Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

I really should read my own blog.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Bark louder, little dog.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Not all heroes wear capes.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Everybody saw this coming.

This blog will pay for itself.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

This really is a full service blog.

Let there be snark.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Biden-Harris 2020 / Monday Morning Open Thread: Go, Go, GOTV!

Monday Morning Open Thread: Go, Go, GOTV!

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And one more (only two tweets above the fold, cuz the BJ website hamsters have been struggling!), from commentor TXSwede:

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143Comments

  1. 1.

    debbie

    And now GA Dem voters are getting fake voter guides which list GOP candidates as the Dem choice. This kind of fraud needs to be high on Joe’s list of things needing to be fixed

    When I googled for a link, it seems to be happening in multiple states.  ?

  5. 5.

    Nicole

    In line to vote now. We got in line about an hour ago, and are finally about to enter the building.

  6. 6.

    satby

    @debbie: It doesn’t help that a lot of candidates in lower races don’t identify what party they’re running with. I hate that, but it doesn’t matter, because in the voting booth I can just go down the ticket and vote for the Dems whether I got junk mail from them or not.

  7. 7.

    OzarkHillbilly

    In hard fought elections, there is almost always skullduggery and other shenanigans. There is always someone somewhere who is not only willing but wanting to cheat. Most times they have minimal effect.

  8. 8.

    debbie

    @satby: 
    When I voted early in person, there was lots of Democrats handing out sample ballots and urging people to vote the entire ticket, including judges.

  15. 15.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    One message I wish the Dems would hammer on harder is Trump’s threat to Social Security’s funding. Biden touched on it in the debate but that is literally the only time I’ve heard it mentioned during the campaign. It’s a huge motivator for our side and a big wedge issue for them. Even the Trumpiest folks on my FB feed love Social Security. Put it in their minds that Trump may double cross them on Social Security funding and maybe a few stay home rather than risk their retirement security.

  16. 16.

    Mousebumples

    @Baud: I didn’t realize Nelson was a former State Assembly Leader. He has daily COVID video updates on Twitter. He’s in my area, so I sometimes watch them.

    But, yeah, beating Johnson is definitely on my to do list for 2022. He claimed 4 years ago that he wouldn’t run for reelection again so.. We’ll see if he elects to retire or something.

  17. 17.

    NotMax

    Have been holding this in stasis in hope of bringing it to the attention of Major⁴ as it would seem to be in his wheelhouse. However time is getting shorter and haven’t seen him around of late, plus there are others here involved in game design, so notice of a three day virtual conference in November which mayhaps could pique some interest among that cohort.

  19. 19.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    With Trump at risk on so many varied fronts, there is no single, obvious place for him to go to stanch the bleeding. Instead, he is seeking to prop up his base in as many states as possible, while Republicans hope unfavorable polls and turnout models are off, just as in 2016.

    So true. Let’s just look at the south. Florida, obviously, but it’s not just Florida. He needs NC and GA too.
    The people who are looking at Georgia have a good benchmark, too. They have Abrams so they look at this:

    Ossoff and Biden are outrunning Abrams by 10-11% with whites.

  21. 21.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    Incumbent presidents have only been denied reelection two times in the post-World War II era — the last to lose was George H.W. Bush in 1992.

    A small point, but three incumbents, not two, have been denied reelection since WWII: Ford in 1976, Carter in 1980, and Bush in 1992.

    It feels churlish to go after the Politico writers for something this (relatively) minor, but when obvious, easily checked errors are allowed to stand, I’m distracted from the gist of the article by wondering what other, less-obvious errors lurk within. The whole thing turns into a proofreading, copy-editing exercise for me instead of reading for information and insight.

  22. 22.

    Mousebumples

    @Kay: I’ve been following LeanTossup too. They seem like the NowCast of polling, which i appreciate, since 538 seems to have a major fudge factor in place this year.

    My husband and i have made a friendly wager over Georgia. If Biden wins it (which he should), he’ll make my dinner or dessert of choice. (and vice versa if Trump wins).

    Here’s hoping (and working!) for a landslide. *starts humming some Fleetwood Mac

  23. 23.

    Humanities Prof

    @SiubhanDuinne: 
    I think the argument against including Ford here is the use of the word “re-elected,” since Ford wasn’t elected in the first place.

    This is a common distinction in the political science community. In the last 100+ years, there are three first-term _elected_ Presidents who were not re-elected–Hoover, Carter, and Bush the Elder.

  24. 24.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Seems like the story flogged by political media is shifting from “exciting horse race” to “exciting blowout”, which is… not a bad sign.

  26. 26.

    Kristine

    @SiubhanDuinne: wonder if they don’t count Ford because he wasn’t elected to the presidency the first time

    and I see the comment was already made. Not fast enough, me.

  27. 27.

    danielx

    Spousal unit watching news in another room…overheard Trump blathering something to the effect that “Democrats are the shutdown party!”. I cannot express how much I look forward to not hearing or seeing that braying ass again, unless in response to a judge asking if he has anything to say before sentencing.

  28. 28.

    Matt McIrvin

    @satby: “Non-partisan” local elections are one of the many ways communities try to suppress the vote–not necessarily for partisan advantage but to benefit incumbents and machines. You need to have a lot of tacit knowledge to get in and make a difference.

  29. 29.

    Kay

    @Mousebumples:

    I like 538 too, and Nate Cohn. I just take them all together. I like LeanTossup because they’re willing to take a risk and say something definitive. The others have gotten to the point were it’s “they might win, they might not!”. They’re just not confident enough in their own work for me. Too much ass covering.

  30. 30.

    Geminid

    I read in The Houston Chronicle that Kamala Harris is headed for Texas Friday. Campaign sources told the paper that there will be a stop in Houston, although the complete itinerary has not been made public.

  31. 31.

    Kay

    One of the horrible Trump sons is going to Wood County, Ohio today. Wood County is the swing county in Ohio, so they’re not confident in Ohio either. Trump himself would go except he has 7 other states to defend :)

  32. 32.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: 
    You say Georgia, I say Texas (also Lean/Tossup)

    Biden is outrunning Beto O’Rourke by 6-9% with Texas whites. Donald Trump cannot win the state if that’s the case. Notions of a red Texas propped up by low turnout are out the window – and notions that hundreds of thousands new voters, many young and non-white, are coming to save the President are laughable.

  33. 33.

    Humanities Prof

    @SiubhanDuinne: Interesting pattern here, which I just now realized.

    During the 1800s, no Vice President who succeeded to the Presidency after the death of his predecessor won a term in his own right.  In fact, none of the Vice Presidents who succeeded to the Presidency during the 1800s were even nominated as their party’s presidential candidate.

    In the 1900s, the pattern reversed itself.  There were four successor Presidents who won re-election (T. Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman, LBJ), and only one (Ford) who didn’t.  And that probably had a lot to do with the unique circumstances that surrounded Ford’s presidency.

  36. 36.

    Kay

    @Mousebumples:

    I like Nate Silver because he not only criticized the national media for the 2016 email coverage, he backed it up with an analysis of their insane over-focus that was and is impossible to deny, so they didn’t deny it- they just sniped at him on Twitter for a while. I appreciate him doing the extra work and risking alienating people who really could impact his career.

  38. 38.

    Derelict

    @SiubhanDuinne: 

    Ford was not elected to the presidency, and thus could not have been “re-relected.” Ford was, I believe, the only man to ever hold the office without having ever been elected to either the presidency or the vice-presidency.

  40. 40.

    The Oracle of Solace

    Good morning, my esteemed homies. I see from the U.S. Elections Project that things are interesting in Dixie. Last night’s update showed that five states in the Old Confederacy are at or approaching sixty percent of their total 2016 vote. Texas leads the nation at eighty percent. The states that report partisan affiliation of early votes show a roughly 2:1 ratio in favour of the Democrats. If that can be applied to Texas, then about 4.8 million Democratic votes have been cast, exceeding Trump’s vote count in the Lone Star State. But Republicans bat last, so keep running up those numbers!

  43. 43.

    Gin & Tonic

    @danielx: 

    I cannot express how much I look forward to not hearing or seeing that braying ass again

    I regret to inform you that we will be hearing and seeing that braying ass until he is dead, or incapacitated by stroke. Even after his devoutly-to-be-hoped-for drubbing in the election, he will not go away, and the media which so love him will continue to do so.

  45. 45.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    A couple of weeks ago I read the Trump campaigns “paths to victory” thing they gave the NYTimes. There are three. What struck me about it was not the states they listed that they had to win, but how many assumptions they started with. They START with an overly rosy picture and then add states. For example, every path to victory includes FL, NC and GA before they even get to the states they’re adding in their column.

  46. 46.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @danielx: Yes. Both of them. Tore some posterior ligaments there, gonna be in a lot of pain for a long time. I do not envy his PT.

    ETA: posterior, posterior POSTERIOR. Head? Desk.

  47. 47.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    So if your three “paths to victory” all include three states that are contested and close and you simply failed to mention that, or 4 if you include Texas, then your “path to victory” looks a lot shakier.

  49. 49.

    Amir Khalid

    @debbie:

    Mailing such disinformation to voters has to count as election tampering, and I can’t imagine a non-laughable free speech defence for it. Is anyone talking about prosecuting these crooks?

  52. 52.

    Aleta

    NYCBoardOfElections  @BOENYC
    Early Voting Cumulative totals!! Please note this includes Day 1

    New York – 40,838
    Bronx – 30,484
    Brooklyn – 61,315
    Queens – 40,278
    Staten Island – 21,000
    Total Number 193,915

  53. 53.

    Rob

    @debbie:  What the everloving f

    I dropped my ballot off in the nearby secure ballot box at a county building in the Maryland suburbs yesterday, after consulting the county democratic party website for guidance on some ballot questions.

  59. 59.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Humanities Prof:

    That really is fascinating, especially:

    In fact, none of the Vice Presidents who succeeded to the Presidency during the 1800s were even nominated as their party’s presidential candidate.

    I don’t at all consider myself a student of the presidency, but I feel I should have noticed this at some point in my life. Good catch!

  67. 67.

    PsiFighter37

    @Aleta:  Really low IMO relative to NYC’s overall population. I have to think that the dearth of early voting locations is really depressing numbers, especially since this is the first presidential year NY has had any in-person early voting.

  69. 69.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @debbie: This shit has been enshrined in the standard Thuglican playbook for at least 50 years. And I can personally testify to this.

    In the 1970 MD Democratic primary, African-American Parren J. Mitchell defeated incumbent Samuel Friedel for the nomination in the 7th Congressional District. As my first venture into electoral politics I, a Johns Hopkins undergrad barely too young to vote, volunteered to help Mitchell in the general.

    I was sent with a pile of official Democratic ballots to hand them out at a lily-white polling place in south Baltimore City. When I got there I swiftly discovered that there were two other “Official Democratic Ballots” being handed out. Both had replaced Mitchell’s name with that of his Republican opponent. One of them also cut Joseph D. Tydings, the incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator up for re-election, in favor of the GOP candidate, one J. Glenn Beall.

    Parren Mitchell won in spite of the ratfuckery to become MD’s first AA Congressman. Joe Tydings fell victim to the ratfuckery and a flood of dark $$$ from Tricky Dick’s thugs.

    (What was that line from Ecclesiastes 1:9?)

    FTR another classic bit of Rethug rodent fornication to watch out for on E-Day is the late-afternoon robocall to registered Democrats who haven’t yet voted: You don’t need to go to the polls, Joe Biden has already won. Even if convincing folks to stay home doesn’t help the top of the Thug ticket (e.g., in a state like MD, in spite of enclaves with more DINOs than Jurassisgrassic Park – I grew up in one), the tactic can depress Democratic turnout enough to sneak some Thugs through in the downballot races.

    NB Anyone who hears of this chicanery on E-Day needs to report it to the local Democratic HQ ASAP. When the bastards tried it in MD in 2010 (when my good friend Martin O’Malley was up for re-election against the Thug he bounced out of the Governorship 4 years earlier) the Dems got wind of it quickly & called those people back with a message from Elijah Cummings (RIP) to tell them they dang well needed to get out & vote, and the tactic failed miserably.

  70. 70.

    jonas

    @debbie: This kind of fraud needs to be high on Joe’s list of things needing to be fixed

    Normally state SOS offices and LEAs would be on top of this sort of thing. But Georgia? Whoever’s doing it is probably *coordinating* with the SOS. I agree Biden and a Dem Congress need to put teeth back into the VRA, but unfortunately Trump’s new SCOTUS will almost certainly give states veerrrrrrrrry wide berth to decide what “rights” are and who is a “voter.” Ultimately there simply needs to be a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote, and the principle of one-person, one-vote. As long as one of our two major parties remains anti-voting, however, that’s also going to be a heavy lift.

  71. 71.

    Humanities Prof

    @Kay: Is there any sense of what’s happening with Joel O’Dorisio’s campaign for State Senate? I know he was one of a handful of candidates the state Democratic Party was trying to boost in an effort to break up the Republican supermajority.

    [Edited to clarify that O’Dorisio is the Democratic challenger here.]

  72. 72.

    Matt McIrvin

    @debbie: The classics never die. I imagine there are going to be a lot of flyers telling them to vote the day after the election, too.

  73. 73.

    Aleta

    @OzarkHillbilly: I hope bureaucratic technicalities don’t dampen his virginal dream.  Little charges like coordination between their foundation and the 2016 campaign.   Investigation for campaign finance violations, criminal conspiracy, lying to the Senate Jud. Committee.

  75. 75.

    Mousebumples

    @Kay: yeah, I don’t dislike 538/Nate or Harry Enten (now with CNN) or even Nate Cohn. And i get that there is some historical modeling to election predictions – especially when these launched months ago. But we’re 10 days out and it feels too much like the current models in largely seeing are doing a little too much “But what if there is a shy Trump voter?!” effect or something.

    LeanTossup – including the articles written by Evan – looks at the numbers and says what they think. They could be wrong, but like you, i appreciate their willingness to compare stuff to 2016, 2018, and tell me what the numbers say.

    And as others have said above, i believe they are Canadian so they have maybe less concerns over who they piss off by being so clear about Biden’s chances.

  76. 76.

    Kay

    @Mousebumples:

    Some of the hedging is just silly. They spent 2 weeks saying early vote numbers didn’t matter for Democrats because Democrats were cannibalizing ed-day votes and Trumpsters would swamp on e-day. Then they were like “look at these GOP early vote numbers ‘cutting into’ the D lead!”
    They have to choose. Are we “cannibalizing” or not?

  77. 77.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @SiubhanDuinne: It feels churlish to go after the Politico writers for something this (relatively) minor –

    But considering this level of idiocy is customary from the jerkoffs at Zampolitico, you are cordially encouraged to set aside your nobler sensibilities for the moment – & savage the living shit out of them.

  79. 79.

    Kay

    AJC’s poll of likely voters in Georgia:
    Biden – 47
    Trump – 46
    3rd party – 3
    Undecided – 4
    (Margin of error, +/- 4)

    This is what I mean. If your most likely “path to victory” assumes states as close as this one and doesn’t even mention them as competitive, your path to victory is describing a different election than the one you’re in. Trump padded his base number in his own campaign doc.

  81. 81.

    Geminid

    @The Oracle of Solace: Political scientist Rachel Bitecofer pointed out that two million registered Texas women did not vote in 2016. This was part of her argument that GOTV stategy was more consequential than “conversion” messaging, i.e. trying to flip republican voters.

  82. 82.

    SFAW

    @danielx: 

    I cannot express how much I look forward to not hearing or seeing that braying ass again, unless in response to a judge asking if he has anything to say before sentencing.

    This, to the gazillionth power

  88. 88.

    JPL

    @HinTN: Warnock is heading towards a run-off since no one will get 50 percent plus 1.
    He’s at 34 percent, while Collins is at 21 percent and Loeffler at 20 percent.
    There’s a good chance that neither Ossoff or Perdue get 50 percent plus 1. GA might not decide either race until January.

  89. 89.

    Mousebumples

    @Omnes Omnibus: me too, but I wonder if he’s planning to run for Governor? No idea if Evers is planning on running for reelection but if he opted to not run again, i wouldn’t be shocked.

  90. 90.

    Another Scott

    @Humanities Prof: But, of course, Ford had all the advantages of incumbency when he was running in 1976.  That’s what people usually think of when they think “re-election”.

    At least, that’s what I think.

    The counterpoint is Loeffler in GA.  Let’s see…

    https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/kelly_loeffler/456790

    Loeffler was appointed to the Senate to fill a vacancy and is up for reelection in a special election in 2020.

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  93. 93.

    cmorenc

    @satby: 

    @debbie: It doesn’t help that a lot of candidates in lower races don’t identify what party they’re running with. I hate that, but it doesn’t matter, because in the voting booth I can just go down the ticket and vote for the Dems whether I got junk mail from them or not.

    This election cycle, it will nearly always be the R candidate who tries to go stealth, often borrowing a few bits of vaguely progressive-sounding positions as camouflage, and the rest positive-sounding platitudes. For example, take Olivia Holmes Oxendine, a UNC-Pembroke professor who’s the Republican candidate for NC state house, district 47 (mostly western Robeson County). Take Olivia Oxendine’s campaign website – you will search in vain for ANY mention of her party affiliation.

  94. 94.

    Jinchi

    @Baud: Trump looks absolutely awful in the picture at the start of that article. The ill fitting clothes and a face that looks like he’s still beaten down from covid. And that’s at one of his rallies.

  95. 95.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mousebumples: OTOH having someone from Outagamie County rather than Madison or Milwaukee wouldn’t hurt.  Still, this far out, Barnes is the one I want to see.

  96. 96.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: There is always someone somewhere who is not only willing but wanting to cheat.

    This is one of my points of disagreement with the Baud! 2032! campaign, the ridiculous insistence on probity and honest.

    All right, my real disagreement isn’t in how that applies to vote cheating, but to the misuse of campaign funds.

  97. 97.

    Betty Cracker

    JFC, let’s wipe the self-satisfied smile off this nepotism hire’s face:

  99. 99.

    Jeffro

    Rich Lowry at National Review has up a piece that on its face is offensive: “If trumpov Wins, It Would Be a Huge Middle Finger to the Left” or something like that.

    He goes on to list all the very real reasons why trumpov is losing bigly: the pandemic, the ranting and raving, the economy, the ranting and raving, etc. So he’s not really rooting for a trumpov win nor is he expecting one; he’s just saying that his tiny pea-sized brain can think of no other way to oppose the ‘woke Left’ than to vote for trumpov.

    And technically, Lowry is correct: if trumpov were somehow to win, it would and could ONLY be that enough voters threw all of those reasons aside in order to give a big middle finger to the Left.

    The problem with Lowry’s article is, he doesn’t take the next step: there AREN’T enough of those asshole racist/Randian/religious-right voters to win anymore. Not we we Lefties show. up.

    So…fucking figure it out, Rich (and all you precious Republicans/conservatives/tea partiers/never-never-trumpers): change, or die. Stop enabling people who think that the pandemic is fake, that climate change doesn’t exist, that voter fraud does exist, and that immigration is anything but a net positive for this country.

  100. 100.

    Geminid

    During a recent drive through part of South Carolina I saw some signs for the local  republican congressman. They just had his name in the middle, Congress below, and a palmetto tree above.

  102. 102.

    Ken

    @Geminid: In the reverse case, all the Green Party signs I’ve seen just say “Vote Green Party” with no candidate’s name or office.  I expect it’s a lack of funds, so they just go for party awareness – plus the sign can be reused in any election.

  103. 103.

    Mousebumples

    @Omnes Omnibus: if Johnson runs for reelection, I’d wonder if 2 Fox Valley candidates would cut into Johnson’s numbers at all? (as you know, but others may not, Winnebago County, where Johnson is from, is adjacent to Outagamie County – Oshkosh versus Appleton, if city names help out at all)

    No idea. And I’m on board with a contested Dem primary race, too. Get people involved and motivated to fire Ron Johnson.

  104. 104.

    SFAW

    TPM is reporting that the Murderer-in-Chief is tweeting that he wants the MSM not to be allowed to report on COVID, because it’s an election law violation or something like that, and it’s helping Sleepy Joe. and the Demon-craps.

  106. 106.

    SFAW

    @Jeffro:

    that’s it.  Kushner’s going to the head of the tumbrel line.

    Not ahead of Traitor Turtle nor Shill Barr, he ain’t. A shitload of others, too. He’s just an entitled moron, mit einem Backpfeifengesicht.

  107. 107.

    japa21

    @Mousebumples:  As a one time resident of Appleton, the mere thought that a viable Democratic candidate could come from there amazes me. Granted that was 60 years ago (not quite but close enough) and it was as red as could be. The home territory of Joe McCarthy.

  108. 108.

    Elizabelle

    @Matt McIrvin: 

    Noticed with last night’s Biden We Will Vote concert extravaganza that the speakers kept saying, over and over, to vote because it would be close.

    No complacency or magical thinking. Run up those numbers.

  109. 109.

    The Moar You Know

    And now GA Dem voters are getting fake voter guides which list GOP candidates as the Dem choice.

    @debbie:  Wasn’t aware that was illegal. I’ve been getting them here in CA since 2012. The fliers usually present a slate of legit Dem candidates with one lower-level goose-stepping Nazi in the woodpile. I don’t think they’re very effective.

  110. 110.

    Humanities Prof

    @Ian:

    I don’t think we’re talking about quite the same thing.

    Adams and Van Buren had both been Vice Presidents, yes (Jefferson, too–he was Adams’ VP, despite having been his opponent in the 1796 election). But each of them was elected President in his own right (Adams in 1796, Jefferson in 1800, Van Buren in 1836). The people I was referring to were VPs who succeeded to the Presidency mid-term, when their predecessors died in office (Tyler, Fillmore, A. Johnson, and Arthur).

  112. 112.

    Kristine

    @SFAW: Anyone heard anything from Barr recently? It’s as though he’s in hiding or something.

    Maybe he’s pulling together that promised October Surprise.

  113. 113.

    trollhattan

    @Betty Cracker: 
    What a mensch. Since he’s a slumlord I’m sure he has lots of firsthand knowledge of the people he’s busily insulting. “Love me or hate me, either way you’ll be paying me.”

    Learning to say Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou is my project for Monday.

  114. 114.

    trollhattan

    @Kristine:

    “This year, October surprise comes with a prize in the box: a tiny time machine for going back and changing your ballot–to Trump!”

  115. 115.

    Another Scott

    @Kristine: Linky (from 10/21):

    As the election nears, Barr has kept a lower profile, limiting his time in front of the cameras to avoid facing direct questions from the media about Trump’s demands for greater Justice Department involvement in the election.

    The department on Tuesday announced a landmark antitrust case in Washington against tech giant Google, but Barr was in Florida speaking at a law enforcement conference. Barr also has remained relatively quiet after U.S. attorneys announced charges against a group of men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democratic ally of Biden’s.

    “He’s toned it down, but it’s hard to know what else might be going on behind the scenes,” Carl Tobias, a constitutional law expert at the University of Richmond, said of Barr.

    While Barr has kept a lower profile in recent week, he has publicly sided with Trump on election matters. He said foreign nations could print counterfeit ballots, something intelligence officials say there’s no evidence of and would be nearly impossible. After Trump encouraged North Carolina voters to vote twice to try to test the system, which is illegal, Barr declined to definitively say it was illegal, instead saying he wasn’t familiar with the laws in every state.

    Hey, one can’t expect the Attorney General to know the law and comment on it accurately. That’s crazy talk.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  117. 117.

    Kay

    Kayleigh McEnany
    @kayleighmcenany
    · Oct 17
    The Thin Blue Line flag flying over President @realDonaldTrump’s rally in Janesville, Wisconsin!
    We LOVE our police officers

    It will never not be amazing to me that police took the US flag and defaced it, turning it into a flag that glorifies only themselves, and all of conservatism embraced the new flag.
    That’s how fucking easy it was to turn these people. You just make an authoritarian flag and they’ll follow behind it.
    They made a police state flag and the entire Republican Party adopted it.

  118. 118.

    Van Buren

    @PsiFighter37: I live on Long Island: there are 12 early voting locations in Suffolk County , which has a population of about 1.5 million. Waited 3.5 hours yesterday. I used Google maps to determine the line was .32 miles long when I started. Periodically, they stop activities to sanitize.  That experience will really suck for people who have to do it in unpleasant weather.

    But nearly as bad as 4 more years of Trump would suck.

  119. 119.

    TS (the original)

    @SFAW:

    TPM is reporting

    That is an awful picture of his face – inches thick in orange. I’m so confused that his manly male supporters think it is fine that he wears orange makeup.

    Just weird – and awful to look at.

  121. 121.

    Kay

    John Cole also noted a Townhall commenter who was outraged that Obama would “change” the American flag: “I don’t want to hear any looney left comments that they are only decoration. They ARE a modification of the American flag.”
    Here’s the Ohio state flag, and here’s Obama standing in front of Ohio’s state flag.
    Sometimes, the right finds the strangest things to get worked up about.

    From 2008 when they were outraged that Obama used the Ohio state flag with the US flag, to 2020, where they fly not the US flag but the police state flag.

  123. 123.

    japa21

    @Kay: Look, this is minor thing. See it really shows true respect for the American flag, unlike those thugs that kneel during the anthem. //

  124. 124.

    Jeffro

    @Kay:It will never not be amazing to me that police took the US flag and defaced it, turning it into a flag that glorifies only themselves, and all of conservatism embraced the new flag.
    That’s how fucking easy it was to turn these people. You just make an authoritarian flag and they’ll follow behind it.
    They made a police state flag and the entire Republican Party adopted it.

    It’s enraging, but it really does fit all their needs, symbolism-wise.  No need to defend the Confederate flag, or even use the original 13-star U.S. flag.  Just take a b&w version of the American flag and run that blue line through it.  Everyone knows all the different things that are wrapped into that one blue line: the racism, the authoritarianism, the near carte blanche given to police to beat up protestors.

    And still…I hope we on the Left don’t start doing the same thing.  I don’t want a recolored or reconfigured American flag (except one with 51st and 52nd stars added ;)

    It’s a little like the thing I mentioned a week or two about vanity plates: regular plates are Democratic, centrist, good-government, unifying plates.  The regular U.S. flag should be our flag.  And I hope our leaders keep (start?) saying that publicly, noting the constant shift in symbols by the Right to try and keep their racist signaling alive.

    If they cared about police, they would have fought Covid, and they’d have bars closed/schools open so that policemen’s and policewomen’s kids could be in school.

  125. 125.

    Kay

    Instead of The Intercept reporters all joining Glenn Greenwald insisting that “no one” is reporting on Hunter Biden- which isn’t true- why doesn’t The Intercept just do the report on Hunter Biden they’re all demanding?
    They’re supposedly a news organization and they’re obviously well connected in Right wing media so they should be able to get the source information that Rudy won’t turn over to the WSJ or NBC.
    The Intercept should do the Hunter Biden expose. Is someone stopping them? Why are they scolding other outlets for a story their own outlet hasn’t done?

  126. 126.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Van Buren: 

    Waited 3.5 hours yesterday

    I’ve become a bore on this, but, you know, lots of other countries manage to run elections in which people don’t wait for hours.

  127. 127.

    SFAW

    @Kristine: 
    I think he’s putting together a November surprise, something on the order of declaring all votes to the Democrat Party are null, void, and fraudulent.
    OK, that’s obviously an exaggeration, but it would surprise me not one iota if he were working on voter intimidation/suppression plans which Americans won’t have time to fight back on. And by “Americans,” I mean persons who are not Republicans, nor Republican supporters.

  128. 128.

    Kay

    @japa21:

    It’s outrageous for police to take a national symbol and deface it to turn it into a symbol that glorifies them. What nerve.

  130. 130.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Kay: According to reports from the darker corners of the internet, a Chinese source close to Bannon is busy unloading a bunch of alleged Hunter Biden sex videos. The (slightly more) reputable players are doing a good job of ignoring that material.

  131. 131.

    SFAW

    @Jeffro:

    Can he be 4th? Wait, forgot about Stephen Miller…5th?

    The way I envision it is something like this:

    You know how some “Top 10” or “Top 100” lists sometimes have, let’s say, three entries tied for second, and the list is numbered as 1-2-2-2-5, instead of 1-2-3-4-5?

    I see the “Top 1,000 Tumbrel-Bound” list as being 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 … -1-1-1-899-900-901-902 and so forth. Is that something you can “get on board with”? [Naturally, actual numbers and positions are not “cast in concrete” (unless we’re talking about cement overshoes), and would be somewhat fluid, depending on what happens between now and 1/20/2021.]

  132. 132.

    SFAW

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I’ve become a bore on this, but, you know, lots of other countries manage to run elections in which people don’t wait for hours.

    Like Russia and DPRK? Yes, I know that’s not what you meant.

  133. 133.

    laura

    @Betty Cracker: That gormless wax faced shitweasel should have to live in of of his substandard shithole apartments for the rest of his vapid social climbing life. Fucking entitled pig shagger.

  134. 134.

    Another Scott

    @SFAW:  One of my early childhood memories is going to a Christmas party for employees of Lockheed in GA. It was in a huge hanger and they had about 5 “Santas” sitting on thrones that hundreds of kids were lined up to talk to.

    “Mommy? Why are there so many Santas??!”

    “They aren’t Santa, they’re his helpers.”

    “But why are they dressed like Santa???!!?”

    Very confusing. :-/

    But the lesson is – we can have many more than one tumbrel and do things in parallel!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  135. 135.

    Kattails

    @OzarkHillbilly: sadly, if you click along to the original post you get a lot of Republicans castigating her for being a horrible daughter bothering her dad about politics, how shallow and mean, “if my daughters did this I’d write them out of the will” etc. Always about money.

    I’d rather get a legacy of a decent, functioning country. I’ve literally said to my mother that if my sister and I have the luck to survive as long as she has, we will be dealing with the consequences of this election for many years to come.  I think it’s entirely fair to ask her to consider that.

  136. 136.

    Kattails

    @laura: You need to stop pussyfooting around and tell us what you really think. This is just so open to misinterpretation. :-)

  138. 138.

    Ken

    @trollhattan: Maybe one of the ones that Ivanka and Jared hold? Whatever they call a person who couldn’t pass a security or background check, is not subject to Congressional confirmation or oversight, and is allowed to hang around the most secure spaces in the White House and take pictures with their personal cell phone.

  139. 139.

    Miss Bianca

    @Matt McIrvin: And why the fuck not? I mean, even in horses races, we remember the blowouts best.

    Secretariat winning the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths in 1973? Yeah, people still remember. And I’ll guarantee you no one who witnessed that race thinks, “Man, it would have been *so much more meaningful* a victory if Sham had been more of a contender!” //

  140. 140.

    Geminid

    @Kay: I wish someone would hack The Intercept and publish all their internal communications, discussions with ownership, etc. Just to see how much those guys really like transparency.

  142. 142.

    Bluegirlfromwyo

    @Betty Cracker: He-went-to-Jared is going to keep AAs from getting shot by police? /s Last I checked, you can’t be successful when you’re dead. What a POS.

  143. 143.

    Hoppie

    @Uncle Cosmo: Gee, we were campaign mates. I was a freshman, though, so more distant from voting under the old rules (would have been my first election under the 26th amendment). And I was sent to inner city Upton neighborhood, where there didn’t seem to be much rat-fornicating. What a long. strange trip it’s been!
    (Oh, and FYI, 5-year AB/MA in international relations.)

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