Okay, it’s more deep purple to blue, but I needed an excuse to listen to Lou Gramm. Although when I moved back here in the early 90’s it was a cherry red state. But we fixed that.
I know we are not Texas-level electoral college numbers (and you keep on moving that needle Texas) but I was pleased to see the latest polls for Colorado:
There have actually been a few ads for the orange disease on television that I’ve seen. One directed at the Latino community that is just awful. Fear-mongering, intimating that they are afraid to say they’ll vote for the Orange one out loud, so they are part of the “silent majority.”
The entire ad is done in silence with a terrified looking woman sitting on a bed flipping poster board notes (seriously it looked like they were holding her hostage and making her flip these cards or they’d kill her dog), and telling us her silent vote was “for the children.” I refrained from throwing something at the television.
Biden has had very few ads as well. Much different than 2008 and 2012 when we were quite the prize for the DNC. I prefer being ignored. Though the Doug Emhoff was in town last night!
Gearing up for tonight’s car rally with @DouglasEmhoff! #BidenHarris pic.twitter.com/xvydYVRiA4
— Joe For Colorado (@JoeForCO) October 8, 2020
Looks like we’ll flip that Senate seat:
Cory Gardner has run the WORST campaign against one of the most popular Governors in recent history. His final salvo has been, “hey it’s better to have a Democratic Senator AND a Republican Senator to get things done, showing sunny photos with him and Sen. Michael Bennett. Bennett quickly came out and reminded everyone he was supporting Hickenlooper.
Finally:
Despite having a poorly worded and confusing abortion ban proposition on the ballot that is polling tooclose for comfort, support for pushing through a new justice is lower than the actual abortion proposition. So I guess that’s good news.
Lots of good video and more details about the polling at this link: 9News
That’s probably more than you wanted to know about Colorado politics! But would love to hear what your state looks like 25 days out from the election.
Otherwise, open thread
Baud
Since CO was a good state in 2016, I kind of assumed that it would be good again. Glad to hear neither campaign thinks it’s worthwhile to pour money in.
Jeffro
Not ashamed to admit that I liked Lou Gramm’s solo albums A LOT ?
Amazing how these states just flip blue and don’t come back (knock on wood). I guess that’s why we’re called progressives !
Hoodie
My son’s at school in Fort Collins and voting absentee for NC. Glad to hear that CO is under control, we need all the help we can get in NC.
zhena gogolia
michael bennet
peter strzok
Patricia Kayden
cain
Colorado has been moving blue and a lot of that is that Denver has been growing like hotcakes. Off in the hinterlands out in the rockies plenty of conservative communities. That’s no different than other Oregon. Every time I’m out amongst the Rockies – I can smell their evangelicalness. But the land does seem to lend itself that way – it does look and feel like God’s country.
SiubhanDuinne
@Patricia Kayden:
FFS
cain
@Patricia Kayden:
Translation – black people are scary and dangerous. If they were that inclined – they would have been murdering and killing back in the 80s given the grave injustices served them. It’s bullshit.
Fuck this judge.
Gin & Tonic
@zhena gogolia: Lincoln Chafee
trollhattan
Lot of mall hair packed into a single video.
Jacqueline Squid Onassis
We’re getting that same Dylan inspired Dollar Store Mussolini ad in Oregon and Washington. A lot. I’m am tickled pink to see the clever strategery of the election campaign of a genius throwing dollars at Washington & Oregon.
MFA
The nice bit about the SurveyUSA national poll (insert note about the pointlessness of national polls here) is that ‘Other’ + ‘Undecided’ < the gap between Biden and runner-up Trump. Even if Little Donny got 100% of them, he'd still loose.
TaMara (HFG)
@Hoodie: My friends’ son is going to school in Iowa and they had a long discussion on what he should do. He decided since he’s been living year-round in Iowa because of the pandemic, he’d register to vote there because his vote would mean more there.
trollhattan
Lincoln Project is very, very busy. New target: the fundamentalists.
One thing Goldwater was correct about what the danger fundy Christians represent, so of course Reagan ran right into their raised arms.
JPL
@TaMara (HFG): Nice. A neighbor is moving to FL and I said I hope you will vote here first. Even with non stop negative ads, Biden is still tied with trump in GA. FL is looking pretty good
TaMara (HFG)
As expected, Pelosi trolls the orange disease hoping to push him over the edge. She sure has his number.
catclub
I heard that Louisiana has SEVEN constitutional amendments on this years ballot. One is outlawing abortion.
JPL
OT I had no idea how militant some in Michigan were. Wow! At the end of the video is a sheriff justifying those arrested. Look they were simply going to arrest her. link
cain
@trollhattan:
It was a deal with the Devil – and those MFs are now taking over the party – and they aren’t easy to manage – so the oligarchs will have their hands full. The party is going to continue to go down a dark path. It’s just too bad that there is such a stark contrast between the two parties. We need another party to take on the conservative brand.
Another Scott
Muahahahhahh!!
secure.actblue.com/ – only $18M to go to $7.1B.
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Patricia Kayden: Who would have thunk murdering a man in cold blood and broad daylight has consequences?
Ken
Good news from Colorado. Terrible statistical graphics. The half-pie charts should be bar charts. The stacked bar chart (opinion of the candidates) should be a regular bar chart; or, if stacked, the neutral point of both should align so you could quickly compare the candidates’ favorable/not stacks.
TaMara (HFG)
@Ken: Wow, I’m glad it wasn’t just me. I kept looking at them thinking, this is weird and unreadable.
James E Powell
@Baud:
I think that’s a fair assessment. Is there any state that is redder than it was in 2016? Has Trump improved his position in any state over where he ended up November 8 2016?
Baud
@James E Powell: Nevada is the only one that comes up on occasion. I don’t know why.
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: Wut?
Benw
I can’t believe that Trump is running ads here in NY! They were on last night during baseball: running ON Trump’s COVID performance: “the greatest response in the world!” or some BS. Buying loony tune ads in NY is just lighting $ on fire
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
@Jeffro: I remember being seeing REM at Radio City in the late 80s, and being surrounded by pretentious proto-hipsters. Peter Buck starting playing these chords that were familiar, but not REM. Could it be…? Yes! Midnight Blue!
They rocked it, but I think I was one of the only ones dancing — a lot of the pretentious proto-hipsters around me just sat there, deeply confused. “Oh, they must be doing it ironically.”
From what I understand, they only covered songs they liked. So take that, pretentious proto-hipsters.
Ah, youth.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
@Benw: I think we’re seeing what Bialystok and Bloom would be like if they became political consultants.
Ken
@Jacqueline Squid Onassis: @Benw: Running ads in Washington, Oregon, and New York; pulling ads in Iowa and Ohio. Maybe this is the difference between a stable genius and an ordinary genius?
mali muso
From here in Virginia, it’s been interesting to go from Swing State status to solidly blue within the past 15-odd years I’ve lived here. I got to see Obama and Biden at multiple campaign events in 2008 and 2012, which was awesome, but I have no complaints about less visits from the big names if it means the state is reliably blue.
Roger Moore
@Jeffro:
Unfortunately, there seem to have been states- we’re talking about you West Virginia- that flip the other way and don’t flip back.
Barbara
@cain: I like to look at voting patterns, and one thing that I looked at after the 2012 election was counties that were majority Caucasian and that voted for Obama by the largest margins. Of the top 5, the largest urban areas in this category were Multnomah County, Oregon and Denver County, Colorado.
@Benw:
If it were Western New York, it might be part of the Ohio or Pennsylvania media market? Otherwise, not only useless, but one of the most expensive media markets in the nation.
Baud
@mali muso:
Virginia seems like a poster child for how elections have consequences.
Yutsano
There is a major political tension between the west side and east side of the state of Washington. Fortunately the west side is where 4/5ths of the population lives. So the resentment in the east keeps growing, but now they’re dominating the Republican party here. So the Republicans are in danger of going the way of the California Republicans.
Croaker
Well in PA and not happy. The Mail in Ballot process is a mess. Less than confident will receive ballot in time.
Elsewhere, folks have received ballots and voted. If PA goes red I personally will be able to tell you why.
Chetan Murthy
@TaMara (HFG): I know I’m not supposed to say they’re not Christian (those fuckers supporting Shitler) so I’ll call ’em Strip-Joint Christians.
Barbara
@Baud: It has been a long time coming. In truth, Virginia never became as deep red as other Southern states. We alternated pretty reliably between Democratic and Republican governors throughout the 80s and 90s. However, presidential was nearly guaranteed to be Republican — as recently as 2004, I went to my home state of Pennsylvania to participate in campaign activities because it just didn’t seem likely that Kerry could win Virginia. The watershed was 2006, when George “Welcome to the real Virginia Macaca or whatever your name is” Allen imploded.
Kent
@Ken: Exactly. Definitely was NOT a Kevin Drum production. I teach graph making in HS science classes and this should be very basic stuff for media organizations.
mali muso
@Baud: Oh yeah, definitely! Now that we finally have representation at the state level, things have been changing for the better. For one thing, this year I could go vote early without having to come up with a lame excuse (previously, you could only do excused absentee voting early). And people are taking advantage of early voting…last I checked, Virginia was #1 or #2 in numbers of ballots cast so far.
Ian
I’m glad Hickenlooper seems to have held on to his lead. Gardner has been the Colorado Dem’s #1 target after we got rid of Coffman in C0-6. For a while there Hickenlooper was caught in a bind after his primary and blowing through his warchest twice. The ads attacking Gardner for his 8 year crusade against the ACA have been fantastic.
Have any CO juicers seen polling on the Grey wolf initiative?
A Ghost to Most
@Hoodie:
Steve Addazio has pretty much fucked up everything with CSU football. He thought his Boston College Catholic horseshit would play here. It didn’t.
Soprano2
They’re showing that one in SW Missouri too, I’ve seen it a few times. I was surprised they were even advertising here, Trump is ahead 50% to 45%, so now I’m surprised because I assumed Trump would be ahead by 10 points or more here. Maybe that’s why they’re running it
Looking at electoral-vote.com is like poll porn right now – Texas as “barely Republican”? Tennessee as “likely Republican”? Now Missouri is “likely Republican”, it hasn’t been like that since 2008, when Obama almost won here. It makes me more and more hopeful for a huge blue wave that will wash out a lot of Republicans at the state level. Maybe we’ll actually get rid of some of our mostly-appointed Republican state officeholders.
TaMara (HFG)
@Ian: I’m going to guess it’s not much different than the 89% approval poll in 2019 (which I think is what propelled them to add it to the ballot).
The only objection is from the ranchers and I don’t think it’s going to sway the general population.
James E Powell
@Baud:
I’m curious about Nevada. I was thinking it was trending toward a bluer hue of purple
Are there any jackals with local knowledge?
Ken
@Soprano2: I’m leaning toward the theory (suggested by many) that the inexplicable Trump ad buys in Missouri, Louisiana, New York, Washington, etc. are part of the grifting operation. They direct campaign funds to Trump cronies, possibly even to shell companies owned by the Trump family.
A Ghost to Most
@Ian: I looked through the 9news.com poll, but they don’t list it.
Kent
Yes there is an east/west divide. But I think it’s just as much an urban rural divide. Down here in Clark County we have rural communities that are every bit as ruby red as eastern WA and perhaps even more racist. Visit Yacolt or Battle Ground, for example. If you drive up I-5 between Portland and Seattle there is basically nothing blue at all in the 100 miles between Vancouver and Olympia. Which is why Jaime Herrera Beutler keeps winning the WA-3rd. The very last House district touching the Pacific Coast that is still in GOP hands between Mexico and Canada. In the east, Spokane is bluish. And the Tri Cities and Wenatchee are pretty purplish if you exclude the outer suburbs. Eastern WA is just a whole lot more RURAL than Western WA which is mostly cities and forest land compared to eastern WA which is mostly rural ag land.
TaMara (HFG)
Completely OT: I must have been distracted while making chocolate chip cookie dough, because when I baked a batch (I keep dough frozen and make a few at a time – I used to do it for when company came over, sigh) – anyway, when they came out of the oven just now, they were more like chocolate-walnut candy bars with a little cookie around them.
I think I might have doubled the chocolate chips.. you know, accidentally. ?
Soprano2
According to electoral-vote.com, Trump has added zero new states to his column since 2016. That’s been pretty steady as long as I’ve been looking at it.
mali muso
@TaMara (HFG): Sounds like my kind of cookie!
Ian
@TaMara (HFG):
That is refreshing to hear. I heard a radio ad buy against it the other night, first advertisement for or against it all season. It was for a front range radio station, and all I could really think was, “really, they want us to be scared of wolves, here?”
different-church-lady
The president of the United States is demonstratively and manifestly insane, and yet he is still going to get 40 percent of the vote.
Roger Moore
@Ken:
My suspicion is they were trying to do something like one of those graphs of the composition of a legislature, where they have different size wedges for each party arranged from right to left. They’re actually pretty good for that application, since they show the overall ideological balance of the legislature, but they’re not the right thing for showing a share of the vote in a winner-take-all election. They’re especially useless since the whole thing would take up less space and be more precise as a table.
Kent
I don’t know about you guys but I just can’t fucking stand this anymore. I need this election to be over in a desperate way. I want to be cheerful but I can’t. My wife is still convinced that Trump is going to pull it out somehow. I just can’t take the endless drip drip drip of apparently good news that can still be so ephemeral. I feel like Charley Brown and the football. RBG was just the last straw for my sanity.
different-church-lady
I’m so old I can remember when there was a huge enthusiasm gap in favor of the guy they’re now supposedly too ashamed to talk about.
WereBear
@TaMara (HFG): You must need the chocolate :)
WereBear
The one dim spot in our neck of the woods (literally, ADK Mountains of NY) is how Tedra Cobb is not polling competitively. But then, things keep happening :)
JPL
@Kent: Assuming Biden wins, will we be able to sleep more that four or five hours a night right away, or have to wait until after he’s inaugurated.
VeniceRiley
@Kent:
@JPL: That’s my fear. No rest until 1/21/21
Ken
Don’t panic, not that long now. I just got my card reminding me that election day is November 10.
Just kidding, but if this year is typical, a few groups are already printing such cards. Also if typical, when caught the group will be found to be Republican-affiliated, and will claim that it was an honest mistake that led to mailing misprinted cards to every registered Democrat.
rjnerd
Wow this fills up fast… It was noticed that most favored daughter hasn’t been seen in a week. So imagine a TV promo for an upcoming show…
Martin
Kamala headed to Texas to campaign based on Beto’s advice. I’ve been predicting a blue texas for a while now, and while the circumstances are unusual to say the least, we might just get it this cycle. Dumping Cornyn in the process would be a nice bonus.
I wouldn’t necessarily expect it to repeat for a few more cycles, but CA and TX are the party anchor states, and if you’re forcing a party to dump money to defend their anchor, they’re gonna struggle. Take TX away from the GOP and the party is dead – they’ll have to reinvent.
MisterForkbeard
On a side note, it’s really interesting/depressing watching the Right flail around now. They’re desperate, but they’re desperate to believe rather than anything else. They feel like they have the stool kicked out from under them.
I have family who are insane psycho conservatives, but do the “I’m the patient, logical one and everyone who’s freaked out by all the Trump behavior are just silly alarmist liberals” thing. I’m one of the few who haven’t blocked them on facebook. But I can see them posting comments on articles from The Blaze and similar. And yesterday’s article was “Trump indicates Barr has enough evidence to charge Obama, Biden and other Democrats with treason, collusion, fraud, and obstruction of Justice.”
The ENTIRE comments section is full of this urgent and breathless “Why won’t barr indict? This has to happen now or never! What is he waiting for? Why did the Democrats do so much damage to our nation by illegally attacking Trump?”. The prevailing theory seems to be that Barr is waiting until closer to the election but they can’t understand why he wouldn’t do it now because everything is falling apart. And they’re just refusing to acknowledge that maybe… just maybe… Trump is lying, Barr is wrong, and there’s nothing there. They’re all clearly aware of the possibility but it’s the giant elephant in the room that can’t ever be acknowledged or the whole facade comes crumbling down.
Like I said: Fascinating and also really depressing.
Benw
@Ken: @Barbara: it’s Long Island! It must be the 10^11 dimensional chess to flip NY red by turning out the goombas on LI; indeed a very stable genius
Ken
Serve her and Jared right if Patient 0 is all whiny and paranoid from the dex and insists that they do all his cooking, food-tasting, bed-linen changing, and sponge baths.
Martin
@Kent: I’m there with you. The period from Kamala being named VP to RBG was a nice upward trend for me. A few other unrelated events conspired to make the RGB announcement too hard to take, but I’m back to anxiety levels being a bit more than my meds can mitigate.
I’m fairly confident in the election at this point, my worry is on the Senate, and on our mad king wrecking shit just because he can.
cain
I suspect King County, WA is also on that list. Hillsboro and Beaverton I would say are pretty blue. But some of the others are red. What we really need now is a full quorum in the state legislature so that we don’t have to depend on Republicans to be there to do any voting. Once that happens, majority will rule and whatever stupid tricks that Republicans pull will have no effect.
Last time the fucking militia was intimidating the legislature because of climate change legislation. It was a dumpster fire.
raven
@Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA): They would always put a group of tix on sale at the Georgia Theater for Atlanta shows basically unannounced. At the last one we went to at Lakewood Michael made a short plea to vote for Obama and the fucking asshole frat rats booed.
cain
@Croaker:
Time to talk to the press then. Get it out there now and make sure that it is highlighted so that Democratic leadership and other organizations can start putting the pressure on them.
Elizabelle
@Barbara: @Baud:
WRT Virginia now being blue: I think some credit goes to Republican Senator John Warner, who actually took a principled stand against the GOP crazies trying to run Oliver North for US Senator in 1994. A lot of Democrats and independents, in my experience, voted for Warner after that to reward actual political courage.
And then George Allen turned out to be a bridge too far.
Interesting, no, that Liberty University’s home state of Virginia has been represented by two Democratic Senators ever since Mr. Macaca lost his bid in 2006. John Warner retired in 2008.
Martin
@mali muso: Local control helps a lot. Watching the Texas only allowing one drop box per county, when my sample ballot arrived here in CA, we had over 100 drop box locations in our county (and we’ll be dropping off our ballots later today).
And our county registrar of voters is (or at least was) a Republican – he’s actually very, very good at his job.
CaseyL
@Kent:
@Yutsano:
Ditto the Olympic Peninsula. Lots of small communities, with houses spread out. Not as red as Southern and Eastern Washington, but…Grey’s Harbor is pretty GOP.
And I was shocked to see a Trump flag outside of a house on Whidbey Island – and not at the northern end, either (there’s a naval base there, which one assumes skews the residents GOP). Since I adore Whidbey, it was very upsetting to see.
Marcopolo
So here is the R leader of the KS Senate talking about how she plans to gerrymander Sharice Davids out of her seat when Kansas does redistricting for 2022. If she can keep supermajorities in the KS House & Senate so they can override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto.
Kansas Democrats need to flip 1 state house seat to end the R supermajority. Here are 4 candidates who are trying to flip KS HDs from Red to Blue if you would like to foil her plan. These candidates were included in a Data For Progress Fuck Gerrymandering ActBlue list that I gave to on September 30. That fund list has been switched to all TX candidates now so here are their individual ActBlue pages.
Cheryl Arthur KS HD-67
Katie Dixon KS HD-49
Cole Fine KS HD-15
Todd Maddox KS HD-60
Thanks in advance.
Matt McIrvin
That’s a QAnon dogwhistle.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Less than 16 mill now
From 18 mill to 16, in 1 hr 20 min. A mill every 40 min? Damn.
Barbara
@cain: Well, it’s not in the top 10. I think Marin County might have been just out of the top 10, and Arlington, VA was 8th. Counties like Fairfax, VA and King, WA are just so large that it’s hard to get beyond a 60/40 split. That’s what made Denver and Portland so striking. Most of the counties in the top 10 were small population counties in Western Massachusetts and Southern Vermont. It was just an exercise in me trying to understand where Obama really appealed to white voters.
Kent
I assume you are talking about OR. But the Dems are also really shitty about raw exercise of power. GOP legislatures in a similar position from TX to NC to WI managed to ramrod all kinds of toxic shit right through through sheer force of determination and manipulating the rules to their advantage. Dems tend to wince and retreat at the first sign of pushback. Even having a quorum probably wouldn’t have made a difference because some astroturf timber lobby group would organize a log truck or tractor parade in front of some rural Dem legislator’s house and scare them into caving.
Dems need to follow the GOP lead of just not giving a shit about the opposition at both the state and national level. McConnell doesn’t give a flying fuck how popular he is, or even how popular the GOP is. He just relentlessly pushes his agenda like a terminator or velociraptor. Dems need the same single-minded focus.
Eljai
@Marcopolo: Thank you, was just deciding where I should donate. Also, my 26-year-old niece lives in Sharice David’s district and she loves her!
jp_chgo
@Ken: Amen. Correct presentation makes the information so much easier to understand. And vice versa.
catclub
@Matt McIrvin: luckily I know this. saw a sign on a store in my towns main street.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
@raven: That’s hilarious. WTF band did they think they were seeing?
geg6
Best gauge I have as to what is actually happening here in PA is what I see in my own very Trumpy county. I called the Beaver County Democratic Party HQ yesterday to ask when I could pick up my mailing list and the 60 postcards I signed up to do and I was told they really were okay with me not doing them because they have so many volunteers that have nothing to do right now. They said they could make two of these new people happy to be doing something. They’re breaking up the 60 I requested into packets of 30 so they could give two newbies a task. I’ve been doing this stuff for forty years, so I’m happy to see newbies stepping up.
In other good news, a local GOPer state rep is in big trouble, even among his own caucus. Video came out yesterday of him making his 5 yo son smoke a cigar and call women the P-word. Other videos show him with another older minor who he encourages to play the Fuck, Marry, Kill “game.” Dems and some in his own caucus are calling on him to resign his current seat and drop out of the race.
timesonline.com/story/news/2020/10/07/gop-rep-aaron-bernstine-shared-snapchat-videos-enticing-young-…
JPL
@TaMara (HFG): It’s about time. Unfortunately, trump won’t be the only one that is bat shit insane, and because of that, I support it. You do know the republicans would abuse it.
Kent
@CaseyL:
You shouldn’t be shocked. There are plenty of Republicans in the bluest parts of blue states. Just like there are plenty of Democrats in the reddest parts of red states. I remember 2008 when we were living in rural China Spring TX which is like 75/25 GOP. That was when TX was still a caucus state and I was utterly shocked and delighted to see how many of my neighbors and other white rural TX Dems came out of the woodwork to caucus for Obama and Hillary at our little rural elementary school gym in rural red country that was packed to overflowing. Even though we were literally in the heart of McCain country and spitting distance from Bush’s Crawford ranch.
We don’t need to extinguish them, we just need to beat them.
JPL
@geg6: Children and Family services needs to investigate. The video was horrifying.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
I wonder if it might be the sanity of his voters, the appeal of someone who looks normal – to the insane.
Haroldo
@Marcopolo:
All done. My folks’ families are from Kansas – I’ve watched the deterioration the state over the years with sadness.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Well, we finally got our ballots in the mail today, and they were delivered to the county drop box within the hour.
Mask usage in and around the courthouse where the county offices are, was near 100%. But on the streets a block away, it was pretty much 0. People with strollers, people jogging, people walking dogs. No masks. Like it was a different planet.
There was a steady stream of foot traffic at the drop box. Encouraging to see but we were VERRY uncomfortable at being forced to be within a foot of several strangers. The meandering course we had to take to try to maintain distance on the way to and from the courthouse was also very stressful.
LOL, now we’re back home and my wife is taking an online writing workshop. The writing prompt is “I’m talking here!”
Marcopolo
@Eljai: Thanks. Watching that clip pissed me off. Gerrymandering is awful but seeing someone take about it like that so shamelessly. Argh.
Ruckus
@Kent:
Seeing as how turnout has been dismal in almost all elections for a long time. 75% of the population is over 18 and in 2016 only 55.5% of the voting age population voted. That’s a lot of votes sitting on their asses. Now of course some of those can’t vote for various reasons but still, that’s a lot of votes that didn’t/can’t get counted.
BTW the highest % count was 2008 at 57.1%
Marcopolo
@Haroldo: Thank you. I sent an email to DougJ in hopes he will do a front page post on this since the clip of the R Majority Leader talking about gerrymandering Davids out is so visceral.
Mike in NC
That same ad was running here about 2-3 months ago and it’s now back. Looks like it cost $5 to produce. Fat Bastard has got to have the shittiest communications team imaginable. One of the other TV ads features a beefy Hulk Hogan type who complains that Biden will let the liberals burn everything to the ground, and the third one raves about how Trump will quickly defeat the coronavirus (uh, why didn’t he do something back in March?) and create ten million new jobs in ten months. The stupidity is mind-boggling.
raven
@Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA): Same as whining about the Boss being too political.
Yutsano
@Haroldo: I was worried about this. The disaster that was Brownback is fading into memory. Kansas doesn’t really have any big population cores, so you really just have Topeka and Lawrence. But my understanding is the eastern half of the state is trending blueish. So if there’s a way to get some more solid wins there Kansas might just go purple.
ballerat
Russ George, a republican and former speaker of the Colorado house of reps, endorsed Diane Mitsch Bush, the dem candidate for US House CO-3, over crazy lady Lauren Boebert.
Even a better burn is that George is from Rifle, crazy lady’s hometown.
Apparently Boebert isn’t just a q-anon kook and supporter of far-right militias, she’s also personally a recidivist shitbird with a number of arrests over the last 10 years for offenses like unsafe driving, disorderly conduct, harassing her neighbors and not showing up for her court hearings.
Naturally she’s running on “law and order”. None of which should surprise.
Unfortunately it’s going to be very close. I think Mitsch Bush is polling slightly ahead but within MOE.
geg6
@Ken:
I haven’t seen a Cheetolini ad here in Western PA in weeks. And this is supposedly one of the places he plans to come to as soon as they take his straight jacket off. Even some of his fans around here are saying they wish he’d keep his germs to himself and just buy some ads.
Marcopolo
@Ruckus: The last time turnout in a US Presidential election was over 60% was in 1968. The folks who are looking at numbers this year think we have a chance of hitting that this year.
geg6
@Croaker:
That’s your county that’s screwing up. I got my ballot two weeks ago and dropped it at the county elections office on Tuesday. There is no one here in Beaver County who asked for a ballot who hasn’t gotten one.
ETA: You should be able to just go to the county elections office and vote right there.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Croaker: What county in PA? I’ve heard mixed things across the state. People in Philly have reported voting already, and I think @geg6 who is in the Pittsburgh area also reported voting. We are in Delaware County just outside Philly. Our county office at least was responsive, answered right away and told us the ballots had gone out last Saturday. As I said upthread, we got them today (6 days after they were supposedly mailed from 5 miles away).
ellie
@Marcopolo: Thank you! I shared this info on Twitter.
J R in WV
@Roger Moore:
Well, I’ve been here since birth a very long time ago. When I was a kid and would visit friends’ homes, there would be 2 or 3 portraits on the wall. FDR, JFK, John Lewis (UMWA president) were venerated, and the Democratic party was the only party in the southern part of the state.
I’m not sure when it flopped over to the evil side, I guess Reagan started it, Arch A Moore (Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s felon father) pushed it along too.
Remember, we elected a Pseudo-Democrat Governor in 2016, who changed to Red Republican asap after taking office. We re-elected Sen Joe Manchin, I’m glad he is our other senator relative to any Republican…
I really believe too many people who can think for themselves had to move away to have a career.
Kent
@Ruckus:
@Kent:
Yes. Although I’m fairly confident that if we have actual free and fair and universal elections and can dial back the overtly undemocratic voter suppression and institutions like gerrymandering and the electoral college and Senate. Then a reasonably center-progressive agenda is going to usually prevail. Not always, but usually. And enough of the time to radically change this country from a revanchist Confederate hellhole to something more like Canada or Germany. Even those countries have their conservative backwaters. But least their national conversation and institutions are more progressive.
Sure Lurkalot
It’s easy to get encouraged in Denver…I walk and bicycle a lot and note that Trump signs are not very prevalent while there are many Biden signs. But since this happens every 4 years, no complacency here. Besides, I live south of the city and can drive not too far to get to Trumpyland. Ballots are supposed to be mailed today, I’ve read the election materials and my friends and family are all ready to go.
Want to thank TaMara for the Beef with Barley soup recipe…I made it last night and it was delicious and a big hit.
…
thylacine
I’d like to see some polling of CO-3: Mitsch Bush (D) versus Boebert ( Whackaloony).
Ruckus
@Barbara:
Lived in Marin county in 2008. Worked for President Obama’s election. On election day the crowd at Democratic headquarters was packed, all day, in both the main office and the overflow office next door. Had to walk to a drug store because I forgot my reading glasses, passed the republican headquarters and there were 3 people there, doing nothing. Marin county is 80% democratic and even there and back then we had one 4×4 moron with an 8 ft stars and bars flag flying, driving around town. He was “popular.”
jonas
@Yutsano: Same in NY — rural parts of upstate is stalwart MAGA country, but fortunately 4/5 of the population is in NYC and surrounding counties. What on earth Trump is doing wasting ad dollars there instead of PA and OH is beyond me. It would be like Biden doing a major ad buy in Alabama when Illinois or California are on the line.
Marcopolo
@Croaker: It isn’t clear to me what your issue is. Have you requested a mail-in ballot and not received it? Have you not been able to even request a ballot? I’m assuming you’ve made sure you are currently registered at your current address.
Generally speaking with mail in ballot issues you do want to talk to your local Board of Elections. Keep trying to call them & send them an email or two.
Kent
@J R in WV:
When I was in HS in 1980, West Virginia and Georgia were blue states. Washington, Oregon, and California were red states.
In 1988, West Virginia and Iowa were both blue states for Dukakis. While CA, PA, and most of New England were red states for Bush.
Times do change. It’s the winning that counts.
James E Powell
@different-church-lady:
Right. It’s stunning and it’s scary. And I reject the “even Hoover got 40%” or Goldwater or Mondale responses as any comfort. None of those guys were anything remotely like Trump. We are living in a nation that is ~40% horrible people.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
So does anybody have any insight about Cal Cunningham’s scandal that the headlines keep telling me is going to give Thom Tillis the victory, and let the Republicans keep the Senate?
Kent
It wasn’t Reagan. WV voted blue in both 1980 and 1988. 1984 was a complete Reagan landslide with only MN going for Mondale so that doesn’t really count. In fact WV stayed blue through both Clinton elections in 1992 and 1996 and voted Red for the first time in generations in the 2000 election for Bush over Gore.
So if anything it was Bush that flipped WV not Reagan.
Haroldo
More grimness. Ex-Special Forces are being recruited for ‘poll watching’ in Minnesota. The tip of the iceberg is becoming more exposed, for better or worse.
washingtonpost.com/politics/private-security-minnesota-election/2020/10/09/89766964-0987-11eb-991c-b…
Jeffro
@James E Powell: DC is actually slightly redder now than in 2016. Seriously!
Jeffro
@Benw: he really thinks he’s going to magically “flip” NY, CA, WA, etc
Marcopolo
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: We will find out on election day. So far the polling hasn’t shown much, if any, movement away from Cunningham to Tillis. TIllis, interestingly, has had his own marital issues.
Thom Tillis’ Ex-Wife Cites “Cruel and Inhuman Treatment” in Divorce Documents
At least there doesn’t seem to be any child-born-out-of-wedlock stuff going on here–if you remember John Edwards.
geg6
@James E Powell:
Yes, the GOP 40% were always horrible people. They just didn’t have someone even worse than they are to vote for. Tells you a lot about how far the standards have fallen in the GOP when Barry Goldwater looks like the sane and sober alternative.
Jeffro
@Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA): that’s awesome ? I’m sure they were fans (of the song, at least) – it is a lot of fun!
Kent
I have older MAGA relatives who are convinced that Trump deserves re-election on the merits. Because he lowered taxes, cut regulations, strengthened the military, protected their religious freedoms, and won the trade war against China.
They are convinced that a Biden victory will mean they will need to hide their bibles and attend church in secret
Are they horrible or completely delusional and living in an alternate reality? Or maybe a little of both?
Jeffro
@Roger Moore: yeah but it’s West Virginia, who cares? ?
(I kid, I kid, JC!)
Kent
Not surprising I guess. We’ve had 4 years of gentrification plus four years of GOP lobbyists and staffers and appointees descending on DC to replace the 8 years worth of Obama folks who have moved on. DC really is a company town and right now the GOP are running the company.
Haroldo
@Kent:
Increasing age engenders possible cognitive decline. Simmer that in FOX sauce. Empirically that seems to lead to your older relatives more often than not.
My mom is the last one standing in our family and is a strong, strong liberal Democrat. Some of my younger, Arkansas based cousins, however……
Calouste
@Ken: I assume the ad buy in Louisiana is so they can charge the campaign at LA (the city) rates for ads they bought at LA (the state) prices and pocket the difference.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
And now I’m hearing them do pieces with the prompt “Will you shut up, man!”
Wonder where the inspiration came from for these?
Barbara
@Ruckus: I am not disagreeing. I did go back and look at my data again, and Marin was a bit higher than I had originally thought.
WaterGirl
@geg6: Wow-ser. Just when I thought they couldn’t really surprise me anymore.
Un-fucking believable.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@different-church-lady: So did “In your guts you know he’s nuts” Goldwater.
WaterGirl
@Marcopolo: Ha! When I saw your comment earlier, I sent DougJ an email message with your comment in it. :-)
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Sometimes I wonder if we’re overly nostalgic. Past Republicans were not as crass, personally corrupt, or incompetent as Trump, but the GOP (and the U.S.) has had some pretty awful policies in the past that were less controversial than they would be today.
Anyway, I’m still hopeful we can set a new record with Trump. We still have over three weeks to go, and I’m not sure that all of his 40% will necessarily bother voting.
Kent
Yes. Bush probably killed 10x more people with his illegal and immoral war in Iraq than Trump has killed with his Covid response.
Reagan’s death toll in Central America through propping up and supporting right wing genocidal dicatators in Guatemala and El Salvador also exceeds Trump by at least 5-fold.
Trump just kills more Americans so we notice it more.
CarolDuhart2
I’ve been thinking about an idea that someone here mentioned. “Hack the Electorate”. Let immigrants who have a bachelor’s degree automatically qualify for U.S. Citizenship. Not a bad idea, per se. But I’d also let all of those refugees in, offer a chance to Tibetans, Uhugihurs, Palestinians, those Brits who see no future in Great Britain, and some reparative citizenship to those American-born Mexicans whose parents who were expelled during that great deportation in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
Chris Johnson
“for the children” is a straight QAnon play. Is it coming directly from the Republican party?
Geoduck
In my tiny corner of Washington state, a lot of GOPers are being cutesy and putting up signs for the GOP governor candidate instead of the Shiatgibbon. Said candidate is a doofus proto-Shiatgibbon, a mask-denying sheriff from a tiny town in the far east of the state. As I understand it, he is literally the sheriff, the only member of his “department”.
Kent
@Geoduck: Same here in the Vancouver area. The MAGA folks are putting up signs for Culp and Jaime Herrera Beutler, but not Trump.
Croaker
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: 3rd most populated.
Hoppie
@Marcopolo: Election trivia: in 1964, Barry Goldwater got just under 40% of a turnout just above 60% of eligible voters, or a little under 25% of total eligible voters. In 1980, Ronald Reagan got 50% of a turnout of just above 50% of eligible voters, or a little over 25% of total eligible voters. And both were considered landslides! Who doesn’t vote is very important.
Another Scott
@Mike in NC: I heard bits of the Wyoming US House debate last night (on C-SPAN radio). Cheney was going on and on about dangerous leftist anarchist radical burning down cities and businesses and how she supported the good police, freedom, opportunity, the American Way, etc., etc. It was 100% RWNJ talking points. (Wyoming is a well-known hotbed of urban antifa violence, donchano.) The Democratic candidate, Lynnette Grey Bull, kept talking about the impact of the government and the law on real people – especially native Americans – and making a good case, but it was like both of them were on different planets. (There were two other spoiler candidates up there as well.)
It would be great if the blue wave washed away Liz, but that seems to be very unlikely. Here’s hoping that Grey Bull gets her sea legs and comes back stronger next time if she doesn’t make it this time.
tl;dr – Even if there is a huge wave on November 3, the job will not be over. We will have to fight them every single day.
Cheers,
Scott.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent:
Huh? California shifted between a blue and red shade of purple from the 60’s to the mid aughts. I don’t think we’ve had two Republican Senators in my lifetime. The Governorship has moved back and forth between the parts(though 16 years of GOP govs in the 80’s and early 90’s). As far a Presidential elections go, for the 80’s, remember Ronnie was a California governor.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
I’m old, it comes naturally.
2liberal
Possibly the numbers get worse when voters see the ads?
Quiltingfool
@TaMara (HFG): I have a question about freezing cookie dough. I make pretty mean chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies. I’d like to make a few batches and freeze them so I could bake a few at a time. So, do you shape the cookies and then freeze and package them? Also, how is baking time affected? Do you allow the cookies to thaw or just bake from a frozen state? I bake my cookies at 375 degrees for 12 minutes (I make big cookies). I’d really appreciate your input!
Michael Cain
Re the questions about Nevada… Post 2018, the superficial numbers on offices held are about as blue as you can get. State government trifecta; three of four US House seats; both US Senate seats. Given that it’s a western state, I always like to look at what sort of ballot initiatives have been passed recently. In Nevada’s case, those include marijuana legalization and a requirement for utilities to get 50% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030. The latter is not a huge leap. In 2019, Nevada’s in-state generation — which is not the same as consumption — was 28% from renewable sources.
Blackcatsrule
@Quiltingfool: Not TaMara but I scoop my cookies and freeze them on a tray, throw them into a freezer bag, take out as many as I want to bake, just add 2 or 3 minutes to the baking time, no need to defrost.
Ken
@Quiltingfool: I re-posted your question in TaMara’s new cooking thread, balloon-juice.com/2020/10/09/recipe-exchange-spicy-lime-cilantro-chicken
TaMara (HFG)
@Quiltingfool: Sorry for the late reply. I make round balls, flatten them and then freeze them. Then I just pop them on the baking sheet and baking. No need to thaw. They take a couple more minutes to bake.