grassley in September 2022, and then the October poll showed a big lead for him and he did win handily. Fear that pattern this year; in a pinch the Rs come back--there is always some grievance that comes up that they can hang their hat on. Or As John Cole says "fuck it, they just want to be able to say the N word."
I don't think 6.2 could be more wrong. That's what Project 2025 is all about. This time he'll staff everything with his loyalists who do know how everything works.
13: Yeah, we are at the point of trying to figure where we are on the "great deal of ruin in a nation" scale. Certainly a T win would be more consequential than Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga.
I am also preparing for the Ashli Babbit Memorial Presidential Honor Guard consisting solely of pardoned J6 participants.
I feel like as the race tightened, the Democrats have moved towards rhetoric of EXISTENTIAL CRISIS!! when voters respond way better to MOCK THE WEIRD GUYS!!
I wish public opinion mongers would stop rehearsing their bullied-teenager cringing and whining, alternating with lubriciously envious cataloguing of Trump's depraved behavior and power over his followers.
If the worst comes to pass, many people you know, some you like, perhaps even some you respect, will accommodate and conform to the current of depravity. Which excuse will be the most tempting to you?
Which excuse will be the most tempting to you?
"I have to somehow continue on for the next four years."
I was thinking more along the lines of "I am afraid to gainsay the imaginary working class" or "I told you she should have promised to revive the New Deal."
Which excuse will be the most tempting to you?
I'm nobody, and nothing I do matters anyway.
I feel like as the race tightened, the Democrats have moved towards rhetoric of EXISTENTIAL CRISIS!! when voters respond way better to MOCK THE WEIRD GUYS!!
Sadly, I think the causality might be reversed. Mocking the weird guys is a front-runner tactic, and it worked when everyone was feeling confident and happy. But it's harder to pull off as an underdog.
I say "sadly" because I would like to believe that voters would respond to it.
Early voting is down in Texas. Like, Democrats did an outstanding job this round. We got Biden to step down. Harris has been preternaturally poised and good. We were handed abortion on a goddamn platter. Therefore it's the actual humanity of voters that is the problem. HOW COULD THEY.
24: on the other hand, from the article "There are caveats to early vote data. It can be incomplete -- each county self-reports to the state. And Texas is offering two weeks of early voting in 2024 compared to an extended three weeks in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There was also a greater emphasis on mail-in ballots four years ago."
Therefore it's the actual humanity of voters that is the problem. HOW COULD THEY.
Two articles that I thought wrestled with that well are: https://smotus.substack.com/p/the-race-is-close-it-should-be-a
Importantly, the percent of Coloradans who describe the Republican Party as dangerous is 20 points lower than the percent describing MAGA as dangerous. That is to say, the GOP without Donald Trump in charge of it is a lot less toxic in the state, and it would likely be in a far better position to benefit from state residents' general grumpiness and dissatisfaction with their situations.
https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/thirteen-days-to-go-gut-checks-and
(3) The strangest part of this election is how people seem to be reacting to the underlying question, are you better off now than you were four years ago?
This is an easy one. Yes. Yes of course we all are. Four years ago we were still reeling from the pandemic. The world was barely coming out of lockdown. The global economy was a mess, and every single human being was taking massive psychic damage.
I've particularly been thinking about this point because I'm currently reading Felix Salmon's book, The Phoenix Economy: Work, Life, and Money in the New Not Normal. The entire book is about the unexplored, lasting effects of COVID trauma.
A while back I started looking for and reading about what happened in Nazi Germany, and specifically in the runup to and the early months of their seizure of power. William Sheridan Allen wrote what I think is a very good book about this in 1965, _The Nazi Seizure of Power_. It's a week-by-week, in some parts day-by-day, hour-by-hour account of the rise of the Nazis in a small town in Germany. It's detailed enough that you can follow individual people thru the months, follow the fate of particular civic institutions. And one thing that stood out from that book, is that if anything Weimar was in a better place back then than we are today. They had robust civil society institutions: unions, clubs galore, churches, civic associations of all kinds. They had the Reichsbanner (socialist party militia). And it was all rolled up in six months. Basically without a peep of resistance.
TL;DR if you're planning on sticking around, be prepared to have to submit and not resist. B/c unless the bastards are incompetent (and exceptionally so, b/c it won't be TCFG making these decisions -- it'll be Stephen Miller and Heritage Foundation apparatchiks) they -are- going to go after their ideological enemies. It took the Nazis six months to roll up civil society resistance in Weimar Germany. Six months. There are people who think that lawsuits or "the rule of law" are going to hem him in. They're dreaming. Or, y'know, maybe his gauleiters will be preternaturally incompetent.
I resolved back in March that on Nov 6, regardless of the outcome, I would not have regrets. I've acted on that resolution in my political activity.
I believe there are large numbers of people whose indicator of things getting better is the growing misery and anxiety of some amorphous group that includes me. Not especially me, but I am also a part of it. I'm still not sure what do to about it beyond the Serenity Prayer. Just being publicly miserable (real or feigned) all the time would spread the misery more than it would help.
Honestly I'm trying not to think about it because when I think about it I get too anxious to breathe. Having a trans kid makes everything like ten thousand times worse.
Everything about the election is worse I mean! Having a trans kid is great.
Turnout will be lower than in 2016 and 2020 because people are less invested because (on both sides) they've gotten bored with Trump. In many of the key states lower turnout will benefit Democrats because of education polarization and because low propensity voters lean towards Trump because he's a famous and "not a politician." (Though this may be less true in states with large minority populations.) Midterms have gone consistently better for Democrats during the Trump era. There's plenty to worry about here, but lower voting rates isn't one of them.
WaPo joining LATimes in no endorsement for Pres. (I actually don't find endorsements worth a shit, but still telling.)
Pro-tip: If you don't want to cancel you WP subscription over this, you should still cancel it anyway. They offer you a year for $60 after you cancel it.
I cancelled despite the offer. Those fucksticks.
"WaPo joining LATimes in no endorsement for Pres."
What is vorauseilende Gehorsamkeit?
Anyway, golikehellmachine on bluesky is a welcome antidote to doom. Was he a friend of the blog at some point, too?
I should probably give the $60 to the Guardian.
How is the New Republic these days.
We have already discussed Preparing for autocracy, and one way or another, most of us will become Sulzbergers in the end, learning to get on with our lives in an autocratic environment.
The LA Times and Washington Post are sitting out endorsements this time around, and it's not hard to see why. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have likewise gone silent in public. You don't need to be a weatherman to see which way the planet is warming.
I live in a blue state and am otherwise a person of privilege. The odds are good that -- like Sulzberger -- I will be able to protect my own. I will donate to causes and bitch about things online. Maybe I'll have to delay my retirement given what might be in store for the economy.
But we live in a world of stupidity and mass tragedy, and within my lifetime we have had extreme denials of constitutional rights in the US. Within my (quite young) children's lifetime gay people were denied the right to marriage. In some ways, at least, we will continue to make progress.
But in politics, I suspect Harris is mistaken. I think we probably are going back.
So the question is: How do people in Hungary cope? I expect we will all find out.
Putting I/P issues aside, and if you'll pardon the mix of metaphors but it's like Harris came out firing on all cylinders, Walz took it up to 11, and then the Democratic consultants sank their teeth in and all the momentum halted.
I'd read, if not a book, at least a long read on exactly what happened.
The one good thing about WPost and LA Times cowardice is that now all the publications that are endorsing Harris get to make a big deal of it and act like they are heroes.
40: "I live in a blue state and am otherwise a person of privilege. The odds are good that -- like Sulzberger -- I will be able to protect my own. I will donate to causes and bitch about things online. Maybe I'll have to delay my retirement given what might be in store for the economy."
Why would you think that this will be the case? Prussia under Weimar was a Socialist stronghold; nevertheless the Nazis conquered them like they were made of putty. It is often said that there are more Trump voters in CA than in TX. Why should those Trump voters not demand control? The Nazis did it by demanding that every club, every union, every council, have a composition that reflected the national composition of Nazi rule: that is to say, it didn't matter if your local area was pretty anti-Nazi: your local government had ideological commissars who made sure that Nazis were installed on the City Council. Why would that not happen here? And what will stop a national abortion ban from being enforced everywhere? Starting with (of course) denial of insurance coverage for abortions and a full stop to all manufacture of abortion pills, a full stop to any shipping of same.
There's a book by Claudia Koonz, _The Nazi Conscience_ about how the Nazis portrayed themselves as ideologically moderate in the years after their seizure of power, toning down the anti-Semitism. But they were also very, very hard-line about squashing dissent. They took the time to erase any opposition, and only then started in with the really awful racial policies. [where "really" is doing a lot of work: Jewish Germans lost their positions in society almost instantly.]
42-43: That seems a bit facile to me. What is Harris doing differently? What actual behaviors have "the consultants" engaged in that have halted momentum?
If Trump wins, I am going to object to the tendency of the Democrats to blame other Democrats. The truth is, Trump is no accident and no error, but is a symptom of a deep American rot that was not fostered by Democrats and not curable through any method that the Democrats are not already employing.
Off the top of my head, here are the American institutions that have utterly failed:
1. The United States Constitution
2. The plutocrats
3. The media
4. The churches
5. The Republican Party
6. The changes wrought by the Internet
The Democrats don't make the list at all.
46: I reside somewhere between you and 6.2 on this. Even most of Europe's fascists didn't go full Nazi.
And even with the Nazis, Niemöller was wrong: They came for a whole lot of people, but in the end quite a lot of people were left to live their lives. Niemöller himself died in 1984.
That said, I think something very bad has to happen before Americans wake up. It was insufficient, for example, for Americans to discover that a war was based on false pretenses, or that the economy was built on a house of cards. Even a mismanaged plague didn't do the job.
When will events turn so decisively that Republicans are required to surrender? What will be Trump's Stalingrad? I don't know the answer to that, and am more sympathetic to your pessimism than Upetgi's optimism.
I could well be wrong, but I still think Trump is *much* more Berlusconi than Mussolini. At any rate, this is why analogies are banned, no one ever agrees with someone else's analogy.
>That said, I think something very bad has to happen before Americans wake up.
I think what will happen is one day Trump will die and then things will be very different without anyone "waking up." Either Republicans will move to the center on some issue (like Trump often does in rhetoric, see his instincts on abortion and on medicare) or they will stay crazy and lose in landslides like is happening in AZ and NC. The whole thing doesn't work without a charismatic reality TV villain.
Also one day Rupert Murdoch will die, and there's a good chance that Lachlan will lose his lawsuit and then everything will be way better, again with no one waking up.
Or one day the people will get what they want: a moderately pro-choice and anti-immigrant party that supports all the existing social programs but no new ones.
49: OK, fair. A lot of Aryan Germans who shut up and stayed quiet, did as they were told, didn't make waves, were left alone. [Until their men were sent off to war, but that's another story.] I'm Brown, and there's no way I can "pass", so that option isn't available to me; I guess that colors my perception. I think anybody with LGBTQ family is in the same (if not worse) position: eventually they'll be forced to make morally unpleasant choices.
Emily St. James: "If things get worse and then so much worse, that does not mean the triumph of horrible people is inevitable. Bad events never happen in a vacuum, and the world has ways of surprising you. Maintaining hope in darkness is a valuable survival skill! Being an abuse survivor who's had a lot of trauma therapy has made me SO ANNOYING when bad things are happening."
They came for a whole lot of people, but in the end quite a lot of people were left to live their lives.
As long as they abandoned any political activism - isn't that what 46 was saying? Not that they killed, imprisoned, or even beat up everyone dissenting, but they shut them all up one way or another.
52: Yeah, it's certainly not over-dramatizing the situation to fear (for example) concentration camps on the southern border.
Tne NYT got the headline right this time -- The Only Guardrail Left Is Us Maybe Jamelle chose it.
My hope, in short, is that enough Americans understand that there is no amount of harm you can inflict on others that will save you, give you strength, make you whole or keep you safe.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/opinion/trump-milley-kelly-esper-generals.html
56: The NYT got it right -- so of course I botched it.
The Only Guardrail Left Is Us
Maybe Jamelle chose it.
Bouie is going to be really interesting. I follow him on Bluesky and it is increasingly clear that his media critique is a direct critique of his own employer. I think he's going to force the NYT into a very difficult position.
Quote from 56:
[E]very one of Trump's allies and surrogates should have to answer the question of whether or not they agree that their boss is a "fascist to the core," as Milley put it.
What will Bouie say when his newspaper fails to make that happen? I don't think he will be silent, especially if Trump is elected.
Holy shitballs. These print-outs got taped all over Harris-Walz signs in town last night:
Greetings!
YOU have been identified and are now in our National Database of mis/creant Harris supporters, either by social interactions with your neighbors who are on our investigations team, or by yard signs, or vehicle bumper stickers.
Rather than the hang/man's nooses of the old days, you are now guaranteed that once the magn/ificent Donald Trump assumes the Presidency again YOU will be IRS tax audited going all the way back to your very first tax return - - and at a minimum - - - 4 years of painful misery and attorney's fees.
Sincerely,
The Grand Dragon of Trump Klan #124, Heebieville, Texas
(Lightly googleproofed because WHAT THE FUCK.)
I don't know yet whether or not we got one. We haven't been home yet.
I don't think Harris gave in to the consultants. I think that reporters stopped finding her crowded rallies *new* hence they stopped being *news* -- and I suppose readers clicked less eagerly on links to Harris stories.
Meanwhile, Trump got up off his ass and said some dishonest shit about the hurricanes, some crazy shit about Arnold Palmer, and ended up creating news.
Everyone looking to the last Trump admin to guess what will happen in the next one is truly whistling past the graveyard. Guardrails were already proving inadequate, and he was already saying that the new team wasn't going to restrain him. And now he's got criminal immunity. If Trump wins he's going to have a trifecta, and both houses have been purged, somewhat, of non-MAGA members. Oh, and getting rid of Chevron means that federal judges in Amarillo and Wichita Falls rule the country anyway -- this will limit the bureaucracy's interference with MAGA.
54: There are a bunch of books that covered this ground (what the Nazis did to their political opposition).
William Sheridan Allen's _The Nazi Seizure of Power_: this covers at day-to-day fine-grain detail what happened in a small town. So you get the know the individuals and their roles, and their outcomes.
Robert Gellately's _Backing Hitler_: a much higher-level story. Among the things I learned here: right after the Nazis seized power, local party orgs opened torture and detention chambers all over Germany, where they held their political opponents. Socialists and Communists. The first concentration camp, Dachau, was opened a few months later, to bring order and discipline to what was completely chaotic. It was first and foremost for political prisoners -- *political* enemies of the Reich.
The message that got thru to me was: if you stay silent, and that includes at home, do everything you're told (including giving money when ordered to do so to various "charitable" causes), you'll be left alone. If you buck, they'll squash you. And this is for those who aren't enemies of the Volk. Black? Brown? LGBTQ? Haha, you're not going to get the chance to stay silent and be spared, b/c you're the object, not the subject, of the machinery of oppression.
Heebie, what you saw in those posters, was the beginning. If TCFG wins, there will be an upwelling of angry MAGAts taking matters into their own hands, all over the country. If he loses, it'll happen too, but at least, the forces of the state will be arrayed against them. If he wins, the forces of the state will know that there's a timer: when it expires, they're -his- forces. So they won't do much. Be prepared for it.
"Who do I have to oppose to get on the IRS audit watchlist around here?!"
Mpls is about as rottenly Democratic a borough as you're likely to find, and I just read a story today about how the police department is refusing to arrest someone who has been charged with *attempted murder* by the Democratic DA because they're afraid that he's too crazy to arrest at his house. Would anyone care to guess the race of the accused and that of the victim? When you have a Democratic mayor and a Democratic city council in the largest city in a state with a Democratic governor and a Democratic legislature and a Democratic attorney general, and the council is *still* reduced to whining about how the police won't do their job if it doesn't jibe with white supremacy, well, who needs Republicans?
17: ai'm all in on existential crisis, and when I feel less than excited by Harris, I'm reminded of how horrid he is. But I'm not a swing voter. I feel like all the consultants got involved and the positive stuff she was saying went away.
But watching her in Texas with Beyonce is pretty upbeat.
I have reread the 2016 election thread a couple of times. It's amazing that in the course of an evening we went from being sure Hillary Clinton would win to facing the reality of a Trump victory.
Just to put some geographic context to the story: 35th and Grand is not some scary no-go area where every white face is an invitation to robbery. It's the mostly white, mostly middle class neighborhood where I grew up. I went to elementary school one block away. The city's long running hippy bookstore is on that block. There's a little Cuban brunch place that is always awash in hipsters right there. The people in that neighborhood vote and volunteer and serve on the boards of community organizations. This is where people who never miss a DFL caucus live. And yet all that privilege isn't enough to override the police department's desire to fuck over Black people any way they know how. That fucking toady Jacob Frey will roll over for belly rubs any time the MPD pigs say "boo!" And there's always enough money and manpower to ride roughshod over any size encampment of homeless people. Nobody says shit about "officer safety" when they do their Gestapo tactics in the ghetto. Fuck a pig.
To some degree the endorsements/non-endorsements are consistent with my observation that dating back to Whitewater, although the WaPo's political news coverage* has generally been better than the Times their editorial positions have been worse (actual editorial boards positions, they both have a surfeit of shithead OpEd contributors). For instance this election their news articles (and headlines in particular) have been less problematic than the fog ass Times.
*Iraq war runup excepted--everyone except Knight-Ridder were dreadful. (And WaPo was also shit on Gore 2000.)
Of my various typos way up there I am amused/distressed by 'surpassingly' for 'surprisingly'. And I don't think I can blame autocorrect.
The edges are being sanded down as I very slowly fade to black.
70.last: David Hasselhoff was ahead of his time.
70 I thought they were much better than the NYT at getting stories from outside the 'stovepipe' out during the run-up on Iraq. Both were terrible on Whitewater.
Just this moment, I've started thinking of a theory. JMM is quite articulate on how media is wired for Republicans, and I think it's fair to start with that. My theory is that establishment media people really were offended by Clinton beating GHWB in 92, and never forgave him. Despite handling the fall of the Soviet Union and its empire about as well as could have been done, putting together the coalition to liberate Kuwait, and signing on to genuine deficit reduction (including tax increases, clearly the adult move), you end up with the proto-MAGA movement throwing tantrums first with Buchanan and then Perot, which let Clinton win. Clinton was nobody from nowhere, and that SNL skit having "him" brag that Arkansas had passed WV in rickets hit the right note.
once i've done what i can do ...
my knitting production rate has really skyrocketed, when asthma allows the bay provides solace, i am exploring new and delicious teas (recommend so highly red blossom tea here in sf, just an endless cornucopia of delights), proust as ever is my reliably transporting companion, and last weekend we had a delightful sunday lunch bringing together old friends and new-to-each-other friends that truly refreshed the spirit.
whatever the outcome of the election, we live in broken fucked up times. doing what we can to build, repair and restore for the future takes hard work and endlessly renewed spirit. i'm trying to keep the muscles of renewal in training.
that said, the mayoral choices on the ballot here in san francisco make me physically ill. unfortunately i am not able to negatively rank anyone, and there is not a one among them that i have any positive feelings for.
My theory is that establishment media people really were offended by Clinton beating GHWB in 92, and never forgave him. Despite handling the fall of the Soviet Union and its empire about as well as could have been done, putting together the coalition to liberate Kuwait, and signing on to genuine deficit reduction (including tax increases, clearly the adult move), you end up with the proto-MAGA movement throwing tantrums first with Buchanan and then Perot, which let Clinton win. Clinton was nobody from nowhere, and that SNL skit having "him" brag that Arkansas had passed WV in rickets hit the right note.
I love this, but it amusingly fits into my "theorists imprinted on life when they were 25-30" hypothesis.
I would really like to never get a text from James Carville again.
How many texts are you getting? My spambox is full, but I only get a notification of a campaign text like a few times a week. I told some people recently my filtering seemed to be working well, and they were surprised, but maybe they just weren't checking their spam to see how much was being filtered.
I'm getting 3 or 4 texts a day. I changed messaging apps, because Verizon, and the new app makes blocking much easier. Maybe this will do something.
76: Me neither. Not sure which Dem I would have preferred. I was not yet old enough to vote in 1992.
59: I donated to Harris twice in the hope of being put on lists. Good. Proscribe away. Fuck you.
You know that I didn't put the flyers out, right?
I know. Fuck them, rather. I meant that that is my response to those flyers and the Trump toadies' sneering little and big threats.
I sent more money to Harris today because of Trump's threats to go after donors.
That flyers thing is absolutely horrifying. I joke about how comfortable it is living in my nice safe urban bubble, but it really is very comfortable in here. I know you're not living there on purpose to be a hero, Heebie, but I am still very impressed that you're out there being politically active where it can do a lot of good.
Personally, I am incapable of learning. Intellectually I know that Trump might win, but I am viscerally certain he won't. If he does it'll hit just as hard as it did eight years ago.
73: Both were terrible on Whitewater.
I did forget that the WaPo had printed the single worst piece on Watergate (and Lewinsky) stuff, the dreadful "Letdown Feeling" thing by Sally Quinn that I linked here recently. But the Times not only started it with the completely misleading Gerth piece, but were relentless in flogging it.
Home after about month away and the yard sign survived (also a Casey one) and no flyers or defacement. Also heartened to see the young couple next door* with one up and several up the street. (Offsetting 4 sign/flag Trump displays in the immediate vicinity.)
*They did have a Biden sign stolen in '20.
NY Times with article taking daughter of LA Times owner at her word that the concern on endorsing Harris was Gaza. Nothing in his statements or record support that (she does appear to have a track record of support for Palestinians.)
Drove across the Adirondacks yesterday and was cheering to see at least some Harris/Walz signs amongst the sea of Trump flags/signs. But even far more Stefanik signs than Trump ones.
Almost amusing that Bezos and LA Times dude are obeying in advance given that Trump loves him some apostasy. (see Vance/Hitler etc.) Wait for the moment dudes.
92: Bezos' might believe he can own a plausible centrist newspaper in a Trump presidency. As you point out, he can say whatever he wants to today. But when the time comes, he needs to go full fascist, regardless of what he says today. Maybe he's still hoping to cut a deal.
On the other hand, maybe the point of the non-endorsement is to let Trump know that he's ready to jump onboard, and to put his name a few spots lower on Trump's list. There's a real possibility that Trump will move quickly in January.
I am viscerally certain he won't.
My viscera believe that Harris is toast. Trump speaks to something extraordinarily powerful in human nature that I feel as though I understand -- and have begun to sympathize with. It's a hard world, and Trump offers answers.
Anyway, I voted today. I had a lot of irrational anxiety about voting. I worried that I might somehow be deprived of the opportunity -- I might be incapacitated or dead or something.
I feel genuine relief at having gotten that out of the way.
I've been really gassy lately. I'm not sure what my viscera are trying to tell me with that.
I cancelled my WaPo subscription today.
I don't doubt that Bezos is more interested in his other businesses, and the loss of revenue to the Post from subscription loss is barely going to be a rounding error.
I'm feeling like Harris is in the better position than Trump. The polls are based on assumptions about the electorate that don't seem that likely, to this outsider, to be true. It's going to be about turnout in Detroit, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Atlanta.
Knocking doors today, I ran into several Republicans nonetheless voting for Tester. It's far from clear that there will be enough of this to make the difference, but I know that 6 months ago, the Tester campaign had some specific goals.
I'll get my voter protection assignment tomorrow.
I'm going to cancel Prime and my Prime credit card. I just can't do that at the drop of a hat.
My only real sources of news are WaPo and LA Times. I don't know what to do.
I haven't voted yet, because I'm still undecided about a few of the ballot questions.
Our auditor wants to audit the State legislature which is notoriously secretive and has employed NDAs. Senate President and Speaker of the House have indicated they will amend the ,as if it passes.
They want to decriminalize psychedelics. Some home grown will be allowed, but mostly people with PTSD will have to pay $1,000.00 to have a trained facilitator guide them. I'm worried that For-profits would take over.
99: TMZ, CBN, and Final Call and you've covered all your bases.
There's also the life-changing power of making up whatever facts would justify doing what you've wanted to do.
Choose Your Own Adventure News Network
Own News Adventure Network. Onanism is the biggest thing on the internet.
94: pf, have hope. I've been a really pessimistic guy in these comments for months, and I have hope. You're right about the way TCFG speaks to a deep, dark, angry place in a lot of Americans. But so does Dobbs, pf. So does Dobbs. Have hope that Americans and esp. American women will see their personal, immediate, bodily self-interest as something they will crawl over broken glass to protect, to defend.
Maybe in 10 days we'll find out different. But there's no need to be pessimistic now: there's nothing you can do that will change things, and nothing you can do to prepare for the worst, that you can't start on 6 Nov.
Have hope.
I canceled my LAT subscription, less for the non-endorsement than for the "explanations" of the non-endorsement from the owner, as reported in the LAT.* I left a note about the owner apparently wanting to favor "both sides" over actually reporting and arguing from facts.
I fully acknowledge it's mostly a performative unsubscribe. I already knew my subscription wouldn't actually end until after the election. I may resubscribe if Harris wins. But I won't otherwise, since the clear signal is that pro-Trump voices will be coddled and elevated, justified through some mealy-mouthed intellectual diversity bullshit.
*Which I read before the whole daughter-Gaza thing, but which I see has already been updated with the owner saying "it's not Gaza, my daughter has her own opinions that have nothing to do with the editorial board."
This from Josh Marshall, ostensibly about cancelling WaPo subscriptions, is really about where the existential anxiety for blue America is coming from. It's good. Though IMO PF said it more cogently in 48, for which, thanks PF. I'll be cancelling all my subscriptions and signing up for PF's substack.
I betook myself to Cyprus. I also think Harris' chances are very good, but I am not joking about Trump going the full Mondale like I was in 2016.
The unsubstantiated rumor I saw was that there were 60,000 cancelled subscriptions to the WaPo. If that's true then, damn - that's a lot of cancelled subscriptions.
One cancellation is performative but 60,000 cancellations is the kind of thing a newspaper does notice.
What that means to Bezos is a different question.
It's not Bezos we're communicating with, but the people directly below him in running the newspaper.
I'm hoping that Samuel L. Jackson is appearing for Harris every day from here on through. Very high favorability among men. No-bullshit speaking style. Wouldn't you go vote if he told you you needed to do that?
Only if he called me a motherfucker. If he would to that for me, I'd totally go vote.
Despite handling the fall of the Soviet Union and its empire about as well as could have been done, putting together the coalition to liberate Kuwait, and signing on to genuine deficit reduction (including tax increases, clearly the adult move), you end up with the proto-MAGA movement throwing tantrums first with Buchanan and then Perot, which let Clinton win.
Have you read When the Clock Broke? It's excellent. Highly recommended.
"Samuel L Jackson appeals to the demographic that enjoys hearing people called 'motherfucker', but can he appeal to the ordinary American who watches the versions of Jackson's movies that are edited to say 'mellon farmer'?"
59: if they were printed on a laser printer, they'll be traceable to the individual printer in question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
I don't think 6.2 could be more wrong. That's what Project 2025 is all about. This time he'll staff everything with his loyalists who do know how everything works.
Sink-Trap theory, though. Do we really think that all these fanatical Trump loyalists will have any more ability to make the federal government do stuff than Trump has?
Look at John Bolton (as I think I've pointed out before). I spent YEARS being told that he was a super-operator, a Machiavellian genius, a Kissinger reborn, who was peerless in his ability to shape US foreign policy to his will. There was going to be regime change in Venezuela and war with Iran and an invasion of North Korea and all that. And he was Trump's NSA for almost two years - so he was in a position of power. But it was all bullshit! He didn't achieve any of his aims!
And now he's anti-Trump - he even thought about running against Trump this time around - and is anyone still on Trump's team remotely as experienced and able even as the inept failure Bolton?
118: tend to agree. The Republicans are rolling chaos and barely suppressed infighting, with a few people (prominently Vance?) trying to impose messaging discipline. The MSG display confirms it. Miller might still want to go full ethno-nationalist, not clear he'd be allowed.
Also, post MSG, Americans now have a clear shot at an open goal. Do you want to endorse _this_? Obvs. we'll soon find out, but any 2016 pretences (the 'take him seriously but not literally' garbage) are weakened if not gone, I have to believe.
On the ideological side, it's true that things are terribly bad with the US political right. But this has been true for decades now, albeit with a gradual worsening throughout.
A few months ago, I'd decided that the closest historical comparison is Falangist Spain, to take account of the religious component. But there's no American Franco, just a creaking ancient TV personality with psychological defects. He can sell the project, such as it is, by exuding a vibe of 'money' and 'business' and 'fixing the cost of living'. He'll fail at that if given the chance, and there's no successor. Can he and others permanently sink democratic process within four years? They can hurt it, and they already have, but it takes a lot, and there's a couple of centuries of tradition to overturn. Not the case for historical comparators, imo.
And yes I realise someone is going to point out that no one called John Bolton a Kissinger reborn at the time because actual Kissinger was still alive. I would counter that it is entirely plausible to me that Kissinger had gone full Branca Doria some time in the early 1990s.
«Io credo», diss' io lui, «che tu m'inganni;
ché Henry Kissinger non morì unquanche,
e mangia e bee e dorme e veste panni».
«Nel fosso sù», diss' el, «de' Malebranche,
là dove bolle la tenace pece,
non era ancora giunto Richard Nixon,
che questi lasciò il diavolo in sua vece
nel corpo suo, ed un suo prossimano
che 'l tradimento insieme con lui fece.
Bad Bunny supporting Kamala is potentially an even bigger deal than Beyonce's endorsement. Otoh, who knows if it will make any difference.
Puerto Rican celebrities generally have been on it with a really impressive level of alert responsiveness. I was sort of waiting to see if Residente weighed in, because he's in the range of people who I wouldn't ever have heard of if Newt weren't a fan, and there he was. I respect that.
118, 119 That's why the staffing is being outsourced to Heritage, they'll make sure that departments are staffed with people who are both loyalists and who know how these bureaucracies work (apart from Trump getting his high level wrecking ball appointments like RFK Jr at HHS and Musk at Energy or wherever). This will not be a simple reprise of the last time around.
124 is wrong. Project 2025 was Heritage, Trump disavowed 2025*, now 2025 is ash.
*Precisely because it was a R effort essentially to control him.
Trump disavowed it because it's unpopular and he's a liar.
I don't think there's enough left of the Republican Party to try to control Trump.
128: ironically, that would be a good thing, no? It then dies with him.
I think he'll attempt some sort of militarized immigrant sweep on day 1. I think it will get half-heartedly implemented and blocked by the courts, but the mood in all organizations that interact with undocumented people will be "Dehumanize and Sweep" and that will have catastrophic effects.
I think red states will start chipping away at birth control.
I think things will get worse for trans people.
I don't actually think he'd stay in office past 2028. He can leave office without LOSING BEING A LOSER at that point, which is all he actually cares about. Plus he'll be really goddamn addled by then, and power-hungry Republicans will probably be able to pry him loose by then. And whoever manages to will probably not have the same cult of personality. So in that sense, I think democracy survives. But the wreckage will still be appalling, not to mention the time-clock on mitigating climate change slipping by.
That's why the staffing is being outsourced to Heritage, they'll make sure that departments are staffed with people who are both loyalists and who know how these bureaucracies work
I mean, maybe? But if Heritage really does have a huge warehouse full of bureaucratically competent, experienced people who are also infallibly loyal to Trump, who are they, and where were they last time around?
I don't think they need to be especially competent or loyal.
I would say we'll see but let's hope we don't find out
118, 119 and 126 are surprisingly misguided, coming from such astute observers. Where to start?
118: Bolton spent his career as the public face of shockingly awful policies, but he was a consistent failure in making them as awful as he wanted them to be (as you point out). If we're looking for reasons to be optimistic, we can take heart in the fact that Trump, seemingly as a matter of genuine conviction, opposes Boltonesque interventions.
119: The Republicans' authoritarian tendency has found its apotheosis in Trump. There is no meaningful dissent. Everybody in the party is pulling in the same direction -- over a cliff.
126 was already answered by 127, but the authors of Project 2025 (for example) correctly understand that Trump's disavowal is just more Trump bullshit. Trump's minions understand that he can be trusted to lie. Did anyone ever think that Trump's current heterodoxy on abortion would alienate the forced-birthers?
"Too incompetent to really fuck things up" is a self-contradictory concept. "Competent fascism" is close to being a contradiction in terms -- and yet the storied history of that ideology is full of amazing accomplishments.
And this time, Trump has a free pass for criminality from the Supreme Court -- whose majority, in terms of conventional legal and ethical concepts, has been breathtakingly incompetent and extraordinarily adept at changing the law.
Trump is running ads about how he doesn't want to ban abortion, but no one who votes solely on banning abortion seems to believe those ads any more than I do.
"Competent fascism" is close to being a contradiction in terms -- and yet the storied history of that ideology is full of amazing accomplishments.
I would love for you to introduce the second half of this sentence to the first half.
I am not arguing that no fascist regime can ever achieve anything or have any competent people involved. I'm making the point that Trump is fishing in a very small pool for his underlings and the chance that it will contain enough competent people to actually achieve the huge difficult projects that he wants to achieve is very small. Mass deportation of millions of people, for instance, is a logistical nightmare. Mass anything involving millions of people moving around is a logistical nightmare - read up on the WW2 mobilisations and then consider how much harder they would have been if the men involved had been constantly trying to escape.
Here's the thing. Mass deportation run incompetently would still be a huge batch of human misery, pain, and death.
135: Right, Trump opposes Project 2025 in exactly the same spirit as his stated willingness to release his taxes.
I met with a local homeless advocate over the weekend and got an earful about things I somewhat suspected but didn't have the full backstory on.
One of the most appalling things that I didn't realize is that the city houses homelessness under fucking Code Compliance*. As in, the people who see the world through a lens of needing to get rid of the trash on the street. There are one or two MAGA employees within Code Compliance who actively see homeless caseworkers as the enemy. It sounded awful.
*There's not really a homeless focus, but there's a broader homeless coalition across agencies, and the city representatives come from Code Enforcement.
138: good job I didn't say that electing Trump would have no negative consequences whatever, then!
Admittedly there's no mass organization like the NSDAP or Minute Men to politically staff a fascist bureaucracy at enough levels. But the nation's police, local and federal, are a ready-made bullybranch probably willing and able to carry out illegal orders against the rest.
I would love for you to introduce the second half of this sentence to the first half.
World War II: Competently carried out by the fascists? An amazing accomplishment by fascists? I'd say no to the first and yes to the second.
141: You seemed to be saying they wouldn't accomplish much.
Poor ol' Bezos is really in over his head with the whole journalism thing.
It doesn't seem to have occurred to him that if he was going to suppress a Harris endorsement, he was going to need to fire a bunch of people. This is at the top of the front page right now:
Some billionaires, CEOs hedge bets as Trump vows retribution
The story includes a straightforward, properly contextualized account of Bezos' actions.
You seemed to be saying they wouldn't accomplish much.
I do not think they will accomplish much.
But I am starting to realise that this is a BrE/AmE difference over the meaning of the word "accomplishment". Saying (like 143) that WW2 represented an amazing accomplishment by fascists is, using the British sense of the word, completely insane - though clearly using the American sense of the word it's entirely reasonable.
Now let's all say "schedule" differently.
People read Alexandra Petri's Harris endorsement in the WaPo, right? https://braddelong.substack.com/p/crosspost-alexandra-petri-it-has
My wife knew her dad, so the one thing I know is how to pronounce her name.
I watched the Dick Van Dyke show, so I have a strongly held opinion on the pronunciation of her name.
Heritage has form as an incompetent staffing organization. They did it in Iraq. Which I guess prompts the question of which is worse, competent or incompetent staff?
134: I think we just disagree about the scale of the apocalypse. Francoist Spain lasted four decades, for example, and it had ideological resources that this bunch seemingly don't have. Which I'd tend to credit for its longevity. But maybe something yet more malignant and better organised can emerge from the GOP. At the moment it all still looks at least somewhat opportunist. And again, if Trump really is the catalyst, well, he'll soon be gone no matter what! Or do we think Trump Jr will take over?
Anyhow, isn't it better to identify _some_ point of weakness or vulnerability rather than just hand them the whole thing?
Anyhow, isn't it better to identify _some_ point of weakness or vulnerability rather than just hand them the whole thing?
Yes, I assume that ajay is arguing, in part that we shouldn't minimize the value of bureaucratic and legal delaying tactics. A second Trump administration would be very bad and it's possible that trying to run out the clock would be the most effective opposition.
We shouldn't forget that this time around Trump will have a good portion of the federal judiciary onside, and the federalist types are adept at funneling case to sympathetic judges
I started writing a longer comment but I'm wary of getting bogged down in comment thread arguments. I do think there are a relatively small number of competent autocratic people who see an opportunity in Trump, but they're probably also grumbling to themselves about having to be ruled by loons, goons, and buffoons.* That doesn't mean they can't incrementally advance their goals with a Trump win, though I don't think the US could go full autocrat in just four years.
*Well, they're probably happy with the goons.
Speaking of being ruled by a Crazy King, got to hear a bunch of stories recently about how completely insane our university president is. Like "you have to manually pick the onions out of one of the dishes in the buffet because the president hates onions" stuff. Just truly a lunatic. Everyone I've ever talked to her works with her gives the same kind of impression you get from people who used to work with Trump, that this is someone with the temperament of a 5-year old.
156 I always wonder how it is people like that e to such high positions in the first place. Wouldn't someone like that piss off or alarm enough people on the way up that they'd never get promoted?
Yeah, it's bizarre. At least with Trump he just inherited it all and never worked his way up anything.
if Trump really is the catalyst
I'm not really convinced he is. This has been building for decades. Perhaps he was the perfect person at the perfect time to harness and embody it, but I don't think the hunger for performative sadism/assholism that animates their politics is going anywhere. Somebody is going to step up to the plate and it's likely to be someone less prone to constantly sitting on their own testicles.
160 is how I read it. Trump has caused people to forget what an astonishingly abysmal president GW Bush was. And GW, in turn, superseded Reagan's awfulness in most respects.
There's no particular reason to suppose that the Republican Party can't cough up somebody worse than Trump.
Mitch McConnell was briefly unclear on the fact that Trump could actually get away with open authoritarianism, but once that became evident, Mitch was onboard. Republicans who oppose Trump are, in actual fact, Republicans In Name Only.
Tucker Carlson is only 55 years old. Don Jr. is 46.
They probably sit on their own nuts and bounce up and down.
156 describes more than one of my most successful colleagues pretty well. Not university presidents, but people generally thought of as being at the top of their field. Sometimes I think being completely nuts is actually a requirement for really great success.
Maybe fear of onions is required.
NPR is saying 200,000 canceled subscriptions at the WaPo. That's pocket change to Bezos, but still extraordinary.
The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.
Pour encourager les Sulzbergers.
Mr. Belvedere would have been an excellent president.
For myself, I chose voice over exit for now - sent them an email saying I was close to canceling.
It might be worth cancelling anyway, depending on when your subscription runs out. Mine was re-upped fairly recently, so my current subscription lasts until next September. So I've cancelled, figuring they have 11 months to change my mind - and if they can't manage to do that, its on them.
Yeah, mine runs out in December. And I only really got it for the election year, so my cancellation is pretty low burden for me. But I don't at all mind being part of the count. Bezos didn't get where he is by giving away pocket change -- or letting employees take bathroom breaks -- and I'd like to think that he thinks Lewis let him down by not explaining the likely consequences of this move.
You can rhyme Petri with Caption Bligh. Well, ajay can, if he's in the mood for a story about mutiny.
I did not realize Bob Uecker was still alive. Wow.
I guess either the reaction to the LAT has been more muted or people just don't care to follow up on it. I haven't been offered any special deal on resubscribing. Which I'll probably do eventually because it's been a good local paper and it's not like there's another one.
174: He probably doesn't know are alive either.
169: Hm, my subscription runs out in April, so yeah, that makes sense. (LA Times is monthly.) And they did tick me off a second time with saying that Harris questioning Trump's mental fitness was "borrowing from Trump's playbook."
175: It's because California doesn't seem real to most of us.
Ah yes, all true about a succession of bad Republican presidents, each worse than the one before, but I suppose the thing I was trying to bring out was that Trump also has positive qualities - defined strictly as things that get the voters interested. The performative arseholeism is part of it, but the guy is also simultaneously a huckster with a line of golden watches (bad ones), a TV entrepreneur, a casino / resort mogul, etc. and all driven forwards by his own weird dark charisma; it's not a very normal combination. Musk has some of this, perhaps? Carlson; what does he have beyond wavy hair and a really strange-looking blue steel? Am hoping that the novelty of the 2016 Trump package has worn off at least a bit though.
He's still calling Brewers games at 90. That's amazing.
If I'm the Harris campaign, I'm sending Tim Waltz over there to secure his endorsement.
A Bob Uecker endorsement is the real October Surprise. Thousands of old white men in Wisconsin will follow his lead.
Mr. Belvedere would have been an excellent president.
Not a native-born American.
This is Clifton Webb erasure.
The backlash against that comedian's comments about Puerto Rico at Trump's Nuremberg rally are something to see. He October surprised himself. Reportedly they felt the need to cut the bit where he called Harris a cunt.
167 except the part when he sat on his own balls while filming so they had to stop filming for a few days while he recovered.
173 really? She pronounces Petri to rhyme with eye and bye? Weird.
Suspicion in the Guardian this morning was that Trump is counting on winning a few House seats in New York, and then a House victory plus shenanigans to award him the presidency. Otherwise why campaign in New York? (Admittedly the answer might also be "he's always wanted to play Madison Square Gardens" or "he knew he'd get a lot of TV and media because it's happening somewhere real, not out in the backwoods").
189
Otherwise why campaign in New York?
I'm trying to avoid asking questions like that, or else I'd have to wonder what Harris is doing in DC today.
Carlson; what does he have beyond wavy hair and a really strange-looking blue steel?
If I had to summarize Trump's superpower in one word, it's "shamelessness." He can do and say whatever he feels in the moment, and thus grants his followers the same freedom. It is no accident that the people who want the government to interfere in personal medical decisions talk the most about "freedom."
You're a racist? It's okay! You don't have to be embarrassed about that. The real racists are the people who notice your bigotry.
You're an idiot? That's fine! You know more than people who have spent years studying foreign policy, urban governance and epidemiology. And if you are just bursting with hatred, that's only natural given the state of the world.
Carlson and Don Jr. are the two that I've seen that really have that quality. But there are others and, as Trump has demonstrated, one of those people can emerge from anywhere. With a little more ambition and a Y chromosome, Sarah Palin could have been president.
Trump's genuinely special quality -- and it took me a long time to understand this -- is his ridiculousness. His followers understand that as humor. People are entertained, not appalled, when he decides to dance for 40 minutes at a rally. Vance and Desantis lack that, and when I'm thinking about possible presidents, I become grateful all over again that Rush Limbaugh is dead.
But look out for Joe Rogan in 2028.
https://goodauthority.org/news/election-poll-vote2024-data-pollster-choices-weighting/
Really good piece on polling: making different, but equally defensible, decisions about weighting can produce either Harris +1 or Harris +9 from exactly the same sample of respondents. This is separate from statistical margin of error, which is related purely to sample size: ie if you have a population that is 50% green and 50% red, your sample of 2000 people is 95% likely to be between 47% and 53% red.
189 If the election goes to the House, they don't vote in the usual manner. I'm generally pretty supportive of our Constitution, having taken oaths and all, but that, that, is some dumb 18th century shit.
192 I think there's something to Tom Nichols' observation that the wackier Trump/Trumpism gets, the bigger a fuck you to "The Elites"* it is to vote for him. There's a segment, shockingly large, for which this kind of thing matters.
* Includes anyone who went to university.
190: Taking back the House is important if she wants to enact legislation. Or, if we lise the Senate, stopping the Republicans.
195.2: Nick Bosa went to college (I think "The University" still counts). But he didn't graduate. Maybe graduating from college is what truly marks a person as part of the hated Elite.
Is there any evidence that campaigning in swing states actually helps? It seems like one of those things that people take on faith, like we used to think that it was important to choose a candidate that wasn't a complete idiot.
189, 194: I think the concern was not the ultimate House vote, but rather the NY delegation helping get an R majority so Johnson is Speaker and that being used in some unspecified way to help get it to a House vote.
I will note that none of the Rs in competitive races attended(? or maybe just did not speak), and some of them rushed out statements decrying the island of garbsge joke.
198 For almost exactly eight years I've been saying 'yeah, well Russ Feingold *did* campaign in Wisconsin' but I think where we are is that the election in the swing states gets decided by the least engaged people who actually vote, and no one really has any idea what's going to capture their attention on election day. All the candidates can do is try to minimize permission to vote for the other one, and maximize permission to vote for their side.
So, they campaign in the swing states so no one can say 'she doesn't respect us enough to come ask for our votes' even if appearances/rallies are never attended by the marginal voters who's attention is being sought.
200 Trump only barely cares about legislation or the House. Sure he doesn't want a Dem majority, but only because Pelosi kept showing him up. And, you know, they impeached him twice.
And on the joke, I'm not thrilled that like so many Trump outrages* to a large extent the whole rally is being reduced that one "joke" which then can be dismissed in various ways. (Jon Stewart has one of the most hackneyed responses basically just defending the comedian.) So the whole vibe of the rally (and other thing the comic and others said get pushed to the side.
*See pee tape/Russia, very fine people/Charlottesville for instance.
I'm just thrilled that finally something broke through
202: For actual governing I agree. But the "hint" is that an R-controlled House helps him with fuckery to win the presidency. Beyond that he would mainly want Rs in to stifle oversight and to "investigate" various things like FBI and other departments.
194: I am rereading CV Wedgwood's terrific "The Thirty Years War" and electoral colleges play a significant role. The relevant one in the HRE had only seven members and they still managed to get themselves into a terrible mess.
Just to spell things out extra-dumbly: if Trump is campaigning in New York to tip house votes that will override the electoral votes on January 6th-ish-day... well those congresspeople won't be installed yet on that day either. It's the current House that would do his bidding.
I assume I'm either missing something in his quasi-logic or somewhere.
207: well, maybe not! This is what Wiki says:
The past three contingent elections were conducted by the outgoing Congress because congressional terms then ended / began on March 4, the same day as presidential terms. In 1933, the Twentieth Amendment set the new congressional term to start on January 3 and the new presidential term on January 20. The amendment shortened the length of lame-duck sessions of Congress by two months, and any future contingent elections would be conducted by the incoming Congress.
So if he can cause enough chaos that a contingent election gets called...
Oh, huh. Well good for him, then. I think.
Of course, how you get to a contingent election is the tricky bit.
Guess I'll go look up what a contingent election is now.
It was fun explaining to Rascal why JD Vance is a different VP than Trump had before. That sounds sarcastic, but isn't.
Vance is a shittier person than Pence.
You can use the Bristol Stool Scale.
I've only skimmed it so far but here's a recent article detailing plans for a second Trump administration https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga
AIUI, and I may not, it only gets triggered if no one has a majority of EC votes cast. So interfering in one or two states wouldn't do it.
Let's say Harris wins, including PA, but Trump is able to meddle in Pennsylvania somehow. If he succeeds,
a) either PA doesn't cast any votes at all (in which case Trump wins with a majority of the remaining votes) or
b) it votes for Trump (in which case Trump wins) or
c) there's some sort of nonsense with two contingents of voters and either neither contingent is seated in which case a), or the fake contingent is seated in which case b), or the real contingent is seated in which case Harris wins.
The only way Trump could get a contingent election out of a Harris victory would be to get the electors from a Harris-voting state to vote for a third party candidate instead - and if he can do that, why not make them vote for him directly?
Or, I suppose, option c) followed by a Supreme Court ruling that since there's no way to know which contingent is real, the fairest way is to have a contingent election.
I assume the plan, like last time, is to "raise doubts" by having fake alternate electors, claiming the election is disputed, and then presenting the House as the only way to break the dispute.
I'm sure they'd prefer just to get Trump declared winner in a sacred landslide, and if they're planning for a vote in the House it's contingency planning.
There's very adult of them to think through a back-up plan.
They are highly competent people and I look forward* to them announcing legal challenges from their headquarters at the Four Seasons.
*To be earnest, it's probably going to be awful all the way to inauguration even if Harris wins. Maybe worse than the campaign except for the stress of not knowing the outcome.
217, 218: In late 2020 a local group here had an academic expert on certification talk about actually getting the President certified and inaugurated. I forget all the details, but there a number of potential ambiguities only a few of which git highlighted by J6. Will try to find it. As usual, all the guardrails are people and in explaining what would happen in the case of guardrail malfeasance several times he said "And no one knows what would happen in that case." Speaker and Supremes are important guardrails as is the VO of course.
My views on 2020 situation vs. 2024:
Incumbent Dem administration (and VP)--big, big good
Supremes more red-pilled (esp. Roberts) big, big bad
Rep->?? vs. Dem to Dem House. potentially very big bad
Not sure on the Senate
States more prepped to ratfuck--very bad
Public, media etc. everyone more alert on both sides--hard to say what iimpact that might have.
Shorter 222:
It's complicated, and per usual the chaosmongers have an easier job. However Dem admin in place does a lot to limit certain kinds of chaos
We are fixing to reinstate the nimrods who put Giuliani's melting face out in front of Four Seasons Total Landscaping. I'm still struggling here.
Life is one long struggle in the dark.
if Trump is campaigning in New York to tip house votes that will override the electoral votes on January 6th-ish-day... well those congresspeople won't be installed yet on that day either. It's the current House that would do his bidding.
Not correct - the new Congress is sworn in on January 3rd. I assume that was always why the electoral count date was the 5th.
There are a lot more safeguards against GOP House shenanigans than last time around, though I can't rule out it being twisted in some way.
- Under the Electoral Count Reform Act, objections to electoral votes require 20% of both House and Senate to consider, and majorities of both houses to sustain. Even with (small) majorities in both houses, I think they'd have a hard time getting to that threshold.
- Objections are much more limited in scope, although I'm not sure what happens if the President of the Senate rules an objection out of order but the Speaker disagrees.
- If they somehow keep a state from sending an electoral slate at all, the "majority of electoral votes" calculation now excludes that state from the denominator as well as from the numerator. So for example, if Harris wins MN, MI, NV, PA, VA, WI, and NE-1, while Trump NC, GA, and AZ, but Wisconsin ratfuckery prevents that slate from being transmitted, Dems still win with 266 to 262 - it doesn't throw to House-voting-by-delegation just because no one's hit 270.
I guess if each house's president rules with regard to their own house, then Harris only rules an objection out of order, there is no vote in the Senate to see if the 20% threshold is met, so since both are required everyone has to move on. Assuming that isn't when the chodes or SCOTUS come out.
The real reason for a late rally in New York City: fundraising. New York (and California) Republicans have lots more money than Wisconsin Rapublicans. True, it's too late for the campaign to make use of any money raised. But if you plan to pocket any remaining millions at the end of the campaign, it makes perfect sense.
Does a rally raise much money? I thought that was dinners.
The McDonald's stunt didn't raise much money because it only paid minimum wage.
226: Ah, I'd forgotten they had actually gotten some stuff passed on that.
This damned post keeps going around on Bluesky asserting, without a mechanism, that Johnson is going to block EC certification in the House if he retains a majority.
Actually, I might have overstated the threshold thing in the ECRA. The 12th Amendment already says majority "of the whole number of electors appointed." The ECRA just adds that the threshold also drops if Congress rejects a slate & does not replace it.
234: Let more jackbooted thugs in and coordinate with them better this time, resulting in a critical number of Democrats being kept off the floor? I don't know, I'm not saying it's likely and I feel bad for giving people even more things to worry about, but mechanisms weren't a problem last time.
236: Security around the Capitol should be serious this time - Biden is certainly motivated, as are the Joint Chiefs. I don't want to rule out that kind of thing, but what gets me is people acting like it's a foregone conclusion and the GOP has a fully worked out sinister plan, as opposed to the political equivalent of failing up.
Everyone has a plan until the Joint Chiefs punch them in the face.
Are they even going to be able to get enough of a crowd together for the attempt considering that so many of the last lot are doing time in the federal pen.
That's got to be a serious deterrent
I voted today. I had a dentist appointment and my dentist happens to be across the street from the Division of Elections office, so I decided to go ahead and get it done. We had our first big snowstorm of the year last night, so there were no lines but it was still fairly busy. The worker who checked me in said it was the first day since early voting started that they hadn't had long lines.
Jeff Bezos: the latest victim of cancel culture.
We're paid up through next July, but we canceled. It's a symbolic gesture, but satisfying nonetheless.
I want to touch back to ajay's polling link in 193. I can intellectually concede that Trump doesn't have it locked up just fine, but emotionally I'm way too scared to camp out there.
243: Wait, your default position at this point is that Trump has it locked up? I am concerned but my default is Harris as slight fav.
But sure, the misogynistic fuckhole brigade of racist dumbfucks will possibly crush my soul forever.
The polling thing I can not grt my head around os Jacky Rosen running cx (3-8) points ahead of Harris in Nevada. Gallego in Arizona I sort of get, but jeez, who are those spliitters?
244: Strictly out of emotional self-preservation, yes - I decided last week to pre-emptively live as though Trump has won.
I once tried to dance like no one was watching. I just sat down because there's no point.
I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. (Well, me and Jeff Bezos and heebie.)
I once tried to dance like no one is listening, but I guess farting is inappropriate.
The polls are all over the place, but who knows? They're not trustworthy or reliable when both sides have reason to want them to appear to be close. Harris needs people to mobilize because she wins on turnout; Trump needs to hear that he's winning because he's a toddler and his brand is pretending to be a winner, and because if MAGA believes he's winning it's easier to try to steal the election. It's basically p-hacking for elections.
Looks like I need to pop up every now and then to remind you that women are lying to pollsters in front of their husbands and it's not going to be close. I'll be back here next week to collect my flowers.
State politics are going to be a landmine regardless of who wins -- emboldened or vengeful are the options, and the universities are the current target.
State politics are going to be a landmine regardless of who wins -- emboldened or vengeful are the options, and the universities are the current target.
I've been really gassy lately and I blame the stress of the election. My entire digestive tract is off.
are lying to pollsters in front of their husbands and it's not going to be close
I'm sure this exists. I'm not sure it's so many as to swing the election. It could on its own account for a point or two not captured in polls. So much else is unknowable though.
So the US Supreme Court is not playing the RFK Jr game.
He's on the ballot here. And in WI and MI. Which, isn't voting already going on there?
I will happily send Ogged flowers if Harris wins.
Is French Laundry still in existence?
I know he wanted off the ballot, although maybe he wanted to stay on in some states strategically? I forget. Anyway, meaning the Supreme Court is not aiding his quest to remove?
are lying to pollsters in front of their husbands and it's not going to be close
But are their ballots secret? I've always worried that mail-in voting could be exploited to remove secrecy where some authority figure(s) - abusive family situation, or maybe a cult or cult-like group - checks everyone's ballots before they're sealed and mailed. But there doesn't seem to be much evidence that happens at all, or if it does happen, it would be isolated incidents, not at a scale that makes a difference. A big group meeting to fill out their ballots together in a coercive environment would be reported, probably.
I just wanted to add another worry to the list.
If Trump and the Electoral College weren't involved, I'd expect Dems to have similar success to 2022, when the most pessimistic speculations were too pessimistic. I'd only be shocked by a Trump popular majority.
I've never been to the The French Laundry, but I went to their cheaper sister restaurant. But that was over 20 years ago. The steak was good.
261 I don't think he cared enough about MT to try to get off: he can't matter here. His presence on the ballot in MI and WI could, if shit goes way wronger than I'm hoping, be material. It's ridiculously late for the US Supreme Court to be messing with ballots, so the case was maybe more about publicizing to people that he isn't really running. A message that's just as effective with a denial from the Supreme Court.
But are their ballots secret? I've always worried that mail-in voting could be exploited to remove secrecy where some authority figure(s) - abusive family situation, or maybe a cult or cult-like group - checks everyone's ballots before they're sealed and mailed.
I heard Celinda Lake, Democratic pollster, interviewed a couple of weeks ago. Apparently the gender gap between married women and their husbands narrows (in R favor) when mail-in ballots are used. Her solutions were twofold:
1) Encourage in-person voting when possible.
2) Lean hard into messaging what their research has tested with said women: 1) Your vote is private. 2) Your vote is important to set an example for your daughters/granddaughters/other young women.
Apparently, the ideal time that married women say they want to fill out their mail ballot is between 10-11pm, after the kids are in bed, once the laundry is done. Messaging around "You deserve to take the time to vote thoughtfully" is what gives these women permission to say NO when their husbands want them to sit down after dinner and fill out their ballots together.
I have no direct knowledge of the accuracy of this information, but it seems reasonably plausible for middle-class/UMC white married women. No clue about other groups.
269: very similar findings here as well, particularly in Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities where it's often the job of the head of household to "deliver" the votes of everyone in his house. Electioneering in those constituencies is much more eighteenth century than elsewhere; it's all about negotiating with "community leaders" who can use their kinship networks to deliver block votes.
https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/31873216/FULL_TEXT.PDF
I suspect the issue of "husband makes sure his wife votes the right way" is less widespread simply because there's less of a gender split anyway, and indeed until recently it went the other way - women were much more likely to vote Conservative than men were.
1. I just voted by 'fax' (using the HP Smart app to send a PDF) and even though I believe the researchers who insist that fraudulent votes are not a serious issue, it feels like it would be insanely easy to vote fraudulently on behalf of California military or living-abroad voters. All you have to do to download an official ballot (and presumably log that 'I' have done so) is know my old street address and date of birth -- and then, of course, be willing to sign it as me on an oath form that you also 'fax' in. Obviously the real safeguard is the potential to prosecute afterwards, but if there's no clue that something's wrong (because the real person doesn't vote, and the 'signature' looks fine), I'm not sure how credible a threat that would be. I assume there are ways to digitally fax that are hard to trace back to the user, but maybe I'm wrong on that.
2. Actual Austrian conservative party election poster from 1969, showing a man filling out (presumably) his wife's ballots, with the capture "That's how you vote".
I can't even get the HP app to let me print in my own house.
Republicans used to favor mail-in ballots because it made it easier for the elderly and I'm sure there's some bloc voting in more conservative areas. How do you 'no' if the expectation is that you all sit down together and vote? Remember, you're probably not dealing with a guy who thinks you ought to have the right to vote differently.
It's a significant worry. But I don't know how big of a worry it is.
274: Yes. very much the case here in PA where the Repubs took the lead on expanding mail-in voting but have since refused to help fix some of the ambiguities or allow pre-Election Day counting of ballots.
And one of the signals in the shift in absentee/mail-in was in the 2018 special where Conor Lamb won. It was close and absentees (no full mail-in at the time) sealed the deal for Lamb. Republicans cried foul and challenged because before then absentee votes had trended Republican.
I voted for him over Fetterman in the next primary.
The next primary Lamb ran in, not in the future.
272: ah, but how scalable is that? Just in your case, someone who wanted to vote fraudulently by pretending to be you would need to know the following:
1. You are a real person who is alive and eligible to vote
2. Your address and your date of birth
3. That you have not yet applied for a postal vote or proxy vote
4. That you are definitely not going to apply for a postal vote or proxy vote
5. That you are definitely not going to vote in person on the day
6. That you are definitely not going to vote early
7. That you have not already voted early
(ignore those last two if CA doesn't have early voting)
How many people would actually know all of those things? Quite a small number, I would think.
And they can't achieve anything by just stealing your vote. They need to do it hundreds - probably thousands - of times to make a difference. How many people are going to know 1-7 for a thousand people? And they need to be very accurate about items 3-7. If they're only 99% accurate, there will be tens of cases of people turning up to vote and being told they've already voted, or double applications for postal votes, or whatever - all of which will trigger alarm bells.
The WaPo rage is all over Bezos, but should more of it be directed at Lewis ex- of the Telegraph and Murdochland?
(Obvs that doesn't let Bezos off, since he hired Lewis and signed off on the non-endorsement.)
I'm going to put a new election thread on the front page.
But we haven't finished this election yet.
278: I agree it doesn't seem like it could scale in terms of "actually casting valid votes", but it feels like it could scale at the level of "generating enough pain-in-the-ass work for election officials and/or undermine trust in the system through headlines about invalid votes" to be work having troll factories outside the reach of American law enforcement give it a go.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
279: Particularly because Lewis straightforwardly lied about what happened: he said it was an editorial decision, and then Bezos stepped forward and took responsibility.
Anyway, Trump is a rank amateur:
FT: BB chief says tycoons linked to Hasina siphoned $17bn from banks with spy agency help
That's more than $1bn a year.
284: As I read it, he did everything he could to imply it was his decision, while using weasel words to keep from outright saying it. Lewis's column just keeps using "we" as the subject (when it says "The Editorial Board" it's for historical actions). He also tweeted Bezos "was not sent, did not read, and did not opine on any draft" of an endorsement, which obviously leaves open many kinds of discussion & decision.
I'm not sure why I need to have an opinion on how to divvy up the blame between them? Like the upshot (no op-ed, cancelled subscription) is the same either way. It's not like they're people I know personally.
287: If you were on the fence about cancelling, it might worsen your opinion of Lewis or the board to know that they're willing to be so misleading about their role in it. What else would they be so weaselly about? Or, alternately, it might worsen your opinion of Bezos that he'd throw them under the bus like that. I've seen the term "dignity wraith" applied to Trump; maybe Bezos is giving it a shot.
278 And because of the electoral college, if you want to mess with the presidential election you have to do this in a bunch of different places, with slightly differing systems, and different officials and courts policing the results. This is a big worry about going to a national popular vote: The Rs are going to win Mississippi, so there's no need to run up the score there by cheating. Go national, and every vote is the same, and suddenly I have to care how diligent every county clerk in Mississippi is.
269 I talked about this a lot in 2020, and the data mavens told me it wasn't even a rounding error. Also in 2020, college students still registered at home would have had some pressure to fill it out together.
283 is a fair point.
290: but the margins are always huge in the popular vote, though. There's been one election since 1900 where the popular vote margin was less than half a million (1960, when JFK won it by 112k votes). Stealing half a million votes is pretty implausible. But with an electoral college, you just need to steal a few thousand votes in a few swing states, some of which your party may run already.
272: if you look closely the two ballots in the poster are for different races (Gemeinderat and Bezirksvertretung, local council and city councillor), so it's what the Aussies call a how-to-vote encouraging you to vote a straight ticket. Hence "so wahlt man OVP"; here's how to vote OVP.
Mind you, in that case the woman is just smiling gormlessly into the camera so it's not *much* better.
It's like the Harris campaign is actively trying to lose Michigan. Whose bright idea was this?
https://x.com/davidklion/status/1851985690852000157?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
294: I couldn't watch, but enjoyed the fantasy that it's a setup so that Kamala can Sister Souljah Bill Clinton.
295: or else they've noticed they've lost the Muslim vote in Michigan already, and are trying to shore up the pro-Israel vote.
And Arab-American, most Arab-Americans are Christian
I think they are looking at Pennsylvania even in Michigan.
most Arab-Americans are Christian
I did not realize this. I knew it was a Detroit thing, but I didn't realize it was overall.
Not all of them will be particularly pro Palestine, though. I think a lot of them are Lebanese origin? There's some history there.
Mostly Lebanese Christians, yeah. They're generally pretty conservative on social issues and historically tended to vote Republican before 9/11, but recent polling has shown them to be very pro-Palestine.
The country with the largest number of Palestinian Christians surprised me. It's not the US, Israel, or Palestine, and in fact has more than all three put together.
Are you going to leave us hanging?
Is we're supposed to guess first, I'm going to guess France.
302: Jordan? It has a massive Palestinian population so probably a lot of Christians?
My first guess would be Jordan. But interestingly, the country having the greatest Palestinian population out of predominantly Christian countries is Chile.
Wrong continent for both guesses.
306 is right.
Israel has around 140k, Palestine under 50k, and the US I've failed to find any good numbers but I think it's likely less than 100k. My understanding is the 400k+ in Chile are almost entirely Christian.
Wikipedia says, citing a source in Arabic I can't follow the link to (work firewall around most non-US websites), there are 250-400,000 Christians in Jordan including Palestinians, so if that's correct Chile is almost certainly the largest. But that must be an extraordinarily rough estimate from Jordan - there are 2 to 3 million Palestinians in Jordan total.
Jordan has around 250k-400k Christians. So it may well be second, but since a plurality are Catholic and not Greek Orthodox I suspect it's at least half people from the east bank.
Crossed with 310, but we ended up in a similar place.
295 would be awesome. I think he should go to one of the Native Reserves here in the US of A and make the same speech.
Mostly Lebanese Christians, yeah. They're generally pretty conservative on social issues and historically tended to vote Republican before 9/11, but recent polling has shown them to be very pro-Palestine.
Pro-Palestine and Republican and aware enough that Trump would allow all of Palestine to be annihilated? Or pro-Palestine and Republican and angry enough at Biden to vote for Trump? (I assume there's no meaningful polling data to parse this.)
I just find it very very weird that "pro-Palestine" is ambiguous.
314: Yeah, I don't think any of the polling teases this out. Issue polling like this is pretty unreliable in general and there hasn't been much of it, in any case.
I got so many polls about Israel/Palestine before the primary.
I mean, if activists are all speaking with one voice that Democrats are bad and not saying anything about Trump, of course most people are going to think that means Trump is the better alternative. That's the point, and it seems it's been pretty successful.
I don't pretend to know how this nets out, but one thing I've noticed over the years is that lots of people don't like activists.
318 is so depressing. Is it just because activists act like scolding know-it-alls?
Locally, I think it's more the blocking traffic thing.
There does seem to be a bit of a disconnect between tactics and strategy in a lot of activist circles these days.
The main thing I find annoying about activists is that so many of them seem to care a lot more about getting followers on social media than on what happens to actual people. Social media is terrible in infinitely many ways, but in particular people who have grown up with social media seem to think activism is mostly about being an online influencer and not about material conditions.
A lot of people around here really like Israel too.
I think because it's the largest island and the smallest continent all in one.
324 : Just because everyone confuses Israel and Australia doesn't make it any less annoying.
Random person on Twitter: "People who become right wing because they get annoyed by leftists are weak willed, most leftists are annoyed by leftists every single day."
I think I just got GOTV'ed by the Republicans.
329: Were the canvassers wearing shock collars and trailed by a van?
It was a South Asian guy who I'm pretty sure was in South Asia. The call came through exactly like the calls where they ask about "TV Services." He asked to speak to me by my first name and he could not pronounce it. He said he was calling from an organization that wasn't associated with either party or candidate, but I could not understand the name he gave. My thoughts are that if it was really a neutral public interest thing, they would do a better job.
Instead of working at splitting Israel from Netanyahu, the US from Israel, or Biden from Blinken, the left directed their efforts at splitting democrats from the presidency.
I don't think 332 is even remotely correct, but maybe I'm missing the joke. AOC and Bernie, who surely must be the most powerful leftist leaders in the United States, have done everything in their power to keep Democrats (and leftists) voting first for Biden and now for Harris.
332: there are people right here on this very blog explicitly arguing that the preferred outcome would be for the Democrats to lose, because that would force a reckoning on the Democrats and make them, eventually, in like 2044 or something, put up a more Palestine-friendly candidate. So it's not just 317 - supporting Trump through silence; it's actively, explicitly wanting Biden (and now Harris) to lose.
The left is not a monolith. You're of course right that the prominent leftist Democrats have been great. There's also loads of leftists who aren't Democrats (eg the ones harassing AOC when she's in public), and most of them have been working to elect Trump.
335: Not the mainstream left wing of the Dems, but a significant contingent of noisy dead-enders who see themselves as the true left. Viz. former Seattle City Councilmember stumping for Jill Stein, saying "We do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan." To applause, even!
Not a lot, but Stein's votes in 2016 were higher than the margin for Trump in several states.
There's this theory (which I'm not sure if I buy) that lots of kids who grow up in conservative households reject conservative politics, but retain from Fox News the vague feeling that Democrats are evil, and so become leftist anti-Democrats.
AOC herself is a treasure, and even if she's a bit to my left I really hope she's president some day.
Back in the day, I'd figure you were talking about Bob, but these days I can't think of who.
Jill Stein and anyone supporting her are just Russian agents or useful idiots.
Yeah, Unfoggetarian is speaking for me. Need a better collective noun. As if I would ever defame my queen.
I thought the recent episode of the Code Switch podcast where they talked to some Arab-Americans in Michigan about Gaza and the election was fairly good. I think everyone they spoke to was critical of Biden/Harris, though I'm not sure all would consider themselves activists. There was a whole range from planning to vote for Trump, possibly voting third-party, not voting for President at all, to voting for Harris but not endorsing her*, to declining to say how they would vote.
*Dearborn's mayor, whose endorsement probably would mean something.
336: I don't recall someone on unfogged making that argument. You probably have someone specific in mind, but I think the general consensus is to vote for Democrats.
More dead-enders squirreled away in certain committees of the DSA.
339: It does seem like the "left"* and Republicans agree on one thing: liberals are the worst.
*For some values of "left", etc.
The Code Switch podcast had a pretty nuanced and interesting episode on Arab Americans in Dearborn and these issues. Transcript and recording here.
I did came away from it feeling old in comparison to the youngest and most vehement activist they interviewed, though. Both in the sense of her faith that withholding her vote and causing the Democrats to lose will change things, and in her comment that:
I did not think that Democrats would allow themselves or allow their own leadership to get to the point where a genocide is happening in front of our eyes, and they would do nothing but support it.
Obviously she didn't live through the '90s (she's too young) but it's remarkable to me that she genuinely seems to believe this.
Darn, shoulda refreshed the thread before I commented! Sorry, fa.
I will totally cede the ground that if we're talking about leftists who don't matter in American electoral politics, because they exist so far outside of the mainstream that they've never voted for candidates from either of the two major parties, then yes, many of them are absolutely are trying to persuade Democrats not to vote for Harris. But I think their efforts are unlikely to matter very much. I also think--though I'm somewhat less sure about this--that Stein's vote count isn't going to matter much, because Stein voters were (see above) never going to vote for either of the major party candidates.
349: No need to apologize, you added value a link. Also, I felt sort of the same way about the most vehement activist they spoke to.
Stein got 1.4 million votes in 2016, while Hawkins got 0.4m in 2020. That's a drop of 72% in Green votes while the overall votes cast increased 16%. Then in Pennsylvania, Green votes dropped by 97%, from 50k to 1,300. Obviously I can't prove it, but I have a hard time believing that's all Green voters no longer voting. (The difference-in-difference is the most suggestive.)
Yeah, that's why (one among a few reasons, actually) I said I was less sure. The truth is, I'm not sure about anything. I don't understand the American electorate at all.
Why stop there? I don't understand the electorate anywhere. I don't understand people. They confuse me.
Yeah, voters are super weird. Like in Alaska it turns out it's really common that people's preference is A then B, and so they'll vote for B if A drops out, but if given the chance to rank candidates they will only rank A. It's wild.
At any rate, there's surely a decent chunk of people who would vote for Harris if it weren't for a Green candidate, and even some people who vote Green who would vote for Trump if they didn't have the Green option. The thing that bothers me more is the people who are voting for Trump because they're moderate (say Muslim union members who are anti-LGBT) and think that Harris is worse than Trump on Palestine because that's all they've seen.
To be fair, Trump's comments suggests he prefers ethnic cleansing to begin at home.
Sure, the performative left doesn't bring many votes, but they did manage to make Gaza about their losing fight to hold a sleepover in the backyard, and then turn every online conversation towards how pure and precious their votes are, after four years of forwarding every bit of left coded anti liberal bullshit they could find. So yes, they probably won't matter, but it's worth remembering that a strategy guaranteed to fail, to not save a single Palestinian, but with a significant chance of ending civilization. When they finally found an issue where the democrats are truly terrible, they abused it. Palestinians deserve better.
Like in Alaska it turns out it's really common that people's preference is A then B, and so they'll vote for B if A drops out, but if given the chance to rank candidates they will only rank A. It's wild.
People on the right especially don't seem to have really gotten the hang of ranked-choice yet. They try to act strategically but it's not really tailored to the way the system works now. Dems have been better about this but it comes up less often; races with multiple Republicans are much more common than ones with multiple left-of-center candidates.
The fact that the right hates ranked-choice and is trying to get rid of it is probably a factor in this.
And it's his best issue! Voters agree with Trump over Harris on deportations 51-19! On immigration generally he's preferred 51-38, and he wins more on deportations than on anything but The Wall (51-13).
348.last: Like what's going to happen if Trump wins is will get a Clinton-like correction, and the next Democratic candidate will move way right on immigration.
What American voters want is a pro-choice candidate who will say things like that the police should shoot on sight any immigrant in a gang.
there's surely a decent chunk of people who would vote for Harris if it weren't for a Green candidate, and even some people who vote Green who would vote for Trump if they didn't have the Green option
Maybe this is true, but I very much doubt it--unless by "a decent chunk," you mean, "nowhere near enough to swing a state, much less the election." But again, I know nothing.
I should maybe be clearer about what I'm saying. I don't think there are many third-party voters, especially not in swing states, who, but for the third-party candidate, would vote for Harris in this election. I also don't think the young activist described in 344 and 348 was, but for the ongoing horrors in Palestine, likely to vote for Harris. This doesn't mean that either third-party voters or the young activist described in 344 and 348 don't matter in American politics. But it means that they don't matter very much in electoral politics. This is why, I'm fairly sure, the Harris campaign has chosen to pander to Jewish voters: because they represent gettable votes. But again, I'm 100% open to being wrong about all of the above.
That seems right. For comity's sake, I could express anger about other groups?
Remember when Arafat paid Clinton a compliment, and Clinton snapped that Arafat had made Clinton a failure? Haha what a shithead.
In the 1992 primary, I voted for Jerry Brown, and I stand by that.
My cousin was in the seminary with Brown. They both dropped out.
I think they both would have made fine Jesuits.
Anyway, I'm still boycotting Israel.
I guess I'm boycotting a bunch of countries and companies. I'm not really that good at keeping track and it is hard to avoid buying things from China sometimes.
Can we just genetically engineer something that looks like a panda? So we don't keep renting them from dictators?
We can probably breed large raccoons?
Nothing bamboozles like a rented panda.
372: Especially since there are a bunch of products that get sent to Mexico to be made in to something else, then get a Made-in-Mexico label slapped on them and are imported duty-free. Some things are fundamentally changed. Think lumber in to furniture. Others are assembled from parts, like computer chips, but the change is substantial enough.
The poll question I'd really like to see is "who is currently the President of the United States?" because I want to see what percentage of people think it's Kamala Harris.
there are people right here on this very blog explicitly arguing that the preferred outcome would be for the Democrats to lose...
If you're going to make a statement like that shouldn't you say who you mean? For consistency's sake, at least.
I didn't want to name names without having a link to hand, because I didn't want to get the wrong name, and that would involve looking through the last year of comments because the search box isn't too good. But I distinctly remember it happening, and my making the point in response that it didn't make a lot of sense to sacrifice actual Palestinians now in the interest of maybe improving the candidate selection in a more Palestinian-friendly way in the 2044 Democratic primary, because if there actually was a genocide going on right now then there wouldn't be any Palestinians by 2044, at least not in Palestine.
Slight tangent: We're (rightly) annoyed at the possible discrepancy between the popular vote outcome and the electoral college (though that we've gotten to merely annoyed and not existentially appalled by this in 25 years is interesting). But can't something like this happen in any parliamentary system with first-past-the-post voting? Does it happen in the UK that the popular vote and party control of Parliament are different? Is it just of less concern because there are 600+ voting units instead of 50? Or is it more tolerated because it's clearly not a single election for a single head-of-state figure?
380: I think it's that last, yes. A majority of 600 plurality races, people define as a majority.
But can't something like this happen in any parliamentary system with first-past-the-post voting?
Yes, it can happen and has happened from time to time. In February 1974 Labour got 11.6 million votes and 306 seats; the Conservatives got 11.9 million votes but only 297 seats. Neither had an overall majority (which needed 318) so the Labour party called another election in October and won decisively. In 1951 Labour got 13.9m votes (vs 13.7m) but still lost the election, with 295 seats to 321 Conservative.
Does it happen in the UK that the popular vote and party control of Parliament are different?/i>
The existence of more than two parties complicates things slightly. The governing party almost always has a majority of seats and almost never has a majority of the popular vote - it hasn't happened since the 1930s - though they generally have a plurality.
I think 381 is right as well. It's a parliamentary system, people are generally OK with the idea of a majority in Parliament leading to government, and the total number of votes is not really seen as terribly interesting except as election trivia.
It routinely happens in the Senate because of the unequal apportionment of seats by state instead of population. A bit harder to calculate given the six year cycle replacing 1/3 every two years, but if you add up the popular votes of all sitting senators at a given time I think Democrats routinely have the majority of votes even when partisan control of the chamber is Republican.
And presumably it could happen from time to time in the House, especially if there's a bit of gerrymandering involved.
379: My eyebrows also rose a bit with that original assertion. Duckduckgo does a pretty decent job of searching the site if you use the Google search method: which is
site:unfogged.com [whatever you're searching for]
I'd be curious to see what you're referencing here - but I absolutely agree that it's the sort of slanderous accusation one ought not make about someone without the citation.
386: I tried that! It told me that the word "Gaza" had never appeared on this site.
I'm pretty sure I know the name, but since I don't know how to find the thread either I wasn't going to say it.
386: that's not what I'm getting -- https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aunfogged.com+%5Bgaza%5D&kp=1&va=d&t=he&ia=web
Problem for me is that there are too many threads to look at.
I sometimes comment on the threads about Israel-Palestine, but I never read them.
Now I feel bad. I was thinking of imaginary people on bluesky, not real life like unfogged.
I like how every thread title in 389 is some variation of "I know this makes me look like an idiot, but please explain..."
Not meaning it in a hostile way, people are going to vote how they're going to, but it just occurred to me who might be voting third-party on the basis of Gaza.
Roger, are you around? No more judgment than is implied by vehement disagreement, but how are you planning to vote if at all?
Aymann Ismail's piece from April about Muslims in Michigan made me sympathetic to this sort of view in a way I had not been.
Quote:
"If it came down to Trump and Joe Biden, I will vote for Trump. Because it doesn't get worse than Joe Biden," a man named Salah told me.
I have no patience for sanctimonious anti-Biden Leftists who want to reject the Democrats based on Palestine. And I think Salah is flat-out wrong.
But I get it. I can see how someone with a stake in the matter could look at Gaza and say: It couldn't be any worse.
It's pretty goddam bad. How bad does it have to get before we can legitimately say that the people who permit this to happen must be despised and ostracized, no matter the consequences?
I was stupidly going through the threads in 389 and came across this comment.
Yeah, I'm wandering around somewhere in the territory between confused, horrified, depressed, and can't-we-all-just-get-along, myself. I was reading something the other day saying that Palestinians in Gaza are basically blockaded without electricity, which means no running water b/c no pumps, and no cooling, and no food, and holy fuck.
from Bitchphd in 2006.
That was before I even heard of this place.
The comment I thought I remembered is not on the thread I thought it was on. Could be on a different thread or I could have made it up.
398: No thank you. I'm cutting back.
It's possible I got confused and the comment I was remembering is:
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_18692.html#2194754
I've signed up to go see Harris on Monday. Honestly, this isn't going to top seeing Michael Stipe, but it's still pretty cool.
401: Note a little later -- I was drunk when I wrote that and I stand behind most of it though not necessarily all of it.
But Spike can tell us who he wants to win the election -- if he wants to.
I write all kinds of nonsense here when I'm drunk, but mostly nobody seems to notice.
Something that surprised me when I looked at my ballot -- there were actually 3 other choices for President(other than Harris, Trump, and Stein) that I had never heard of. Is it like that in other states?
We only have four. Harris, Trump, Stein, and a "libertarian."
Just saw that a CAIR poll of Muslim voters shows a dead heat between Jill Stein and Kamala Harris with Trump well behind.
405: Yes, it varies by state, whether the tiny no-hope parties like Peace & Freedom have the juice to even get signatures to qualify, plus how hard it is to qualify.. The alphabetically-first 5 states in 2020 had the following numbers of presidential candidates making the ballot: 3, 7, 3, 13, 6.
408: 13! How do those poor people decide with so many choices? That would be almost as hard as choosing a cereal!
389: that is really weird! I follow that link and it says "No results found for site:unfogged.com [gaza]."
409: Please remember that there is ample evidence that the answer to your question is "No very well" in many cases.
What could be worse than looking at pools? Looking at prediction markets! So, of course I do from time-to-time. They are totally gamed in various ways, but I will still note that Predictit (not the really effed up Thiel/Silver Polymarket) which had vibed its way to T >60% through October has been going the other way the last few days and Harris just pulled ahead. So vibing in the other direction. Not saying it says anything about the actual chances, but am curious about what things get through the vibe-rators. I'm guessing in this case Puerto Rico, Cheney, and maybe the general WTFness of Trump "closing arguments."
Anecdata: The latest handwritten postcard I got is unlike anything I've seen before. Professionally printed "Your Vote Matters" on one side, and on the other side, this handwritten message:
[Witt],
A year ago, HAMAS led a genocidal attack against Israel and the Jewish people. Kamala Harris funds HAMAS through Iran and made this terrorist attack possible. *We need a return to President Trump's peace in the Middle East policies. Say NO to Kamala. NEVER AGAIN is now.
Patriotically, Gwen
This retyping does not begin to capture the mishmash of typographical symbols, underlines for emphasis, boxed text, and other formatting contained in one small postcard.
In other news, I just encountered this ad in the wild. Yeah, what I really needed was to hear a white woman rhapsodizing about how great life was under Trump and saying that he won't ban abortion. ::greenface emoji::
Did Hall and Oates cover their own songs in Spanish?
403: I'm guessing Spoke wants Harris to win.
Hello from Scranton. The group I am with is very well-heeled. I recognized the wife of a failed Congressional candidate multi-millionaire Venture Capitalist who is here to knock on doors.
BTW, my oldest niece, who shares your IRL first name, tiurns 18 on Monday. She already filled out her absentee ballot from college in Ohio.
She was a toddler when I started commenting here, I think. Crazy.
My 18 year-old keeps getting handwritten postcards from random people.
I got a postcard the other day. We got several addressed to my mom.
If you had T's closing argument being him miming fellating his microphone at a rally you win.
I had it that he would "hawk tau" first, so I didn't win.
He was pissed about mic "problems" as he often is, ranted about it for minutes, suggested that he should go backstage and beat up the crew and at some point did a brief handie and BJ motion on the mic.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1852543627534414086
The Times is on it...
At one point, he pantomimed adjusting the microphone setup and bobbing down toward it, to the laughter of the crowd.
403: I still want Harris to win and I'm still happy when protesters give her shit. She's going to win in a blowout anyway, its fine to criticize her for supporting genocide.
That is, to put it mildly, not the philosophy that animates the vast corps of Harris volunteers doing GOTV.
431: If I had anything near to your level of confidence about the election, I might feel the same about the protesters. I hope you're right.
433 is me, too. I'm totally serious about trying to preemptively live under the cloud of a T presidency as a way of trying to cope with the uncertainty.
431: honest question - what will you do if it turns out you were wrong? If Trump wins, or if Harris only wins 276-262 or something?
In what is a really good sign, I successfully parallel parked on my first try going in to canvas.
I haven't been in this long of a line waiting for an assignment since I volunteered for that young man Biden back in 2020.
431: honest question - what will you do if it turns out you were wrong?
Same thing I've done for the past 8 years: continue the fight.
I'm not wrong, though.
If it turns out you were wrong, you should take a moment to reflect that your political judgement isn't nearly as good as you thought it was.
So people should just shut up when their country and party is aiding and abetting genocide?
My political judgment says it was bad for the Harris campaign to alienate Arab voters. If they do lose, I hope the people who made that decision will also take some time to reflect on their political judgment.
So people should just shut up when their country and party is aiding and abetting genocide?
People should be strategic about what outcome maximizes the genocide at critical crossroads like an election.
438.last: From your lips to God's ear, and wow do I wish I was as confident as you are.
441 I would not be surprised if it turned out that this is wrong even in Michigan. In most of the US, advocacy for distancing the US from Israel is not a winning political strategy. That said, the less Harris talks about Gaza, and now Lebanon, the better.
440 There are time, manner, place considerations adults can apply to their own behavior without becoming immoral. IMO Arab Americans for Harris (assuming that there is such a group) is going to have a lot more say during the transition when staffing/policy etc is being considered than the people who thought threatening candidates with defeat is a successful coalition building strategy. Or a successful strategy at anything.
Is anyone else, here or elsewhere, actually predicting a decisive Harris/Walz victory? I'm surprised.
Some recent link posited 1/3 chance narrow trump win, 1/3 chance narrow Harris win, 1/3 chance polls are underestimating Harris.
I don't know if I buy that, but it's been said.
I also think it'll be Harris and not close. I think the women's' vote is going to be decisive. I can't make up my mind as to whether that translates to Congressional seats as well, or if the normally R women who cross over will double down on support for an R congress.
The main seven swing states are all so close that I think it's pretty likely one candidate or the other will win at least 6 of them, which will then look pretty decisive.
If you made me pick one scenario, I'd say the pollsters have overcompensated for their mistakes in the last two elections, and Harris wins by 3 in the national vote and wins all the swing states except Georgia. I just don't think people are as enthusiastic about Trump this time and a lot of Trump leaners just won't vote. But it could easily be the reverse of that.
447.1 seems plausible to me, but perhaps slightly optimistic. I'd say 40%/40%/20%. Though it depends a bit on what you think counts as close.
I am kind of wondering about whether a big Harris win might happen, but not with any faith.
I read something pretty good this morning about how all the tied swing state polls mean that pollsters are excessively cooking the books. As a matter of simple statistics, there should be more variation. You math geniuses have an opinion?
> I just don't think people are as enthusiastic about Trump this time and a lot of Trump leaners just won't vote. But it could easily be the reverse of that.
I feel like this is the "The cost of eggs is a hardship, and I hate that all the deodorant is now behind bars" voter.
The Atlantic article about the last 4 months of the Trump campaign is a good reminder of the sheer entertainment value the MAGA movement provides.
It didn't even get to the riding in circles in a garbage truck at an airport or fellating the mike at a rally while thinking about Arnold Palmer parts of the program.
It's plenty demoralizing that so many of our fellow citizens want this guy and his shitshow in charge.
I think 453 is exactly right. The economy has become the heart of the election and the electorate has shit for brains.
So people should just shut up when their country and party is aiding and abetting genocide?
Well, apparently, yes! I was surprised as well because I thought Spike was more principled than that. But according to 431, if it looks like being a close election, you need to shut up and fall in line.
FWIW I think Tlaib has it right for those who think this matters, refused to endorse Harris while doing rallies in Michigan and exhorting supporters to vote a straight democratic ticket.
The main seven swing states are all so close that I think it's pretty likely one candidate or the other will win at least 6 of them, which will then look pretty decisive.
I think this as well. Instinctively, looking at a lot of 50/50 polls and 50/50 odds, you want to say "the likeliest thing is that the result will be close" but as Upetgi says it's quite likely that a lot of those states will go in the same direction - they're not independent events, they tend to be correlated. If something happens to push Georgia (say) in one direction, it'll probably push everywhere else in the same direction, and similarly if the polls are wrong about (say) Georgia because of some methodological error it's plausible they will be wrong in the same direction by the same amount everywhere else. So it's not unlikely that one or other candidate will get over 300 votes.
I think it is practically impossible to think clearly about the actual odds of a comfortable Harris win given the venal obscenity and manifest unfitness of T. The fact that is happening at all much less that iit is close overwhelms any confidence in any reasoned consideration.
I will note this bit from a Nate Cohn piece on polling:
At the same time, the 2016 and 2020 polling misfires shattered many pollsters' confidence in their own methods and data. When their results come in very blue, they don't believe it. And frankly, I share that same feeling: If our final Pennsylvania poll comes in at Harris +7, why would I believe it? As a result, pollsters are more willing to take steps to produce more Republican-leaning results.
Is that really happening to any significant degree? Not sure.
On Fellatiogate, another NYTimes report acknowledges the motion but is just as ludicrous:
He played with the microphone stand as if trying to adjust it, stooped toward it and bobbed with his mouth open. The crowd roared with laughter. But observers on social media shared a 5-second clip of the moment, suggesting the former president was pantomiming oral sex. Those short clips quickly received millions of views.
By insipid Dowd alumnus Michael Gold who has been one of the lead sanewashers.
Have a big swing state FB game on in the background with the sound off and just a parade off hatefull fear and lies in the commercials. Even with the sound off.
I think it's possible that Harris will win by a margin that can be described as comfortable, but that it won't be possible to feel comfortable about it until after it happens.
Trump seems to be more publicly shitty in the last week than we was in 2016. In that race, it felt like when he wasn't the story - because something like EMAILS was - he did a bit better than when he was on stage saying the kinds of shit that leads his supporters to pretend he didn't say it, didn't mean it, or it was taken out of context.
465:Yes. He actually listened to someone (probably Kellyanne Conway) at the end of 2016 and mostly shutup and let the press have their field day.
I do wish he had actually fallen on his ass trying to get into the garbage truck. The kind of thin it would take to actually break through the bubble.
I am willing to accept that I may be an objectively bad person.
I think Harris will win, and like Ogged, I think it'll be because there are just more D women and you can't believe that they're not just as motivated as the R men (and likely more). Still, it's fairly obviously not _safe_ to rest on this belief, partly because the thing believed won't happen unless voters _make_ it happen. If you live in a place where your vote can make a difference, you should vote Harris, really you should.
On the flip side, to vote Trump, or to otherwise enable a Trump win, does nothing at all to help a single Palestinian, and it's easy to imagine the exact reverse. You can _think_ that you're punishing the Democratic party by not voting for them in this context, but a loss isn't going to teach them a single thing about foreign policy; they'll put it down to a whole laundry list of things (like immigration) before they get anywhere near foreign policy. If you think you can judge it so fine that they get a scare but still win, and what's more they'll recognise you as being the one who scared them, well that takes some god-like vision that I certainly don't have.
Iowa poll out at 7 tonight. As I mentioned, no one cares about Iowa, but as I mentioned recently, it has been one of the best for gauging midwest in general. I suspect will show Rs rallying to T compared to relatively good D result in September poll.
466: he missed the handle, it's as good as, very clearly it's not been a good week for him, may it continue right through the weekend for him, indeed why not a stroke or a coronary? Never more deserved, nobody made him run for president, he can stop at any time.
Money and ground game appear to favor the Democrats, but actual votes, not so much. More Republicans are voting early than in the past, and, for example, a respected Nevada analyst says it looks bad for Harris in that state.
461.1 articulates my view, though. I don't feel as though I have any grip at all on what's going to happen.
Explanation of poll clustering here that sounds plausible: https://kcav.substack.com/p/a-note-about-polling
From the same link: "there isn't a lot of evidential value in any of the polls. Just saying 'It will be the same result as last time' will probably get you just as close to the final score as carefully analysing the polls. Saying 'It will be the same as last time except in Nevada, where the early vote looks bad' might do even better."
The last time being 2020 I guess, and in polls I've seen that give a breakdown, women 18-40 lean more D than in 2020 (quite a lot more) while men 18-40 lean more R than in 2020 (but not by as much). And very little else seems to have changed. To win, Trump needs more votes than last time; where is he going to get them? Which demographic has gone more Trumpy? Maybe we'll be amazed and surprised, and no it's not at all comfortable waiting to find out.
The economy thing is maddening, I can't believe the Trump campaign is getting away with asking if you're better off now than you were 4 years ago, and getting no pushback from the media. His supporters, and the media, have the object permanence of a flatworm.
Charlie's article links to this https://www.natesilver.net/p/theres-more-herding-in-swing-state"Nate Silver article on herding, and I know we all hate him now, but I found the stats on the implausibility of some of the polls to be interesting.
IMO Arab Americans for Harris (assuming that there is such a group) is going to have a lot more say during the transition when staffing/policy etc is being considered than the people who thought threatening candidates with defeat is a successful coalition building strategy
First of all, anti-genocide people tried damn hard to be a part of the coalition and it was Harris who rejected them. Second, to the extent that a hypothetical Arab Americans for Harris is going to have any influence at all during the transition (not holding my breath) its because Harris is going to feel pressure to make amends based on pushback she experienced during the campaign. She'll deal with the people who are ready to be nice to her because its easier than dealing with the people who aren't, but the people who are nice to her wouldn't get the time of day without the work of angry, pissed off activists willing to force her to recognize that she has a problem.
I have promised myself a few days off for MH and so gosh I really do need to leave this, but otoh there's something darkly fascinating and the latest from the orange one is as incredible as anything:
"I said we will protect because I keep hearing -- I think the women love me, I do, because they know, you know what, if they don't have me, they've got millions of people pouring through and coming up to the suburbs. They say the suburban women. Well, the suburbs are under attack right now. When you're home in your house alone and you have this monster that got out of prison ... I think you'd rather have Trump."
It just keeps coming consistently now. Trump, prison, monster, have, alone, in your house.
Just cleaning house of the likes of Blinken, Sullivan, McGurk, and Hochstein will go a long way.
477: Rejected=Didn't do enough to get them on board. The focal issue at this point is "didn't have a mainstage Palestinian speaker at the convention."
Yeah, that was really a "no, you can't be in the club" moment.
With the "you" in that sentence directed specifically at the particular people the campaign was negotiating with, yes. That is, I took it as a clear expression of distrust that any offered speaker could be relied on not to hurt the campaign: I don't know enough to know whether or not the distrust was justified.
But I wouldn't interpret distrust in the activists the Harris campaign was negotiating with as an expression of settled opposition to Palestinian interests.
I have now spent six hours talking to white, suburban middle and upper middle class swing state voters. Do I need to ask the NYT for my opinion column or will they just call me?
482: I suspect, as I intimated above, that the Harris campaign made a clear choice that Jewish votes in the suburbs of Philly and Detroit were a safer bet/more gettable than Palestinian/Arab/Muslim votes in various parts of Michigan and elsewhere. I'm not defending that calculation, though it's not hard, I don't think, to see what would have led paid political operatives to place that bet.
The real tragedy, then, is that it was somehow an either/or. I don't know that the Harris campaign was right about that either, but I don't know that they were wrong.
Oh, fair. It didn't even have to be distrust in the offered speakers, just a belief that having a Palestinian speaker would lose more votes than it would gain. But that still doesn't necessarily reflect opposition to Palestinian interests, just a belief that support for them is a net vote-loser if it becomes salient.
The thing that kills me a little is that the convention is all theater. Like it's not even about alienating one group or another by actually committing to a policy.
You'd have the same calculus if it was actually a declaration of policy, I get that. I just wish when it comes to theater, we could all just play along, and throw down when it comes to policy. Probably naive of me.
I looked it up. I was never in Blawnox. I don't know what was up with the addresses.
I knew Blawnox was by the river. I was not by the river. I was by all the doctors who want their kids to go to school with only other doctors' kids.
Ha, final Selzer poll is Harris +3. Take that, doomers!
That's in Iowa. We still don't have results in normal people.
Normal people aren't enough; she needs a majority.
490: Ha! Per my 12 and 468 this was a poll I was waiting for. As were a lot of election nerds. It will be way over-interpreted. She (Selzer) had late polls in 2016 and 2020 that were much more R than other polls. Poll was Trump +4 in September which was seen as a good result for Harris.
However, another Iowa poll just came out (Emerson, not highly-rated and often Rish) which was T + 10)...
Immediate noticeable swing on Predictit.
Blawnox. I lived there for a year in the 70s. Named for the Blaw-Knox company. Accomplished the nearly impossible task of originally being named Hoboken and finding an even less mellifluous name adopt.
488: 15238 post office used to be in Blawnox so some may have used that name.It is now a microbrewery.
Final Times/Siena polls out tomorrow.
Wow, that's certainly interesting...
One caveat to 449/460 is that I think it's entirely plausible that you'll see polling errors with Midwestern WWC and Mexican-American men go in opposite directions. So you could very easily see PA/MI/WI being several points off in one direction and AZ/NV being several points off in the other direction. If you think Selzer is seeing something real, then even if Harris doesn't win Iowa surely that means WI/MI/PA are less close than the polling average.
I was right behind the least stuffy golf course.
> Similarly, senior voters who are 65 and older favor Harris. But senior women support her by a more than 2-to-1 margin, 63% to 28%, while senior men favor her by just 2 percentage points, 47% to 45%.
[eyes emoji]
I wonder how many people have moved from Blawnox to Boron or vice versa.
I think it's the least stuffy one even though I've only ever been in the club house for the other one. But that was a remarkably stuffy place.
501: I did the much more typical Houston TX -> Blawnox -> Houston circuit.
RFK Jr out here channeling General Jack Ripper by protecting our precious bodily gluids.
RFK Jr out here channeling General Jack Ripper by protecting our precious bodily gluids.
Dan Osborn has texted me for money so many times today. Maybe 8.
ME TOO. what the hell. I wondered if it was a scam.
I thought it was because I give off Nebraska vibes still.
Anyway, he's real. I guess he might win.
If Iowa really is that close, how come it wasn't noticed by the campaigns earlier and given some candidate time?
I did some not very productive GOTV in Scranton, because I missed the e-mail from MassDdms saying they wanted us all to go to Carbondale. Few conversations, lots of lit drop. One guy who was pretty annoyed that Harris hadn't visited Scranton personally and wanted to know if she was coming before the election.
I was going to do office work tomorrow and fly back Monday, but now I feel like the Scranton office doesn't need me. My ride is kind of flaky and does not want to drive back here if he goes to Carbondale or drive all the way back to MA. He's thinking of driving an hour east and staying overnight in some town closer to MA. So, I can stay here and feel kind of useless or maybe try to fly out tomorrow. Or take a chance on finding a place to stay on the drive back. My driving companion is retired (worked as a CFO and then charter school teacher). Seems quite safe but is a little flaky, so Tim is worried about my trying to find a place to stay just driving and stopping somewhere. I am so tired.
510: I don't know if that's a serious question but the simple answer is that it's unlikely to be the decisive state -- a race in which Iowa is within 2 points is one in which the Republican probably can't win no matter where they campaign.
To some extent they have to make decisions based on, "where should we put resources, on the assumption it will be a close race."
511: You should prioritize getting back safely. Take care.
Thoughts while waiting for the NYT/Siena polls to harsh everyone's Iowa poll buzz.
Iowa may in fact be more primed than many states for the defection of otherwise Republican woman to the Democrats. Iowa has a recently enacted strict abortion ban and a Supreme Court justice is on the ballot who was part of the 4-3 majority ruling upholding it. In 2022, states with abortion bans or high risk of them did well with Ds while places that were perceived as "safe" on abortion like California and New York underperformed (and led to the House flipping).
"If Iowa really is that close, how come it wasn't noticed by the campaigns earlier and given some candidate time?"
Because it wasn't that close! There have been five decent polls so far in Iowa. Here's what the results looked like. https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Pres/Graphs/iowa.html
That really does not look like a winnable state.
Yeah. The Selzer result is potentially interesting for other midwestern states, not Iowa itself. But the fact that it is an outlier and the particular saliency of abortion there may make it less relevant than it was in 2018 and 2020.
Meanwhile NYT/Siena out with mixed results. Trend from their earlier results--Sun Belt move towards D, Rust Belt towards R.
So we can back to ignoring polls....(note to self)
I hate that self guy. What a party pooper. And why are there all these cautionary message tattooed on my arms?
2016 and 2020 (but she does also have a very good recent track record in non-prez years).
We did go out to eat last night at a nice family Mexican restaurant. He tried to talk to the owner about voting at the end of the shift. The guy was undecided and actually liked Trump's deportation proposals even though he was an immigrant himself ( or at least his parents were). This is not how the Brazilians in MA feel which is really interesting.
Almost as if they're actually people, rather than a category invented by the Census Bureau.
511 JFC. We don't really seem adult enough for self-governance.
The Harris campaign has a ton of money, sure, but none of it should be spent polling states Biden wasn't within striking distance. She's not polling Montana. Tester is, of course, and my coordinated campaign script, in use for the last 2 months (including yesterday) makes no mention of Harris. But a bunch of other. And I only talk about her with voters excited about her.
Tester needs to win the votes of mid to high 5 figures worth of people voting for Trump. I go to doors of Republicans all in for Tester -- he's real, and his opponent is a big phony -- so I take the opportunity to talk about our down ballot candidates, many of whom I have a personal relationship with. We have a very good line up, and getting to talk about these folks might even make a difference.
519 Does he really not understand the inflationary impact of deporting restaurant workers? Maybe not his, but other people's. Who then need to try to get his to switch over to them.
People act like Trumpism is free.
Only bad people will be deported. That couldn't possibly include anyone who contributes to the economy. All the stuff about the country being invaded is just taken out of context rhetoric, Trump just wants what's good for business like the businessman he is. What could be wrong with kicking out criminals?
Anyway, I have some immigrant relatives who think Trump will be better for the economy. I don't get into political discussions with them but it sounds like they believe a number of things that are not true about both major parties.
November 1st the house was covered in candy, and I was like "bleagh, I need a break from all this sugar." Somehow that's morphed into "I will refrain from desserts until I know the outcome of the election." Magical thinking got me and I'm helpless to stop it, and it's probably better for my teeth anyway. And it will definitely help the Dems somehow.
I have now spent six hours talking to white, suburban middle and upper middle class swing state voters. Do I need to ask the NYT for my opinion column or will they just call me?
Yay Moby! I spent 5 hours and 5.5 miles walking around NE Philly today talking to middle-class and working-class Puerto Ricans, West African immigrants, and Palestinians. Most of the Anglos wouldn't talk to me, either because they've been canvassed to death (one harassed-looking guy told me he was sure that FORTY doorknockers had come by their household for their four voters) or because they are old people registered D who aren't willing to vote for Harris.
I have zero additional perspective on how Pennsylvania or the election will turn out.
I DO have a very nice green button that says "Go Harris/Go democracy/Go Birds/It's a Philly thing," and a couple of photos of a billboard on a major thoroughfare that someone spray painted so it now says "Illegal Immigrants HELP America. Racists for Trump." The superPAC name of the conservative group that posted the original billboard is still visible. I'm kind of tickled that someone was mad enough to do that.
Thank you all for doing the block-walking. Very much appreciated.
Yeah, I don't know how to stop overcanvassing, but I wonder if they don't need more coordination.
I can't figure out how much of it is deliberate overcanvassing -- that is, campaigns assuming that volunteers won't knock every door,* and sending more than one team of doorknockers to the same turf. I always do the more annoying doors (upstairs, weird entrance, etc.) on the theory that fewer volunteers will have bothered to try.
The lady at the office told me that anything over 75% is considered "full coverage," and I bit my tongue from saying I am a librarian and if I'm assigned X doors, I'm damn well going to knock X doors, not X-25%.
*I did the first 90 minutes of my canvassing today with a co-volunteer, who despite having spent time as a child in the neighborhoods we were canvassing, expressed fears for our safety several times. I couldn't figure out what was behind it, because I certainly didn't see any of MY flags for unsafe neighborhoods. Bright sunshiny day, people out washing their cars, lots of Halloween decorations and other signs of occupied/maintained houses. Nothing was boarded up, and even the poorest street we went down was just poor and slightly litter-strewn, no broken windows or abandoned cars or what-have-you.
I had two recent conversations with wildly overprotective parents that left me scratching my head. One is the soccer coach at Heebie U. He started when I did, so I've known him for almost 20 years, and we're roughly the same age. He stopped me and solicited my opinion on cell phones for kids. I gave some mealy-mouthed half-answer. He went from there about how it's ruining the youth. In the course of the conversation, he said that he and his wife are with their daughter 24/7, unless she's at school. They don't send her to grandparents' house, they stick around at soccer practice or birthday parties, etc. The only time she's apart from them is literally during school hours.
I said something mild about giving kids a chance to fall down and skin their knee, and get into trouble where they have to come seek out their parents for help. He nodded enthusiastically and said, "That's what school is for." So that's nice.
On topic because of Witt's co-volunteer.
That reminds me, today I was sent to canvass houses that I had canvassed before. Some of them were up three flights of steps from the road. But the mailman said "fuck that" decades ago and you can walk the whole block on an unofficial path between the houses that runs at the top of the hill. Never lose altitude unnecessarily.
But, some of the new people are canvassing for affirmative purposes more than anything. I just learned the 75% rule today because the mother canvassing with her pre-schooler only got 60% of the houses. Because you can't really get much done with a pre-schooler if you are canvassing somewhere without sidewalks.
Supposedly, Scarlett Johansson was at the canvassing office today. I didn't stick around though. I did stick around to see AOC, but not long enough to actually see her as she was late.
What does "canvassing for affirmative purposes" mean?
It means my autocorrect is an asshole and doesn't think "affiliative" is a word.
So your autocorrect took affirmative action? interesting.
I can't figure out how much of it is deliberate overcanvassing -- that is, campaigns assuming that volunteers won't knock every door,* and sending more than one team of doorknockers to the same turf.
I haven't been very involved in this cycle, but in general IME campaigns don't do this, because it causes confusion among the volunteers and can alienate voters (as you've seen!). This is kind of an unusual situation with so many volunteers and such a tight race, though, so maybe they've decided it's worth the risks. I would still tend to attribute it to lack of coordination though.
you can walk the whole block on an unofficial path
Ha, I love those. Today I looked for the unofficial path in my neighborhoods and quickly realized there wasn't one because the neighborhood is probably 60/40 D/R and more than a few of the R houses had lights/cameras rigged to go off whenever you stepped over an invisible line. One of them even had an audio that barked at you "You are now being recorded!"
(Everybody has Ring doorbells; that's not a partisan thing.)
I have encountered a few of the wildly overprotective parents. Hard to diagnose; they don't seem to have a common political leaning. If I had to guess I would say that what they *most* have in common is getting their news from news media/social media/citizen-vigilante type apps rather than real-life exchanges. And being ignorant and uncritical about the sources of their data. (I.e. thinking that a scared person posting on Nextdoor and a bunch of people chiming in to validate their scaredness is somehow a measure of even ONE instance of crime -- when the post was literally just "someone I don't know parked next to me in a parking lot and sat in his van for a few minutes." That is not crime! Much less sex trafficking!
Everyone indeed has Ring doorbells. And the among of shit people store on their porches in my neighborhood is astounding.
I DO have a very nice green button that says "Go Harris/Go democracy/Go Birds/It's a Philly thing,"
That's cute. Seems to have worked for the Birds!
523: That's what my dining companion was trying to chat him up about as the son of a Polish immigrant. I think his restaurant was entirely staffed by family. Waitress could take the order for beer but couldn't serve it because she was under age.
I saw the local Congressman who walked into the campaign office. We aware adding his lot to the Harris packets. He wanted to take his picture with use and my fellow MA resident even though we both said we weren't from Ohio. He did ask who our reps were and had stories to tell.
Further to 541: I developed the firm conviction, around my 55th door knocked, that Ring doorbells must sell a fake dog barking noise timed to go off when you ring the bell. I realized this because I had run umpteen doorbells in a row and the dog barks on several sounded exactly the same.
I second-guessed myself for a while because it seemed so wacky, but I kept hearing it at houses with no visible dogs, and it turns out that is a setting on Ring Chime Pro.
What a world.
My girlfriend is a fluent Spanish speaker after living in Mexico for six years, and has been canvassing the Latino population here in Durham because somehow the campaign didn't have any legitimate Spanish speakers here. Anyhow, she said people had been polite but mostly noncommittal until the day after the Puerto Rico joke, and then LOTS of people she spoke with were righteously pissed off and acting for information to take back for their neighbors and family.
I.e. thinking that a scared person posting on Nextdoor and a bunch of people chiming in to validate their scaredness
We were friendly and empathetic at the door itself, but when we left my canvassing partner said the timid person "had the stench of Nextdoor" all over her.
Crom always goes bonkers when the bell rings but this is only because she wants to make friends with whoever is ringing it (and normally succeeds); we had a problem last year with kids ringing the bell and running away, until one day they happened to do it while I was in the front garden and so I opened the door in time to see them running off, and instinctively shouted "Go get them!" and she shot out the door like a torpedo and chased them all the way down the street.
She only wanted to make friends, of course. But they didn't know that.
Haven't had any problems since.
535 would be really quite unsettling. It reminds me of "Under the Skin" which is a film about a woman played by Scarlett Johansson driving round Scotland picking up hitch-hikers and murdering them, and they filmed it by putting Scarlett Johansson in a car with hidden cameras and getting her to drive round Scotland picking up hitch-hikers, and after a bit she'd stop the car and the director would appear and say "hey would you like to be in a film?" and if the hitch-hiker said yes then they'd set up all the special effects and so on for the scene where he gets murdered.
There are worse ways to get fake-murdered.
It would be very strange indeed to be some random guy who sticks out his thumb and says "any chance you can take me as far as Crianlarich" and then spend the next 20 minutes in silence with the gradually growing certainty that you are having a psychotic episode because the woman who's driving the car is, you are increasingly sure, Scarlett Johansson in a wig, and thinking that a woman driving a Fiat on the A85 is Scarlett Johansson in a wig is the sort of thing that only psychotics think.
549 great and very unsettling film that. I should have rewatched it as part of my Shocktober viewing but I'll make sure to rectify that next year.
BTW has anyone seen his Birth? Both Sexy Beast and Zone of Interest were fantastic (a highlight of my summer was watching the former with my parents and they both really liked it.)
This Peanut the squirrel thing is bizarre
The film was better than the book in that the film was unsettling while the book was just silly and (which is fatal for horror fiction) unintentionally funny.
Initially read 555 as being to 554.
Now that polling is almost completely done, some context on the Selzer (Iowa) and other polls (repeating some of what is above).
1. Why the Selzer/Des Moines Register poll got such attention. Has been traditionally a very accurate poll (of course that can change) and in 2016 and 2020 it was one of few that did not end up with a D lean. So it was an alarming wake up call in those elections that HRC was potentially in trouble and that Biden not as comfortably ahead as it seemed. This year it had been R+16 (or 18?) with Biden and the R+4 in September which was viewed as very good for Harris (T won by 10 and 8). Most were expecting some kind of return of stronger R support given Vibetober and Ds were hoping it would be small. (This happened with octogeneraian asshole Grassley in 2022--a close September poll then a an accurate R+12 in November) So the move to D+3 took everyone by surprise.
2. How much an outlier. Probably is, *However* it is somewhat consistent with two other recent non-swing state polls--Kansas and Ohio with T up by less than 5 in each. Things the states have in common: not considered swing states, not targeted with Harris demonization ads, and all have had significant attacks on abortion and women's healthcare rights.
3. Other national and swing state polls are almost certainly being "herded" to some degree (through methods if not actual manipulation). Plus a big dose of R-leaning "red wave" polls flooded in.
Considering going to the rally tonight. moved from the Point to a site along the Mon where there were historic blast furnaces due to security concerns. The Point is quite exposed with overlooking high rises. Am curious if Mt. Washington would be a concern--high bluff about 2000 feet away. My complete ignorance of ballistics and threat radii, let me show them to you.
I also suspect they were not keen on being in the general vicinity of a Trump rally and Trump supporters.
