Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Second rate reporter says what?

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

So many bastards, so little time.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

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

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Another Great Woman…Another Great Vet Campaign Ad

Reader Interactions

124Comments

  3. 3.

    satby

    Love that!

    And one of my older son’s friends from grammar school is running for Santa Cruz City Council, Justin Cummings
    He’s a great guy and will be a great advocate for the citizens of Santa Cruz. Give his video a listen if you’re in that area.
    I like that the newest crop of candidates are diving in headfirst and focusing on local issues.
    Edit: guess the video is on Facebook only, sorry

  4. 4.

    guachi

    NY Times is currently polling 11 races – CA48, GA06, IA04, IL14, KY06, MI08, NY19, NY22, TX32, VA07, WA08. All are close. The combined 528 predicted vote percentages is D 48.7 – R 49.7. By 538 estimates, Democrats are ahead in 5 races and Republicans are ahead in 6.

    The NY Times polling, which isn’t completed yet as they try for 500 responses, has the Democrats ahead in 7 races, behind in 3, and tied in 1. The number of responses ranges from 286 to 473. The Democrats are ahead 45.8-44.3 for all 11 races.

    So… things still look reasonably good in the closest races.

  5. 5.

    Roger Moore

    @guachi:
    Nate Silver was commenting that they haven’t seen any movement in the generic ballot, but that the Democrats have a spending advantage which may help them in the closest contests.

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    @guachi: I looked at those live polls earlier today; if memory serves, aren’t pretty much all of them currently Republican-occupied districts? That’s definitely where we want to be, playing on offense.

    Also, that’s a good ad, but for the love of God I wish her campaign would dial the email frequency back just a bit. I get several messages every day from her campaign; it may not be the most prolific, but it’s in the running.

  7. 7.

    Brachiator

    Love this ad. Love that Hegar pointed out that her opponent had not held a town hall meeting in 5 years.

    The GOP don’t care about their base. They are certain that plutocrat money, gerrymandering and voter suppression will always protect them, no matter what.

    Voters have a chance to prove them wrong.

  10. 10.

    clay

    We early voted today — took the kids like we always do.

    The line was *an hour*! We’ve *never* seen it like this, except once… 2008.

    What this portends, I’ve no idea. (We’re in Jax, FL, by the way.)

  11. 11.

    guachi

    @dmsilev: Yes, all 11 being polled are currently Republican held. 538 is already incorporating the polling into its forecasts, even if the polls aren’t complete.

    For example, the currently good results for Elissa Slotkin in MI-8 (up four points) has increased her 538 win percentage today from 50% to 65%.

    On the other hand, the results for Amy McGrath in KY-6 (down 4) have decreased her chances from 50% to 39%.

  13. 13.

    clay

    @WaterGirl: I know you’re referring to the stupid line DeSantos is using against Gillam, but there WAS a horrific shooting in Talley yesterday.

  14. 14.

    Brachiator

    @Roger Moore:

    Nate Silver was commenting that they haven’t seen any movement in the generic ballot, but that the Democrats have a spending advantage which may help them in the closest contests

    I suspect that most of this stuff is meaningless. It is theoretically valuable to compare the most recent generic ballots to earlier ones, but now there are actual candidates running against each other, and ballot issues that are drawing voters to vote.

    I’m also not sure what Democratic party money is supposed to accomplish. Are late ads supposed to move people?

    Here in California, people still deciding who to vote for are having problems finding endorsement info about nonpartisan and judicial offices and local issues, often because their local newspaper has gone out of business.

    One hopeful sign is that voter turnout is projected to be high.

    In the  non-Presidential election of 2014 just 42 percent of California’s registered voters cast ballots, a record low. But this year…
    turnout is expected to be high.

    Absentee voting has also increased.

    One in five absentee voters returned their ballots as of Oct. 31, compared with one in eight who had done so at the same point before the June primary. 

    Still, this is unlikely to match 1982, when voter turnout was almost 70 percent.

  18. 18.

    Cheryl Rofer

    I love that we now have a number of women veterans running, so that they can out-macho the boys.

    That said, I would like to change the paradigm that violence is the way to solve things, but for now I like that they can beat them over the head for not knowing (beep) about war.

    And, as noted above, there are a lot of other good points in the ad.

  19. 19.

    NotMax

    @guachi

    Gee, maybe I should head to the nearest slaughterhouse and read chicken entrails.

    About as scientific a sampling and trustworthy a metric as is online polling.

  20. 20.

    Gin & Tonic

    I expect no competitive races on my ballot, except for town council. But I’ll be there anyway, as always.

  25. 25.

    guachi

    @NotMax: It’s not “online polling” It’s regular phone polling. Go read chicken entrails if you want but I’ll take polling any day.

  26. 26.

    clay

    @WaterGirl: I figured as much. No biggie.

    Brace yourself — this is a shock — the perpetrator has a history in the alt-right movement and threats against women.

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    @guachi

    Will take your word for it but it has been described (and lauded) here multiple times as online polling.

    If a single poll moves Silver’s percentages that much, then there is something inherently suspect with all his data up until now, something suspect with the new data, or both.

    But then, have always viewed Silver as a gussied up racetrack tout anyway and regard anything non-sports related from him askance.

  33. 33.

    Jay

    @Corner Stone:

    LATEST POLL RESULTS!!!!!!!

    “Four out of 10 Canadians say the price will determine whether they buy their pot legally or on the black market as legalization approaches.

    That’s according to a Global News’ exclusive Ipsos poll on cannabis usage in Canada.”

  35. 35.

    Brachiator

    @WaterGirl:

    From what I’ve read, money at the end is very useful for GOTV.

    How?

    Are we talking about something other than political ads?

  36. 36.

    Zelma

    Ok. She’s been asking me for money for weeks. I’ll send her some, I don’t want to look at my next credit card bill.

  37. 37.

    guachi

    @NotMax: The reason a single poll can move the win percentage as much as it does is the two races I mentioned were almost at 50%. Win percentages are most sensitive at that point.

    A poll showing a candidate ahead by 25 instead of 20 might move the win chance from 99.8 to 99.9. But a poll showing the candidate ahead 5 instead of 0 is vastly more of an influence, especially in races where there is little polling.

  39. 39.

    NotMax

    @Jay

    The market is, shall we say, disjointed.

    Supply shortages plague Canada’s new cannabis marketplace

    The name of the store is High North, but it might as well be named High and Dry because for all but about four hours of the first two weeks since marijuana was legalized in Canada, there was no pot to sell. Source

  40. 40.

    Roger Moore

    @Brachiator:

    It is theoretically valuable to compare the most recent generic ballots to earlier ones, but now there are actual candidates running against each other, and ballot issues that are drawing voters to vote.

    A generic ballot poll is less informative than a poll of a specific district, but it’s a lot more informative than no poll at all– and for a lot of districts that’s what we’re likely to get. I went to 538 and chose a close district more or less at random. It happened to be one of the districts that’s just been polled by Sienna/Upshot (KY-6). The most recent poll before that one was from the beginning of October, and that was a partisan Republican poll. The most recent poll by an independent pollster was from mid September. None of the polls of that district was of more than 600 respondents, and most of them were only about 400.

    This is one of those districts that we’re supposed to care a lot about because they’re close, and it went a month and a half between serious, independent polls, and even those had small sample sizes. Nor is this atypical; I checked out several other close districts, and none of them had regular, high-quality polls. There are just too many districts to poll them all regularly with large sample polls. Generic ballot polls are a way of filling in the gaps between the district polls, and unfortunately for a lot of the districts we care about that’s most of what we have.

  41. 41.

    oldster

    I can now say, with pride, that I partly funded MJ Hegar’s ad.

    She was one of the 47 that I picked from the BJ list, and she got a chunk of my donation.

    I love to see my money being put to good use.

  43. 43.

    Corner Stone

    Just jam the fuck out of Jerry Rice at the line of scrimmage. Don’t give him a free release and he’s got nothing. Excellent route runner but not too fast in make-up speed.

  45. 45.

    A Ghost To Most

    We are off the map. The pollsters are as blind as we are. They have no model for this.

    All hell is likely to blow up by the end of the week, whatever the results. Buckle up.

  47. 47.

    PsiFighter37

    @Gwangung: I think it’s a combination of a) very little polling, and b) being this close to ED, there is very little chance of a big swing relative to a recently-completed poll. I don’t think much of the polling being done at a congressional district level is actually much good these days, however – I get the sense that compared to 2006 and 2008, there’s much less polling, as well as much less quality polling going on. With the massive change in behavior of folks answering polls, I think that means there’s a lot less certainty about the exact magnitude of what will happen on Tuesday. Here’s to hoping that everything goes as planned – and much, much better.

  48. 48.

    Corner Stone

    @Jay: The only pole I want to see at this point has a delightful young lady named Mercedes somewhere near it.

  49. 49.

    Jay

    @NotMax:

    It’s way worse than that. The Potheads in Vancouver didn’t even get their bylaws in place until mid-July, so Vancouver has no “legal” pot stores, just medical and grey market shops.

    No one was ready, not the Industry, all branches of Government, nobody. You can’t set up a whole new regulated retail industry in just 3 months.

    Still, Reefer Madness hasn’t happened.

  51. 51.

    guachi

    @A Ghost To Most: I’m sure there will be people who criticize pollsters and those who analyze polls once the results are finally in, but I won’t.

    Like you said, there is no model for such a massive money advantage. There is no model for such heavy early voting in a mid-term election. There is no model for such heavy personal opposition to the President. (I say “personal opposition” because the opposition is directly related to the actions of the President and not something general like the economy being good or bad)

  52. 52.

    Brachiator

    @Roger Moore:

    A generic ballot poll is less informative than a poll of a specific district, but it’s a lot more informative than no poll at all

    So, I guess the polls have some value to political strategists as part of a got effort, but otherwise the information value is low. At this point, I can wait a few days to get an actual vote.

  55. 55.

    Roger Moore

    @NotMax:
    There are a ton of polls because there are a ton of races. Some of the big races have been heavily polled, but many of the smaller ones have barely been polled at all. There are lots of House races that have at most a handful of polls, and those aren’t limited to (normally) safe districts. One of the things people like Nate Silver have been complaining about is that the pollsters like to re-poll the same races again and again- I think TX-Sen was one he especially complained about- rather than spreading the effort among all the races. So we can simultaneously be buried in polls but still not have a good idea of what’s happening in some important races.

  56. 56.

    Brachiator

    By the numbers, from WaPo, a couple of factoids.

    There are 184 female candidates who are not incumbents who will be on the ballot in November.

    Notably, every female governor is either term-limited or running in 2018.

  58. 58.

    Brachiator

    A few more factoids.

    Several would be the first woman, woman of color, or LGBTQ candidate elected to their particular seat. Many are lawyers, business executives, nurses or teachers. About 15 are military veterans.

  59. 59.

    Karen

    I’m really scared of what will happen on Tuesday because of the possibilities that:

    We don’t win because they’ve cheated.

    We win but Satan claims voter fraud with every Democratic vote. He’s already threatened about voter fraud so it’s not a huge leap.

    Is there a way that we win without agita?

  60. 60.

    germy

    @Brachiator:

    Love this ad. Love that Hegar pointed out that her opponent had not held a town hall meeting in 5 years.

    The GOP don’t care about their base. They are certain that plutocrat money, gerrymandering and voter suppression will always protect them, no matter what.

    They’ve got the fox network to take care of their voters for them. No need for town hall meetings.

  61. 61.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Roger Moore: Many of the (nominally) less-competitive races have no polling at all, so all Silver can really do is incorporate a guess based on “fundamentals” and the generic ballot. For instance, there’s no polling whatsoever in my district, but it’s probably a pretty good guess that Lori Trahan will have a good lead. But sometimes the numbers end up surprising you when they arrive, like in Steve King’s district.

  63. 63.

    Roger Moore

    @Brachiator:

    So, I guess the polls have some value to political strategists as part of a got effort, but otherwise the information value is low.

    Bear in mind, though, that with sites like Act Blue making it easy for us to donate to various political campaigns, we’re all political strategists now.

  65. 65.

    Uncle Cosmo

    I hate to sound a down note, but some, maybe a lot, of our folks in the closest races are going to need more $$$ after the election – for the costs associated with opposing (or mounting) a challenge to the results. We have to assume the Thugs will be challenging every & any Democratic lead they have a prayer of overturning; hopefully we’ll have the wherewithal to do the same.

  66. 66.

    J R in WV

    We contributed to M J Hegar way back, and again more recently. She was a rescue copter pilot, a Major, when she got shot down by a RPG in Afganistan on a mission to rescue wounded troops. She and her crew was rescued by the other copter on the mission.

    Major Hegar was pretty seriously wounded by shrapnel and flying windshield fragments, and has some interesting tats to cover the scars. Not your average congressional candidate. This great political ad tells the truth about that race.

    Best of luck to the Major (ret) in her most recent contest.

  67. 67.

    NotMax

    FYI, if it’s your thing, O’Donnell doing a Saturday show (on right now), Maddow doing a Sunday show at 9 p.m. Eastern.

  68. 68.

    Brachiator

    @Karen:

    We win but Satan claims voter fraud with every Democratic vote. He’s already threatened about voter fraud so it’s not a huge leap.

    You can’t do anything about this. Trump lies and his supporters are eager to believe his lies. A devoted Trump follower who comes out to the food truck at work insists that 10 percent of votes were cast by illegal immigrants.

    Is there a way that we win without agita?

    As late Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis used to say, “Just win, baby.”

  69. 69.

    Jay

    @Karen:

    “Is there a way that we win without agita?”

    Because President Puke Funnel holds that everything is about him, there’s a 50/50 chance that after the bluewave, Dolt 45 will aim his guns at the Weak! Looser! cofeffe ReThugs and Maggie H.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    Love how Republicans just openly embrace nepotism now:

    U.S. Rep. Steve King employs his son and daughter-in-law as full-time campaign staffers, and has paid them more than $805,000 since 2004, records show.
    Although typically legal, an arrangement paying close family members year-round for congressional campaign work for more than a decade is unusual in several respects, experts said.
    While holding various campaign manager and chairman titles, King’s son, Jeff King, has received a steady paycheck dating to at least 2004, the earliest year for which electronic records are available from the Federal Election Commission.

    14 years, they’ve been on the payroll. If he goes down the whole family goes broke.

  72. 72.

    NotMax

    @Brachiator

    FAKE ELECTION! //

    Let’s keep in mind how well the challenge/recount route played out for Roy Moore. In Ala-freakin’-bama.

    It ain’t gonna be smooth sailing, but the boats will make it to safe harbor.

  73. 73.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator: In ’82 people were talking about Reagan as a doomed one-termer. It goes to show that there’s no correlation whatsoever between a midterm and the subsequent presidential election (Silver recently posted a historical scatter plot–it’s not a positive or a negative relation; there literally is no correlation at all).

  74. 74.

    Nelle

    This has probably been well discussed but if so, humor me. How are they polling? We have no landline. Friends and family who have landlines don’t answer them. Most people I know under 40 don’t have landlines. Most that I know don’t answer unknown numbers. How can anything be reliable? Or do I just know the oddities?

  76. 76.

    germy

    @Nelle: Same question I’ve been asking. Who answers their phone for unfamiliar numbers? Every other day there’s another news report about how to avoid being scammed, and the first piece of advice is always “Don’t answer a call if you don’t recognize the number!”

    Who is being polled? Has anyone here been polled?

    My wife got a call once, thought she was being polled, but the guy was trying to get her credit card number. I googled their number while she was on the phone and it came up with a bunch of complaints of fraud.

  78. 78.

    Patricia Kayden

    @A Ghost To Most: Buckled up and dying for that seeet blue wave on Tuesday!! It will be nice to see Trump’s bigotry and bullying soundly rebuked by voters. And I’m looking forward to Democrats holding hearings to address the swamp which has taken over D.C. under the current regime.

  79. 79.

    NotMax

    @germy

    Some of us do not have caller I.D. (or are unwilling to pay extra for it). My phone has no screen on which to display it, in any case.

    Just sayin’.

  80. 80.

    FelonyGovt

    My daughter’s girlfriend voted early at West LA College today. She waited almost 3 hours in a line composed mostly of young people. (They handed out free pizza).

    Gotta be encouraging.

  83. 83.

    guachi

    @Nelle:

    “They” as in the New York Times polling? Each polls shows the breakdown of landlines and cell phones. The particular race I have up in my browser right now is NY-22 and it shows 40% cell phone and 60% landline with a 1 in 52 response rate for cell phones and 1 in 20 for landlines.

    EDIT: As a counterpoint, GA-06 (Karen Handel’s district) is 70% cell phone and 30% landline with a 1 in 51 response rate for cell phones and 1 in 79 for landlines.

  87. 87.

    Brachiator

    @Matt McIrvin:

    In ’82 people were talking about Reagan as a doomed one-termer. It goes to show that there’s no correlation whatsoever between a midterm and the subsequent presidential election (Silver recently posted a historical scatter plot–it’s not a positive or a negative relation; there literally is no correlation at all).

    Yep. This is not surprising.

    Also, I wonder who these people were who predicted Reagan’s doom.

    There’s also no correlation between pundit prophetic BS and reality.

  90. 90.

    Steve in the ATL

    @guachi: I live in GA-06 (hi JPL!) and I have a landline only because cable/internet/phone is cheaper than cable/internet. We haven’t answered that phone in years.

  91. 91.

    Roger Moore

    @Kay:

    Love how Republicans just openly embrace nepotism now

    It looks as if they’ve been doing it for quite a while if King’s kids have been on the payroll since 2004. I’ll reiterate a point I’ve made about Trump before: he’s doing all the things Republicans have wanted to do for a long time now. The big difference is that he’s open about them while the Republicans have tended to be quiet about them before. That creates the big tension within the party. They’re simultaneously worried about getting caught and eager to be able to do things in the open. So if Trump succeeds in getting away with his corruption (and bigotry, electoral cheating, etc.) it will encourage the rest of the party to come out into the open. If he’s punished for it, they’d go back into hiding.

  92. 92.

    Beautifulplumage

    Hee, hee, hee….Duncan Hunter failed to secure duncanhunter.com…it has been put to good use.

  94. 94.

    NotMax

    @Roger Moore

    There’s a not insignificant number of Congresspeople who work out a deal so that Congressperson A’s family works as staff for Congressperson B, and vice versa.

    King is too corrupt even to tack on that veneer of operating ethically.

  97. 97.

    Amir Khalid

    Open thread:
    My run of bad luck with tech continues. The headband of my new headphones broke Friday, forcing me to buy a new and hopefully less fragile pair. Feh. This Sunday morning, I find I have mislaid the charging cable for my new phone and must buy a replacement pronto. Feh feh.

  100. 100.

    Suzanne

    @Nelle: I have the same question. I was polled once, years ago, and have never been reached since. I have no idea how they got my number. We have no landline, because everyone except for Spawn the Younger has a mobile. None of my friends have ever been polled. Is it all old people and stay-at-home parents getting called?

  103. 103.

    Jay

    @NotMax:

    Yup. Reveal after reveal, (eg. Yale, Harvard, Kavanaugh) has shown the US is “run” by elitist cliques.

    Another metric, the #1 requirement for being a CEO, is being the child of a CEO.

    Meanwhile, Wohl, the youngest guy to get a lifetime ban on Financial Services, is ripping off homeless women for $1200.

  104. 104.

    Steve in the ATL

    They are still having a better season than Florida. Sorry, Betty, Paul W, Gator90, et al.

    Sorry not sorry….

  105. 105.

    Kay

    @Roger Moore:

    Sherrod Brown’s daughter worked for the Ohio Democratic Party at one point, 2004 or 6, around then.

    But that’s a horrible job so it doesn’t count :)

    She’s since been elected in her own right- city council or something- urban, local.

  107. 107.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Suzanne: While I don’t often think of myself as “old”, we do have a landline here, for a number of reasons, and we don’t have caller ID on it, because I am mostly a cheapskate. So I sometimes answer the phone for calls I’m not expecting, and once in a while it turns out to be a poll or survey, which I don’t mind, because I’m interested in the questions they ask, how they ask them, etc. Maybe it’s my math training, but I like to think of the polling parameters as I’m answering. Sometimes I even answer truthfully.

    A couple of months ago it was the State Dept. of Health, with a long survey about health care utilization, insurance coverage, etc. Not just a well-designed survey, but the caller had a voice I could listen to for hours – sonorous like a midnight-shift jazz radio DJ from a major urban area. It was almost a shame to hang up.

  109. 109.

    Terry chay

    @guachi: NotMax is right. If Silver was being honest he’d admit that there is almost no way the day at can make a prediction into a midterm election, let alone this one where the early voter turnout and the low response rate is making this effectively unpollable.

    Just taking the poll you mentioned, the standard deviation on that poll WHEN IT FINISHES, will be a little over 20 responses which works out to +/- 8 percent or greater than lead in every single one of those polls! Plus, those things are modeled but there is no model for the current turnout numbers, so they are taking really high statistical error and adding systemic error to it.

    We don’t know the direction of the systemic error. In 2016, aggregate polling predicted the overall vote count pretty darn well, but the models didn’t predict the softness in voter participation in the urban rust belt (e.g. urbanites in California were overweighting the electoral math in Pennsylvania) which is how polling missed the call.

    This election is even more difficult to poll (being a midterm and a large number of independent races) and the models are more prone to that error because there is no past model that can guide how to weight this huge voter turnout of people (minorities, affluent, young people, first time voters, #GOPVotingBlue) who are pretty much unpollable.

  110. 110.

    Kay

    Nate Silver has Cordray at 55.9 chance of winning. I love the decimal point.

    *That’s an improvement, btw. I had an Ohio political person tell me Cordray would “pull away” at the end, so I guess he meant by .9

    I was hoping for …whole numbers in this pulling away thing .000009

  111. 111.

    James E Powell

    @NotMax:

    A million years ago, before Reagan, my girlfriend and I got jobs in the Ohio General Assembly because we worked very hard as volunteers on campaigns. We attended a big party attended by all the D staffers, about 50 people. We were the only ones who were not related to an elected official, party leader, or a big-shot donor. Politics is a family business. The legitimate pay is pretty low, so it’s a bit like the non-profit internships. Finishing schools for elites.

  112. 112.

    NotMax

    @Gin & Tonic

    sonorous like a midnight-shift jazz radio DJ

    More than likely would not have understood the reference if you said, “Play Misty for me.”

    :)

  115. 115.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    this is so pathetic, and so corrupt, and so…. trumpy

    Philip Rucker @ PhilipRucker
    DeSantis says that as governor he would go to Don Trump Jr. and Eric Trump to try to convince them to move the Trump Organization headquarters to Florida from New York.

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