I know I’m an easy mark for these ads, but if you’re not tearing up by the :30 mark, you’re a stronger person than I am.
And furthermore, damn the haters, I’m with Chimamanda Adichie, at the Atlantic:
We do not see, often enough, the people who love Hillary Clinton, who support her because of her qualifications rather than because of her unqualified opponent, who empathize with her. Yet millions of Americans, women and men, love her intelligence, her industriousness, her grit; they feel loyal to her, they will vote with enthusiasm for her…
There are people who love how cleanly she slices through policy layers, how thoroughly she digests the small print. They remember that she won two terms to the United States Senate, where she was not only well-regarded but was known to get along with Republicans. They have confidence in her. There are people who rage at the media on her behalf, who see the coverage she too often receives as unfair. There are people who in a quiet, human way wish her well. There are people who, when Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman to be president of the United States, will weep from joy.
Hillary Clinton was guilty immediately when she stepped into the view of the American public as the first lady of Arkansas. She was a lawyer full of dreams. She had made sacrifices for the man she loved, waived her plans, and moved to his state. But she also dared to think herself her husband’s equal, to assume herself competent enough to take on expanding access to healthcare and reforming the Arkansas public education system. She was guilty of not being a traditional first lady. She offended the old patriarchal order. The conservative media loathed her…
Because Hillary Clinton is a woman, she is judged too harshly for doing what most politicians do—hedging sometimes, waffling sometimes, evading sometimes. Politicians are ambitious; they have to be. Yet for Hillary Clinton, ambition is often an accusation. She is held responsible for her husband’s personal failings, in the gendered assumption that a wife is somehow an adult and a husband a child.
There are millions of Americans who do not have the self-indulgent expectation that a politician be perfect. They are frustrated that Hillary Clinton is allowed no complexity. And they love her.
***********
Apart from continuing to GOTV, what’s on the agenda for the day?
rikyrah
Good Morning ?, Everyone ?
rikyrah
One day to go
Mary G
@rikyrah: Thank FSM. I don’t think I could take one more day.
Cermet
And we haven’t seen anything compared to the hate, lies, and utter bile the thugs will pour out day one against President Elect Hillary; then this peak wing nut will go to eleven on her first day as President. Impeachment hearings will commence day one, as well. Hillary had better have control of the Senate or else this will be a disaster as far an her ability to get any judicial appointments. .
Schlemazel
@Cermet:
exactly.
AL, Chimamanda, put me down on that list of millions
Mustang Bobby
Good morning, rikyrah.
NPR had Cokie Roberts and Tucker Carlson commenting on Comey this morning. Not even feigning the concept of equal time, they go with two full-tilt-boogie Republicans. Next pledge drive my money goes to WDNA, the serious jazz station in Miami that uses the BBC as their hourly news feed.
satby
@Mustang Bobby: it’s ironic that most of the NPR stations rely on donors, and those donors are usually liberal, but they have no problem insulting oour common sense daily. Every pledge drive, I notify them why I don’t donate. Some day they may notice if enough people tell them that.
NotMax
@Mary G
Only two more days until campaign 2020 begins.
;)
Schlemazel
@satby:
But they really don’t depend on individual donors any more. There is a reason every show starts with, or is interrupted for, commercials for companies large & small and foundations formed by the very people who want to stifle left media. The reason they appear to be Nice Polite Rrepublicans is because that is what they are, the industrialists who want to own us. They feed the ugly monster on the right but don’t want to get dirty themselves. They side with the GOP because of tax breaks, no regulations and a strong undocumented labor pool. They have been this way since at least 2000.
raven
@Cermet: Oh yea, “IT’S A DISASTER” !
Schlemazel
@NotMax:
15 weeks until impeachment hearings start in Congress
satby
@Schlemazel: I agree, but they run their stupid fundraisers locally in small classical or jazz stations where they buy NPR as a feed, and those stations need donors. My local station in MI used to alternate BBC and NPR, but dropped BBC because it was too expensive for them. That’s when I started my solo campaign ☺
Matt McIrvin
@Schlemazel: There’s been discussion of trying to start earlier than that.
Schlemazel
@satby:
Our local affiliate (MPR) is wildly successful, having dozens of outlets including Los Angeles Public Radio (How that became part of Minnesota Public Radio is an interesting story). They also run a couple of the large production outfits like Public Radio International. It is a hugely profitable machine but they like to appear poor because it makes them seem humble.
Schlemazel
@Matt McIrvin:
I realized after I posted that comment that wingnuts say the same sentence with glee while decent people say it with dread.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel: Awfully optimistic of you.
Schlemazel
I am off to the daily hell that is my work life, you kids be good and keep the stove going here so the pipes don’t freeze.
Kay
qwerty42
@raven: Oh yea, “IT’S A DISASTER” !
I think the preferred term will be (recycled) “The failed Clinton Administration”.
hueyplong
I can’t tell whether that Ingraham post is just stupid or is instead laying the groundwork for making yet more voter fraud pitches to her credulous followers.
Mustang Bobby
I feel it is my duty that Wix.com as a website host and manager is about as useful as tits on a snake.
So there.
OzarkHillbilly
@hueyplong: why not both?
PsiFighter37
@Kay: What a dummy.
Thank goodness there is only 1 more day of this madness left. I hope our Senate candidates are making final pushes and that we get some surprises. We absolutely need to have the Senate if we want to get anything done (mainly on the judicial appointment front).
PsiFighter37
Also, I hope Nate Silver’s assholish preening is punctured by Democratic GOTV. The dude’s become a complete jerk this cycle.
Kay
@hueyplong:
It’s the missing white voter theory. It’s a real thing in GOP politics. After 2012 there were two groups- the “diversify” group (The Establishment) and the “find hidden white voters” group (the Tea Party and Donald Trump). It was real. County chairs and local GOP elected officials talked about it here. They’re waiting to see which side was right.
Immanentize
@raven: Heh heh. DOOMED!
Aimai
The story of her–final youtube ad–says it all.
Mustang Bobby
@Schlemazel: We had a station here in Miami that was basically an outlet for MPR’s Classical 24 feed with designated drop-ins that tried to make it sound local like inserting the weather forecast and local events (sometimes they’d screw up and give us the weather for Sun Valley or mispronounce a local place), but the music selection was repetitive (how many times can you hear “Til Oilspill’s Merry Pranks”?), and the station went under after about three years. Now the local NPR station carries the feed on HD2 which I can’t get on my crystal set.
I give money to Interlochen Public Radio out of northern lower Michigan because I listened to it when I lived there and hearing their weather forecasts in January when I’m in Florida gives me my dose of schadenfreude for the day.
Elizabelle
Good morning. Ok, I am curious. If the late, great Janet Reno cast an early or absentee ballot before she died, is it included in the final count?
Does a voter have to be alive some moment of Election Day, or just on the day the ballot was cast?
And RIP Janet.
ETA: do the registrars check the final official tally against county death records?
And Happy Monday. Tomorrow is Victory Tuesday.
Baud
@Kay: As are we all.
OzarkHillbilly
OH NOOOOOOOES!!!! EMAILGATE LIVES AGAIN!!!
Rahm Emanuel used personal email domain for government work
Now Hillary has been tarred with the stench of Emanuel. One more thing for the GOP to impeach her for.
Immanentize
@Elizabelle: You only need to vote alive when you vote. Your vote is (should be) anonymous and can’t be sorted out and removed from the rest. That is why the crime is “dead people voting,” not “-alive people who voted who died.”
Kay
@PsiFighter37:
People talked about yard signs a lot in the closing days of the Kerry campaign in Ohio- we were winning yard signs. People had never seen so many signs! Surely this meant something.
Talking about signs is a bad sign :)
Immanentize
And not on point — I’m kinda liking having some more light in the morning before work today.
Marianne19
@hueyplong: She’s wishing she could be Peggy Noonan who famously posted back in 2012 “There is no denying the Republicans have the passion now, the enthusiasm. The Democrats do not. Independents are breaking for Romney. And there’s the thing about the yard signs. In Florida a few weeks ago I saw Romney signs, not Obama ones. From Ohio I hear the same.” I’d post the link, but you know, moderation.
LurkerExtraordinaire
Good morning, rikyrah, and others. Still too warm for my tastes here in Central Ohio. Here’s to hoping Hillary wins here tomorrow! Have a great Monday.
One. More. Fucking. Day.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s a pathetic story. I expect that sort of thing only from American media.
Immanentize
@Kay: Signs, signs everywhere are signs. Blocking up the scenery….
gogol's wife
@Kay:
Nevertheless the proliferation of Trump signs in Connecticut does depress me.
Currants
@Schlemazel: it’s probably old news here but check out @pantsuitnation on Instagram or The twitter machine. That will warm your morning!
Immanentize
@gogol’s wife: which do you think they are? Yankees or Red Sox fans? I suspect Yankee fans.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: Yes her vote counts.
Luthe
@Schlemazel: I have issues with NPR’s political coverage, but not my local(ish) station. WNYC brings me the BBC, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and things like the Harlem Heat Project. They are good eggs, even if the larger service can be kinda rotten.
Elizabelle
@Immanentize: great point. The anonymity of the vote. So you cannot remove those cast by those who died after voting but before Election Day. (Unless you were to scrutinize mailed absentee ballots, which might not be counted until after Election Day. But why give them any more ideas?)
@OzarkHillbilly: Thanks. Top o the morning.
MomSense
@LurkerExtraordinaire:
I wish but it’s really two more days of GOTV.
I was going to veg out last night and watch tv but I fell asleep instead.
If you are checking in with any family members about voting, make sure they have a plan.
kd bart
If we’re judging by roadside signs seen than Gary Johnson is winning Georgia. I’ve seen more of his roadside signs than anyone else’s. I haven’t seen a sign for any of my Senate or House candidates.
OzarkHillbilly
@gogol’s wife: Well, here in the backwoods of Misery there are more Confederate Flags than Trump signs. A lot more. Not sure just exactly what that says about my neighbors. Probably that even white supremacists are embarrassed by him.
Kay
@gogol’s wife:
We have a Trump-sign-heavy county here,east of mine. It’s interesting to me because that is the (rural) county with the highest proportion of Latinos. I don’t think Latinos are putting up the signs- I think it’s a response to the county changing.
Ohio has “open enrollment” for public schools. If an adjoining district to yours has openings you can enroll in another district. The county with all the Trump signs has had a lot of movement – white people are open-enrolling their children out of their home schools with 20% Latinos and into surrounding districts. This of course just makes the schools with larger Latino populations more Latino. I’m on a school committee and we’re watching this happening. Open enrollment was intended to make schools more diverse. It’s having the opposite effect.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
Once the requirements and process of voting have been duly met and completed, the vote will be tallied.
No different, really, from a case when someone stands in line to early vote, does so, then dies the next day.
JMG
Good morning! Took a break from my phone banking (caller ID has killed it, people see an out of state number come up and don’t pick up) yesterday to go see Dr. Strange with my wife and son. Highly recommended. First of the Marvel movies to really capture the visuals of the original comic book, which in this case was some trick. Also how can Cumberbatch and Swanton be bad in anything?
Barbara
@Marianne19: Noonan even talked about the yard signs in her DC neighborhood. Talk about delusional. Also just saw David Farenthold tweet that Philly transit strike is settled. Fingers crossed.
Mustang Bobby
We have an even distribution of Trump / Clinton yard signs here in south suburban Miami, but they’re overpowered by local elections for city councils and state house and senate races. So far I haven’t seen any Marco Rubio signs but a few for Patrick Murphy, his opponent. My bellwether for attitude is my neighbor to the north who had a Santorum sign during the primaries. Now all he has is one for the local state senator. I think he’s embarrassed by Trump.
TS
@Marianne19:
Peggy Noonan Link
“And there is Obama, out there seeming tired and wan, showing up through sheer self discipline. A few weeks ago I saw the president and the governor at the Al Smith dinner, and both were beautiful specimens in their white ties and tails, and both worked the dais. But sitting there listening to the jokes and speeches, the archbishop of New York sitting between them, Obama looked like a young challenger—flinty, not so comfortable. He was distracted, and his smiles seemed forced. He looked like a man who’d just seen some bad internal polling. Romney? Expansive, hilarious, self-spoofing, with a few jokes of finely calibrated meanness that were just perfect for the crowd. He looked like a president. He looked like someone who’d just seen good internals.”
If the paywall comes in google – There is no denying the Republicans have the passion now, the enthusiasm
Top of the list – wsj – and didn’t she get it wrong – how do these pundits keep their jobs? If I was wrong so often I would be unemployed.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: You’ll enjoy this from Juanita Jean:
Jack the Second
@Kay: Open-enrollment may have been sold as a way to make schools more diverse, but color me skeptical that the architects didn’t know exactly what they were doing. White people have been trying to find sneaky ways around school integration since Brown.
Baud
@TS: Peggy Noonan gets a lot of contempt, but it’s not enough.
satby
@Baud: none of them get enough contempt.
Patricia Kayden
@Cermet:
Yep. President Clinton will need the Senate in her corner to get anything done. And I do mean anything. But I’m hoping she gets some momentum as we flow into Election Day.
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning!☕
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: that’s true. It’s treating voters differently. And what of voters who died abroad or in other states?
Good call. (Besides which, if the widow had not answered the phone, they would have had no idea.) Maybe there will be a court case about this. I don’t think most courts want to turn county registrars into death sleuths.
maurinsky
@Kay:
I started seeing Evan McMullin signs popping up in CT this weekend.
I will say that the Trump fans are super enthusiastic about him, but Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1 in CT. In some towns by more than that.
Hal
Several conservative friends on Facebook are furiously posting about the impending doom if Killary becomes president. There is a sense of panic from them I’m honestly finding kind of funny. Amazing how someone can talk about Hillary Clinton’s morality while voting Trump.
rikyrah
@Kay:
But… Economic anxiety
TS
@Baud: Reading that blog it’s no wonder Romney thought he was winning. She deserves all and any contempt thrown her way.
She knew/knows NOTHING about President Obama (other than the fact that his skin is black – impacts every word she writes)
“Of all people, Obama would know if he is in trouble. When it comes to national presidential races, he is a finely tuned political instrument: He read the field perfectly in 2008. He would know if he’s losing now, and it would explain his joylessness on the stump. He is out there doing what he has to to fight the fight. But he’s still trying to fire up the base when he ought to be wooing the center and speaking their calm centrist talk. His crowds haven’t been big. His people have struggled to fill various venues.”
hahahahaha – rather like Trump has yooooge crowds
Ceci n'est pas mon nym
Good news in Philly. Can’t post a link right now but the transit strike is over and full service will be restored by tomorrow.
Mustang Bobby
@Hal: I got that, too, and after being told one too many times that Hillary Clinton was an evil and conniving b- and c- word whose perfidy knew no bounds, I replied that if she was truly that powerful, she would be leading by 50 points and that all that would be left of Donald Trump would be that strange smell in the elevator shaft.
I know I was going to get nowhere with them, but it was fun for a moment.
TriassicSands
One more day. Clinton’s chances of winning — according to 538 — continue the slide that began on October 17, when they gave her an 88.2% chance of winning and well over 300 Electoral votes. With one day to go, she’s still dropping, down to a 63.6% likelihood of victory. Her Electoral vote total has fallen below 290. While some tightening of the race is normal, Clinton’s loss of support has been appalling, thanks in part at least to James Comey, who should resign. The best reason to want this election over is because right now it looks like Clinton is going to win, but the longer the time to election day, the better the chances are that Trump will pull out a victory.
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.
Elizabelle
@TS:
Peggy Noonan is a partisan, period.
Because if there’s one thing Obama is known for, it’s running his mouth before his brain catches up. And making wild statements and accusations.
Elizabelle
@TriassicSands: Calm yourself.
Baud
@TriassicSands: Or stop reading 538.
Patricia Kayden
@Kay: I haven’t seen any signs where I live in Southern MD. Doesn’t mean anything. I assume Trump has enough passionate supporters to get his signs planted everywhere. I would be shocked if CT went for Trump, notwithstanding Graham’s sightings of his signage.
TS
So I foolishly watched Morning Joke for 20 seconds (no sound). He had Kellyanne Conway on. Everyone was smiling at everyone. She cannot tell the truth to save her soul or anything else. This whole election has been about the media accepting lies as “things people say” without any discussion of truth and why the republicans lie with impunity
TriassicSands
@OzarkHillbilly:
Emanuel (someone I despise) would probably argue that it is he who is being tarred with the stench of Hillary. After all, emails, Anthony Weiner, Benghazi, Vince Foster, Whitewater, Clinton Foundation, etc., etc., etc.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly:
A reader comment on that Juanita Jean blogpost: from “Opinionated Hussy”:
I wonder if that’s true. Good old North Carolina, again, if so.
And that’s a court case begging to happen. How would you like it if your beloved relative or friend had their ballot tossed in the Tarheel state, while it would count in Florida, or Missouri, or New Hampshire, or wherever else? Why is one of their final actions and wishes less important?
Phylllis
@Currants: We’re off tomorrow for election day & I’m seriously considering shopping for a pantsuit to wear to work Wednesday. It will completely go over the heads of my crackerasscracker co-workers, but it will amuse me to no end.
Applejinx
@TriassicSands: Somebody should tell him that Trump is NOT going to pay him…
Elizabelle
@TriassicSands: Could we not disappear down a GOP-sprung rabbit hole? Just because they spew out crap does not mean we need to discuss it.
More positive thoughts, please. GOTV!
Patricia Kayden
@TriassicSands: It has been a wild ride but Secretary Clinton still has the edge and a great ground game to make that final push for votes. Not seeing any clear path for Trump to win the electoral college without flipping some very blue states.
TS
@TriassicSands: @TriassicSands: Nate has lost it this cycle.
Go read Sam Wang. Is 99% a reasonable probability?
Alain the site fixer
@Mustang Bobby: let me know if you need help moving off of it!
OzarkHillbilly
@TriassicSands: Sam Wang has her chances of winning at 99%.
You pick your poison.
Jeffro
@Schlemazel:
Sadly, I can think of almost no better way to keep the Dems in permanent campaign mode and help clarify for the nation what today’s GOP is really all about. For the country’s sake I’d like to be wrong, but the Rs’ bad case of ODS will be full-on CDS(times eleven) now that History’s Greatest Monster is going to the Oval Office.
They’ve slimed her for almost 40 years – to turn back now would mean a) admitting they were wrong and b) utterly unmasking themselves in front of their base.
I am one of those “voting FOR Hillary” voters and I’m a white guy. CNN, why is my phone not ringing with an interview offer, hmm?
Patricia Kayden
@TS: Sadly, the media will continue its pandering to Republicans as they go after President Clinton lock, stock and barrel. Thankfully, she’s had decades of dealing with them so she’ll be alright.
CarolDuhart2
Philly transit strike ends just in time for elections
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
My cousin Martha died yesterday. She voted absentee (for Hillary) a couple of weeks ago. Yes indeed, those ballots count.
amk
@Kay: Any last minute reliable poll on OH?
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: Look on the bright side, there are far more old Republicans with a foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel than there are Dems.
raven
@kd bart: Drive by your local gun shop.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: Sorry about your cousin.
TriassicSands
538 has struck again. For the first time since July they are giving the Democrats less than a 50% chance of controlling the Senate. A few hours ago they had the Dems at better than 56%. Curious, I’ve been watching the 538 site for the last few weeks and it is so volatile that it is barely believable. I know the American electorate is incredibly fickle, but this is just ridiculous. On November 2 they had the Dems at 68.9%.
More than anything, I think this shows that constant reappraisal is probably a bad idea. Nothing has happened in the last five days that could possibly explain a 29% drop in the likelihood of the Dems controlling the Senate. As far as I know there have been no major scandals or other events that would explain such a drop. 538 claims that it is Hillary Clinton who is dragging the Senate Democrats down. Once again, a big thank you to James Comey.
Resign you worthless POS.
JMG
There’s no way any two-party election outside North Korea has a 99 percent probability of one candidate winning and not the other. On the other hand, the way Silver’s model keeps Clinton’s chances slipping seems, well, quite odd. It’s as if his model assumes that if the Democrat isn’t ahead by more than five points, the race is tied.
PS: That’s not to impugn his honesty in any way. Creating a model that assumes the electorate in this country is basically tied is not unreasonable.
Baud
@TriassicSands: Maybe Nate’s trying to manipulate the better markets.
Jack the Second
@TS: I think Sam Wang’s piece actually did a fair job of convincing me that Silver is on the level, just forecasting in a way that leads to more uncertainty.
NotMax
@Baud
This. Silver got lucky, forcing a square peg into a round hole by adapting a methodology geared to hard data and a limited scope of intangibles (professional sports – there aren’t differing polls disputing the final score of a game, for example) to politics, a universe of fluid data and with broad subsets of intangibles. That circumstances happened to fortuitously match his output more intensively than his output reflected the circumstances does not validate his system.
In the years since he has worked to massage and tweak that system, by now trying to pound an oblong peg into the same round hole, a machine designed to be powered by volatility.
That the mantle of oracle was laid upon him was both unfortunate and unwarranted,
TS
@Jack the Second: I can agree with the concept – but it is not convincing me that Nate’s % are valid.
I do know that Comey has not only reduced the level of enthusiasm for Sec Clinton, it has also encouraged some GOPers (in particular the nominee) to think they have a chance to win this. Nate has to be giving this consideration in his model. Given the model is “secret” impossible to know. I do hope he is completely and utterly wrong & has simply swallowed the cool aid this cycle.
Craigie
I watched the video. It didn’t make me cry, but it did make me dance a little. I’ll take it.
Taylor
@Luthe: WNYC has the excellent Brian Lehrer and Leonard Lopate. I wouldn’t know anything about my home state of NJ without Brian Lehrer, the MSM coverage is beyond pathetic.
WNYC was running some billboard ads a few months ago: Give the NSA something interesting to listen to. Heh.
OzarkHillbilly
@JMG: Technically, Trump’s chances of winning are far higher, it’s the probability of his winning that is at 1%. Those 2 words are interchanged all the time (I used the wrong one above) when they shouldn’t be.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Your cousin’s illness got me thinking about it. I am sorry she passed, but glad you and she were able to be together again for a spell.
Farewell to Janet Reno and your cousin, two women who made a difference.
And how about James Earl Carter remaining on this mortal coil? I hope he has much time left, that his health holds and he continues his productive work. How great would it be to have him advising on ensuring fairness of the vote in our own American system?
Chris T.
@TS:
A pundit’s job is not to be right. A pundit’s job is to attract eyeballs.
TriassicSands
@Applejinx: @TS: @OzarkHillbilly:
99.9% sounds ridiculous. There are too many variables and the American electorate is too fickle. Nate Silver built himself a stellar reputation based on accuracy. I’m curious what is different this time around, if, in fact, he is the one who is wrong.
Based on the volatility of the polls and the fickleness of the voters, I’m not betting on any of the prognostications being right. We’ll all get the only answer that matters on Tuesday night / Wednesday morning (I hope not).
@Elizabelle:
Hmm. Discussing only things that make one smile or happy seems like a very strange approach to both elections and life. I find 538/Silver’s performance this cycle quite interesting. His reputation depends on his being accurate, not on how pleasing he is to one party or the other. He would be very unwise to design his forecasting based on wishful thinking or partisanship. While Silver is just one person, his position is much like that of climate scientists. Republicans claim that climate change is a giant hoax perpetrated by dishonest scientists who are just out to get more grants. But science rests on impartiality. Silver’s position is even more obvious — he will be proven right or wrong in a very short time frame, whereas climate scientists have dealt with the problem over decades. Something could happen to alter the climate in ways currently unforeseen, but the election is over on Tuesday and the verdict on Silver and 538 will be rendered shortly thereafter.
I think Clinton will win, but I wouldn’t be shocked (though I might be IN SHOCK) if Trump won. I have little confidence left in the American electorate. If we had a sane, informed electorate, Clinton (with all her faults would be up by 25 or 30% or more). Her opponent is conspicuously unfit and unqualified to be president, yet the race is close (or appears to be).
If anyone wants to respond, fine, but I’ll be trying to get to sleep. Night all.
Betty Cracker
Regarding Silver and Wang, as an innumerate person with absolutely no desire to understand the details of either outfit’s methods, my takeaway is that both models predict a Clinton win. Yes, it’s terrifying to contemplate that Trump has a 35% shot at the presidency. It’s also horrifying that he has a 1% chance. Any non-zero odds that a racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue could lead a nuclear-armed superpower are unacceptable. All we can do is work our asses off in the remaining time to foreclose that possibility and take some comfort in the fact that the odds are in our favor.
p.a.
@Elizabelle: he has/had glioma I believe. Great strides against it very recently, so much so FDA fast tracked treatment. Using polio virus IIRC.
Hal
Is a two thirds chance of winning really that bad? I get that 80% is more certain and comforting, but we’re focusing on the odds of a candidate who is more like than not to win, and has been more likely than not all along. Imagine being Trump and never being able to take the lead. Now that’s a situation in wouldn’t want to be in.
Baud
@TriassicSands: Sweet dreams, man.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
@Hal:
Yep.
Ceci n'est pas mon nym
@JMG: You seem to be confusing 99% probability with 99% of the vote or something. Sure Trump has a basic floor of 40% or more. There is a 1% chance that could grow to a majority in enough states to get Trump to 270 by tomorrow. Why does that seem undemocratic to you?
Peale
@OzarkHillbilly: yep. The there is a chance that Trump wins California and New York. There is a chance that Hillary loses Florida and Ohio, but wins anyway by winning Oklahoma and Texas.
greennotGreen
One thing that has been repeated ad nauseum this campaign is the parenthetical, “Clinton, though flawed.” Damn it, all human beings are flawed! Buddha wouldn’t run and Jesus Christ isn’t running, and neither of them are U.S. citizens anyway. No more with the caveat…unless you also add it to Trump. “The Republican nominee, though highly unstable, incompetent, and totally unqualified.”
greennotGreen
One thing that has been repeated ad nauseum this campaign is the parenthetical, “Clinton, though flawed.” Damn it, all human beings are flawed! Buddha wouldn’t run and Jesus Christ isn’t running, and neither of them are U.S. citizens anyway. No more with the caveat…unless you also add it to Trump. “The Republican nominee, though highly unstable, incompetent, and totally unqualified.”
mai naem mobile
I love this ad.
Applejinx
I think people are clinging to the notion that Brexit seemed just as improbable.
But Hillary’s platform isn’t like the ‘remain’ platform. She’s not aligned nearly as much with centrist plutocrats as she could be. She’s aligned with the Left who are busting their butts for her. I’ve personally seen people with very much the American version of ‘they’re all bastards, vote Leave and show them a thing or two’ attitudes, turn right around and stand up for Hillary.
I don’t think this would be the case if she hadn’t campaigned to the left and with a fiercely populist message (can’t get much more populist than seeking debt relief for Greece, that’s a real tell right there). But she has. That does not describe the Remain people.
I think Hillary observed Brexit and decided she was damned if she was gonna be caught that way, and good for her. Shows wisdom.
Latino J
@Jack the Second:
Right – I don’t pretend to understand the math, but the fantasy sports analogy makes sense. You can take 2 teams that are very unevenly matched on paper, but coming up with a 99% chance that one team will beat another is impossible. What if the quarterback breaks his leg in the first quarter? What if the coaches found a secret tell in the way an opposing pitcher winds up? What if it rains? What if one team catches a flu bug?
But as Wang alludes, that thinking doesn’t really apply directly to this type of contest. Thousands of polls over the period of months give you too much data that is too directly applicable to the results.
We’ll know tomorrow – but I think one of the victims of Comey’s letter might be Nate Silver’s reputation.
OzarkHillbilly
@TriassicSands: To repeat myself @OzarkHillbilly:
Trump was never likely to win, but he always had a chance, based on the electoral map it wasn’t much of a chance (he would’ve had to run a near perfect campaign to win) but he had as much chance as anyone who will automatically get 45-47% of the vote. The probability of his winning now at this late stage in the race is near zero.
Comey’s rat fvcking had very little effect on the race because GOP’ers saw what they wanted to see and it justified in their minds what they always wanted to do anyway. DEM’s saw it for the rf’ing it was and became even more determined to vote. At this point in the election, it’s all about GOTV, Hillary has a very strong GOTV effort. Trump’s is all but nonexistent.
greennotGreen
@mai naem mobile: I like the ad and I love the Katy Perry original video that goes with the song. I’m a classical music buff, myself, but I do like that song and its message, and I’m so happy Perry gave Hillary permission to use it.
cintibud
Since it’s an open thread –
Ray Tensing, University of Cincinnati police officer on trial for murder of Sam DuBose was wearing a Confederate Flag T-shirt under his uniform shirt.
Other University of Cincinnati officers had testified that they were required to wear black T-shirts under their uniform.
link
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: It’s good to see people still playing the classics.
Mustang Bobby
If you’re freaked out by Sam’s 99% and Nate’s 65%, split the difference and go with the Upshot or Kos at 84%.
Ceci n'est pas mon nym
@Latino J: A quarterback breaking his leg is much more probable than so many Hillary voters in swing states deciding to switch to Trump that he wins.
Peale
@Patricia Kayden: well they have to, now, anyway. They’ve painted themselves into a right fix, they have. I mean, tweety and Todd are all upset that trump had this winning message, that just got lost in the anti-Semitic and racist weeds. I’m sure they’ll both be chiming in over the next four years about the threat posed by large, global corporations. Because they’re all about WWC populism now.
Jeffro
@Aimai:
My daughter and I just watched that (saw it on HuffPo) and what can we say…we laughed, we cried, we’re fired up and ready to go!
ETA: for those who are interested, click the link – it’s not the ROAR video, it’s a 7-minute look back at the campaign from start to (almost) finish. Amazing
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: I disagree with the notion that Comey’s letter and the subsequent leaks from Comey’s out-of-control underlings to Trump campaign operatives about quashed investigations into the Clinton Foundation, etc., had little effect.
We’ll never know for sure; it wasn’t unreasonable to expect polls to tighten toward the end even without Comey’s ham-handed entry into the race. But Clinton had tons of momentum, and the media narrative was all about the Trump campaign falling apart until Comey’s letter reanimated a dead issue. It gave Trump better odds than he deserves, and while I still think Clinton will win and we’ll retake the Senate, there’s a possibility Comey’s letter will cost us the Senate or at least narrow the margins of our victory.
That’s why I’m still so goddamned mad.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ceci n’est pas mon nym: Yeah but Hillary might fall and break her leg in which case anything can happen.
FlipYrWhig
IMHO the best and most clarifying thing Nate Silver did when he burst onto the scene was demonstrate that the right thing to measure isn’t the margin between the candidates, which is bound to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-50, but the likelihood that the candidate who is ahead is going to stay ahead by enough to win. This is why a 55-45 margin _seems_ like a coin flip, but the odds that something that has been measured as 55%-45% is AT LEAST 50%+1 to 50%-1 are far greater. Everything else is tinkering.
mai naem mobile
@greennotGreen: Katy perry’s been a big active supporter of Hilz and Obama and her parents are republican evangelicals!
nonynony
@Kay:
Is that really true? I thought open enrollment was intended to make poor schools poorer both financially and academically by moving the best students (whose parents care about their education) out of them and into neighboring districts that are better off – leaving the worst students behind so that the district can fail on the statewide metrics and get shut down or taken over by the state/city (depending on the district I suppose).
Perhaps that’s cynical of me, but it’s the way that I’d expect the Republicans in this state to “fix” a school problem. “Let’s not actually try to fix the schools that are performing poorly – instead let’s bleed all the resources out of them until they fail completely so we have an excuse to shut them down.” It’s a very “corporate raider” mentality.
Another Scott
The Democrat Machine has figured out Donnie’s path to victory! It’s pretty Scary!!.
rofl! :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
FlipYrWhig
@OzarkHillbilly: AND YOU SAW HOW SHE ALMOST FELL THAT TIME BREAKING HER LEG IS PRACTICALLY ASSURED AND THEN TRUMP WINS!
Glidwrith
@Elizabelle: Juanita Jean’s blog reported she is on the ballot judging board. Basically, the Thugs challenged a dead voter’s vote in TX, but she pointed out if he had early voted in person, they couldn’t have pulled the ballot, so it stood. Obviously can vary by state and whether the Party will fight for the ballot.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@TS:
She’s telling her mostly conservative readers what they want to hear and they are fools enough to buy it.
TS
@Betty Cracker:
Not only terrifying and horrifying but utter dismay that a large proportion of voters think he is fit and able to fulfill the roll of President. I will forever blame the media for campaigning for such an event. That they thought they must portray Trump as an equally valid nominee with any other candidate is beyond insanity. That they accept the lies and nod their heads when anyone portrays him as a valid candidate is mind boggling.
The lies he has told about his opponent should disqualify him from being on the ballot – let alone being close to a win. That the dems may lose the senate – I put totally at the feet of Comey.
different-church-lady
@Peale: Nova Scotia is going blue this year, I can feel it…
nonynony
@Betty Cracker:
I think what it did was force the Republican wafflers to come home to Trump. I don’t think it moved any Democrats or Democratic leaners, but it did probably shove a bunch of Republican leaners who were in the Gary Johnson or Skip the Presidential Line or even Not Bother To Show Up camps into the OMG WE HAVE TO STOP THE SHE-DEVIL NOW NOW NOW camp.
Which I think was largely going to happen anyway. I have been predicting that Trump would perform somewhere between McCain and Romney all election cycle (popular vote-wise – his Electoral College performance may be quite different). I think the net effect of the Comey letter will be to make that outcome closer to Romney than to McCain as it brought more Republican leaners the excuse they were looking for to vote for him. But that’s about it.
danielx
@TS:
Well, there’s this exemption for Our Lady of Stolichnaya….but seriously, if you’re a Villager in good standing, there is literally nothing you can say or write that will get you kicked out of the club.
different-church-lady
@TS:
You know what’s worse than that? A lot of them know he’s not fit to be president and they don’t give a shit about it. They do not care what happens to the country as long as they get to taunt Hillary and liberals. It’s literally all that matters to them.
Glidwrith
Dammit, and multiplke folksgot there ahead of me.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@JMG:
The best way to describe Wang’s pronouncement is “Statistically speaking and according to the polling…” since it’s not impossible the polls are all wrong.
bupalos
@Betty Cracker: Agree Betty, and I don’t want it swept under the rug just because Hillz wins, just like she always was going to. The timing alone, both of the initial !!!BOMBSHELL!!! and of the walk-back assured maximum damage.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker:
And this is where you and I disagree. A dead issue is dead, the only way to reanimate it is if it was never dead to begin with.
For Dems, it was dead. Has been dead for months. Was dead LONG before Comey gave his opinion on her nothing illegal email practices under shade of Dir of F.B.I. It is a dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead issue.
For a GOPer it is just more PROOF, absolute dead certain PROOF that Hillary is CORRUPT and EVIL so EVIL she must be STOPPED by any means NECESSARY!!! even if that means voting for a racist, misogynistic, ignorant, perverted, bloviating, grifting, bully. In other words it was never dead at all. In fact, it never will be.
Josh Marshall agrees with you about the Senate and to be honest I don’t have enuf info to even have an opinion on that matter. I have a hope that in the end it won’t matter but that is all I have.
FlipYrWhig
@different-church-lady: Exactly. They know EXACTLY that Donald Trump is a horrible person. It’s not like it’s a secret; it’s self-evident. The ones who like him like that he doesn’t give a shit. The ones who don’t like him vote for him out of spite. And AFAICT these same fine specimens and their attitudes have been fueling the Republican Party for at least 40 years.
FlipYrWhig
@nonynony:
I remember seeing the polls where Hillary was up by 8-10 with Johnson at 5-6 and thinking, hmm, if those Johnson voters drift back to Trump it’d be a different story. And I assume Johnson voters started to realize that at just about the same time. But this was before Comey had done anything.
ThresherK
@FlipYrWhig: Well, I’m not a betting man. That’s because nobody is offering me a coin that will flip my way 55% of the time.
But seriously, that’s an accurate reminder about how numbers simply don’t miraculously move really fast like some people purport them to.
And it’s time for my quadrennial Margin of Error Reminder: A lead of 3% with an MofE of 3% is not a statistical tie. Just for a common example, that means the leader of such a poll has an 84% likelihood of being in the lead at the time the poll was taken.
Remember that whenever some newsreader talks about polling when a Dem is ahead. (Oh, yeah: It’s always couched that way when a Dem is ahead. Funny, ain’t it?)
Barbara
@TS: From what I understand, Nate is incorporating some kind of “trending” adjustment into his model, in addition to just calculating an average. So a few weeks ago there was a Clinton +12 poll (likely outlier) followed the next week by a Clinton +1 poll (also likely outlier) from the same polling outfit. The average would be Clinton +6.5, but I think Nate makes a further adjustment to show a lower probability for Clinton because the trend is so negative. I am not a statistician, but it seems like this kind of adjustment carries some obvious risk. First, it risks magnifying the effect of outlier polls, whether they are good or bad for the candidate. Second, as the race has tightened, pollsters like Sam Wang do not view tightening as a fundamental change because they are still mostly focused on the average, but Nate’s model is giving more weight to trends and any recent negative trend has a bigger impact on his calculation of probability. It’s like he expects the trend, whatever the trend is, to continue until evidence shows it has stopped.
satby
@SiubhanDuinne: So sorry SiubhanDuinne. Condolences to you and your family on Martha’s passing.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@TS:
You’re assuming they think at all. Basically Trump is the cool dude from TV and that’s it for them. Heck, likely in the back of their minds this is like the people who voted for Britexit, Trump is symbolic to them, a way of flipping both the damn liberals the bird for being right all the time and the Republican leadership for being losers. They don’t really expect him to be president, but they do like how he pisses all the evil people like immigrants, women, millennials and the handicap off.
Barbara
@amk: Hillary +1, from yesterday or the day before. Essentially tied.
Punchy
Offshore odds just blew up in Dems favor w/r/t Dems taking the Senate. Doubled. Again, its volatile, but day’um, that makes me smile.
greennotGreen
@mai naem mobile: I know there’s been research to suggest that whether we are conservative or liberal is due to our brains, but I don’t know whether any work has been done to determine how much of that propensity is nature versus nurture. My sister and I are both quite liberal, but are parents are/were quite conservative. Nevertheless, we were raised in a secure environment where we were encouraged to learn and try new things. Katy Perry’s parents could have provided her with a similar upbringing. Perhaps it’s nature and nurture which might explain why siblings may differ politically despite growing up in the same household.
HRA
I may have missed this being previously shared here.
ThresherK
@ThresherK: PS I stole this, like all my best work. And I can’t add links during edit. If you’re a smarty like Kevin Drum would have the explainer that the Beltway forgot, you’re right!
hovercraft
Obama Meets 12-Year-Old With Cerebral Palsy Who Was Kicked Out Of Trump Rally
This shitgibbon is not worthy of the presidency.
I’m going to miss Obama sooo much.
ThresherK
@SiubhanDuinne: Condolences from our home. Hope your family can have a happy wake (I’ve got Irish on each side, I’m allowed to say that) after tomorrow.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Barbara:
The article linked to “Sunday Afternoon Open Thread: Chickenshit Candidate r” post talked about that poll. Basically the Trump Campaign screamed at the pollster until the pollster changed their numbers. That’s the “Trump surge”
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: We’ll never know for sure. But it’s entirely possible the letter affected low-info voters without a strong partisan affiliation once the Beltway coverage returned to all-emails all the time. In our fucked-up system, those are the very voters who hold most sway as each side counts on its base and fights it out for the undecided morans in places like FL and OH.
Eric U.
@Schlemazel: the local stations depend on donors. If they reported to NPR that the faithful republican tool shtick was costing them money, NPR would have to listen
Barbara
@TriassicSands: No, he won’t really be proven right or wrong. There is no way to prove which anticipatory calculation of likelihood of winning was correct. If Clinton wins, both Silver and Wang will be correct. If she loses they will both be wrong. One underlying difficulty with applying statistics to one off events is that you can never know with precision how likely an outcome was because that event will never be repeated. Some kinds of one off events, like medical procedures, are close enough that you can give confident predictions (10% likelihood of dying in patients who are younger than 75, but 20% chance of dying in patients over the age of 75) but if you are the person who dies you are 100% dead and that prediction for you was completely and totally wrong. Not that I don’t appreciate what Silver and Wang are doing.
Peale
@Applejinx: yep. It’s not like she thought “well everybody I know knows that I’m going to win. So I’ll just collect donations and pay myself for being me. I don’t need to mobilize any voters.”
OzarkHillbilly
@ThresherK:
Heh. Somebody recently did a study and it turns out that a coin will flip a certain way more often than the other. Has nothing to do with the coin tho. It’s all about the flipper (subtle little things we do without even knowing it). Something that I have long known anecdotally with my own coin flipping. (hint, call it ‘heads’)
Percysowner
Hillary’s The Story of Us video is up. It’s really inspiring.
schrodinger's cat
@JMG: To be President a candidate needs to win 270 electoral votes. According to Wang’s prediction the number of ways Hillary can get there is 99%, while 1% represents the # of ways Trump can get there. It does not mean that Hillary will 99% of the total votes cast. That would be your N. Korean scenario.
Peale
@Barbara: he’s recording false trends then. It’s fine to make trendline adjustments. But first there needs to be a trend. He should wait to have more data points that show movement in the same direction and needs them in the same poll from the same outfit. Five – seven data points before making a trend adjustment.
Bruce K
The thing I don’t get at this point: how the fbeep is Donald Trump still politically viable? Any other candidate with even a tenth of the problems he’s had would have been, politically speaking, a smoking hole in the ground at least a month ago – but he still keeps going. There’s rumbling that even if he loses, he’s going to keep on going. He’s like one of those walking-undead horror-movie villains that never stops pursuing the heroes no matter what they throw at him.
He’s like the GOP created its own Jason Voorhees. How does the sane part of America just fbeeping end him, politically speaking?
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: I long ago started operating from the principle that 95% of undecideds are just people who haven’t decided to decide yet, that most of these people are closet Republicans or closet Democrats and will vote the same as they always have..
shrug
Not being a political scientist, what do I know?
TS
@Barbara: Nate has so much “additional stuff” in his model which is not explained, it is hard to follow. I assume he does it to help him get the right result in all situations (which is just not going to happen every election). This election is especially difficult because Trump is not your usual candidate. On reading Sam Wang, I think Nate also adjusts for Country wide polls, whereas Sam ignores them in his calculations – given that the president is decided by each state not by popular vote.
Given Trump has zero GOTV it will be interesting if anyone can calculate (after the fact) what this was worth to Sec Clinton.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: I don’t know how it works in Reno’s state, but in Massachusetts, even in-person early voting is done with ballots that are sent back to the precinct in envelopes labeled with the voter’s name and address, like mail-in ballots. The envelopes are opened and the votes theoretically anonymized after the polls close, but a person intent on scrubbing the list with death records before that could do so.
albertZ
The Morning Show with John Richards (KEXP) just played Rodriguez – Crucify Your Mind (1970). Very appropriate, no?
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: I think a substantial number of them are actually non-voters.
Barbara
@Peale: Right. I don’t know specifically what he is doing but whatever it is has resulted in a lot of volatility that does not seem to be justified when you look at the data over time, which shows a remarkably stable race. The difficulty for Republicans in the presidential contest is that there is only one “monster” state that is virtually certain to vote Republican, and that is Texas. Whereas, Democrats have at least three: California, Illinois and New York. Florida, and Ohio are legitimate swing states, and Pennsylvania is probably not quite swing, but not quite guaranteed. So Republicans have to assemble a collection of a lot of states with relatively few EVs. Georgia is probably their second largest, mostly guaranteed source of EVs. As some of these start flipping to blue — Virginia and Colorado — the combinations become harder to assemble. However, next time, it might really be the case that Ohio is no longer swing but red — and Florida is no longer swing but blue. Or longer term trends, like gradual shift to Republican voting in Iowa and Wisconsin will make those states in the next decade like Virginia and Colorado have become for Dems this decade. However, my fervent hope is that demographic trends force Republicans to start making governing choices instead of being the party of holding their breath until they turn blue all the time.
ThresherK
@OzarkHillbilly: Okay, is this like the “toast lands butter-side down” study? I’m not looking up, but IIRC it shows that 1) variance of sizes of bread and 2) variance of the height of tables or plates that 3) the toast is more likely to land butter-side down.
I guess to make it totally random we need a coin-flipping machine.
OzarkHillbilly
@Barbara:
No. It was completely and totally right if you are among the 10% who died. The only way it would be wrong was if the percentages who died were way off.
Peale
@Bruce K: they end him by showing up in the low turnout mid terms and throwing out republicans. Once the party can’t win state offices even with gerrymandered state districts, its over.
Barbara
@OzarkHillbilly: My point is simply that when you have a binary outcome it will be 100% one thing or the other regardless of what the underlying probability showed. Many people in this situation would look at 90% odds as being very good and, in their minds, translate that low risk of dying into no risk of dying. Of course they would be wrong, but the human mind is not made for statistics, the same way it isn’t made for actuarial science.
OzarkHillbilly
@ThresherK: I wish I remember where I read it, it was actually quite humorously done.
That was the gist of it.
No One You Know
@SiubhanDuinne: I am sorry for your loss. Were you close?
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin: Yep.
waysel
@TriassicSands: Wang shows his work. Nate hides his. Nates livelihood depends on clicks. Wang does it for free. ’nuff said.
Joel
@Mustang Bobby: since the advent of podcasting and stitcher radio, I have listened to 0 hours of NPR. You can get TAL, Radiolab, Snap Judgement, Planet Money, The Moth, Science Friday, etc. without having to listen to a minute of their news coverage.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I loved the show Parks and Recreation, which was possibly the most politically optimistic show about politics in decades. Clinton is basically a more powerful and older Leslie Knope…a crusader for the public good who seems a hilariously corny because of her devotion to making her corner of local government the best it can be. Sure, she makes mistakes. Occasionally she bends the rules. Some times she’s annoyingly self important. But…even the libertarian ostensibly in charge of her department wants her in actual charge because she’s hypercompetent and super hard working, and her heart is in the right place.
Matt McIrvin
I think I agree with mirror-universe bearded Sam Wang’s 91-93%.
David
Random question, but I’m looking for a quote. Goes something like “people who have no job and live in a tent, will happily vote for any politician who promises that the other guy down the street won’t even have a tent”. Sound familiar?
Matt McIrvin
@David: I know the version about Russian peasants:
Original Lee
@JMG: I saw Dr. Strange last night in IMAX 3D. I don’t usually spring for that level of presentation, but I had been told by several people it was worth it. I definitely concur. I was blown away. They were really using the 3D to do amazingly cool things.
MisterForkbeard
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m so glad we have WikiLeaks to show us this incredibly important and mindblowing information.
Seriously, I like the idea of Wikileaks. But this whole thing is incredibly dumb.
schrodinger's cat
@waysel: When I am grading, I give zero pts for no work shown even if the answer is right.
David
@Matt McIrvin: Nice! Hadn’t heard that one before, but I like it.
joel hanes
Spend two weeks in my small town hometown in Iowa.
Many large and proud Trump yard signs.
No Hillary yard signs at all. None.
My friends say that they’re too afraid of the Trump voters to risk it — keyed cars, slashed tires, that kind of thing. Very depressing — Iowa used to be better than that.
liberal
@Barbara: I don’t think that’s true. You can look at their predictions for the individual states as evidence as to how good their models are.
Matt McIrvin
@joel hanes: Clinton-Kaine signs just started to appear around my town in the past couple of weeks. A few even in people’s yards. The gigantic Trump signs have been up for a year, and have just accumulated the increasingly deranged ones about prison and balls in their orbit.
Matt McIrvin
@Matt McIrvin: …Though that number goes up, maybe even up to 99%, if I can believe the reports about early voting in Nevada giving us a lock. Because the most likely Trump win scenario by far is FL+NC+NH+NV. But without NV he has to win some much bluer state like Pennsylvania or Michigan. Not even ME-2 and that Bernie-or-Buster elector in Washington state can save him.
To some extent I agree with the troll formerly known as shomi: I’ve been burned by those early-voting stories before, to some extent “big crowd at the polls” tales are our version of yard-sign punditry, and I’m skeptical of them. But Nevada seems to have a track record that suggests optimism.
Seanly
Count me in that group. I voted for her in SC primary in ’08. I lived in Little Rock when she was AR’s first lady (a very good family friend served with her on the Arkansas Childrens’ Hospital board). I got my wife to change from a reluctant Clinton supporter to excited by talking with her about Clinton’s knowledge and quiet passion. She’s voting FOR HRC, not just against Trump.
Also, I think a superior ground game and unspoken support by women will make the difference in several key states.
Applejinx
@joel hanes: Hell, I’m in VERMONT and not super comfortable about posting big Hillary signs on anything I’ve got that can’t defend itself. I can’t afford to replace vandalized shit and my car’s already old and fragile.
Call it the terrorist factor. It will stop people from putting up signs, and may also skew polling (women talking on the phone to pollster with husband listening: the ballot box is more truly private, at least for now).
We will have to deal with our homegrown terrorists. I favor buying them off with helicopter money and legal weed. All ya gotta do is keep them from running amok, and keep an eye on their ‘alternate universe’ which is now seriously mainstreamed.
chopper
@Elizabelle:
generally, yes. if someone pulls the lever in person at 7 am and dies that day at noon their vote still counts. there’s literally no means of canceling their vote. so the same standard should apply to early or mail-in ballots.
chopper
@TriassicSands:
yeah, he sure nailed the republican primary.