Who knew Mandy Patinkin and family would be the heroes we didn’t know we needed in 2020. Following him on Twitter has been a joy.
This stuff ain’t easy or the most comfortable for lots of folks. It’s not always comfortable for me. I’ve been hung up on many times, sometimes I feel awkward and ridiculous making calls, but then I help someone and I know there are thousands of others doing this work with me.
— Mandy Patinkin (@PatinkinMandy) October 24, 2020
Loved this gif
I’m off to put together a recipe post for tonight. The duck hut has arrived and as soon as it’s warm enough I’ll attempt to put it together. Y’all will get photos of the finished project..probably with the ducks giving it a middle claw, as they are creatures of habit and hate change. I’m sure trying to get them into it tonight will be a real treat. /s
Open thread
Cheryl Rofer
My shift in the county and state texting operation starts at noon.
RaflW
Since this is an open thread, was Mother Jones’s Ben Dreyfus drinking last night, ’cause holy shit. He went off, defending the NYT and Plott.
I think it’s okay for an editor to want to defend fellow practitioners of the craft, but the Times really, really screwed the pooch on that one. They had to issue three corrections, and it isn’t like this was the first time the ‘paper of record’ had run a piece that failed to acknowledge the Republican operative backgrounds of people selected for interviewing on a news item purporting to be about just regular voters.
MomSense
Mandy made me cry. I love how happy he felt.
eclare
Good luck with the hut assembly and acceptance!
oldster
Most of us only get one vote.
But if you phone-bank, like Mandy, you can get a second vote. And a third, and more and more.
Every person who would not have voted without your call. Every vote that would have been thrown out without your help.
Those are votes that you can add to your tally, without doing anything illegal or immoral.
It gives you a lot of power. Use it for good.
Suburban Mom
I had to do an errand with my mom this morning and could only get home by slipping in between two vehicles in the local Trucks for Trump parade. I feel so dirty now.
James E Powell
@RaflW:
This has happened before, though it’s not like it’s only the NYT. I recall some cable show interviewing “random voters” who turned out to be Republican party officials. It’s one of those things somebody – not me, obviously, I’m lazy – should have kept track of.
It is appalling the way so many are defending Plott for what should get her removed from political stories, maybe not fired, but definitely something other than people talking about how great she is. Where is the evidence of her greatness? Reminds me of the multiple defenses of Maggie Haberman.
cain
? Phone bank heroes, with stars in their eyes ?
It’s awesome that Mandy is jumping in and doing these things with such gusto. He and his wife have been stellar.
brantl
@Suburban Mom: It will wash off you, but not off of them.
David Evans
@Suburban Mom: Think of yourself as a secret agent.
Ken
@David Evans: A secret agent would have pushed the button that sprayed oil and caltrops across the road behind the car.
lamh36
Permission granted to post pics…finally! Say hello to my newest niece Olivia Love T! Courtesy of my youngest sister Jess and her husband Ro???
https://twitter.com/psddluva4evah/status/1320037883936411648?s=21
Baud
@lamh36:
Aww. That baby is going places.
lamh36
@lamh36:
She’s our lil chunky monkey ?? this is her and my mom
https://twitter.com/psddluva4evah/status/1320039990240399361?s=21
RedDirtGirl
First day of early voting. In my liberal Brooklyn neighborhood I have about a 2 hour wait ahead of me. I did the poll worker training, but it seems they may not need me which is a great sign!
FelonyGovt
@lamh36: What a little doll! ❤️❤️❤️
Yutsano
@lamh36: Quick! Someone give that baby to Unca Joe for a feeding and a snuggle! What an adorable bean!
JanieM
@lamh36: The pics made me laugh out loud, she is so cute. In that first one, she looks like she has a lot to ponder, and is already getting to work on it! One of my great-nephews, in his baby pictures, always looked like he was about to try and sell you a used car.
lamh36
@JanieM: I told my sister she’ll looking like “ok I’m here, now what…ya gonna entertain me or not”??
JanieM
@lamh36: LOL. Nice to have something so cheerful to think about right now! Well, any time, but especially right now.
Sister Golden Bear
@lamh36: So cute!
Emma from FL
@lamh36: ooooh. Pretty baby!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I’m having mostly optimistic days with occasional panic attacks when some thought occurs to me.
Here’s this morning’s wake-up-in-cold-sweat thought: Why did DeJoy pull all the USPS police off the job? What do they normally guard against? What fuckery is he planning with the vote?
Have we heard any follow up to that story?
Optimistic me says the 20 million ballots already returned are a buffer against whatever it is. But it still nags at me that clearly DeJoy has some nationwide scheme planned and the shoe has not yet dropped.
TaMara (HFG)
@lamh36: Squeee! Glad I popped back in and can do the embed:
Dorothy A. Winsor
@TaMara (HFG): Baby! So sweet.
TaMara (HFG)
Keep a thought for Estes Park today. Snow cannot come soon enough.
lamh36
@TaMara (HFG): Thx. I won’t be able to see her til about 2 weeks but I can’t wait!
laura
@lamh36: oh what wouldn’t I give to smell behind that tiny perfect ear. Keep On Aunting lamh36 – and thank you for sharing!
SiubhanDuinne
@James E Powell:
Plott used to write for the National Review. She is a self-described “Ann Coulter fangirl.” I can’t imagine how any editor thinks she can be fair and objective as a political reporter. Put her on another beat where her political views are irrelevant and won’t compromise the story.
SiubhanDuinne
@lamh36:
Awww. What an adorable baby! Congratulations to the whole family!
Suburban Mom
@Ken: A flamethrower would have been handy.
evodevo
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: The Postal Inspectors just investigate mail-related fraud, like employee embezzlement, mail theft, Nigerian scams, employee disability fraud, direct threats to employees and the like…I doubt if pulling them off would really do much to the election…I was a carrier for 23 years and never saw/met one…
Kathleen
@lamh36: Too precious for words. Every baby Girl pic you’ve posted shows bright purposeful intense sprites. I can see them all competing in the same Presidential primary in 40 years. Be prepared.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@evodevo: So are there any theories why he would stand them down? Is he launching his own Nigerian scam?
WereBear
@lamh36: Love those pics. So little… and yet, so wise :)
Kathleen
@SiubhanDuinne: NYT pulled this stunt in 2016 IIRC. I wonder if she was the offender in those stories as well. Thx for the context.
frosty
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: @evodevo: Mail theft.
Baud
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Maybe preparing for Trump’s post-presidency business.
evodevo
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: He doesn’t need a reason other than to cripple the PO…but in our rural county, you call the local sheriff to report damaged mailboxes or mail theft…we see postal inspectors only when a customer has threatened an employee or vice versa, or the post office is broken into…and that hasn’t happened in years…Now…theft in a mail sorting facility…THAT might be a problem, but the supervisor is supposed to report on that…
hells littlest angel
I can’t help imagining Mandy Patinkin phone-banking sounding like this:
“You’re voting for Trump? What the hell is wrong with you? Are you fucking stupid? You ignorant fucking asshole!” [Slams down phone]
ETA: He is renowned for being an arrogant, tantrum-throwing diva,
scav
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: How else is der Trumsterfeuer going to raise the 419 bazillion campaign dollas he needs?
Barbara
@lamh36: Gorgeous baby! So nice to have more recipients for your auntie love.
David Evans
@Ken: Thereby ceasing to be secret.
Emerald
Ya missed this one from Mandy that he posted yesterday. Trust me: it’s worth it to endure a few seconds of tRump to get to Mandy’s punchline:
https://twitter.com/PatinkinMandy/status/1319474243604656129?s=20
eclare
@lamh36: Adorbs!
Barbara
@SiubhanDuinne: Or, you know, put her through the paces with rigorous editing. Seriously, it’s not just NYT that has this problem, but this was jaw dropping incompetence on someone’s part.
I no longer read “man in the street” articles like this one. Even when they are not infected with such obvious and extreme bias, they all pretty clearly begin with a desired narrative line that goes in search of a few quotes to bolster that narrative.
They are comparable to “pasta night” at your local restaurant — something cheap and filling to hide the fact that you don’t have enough real cooks to keep the kitchen going at full tilt every night of the week. They don’t add anything to anyone’s understanding of real events.
I feel a bit guilty this year for not doing more. I have donated a ton, but I am just feeling exhausted. I was solicited to do some texting, which I think I will end up doing. I voted a month ago!
randy khan
I’m seeing that Trump people are arguing that Trump won the debate because Biden said that we’d be transitioning from oil in the future. The evil Miller in the campaign (as opposed to the evil Miller on the White House staff) said Biden had lost Pennsylvania and another state (I forget which one and am not going to look for it because it’s silly) with that statement. No word from them on how Trump’s incoherence on COVID-19 might affect that thinking.
HumboldtBlue
J R in WV
@lamh36:
Congrats, Lamh, she’s beautiful~!
Barbara
@randy khan: It probably was an unforced error on Biden’s part, but transitioning to clean energy sounds an awful lot like not stopping the use of fossil fuels in the near term.
Uncle Cosmo
@Emerald: My name is Mandy Patinkin. You tried to kill my democracy. Prepare to be thrown out of office in disgrace.
RedDirtGirl
@lamh36: Gorgeous!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@randy khan: Fracking is a big and controversial topic in PA. It was addressed directly in the “debate” and Biden made the statement that “no, I’m not going to end fracking” but that hasn’t stopped the Trump people from running ads with “fracking creates lots of jobs and Biden is going to kill it.”
That’s as far as I know the main connection to the oil industry in PA. And a lot of PA residents do actually hate fracking and its environment effects and want it to go away.
So even if there was widespread belief that Joe’s jackbooted thugs are coming for your fracking, I don’t think that’s a killer in PA.
TomatoQueen
Done, done, and done in VA 8. Mr Beyer, Mr Warner, Unca Joe and Auntie K. As for the amendments, no and no, both are badly written pls try again. Absentee ballot to be mailed in, I have a pic of the envelope, postage paid (.50, not .55) by the gov’t. The privacy envelope, or envelope B as it is called, used to be printed in a larger font, landscape. Now it is printed portrait, tiny tiny tiny font and I will be you anything you like that this nefariousness against the elderly and visually impaired is intentional. But I was most cautious and careful to complete all parts, my witness completed his part, and now democracy’s most precious gift to the future is on its way. We shall see whether it is counted.
Uncle Cosmo
@randy khan: Evil WH staff Miller is competent at the ratfuckery he perpetrates. Evil campaign Miller can’t find his arse with both hands because he keeps mistaking his face for it. Fuckem both.
WaterGirl
@lamh36: What a doll! Congratulations.
J R in WV
@evodevo:
Many years ago (like 30+?) someone (Mona) stole a new box of checks from our rural mailbox. Then she got a phoney driver’s license with her picture and wife’s identification, and kited checks all over the valley.
We were in bed early on Sunday evening reading, when we got a phone call from a distressed young clerk at a convenience mart, whose first words were “So I bet you guys didn’t just cash a check in St Albans, did you?” She was upset because Mona and her boyfriend almost ran her down making their getaway.
Cops told wife “But how much did that box of checks cost you? You aren’t going to pay those bad checks are you?” Did not want to take a report, fill out paperwork. Sure didn’t care about Mona passing bad paper.
But the Postal Inspector cared, had busted Mona once already, she was on probation when she stole our checks, went inside the jail finally…
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Any lovers of the Strand bookstore in NYC? It’s my favorite bookstore in all the world and I just found out that they, like so many retail businesses, are in extreme danger of closing their doors.
Edit: Still trying to find information on how to actually help them out, but here’s an upcoming event with Neil Gaiman that jackals might be interested in.
Emma from FL
@randy khan: Probably Texas? The problem with that claims is that even Texas is turning to alternative energy sources. So are some of the plains states. Some people in an earlier thread were taking about it.
James E Powell
@Barbara:
And that right there is the inconvenient truth that none of the defenders of bad journalism/propaganda will ever admit. There are no random people stories.
Right now there is an MSNBC story circulating with three young African American women talking about how they are not sold on Joe Biden. That story exists because someone at a meeting said, let’s do a story on young African American women who are not sold on Joe Biden.
Ripley
I’ll be the grain of sand, I guess. I hate phone calls and texts from political campaigns. I mean that I fucking HATE them. I hate that people use my phone number as a thing in their toolbox to “do something”, no matter how important this election is or any election has been.
I received a 7 part text yesterday from ‘James Carville’. 7 freaking pieces of a text, that show up out of order. I can’t vote in Louisiana, ‘James’. Leave me alone. That’s just one of probably 200+ texts I’ve received in the last two months.
I’m a registered Democrat, not an Independent or No Party or anything that might make you wonder – I’m a Democrat. I’ve voted in every election, in this district, since 2006. You don’t need to send me GOTV texts or call me. And, pre-COVID, you didn’t need to stop by to knock on my door and ask for my support or encourage me to vote. Do your damned research and you’ll realize I’m a solid Democrat and a solid voter.
Sorry – I know this is probably an unpopular attitude here, but it’s probably not an uncommon attitude. Some of us don’t appreciate the carpet bombing tactics from every damned campaign and organization out there. Just because you somehow picked up my contact info, and it’s super easy to send texts and make phone calls, doesn’t mean I need or want to have a conversation with you or hear from you.
PS – I am not a crank. I am a yellow dog Democrat, though.
Cheryl Rofer
@Ripley: I’m sorry. Our operation takes you off our lists if you text back that you don’t want to hear from us. And all of them should take you off their lists once you’ve voted.
I’ve been blocking a lot of numbers, too, although it’s gotten better since I’ve voted.
Kent
@Barbara: It wasn’t incompetence on the part of the NYT. It was deliberate partisan fuckery on the part of the reporter who needs to be fired for fabricating a story.
You can’t expect editors to triple-verify every single source that a reporter uses. They are paid generous salaries because they are supposed to be professional reporters.
This was a fabricated story in which the reporter manufactured a deliberate lie by concealing the identities of her “sources” She knew EXACTLY what she was doing. It wasn’t a “mistake”.
She needs to be fired. I’m sure the National Review will be happy to have her back.
JMG
@James E Powell: This is exactly correct. In a nation of 330 million people you can find three or four individuals willing to say on the record the moon is made of green cheese if you look hard enough. And Plott couldn’t even do that! She astroturfed her story because she’s lazy as well as deceitful. Let’s not kid ourselves her status at the Times won’t go UP because of this story.
Baud
@James E Powell:
Exactly. If Biden were up in the polls 80-15, the media could run the exact same stories with 5% remainder who were undecided.
And I’m still waiting on stories about working class white guys who are unsold on Trump.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ripley: I tend to agree with you. I find it annoying, I am going to vote anyway and I am going to vote for the Democrats. That being said, we are outliers and I support doing what needs to be done.
FWIW I also hate Christmas music before Thanksgiving and I like traditional carols. So there.
germy
Her phone contact list is full of republican operatives.
Kent
Some trivia. The owner of the Strand is Nancy Wyden (Bass) who is the wife of Oregon Senator Ron Wyden. The recent hits on Wyden is that he spends too much time in DC and NY and never comes back to OR anymore (I worked on Wyden’s first campaign for the House back in the early 80s when I was in college).
No One of Consequence
Early In-Person Absentee Voting today in Urbandale, Iowa. Particular location was open yesterday and today. I scoped it last night in a drive-by, there was a line at about 5pm roughly 30 people. Was no line outside today, so me and the missus got our vote on.
Two solid D votes in the bank for Joe and the Dems, can’t be shennanigan’d, and will be in place when the tallies start going and being broadcast when the polls close here in Iowa, on Election Night. I voted in-person for this very purpose, and to avoid any mail service fuckery (which I do not hold them responsible for).
Feels damn good, and one less thing I have to worry about. Fuck these monsters. They do not speak for us.
Crush enemies, see them driven before you, and here the lamentation of the Lindseys…
Peace, fo’real,
NOoC
p.s. VOTE DAMNIT!
Kent
@Ripley: I’m getting about 100 political emails a day now. A lot of them are starting to look like fraudulent blue fundraising campaigns that are more like phishing. It is out of control.
We have donated several times to Biden and before that to Warren and Klobuchar (my wife). That is really our only engagement and it has all multiplied malignantly from that. I won’t be doing political engagement from my own email address ever again.
Sloane Ranger
@lamh36: Not normally a fan of baby pics but she’s a beauty. Awwww.
germy
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/
Ripley
@Cheryl Rofer: I’m not pointing fingers at anyone here. I apologize for making my rant seem like it was directed at the BJ community; this is a place filled with good people. (Except Baud – for President?? Not bloody likely.)
I hate Election season and campaign ads. I hate Xmas season and the Xmas ads. And every two years, we get months of both.
I’m coming off a mild case of COVID, and definitely have brain fog. But I’m a broken glass voter and I plan to vote Biden/Harris early next week.
I don’t begrudge anyone putting in the effort to GOTV or support their/our candidates. I wish there were a more subtle method to do it, I guess.
Nicole
@lamh36: She’s so beautiful! So happy for your whole family.
frosty
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: My favorite too, although it must be 20 years since I’ve been there (!). Just ordered 5 books from them. Maybe it will help.
Baud
@Kent:
Dude, why didn’t you tell us you were married to Amy Klobuchar?
Baud
@Ripley:
I’m putting you on the Baud! 2036! spam list.
I hope your phone has a lot of storage.
frosty
@Ripley: I’m with you on all of that. As a door-knocker, it seems like they send us out to infrequent voters, not the solid ones.
I’m sick of texts and emails both asking me to confirm I’ll show up to canvass. Just send me one dammit!! Not 2 or 3 a day. Also, too, fix your database and get my name right! I’ve been trying to do that for at least two elections. Somehow the person who says it’s fixed isn’t working in the right database.
/ OK, rant over now. I seem to have gone off topic LOL
J R in WV
I was in chorus in HS, because that’s where a number of cute fun girls were. So we sang Xmas songs for MONTHS… was horrible after the second year…!!
Now, if I go shopping, anywhere, I’m forced to endure the same terrible kitchey songs. Arrgh!
Ripley
@Baud: WTH? I thought you took weekends off!
HumboldtBlue
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon is married to the owner.
Barbara
@Kent: I would definitely be fired from my job if I did something comparable, that’s for sure, and it wouldn’t matter why I did it. Malfeasance, incompetence, laziness, whatever, without the quotes from her random average people there was, literally, no story at all.
HumboldtBlue
Biden makes another friend.
Rick — thank you for sharing your talent with me. I was so blown away by your art that I asked my team to add it to our online store:
randy khan
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I agree – it matters to some people, but at worst it cuts both ways. And a lot of people really hate it.
randy khan
@TomatoQueen:
First, nice to see another V-8 voter.
I voted no on 1, too, as it gives each party a veto, which is a recipe for incumbent protection at best and an invitation to disaster at worst ( as you go to the Virginia Supreme Court – currently Republican-controlled – if the politicians can’t agree). And since Ken Cuccinelli had a hand in it, well, need I say more?
In other years I’d agree that there was potential nefariousness in the envelope design, but with Ds in control in Richmond and in nearly all of our part of the state, it seems unlikely this year.
randy khan
@Emma from FL:
I feel like it wasn’t Texas, because I feel like I would have remembered it in light of that being an acknowledgment that they’re in trouble there, but I really don’t know.
raven
I don’t really care what some people think about the Lincoln Project, they fucking rock!
JanieM
@Ripley:
@Ripley:
Thanks for ranting my rants for me. ;-)
I’ve also been getting two or three partially filled in absentee ballot applications a week for many weeks now. They’re made to look official, but they aren’t. I voted three weeks ago and my ballot was marked accepted online the next day, just stop already. I think the mailings, as official as they’re made to look, are at the point of causing more confusion than they alleviate.
Emma from FL
@HumboldtBlue: God, this man is a mensch.
Capri
@frosty: @Ripley:
Move to Indiana, where nobody cares at all about whether you vote and you’ll barely know that there’s a national election going on. Guess we’re so safely red that neither campaign is spending a dime here. Haven’t gotten a single call or text
Kent
@Baud: Hah! back in February my wife decided to balance out my Warren contribution by giving to Klobuchar. Just to spite me I think. Amy was her girl until the voting started and then she came round to Biden.
mali muso
Yay, whatever was borking the site for my iPhone earlier seems to have been fixed!
Count me in as another Virginia voter who voted NO on 1.
SFBayAreaGal
@lamh36: She is beautiful
Mary G
@lamh36: @lamh36: So freaking adorable; she does look like a little wise woman, and Olivia Love is a great name.
How’s the new job going?
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@lamh36: What a cutie! Congratulations on the newest family member.
HumboldtBlue
@Emma from FL:
Yeah he is.
Nora
First day of early voting in New York and my husband and I went to our local polling place. The place opened for voting at noon, and there were people waiting there at 10 a.m. already. When we got there at 1:30, the line already stretched down the plaza and along three blocks.
We were smart and brought our filled-out absentee ballots, just in case. A young woman with a clipboard was standing in the plaza and I asked her whether we could skip the line if we were just dropping off absentee ballots and she said yes. She said to hold the ballots up in plain sight so the people in line could see we weren’t just trying to cut in front, which we did.
Took us five minutes to drop off our ballots, and we high-fived each other on the way out.
I’ve never seen crowds like this before. We’ve lived here more than 30 years, and this is something else. I think we’re going to make history — in a good way — this election season.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
I agree.
What matters is what you’re doing right now. They’re doing the right thing.
Yutsano
Let’s talk Texas. This could mean anything, but higher turnout is always a positive sign.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Ripley: What you said! I always vote Democratic, I donate $, and I don’t need to hear from the campaigns. I have basically stopped answering my phone for the duration because of all the auto-dialed calls (sigh). My email and text messages soliciting for $ on my cell phone have blown up and I can’t wait for the election to be over. At least I can ignore the messages because with DougJ’s help, I’ve been giving to lots of Dems via ActBlue
ETA: I think I’ve missed one election since 1972. I think I’m a Yellow Dog Democrat also :-)
O. Felix Culpa
@Cheryl Rofer: Yay you! Thank you so much for doing this.
evodevo
@J R in WV: Yep…they have that hang on like a pitbull reputation lol – NO postal employee wants to fuck with them…only the stoopid/desperate ones hide undelivered mail in their barn (like one at another rural PO near here did lol) or try to cook the books and embezzle a little cash while clerking – but this close to the election it’s gonna be hard to screw with the vote using them…at our tiny PO we are busting butt to get all this mail out every day, so I can only address that, but this is Ky and we have a Dem gov, so I don’t worry too much.
Badgetoon
For all the anti-phonebankers ranting away. Those people making the calls do a three percent shift in votes 3% gets a President Hillary not the crap we have now. I’m spending the next week making phone calls cause I need health insurance and I want to live in a sane world. I have more fun stuff to do then sit on the damn phone all day. When I hear people like you bitching honestly I file it with Wilmer fanboys and Trumpers screaming at me, in the brain dead circular file.
Do you people ever think about all the people doing the work with the damn insults you’re spewing out and how it effects the people you’re attacking and how it helps win this election? Or would you rather just lose?
Matt McIrvin
@lamh36: What a sweet baby!
Matt McIrvin
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: In many states, the mail ballots requested and not yet returned lean 50-50 or majority Republican, whereas the ones already returned are enormously Democratic. Of course, many of those Republicans might just decide to vote another way, and some of them might not vote regardless. But… if DeJoy pulls something really late with the USPS, he might be mostly screwing with Republican votes.
Uncle Cosmo
Whatever fraud there might be can easily be avoided by donating via ActBlue or the campaign itself.
Personally, I doubt there’s much, for that very reason. The sad fact is, it’s been repeatedly demonstrated that the most likely predictor of whether a person will donate to a campaign is – whether s/he has already donated to it.** Literally, campaigns get more buck$ for the bang by hitting up their donor lest again & again & again & again… About all you can do is keep unsubscribing till they get the hint.
** Analogous in some ways to the Turkish carpet seller effect: Once they get you to increase your offer by even a dollar, they keep yanking on you to go higher. (Which is why you offer what you’re willing to pay for the shmatte and never budge a cent no matter how loudly they protest “it’s less than I paid for it” – you’ll almost always get it for that price & they’ll still be making money.)
I’ll give you that – see above.
eddie blake
@RedDirtGirl:
goin tomorrow in the AM.
Jinchi
Higher turnout in Texas is a great sign for Democrats. We usually consider Texas a hard red state, but the reality is that turnout in Texas is often abysmal and it’s clearly by design. Republicans don’t want the wrong people to vote, because they’re worried they’ll lose.
But that gives a huge opportunity. Convince enough disenfranchised Texans that it’s worth the effort and you could see a blue tsunami that puts the rest of the nation to shame.
Biden and the Democrats polling within a few points of striking distance is worth the effort even if the odds are still in Republicans favor.
Uncle Cosmo
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: @Kent: @frosty:
Umm… have you seen the news stories that the Strand owner took the “stimulus” money, used it to buy >$100K of Amazon stock, then laid off all her unionized employees & closed the shop? Here’s a source. Then hired a few of them back to help prep for opening another location, & then let them go too? Here’s another source.
I have some fond memories of the Strand from my summer at Columbia 50 years ago (!), but after reading this, I’d be more tempted to boycott them in support of the employees than wring my hands over their fate.
@HumboldtBlue: Just seems to go to show that there are robber baron types on our side of the aisle too. Screw her.
O. Felix Culpa
Phone banking increases the likelihood of a person voting by 7%. I don’t love getting those calls either, but they can affect the outcome of an election. The Democratic Parties (state and local) use voting records for their calls. The database gets updated daily, after the county clerks upload their data. So anyone who has voted will be taken off the call list by the next day. I often tell folks that the best way to ensure they don’t get any more calls this election is to vote. Campaign calls might operate differently, but that’s how calls from the party work.
Cheryl Rofer
@O. Felix Culpa: Nice to see you here in what is probably the only free three minutes you have today.
Things are a little slow on the texting front – people have moved over to phones. But we’re working through the texts.
Yutsano
44 is speaking in Florida right now!
EDIT: caught the very tail end. But he is all in!
Geeno
@Suburban Mom: Dirty Girl
O. Felix Culpa
@Cheryl Rofer: Great to “see” you too! I’m putting in crazy hours these days. Can’t wait for the election to be done, for sooo many reasons. ☺
WaterGirl
@Ripley: just text: STOP to each group that texts you.