Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

The lights are all blinking red.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Let me file that under fuck it.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

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104Comments

  5. 5.

    planetjanet

    Yes, I was knocking doors today. Mostly friendly here in Virginia. One odd encounter, as I was introducing myself to someone I believe was my contact’s mother, she refused to shake my hand. Awkward pause.

  7. 7.

    Elizabelle

    In North Carolina. My second canvassing turf packet was $1-2 million homes around a golf course. Guy at door: “Democrats never canvass our neighborhood. It’s all Republicans.”

    Told him we had a lot of Democrats flying under radar. And they are early voting.

    Did not finish the packet — got dark, and no lighting. Afraid of turning an ankle. Will finish the last 12 or so homes tomorrow, in daylight.

    Know hope.

  15. 15.

    Elizabelle

    @Another Scott: It’s been a ball.

    The last gentleman I talked to said the ads against Senator Richard Burr had been very effective. About him making beaucoup bucks while in the Senate, and self-dealing.

    Today, the Raleigh News Observer endorsed Roy Cooper, Democratic candidate for governor. Last week, the Charlotte Observer, Pat McCrory’s hometown paper (he was mayor of Charlotte) endorsed Cooper.

    Tonight was the last night of the NC Fair in Raleigh. They had a gorgeous weekend to close out. Cool at night, with sunny days.

    Meanwhile, have not heard a further word about the firebombed! GOP! office! in Orange County. I still think that one was own team. But all under wraps, as the feds investigate.

    I love North Carolina.

  17. 17.

    opiejeanne

    I voted yesterday. WOOHOO!!! Historic election!

    Washington had a pretty extensive ballot and a long voter’s pamphlet and we researched down to the very last judge, which took several hours. The only R we voted for was State Treasurer because there were two Rs, and one was actually a worse choice than the other, according to info we found on a Democratic site.

  20. 20.

    Chris

    Back from Magnificent Seven viewing. “If God hadn’t wanted them sheared, he wouldn’t have made them sheep” is definitely one of the classic villain lines of all time. Also, it’s nice to see a movie where the fact that you think of civilians as “sheep” marks you as a bad guy (looking at you, American Sniper).

  22. 22.

    Elizabelle

    @opiejeanne: Was only dealing with Democrats.

    They were nice as could be. A lot of our “sporadic” voters are really enthusiastic about Hillary. They didn’t get the memo that the cool kids look at her as an unlikeable, untrustworthy grind. They are excited.

    Why can’t NPR or other media outlets find them? They’re not necessarily at rallies, but they are early voting in serious numbers.

  24. 24.

    Mary G

    We were forecasted to get 0.19 inches of rain tomorrow, then they said, never mind, no rain at all. So it rained pretty good today, for California. All the weather sites still said it was clear. Nothing on the radar, so maybe fairly low and local clouds. My joints kept me up until after 5 a.m., so I figured it was coming and gave myself permission to not do much today once I got up. I am mostly over my cold except for a cough and wheezing.

    I spilled soda on my absentee ballot so tomorrow I am going to request another one. There should still be time to get it in the mail.

  25. 25.

    Elizabelle

    @opiejeanne: Ah, realize my comment was misleading.

    This guy was definitely a Democrat. Three in his household. He told me he was the lone rabbit at his business group meetings. I’m sure it seems the world is all Republicans. But it is not. Even in wealthy areas.

    He told me he put signs up all the time (mind you, long curving driveway, so he can’t see his front yard near the street) and they always disappeared. One time he was out, very early morning, and he saw a guy with a pickup truck collecting the pro-Democratic signs and throwing them into the pickup’s bed.

    So what? Mucho Trump signs out, but those neighborhoods are early voting. The under radar Democrats, for Hillary and the downticket.

  26. 26.

    opiejeanne

    @NotMax: Leroy Anderson. We played a bunch of them in a summer concert series in Pomona’s White Park: The Typewriter, Blue Tango, The Syncopated Clock, Serenata, Sleigh Ride (In July) and looking at his date of death, May 1975 explains why we played so many of them. I can’t remember the names of the rest, but we played one every week of the series, along with barnburners like Conquest (USC’s theme) and a massive performance of Stars and Stripes Forever. That group was kind of a big deal back then, just a municipal band made of volunteers who had to audition. I was lucky to get in.

  28. 28.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    All polling points to a landslide. David Plouffe is the one I pay attention to since he’s the architect of Obama’s wins, and he thinks it’s going to be closer to 400 than 270. I like Hillary’s chances.

  29. 29.

    Mj_Oregon

    Our ballots arrived at 11 am on Friday and were back in the mail by 1 pm that afternoon. My husband was really stoked to be voting Democratic this year as he’s a reformed Republican who despises them more each year since he stopped drinking the Kool Aid a few years back. Once our ballots are acknowledged as received, all the phone calls should stop. Gotta love Oregon’s Vote-By-Mail system! And our Motor-Voter Registration system is fully in place now too. Other states need to get with the program – I’m looking at YOU, North Carolina!

  31. 31.

    opiejeanne

    @Elizabelle: That’s great.
    NPR nor any other news outlet ever interviewed any of the enthusiastic Hillary voters that I know, nor have they asked us.
    My older daughter says she’s so worked up about this election, so excited, that she may just throw up. The middle kid was and still is a Bernie fan and she’s a bit grim about it but says she’s voting for Hillary. (yay). She’s in for a huge disappointment if (when) his movement disappears.

  35. 35.

    eric

    @Roger Moore: in a lot of jurisdictions, such an overwhelmingly disproportionate liquidated damages provision would be unenforceable. Given the likely lack of actual damages, that strikes me as legal rubbish.

  36. 36.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @srv: Well, the economy never recovered from the demise of the buggy whip and horse shoe industries, you know.

  37. 37.

    Ruckus

    @Roger Moore:
    How is Assanage going to sue from the London Ecuadorian embassy? Or without exposing who they are? And if he has that kind of money, why is he hiding in an embassy in the first place?

  39. 39.

    Nom de Plume

    @srv:

    Smug Prius buyers destabilize your 401k

    The Prius uses gasoline, moron. You probably meant electric vehicles.

  40. 40.

    p.a.

    Per TPM per ABC/WaPo poll tRump +4 among whites, rMoney was +20. HRC +32 (not a mistype) among college educated white women. R likely voters down 7% vs last month, virtually all drop among R’s who supported other R’s in the primaries.

  42. 42.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @opiejeanne:

    Trump’s campaign echoes Bernie’s in so many ways – a loss means it’s rigged, a win means it’s fair, and both campaigns dismiss the Democratic base voters – ie., women/people of color. Don’t understand why so called progressives can’t see that.

  43. 43.

    Roger Moore

    @Elizabelle:
    Sounds to me as if part of the point of stealing the signs is to make the local Democrats feel lonely and defeated. If they stayed up, the Democrats might realize there are plenty of compatriots around.

  46. 46.

    NotMax

    @srv

    Things change, markets adapt.

    “Rails” used to be one of the sectors listed in every stock market report.

  48. 48.

    Bruuuuce

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: Not all polling. I haven’t tracked down the source publications, but according to Robert Reich on FB: “Today’s Investor’s Business Daily tracking poll — which predicted the outcome of the 2004, 2008 and 2012 elections more closely than rival surveys — gives Donald Trump a 2-point lead over Hillary Clinton when Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are thrown into the mix. The same poll gives Trump a 1-point edge in a head-to-head contest with Hillary. The Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California daily tracking poll has the two major candidates tied a 44 percent apiece for the week. As of today, they’re separated by just 0.3 point, with Trump retaining the edge.”

    He then correctly concludes “Take nothing for granted. Vote, and get others to as well. Our fates depend on it.”

  51. 51.

    Redshift

    I was out working on running up the score in Northern Virginia yesterday. Friendly people at the doors, and one smart alec who claimed to be a Trump voter. Given his name, complexion, and the fact that he was on my list of Democrats, I was skeptical, and the big grin on his face made it hard to maintain the joke, so he admitted he wasn’t before long.

    I’m still getting emails from the Republican challenger in the safest Democratic digestive in the state, which tells you how bad the VA GOP’s data and targeting are.

  52. 52.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Bruuuuce:

    Don’t see how that poll works, when every other polling outfit has Trump down by huge margins in every category of voter compared to Romney, who lost.

  53. 53.

    Bruuuuce

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: Like I said, I hadn’t taken a look at the sources there. I suspect their methodology is messed up. If anything, I would guess that the IBD poll is likelier to be ‘unskewed’, given their audience, whereas the LAT/USC poll probably misses segments or otherwise samples poorly.

  57. 57.

    opiejeanne

    @Elizabelle: I live in a somewhat expensive neighborhood, and there are no Trump or Hillary signs in my neighborhood, but I saw a Hillary sign in Seattle today. The signed we do have here are for Governor Inslee, Senator, Congressperson, State Senate and House, and Judges; there is one sign for the R governor candidate across the street from us.
    It’s nice to know that there are far more Democrats living here than you’d suspect.

  58. 58.

    Redshift

    @Bruuuuce: All polling averages. Focusing on individual polls is silly, whether it’s done to keep your hopes up unreasonably or to keep some unspecified other people from becoming overconfident.

    I find Reich’s argument unpersuasive because the people who might “get complacent” and not vote aren’t people who are plugged in enough to hear his pitch. For those of us who are, we know that there is no amount Trump can lose by that is too much (and downballot races are important.) Always fight as if you’re ten points down, but don’t annoy us by engaging in bullshit handwringing. (See also Moore, Michael.)

  59. 59.

    opiejeanne

    @Mj_Oregon: Converts, religious and political, tend to be very enthusiastic. We are converts and I almost spit when I say “Republican”; it’s a curse word to me now.
    We live in WA now. Love our vote by mail program.

  61. 61.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Bruuuuce: Stop fucking panicking. Unless panicking is your kink, in which case let your freak flag fly. Otherwise, check out Sam Wang and calm the fuck down.

  65. 65.

    Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

    @opiejeanne: Sigh…another person trying to predict a federal election based on the amount of signs they see in their neighbourhood. Are you people for real?

  66. 66.

    amk

    da deadbeat: “I’ll tell you what, we’re doing well in the polls, but you know, I really think those polls are very inaccurate”.

    LOL. Even polls about polls are rigged.

  67. 67.

    Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

    I guess it is “progressives thinking they are losing…as usual” night.

    Hilarious. Hillary is at 97% probability and Senate is at 80%. Not only is she going to win (which was NEVER in doubt). It’s probably going to be a historically big win. One outlier comes out and people freak out. Unbelievable….lol. You people are a trip.

  69. 69.

    TS

    Go look at the liberal media of TPM. Josh might be anti trump but 99% of the front page articles are about him or other GOPers. This has been the “liberal media” for the past 2 years. Good or bad – it’s all name recognition.

    Going for the clicks – here are the “most popular”
    CNN Panel Laughs When Trump Backer Says No Evidence To Call Him Racist (VIDEO)
    Here’s What Happens When You Publicly Oppose Donald Trump On The Internet
    Sheldon Adelson Has Reportedly Had It With Donald Trump
    Trump On First 100 Days: I Will Sue ‘Liars’ Who Accused Me Of Assault
    Trump Goes After Michelle Obama: ‘All She Wants To Do Is Campaign’

    Wouldn’t even know there was a dem candidate

    liberal media TPM

  71. 71.

    Bruuuuce

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m not panicking; my faith rests in sites like 538 and Princeton, which show HRC up by a good margin. I was simply replying to an assertion that all polls have her comfortably up by noting that not all polls do. Chill your jets.

  72. 72.

    Aleta

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: @Bruuuuce: I’m thinking that the few polls that show Trump ahead are (fittingly) sort of like data points that are normally thrown out as noise. (Far away from the rest of the data due to normal error creeping in or other reasons.)

    It’s all they’ve got, so they are using those results and ignoring the rest, but it’s not accurate.

    eta But still, polls aren’t the same as what will happen, which no one knows.

  73. 73.

    TS

    @Bruuuuce: Only seems to be the RWNJ sites (and the twitter feed of the GOP nominee) that keep bringing up these polls – funny that you have found them.

  74. 74.

    Bruuuuce

    @TS: Reich is on my FB feed, and that had appeared not long before I read this thread. Even I and my lack of short-term memory made the association.

  75. 75.

    Betsy

    Yep. Spent most of yesterday canvassing.

    And today I found out that my campaign volunteer will arrive Wednesday and spend the next two weeks lodging with me while working every day through the election. Lots of vols arriving from out of state here.

    I got busy cleaning the room and getting fresh towels ready. Hope to provide a comfy place for a hard-working volunteer to rest up!

  76. 76.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Bruuuuce: GOTV messages are fine, but as far as I can tell, that IBD/TIPP poll is the ONLY national poll that has Trump ahead that is not (1) a complete methodological oddball (the LA Times/USC/Dornsife), or (2) Rasmussen, whose blatant Republican bias is infamous and of long standing.

    Even the polls associated with Fox News and Breitbart, even Quinnipiac (which was fairly pessimistic all year) and Morning Consult (which spent the early part of the cycle insisting everyone else was selling Trump short), are pretty much in line with everyone else. And now it’s time to translate those poll numbers into votes.

  78. 78.

    Chris

    @opiejeanne:

    Converts, religious and political, tend to be very enthusiastic. We are converts and I almost spit when I say “Republican”; it’s a curse word to me now.

    If you “converted” while you were still a teenager too young to vote, and had only been a Republican for a couple of years anyway, does it still count? Cause I’ve definitely got that enthusiasm and that mentality.

  79. 79.

    Bruuuuce

    @Matt McIrvin: Yes, completely, to your second graf,. As to the first, I plead youth and innocence and long and faithful service and not having investigated the polls directly in the interest of posting a bit sooner.

  81. 81.

    Chris

    @amk:

    LOL. Even polls about polls are rigged.

    We apologize for the error in the polls. The pollsters responsible for the sacking of the pollsters who have just been sacked have just been sacked.

  83. 83.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Bruuuuce: On the other side of the coin, I will say, this does not look to me like the epochal Johnson ’64-type wave election that Democrats are salivating about when they look at high outliers. It looks like a solid, Obama-sized win, with the Senate still very much in play for both parties, and Democratic House control as an extreme long shot.

  84. 84.

    amk

    Issa, Obama said, is one of the Republicans he blames for fanning the flames that created Donald Trump, and is now trying to run from Trump as the polls plummet. The California Republican is also one of those kind of Republicans, according to Obama, who spits fire at him and then shows up with family members for pictures at the White House Christmas party every year.

    “Some of them say, ‘I’m praying for you,’” Obama said. “And I don’t question the sincerity that they are praying for me: ‘Please change this man from the socialist Muslim that he is.”

    He paused.

    “I’m sure it’s more sincere than that,” he said, laughing.

    /

    “That is the definition of chutzpah,” Obama said, adding later, “that is shameless.”
    Standing here Sunday night at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee at the home of longtime donor Christine Forester, Obama said Issa’s “primary contribution to the United States Congress has been to obstruct and to waste taxpayer dollar on trumped-up investigations that have led nowhere.”

    LOL.

  87. 87.

    Chris

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Definitely this.

    Over the summer, my father was predicting the biggest blowout in the history of U.S. elections, even worse than Goldwater. I don’t think I even bothered to argue. My side of the conversation was literally “nope… nope… nope… nope… nope. Not happening. Sorry. Just not happening.”

    I’d love to be wrong, of course, but in the era of extreme polarization that is today, and the GOP being in the state it’s in after a half-century of Southern Strategy, I’m very confident in saying I’m not.

  89. 89.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chris: There’s even still time for the polls to tighten or the mood to change just enough to sustain a “Trump, the Comeback Kid” narrative in the political media, say right after Halloween. He still wouldn’t win but it’d drive us nuts for a few days. I give it a 70% chance of happening.

  90. 90.

    Bruuuuce

    @Matt McIrvin: I think the Senate stands a good chance to flip, and the House is unlikely to. As with almost everyone else here, I’d be delighted to be proved wrong in the direction of a Democratic wave, but even just the Senate and White House would make it possible to fill the vacancies in the Supreme Court and lower judicial vacancies if the Senate has the sense of a constipated gnat and passes at least a partial nuclear option with regard to those appointments.

  91. 91.

    Nom de Plume

    @srv:

    TIL hybrids only run on gas.

    As a matter of fact, hybrids do only run on gas. Plug-in hybrids, on the other hand, can run on both battery and gas. Their battery range tends to be fairly short, though: 53 miles in the case of the Chevy Volt, and much less in the case of the Prius plug-in.

    You’re welcome. If you need to learn anything else, I’m happy to oblige, though I’m fairly certain you don’t actually want to learn anything.

  92. 92.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chris: The post-1992 political situation has caused us to define a landslide down. Everything’s a game of inches now, and I don’t see it breaking this year unless it somehow happens at the very last minute.

  100. 100.

    opiejeanne

    @Chris: I think so. I know a guy who converted to Catholicism in college, age 19, to make his girlfriend happy. He became far more devout and rigid about dogma than she was, and she had been raised in that faith. We were on a double date with them and they got in a huge embarrassing argument about birth control: he was against it, she said he was insane. (We’re all in our 60s now )
    My conversion from being a Republican probably started long before my voting pattern changed, because the intellectual disconnect between what you say you believe in church and what you believe in politics was eating at me when I was in HS. I was in my 30s when I noticed that there were fewer sane-sounding Republicans and it was downhill from there.

  102. 102.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Major Major Major Major: It’s fun to go to electoral-vote.com and click on its links showing the situation for this week in 2012 and 2008. In ’12, their model was still showing lagged effects of Obama’s poor showing in the first debate, and it was scary close (I think Sam Wang’s model had already recovered). And Election Day was earlier than it is this year, so there wasn’t much time left.

    This week in 2008, though, Obama was romping. He was actually running ahead of his final numbers–he lost a little ground right at the end. Montana and North Dakota were polling tied, and Missouri was leaning blue. Clinton is actually not doing anywhere near as well as that. She’s in between Obama ’12 and Obama ’08.

  103. 103.

    Matt McIrvin

    …Though Sam Wang’s model currently has an impressive upper tail for Hillary, mainly because it registers her as having a small but non-negligible chance of carrying Texas.

  104. 104.

    Allen W Snyder

    That’ll work great if you want a pic of my dog with multi-inch-long strands of drool hanging off of each jowl.

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