Here’s NBC commentary from the “bad” poll, i.e., the one that has some Dems (not me) alarmed today because it shows the race tightening:
According to the NBC News/WSJ poll, 61 percent of all voters think America’s response to the coronavirus has been unsuccessful. That includes 84 percent of Dem respondents, 58 percent of independents, but just 37 percent of Republicans.
Polls, schmolls, but this illustrates the scale of our national problem as well as anything I’ve seen. By any empirical measure, the U.S. response to the pandemic has been unsuccessful when compared to peer nations. We have more dead, higher rates of infection, lower per-capita testing, etc. That’s just a fact.
Yet north of 60% of Republicans refuse to believe it because it reflects poorly on the Orange Calf. So yeah, why wouldn’t these same people believe in an insane conspiracy theory like Qanon? They’re already denying the evidence of their ears and eyes.
A conman’s greatest ally is the psychological hurdle their marks must overcome to admit they’ve been swindled. It sure looks like most of Trump’s marks won’t ever admit it, and they’re drawn to loopy conspiracies that make Trump the hero precisely because it validates their own faith. Apparently it’s less painful to let go of reality completely than to admit they’re been played.
I still believe enough Trump voters have quietly concluded that the Trump experiment is a failure. Not the hardcore MAGAs, but people like one of my Trump-voting uncles (who now says he’ll vote for some libertarian choad), people the DNC has deployed schmucks like John Kasich to appeal to, the 30+ percent capable of perceiving the embarrassing systemic failure to handle the pandemic.
Trump’s electoral college win was so fluky and narrow that we don’t have to peel too many off to send the shitgibbon packing. I think we have a decent chance of seeing a good-old fashioned thumping that preempts the planned “voter fraud” shenanigans in November.
But sharing a country with such a massive number of gullible dopes sucks. Open thread.
Ken
If it’s any consolation, I expect the Republican numbers will come in line with the rest of the nation’s between November and January. They may even go further, once they can stuff the last eight months down the memory hole and blame Biden.
Baud
I don’t think they’re gullible. They mostly have no way forward that doesn’t involve either sticking with Trump or liberals winning. Despite what some might think, the Dems haven’t stopped moving to the left, so we’re not really making a play for these voters aside from letting people like Kasich try to appeal to their better angels (as if).
New Deal democrat
In the 3 biggest electoral landslides of the past 100 years, the loser still got 40% of the vote.
In 1984, Mondale got 41%.
In 1964, Goldwater got 39%.
And in 1932, after 3 1/2 years of unremitting awfulness, Hoover got 40%.
Trump’s floor is 40%.
I am not concerned about one poll, anymore than I am overjoyed by another poll today that has Biden leading by 14%.
RepubAnon
Pity that most Republicans are so afraid these days that they use victim blaming to deflect from the possibility that they could be next.
“Oh, if they had worked harder, they’d still have a job…”
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud:
I completely agree. I also want to point out there were religious voters who were very skeptical of Trump and, in some cases, just didn’t vote in 2016. Now they are enthusiastic Trump voters. He has really consolidated his rural base. So, just saying we need to pick off a few of his voters to win doesn’t reflect the fact that some people have moved solidly into Trump’s camp. This election is going to be tighter than the polling shows.
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
In 1936, the Republican got 36%. That’s the record low.
feebog
Forget about the national polling and especially any single national poll. In the six battleground states, PA, WI, MI, FL, AZ and NC, Biden’s polling average is well above the margin of error in the first four, about two points in AZ and tied in NC. For good measure, Biden is up by two on average in OH polls, and only down less than two in IA. Don’t know what kind of bump Biden/Harris will get from the convention this week, but all in all I’d much rather be in Biden’s position than tRump’s.
Baud
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
What’s your evidence that Trump has gained net supporters?
New Deal democrat
@Baud:
ok thanks.
taumaturgo
The conspiracy peddlers are going with the boat flotilla size polls!
Yutsano
You have had at least the vast majority of the rural population being told over and over again that liberals are evil. Liberals will destroy your way of life. Liberals will allow strange people in your schools. Liberals will allow abortion on demand up until the day before the baby is due. Liberals will disband your church and force your children to turn from Jesus. I’m not even covering all their propaganda. That won’t go away after one election. That won’t go away even after a generation. Just as many kids stay on the farm as leave. They also get stewed in all this bullshit. But they also understand they are ultimately a minority that is becoming even more so with every passing year. We’re not going to win these people over. We just have to keep outvoting them.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud: Family members, plus I occasionally check conservative blogs. There are some long time, intermittant commentors I’ve seen who were reluctant Trump voters. They didn’t like the vulgarity or the fact he was multiply divorced. They are now all in.
zhena gogolia
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
They were always all in. they were just pretending.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: That’s a little over 1/3. That is the absolute floor for a Presidential candidate so far. Here is hoping that the Orange One breaks that record.
Baud
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Thanks. I don’t find that sort of thing too reliable.
A reluctant Trump vote counts the same as an enthusiastic Trump vote. It doesn’t mean Trump has gained net voters.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I think the bit about how Trump’s narrow win spooked everybody is about right. A lot of people seemed to fall for a line of thinking that went something like this:
1: There was no way for Trump to win.
2: He did win. Therefore,
3: Trump is some kind of subtle political genius.
But the only thing wrong with that is, well, everything. He is manifestly not some political genius. He’s a clown who got lucky because a bunch of things broke right for him.
He had the luck to run against a candidate his party had spent 25 years smearing as a criminal, so people didn’t like or trust her.
He was lucky because the Electoral College gives an unearned advantage to his party.
He was lucky to have Putin’s help.
He was lucky that James Comey’s overblown sense of propriety led him to take a shit on Clinton a week before the election.
2016 for the Republicans was kind of the equivalent of a baseball team going into the ninth inning eight runs down, and then scoring nine. It can happen. It does happen once in a while. But it’s mighty unlikely, and mighty hard, and any manager whose “strategy” is, “Well, we’ll just let whatever happens happen until the ninth inning, and then if we’re behind, we’ll just score more than the other guys, and we’ll win bigly!” is an idiot. Nobody is going to win that way, but Republicans—at least the ones I know–are convinced that this is genius, and that Trump can’t lose.
Sadly, there are still some Democrats who fall for this shit as well, though the last half year has thankfully disabused them somewhat of this delusion.
Now, none of this is to say that November is a done deal, or that we don’t have a lot of work to do. It is to say that we have a huge leg up, and that if we don’t get cocky or lazy, and we do what we need to do, we’re going to win this.
Donald Trump is not some political genius. Donald Trump is a guy who fell ass-backwards into a fortune, and has been able to pay people to shield him from the effects of his colossal stupidity all his life. When he ran up against this pandemic though, he ran up for the first time in his life against something he couldn’t sue or threaten into going away, and everybody has seen this now, up close and personal.
If we keep our heads, we’re going to annihilate this guy.
NotMax
Now if only could convince them that having more than $250 in the bank is a magnet for the virus, so for peace of mind send any excess to
P.O. Box [redacted]
[redacted], Hawaii
where it will be safely handled distant from your community and carefully disposed of in due course by our team of experts.
//
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Anecdata is not data. Also, a reluctant Trump voter is a Trump voter.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
I was listening to 1A on NPR earlier, a show on Kamala Harris and what her selection means, etc. One guest said “both Biden and Harris oppose universal health care”, the other that Kamala Harris is “not a progressive by any measure”. No pushback from the host on either score. I had to turn it off. The original host was a tiresome millennial Broderist (Joshua Johnson, now on MSNBC weekends), but I actually missed him today.
I also heard Kasich on the radio this morning. It’s almost comical how abrasive he is, but he was IIRC one of the most popular governors in the country when he left office. And while neither he nor anyone in the media will ever put it his way, a large part of that was that he implemented ObamaCare.
Baud
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
“Anec” comes the Greek work “μαλακίες” which means “bullshit.”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Yutsano:
My oldest daughter informed me that dad, after years of being pretty racially decent, had spewed a bunch of N-word invective last month – I was saddened but unsurprised, I knew that mom has been bombarding him with Fox News since the start of COVID (he generally likes sports and Turner Classic movies). I called their house last week, and the Fox was blaring so loud in the background that I could hear everything that Hannity and his shrill guest were rapid-fire shouting in the background.
Went to have an outdoor meal with them yesterday. I got treated to an N-word tirade.
That was never him. We can’t put them in the same room with our two youngest daughters anymore – there would be forever estrangements, and I don’t want that.
Honest to god, it is some Radio Rwanda shit. They may as well have a two hour segment showing demonstrations, fires and graffiti while shrieking the N-word.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
At this point, I take that as a compliment.
ETA: Kay asked the other day why we don’t pick on centrists more. I just haven’t heard centrists engage in this sort of messaging against our nominees in a long time. Might be my bubble. Might be a reflection of our current reality.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I didn’t realize your dad was so economically anxious.
Cacti
I never figured that Trump would get anything less than 45% of the vote nationally.
Vote like your life depends on it and vote like the future of American democracy depends on it.
Because both of them do.
jc
Dems keep trying to win by playing by the rules. Trump and Co. start by throwing out the rules.
The Dems try to take principled positions on issues, which puts them at a disadvantage when they’re running against someone completely lacking in principles, scruples, morals and ethics.
Trump isn’t running a normal re-election campaign, where the candidate tries to make a persuasive case for why he’s the better choice. Instead, he’s working every angle, cutting every corner, fixing every political appointee. Voter suppression, tampering with the USPS, dirty tricks, rat-fucking, intimidation, smearing his opponents, threats, etc. All the while whining about how unfairly he’s being treated.
Betty Cracker
@New Deal democrat:
Wow, I didn’t realize that!
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
GOP landslides seem bigger than Dem landslides because they tend to be broad based geographically, which obviously affects the electoral college vote.
rp
McGovern got 38% in 1972.
dmsilev
@Baud: If they want to redefine ‘centrist’ as ‘the Democratic agenda’, I’m actually ok with that. Biden’s proposed set of policies are quite a bit to the left of what we normally call centrism in this country, and seem to have done a good job picking out meaningful and useful ideas from the far left while leaving out most of the frothing and purity-posturing.
Yutsano
@jc: We’ll beat him anyway. And if it’s obvious he won by cheating there will be an uproar. And if you thought the Women’s March was big, imagine that with a bunch of unemployed people who have nothing else to do rising up. But that doesn’t matter. Let them try. We’ll still win.
Baud
@dmsilev:
It’s frustrating because I like many progressive policies, but I don’t believe in their politics (at least the ones whose voices we hear more often and who claim to speak for the whole group).
zhena gogolia
@Yutsano:
I like your attitude.
HalfAssedHomesteader
It was an experiment in the same sense that ramming your car into an ATM is an experiment to see if money will come out.
zzyzx
I mean I get that complaint but you can’t build a society that way. Destruction is always easier than creation but I’d still rather try to build something than just be a bomb thrower.
NotMax
@Yustano
Probably better to have the gap narrow? A consistent double digit lead breeds complacency, which dampens turnout. Although also perhaps not, as in the unique circumstances of this year the regular touchstones are suspect.
‘Tis a puzzlement.
dmsilev
@Baud: What, you don’t think screaming loudly and putting ideological purity above coalition building is a long-term road to political success? Oh, and emojis in Tweets. That’s very important.
zhena gogolia
@zzyzx:
Yes, I’m not sure what this person wants Dems to do.
Baud
@dmsilev: ?
divF
@Baud: A landslide for the Dems ( > 350 EVs) would still look close because of all those empty states in the middle of the country + Texas and the Deep South colored red on the network maps.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Kamala Harris is going to be attacked by BJP’s troll army and the purity left in India and here. You can take that to the bank.
NotMax
@zzyzx
This. All politics is dirty; Republican politics is filthy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m happy to pick on certain centrists. I was perversely glad that Ed Rendell stuck his head up a few weeks ago, cause he’s one of my favorite people to bash, and he’s fairly obscure. I mocked John Delaney and Steve Bullock during the primary. I’d pick on more centrists/moderates/whatevers in the media, but I’ve stopped reading them. Whatever happened to Joe Klein, anyway? (kidding, I don’t really care)
JR
@feebog: The value in the national polls is that there’s a lot more of them. The results are correlated with the state ones, and in the limited sample we have so far, a Biden lead is 1.6 points higher in the national margin versus the tipping point (or meta margin).
Yutsano
@NotMax: Normally I would say yes but I wonder if that’s going to hold this cycle. Yes a lot of his voters will come out for him but there is also a lot of anger on the Democratic side. Stories from Europe and Asia are coming into their homes. The Black vote is as motivated if not more so than for Obama. Even the Hispanic voters are breaking our way if we can get them to come out especially in places like Texas. There are major risks out there. But what has me cautiously optimistic is the Wisconsin primary. Even with suppression, long lines, and the threat of Covid out there Democrats came out in force. I’m not seeing any indicators that’s going to change come November 3rd.
zhena gogolia
I haven’t worn a tank top for a very long time, but this one’s tempting:
https://store.joebiden.com/young-joe-biden-black-tank/
MattF
FWIW, Rick Wilson blames FOX for a lot of the crazy. FOX trained its viewers to swallow garbage, now they are moving on to garbage-plus. I think that underplays the role of racism, myself. Yesterday, Trump was repeatedly given the opportunity to disavow birtherism 2.0, and he, repeatedly, declined to do so.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I got trolled by all 3 groups I mentioned for making a fairly innocuous reply to Jen Rubin’s comment about KH being a Truman democrat.
Ruckus
I look at 2 things which are predicative of probably not much.
1. Normal people have been standing up to the shit storm that is shitforbrains. In many cities and states. At the house of the postmaster.
2. Now this one is lame but, the boating, the parties. They really aren’t that big, not even on the order of his DC inauguration. His support is solid but at least visibly it really isn’t that big.
I suspect that 40% is his maximum. Yes he has supporters, the massive racists, the people that would cut off their own arm if it pissed off the people they don’t like. The Karens and Kens of the world who are out there acting like their leader just are not that many. We out voted them with Clinton, lost by 77,000 votes out of over 100 million. In 2018 we flipped a number of house members and it looks like that shellacking is going to continue. People with real lives, not morons who tattoo themselves with pictures of a 74 yr old moron are pissed. Republicans with political history are quitting politics, their democratic replacements are even or ahead in republican strongholds.
I know, don’t get over cocky.
But at the same time we also shouldn’t believe their last ditch efforts to kill the country are going to easily win.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Right. I can’t remember the last time a centrist said anything worth thinking about. They aren’t the force the were 20 years ago. They have two things going for them: (1) the media loves them and (2) we need them to form a majority in Congress. But they don’t have any ideas anymore other than fetish for bipartisanship.
If someone from the center had exercised some leadership after Trump won, I might have followed them because of Wilmerism in 2016. But no one took that opportunity. In a way I’m glad, but I’m not sure we’ll get another shot to get this right.
Yutsano
@schrodingers_cat: I actually worry how much her mother who was a Brahmin is going to affect the Indian vote. Hopefully the fact that she is South Asian (and speaks the language of your cooking) will overcome that. If so then watch places like Houston. That could push someone like Hegar over the top.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
I think Michael Bennet might have taken that role, but he was sidelined by cancer and didn’t get his campaign going soon enough. He’s a very good guy, I think.
NotMax
@Yutsano
Unaired The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode: The Cheesehead Gambit.
:)
(OT. Time has been wholly unkind to that series.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
You didn’t catch Seth Moulton Fever?
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Was he a part of the anti-Pelosi junta? Not the type of leadership I was looking for.
Baud
@zhena gogolia: He seems eminently likeable.
LongHairedWeirdo
With respect and regards, we knew this already, with their embrace of Bush as war president/hero. Sure, they don’t talk about him *now*, but they wouldn’t admit he was an idiot who mistakes violence for strength and buck-passing for leadership.
This is the problem with the right wing propaganda machine. Sure, one big problem is that it says “see your friends and neighbors? Don’t think of them as hard working people who you’d probably like if you get to know… not unless they’re Republicans, because Democrats are evil, horrible, scheming, freedom-hating, anti-religious, etc., etc.”
The other is their “Dear Leader” propaganda. Q is a difference in degree, not kind; remember, Pizzagate was during the Obama administration, and had similar accusations. The beauty of Q, from a strategic standpoint, is that it covers for how much of an idiot Trump is – “he’s fighting a secret war against evil people, people even more evil than typical of our friends and neighbors of a different political party!”
Notice how it encourages people to believe the worst of Democrats, and deflects criticism. “People don’t criticize Trump because he’s a moronic, bigoted, lazy, corrupt, incompetent; they criticize him over *POLICY* and because they’re *SCARED* he’s going to arrest *CHILD MOLESTERS* who are high ranking Democrats!” I’ll bet the conspiracy explains how Ghislaine Maxwell[1] was a federal investigator all along, which is why Trump is wishing her well – and that the backlash for doing so was because of, obviously, fear that Trump is about to step into a phone booth and turn into Toadstool Man, whose, uh, you know, was bitten by a radioactive toadstool, warping its appearance and ensuring it’s something ain’t no one gonna want to put in their mouth.
What? It’s *possible*! Okay, no, I haven’t ever heard of a radioactive toadstool biting someone *there*. But there’s no evidence it *didn’t* happen, either![2]
Anyway: this sort of propaganda is extremely dangerous, because of what it says, that has no basis in any form of reality. Because there’s nothing to find, Trump is going to “fail” to clean house, which will mean, to many, that there are still evil criminal masterminds molesting children all through the government. Don’t think that everyone has to fall for it for it to be dangerous; it’s the sort of thing that can make a person understand why one of their fellow travelers is stockpiling guns and ammunition, and trying to learn to make explosives, “just in case,” you know, so, no need to report those worries to the police or FBI.
[1] Joke: AND HOW THE HELL DOES AN ORDINARY PERSON WITH A SIMPLE NAME LIKE MAXWELL END UP WITH A FIRST NAME THAT….uh… you know, when fatigued, it’s really, really hard to learn unusual spellings of names….
[2] Yes, I’m referring to Mark “I’m not *quite* as stupid as I look[3]” Meadows discussion of how there’s no proof there *isn’t* fraud in mail-in voting. And I’m not making the amazingly annoyed observation that doesn’t really belong here.[4]
[3] He *is* correct, just mistaken about the *direction* of the ‘not quite’.
[4] Having watched West Wing in a long binge, it literally disgusts me to imagine someone like Mark Meadows playing the role of a Leo McGarry or CJ Cregg – ethical, moral, competent, intelligent people trying super-hard to do a bit of good for the nation. But I wouldn’t want to mention that, because it’s kind of off-topic.
germy
dmsilev
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I understand there’s a vaccine for that now.
Frankensteinbeck
@jc:
Yes, he is. He’s so incredibly shitty at it that it’s hard for liberals to recognize. He’s blaming COVID on China and saying black rioters will overrun your nice white neighborhoods. He’s reaching out to minorities by assuring them that Biden is the real racist and he’s the best thing that has ever happened to minorities.
Not really. He certainly fixes a whole bunch of political appointees, but that has very little effect on an election, and they’re incompetent as all living fuck. He’s doing a decent job of wrecking the federal government, but that does not help him cheat an election much.
Always a danger, doesn’t actually seem to be getting worse. If anything, there’s been significant expansion of voting rights since 2018. His only real attempt, with the post office, is not only blowing up on him it’s likely to suppress conservative votes worse.
See above.
Too vague an accusation.
That’s mostly a Lefty thing, and it certainly is an omnipresent problem, but they don’t seem to be getting the traction they got in 2016, thank goodness. Nobody cares about Tara Reade except hard lefties who were never going to vote for a Democrat, ever. I’ll grant you Republicans are trying to convince black voters to abandon Biden, but Kanye is a perfect example of how fantastically badly they’re doing at that.
I have yet to see any of this. People talk about it, but I see no signs. His Portland goon squad turned out to be a nothingburger, for example.
Which he does so unbelievably badly (Biden has dementia!) that it not only isn’t helping, it may ricochet on him.
Of what kind and to who? I mean, Trump throws around threats all the time, but they’re substanceless and I see no sign that they’ve done anything except maybe piss off liberals even more.
And boy is that a fantastic campaign strategy.
Look, it’s not that Trump won’t and isn’t trying to cheat any way he can think of. Republicans always do. It’s that he’s totally, pathetically incompetent at it and freaking out is not a good idea. Trump has been handed, right and left, opportunities that even the most vaguely competent Republican could use to make themselves more popular. COVID could have catapulted his popularity upwards if he had so much as made a half-hearted attempt to control it. Instead he got up on stage, lied, ranted, and his already bad poll numbers nosedived.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yeah, Bennet’s very solid, but his no-drama affect wasn’t going to get him far in this cycle
and… is Susan Molinari Kasich’s “prominent former member of Congress”? I’m so old I remember when she was supposed to be Bob Dole’s secret weapon to win over young women. And Meg Whitman? As I recall she’d give Kasich a run for his money in the unlikable boor sweepstakes. ChristieTodd Whitman (any relation?) stayed in the GOP too long, but I think she’s decent (willing to be corrected by any of her former constituents).
NotMax
@dmsilev
An Irish one: O’Leander.
;)
rp
@MattF: I think the causal arrow between racism and FOX goes both ways. Racists gravitate towards FOX and the like, but FOX also creates racists.While there was always a lot of underlying racism in our country, I don’t think it’s a static quantity that can be tapped like an oil well. Unfettered hate speech via FOX, Limbaugh, and the web has had a profound impact on the amount of racism in this country IMO.
J.
@New Deal democrat: Thank you for this. It makes me feel a bit better. Though the fact that 40 percent or even a third of this country think Trump is doing a good job and will happily vote for him makes me ill. And we’re still going to be stuck with those people long after Trump leaves office (assuming he ever leaves).
pacem appellant
This gives away a lot, but the “libertarian choad” Jo Jorgensen, and I (in meatspace) share a last name. That is all we have in common. As a Jorgensen, I wholeheartedly endorse Biden/Harris. But if your uncle wants to vote for her in a swing state, I won’t hold it against him too much.
Dog Dawg Damn
Anyone else concerned that Trump is terrified of mail-in voting when it has traditionally favored Republicans?
feel like we are in a repeat of 2016 when the obvious play isn’t being considered.
This tweet thread explains it nicely. Spread the word.
https://twitter.com/Noneya_Mindyers/status/1295397207592464393?s=20
Hoodie
@MattF: He might be correct in the sense that FOX may play a role as a psychological focal point for various people who previously didn’t associate with any particular ideological structure and were attracted by the chance to belong to something that vindicated their malaise, however incoherent. Some FOX watchers I’ve spoken with treat their viewership as akin to a cause or a religious practice. There isn’t a lot of ideological coherence in what FOX puts out, it’s mostly a disordered collection of grievances and prejudices and mindless totems, but something about it makes them feel better about themselves. Trump was a natural progression of FOX because FOX was already kind of a cult looking for a personality to lead it after they unceremoniously dumped the Shrub after Iraq and the 2008 meltdown. It may be anecdotal, but I notice that Trump supporters seem to be particularly fond of big TRUMP flags, like it’s some kind of nationality. Supporters of other candidates tend to stick to yard signs.
Frankensteinbeck
@Dog Dawg Damn:
Any expansion of voting favors Democrats, and mail-in voting was a big thing in the primaries and Democrats SLAMMED it. Huge increases in Democratic voting where it was available.
gratuitous
Let us not discount the amount of time, money, and effort that goes into making Trump seem like just another politician. Last decade, when it was expended on George W. Bush, we wondered how people could be so gulled by such an obvious incompetent. What do you hear about Bush these days, if you hear anything at all? He’s not the beneficiary of the Mighty Republican Wurlitzer, and a far more (ahem) sober assessment is possible. By this time next year, you’ll need the Hubble telescope to find a Trump voter, when he’s no longer fluffed 24-7 by a huge network of propaganda outlets.
There will be a new Trump, a new W, but the previous defective models will just be flushed.
dww44
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
My sister, who is a strong anti-abortion Catholic liberal, tells me this morning that a very nice single lady friend of hers, also Catholic and who lives in Pittsburgh is thinking she might vote for Trump, solely because he’s “anti abortion”.
First of all, one issue voters are the pits and will destroy the country, including the one issue voters who simply won’t vote for any Democrat.
Additionally, I just don’t get how really nice people can vote for Trump. I honestly don’t. If there’s any justice at all, we will have a much deserved pay back for what we’ve endured for the last 3 1/2 plus years, and will win in an historic landslide.
bystander
@Baud: Yeah. The Grecians had a name for it.
NotMax
@Frankensteinbeck
Shall posit that in states which have not been totally vote by mail that the absentee votes by the military skewed percentages of absentee ballots to the Rs. But the sheer volume of mail-in to be conducted this year ameliorates that to a great degree (as gross number of military votes is essentially static).
Yutsano
@Hoodie: The Eddie Izzard theory of politics?
James E Powell
@divF:
And, as every member of the press/media knows, that’s where RealAmericans® live and they are only voters who really matter.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@dww44: “Really” nice people don’t. Voting for Trump, regardless of motivation, is enabling evil and cruelty. Someone who does that, regardless of how pleasant they may otherwise appear, has consciously chosen to engage in an evil act.
Roger Moore
@feebog:
I think there are three worries about relying on polling:
Between those things, it’s hard to get comfortable with any plausible lead. I’m not saying we should give up, of course, but we don’t want to get complacent even with very favorable poll numbers.
cain
But the irony is that – it’s Republican policies – I mean – thanks to Trump these farmers can no longer sell soybeans to China. That has got to hurt. They can’t really blame liberals there – well I’m sure they can, but it was Trump that solely made that catastrophic mistake.
He’s fucked farmers and now they are just getting govt handouts.
cain
Cautiously optimistic, but you can bet that dangerous people like Barr will do something – maybe open up an investigation with Joe and his son in regards to the Ukraine. That shit has not been settled yet as far as I know.
Whatever to create reasonable doubt. They clearly saw that getting shit on a week before an election might turn out good.. so they are going to try to create the same conditions as last time.
Hoodie
@Yutsano: Haven’t followed Izzard lately to know what you mean.
James E Powell
@cain:
Thomas Frank wrote a book about this phenomenon some years ago. Nearly everyone said he was wrong, stupid, and a bad person for pointing out that the Noble Heartland Voters were basically ignorant bigots.
JPL
@dww44: He is pro fetus, only because it helps him among those who have a strong anti-abortion view. He is not pro life because once a baby is born, he/she can pull themselves up by their boot strap. He certainly doesn’t care if that fetus gets covid though. The republicans are not pro life……….
cain
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Wait till they start drifting to OANN if they haven’t already. Already, Trump is pushing his people to follow OANN that Fox News is as bad as CNN. They are going to keep going down the well.
NotMax
@JPL
Wouldn’t that be “by their bootie strap?”
:)
Yutsano
@Hoodie: It’s from an older routine of his. Every time I hear about the Drumpf flag thing my brain turns to this.
schrodingers_cat
@Yutsano: It won’t, Indians in this country are overwhelmingly upper caste. Its like saying being white is going to affect someone negatively at the polls
NotMax
@Yutsano
Remember how the pitchforks and torches were being polished and fueled when they were sure the Ohio state flag was an Obama flag?
Cretins.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: It had that big “O” for Obama.
jc
@zhena gogolia: This person is just observing. This person wants the Dems to win by being a better choice to run the govt. than the shit right. Hoping that is still possible.
JPL
@NotMax: Silly me, and you’re right. I stand corrected. ?
jc
@Frankensteinbeck: LOL. From your keyboard to …
NotMax
@BillinGlendaleCA
QED*.
*Quod Erat Dumbasses.
;)
schrodingers_cat
@Yutsano: Also Indians went for both Barack Obama and HRC overwhelmingly they both got over 70% of the Indian-American vote. With KH on board I see that percentage increasing not decreasing
I was actually talking about attacks on social media not the vote in the elections.
LongHairedWeirdo
@cain: Ah, you have to understand, there’s an explanation for that.
The Republican-real (which is to say, “completely false”) problem is minorities (Affirmative Action means they have an easy-peasy time of it.
And, of course, the Republican-real problem is immigration, driving down wages, increasing crime, and increasing the chance that you’ll be forced to hear someone say something in a different language, to someone other than yourself.
And, of course, the Republican-real problem is the freedom-hating Democrats strangling businesses with all kinds of stupid regulations that protect people from being poisoned, killed (or just worked to death) etc..
You’re right; the actual real problem is the Republican platform of making it more expensive to hire workers, and more lucrative to off-shore, and to support moronic incompetents if it’s what the rubes want.
Yutsano
@schrodingers_cat: I know they have yours. Thank you so much for being part of this community. I always appreciate your perspective even if I don’t necessarily comment back.
Hoodie
@Yutsano: I had forgotten that bit. Does kind of have an eerie quality when you think about Trumpers and their flag fetish. The Trump boaters are really big on flags, and I see a lot of them on flagpoles outside homes when I’m visiting coastal Georgia.
Maybe it’s because they see this more as a war than regular politics. In fact, it seems to be a war on politics. Politics has a long tradition and is essential to a democracy. However, there has been a steady demonization of politics over the last few decades, characterized by things like “they all do it” (bothsiderism), invocations against “political correctness,” and the like. If you notice, Trumpists don’t really try to persuade and certainly don’t try to compromise; these would be political things to do. Donald Trump is a near perfect avatar for them, because he doesn’t actually make deals; he just rips people off.
cain
I don’t know.. it can go either way. I’m just waiting for a right wing evangelical attack on Kamala vis-a-vis on Hindu culture. I guarantee you – it will turn into a shit show with the Indian nationalists – both here and in India – and Trump won’t handle that very gracefully.
Gvg
@dww44: I think the very nice person really isn’t. Trump is not nice, nor attractive to actual nice people. Your sister should take a closer look.4 years ago there were some non political people who didn’t already know Trump was stupid and malicious. Now, it’s not believable. They know.
incidently my anecdotal experience is that some of the trump voters already abandoned him for incompetence. People who were somewhat racist but don’t admit that to themselves, who voted Trump, started turning on him back in the shutdown fights and tax cuts. I think since they never admitted what they had liked about him, they found it easier to just leave him.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Comrade Scrutinizer: I may have mentioned I know some people who didn’t vote at all last time who are voting for Trump now. I know a person who is switching to Biden from Trump.
I know it is anecdata. I’ve just really been struck at how lots of places in my state and others have gone from somewhat purple to deep red in a 10 year time span. I’m in the midwest and it just seems to be getting worse.
WereBear
@MattF: Bold words for someone who was neck deep in how we got here.
cain
My mother was very excited about this – we are also Tamil Brahmins so sharing that bit of shared background was very exciting for us.
Uncle Cosmo
Um…no. Bad analogy. As The Earl of Bawlmer famously pointed out, in a regulation major-league baseball game “they have to give you 27 outs**” – & as long as you haven’t used them up, you can keep on batting & possibly scoring.
2016 was more like being 5 scores down in an NFL game at the 2 minute warning in the fourth quarter. Although even then the game clock could be stopped in a variety of ways to extend the clock time of play. Hmm…
Pace Amir, 2016 was like their side being down 5 goals to Liverpool :^D with 3 minutes left in 2nd half regulation & no stoppage time worth mentioning to extend it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s about right…
** A baseball game abbreviated or “called” (due to weather, earthquake, nuclear attack, volcanic eruption, virus outbreak, etc.) counts as a regulation game only if the trailing team has had at least 5 full innings at bat. So technically, “they” might only have to give you 15 outs. The point remains. /pedant
Soprano2
Last Saturday night I was on the patio at our pub. I was talking about the post office, and it got one of our regular customers who is an intelligent guy about other stuff really exercised and upset. He claimed, with zero evidence, that “they are going to send mail-in ballots to everyone in the country”. He said he read it somewhere on the internet, but couldn’t tell me where, and still hasn’t sent me anything about it. (When I searched for it, I found that CA and NJ are going to send every registered voter a ballot, but I honestly couldn’t figure out where he got this idea from unless he got it from Trump.) His family moved here from Sri Lanka when he was 12, so I attribute part of this to him still not understanding how our system works, or that states and not the federal government run elections (I said this to him several time, with absolutely no effect). I kept asking him who “they” are, and he couldn’t tell me, just that “they” are going to do this, and it’s going to cause massive cheating and fraud. I’m in the middle of Trump country, and I was still surprised by the vehemence I saw. Also, they are extremely angry that “those people got to demonstrate” but “we were told we couldn’t go to church!”
Betty Cracker
@cain: Looks like Barr has telegraphed that he plans to reenact Comey’s inexcusable election influencing “announcement” at some point. It also looks like it will be related to the Obama admin’s so-called spying on the Trump 2016 campaign.
That’s why Barr is pouring untold millions down the rat hole to re-investigate an investigation that has already been re-investigated twice to appease Trump, coming up with zero results both times. This time it’s led by Barr’s man Durham, who so far has managed to browbeat one unknown ex-fed to plead guilty to altering an email that didn’t amount a fart in a whirlwind. It was connected to surveillance on Carter Page, who even fewer people give a shit about, if that’s possible.
I think it’ll be a big fat flop. No one aside from the rabid Trump base gives a shit about Trump’s alleged victimhood in 2016.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: BJP does not like the Dems, they have thrown in their lot with the Rs. The Sangh tries to emulate Likud in its foreign policy.
So she is going to be attacked by evangelicals, India’s fundies and the Rose Twitter. Indian lefties (here and in India) who are fans of the magic socialist grandpa aren’t that thrilled either.
cain
The real danger is that they are not controllable and they are getting political power. If Qanon candidates start winning – the party will fight amongst themselves, but I believe eventually the crazy will completely take over – thanks to outlets like OANN.
HumboldtBlue
This is outside of the Dallas Holocaust Museum. I don’t know what kind of world we live in anymore
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’m still expecting something that seems like a shocking relevation about her claims to pop up in late October and get splashed all over the news and dutifully echoed by regretful progressives.
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: Thanks for your sensible takes.
Matt McIrvin
@dww44: The one full-on Q fan I know got into it through extremely Catholic anti-abortion politics. The nonsensical conspiracy stuff is like brain worms that invade once single-issue anti-abortionism has lowered the defenses.
Yutsano
@HumboldtBlue: That’s fucking child abuse.
schrodingers_cat
The attacks on KH on social media will give our concern trolly MSM a lot of fodder. I am planning to collect all the attacks on her I have seen so far and try to answer them. I don’t know how much traction they will get with the voters at large. Not much is my guess. But we should not let the attacks go unanswered.
Betty Cracker
cain
@James E Powell:
I think we have more than anecdotal proof he was not wrong.
Matt McIrvin
@Gvg: I do know one Massachusetts Trump voter who says he regrets his choice and will not be doing it again. The anti-cop protests still upset him deeply–that seems to be a bridge too far. But whatever he does it won’t be voting for Trump. He keeps posting stuff about how appalled he is about Trump’s COVID response, general contempt for democracy, etc.
Baud
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
That’s odd to hear, given recent Dem gains in MI, WI, and IA.
artem1s
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
um no. he was universally hated by pretty much everyone. He was as easily as offensive as Cruz and he couldn’t get the GOPers to vote for him in 2012 or 2016 primaries. He won the governors seat because of the GOP ratfucking midterm elections in 2010 in Ohio and everywhere – gerrymandering. He won in 2014 because the Ohio Dems ran a spectacularly unqualified candidate who had zero state wide name recognition – think Mayor Pete with less experience. He tried to sell off and privatize everything that wasn’t nailed down; sold mining and drilling rights in state parks; passed a fracking/drilling rights law that over-road all existing zoning in municipalities. We had people putting rigs in their back yards and contaminating ground water all over the NE region.
He’s had no presence in the Ohio GOP since he left office. He’s been trying to paint himself as some sort of ‘nice reasonable’ Republican to weasel himself back in but he’s a Raygun, hedge fund, coingate, Ponzi scheme, supply side, privatization, Bush era toady. Think Paul Ryan without a personality.
Betty Cracker
@HumboldtBlue: Westboro Baptist kooks.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: Damn, it’s parody.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: Right. Offensive, but hardly new.
evodevo
@dww44: that’s the way it is in Ky… a lot of “normal” people I know will vote Repub based SOLELY on the criterion of “anti-abortion” – granted most of them are fundies, but still…you would think that all of his other irredeemable actions would turn them off, but the syndrome of religious fanaticism is in a class by itself…
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: When they punch, punch back double.
SiubhanDuinne
Well, I’m surprised. Apparently DeJoy has agreed to testify in from my of House Oversight Committee next Monday in response to Chair Carolyn Maloney’s letter yesterday. I honestly thought he’d refuse, or at least delay for weeks.
cain
@Betty Cracker:
At this point I have no idea how many actual undecideds they are. If you haven’t formed an opinion by now about Trump – then you are probably a Trump supporter.
So this Barr announcement will likely give them some kind of excuse to vote for Trump while making cloaking themselves in honor.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Exactly. When they go low, knee them and incapacitate them.
Baud
@artem1s:
He beat Trump in the 2016 Ohio primary.
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: May be he doesn’t want to go to prison for the Orangina. But I will wait to pop my champagne cork until after his testimony.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
Part of it is that “centrist” is such a moving target. I flinch these days when I hear someone talking shit about centrists because I automatically assume it’s a Bernie-or-Buster going off on Democrats, not a Democrat going off on David Brooks.
Uncle Cosmo
All of which sounds perfectly reasonable to the Trumpistas, who are convinced that before 2016 they were all being treated unfairly – that wherever the goodies were handed out, they’d spent decades being held back in the line by the eebil gummint to let “undeserving people” jump in front. And the only way to stop that is make sure that those “undeserving” don’t get to vote their own way back in front.
It’s wrong and misguided, but – When they start from a belief that their “tribe” is entitled to certain benefits & they think they’ve seen for decades other people (“not-our-tribe”) getting those benefits while some of theirs don’t, it makes complete sense to prevent those people from being able to claim those benefits by voting in a government that favors them.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: That’s the Chicago way.
cain
Yeah, my uncle has been listening to some lecturer and he’s declared that he won’t be voting for anyone that doesn’t support India – and I suspect that means Democrats. Which is kind of crazy since he’s not a Trumper, but he’s so focused on India, that he doesn’t seem to get the idea that he needs to be voting for the candidate that will help his grandchildren and his child (and us for that matter)
It is sort of sad – he fights with everyone since we are all overwhelmingly anti-Modi, and anti bullshit like this.
JMG
I don’t know how anyone could read, let alone participate in, any Balloon Juice comment thread and think any Democrats were complacent or overconfident about the election to the tiniest degree. It’s all a symphony of anxieties. It’s fair to say there are reasons for concern, even worry. But the Republicans have one hell of a lot more worries than we do right now.
schrodingers_cat
@Yutsano: Aww thanks so much, that means a lot to me.
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: Arrogance of a billionaire? Or he won’t answer anything? I already know the Republicans will just ask voting fraud questions.
cain
@schrodingers_cat:
Have you seen the one by Limbaugh? But worse in that hashtag threat, pornographic animations – disgusting. I won’t even link to them.. but stay away from the “Rush Limbaugh” hashtag it’s very ugly.
JPL
@HumboldtBlue: That was in 2010. We’ve been living in a cycle of hate for a long time. I couldn’t find anything recent.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: Is the academic, Makarand idiot Paranjpe?
cain
When they go low, kick them down even lower and curb stomp them.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: I saw some stuff in the morning. I rarely if ever click on trending now hashtags. There is never anything good there.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Soprano2:
Yes! That’s what I’m talking about. They are really digging in more. I am getting more and more worried these people will get violent.
zzyzx
@Baud: yeah. I’ve counter protested them before and I recognize their fonts.
Yutsano
@JPL: I guess the real question is how is this girl as a 19 year old adult? Still in the cult of her family or escaped because she found a life outside her hate filled church? That’s something a dedicated journalist could follow up on.
dmsilev
@SiubhanDuinne: Showing up and trying to drown the committee in bullshit is probably a better strategy for him than refusing to come and having the hearing be dominated by veterans who couldn’t get their medicine on time and so on and so forth.
The real question is whether Trump is starting to think that the PO problems are reflecting badly on him. If so, DeJoy gets underbused very quickly.
Matt McIrvin
@JMG: My theory is that people have different thresholds of what kind of factual belief they personally would be energized or de-energized by.
When the CNN poll came out, Amanda Marcotte posted some stuff that implied that she regards any belief that Biden is even ahead in the race as dangerous “complacency”. To work hard to win, you have to believe you’re losing–that’s her mindset.
As everyone around here already noticed, I flip into a despairing attitude easily. What I need to hear is more “we’re ahead, but NOT irrevocably”… which actually is the truth right now. I sometimes hear “work like we’re 30 points down”–but if we were 30 points down, there would be no point! You basically can’t come back from that; you might as well give up.
mrmoshpotato
Yup. This comes to mind any time I see someone flapping their jaws about how great their dear orange leader is. You got conned. You willingly voted for a Soviet shitpile mobster manbaby. You picked someone for President who lied to your face every time he opened his orange McDonald’s hole.
Elizabelle
Your daily Jen Rubin: WaPost: Trump’s argument: Look how awful things are — now reelect me
cain
It still makes me laugh that this was an attack on Obama back in 2008.
Roger Moore
@Hoodie:
I agree this is a problem, but I’m not convinced it’s a new one. There has always been a group that dislikes “politics”. They basically don’t like that other people disagree with them. They’re sure they know the right answer to every problem, which is always simple and obvious, and the only reason anyone might disagree with them is because they’re “playing politics” on the issue. They really think the country would be better off with them, or at least someone who thinks like them, as benevolent dictator rather than wasting time on pointless wrangling.
JPL
@Yutsano: That would be fascinating to follow the cult for a decade or more to see how they survive
cain
@schrodingers_cat:
Noo.. it’s not him.. I need to grab the name. But the premise is that Hinduism is in trouble because of the west. A ridiculous notion considering that we’ve been hit twice by Abrahamic religions – and still a hindu majority.
Hell, Hinduism is more in trouble from Covid than anything else.
Mike G
U.S. response to the pandemic has been unsuccessful when compared to peer nations. We have more dead, higher rates of infection, lower per-capita testing, etc. That’s just a fact.
There you go using that empirical librul science.
Real Republicans know “facts” are dictated by what authorities want them to be, which you believe because demonstrating loyalty to those authorities is the highest virtue of a sheep-like authoritarian-follower.
These are people who idolize the shepherd-flock dynamic. The more ridiculous the statement, the higher your virtue by performatively believing it.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: I clicked through when I saw Limbaugh trending, thinking maybe he took a dirt nap. No such luck.
cain
@schrodingers_cat:
Horrible stuff, stuff that kids should never see.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: “I suck, vote for me” is basically an encapsulation of Republican strategy; it’s not just Trump. I noticed it during the Bush years. You sabotage government, government sucks as a consequence, then you run for reelection on an “anti-government” platform. Why would you want to elect the guy who wants to throw more money at the Postal Service–look how terrible it is!
For some people, it works, but I think that even if you’re not a Republican core voter you need to have a really cynical “those darn politicians, doing their politics” attitude to begin with.
James E Powell
@SiubhanDuinne:
That committee better be ready to go hard at him. He will show up with a statement that is filled with lies and attacks. His Republican allies on the committee will repeat them.
No courtesy, no letting him not answer questions, nothing but relentless attacks. This asshole needs to resign.
JPL
Demonstrations that turn violent can cause the polls to tighten. If it’s a winning issue except more violence and homeland security interference. We know that a White Supremacist busted the auto store window, that allowed the violence in Minneapolis, but we still don’t know who sent out the misinformation on the web in Chicago. If riots work towards moving the polls closer, he’ll instigate them himself.
Like trump likes to say, it could be Russia, it could be China, or it could be the guy in the basement.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud:
Those gains are in the suburbs, which were perfectly happy to ignore some level of GOP corruption and malfeasance, if their taxes were kept low. At this point, Trump has managed things so badly, they aren’t willing to tolerate it any more. Big chunks of Missouri used to be union country. This used to be a purple state. At this point, it is ruby red with a couple of blue spots (St Louis and Kansas City). That change accelerated in the last 10 years. And it just seems like the red parts of the state are getting angrier and angrier.
HumboldtBlue
As our nation faces two crises, COVID-19 and police brutality toward people of color, Cardi B gets real via Zoom with the man who could be our next president.
Jinchi
Those Republicans will blame Biden for his catastrophic failure on Covid the day after he wins the election.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat:
I still see people speaking as if Indian-Americans are a Republican-leaning group, and it’s odd because it’s so contrary to my own experience of the ones I know. I can only conclude the right-wing faction are extremely vocal.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: The Sangh and their version of orthodoxy is the greatest danger to India.
Matt McIrvin
@JPL:
I thought so too, but the opposite happened this summer. Trump’s numbers were rising in the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis, then the George Floyd protests blew up and they dropped. Now that that crisis has cooled off a bit, Trump’s numbers are fractionally creeping up again. It was completely backwards from what I expected.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Vocal and well connected and monied. Its like the Jewish Americans. The vocal and wealthy minority is Republican but the overwhelming numbers of regular folks are Dems.
cain
I agree completely. They literally want to turn Hinduism into a Abrahamic one – because it’s easier to control people. Assholes.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I’ve never understood the theory that self-disinformation is the key to our success. You can be an optimist or a pessimist, but you shouldn’t be making up facts. (Generic “you”).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: If Trump was delivering what they want they wouldn’t be angry, they would be smug and complacent.
Soprano2
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I agree, I live in Springfield. I think Trump won 65% of the vote in Greene County in 2016; it might be a little lower this year, but he’ll still win a majority. It wouldn’t take much prodding for some of them to take up arms against the hated liberals. My sister-in-law (originally from Chicago) said this weekend that what’s more dangerous to us than COVID is “all those riots, the looting and destruction”. She really, really believes localized riots that lasted a few days are more dangerous to all of us than a deadly disease that’s spreading literally everywhere in the U.S. Racism and fear of “the other” is a strong, strong thing with many people.
danielx
Like him or not, and he didn’t go out of his way to be likeable, George Carlin knew a thing or two. My sister-in-law is a doc and I love and respect her, but she’s voting for Trump because reasons. One of them being, so the the spousal unit tells me, that Joe Biden can’t get out a complete sentence. To which my reaction was, even if he can’t (which I don’t believe), Trump can’t either, so what else is her problem with Biden? Joe Biden, whatever else he may be, is a decent man and Trump is a narcissistic sociopath – and 40% of the country think that’s just fine.
Yutsano
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Because the libruls and the Dumbocrats are stopping him from makingAmerica great! They actually believe that. They totally ignore how much he has screwed up pretty much everything. It’s never the fault of the Republicans or Dolt45. It’s always the Dimocrats.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
This is the flip side to the complacency argument. Yes, if our side seems to have a commanding lead, that might make people complacent. But it might also make the other side despondent, which would have a very similar effect in terms of suppressing the vote. If anything, I think the perception that you’re doomed is more likely to make people stay home than the perception you’re guaranteed a win.
JPL
@Matt McIrvin: Polling shows trump under water except for law and order issues. It’s not enough to help so far.
Earlier I said except when I meant expect.. duh
StringOnAStick
We’ve had all mail in ballots for 7 years here in CO. The first election after it passed was a recall election for 3 Tea Party nutbags who took over the school board in the second largest school district in the state. They were recalled by 67% and replaced by education professionals who righted the ship.
School board elections were held in odd numbered years because they were “supposed to be non-partisan positions” is the given story, but without mail in ballots it was easy for hard right crazies to win. Mail in ballots ruin one of the RW techniques for gaining local control by running in off season, low interest elections so that’s part of why they are fighting so hard to demonize it.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: Republicans have absolutely no inhibitions about acting like winners whether they actually are winners or not. I suspect that helps them, on the whole–sure, they look foolish when they lose, but who cares? That affects nothing. “That’s why you libs always lose elections” is a favorite phrase, and for some Democrats, they’ve actually internalized from that the idea that, yes, they always lose elections, whether that’s true or not.
People who are wavering like to jump on winner bandwagons. There’s a substantial fraction of undecided voters who just end up voting for whoever they think is winning!
It’s also very good for helping to frame media reality when there’s a disputed election. I suspect Al Gore’s contesting of the 2000 election result was doomed from the beginning just because the Republicans put so much energy into claiming victory, and there was a general perception that Gore wasn’t going to pull it out.
divF
@Betty Cracker: Kamala is absolutely correct, and it is a PITA. Our nephew had his wallet stolen after the COVID started, so he had to reconstruct his paper identity. In order to get his birth certificate from Alameda County (same place as KH), he had to conduct the transaction by mail – could not do it in person. And this last Spring, the mail transactions were going very slowly, because of reduced staffing.
He eventually got certified copy of his birth certificate, then had trouble with the next hurdle (getting a new Social Security card), because all the offices were not taking in-person appointments. Finally, he got that, then a Real ID from DMV, but it was excrutiating.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
I think the key is the violent part. It seems obvious, but the evidence suggests that peaceful protests are good at convincing the public, especially if the peaceful protestors are attacked by the police, while violent protests are counterproductive. There were some violent George Floyd protests, but there was a lot more violence by the police than by the protestors. I think the police violence was especially effective in convincing the public in this case because the protests were specifically about police brutality.
Johnnybuck
@danielx: that Joe Biden can’t get out a complete sentence.
It’s about all they have left to hold onto. I hear “reasonable” “fiscally conservative” Republicans say this all the time. Trump sucks, but the Democrats screwed the pooch by nominating Biden. it’s akin to I’d vote for a Democrat, just not that Democrat bullshit people said about Hillary being a woman. There is no Democrat that could conceivably win the nomination (Hello Bloomberg, Schultz, Delaney) they’ll ever vote for. The end.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: It works when you’re not the incumbent, it did for Nixon. When it’s your responsibility, it won’t work as well.
Redshift
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m fine with the classic “if you’re up ten points, fight like you’re down five,” or Howard Dean’s “it’s not enough to beat the margin of error, we have to beat the margin of cheating, too.” But the 30 points thing is just idiotic.
My preferred formulation is “the polls tell us what’s possible, but it’s still up to us to do the work to make it happen.” It lets you enjoy being ahead in the polls (which is good, it helps keep people fired up!) without encouraging complacency.
Roger Moore
@JPL:
You have to remember, though, that the Republicans have had an advantage on law and order issues for a very long time. You have to compare Trump’s advantage on those issues to GWB’s to see how things are going.
Baud
@Johnnybuck: Agree. Never take their excuses seriously.
JPL
Chief of Staff for DHS
MC
The numbers look great for the Democrats, but I would be more confident about the election if I trusted Americans.
JPL
RVAT Video Ad by former DHS Chief of STaff
JPL
Betty, If you are around can you put up the info I provided at 179 and 181
Origuy
Meg Whitman is a Never Trumper; she raised money for Hillary in 2016. She used to be my CEO. There was a company event during Black History Month where Jesse Jackson spoke. They are pretty good friends; apparently they worked together on one of his projects.
Redshift
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Any chance they’re technologically challenged enough that you or your daughter could block Fox on their cable system or TV, and they wouldn’t be able to fix it?
My late mother-in-law was never a conservative or a Republican, but she started tuning in to Fox after she started developing dementia. I’m pretty sure it was because they repeat simple things endlessly, and watching real news or tv shows had become frustrating because she couldn’t follow it and didn’t understand why. I blocked Fox when I was visiting and things improved.
patrick II
People’s DNA hasn’t changed in the last 60 years from when I was a kid. People were saner then. If we have to be ” sharing a country with such a massive number of gullible dopes” There is another reason why those gullible dopes have become so insane. Education, media, stratification of rich and poor, social change coming at them too fast, helplessness, whatever. Sharing the country with these gullible dopes does suck, but they weren’t born this crazy. Something is being done to them, and we should be thinking in terms broader than political terms about what must be done to get their feet back on the ground.
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin:
It is quite possibly a generational phenomenon.
zhena gogolia
@JPL:
Scary. But how did he make it for two and a half years?
JPL
@zhena gogolia: He was also involved in the child separation. Not an innocent bystander by any means, and he should have come out then But still Wow
Haydnseek
@danielx:Perhaps direct her attention to one of the many YouTube videos that show the exact opposite. The recent one with Joe and Kamala would be perfect.
Calouste
@dww44: There is commenter here who regularly states that “anti-abortion” is just a market for “conservative” for a lot of people. It also means that they have some vaguely plausible excuse to vote for the GOP, for the racism and tax cuts that are the real reasons for them, without having to publicly admit it.
Barbara
@Origuy: I once read a short interview with Meg Whitman, and one of her responses that I never forgot was to the question of how tech business differed from more traditional businesses — to which she said, in effect, “sexism links them all.” She has 10X the business acumen of Carly Fiorina, but, to paraphrase, how do wealthy women differ from other wealthy people? — the desire for low taxes links — or has linked — them all.
Calouste
@patrick II: People’s DNA also hasn’t changed much from a few hundred years ago, and 95% of the people were absolutely fucking nuts gullible dopes then. The belief in witchcraft, to give just one example.
Matt McIrvin
@patrick II: I don’t think people were inherently saner then. I think that 60 years ago, white people were still confident that the government had their backs in keeping the blacks and the browns and the weirdos down. As long as that was in place and would remain in place, they could act like reasonable people otherwise. When that assurance went away, it drove them bugfuck bananas.
Redshift
@Roger Moore:
You also have to keep in mind that when someone runs as a “law and order” candidate in this country, it has never meant anything other than protecting good white folks from the scary black and brown hordes, and keeping them in their place. So unless poll questions are very carefully worded (like asking about being better on criminal justice), a lot of the yes answers are going to come from people who support what “lawnorder” really means, and are never going to vote Democratic.
Geoduck
@Matt McIrvin: And the rise of social media makes it sooo much easier to spread the insanity around, shoving it in everybody’s face 24/7.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
I think there’s a lot of truth to the idea that feeling they’re losing out to Those People has driven a lot of racist whites around the bend. But I don’t think you can dismiss the importance of the right wing noise machine in driving people crazy. They’re anecdotal, but there are too many stories of individuals turning into right wing cranks from listening to too much talk radio or Fox News to dismiss.
opiejeanne
@Baud: That little snake emoji always looks like a little green swan to me, until I remember that it’s supposed to be a snake. A wiggly green line would work better as a snake.
germy
They lie shamelessly
Brachiator
@Redshift:
Yep. I don’t care that much what national polls say, but if Biden’s apparent lead fires people up, that’s good. Let’s use that advantage.
We need to get out the vote big time. And things are a little different this time. More than ever, we need to make sure we overcome three potential obstacles.
Blatantly active attempts to suppress the vote.
Bad weather.
Potential impact of the ongoing pandemic.
We need votes from everyone willing to push the button, pull the lever, mark the ballot for Biden and Harris. Doesn’t matter if they are a committed Democrat or a reluctant Republican.
Mai naem mobile
@JPL: that is powerful. They should have him in a roundtable or something with Biden, some California people(preferably Republicans) and maybe an Obama DHS person or GWBush person. If they can pull it off at the DNC it would be good.
Mai naem mobile
@germy: i would tell Martha to take the dead people out since statistically they’re more like to be GOPrs. Crosscheck dead people the last 60 days or however long absentee ballot voting is. I know the point you’re making. I’m just saying take the bait because dumbasses don’t realize its going to hurt them.
eachother
All the destructive effort being inflicted by the Impeached president and his fellow demons is possibly the plowing of the field for what the Russians may intend to plant in the short time to election.
All the hacking of voter related computers. What did they do that for? Planting day? Impeached president’s doings are, perhaps the companion works for Technology glitch plans.
We see the letter boxes unbolted. Putin pushes ‘send’.
Subsole
@zzyzx:
The subtext is that once we bomb the Republicans into extinction we will be free to build what we wish on the ashes and need never throw a bomb again.
At least, that seems to be the inevitable conclusion of the logic.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
The other thing to do to try to get people fired up is to point out down-ballot races. Even if Biden has it in the bag- which he doesn’t- the presidency isn’t the only race that matters. We need to take back the senate and as many state legislatures as possible. I’m sure plenty of states and localities have important ballot issues, too. We need to vote, vote, vote to win on all those points.
JPL
@Mai naem mobile: Supposedly rather than go to the Biden camp, he went to RVAT Biden probably didn’t know much before us.
sdhays
It’s not “knowable”, but I wonder just how much many of those other points flow from this. Would Benghazi have been investigated to death and unearthed the stupid email non-issue if, for example, John Kerry had been the Secretary of State and was considered to be the front runner for 2016 if he decided to run?
If so, would Comey have gone as far up his own ass if the nominee was John Kerry (or anyone not the subject of a quarter century of character assassination)? Maybe, but I think his personal dislike of Hillary Clinton factored into his decision-making process, regardless of whether he believes it did or not.
Would Russia have gone as all in against someone else? Maybe, but Putin hates strong women and Hillary in particular. At least the homegrown character assassination provided a fertile ground for the Russian propaganda effort.
Roger Moore
@Subsole:
I think this goes along with the leftist “burn it all down” attitude. They don’t really care about protecting what we have now because they are sure they can build something better. If destroying everything we have hastens the revolution, it’s a worthy sacrifice. Unsurprisingly, the people most prone to say this are not people who will be making the sacrifice.
Ruckus
@J.:
We will always have a percentage of people who think the only way is anything non democratic. They like authoritarianism. They are the same grouping of people who liked Hitler. They have been with us forever, just like they are in every other country on earth. They aren’t going away any time soon. The only thing is that we have to marginalize them.
gwangung
@Subsole:
Very common subtext for liberals and progressives. Winning is a PROCESS. You need to keep pressure continually on your side to hew to principles, and to let them know that a) you’re watching, and b) you’re just as numerous as the conservatives that are (rest assured) bombarding them with their preferences.
I hate this attitude. It ignores that a) it’s hard work to build something back up, and b) it makes it WAY easier for evil people to get their ways. What keeps them partially in check now? The need to do it within the institutions that exist now. Burn it all down allows them free reign without a need to make even a token effort.
Subsole
@Hoodie:
I saw a truck decal the other day that said ‘Love Jesus, love America, love Trump’
“Cult” might be a bit mild a way of putting it…
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Of course. And out here in California I don’t know how many ballot propositions there will be. But that’s not of much interest here at this blog. But yeah, other federal and state elections also matter big time.
Martin
Wait, I’ve been working all morning – Trump telling people to eat oleander?
It’s also called dogbane because of it’s ability to rather easily kill your dog. And you. And apparently it’s because the MyPillow idiot got put on the board of the company that is processing it? And oleandrin is not the not-toxic part of oleander – it’s the really toxic part.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator:
It’s California, so the answer is ALOT.
MCA1
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Also, for every rural embittered MAGAt with a big flag next to their mailbox whose enthusiasm for Agent Orange has actually increased over the last 4 years, there’s a lifelong Republican in suburbia who’s spent that time being heckled about the depravity of the GOP and is at best sheepish now. They both voted for Trump last time and they’ll both vote for him again this time.
The good news here is that (a) there’s nary a soul in the outportions of the country that voted for Hilary Clinton and has now switched, and (b) there are, it seems, a good number of those sheepish former Drumpf voters in more populated areas who have seen the light and are openly abandoning him. As you and Baud mentioned, that’s what matters, not enthusiasm level among those who remain on the same side of the field (unless it leads a previous voter to stay home this time).
JPL
@Martin: Look at it this way, the line might not be as long for in person voting, if his supporters try it. I’d love to know how many oleander plants were sold today. Maybe they can order a few Yew also just to be safe.
NotMax
@Subsole
Happen to notice if the truck was an American automaker marque?
;)
Martin
UNC-Chapel Hill just pulled the plug on their in-person classes. Lasted a week.
Martin
@JPL: I’m okay if it’s Arizona, Florida, and Texas, but there’s a lot of oleander out here in California (you learn to look for it when you own a dog) and statistically, every lost CA voter is likely to be a Biden vote.
I’d like to keep the stochastic idiocy in the states where it will cause us to get rid of Trump the fastest.
Subsole
@Soprano2:
He answered your question.
“They didn’t let me go to church.”
Church. I would bet a month’s pay that’s where he’s getting it from. Especially if he is evangelical. And if you want to see fervent vehemence, go visit a wild-ass ‘vangie church. Some of those parishioners are foaming at the mouth when they are happy…
HumboldtBlue
@Martin:
Meanwhile, the geniuses at Cal State have decided that it’s perfectly fucking fine for a few thousand kids from out of county to come back to HSU for classes.
Fucking madness.
Ruckus
@divF:
It doesn’t even have to be stolen to be a problem. My DL expired in July, when I turned 71. The problem is that the DMV is closed and I have to take a vision, written and driving test because this is the first time since I turned 70 that my license is up for renewal and CA requires all of this. DMV sent an extension in the mail and I expect another one when that expires in 3 months, because the DMV will likely still be closed. And probably one after that because of the backlog of being closed for almost a year. IOW he’s actually one of the few who actually got anything done.
Oklahomo
@HumboldtBlue: Ah, the “God Hates _____” Westboro folks. It’s been so long since I’ve heard of them I thought they’d maybe gone the way of the dodo.
sdhays
@Dog Dawg Damn: You don’t have to get that complicated. Just look at the lines they put people through in places like Georgia. That’s the hacking they do every single time. With mail-in ballots, that goes away. A black vote has the exact same experience as a white vote.
Isn’t that terrifying enough (if you’re a Republican)?
HumboldtBlue
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
This year there are 13
japa21
I am curious if the pollsters are counting the AA vote to be about the same percentage it was in 2016 or more like 2008 and 2012. Because if it turns out to be even close to those two years, specially in WI and MI, Trump doesn’t have a chance in those two states. Both those states now have Dem governors.
Also, doing an October surprise is going to be tricky. If they wait too long, an awful lot of VBM ballots will already be in and a lot of early voting will be done. If they do it too early, it will give time to discover it was all FAKE NEWS and won’t gain them anything.
Comey’s timing was perfect. By the time it was announced there was no there there, it was too late.
HumboldtBlue
@Oklahomo:
I had never seen that one that’s why it jumped out at me. I didn’t realize it was already 10 years old.
Ken
I’d disagree, because you need to use conditional probability to handle this. It’s true that:
Prob(Cali voter is Biden) is greater than 0.5
but if we’re told that voter ate oleander on the recommendation of Trump and the MyPillow guy, I have to think that probability decreases. A lot.
NotMax
@JPL
“O. Lee Ander? Criminy, wasn’t he with the Confederacy at Manassas? Good enough for me!”
//
Subsole
@schrodingers_cat:
Bearing in mind India has a socialist party, it still baffles me that Sanders has a following in India. Or any other country.
Like, how dry must your well be to pick some guy from Vermont who, bluntly, seems to embrace socialism more as a brand than an ethos?
Oklahomo
@HumboldtBlue: Once “God Hates Fags” had lost its shock value they diversified. Right after 9/11 they had a bunch of “God Hates America” rallies.
Subsole
@Matt McIrvin:
He lost my folks over covid.
They seemed to find the rank incompetence personally insulting.
HumboldtBlue
@Oklahomo:
You know what I hate?
Lima beans and yellow squash.
Matt McIrvin
@japa21: I’d already voted when the Comey letter dropped. I was happy I had–I’ve heard of people who reject early voting specifically because they’re worried some late-breaking bit of news might lead them to change their minds, but in my experience, that kind of thing usually subtracts understanding rather than adding it.
J R in WV
@Dog Dawg Damn:
No, this tweet thread is a group of incoherent babble, none of which make any sense either stand alone or as a group.
While I agree that Russian disinformation is doing damage to every real democracy in the world, the thread linked to shares no new information, offers no proof, is incoherent in every way.
Sorry, I know you mean well, but to me it is worse than useless.
NotMax
@Oklahomo</a.
Friggin' fetid Tachmonites.
JPL
@Martin: When living in Dallas, I wouldn’t let landscapers use it near the pool We had a dog.
Subsole
@cain: I thought that braying tumor with a microphone had lung cancer…
Are we sure he didn’t lie? I have known several folks who got lung cancer and it didn’t take anywhere near this long for it to kill them…
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: Soon they’re gonna be in bloom up in Annandale.
(but I can’t seem to get to you through the US Mail)
Oklahomo
Sadly, they lack the sense to protest something common sense…
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
Whereas squash with a backbone is more difficult to deal with on the plate.
:)
Brachiator
@HumboldtBlue:
Lucky 13 for California ballot propositions.
It’s going to be fun reading up on them.
MCA1
@Hoodie: Interesting theory. I can see the war footing mentality analogy, but I think in their minds it’s not a war on politics per se, but rather a war on liberals, “the Left,” the Democrat(ic) Party, and anything else they’ve been conditioned to reflexively hate by Fox and similar over the last 30 years. The GOP has been othering those things for a long time now, and insisting to its fans that they’re the only patriots and the only ones who work hard and the only ones who love Jesus and the only ones with American values. The other side, though? They’re coming to take your guns. They want to close your churches. They’re communists who would take your business. They’re gonna make you gay marry and/or force you to get an abortion.
In other words, they’ve co-opted the Gadsden flag and proudly fly the MAGA flags because they believe over half the country is trying to force tyranny on them and they’re righteous, rebellious defenders.
The disinclination and/or inability to have a reasoned discussion of political matters is more an offshoot of that conditioned hatred, and the prion disease of Fox saturation. The reasonable, non-Fox consuming Republican sympathizers I know are still more than willing to discuss policing or tax policy or foreign affairs or whatever else without immediately jumping to accusations of Maoist tendencies or Antifa membership or whatever.
HumboldtBlue
Now I’m reading the California ballot props and here we go, Prop 16 aims to amend the Constitution to remove Prop 209 which says that the state cannot discriminate or grant preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, education, or contracting
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
But BJP has exactly ZERO votes here in the US.
We shall see if their dislike of actual Democracy extends to re-electing a racist who would bomb India as soon as anywhere but perhaps Pakistan.
If he thought there was $100 in it for him. OK, maybe $1,000…
Bill Arnold
@Dog Dawg Damn:
Read that thread; it’s been a default possible scenario since DJT started railing about the hackability of voting by mail. The reliable rule of Trump projection meant that he was saying that in-person voting is more hackable.
I don’t know. Voting machines are a lot more secure than people think they are (I have a friend who evaluates them including their tamper-resistance (he also evaluates crypto devices, and is competent; entire long career devoted to it), and the ones he’s looked at seem OK), however voting involves aggregation mechanisms at the state level that could be tampered with, and also thoroughly corrupt solidly-Republican counties could skew their local votes and affect statewide/presidential elections. There’s always the risk that somebody will talk or get caught.
There is a need for a lot of eyes. There need to be sniffers logging all internet traffic to-from election-related machines for the election +/- at least a week (until results are delivered). There is some of this (some appliances) in place but it isn’t logging everything, just suspicious events.
And probably all phone calls should be logged, or at least the possibility of logging all election-related phone calls should be implied to scare people straight.
raven
We learned last night that the beach house we go to had month-long renters who had to suddenly leave (they didn’t ask for their money back) and our friends are letting us go fo a week with just a cleaning fee and a symbolic payment to keep their sister happy. We’ve spent the day getting ready and, honestly, it’s the first thing I’ve done in 6 months that I really give a shit about. Working on my truck and doing house projects are fine but, damn, I get to go surf fishing. It’s not the best time of year and my expectations are really tempered but I am really glad for the opportunity. There is a tinge of sadness since our friends have decided to sell the place but we’ll probably get to go again later in the fall. The saddest part is Bohdi. I had to be clear to my wife that his shot legs can’t handle the sand and we won’t be taking him down to the beach. There are a couple of places on the bay that I think I can get him in the water so we’ll do that but he so loved chasing the ball and showing off crashing through the waves. At least they both get to be with us.
Denali
The combined effort to hide Co-vid data by sending it to Washington rather than the CDC with the destruction of faith in the Postal Service is a truly impressive Repubican campaign strategy. I wonder who came up with it. Did they not realize that Republcians as well as Democrats receive medications through the mail? While Democrates are more apt to vote by mail and thus have a paper copy of their vote, Republicans may also be less inclined to risk standing in line to vote at the polls.
WaterGirl
@JPL: That’s powerful.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@raven: A change is good. And good for Bohdi.
WaterGirl
@JPL:
NotMax
@raven
Take it easy and remain mindful of those legs.
HumboldtBlue
@NotMax:
And entering from stage left: Audie Murphy Squash
@Brachiator:
The gig business owners want their workers to be independent contractors, that most likely a no from me, Prop 17 looking like a strong yes and Prop 15 seems like a touchy one that may pass but I’ve got homework to do.
raven
@NotMax: That’s what the guy who is working on me said. One thing we remembered is that I had a lot of problems with my foot that seemed to be caused my walking out and casting over-and-over with no shoes one. I’m going to try to avoid that.
cokane
I’m not worried about the polls, as always, check realclearpolitics.com or fivethirtyeight.com a day or two after one of these shock polls makes headlines. You’ll nearly always find that the polling averages have only budged slightly, at best. Polls that make news, make news. The ones that don’t change the underlying depiction of the race, don’t.
That being said, of course people, especially in key states, should treat the race like it’s up for grabs. If nothing else, the Senate is absolutely a toss up right now and is absolutely critical to getting good governance over the next two years, at least. This is a census, redistricting year too. So in many states that is also going to be critical, to get your state legislatures as blue as possible. There is a lot up for grabs! Absolutely no reason to be complacent about anything even if Biden was up by 20 points.
As well, it’s also possible that the pandemic situation somehow ends up looking much much better in November. I’m not saying this is likely. But it’s also not impossible that we have really low death numbers in October, that there’s a vaccine potentially making inroads into the general population, and other positive developments. Voters tend to reward whoever is in power during a crisis (we saw this post 9/11). I don’t think voters will forget the fucked up response so far this year, but it’s also not impossible.
If I had to predict the final vote now, I’d say Biden wins by slightly less than the current polling average (~7.5). Still a sizable blowout, but the race is much more likely to be closer than it is to be a larger than 7 point blowout, imo.
JPL
@WaterGirl: It is terrifying. I hope more come out.
WaterGirl
@Martin: I hope we see more of that.
Students start arriving at the University of Illinois today, and they all have to do the spit test. I hope the University shares the numbers and the % of students who are testing positive.
I think it’s gonna be high, way higher than people expect.
JPL
trump is now tweeting Save the Post Office.
NotMax
@raven
Yeah, sometimes we’re prone to dismiss that we’re not spring chickens any more. Or summer chickens, for that matter.
;)
Subsole
@cain: How would you even turn Hinduism into a monotheist religion??? Like, just say “everything in the pantheon is actually a secret avatar of Rama, so we’re cutting out the middlemen/women and just praying to him now.”? Would that even fly?
raven
@NotMax: Well when you are getting to do something you really want to do and that you were not sure you’d ever get to do again taking it easy may be difficult
Here’s where I’ll be, it’s not exactly the pipeline.
WaterGirl
@JPL: It looked like Betty was gone, and I didn’t know what you wanted her to do with the tweet and the link, but I figured embedding the tweet was better than nothing.
WaterGirl
@raven: If you’re smart about this trip, then you’ll get to enjoy the one you hope to take in the fall.
Bill Arnold
@Matt McIrvin:
…dutifully echoed by regretful
progressivessupporters of fascism. Hopefully the numbers are down since it’s increasingly clear that she’sa grifter (at best)unreliable.raven
@WaterGirl: Yea, we’ve been laying low since March and the beach looked too crazy but Athens is off the hook now.
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: I looked at the photos – do you have room for one more? Jealous.
schrodingers_cat
@Subsole: Lefty people in India love him because he bashes America. They have been brought up on a steady diet of how CIA is terrible.
Soprano2
@Subsole: Well, his family is Catholic, and I think he is too. He said he spent Saturday “researching things”, and that’s where it came from, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the internet source is related to religion. He doesn’t seem to be that religious, so I was a little surprised when he said it. I kept asking him who “they” are and where he read this, and he couldn’t give me an answer. It could be as simple as he heard Trump say it, so he thinks it’s true.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@WaterGirl: I agree. About a dozen members of staff here have tested positive for COVID and half of them were asymptomatic. They were tested because they’d been exposed, so the students will probably be lower than that, but there will be some.
WaterGirl
@raven: You’re a bit ahead of us. Our students come back this week. Ugh.
Athens is off the hook because students are back, massless and not social distancing, going to the bars?
HumboldtBlue
@JPL:
I just saw that.
Meanwhile Pelosi is her susual multi-tasking self.
This event we’re attending with Carole King and Speaker Pelosi has raised over $4 million. Not bad for 4:15 on a Monday.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin:
sheila in nc
@Martin: Only for undergrads. Grad students are unaffected. Or so says my UNC grad school daughter.
Bill Arnold
@Matt McIrvin:
For a while NY State had a Right-To-Life party (they faded out in the 2010s), that would generally but not always endorse the Republican candidate. Once, I voted for the Republican in a local race because the Democrat had a Right-To-Life party endorsement. It was my Rule at the time (still is).
Remember talking to a local R politician outside a store, who was pressing the flesh before the election. I politely told him I wasn’t voting for him because he had the right-to-life party endorsement, and he started babbling about “the children”.
raven
@WaterGirl: All of it. This is by a sports writer who went to Illinois and lives here.
raven
@Oklahomo: One of the great signs ever at a Westboro counter demonstration in Savannah.
raven
@WaterGirl: my post got disappeared.
dww44
@JPL: Which is what my sister told her friend…. that
Trump really isn’t pro life in the real sense of the term.
Oklahomo
@raven: That was perfection!
Bill Arnold
@schrodingers_cat:
Keep us up to date. I’ll happily call fascists and supporters of fascists fascists, or liars, or whatever they deserve. (Not with this real-name nym; somebody put me on PM Modi’s mailing list a few hours after I made some pointed technical comments about the India/Pakistan nuclear arsenals.)
raven
@Oklahomo: They were ambushing people coming out of churches on one of those beautiful squares. The crowd was really interesting with military folks from the area and a good many LBGT peeps as well.
Kent
Honestly, most people I know who say this sort of thing really aren’t single issue voters. They are voting for Trump because of race and immigration and because BLM makes them “uncomfortable” and because of liberal cooties and a bunch of other ordinary tribal reasons. But they know that abortion is the one issue that people generally won’t argue with them on because we tend to give deference to “religious convictions”
I have never met anyone who was otherwise a liberal Democrat except they vote GOP because of abortion. Perhaps such a person exists in the wild. But I have never personally met one.
raven
CNN)Miles Taylor, a former senior Trump administration official, endorsed Joe Biden’spresidential campaign on Monday, becoming one of the highest-ranking former Trump administration officials to do so.
Taylor, who served as chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, also accused President Donald Trump of repeatedly using his office for political purposes, including directing officials to cut wildfire relief funding to California because voters there overwhelmingly opposed him in 2016.
Taylor, a longtime Republican and political appointee at DHS from 2017 to 2019, endorsed the former vice president in a video produced by the group Republican Voters Against Trump in which he also made several allegations about Trump’s conduct. He also wrote an op-ed published in The Washington Post calling the President “dangerous” for America.
“What we saw week in and week out, for me, after two and a half years in that administration, was terrifying. We would go in to try to talk to him about a pressing national security issue — cyberattack, terrorism threat — he wasn’t interested in those things. To him, they weren’t priorities,” Taylor says in the video.
“Given what I have experienced in the administration, I have to support Joe Biden for president and even though I am not a Democrat, even though I disagree on key issues, I’m confident that Joe Biden will protect the country and I’m confident that he won’t make the same mistakes as this Preside
Yutsano
Katie Porter.
That’s it. That’s the post.
JPL
@WaterGirl: It’s perfect. Did you see the comment that I made that Jake Tapper said that Biden didn’t know about this.
Ken
He might want to consider calling McConnell to get the Senate back in town.
Also DeJoy might want to consider watching his back.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Origuy:
I remember that now. Thanks for the reminder.
okay, that speaks well of her.
James E Powell
@Soprano2:
I’m guessing that’s because she watches FOX & Sinclair stations or listens to RW radio.
If a Democrat were president now, they’d be showing people in hospital rooms, struggling to breathe. They’d feature funerals and interviews with the widows and orphans.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yutsano: is there a gif or an emoji for that whistling noise from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
ROFL of course.
HumboldtBlue
Girls, bruh.
VFX Lurker
My husband received a notice to visit a DMV for his CA driver’s license renewal. By the time he’d gotten around to it, the DMV locations were closed…but he was now allowed to renew his license online instead.
Most Californians under 70 can now renew their DL license online even if they got a notice requiring that they renew their licenses in-person. Californians 70+ have a one-year extension after the expiration date on their current licenses.
Governor Newsom made this possible via executive order. I hope this one-year-extension applies to you, too! ?
James E Powell
@Matt McIrvin:
I suspect Al Gore’s contesting of the 2000 election result was doomed from the beginning just because the Republicans put so much energy into claiming victory, and there was a general perception that Gore wasn’t going to pull it out.
The press/media hate Al Gore almost as much as they hate Hillary Clinton. From the start they characterized Gore’s attempts to get all the votes counted as a sore loser abusing the system. They cheered when the supreme court majority disregarded everything they have ever said about equal protection and comity and appointed Bush.
NotMax
@James E Powell
Sandra Day O’Connor’s nadir.
japa21
@VFX Lurker: In IL, when they reopened the SoS offices, they only allowed people with expired licenses to go, so I went after mine expired in June. I was supposed to have a vision exam but they waived those (thank goodness). Will have to do it in 4 years.
cain
The lord still has work for him on this earth still.
Bill Arnold
@JPL:
It might be worth attacking this. It’s what the Republicans would do.
E.g. “The D.J. Trump administration is the most lawless presidential administration in United States history.” With pages of supporting evidence, including links that say what they advertise when clicked through.
Subsole
@Geoduck: I think someone on here pointed out Youtube’s algo has basically linked all the batshit conspiracies that used to subsist on mimeographed pamphlets handed out by a guy in a half-open kimono and a tinfoil helmet into one massive extended universe of swivel-eyed madness.
RaflW
Super late to this party, but: Since most of the remaining rump of the GOP do not consume any news (they are living in a firehose of Tooker Carlshon, and even OANN nuttery) so, “the U.S. response to the pandemic has been unsuccessful when compared to peer nations” is a completely meaningless sentence to them.
The rest of the world, to the tiny extent it intrudes, is ‘lying about the pandemic’ or are just sh*thole countries anyway.
It does point to a major problem, one I see no solution to. Roughly 40% of the nation is ineducable and loves it that way.
Subsole
@Roger Moore: Yep. Nothing like a socialist who can buy their way to the front of the line…
Citizen Alan
@dww44: When I encounter someone who is a single issue anti-abortion voter, the first words out of my mouth are “So how many kids have you adopted?” Shuts ’em up 9 times out of 10.
HumboldtBlue
@VFX Lurker:
Thanks for the heads-up, I have DL and car registration due in October.
Also, California may be pretty blue but sweet mother of fucknuttery we have some seriously stupid people in this state.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@James E Powell: I have a half-formed theory that the press tried to make things stick to Gore and Hillary that they couldn’t make stick to Bubba, taking their weird conflicted feelings about the third on the first two. As she often is when it comes to the press, MoDo is the best/worst example of this.
cain
Hinduism at its core is a monotheistic religion – the one God in this is “Brahman” – Brahman was explained by Krishna in the Bhagavat Gita.
What these assholes are doing is wanting to remove the idea that there are other paths to Brahman. Down through the ages, missionaries, conquerors and others have tried to convert the Hindus.
But the Hindus simply add Christianity, Judaism as another path – you do not lose your identity as a Hindu if you also venerate Jesus or Yahweh.
Kay
@James E Powell:
I’m still mad about it.
WaterGirl
@raven: I released it – a boatload of links.
Subsole
@NotMax:
Yeah, a dodge. But I like where your head’s at.
WaterGirl
@JPL: No, I didn’t see that. It must have been a comment on a different thread?
Subsole
@Matt McIrvin:
Tried to warn you,
About Gino and Daddy G…
Sab
@Ken: Mitch McConnell already has his back. McConnell engineered this mess. Trump just got excited about it.
Roger Moore
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
It looks like the answer is 12:
Prop 14: Continues funding for stem cell research
Prop 15: Rolls back Prop 13 protections for commercial and industrial property and uses the money for schools
Prop 16: Re-authorizes affirmative action
Prop 17: Allows people in prison for misdemeanors to vote
Prop 18: Allows 17 year olds to vote in primaries if they’ll be 18 by the general election
Prop 19: Allows Prop 13 property value transfers anywhere in the state, not just in the same county
Prop 20: Rolls back Prop 47, which made many minor offenses misdemeanors instead of felonies
Prop 21: Allows local government more power to enact rent control
Prop 22: Exempts Uber and Lyft from AB5 rules.
Prop 23: Regulates dialysis clinics
Prop 24: Reinstates cash bail for most offenses
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@RaflW: What he said, in fact when you confront them with it they begin to shout mantras over and over again so they can’t hear you.
I can see why the kids love trolling them.
JPL
@WaterGirl: He decided rather than go to Biden, he would go to that group. I so wish he had done this last week, because I think it would have been 24/7 news. He was fired after he yelled at the president because of the border separation policies.
If the time line is true, what a nice surprise for Biden.
raven
@WaterGirl: sorry
WaterGirl
@JPL: Ah. I see. Biden didn’t know about the ad before it came out? I imagine he prefers to align himself with “not Trump” than “for Biden”.
Going to Biden with the info would have been the latter. That’s my guess, anyway. Interesting times.
WaterGirl
@raven: Don’t ever be sorry about that! It doesn’t hurt anything, except that it delays your comment. A lot of the links in stuff people copy in can be useless– let’s say the newspaper links to the name of every person mentioned.
But those links were really well done, and they backed up with the person was saying. I really liked what you put up.
Matt McIrvin
@Subsole: They played that song at every party at William and Mary.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yeah, I think Meg Whitman falls into the “I didn’t leave the party, the party left me” category. She’s the kind of person who you’d expect to be pulled both ways. Her money makes her want to like the Republicans, but her social beliefs make her want to like the Democrats. She could keep voting her money until someone like Trump came along and made it impossible to ignore what the party was really about. I’m sure his economic record isn’t doing him any favors with that group, either.
Subsole
@cain: Thank you for the enlightening response. That actually makes a really horrible sense. It’s kind of what the various stripes of Christianity do with Biblical interpretation. I just couldn’t map it onto the Hindu system. Much clearer now.
Ruckus
@VFX Lurker:
Thanks! That’s a change from the written extension that I got in the mail. And is sort of what I expected, they just saved a bit of work and mail costs avoiding what I expected in the mail.
The Lodger
@cain: So that’s why Jesus has a picture on the Yogananda poster.