It looks like the election will likely come down to a handful of states: PA, GA, AZ, NC, and FL. (Not a bad chance that Biden wins TX and OH too to make it a total rout but if he wins those he probably already won the first five I mentioned anyway.) If Biden wins even one of those states, he wins. If he loses all five, he loses. Let’s raise some money for state and country parties in PA, AZ, and NC. PA and NC are good flipping opportunities too.
North Carolina State Democratic Party
Pennsylvania State Democratic Party
Maricopa County Democratic Party (AZ)
You can see everyone we are raising money for here.
Kent
33%: Biden’s current chance of winning Texas according to 538
23%: Trump’s chance of winning Pennsylvania in 2016 according to 538
Another Scott
ActBlue’s ticker rolled over to $7.5B overnight.
$7,509,741,798
at the moment, and increasing.
Cheers,
Scott.
cleek
i’ve seen a lot of Biden ads in NC. but i haven’t seen any anti-Trump ads from anyone else.
not impressed by the NC Dems.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I fecking hate that fecking song. Thanks for the earworm. ?
Off to donate again and then watch the ticker roll and listen to some nice soothing Social Distortion to deworm my head.
Benw
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: Mike Ness says new SxDx album coming next year!
Litlebritdifrnt
The only thing that made me smile today was the thought of Elena and Sonya chewing up Amy and spitting her out.
glyph2112
I don’t get the Kavanaugh ruling. Some of these schemes to not count ballots, won’t they hurt Republicans as well as Dems?
The one good thing that keeps me going is all the stories of long time Republicans voting for Biden. I see them all over twitter. Have yet to see a single story of a Dem / Hillary voter saying the have switched to vote for trump.
The Enderville Phantom
They used to play that song at the stadium when the Phoenix Firebirds visited … the Tacoma Tigers. I donated to two presidential candidates in the Democratic primary. I also gave monies to Mike Cooney’s campaign. He is taking on Trump’s favourite journalist puncher Greg Gianforte for Montana governor.
piratedan
while I support the help that Maricopa county is being given on account of recent history, there’s more to Arizona than just Maricopa County, could we maybe include a state ticker instead? Its not as if there doesn’t need to be some love generated out there for the rest of the state. Pima County appears to be reliably blue hued, but help out in the more rural regions would be a bonus.
Just sayin’
Haroldo
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
Check out Buckwheat Zydeco’s version. It’ll have you dancing in 5 seconds, I guar-un-tee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qzul_tIwTo&ab_channel=Teimuraz67
Lacuna Synechdoche
DougJ:
Actually, 538 gives Trump a 24% (roughly 1 in 4) chance of winning a state that Clinton won¹. So we should really hope (and pray, if that’s your thing) that Joe wins at least two of those states.
¹ In the Weird and not-so-weird possibilities section about 2/3 of the way down.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
They really, really wish they were running against somebody besides Biden
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Haroldo: Oh, much better! I kept hearing Steve Miller’s whiny voice in “Rock’n Me” instead. [shudder]
Lacuna Synechdoche
@Haroldo:
Actually, I think Comrade Colette was referring to Rock’n Me, by the Steve Miller Band.
Edited To Add: Okay, looks like Colette got there first.
Yutsano
@The Enderville Phantom: I really love how people think Montana is a lock for the Republicans just because Dolt45 is favoured there. Montana is FAMOUS for ballot switching. They haven’t elected a Republican to governor in 60 years and I can’t see them giving it to a carpetbagger. And Tester won even while being down in the polls in 2018. I’m not giving up any hope there until after the ballots are counted. Especially with Daines skipping town without a covid relief bill.
SiubhanDuinne
Joe’s giving a speech at the Little White House in Warm Springs, GA. Good choice of venue. It’s in a potential swing state, it’s eternally connected to FDR, and it allows Biden to flow naturally into health care, pre-existing conditions, and vaccines.
Nicole
My husband said Hillary Clinton should change her party registration to Republican, just to fuck with them.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Please
clapcontinue obsessing over Hillary.L85NJGT
@Kent:
Chrysta Castañeda
Texas state election law has no individual to candidate contribution limit?
evap
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
This is the song that never ends, it just goes on and on my friend, some people started singing it not knowing what it was, and now they’ll go on singing it forever just because, it is the song that never ends…
Better now?
SoupCatcher
@Haroldo:
The Autry museum in Los Angeles had a Route 66 exhibit a few years ago. One of the displays was a tabletop jukebox selector with a ton of covers of the song. You could punch up whichever you wanted and listen on headphones.
Can’t remember if they had the Buckwheat Zydeco one.
Haroldo
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
@Lacuna Synechdoche:
My knowledge of the Steve Miller Band is not extensive. And the blog post’s title fit right into Route 66’s bridge.
CaseyL
Hmph. I signed up to phone bank Wisconsin later this week. I wonder if I should add one of these states, but phone banking is hard for me and I’m already a nervous wreck.
Haroldo
@SoupCatcher:
I’m smitten by (with?) Route 66 iconography.
JoyceH
I think I saw an Omen today. Dropped my dog off at the groomer, and then went to the store and did more stocking up – pre-buying Thanksgiving dinner, in fact. Driving home, this huge bird lifted off from the ditch beside the road, and the first thing I noticed was its size, and the second thing I noticed was its white head. Bald eagle, friends. Out of the ditch and coming back!
Almost Retired
I am working as an election monitor in Nevada with a lawyer’s group. But after seeing 538’s conclusion that Biden is “clearly favored” to win Nevada, I am going to try and get re-assigned to Arizona…..Even though that will make it harder to recoup my lodging and meal costs at the blackjack table.
CaseyL
OT: Very nice “word of the day” from the Quite Interesting twitter feed:
scott (the other one)
@JoyceH: Fantastic.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Haroldo: There’s the Guardian Lions.
RaflW
@Another Scott: That’s something like $600,000 per hour since I looked late yesterday afternoon. Ten grand per minute seems like a decent clip for one week from the end of balloting. (Hard to call Nov 3 ‘election day’ since we’ve been voting for weeks, and the results may take a while).
SoupCatcher
@Haroldo:
I did a driving tour from California to Texas and back over a long weekend a couple of decades ago, trying to drive as much of the old road as still exists. Kingman to the Colorado River is a great drive, with bonus Oatman burros.
My favorite portion of the Autry museum exhibit was a collection of oral history snippets. Many of the people spoke with great nostalgia about their travels. But the one that stuck with me the most was from someone who grew up in one of the towns along Route 66. They talked about the predatory nature of those who worked on the road and sometimes/often/? took advantage of travelers in distress, price-gouging, etc. Many of the people traveling along the road were desperate, and were seen as marks by the locals.
patroclus
Keep on a-rockin me baby! Great song! My suggestion for your lyrics in a post on election night is Dancin’ in the Streets by Martha and the Vandellas. Cause they’ll sure be dancing in Chicago, and down in New Orleans. (Please avoid the Mick/Bowie video though…)
Punchy
*”Wins” as defined by 5 robes, which means getting more non-mailed, non-contested votes in polling places completely devoid of any issues, including broken toilets, counted by 10pm on Nov. 3rd by octagenerians. Any other outcome = loss.
The Election –>Litigate ad naseum–>5 Robes Fix is in.
Haroldo
@SoupCatcher:
Kinda kills the romance, eh?
My family drove on it in MO and IL when I was a kid.
RaflW
@SiubhanDuinne: But, but, the MN state GOP chair made a ‘campaigning in your basement’ joke yesterday. I’m so confused.
(She is, frankly, one of the more stupid Republicans in our state. Which is fine with me – no need for a best and brightest in that role! Oh, and she’s the wife of one of the US House members. The one with a franking scandal.)
SiubhanDuinne
@JoyceH:
“As God is my witness…”
Kent
In what sense? Not impressed by the candidates? OR not impressed by the populace?
patroclus
@SiubhanDuinne: They’re hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Oh the humanity!
MrSnrub
How do MI and WI count in these calculations?
cleek
@Kent:
the party. i’d like to hear them make some noise once in a while.
Jeffro
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: Social D! That’s a good choice!
One more Zoom meeting and I’m there with ya…
Jeffro
@glyph2112:Have yet to see a single story of a Dem / Hillary voter saying the have switched to vote for trump.
Yep. Nearly impossible to picture it, too.
“I voted for Hillz in 2016 because _____ but now I see that trumpov is the better choice on that issue than Biden.” It’s like a mini-Mad Libs where absolutely nothing comes to mind, or even could.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Hey they had to bring Hillary into it SOMEhow…ugh, seriously GOP? This is your pitch to your voters at the 11th-and-a-halfth hour?
Oh well, you be you. I have a feeling there are other, more (chest com)pressing issues on people’s minds…
guachi
Clinton won every state where she had an 85% chance or better of winning according to 538. If Biden does that he has 278 electoral votes.
It’ll take the Supreme Court screwing with the vote count to throw this thing to Trump.
Calouste
@Jeffro: Yeah, seriously. Of course Biden is not going to nominate Hillary, he is going to nominate AOC. With good health she can be on the court for 60 years.
clay
I may need to take this next week off. My filter-for-workplace-congeniality is basically broken right now. I told a student she was probably a hateful racist for supporting Trump*, and just spent 20 minutes having it out with a department member over his support. Called him a twat.**
If you knew how low-key and mild-mannered I normally am, this would shock you.
*I regret this.
**I don’t particularly regret this, which is probably a problem
Peale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: God. Then I’d vote for Biden then if I were GOP. Go through the effort of expanding the court, then “packing” it with old people who’ll be retiring soon?
p.a.
@guachi: Repub state leges> Repub state SecStates> Repub state supremes> The Federalist Six SCOTUS. I’m way more worried today than I was just a few days ago.
“Democracy isn’t voting. Democracy is counting votes.”
Calouste
@guachi: I think if the margin is big enough and they’re trying to steal it the American stock market will take a nosedive. Because if they’re willing to steal a clearly lost election, they’re willing to steal anything, including whole companies. Money would then be a lot safer in investments that don’t have an American component.
Calouste
@clay: You’re very polite. If I’m polite with these kind of people I call them fascists. If I’m less polite I call them Nazis.
artem1s
@glyph2112:
Kountry Klub Kavanaugh and his ilk aren’t going to settle for disenfranchising just Democrat party UnterMenschen anymore. The GOP SCOTUS upward failing hires have been moving towards land owner and male only citizen’s rights since GHWB at least.
I’m sure Jill Stein and Susan Sarandon are fine with this as their Revolution™ is coming any day now.
Gin & Tonic
@Calouste:
She’s good at what she does, but can’t we actually nominate someone who has relevant experience?
Roger Moore
@Jeffro:
Which is amazing, when you remember that votes are secret. It would be easy for a Trump voter to claim to have voted for Clinton in 2016 so they could explain why they “changed their mind”.
H.E.Wolf
Well, yes: using a word for women’s reproductive parts as the Nastiest Word you can call someone… is a problem.
Gender-neutral still gives you a wide range of excoriating epithets. If ever you’re stuck, try Jacobean literature. Or Scots dialect. :)
Other than that, no need for regrets. It’s high time we shame and shun these folks for their actions. Thank you for that!
Kent
No doubt the FNYT could do a whole story on Clinton voters who are reluctantly switching to Trump because of Hunter Biden, ANTIFA and how Biden is going to ruin the suburbs.
LurkerNoLonger
Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to depend on the whims of a few states to decide the election? Does any other country do it this way? I guess I could just Google it, but I’ll ask you guys.
Nora Lenderbee
@MrSnrub: They seem to assume that MI and WI go for Biden. Then you only need one of the other five states.
Aleta
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s ridiculous. He’s going to nominate her for Vampire Queen.
James E Powell
@cleek:
My take is that the last week is the time for pro-Biden ads and Make Sure You Vote Early ads. The negative ads lose effect over time and if people are not already convinced Trump is bad, they are never going to be convinced.
The most important thing is that our voters are fired up, ready to go, and feeling like they will win if they vote.
Aleta
@Almost Retired: Thanks for doing that work.
Calouste
@LurkerNoLonger: I can’t really think of a country that elects their head of state in a way different than the 3 below:
1) Royalty
2) election by popular vote
3) election by parliament
One of the problems with the US system of course is that a significant percentage of the EVs could depend on a very small difference in votes. Technically 10% of the EVs (California) could be assigned on a difference of one vote.
Calouste
@Gin & Tonic: That was sarcasm.
Kay
Two schools going back to remote learning here in Trumpland county due to staff testing positive. Not my son’s yet- two tiny rural districts.
DeVos was asked why the US Dept of Ed isn’t tracking this nationally and she said it isn’t her job. I wonder what she thinks her job entails.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Roger Moore: I can’t remember where I saw a write up people who were reluctant trump voters in ’16 and are now enthusiastic. There were six or eight of them, and I think every single one mentioned one or all of: Black Lives Matter, ‘political correctness’ and ‘standing up to China’. Also AntiFa or businessman.
Kay
The under-discussed part of the Trump Administration is how none of them ever do any work.
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: So they weren’t convinced in 2016 that he was really a racist, but they are now.
Subsole
@Kay: Bringing back school segregation.
For Je$u$, natch.
Gin & Tonic
@Calouste: I seem to be sarcasm- and humor-impaired this week. I just want this to be over.
danielx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh please oh please oh please…..
Nora Lenderbee
I wonder whether some prominent Repugs are supporting Biden because they think it will mean a return to business as usual. Trumpism is loud, dirty, and creates instability and unrest. With a Dem in office, they can go back to being obstructionist, heckling, calling Dems the devil, etc.–something they’re very comfortable doing.
japa21
I was listening to Biden’s speech in GA on the way back from dropping off the 1st grade grandson at school post his remote AM learning. I know he isn’t the orator that Obama is, but he was inspiring. It was extremely well done. I think he won my vote with this speech. Wait, I voted for him last week. Heck, this is Illinois, I should be able to vote again.
Calouste
@Kay: They don’t even have other people do the work. She doesn’t have to do it, she just has to tell one of her flunkies to do it. And once it’s done, she can take all the credit like a proper CEO.
gwangung
@Nora Lenderbee: Well, of course. They don’t have to do any work that way. Governing is HARD.
Kay
@Subsole:
It’s sad. I suppose if they tracked it they’d have to admit it’s spiking. Just the worst people imaginable.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: So say we all.
Calouste
@Nora Lenderbee: Probably. But it also that under Biden they can do their own thing, whatever that may be. Under the shitgibbon, if you’re not a complete suck-up, he’s going to attack you, and your career will be dead. It’s not just for America that it’s a choice between democracy and authoritarianism, it’s also inside the GOP.
Kent
In a sane world, the Dept of Ed would be leading the charge in terms of helping schools work with Covid. In Trump world they are trying to funnel as much taxpayer money to private schools as they can while going after unemployed students for student loan defaults in a pandemic.
The true absolute horror and badness that is DeVos and Trump with respect to education is an under reported catastrophe. Kids in cages get all the news, as they should…just not ALL of it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
cleek
@James E Powell:
but voting’s been going on for two weeks.
Kent
I think they are mostly supporting Biden because it will give them a 4-year head start in terms of rebuilding the GOP back into a pro-business but non-insane and more electable party. Four more years of Trump means four more years of having Trump represent the party.
The new GOP will be traditionally business friendly in terms of taxes and regulation (which is all they care about) but will be more woke in terms of LGBT rights, BLM, and all the social issues that they don’t care about. 2016 was probably the last year that a Trump coalition of white working class men and evangelical bootlickers was enough to get within spitting distance of winning on the national level. And even that took a lot of heavy lifting.
They are going to go after the “Panera moms” with a vengeance. Listen to yesterday’s NYT Daily podcast to get the reference.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
well, you’ll never guess who spent all morning watching TeeVee!
tell us in the tweet where Obama poked you…
patroclus
@LurkerNoLonger: The U.S’s electoral college system is unique in that it sets up an alternative body based on 51 (states +D.C.) jurisdictions which hold elections for the head of state/head of government position. But it isn’t all that different from other democratic systems which depend on elections in districts/constituencies/ridings to determine their governmental leaders. In all such systems, it usually comes down to a few “swing” constituencies which determine the balance of the election. With the U.S. it’s 51; in the U.K., it’s 650 and so on. If we did it by Congressional district, it’d be 435 individual elections (and Maine and Nebraska do it this way already). I’m not sure why you find it coming down to a few swing jurisdictions all that meaningful. The electoral college has its problems, but it’s not that.
Baud
Via LGM
Kent
@patroclus: We don’t have to do it by any sort of district or even have an electoral college. We could simply use the popular vote.
James E Powell
@Baud:
Minnesota? Seriously? Say it ain’t so.
What I wouldn’t give to see their internals.
patroclus
@Kent: Indeed we could (and should), but I guess my point was that the U.S.’s system was designed to emulate the parliamentary systems that don’t elect their leaders popularly but instead rely on individual votes in constituencies and the winners are in parties/factions who then choose their heads of government – NOT by popular vote. (And their heads of states are often determined by royalty by inheritance).
WaterGirl
@Baud: But what about the $87 million from Sheldon A and the $80 from someone else, all going to PACS, but it’s still money for Trump.
Maybe Trump can pull out there because the other money is covering it?
Gravenstone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Nice to see that the “paid no taxes” thing is still gnawing at him.
Jeffro
@Kay: I just got the word that VA high school sports are probably canceled for the 2020-2021 school year.
My teen soccer player is going to be so. bummed.
jonas
The campaign claims that Trump’s superspreader events rallies are more effective than media buys anyway and they’re totally not frantically triaging resources in the last week of the campaign yada yada. Of course only the hard-core base that was going to vote for him anyway turns out for those, and it’s not 2016 where these free-form, angry ramblefests from Trump sold a lot of independents on his edgy, “outsider” brand. Now they’re just your bog-standard Nuremberg rally, but with shitty production values and much stupider people. Not reaching a lot of on-the-fence suburban moms with that…
Kent
He has the most profound Obama-envy imaginable. He will never command the respect and gravitas of Obama, not even 1% of it. And he knows it. Deep down he knows he is a laughing-stock. And it drives him insane.
Jeffro
Right…they’ll talk as if they are ‘woke’, but they’ll do zip to advance the causes you named. Kind of like how trumpov, Hawley, and all the rest straight-up lie about protecting pre-existing conditions while working to undermine them.
Kent
They are trying to replay 2016 when they got mass media coverage from all the networks of every rally. And it did work.
Is anyone other than FOX covering these superspreader events this time around? I don’t turn on the TV except for sports and Netflix so I don’t even know.
Jeffro
@Baud: He really thinks he’s going to ‘flip’ Minnesota, and hold onto the rest. Remarkable.
Whichever GOP strategist put that bug in his ear…thank you!
gwangung
@Jeffro: Oh, I think they’ll sacrifice a dime to those woke ideals….but they sure as hell are not going to devote serious dollars to them. Easiest way to appeal to folks scared by the xenophobia and anti-PC sentiments.
CaseyL
@Kent: Going by the popular vote would give high-population areas **all** the influence, though.
Maybe it’s my age, and the way Civics and PoliSci were taught when I was in school coloring my perspective, but I was taught that a tyranny of the majority wasn’t a good idea any more than a tyranny of the minority. In classic PoliSci back in the day, the ideal was a middle ground that prevented disenfranchisement as much as possible.
I concede that “back in the day” the polarization we now see between urban and non-urban areas was much less pronounced.
Kent
Well sure, corporate types aren’t social activists. But I do expect a more corporate GOP will be a lot more LGBT friendly and diversity oriented. Because this is an increasingly diverse nation and they want to stay in power as well as make money. Go to any pride parade today. Over half the floats these days are corporate. That was inconceivable 20 years ago. It’s all about the money. And the joint constituencies of poor rural white folk and fundie evangelicals just isn’t going to give you majorities anymore outside of a few legislative districts here and there.
All I am saying is that the smart folks in the GOP know all of this, and they sooner they get rid of Trump the sooner they can start making the pivot.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Very Stable Genius continues his quest to bring Suburban Housewives back to the fold
@Kent: he was going on yesterday about how handsome the press says Obama is.
One shot I would like see Obama, or Biden, or Harris take: Kim Jong-Un is laughing at the man he calls “Your Excellency”
Jeffro
Obama dealt with his ‘dad-issues’, and trumpov never did. He’s not just jealous of Obama’s genuine achievements and talents. Obama has something that trumpov never will: Obama knows what he is about, and it’s not a pathological need for approval.
Oh…Obama also has a Nobel peace prize, a Grammy, etc…
Those too ;)
LurkerNoLonger
@patroclus: Kent basically said what I was getting at. Popular vote would be more representative of how the country feels about a candidate instead of subsections of certain people in a few states. To put it another way: the electoral college sucks.
Kent
Bullshit.
“Areas” don’t vote. People vote. With a popular vote election the map would completely change. Dems would be campaigning in the Rio Grande Valley and in rural black communities and cities across the south where they never bother to go today. When was the last time a Dem campaigned in say Jackson Mississippi? Likewise GOP candidates would be cruising through Orange County to harvest GOP votes as well as exurbs everywhere from the Portland and Seattle suburbs to downstate IL where they also currently don’t go.
We would also finally get to 1 person 1 vote. Everyone’s vote would count equally. Right now if OR gets an 80% voter turnout and Arkansas gets a 40% voter turnout then every AR voter gets twice the vote of every OR voter. Southern politicians pay zero price for voter suppression because it doesn’t change the number of electoral votes they get. In fact, it makes their own votes larger. And that’s without even getting into the population distortions of the electoral college.
Jeffro
@Kent: are we talking about GOP politicians or big-business donors? I was describing how GOP politicians will act and talk. It seems to me like it’ll continue to come across as pretty fake if Dems can successfully point out the difference between what the GOP politicians are saying vs what they’re actually doing/voting for.
Big-business donors might not be inclined to waste too much time and money on GOP politicians with those kinds of negatives, or with the party as a whole. Especially once it’s fully out of power and can’t do jack/shit for them.
We’ll see.
geg6
@Nora Lenderbee:
If those supporters are on Wall Street, I’m guessing yes. I’ve been seeing a lot of reporting about how Wall Street has had it with the Mango Mussolini.
Kent
We’ll see.
Both. We are talking about why some in the GOP (BOTH business donors and politicians) would abandon Trump and support Biden. I’m just suggesting it is in their own self-interest to get down to the task of party-rebuilding 4 years earlier than would be the case if Trump wins again.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: The Republicans who post fantasy Trump-wins maps on Twitter always have Minnesota flipping red.
JPL
link
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JPL: Gary Peters and his surrogates ought to be hounding the would-be reasonable Republican John James, who is 2,000% with trump!, to explain that.
CaseyL
@Kent: But the areas you’re describing **are** high-population!
Take our state, Washington. We are reliably blue, as a state, because the population in Western Washington is so, so much higher than in Eastern Washington. A politician looking to get elected statewide here could conceivably ignore Eastern Washington entirely (expect perhaps Spokane) and focus all their attention to the voters – and the issues – west of the Cascades.
Now: imagine you’re a family farmer in Eastern Washington, and your concern is (say) developers buying up farmland and turning it into suburbia. Or maintaining access to irrigable, potable water. Your property taxes, your infrastructure, etc., directly affect whether you can keep your farm going. In a statewide election, you’d be lucky to have those concerns addressed at all, because all the votes are over on the western side of the state.
(How long have you lived in Washington? Long enough to remember when there was still a lot of farmland out by Carnation and Issaquah? What happened to all those farms, I wonder…)
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Of course they did.
Now that trump said some people say what happened to Whitmer wasn’t a problem, and maybe it wasn’t, I’m sure Wray will deliver his militia information to the House pronto.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hunter Biden did what?
Almost ten times what he pays in taxes for… flowers. How this doesn’t sink in with at least some of the “he’s a businessman” crowd will baffle me for the rest of my days.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well I would have thought Melania’s comment would have lasted a news cycle. I’m not even sure this will be on the news
Immanentize
@patroclus: 435 mini elections would end up being much more Democratic than 51. I kinda like that idea….
ETA Even with gerrymandering!
billcinsd
@japa21: You should consider getting on one of those Democratic buses that take people from big urban cities to vote in nearby small states
Mai Naem mobile
After they expand the court and get Breyer replaced the Dems should just fuck with the GOP by having HRC on the USSC for a few months followed by Michelle Obama for a few months followed by Barack Obama for a few months. I believe RBG’s granddaughter is a lawyer. She can be in there for a few months as well.
Immanentize
@Kent: I am not so sure the business people can put the Trumpist genie back in the bottle. The candidates still need votes. Q-anon choir members will beat old time pro business Chamber of Commerce Republicans for a decade. The more likely result is that those Republicans will try a hostile takeover of the Democratic party. See, Lincoln Project.
JPL
In another world this from the Washington Post would stop someone’s candidacy.
gwangung
@Immanentize: This was always in the cards if the Republican Party has a proper death. Our political system is built on two parties, and if any party was to die, it would be from a coalition of interests, including refugees from the dying party, ganging up on it.
And that one party isn’t going to STAY one party. Because it’s a coalition, the surviving Democratic Party would not naturally be stable; it’ll split.
The danger, of course, will be trying to split too soon, before the xenophobe party properly dies.
Baud
@gwangung:
I think that’s partly what happened after Obama was elected and we had massive majorities in Congress. We’re paying the price.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I saw a screenshot of that tweet on FB and my head almost exploded all over my laptop. I’d bet the suburban housewives were similarly impressed.
debbie
@Baud:
I did see two Trump ads last night. I’d forgotten how pleasant the world was without them. //
JPL
@gwangung: Xenophobia is not going to die as long as trump and his clan are alive to stoke the fire.
debbie
@jonas:
Trump’s treating the campaign like he did COVID: Deny, deny, deny, then when it’s too, too late, panic and go crazy.
Immanentize
Hmmm. Bloomberg just went into Texas with $$$ and people to help Biden (and down ballot too?). Tell me again how Texas is totally out of reach?
prostratedragon
Just one of just this day’s atrocities:
Fits in with this survey from Huffington Post (!) on the war on data, which looks at a range of policy areas that have been affected:
Data Disappeared
Baud
@Immanentize: More telling is that Kamala went.
Chetan Murthy
@clay:
Two thoughts: (1) Right there with ya’. I have -zero- patience or compassion for any GrOPer voter or Covidiot. I told a covidiot anti-masker that as far as I was concerned, people not wearing masks should be shot on sight. Fuck them. Fuck him. I’m losing a year of my fucking life, my *mother* is losing a year of her life, for these fuckers? Fuck. Them. (2) Why would you regret this? This is that student’s time to decide what they stand for: are they Americans, or are they fucking traitors? There’s no fucking in-between.
All that said, yeah: for the same of your blood pressure, and also your financial stability, it might be good to step back a bit. But honestly: not for any other reason. These excuses for Americans, they can all go to hell, and by that I mean an ice floe off Vladivostok, begging for entry to Russia. Fuck. Them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Immanentize: good point, I’m ambivalent about Bloomberg, but he doesn’t put his name or his money in service of losing causes, and I’d imagine he’s got a pretty sophisticated data operation
ETA: I cringe a little citing this source myself, but I did chuckle when Tweety said he knew Obama was gonna win in ’08 and in ’12 when Bloomberg and Colin Powell endorsed him, because those two egos would never take a risk on less than a sure thing.
prostratedragon
@Baud: Scrounging for cash like only a multibillionaire desparate to hold onto office can.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well, except his own primary run.
Immanentize
@gwangung: Agree. The interesting thing might be this ending up with a rump crazy racist Republican party, a center to center right Democratic party and a left of center New Democrats party.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The one he needed two hands to hold?
Immanentize
@Baud: Agree. It’s ON. Texas Death Match. Loser leaves town!!!!!
Kent
@CaseyL: My family has lived in the Pacific Northwest for 6 generations.
As for your hypothetical farmer in eastern WA who wants his concerns met? He will have to build coalitions and maybe figure out that there is compromise involved in politics and that he and his buddies can’t just get 100% MAGA red meat for their consumption. Perhaps they will have to give up their MAGA dream of owning the libs and repealing Obamacare and outlawing gay marriage and banning abortion and torturing trans kids and settle down on the land use issues that are actually important to them and realize there is compromise to politics.
Maybe that means forming coalitions with conservative-minded folks west of the Cascades who aren’t so MAGA to push your agenda forward.
Living in a pluralist state and pluralist society means give and take. I expect that people in western WA would be more conciliatory towards Eastern WA farmers if they weren’t trying to veto every progressive thing Western WA voters are trying to do for themselves from health care to mass transit to higher education.
debbie
Damn duplicates.
Immanentize
@Baud: That is different because people told him he would clean up. Win big. No doubts (invoice for consultant services is in the mail Michael).
JPL
@Immanentize: When Phil Graham was a democratic member of Congress, Texas republican were not all insane. btw I never voted for Phil, no matter what party he was in. I agree it can be flipped. Maybe sooner than GA, cuz there are a lot of folks who receive government aid here, who feel the others are getting most of it.
Kent
Oh, I agree. They are the dog that caught the car. But I think they will try and the sooner they get to the post-Trump world the sooner the project can start. I’m not saying it’s going to work. I’m just explaining why there are some GOPers who are voting Biden. They want to get an earlier start on that project.
And things do have a way of balancing out in American politics. They will be back. Someone new will figure out their new formula for national GOP success. And I suspect it will involve massive appeals to Hispanic voters. George W. Bush knew this 20 years ago.
Chetan Murthy
@patroclus: The problem is that some districts (Wyoming) have … what? 50x the clout per voter, of others (California). That’s the problem. We could dilute that a *lot* by adopting the Wyoming Rule, but even still, that states can choose to award electoral votes *en masse* (and not in proportion to the vote) still makes it problematic.
P.S. Obviously I’m not talking about doing any sort of proportional electoral vote in only some states — it’s either in all states, or none.
Immanentize
@JPL: I was there in the 90s when it was still a sort of 50/50 State. Ann Richards anyone?
Immanentize
@Kent: That is why Biden must settle some critical issues like DACA and immigration. Even re-opening Cuba is popular among most Cuban Republicans. We need a happy constituency going forward.
LuciaMia
Too true. Plus only Fox covers these rallies in their entirety , CNN et al only a few sound bites. So again, only the converted are bombarded with his message.
Geminid
Joe Biden brought the fire to Warm Springs, Georgia. The 5pm radio news had a clip of him shouting that “as President, I will never raise the White Flag of Surrender!… We will control this virus!”
Baud
@Immanentize:
DACA is easy.
Immanentize
@Baud: Easy without a filibuster
Citizen Alan
@Immanentize: I loved Ann Richards, but I’m also cognizant of the fact that the guy she beat to win a single term thought it was hilarious to make rape jokes in a public forum.
Baud
@Immanentize:
I actually think DACA would clear filibuster. Other immigration reforms, not so much.
Fair Economist
@guachi:
538 has *never* had a Senate or Presidential candidate win a state with a low probability. I think it’s actually around 15% that’s the cutoff. His model overestimates the chance of rare events.
Kent
@Immanentize: It’s actually probably easy even with a filibuster, as long as the Dems hold the Senate and can put it on the floor for a vote. As long as McConnell is Majority leader he just blocks the votes from actually happening.
I expect there are at least 8 GOP votes for DACA including Ted Cruz and little Mario. They damn near made it happen in 2017 with the budget negotiations and that was with a GOP Congress.
Things like major heath car reform and voting rights that are more existential to the GOP will require breaking a filibuster. I don’t think DACA is one of those things. There are enough GOP Senators in relatively purple states who aren’t going to want to take a blatantly racist vote to block DACA.
CaseyL
@Kent: I was actually thinking of a pre-MAGA time, particularly in the 1990s, when all the farmland on **this** side of the mountains was disappearing.
Eastern Washington has always been strongly GOP, so far as I know, but it has not always been MAGAts. When I went to Lobby Day in Olympia a few years ago, many of the Democratic legislative staff talked about having good working relationships with their GOP counterparts in E. Washington. And someone I knew with the Innocence Project NW used to tell me how some Washington GOP state legislators were better on IPNW issues than some Dems.
Yes, those days are long gone. It changed almost overnight after Election Day 2016.
But our discussion was about how to represent all constituent issues if voting is done by raw numbers, with no districting. I was talking about how that system would leave smaller populations behind, and using the once-upon-a-time non-crazy Eastern Washington as an example.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: It sounds like you’re referring to the tweet from nycsouthpaw that I posted recently. The numbers are from OpenSecrets:
Top Individual Contributors: All Federal Contributions, 2019 - 20201 Sheldon G. & Miriam O. Adelson
Las Vegas Sands / Adelson Drug Clinic
Las Vegas, NV $183,071,000
Bloomberg is #2.
Soros is #30.
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
Kent
Farmland is disappearing in Western WA because the WA GOP blocked a stronger Growth Management Act to protect farmland of the sort that they have in OR. It was farmers (and timberland owners) in Western WA who wanted the right to sell out their farms to housing developers that prevented that from happening.
I live in Clark County and the rate of encroachment of farmland here compared to across the river in Oregon’s Washington county (Beaverton area) is night and day. It’s happening because that is what the GOP wants, not because of liberal Western WA politicians. Our local GOP County Commissioners are single-minded in their relentless attempts to encroach on and undermine the WA Growth Management Act, which was already orders of magnitude weaker than in OR
And besides, most of the issues you are talking about are state issues, not national issues. And we still do have a state legislature that has representation from eastern WA. Shifting to a popular vote for the presidency wouldn’t change any of that.
Baud
@germy:
Nothing about Christmas stuff and decorations?
NeenerNeener
Early voting just started here on Saturday, and the lines have been so long at my local polling place I haven’t been able to vote yet. I’ve got a number of physical issues that preclude standing in the cold rain for more than about 10 minutes, but lots of my neighbors don’t seem to have any issues with it at all. I may just wait until Election Day when the polling places open at 6:30 am and I’ll have the place all to myself.
Geminid
@Baud: DACA probably will be part of comprehensive immigration reform legislation that addresses the status of immigrants in general. Similar legislation was passed by the Senate under Bush and Obama, but could not get through a republican House of Representatives. But it will get through next year. Schumer and Pelosi might well make this one of the first group of bills, just to let republican senators get their feet wet. “Come on in, the water’s warm.”
Fair Economist
@Baud:
Regretably, Marc Caputo of Politico reports he’s just shuffling money around and the ads will still run paid for by the RNC.
cokane
FWIW, winning North Carolina would really put a big hedge against any possible fuckery in Pennsylvania. So yeah, an important state, and obviously a key Senate race too.
Iowa probably worth a mention too as a swing state alongside OH and TX. Also a competitive Senate race there.
germy
@Baud:
“idle gossip and palace intrigue”
mad citizen
@germy: That’s all just sad, Melania reading what Stephen Miller wrote. She’s just an employee. I thought I was awake for the last 12 months–impeachment ended before virus awareness began, right? (yes, google say impeachment vote was Feb. 5).
In the last few days I’ve been thinking many times about Garry Kasparov’s statement “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Lincoln Project, again. Nothing funny about this one.
JPL
@germy: f..k her. We’ll know if the polls are right, if Fox News starts talking about the deficit, and Melania moves out.
James E Powell
@CaseyL:
That won’t happen. Low population states, even really low population states, still get to senators and at least one member of the house.
The president/vice-president is the only national election. It is immoral that everyone’s vote is not equal to everyone else’s.
Kilgore Trout
@H.E.Wolf: Here’s an amusing you tube video of Shirley Manson from Garbage discussing her three favorite curse words, tw*t being one. To be fair she stresses that she reserves its use solely for male members of society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUCHRTpBe6g
While best known for their 90s albums, their ‘No Horses’ from 2017 could be the anthem of 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPA18-tENac
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I hadn’t seen a tweet, I just recalled hearing the Adelson amounts kicked around – I heard 75 million, 87 million and a third number that I don’t recall.
And that some other rich republican had just ponied up some crazy amount. So there is a ton of money being spent on trump, or at least Republicans, and against D candidates, in this final week.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: The Uihleins?
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Here ya go:
That was a reply to this:
HTH!! :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@germy:
Good to see Stephen Miller pulling double duty.
Ksmiami
@Chetan Murthy: music to my ears. Trump and his infected plague gang have robbed all of us.
Calouste
@CaseyL: If voting happens without districting, you end up with proportional representation and a multi-party system. And one of those parties could be a Farmers Party. And they could find they can make better deals for their specific issues with the Democrats and Greens than with the BigAgro/PolluteEverywhere Republicans.
Geminid
@cokane: Also, Abby Finkenauer is in a tough race. She flipped a republican House seat in 2018. All four Iowa congressional districts are competitive.
mad citizen
@Kilgore Trout: Dang! Thanks for the link to No Horses–just watched it for the first time. That was 3 years ahead of time. I really like Garbage, I was watching a youtube of the creation of the band just recently.
mad citizen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: They are this place (https://www.uline.com/) that has about everything you could ever want to store/ship/warehouse etc. For some reason I receive their giant catalog every so often (might have bought boxes or cd supplies from them sometime). Just found out they are trumpers this year–in Wisconsin. Guess they balance out Penzey’s spices.
Geminid
One selling point for Comprehensive Immigration Reform: when the new cohort of younger undocumented workers enter the legal work force, Social Security “insolvency” will be pushed back to the next decade.
Nettoyeur
@WaterGirl: Or something more sinister: the fix is in for Florida. Who knows?
TS (the original)
@Fair Economist:
Between himself and Ivanka. Probably had to pay the third lady for her speech of support as well. Can’t imagine she did that without a large fee.
Miss Bianca
@Jeffro: Meanwhile, our school – which had managed to open in August and stay COVID-free – so far as we know – till now, has the entire sixth grade and the middle school football team in quarantine because of a positive test.
OK, cross-country I get – that’s a sport with built-in social distancing! – but football? Seriously? We had the option to *not* try to get football going again, and of course, our athletic director decided we needed to go for it! Yay, team! Goooooooooo COVID!!
cain
@CaseyL:
But is that the kind of thing they are actually lobbying the govt though? I see conservatives turn out for the stupidest things. None of them really honestly talk about their problems at all or it never gets honestly reported.
All those things I would care about as well. Because honestly, these land developers are greedy pigs.
Dan B
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This powerfully activates an emotional response. This approach short circuits all the rationalizations that are a defensive shield covering the fear and prejudices that are at the core of extremist beliefs. It doesn’t talk about policy. That’s a discussion for legislative bodies and a few policy geeks. This type of ad can move low information and undecided voters.
cain
This. That goes for Eastern Oregon as well. The tax dollars from the west side funds all the east. The least they can do is stop being entitled pricks when other folks are helping pay the bills.
Kilgore Trout
@mad citizen: Yeah, that video was prescient for sure!
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Shit, man.
I will hold a mean grudge against the Never Trumpers for a long, long time because of their ratfucking, but I have to admit that when they *finally* turn their skills against their own, the results are pretty devastating.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Another Scott:
I didn’t recall the name, so maybe that was it. In any case, my point/question still stands. There’s a ton of last-minuter $$ at play on the Republican side, even if Trump isn’t controlling it.
So my worry is that he is pulling out of these states because others are coming in.
WaterGirl
I do LOVE that Bloomberg hates Trump so much that he wants to help humiliate him with the state’s Bloomberg has chosen to fund: Texas and Georgia, right?
I also agree that Bloomberg must believe these are gettable or he wouldn’t be throwing money in that direction.
WaterGirl
@Nettoyeur: Yeah, I wondered about that earlier this week.
Fun times.
J R in WV
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
DAMM !!! That’s hard, they made me cry. The second one to do that.
The first one was the Mom waking her kid up in the wee hours to tell her kid Trump had won his third term. “I though you could only have two!” kid says. Mom says “That was before…” Heart wrenching.
But this second one is even more emotional because it is drop dead real, literally!
Kent
Honestly, they are just way more badass than we are. Even the Democratic Socialists new ads are crap compared to what Lincoln is doing. It’s a good object lesson. We need more badass leave it all on the field folks on our side too.
Geminid
@Miss Bianca: Curious: how is it looking for Diane Mitsch Bush in the Colorado 3rd? It’s a tough Congressional district, but she seems like a solid candidate.
Kristine
@Immanentize:
I often wonder if that’s how things wind up in the next few years. Makes sense.
Kristine
@Kilgore Trout: Love Garbage and Manson.
Miss Bianca
@Geminid: Tied. Dead heat, essentially, according to the press release from her campaign manager.
God damn it. There’s no way it ought to be this close. I am going to be so PISSED if she ends up losing against Tombstone Barbie after losing against Tipton.
cokane
@Geminid: Good tip, yeah if folks are motivated to give for Ohio or Texas races, I think the money probably goes further by spending it in Iowa this year.
Sally
@Calouste: I know this thread is long gone, but, actually, yes. I did read somewhere where they were worried that he was all talk, and was really a liberal, elitist, New York demorat. But now they know he means it, that he hates who they hate, they’re voting for him.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: The huge number is over 2 years and probably lags a few weeks at least.
There was a recent Politico story about Sheldon dumping $75M into a PAC for Donnie, but that was money donated in September. We probably won’t know what was donated/spent by him and his cronies in October and November until January or so. :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Good to know. I hadn’t caught the timing.