Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

I really should read my own blog.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Not all heroes wear capes.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

People are weird.

So many bastards, so little time.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Republicans in disarray!

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

You are here: Home / Politics / GOP Death Cult / Late Night Open Thread: Chivvying the GOP Retreat

Late Night Open Thread: Chivvying the GOP Retreat

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  3. 3.

    Mike in DC

    I think the black and brown voters will show up in force on Election Day.  They just don’t trust the mail in ballots.

    Trump may do slightly better with black and latin men, but worse with whites overall, worse with women overall, and unlikely to get much past 43-44% of the popular vote nationally.

  5. 5.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steeplejack:

    That’s one of my favourite quotes. Somewhere I have a little sculpture of Julian with a cat curled up in her lap. The “All shall be well” line runs around the base.

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    @smike: Legend has it that in certain intro CS texts, if you look up ‘Endless Loop’ in the index, it will refer you to ‘Loop, Endless.’ One guess what the latter index entry reads.

  8. 8.

    cain

    I’m all secure in the knowledge that my vote was received. Yay.

    Also for no reason, fuck McConnell. I can’t wait to see the senate flipped. But the most dangerous time seems to be in the next few months.

    Crossing my fingers that everything will turn out this Tuesday.

  9. 9.

    Yutsano

    This…is not the speaking of a mature adult. I’m trying to decide what disturbs me the most about this. The fact that the person who said this has the nuclear codes id a big part of it.

    Trump’s full answer, denying Axios report he’s discussed claiming victory on elex night before rest of votes are in, saying R lawyers are “going in” to PA, NV & “other states” to challenge, bashing SCOTUS & claiming we should have results on E night “in a modern age of computers” pic.twitter.com/fMs1xZvVf4— Meredith Lee (@meredithllee) November 1, 2020

  11. 11.

    Anya

    The Jason Miller quote has the same energy as Donald Trump Jr’s  “Just watching my algorithms get crushed.”

  17. 17.

    The Enderville Phantom

    If DougJBalloon is around let him know that last Sunday the Spokesman-Review of Spokanestan, aka Matt Shea territory, endorsed Trump for President in the “Oh sure he’s a bigot and a bully … but he’s (so dreamy) (spot on with the economy) (etc) and Biden would cause Socialism to happen” vein. It could easily be a pitch from Doug’s twitter bot account. There might have been a backlash to the publication. Who knows? That area is way redder than I remember. Tom Foley anyone? Lisa Brown? Blank stares. “We’ve always been Republican around here …”

    I’ve looked for an open thread that’s current but I seem to miss out between work, sleep, driving

  18. 18.

    Matt McIrvin

    They’re going to try to shred half of the cast ballots in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, and claim they were all fake. Literally half the electorate will be claimed as fake. Millions of votes.

  21. 21.

    The Oracle of Solace

    The Barbarian and I are bunkered down in the hotel. I have restocked the liquor cabinet, but there is no guarantee that it will hold out beyond Tuesday night, Wednesday morning. Over the weekend I made my first absinthe cocktail, based on an old Hemingway recipe. Why absinthe? Absinthe makes the heart go wander.

    I have done my part for the election, with a propaganda video looking at the (in)effectiveness of third-party voting, one aimed at persuading left-leaning voters who are otherwise too pure for politics that they are needed because actual fascism is on the ballot this time and must be fought. If only one of the hundred who watched it was persuaded, I have done well.

    Now I await the result of Tuesday’s contest with the same tension one feels for a family member who is scheduled for dangerous surgery. The condition is terminal without an immediate trumpectomy, but there’s no guarantee that the operation will be successful. I can only wait, and think, and edit, and read, and drink, and hide my fears behind my mask.

  22. 22.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    I just asked my Korean-born, 17-year-old adopted son: “If Trump wins (and I think he will) and you have to seek asylum in South Korea, will you take us with you? No pressure, you can say no.”

    He unhesitatingly said yes. So we have that going for us.

    I think T will will the Electoral College, although not the popular vote. I so want to be wrong. Y’all can have a fiesta of telling me how wrong I was.

    But I think T will win.

    ETA: I can’t stand it. I’m so fucking scared.

  23. 23.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I haven’t checked the latest numbers but AZ was at 85 percent of the total vote cast in 2016. Yes, ofcourse some of this is due to COVID but the normal mail in ballot and early in person voting is around 40 percent. Dems are holding a 20K voter ID lead which is slim but they were in the negative  in 2016. Also, we have a decent unaffiliated chunk of voters who I cannot believe will favor Orange Dbag. Maricopa County(Metro Phx)EV is a little over 100% of total 2016 votes. I wonder if the last mail in votes tomorrow will push it over the 2016 total number of votes. I am feeling optimistic since we also have a Dem SOS and a Dem Maricopa County Recorder.

  27. 27.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Matt McIrvin:

    They’re going to try to shred half of the cast ballots in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, and claim they were all fake. Literally half the electorate will be claimed as fake. Millions of votes.

    And how are they going to do that if it’s not close? With a Dem Gov and SOS in each state?

    ETA: I see you said “try”. They may try, but I don’t think (fingers crossed) that they’ll succeed

  30. 30.

    NotMax

    So picked up the phone earlier today to touch base with NY only to discover it wasn’t working.

    Reboot of the phone modem set that aright. May have been out of service since last weekend for all I know as use it so infrequently.

  31. 31.

    Mary G

    @rikyrah: As Yarrow says, “Tick-tock, motherfuckers.”

    ETA:

    Seriously, it is so on brand.Winning by persuading a majority of people to support him was never a serious option: You can't embrace the KKK AND win a majority of voters.All Trump has ever tried to do is control the media narrative.— Teri Kanefield (@Teri_Kanefield) November 1, 2020

    I believe that Biden voters are turning out in numbers too big to ignore.

  33. 33.

    Glyph2112

    @Mai Naem mobile: AZ here.  My ballot received and verified. 2 of my sons as well.

    I said it before and say it again.  If we can’t beat someone as shitty as trump straight out, who can we beat.  I am not as worried about what happens if trump loses, because I think he and his people go into survival mode to try and stay out of jail.

  36. 36.

    RaflW

    Just in the last little while, Trump has now indicated — at the Miami rally, I believe — that he will probably fire Fauci after the election. (T wants a lot more people to die as punishment for this pending electoral embarrassment.)

    Dan Diamond @ddiamond
    TRUMP: You turn on the news, ‘Covid, covid, covid, covid.’

    CROWD: Fire Fauci! Fire Fauci!

    TRUMP: Don’t tell anybody, but let me wait til a little bit after the election.

    Biden camp has been pretty fast at getting new web ads up. One saying “Trump just announced he’s firing Dr Anthony Fauci” with the short clip should motivate any laggards.

  38. 38.

    MisterForkbeard

    @RaflW: I see a lot of conservative folks on facebook and twitter pushing this. “Covid isn’t bad at all and it will disappear after the election once the media can’t hit with it.” They also want Trump to fire Fauci because they think he’s a giant liar trying to take down Trump.

    It’s sad, because they really do project all their crap onto us. “We scaremongering about migrant caravans and Ebola so of course this hugely negative thing is just other people scaremongering.”

  39. 39.

    frosty

    @smike: Like getting stuck in a ‘do loop’ (fortran).

    Freshman year, first semester. FORTRAN. Do loop. This is what cured me of ever writing a computer program again. My stack of cards kept getting thicker and thicker and the program still didn’t work.

  40. 40.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mary G: I’m just directly interpreting the things Republicans are themselves saying about their intentions. They’re saying they want to stop the counting at midnight on Election Night and that any ballots counted after that are some kind of sneaky Democratic trick. The states themselves are saying the counting will take days  Put the two things together– that implies the Republicans think at least half the vote is fake.

    Or, of course, they’re just wilfully ignorant of how elections work.

  42. 42.

    Winston

    @RaflW: I can’t get over how his minions buy it. I won’t speak to any of my inlaws, RW ex friends, my ex girl friend and it’s sad. Not that they care, which makes me not care. It’s sad really. But how can they not see.

  45. 45.

    frosty

    @Matt McIrvin: Who is “they”? The election judge at each polling place? The Board of Elections for every county in PA? The PA Secretary of State? Or just the Dem-controlled counties like Philly?

    “They” aren’t going to shred anything.

  47. 47.

    Kristine

    @frosty:

    Freshman year, first semester. FORTRAN. Do loop. This is what cured me of ever writing a computer program again. My stack of cards kept getting thicker and thicker and the program still didn’t work.

    My freshman FORTRAN class–we had a 20-page limit for programs so printing would stop even if someone forgot to close a do-loop.

  48. 48.

    frosty

    @NotMax: Humph. We didn’t have to do no fancy reboot stuff when The Phone Company* owned all the lines and leased us our Princess Phones.

    ‘* Thank you The President’s Analyst.

  51. 51.

    Mallard Filmore

    Matt McIrvin @40
    A simple trick would be for Pennsylvania to count the mail-early ballots FIRST.

  53. 53.

    frosty

    @Matt McIrvin: Once again, who is “they”? It’s not all Republicans, e.g. McConnell certainly knows how voting works. The only one I see saying this crap is Trump. One person isn’t a “they”.

  59. 59.

    aliasofwestgate

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Because by the 80s (if not sooner) the English as a SEcond Language classes became a standard thing there. Exchange students coming to english speaking countries (i was friends with one girl who was there from japan for a year in high school.) and vice versa. It’s become so much a part of the culture that they mash it into the music. So we get the engrish lyrics that are a bit of a language all their own, and continues to evolve even in modern jpop.  My roomie taught ESL too, while she was in university, over in japan for a year. She also got to do a few geology based stuff to do with her degree too, while she was there.  If you listen to Enka genre and a lot of the early jpop, like Sakamoto Kyu’s songs there’s no english peppered into them. But later on, it starts to creep in as time passes. I’ve even watched a lot of their kids shows from the 60s (The first Ultraman from 66 is one), and the language continues to shift. I’m no linguist, but as a singer hearing lyrics and the languages, it fascinates me.

  63. 63.

    guachi

    My mother, who does not read BJ or use Twitter, thinks Trump is going to win. It’s not that she thinks Trump has some magical power it’s that she thinks America is just full of enough awful people.

    Too many close races. Biden’s ahead by 9(ish) nationally but the tipping point state, PA, is only about a 5 point difference. If PA was 9 like the national number we could all sleep more soundly.

  64. 64.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    @James E Powell: @Steeplejack:

    Thank you, I feel (ever so slightly) better. ?

    I think the “Pennsylvania Too Close to Call” headlines are what’s really freaking me out. If PA goes for T, the rest of the table is maddeningly unforecastable and terrifyingly close.

    This situation calls for more rosé, less analysis.

  65. 65.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    @Steeplejack: Aha, that’s the problem! I’m just out of paper bags!

    I had no idea my electoral worries could be solved with a trip to Target. The things I learn on this blog …

  66. 66.

    guachi

    @Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: 

    Yes. If the Electoral College didn’t exist we’d be easily celebrating a Biden win. If the EC had no lean to D or R, we’d be seeing Biden win TX, OH, and IA and getting 413 electoral votes.

    But, at is it, there are too many “ifs” that can go wrong.

  67. 67.

    aliasofwestgate

    I’ve dug up one of my more positive playlists for the next few days. I’m eyeing my honey mead bottle in the fridge but i likely won’t crack it until election night. If only to make myself sleep then.  Been playing a ton of World of Warcraft in anticipation of Shadowlands dropping, and looking for some kind of online work to get me through the holidays.  Roomie is immersed in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Pokemon: Sword and Shield. I’m also reading steadily through a pile of library books, graphic novels and manga we picked up from the local library. Looking forward the most to the Kousuke Ono’s ‘The Way of the House Husband’. Which is basically a slice of life comedy about a yakuza boss that retires to be a full time house husband while his wife is off doing her job. *grins*  It’s just offbeat enough looking to get my attention therefore i grabbed it. (i also want to read as much of it as i can get before Netflix releases the anime for it next year!)

  68. 68.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    @guachi:

    Too many close races. Biden’s ahead by 9(ish) nationally but the tipping point state, PA, is only about a 5 point difference.

    Ack. Nightmare resumes.

    This is the last possible occasion I could want to say “I told you so.” I want all y’all to be saying that to me on Nov 4.

  69. 69.

    RandyG

    @Mai Naem mobile: Further…. as of Friday, Pima County (Tucson), also with a Democratic County Recorder and more Democratic than Maricopa, was already at 95% of total 2016 vote.

  70. 70.

    Steeplejack

    @Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:

    I think the “Pennsylvania Too Close to Call” headlines are what’s really freaking me out.

    I didn’t tag it, but valued commenter Kay pointed out Sunday morning that the Dems have several solid backstops against a loss of Pennsylvania. Trump not only has to win there, but a lot of other (implausible) stuff has to fall his way as well.

    This situation calls for more rosé, less analysis.

    True of so much in life. ?

  72. 72.

    smike

    @frosty:

    Yeah, but that was fun, wasn’t it? Having to write a program, key in the punch card program, run the program (chance of getting booted due to higher priority runs – start over), wait… wait… oh crap!

  73. 73.

    guachi

    Really what I want is a “reach” state like NC, FL, GA, OH, IA, TX, or AZ to be called for Biden and then I won’t have to worry about PA and I can go to bed.

  75. 75.

    Winston

    @Steeplejack: Makes me sleepy. BTW, I lived in South San Jose (Blossom Hill). I made a lot of money and so did my wife so we bought a house down there in 1982 and sold it for double in 1987, when we bought another for 280K. In those days mortgage rates were 11%. So, $1300 house payment back then. We sold out with a handsome profit in 1994 and bought land in Missouri. In 2004 I checked on our house in BH and it was valued at $1.1million. Wish we had stayed for another 10 years. haha

  77. 77.

    Steeplejack

    @Winston:

    Hindsight is a curse. I worked in the microcomputer software industry from 1981 on, and when I want to kick myself I think about how if I had bought $1,000 of Microsoft stock a year after it went public and just held it I could have retired a millionaire long before now.

  79. 79.

    NotMax

    @Winston

    Got Prime video? Go to the search function and type in ambient. Many choices of soothing natural soundscapes from which to choose. Many of them blacken the screen while playing. There’s a particular one (able to run for 9 hours!) of distant thunderstorms I occasionally find conducive to slumber.

  80. 80.

    Glyph2112

    @guachi: i think what your mom says about awful people is why so many of us are freaking out.  If trump wins, we really are a nation of racist low information people.  This isn’t an election about policy, it’s about values and decency.

  83. 83.

    Steeplejack

    @NotMax:

    Shoot us the link for the distant thunderstorms. I have become a connoisseur of rain videos on YouTube and elsewhere and am always looking to add to the collection.

  88. 88.

    NotMax

    @Steeplejack

    Okay, just peeked at the watchlist on Prime. That one is titled “9 Hour Rainstorm for Sleep black screen.” From the description:

    Black screen for deep, restful sleep accompanied by a soothing rainstorm recorded in the Texas Hill country.

    Also have an alternate choice in the watchlist, titled “Midnnight Rain for Sleep Black Screen 4 Hours.”

  92. 92.

    TS (the original)

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Or, of course, they’re just wilfully ignorant of how elections work.

    The deplorables have voted long enough to know how elections work. This time around because the democrats took over the mail-in voting, they think they will win by stopping the mail-in vote count. Pre-covid time, mail-in leaned GOP.

  94. 94.

    Amir Khalid

    @frosty:

    Many authorities on English grammar, including me, accept “they” — with its case forms “them” and “their” — as a third-person singular pronoun for someone of unspecified gender.

  95. 95.

    Sebastian

    Anyone willing to take a bet when NY AG Letitia James unveils indictments against DJT?

     

    And before you respond “but but DOJ Policy forbids indicting a sitting POTUS” remember that DOJ has to formally act and I’d like to hear who at DOJ would actually file the paperwork.

    My bet is Fri November 6th.

  96. 96.

    piratedan

    on the list of potential dubious favors/dishonest presentation of the facts, I remind you that even while places like You Tube is out there flooding the searches with oodles of clickbait for us potential doom-scrollers to find. Where they breathlessly tell us that there are six battleground states and how Trump is only within the MOE of two of them and yet we are STILL are witnessing a  horserace.

    No mention of the legal battles that are being fought already about counting votes received
    No mention of Biden
    Plentiful clips of Trump claiming shenanigans
    Not much observation of GOP voter suppression and intimidation tactics
    Not much presentation of police supporting these tactics rather then enforcing the franchise of people to express a political opinion or protest.
    while those who have been able to reach voters willing to express an opinion, those that are new do show that while there are brand new fascists that have been registered to vote, they ignore the total of former GOP coalition members who have been peeled off and the number of youth participation that has been energized…

    I think we’re looking at a blue tsunami that is rising but the media only has a horse-race to sell, so that’s what we’re going to get…

  99. 99.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Glyph2112:

    we really are a nation of racist low information people

    I’ve spent significant time in many countries. You’ve just described all of them, even the ones that are generally considered enlightened.

    It is what it is. Focus on the positive. There’s always some jackass meandering about who’ll do negative.

  100. 100.

    Gary K

    @Steeplejack:  I was living in Albuquerque in 1975, and could plausibly claim to be able to program; I had friends who were real programmers. Somewhere in town were Gates & Allen, but alas we never crossed paths.

  101. 101.

    TS (the original)

    @piratedan:

    I think we’re looking at a blue tsunami that is rising but the media only has a horse-race to sell, so that’s what we’re going to get…

    I like your style – thank you. I have had Texas turning blue for weeks. That is what I will be watching.

  103. 103.

    Steeplejack

    @Gary K:

    The company I worked for did a lot of business with MicroSoft (capital S) when one of their big products was a card that went in an Apple II and gave it an 80-column display, rather than 40. (A big deal for business apps.) Hell, I played blackjack at the same table with Gates and Adam Osborne one year at COMDEX. Sometimes I feel like the only guy who didn’t get rich back then. But I know there were thousands of other footsoldiers who missed the brass ring.

  105. 105.

    frosty

    @Steeplejack: Yeah, but you would’ve done the same as me if I’d bought Microsoft. Watched it triple , hiccup in a downturn, sold, and patted yourself on the back for tripling your investment!

  106. 106.

    Bruce K

    @NotMax: Not V-E day. Not yet. Tuesday is D-Day. (Eisenhower had a message in his pocket to be delivered in the event the D-Day assaults failed. He was understandably worried.)

    For V-E Day, I’m targeting 8 November 2022. We have to keep up the fight until at least then.

    (My mother remembers D-Day, from the perspective of a native of Nazi-occupied Greece. She remembers feeling hope.)

  109. 109.

    frosty

    @Amir Khalid: Wow I think you guys missed the point. It’s not about pronouns – there exists no “they” that is capable of shredding all the ballots. “They” is a conspiracy word. There is no Republican party “they” talking about stopping counting. There is only Trump. OK, maybe Barr and Bouf.

    Oh, and I disagree with you about the pronoun they as singular. Grates on me every time I see it. That ship has sailed though.

  111. 111.

    Bruce K

    @frosty: I’m sure there were people who got shirty about the singular “you” instead of “thou”. And actually, if I’m reading Wikipedia properly, the singular “they” actually predates the plural “they” and has been in use throughout, even when using “he” as the generic third-person singular was advocated a couple of hundred years ago.

  113. 113.

    Amir Khalid

    @frosty:

    There is only Trump. OK, maybe Barr and Bouf.

    ∴ there is a “they”.

    Because people and the world around them evolve, languages evolve too. Changes will always grate on some people at first, but then they catch on and become generally accepted. Singular pronoun “they” is well into that transition. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

  115. 115.

    NotMax

    @Bruce K

    Am just throwing it into the mix as celebratory shorthand for Victorious Election.

    Although the real V-E Day, while it did not end the totality of the war, did mark a start of opportunity to rebuild from the rubble.

  117. 117.

    JWR

    Here’s hoping Biden breaks the 270 EV plateau well before Trump hits 100. Also too, that the media starts talking like it’s a done deal by the afternoon of the 3rd, which was about the same time I gave up, went out to do some yard work back in ’16. (My next door neighbor came outside, said hello, and we didn’t talk about election stuff at all.) Fingers crossed for the blowoutiest blowout in the history of all blowouts!

  118. 118.

    Yutsano

    @Bruce K:

    I’m sure there were people who got shirty about the singular “you” instead of “thou”

    Not quite. English used to be like other European languages in that we had levels of politeness. Thou was the informal for you. You, in fact, used to also be the plural form. Ye used to be the singular. So on the one hand we went simpler. On the other…a formal division of singular/plural for our second person pronoun would be nice.

  119. 119.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Mai Naem mobile: Chill dude, as Nat and Adam have been saying, this is not talk of people who think they are winning. All these threats and bluster are an attempt to hide their fear.

  120. 120.

    Yutsano

    @Amir Khalid:

    Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

    Get off my schtick guitar guy!

    (The joke is because I have two artificial hips and a spinal cord stimulator I’m already pretty much a cyborg)

    EDIT: and now that I have evidence that my phone cord is at least somewhat working, I can finally get to this sleep thing. Gute Nacht mein Freund!

  121. 121.

    lumpkin

    @dmsilev:

     Legend has it that in certain intro CS texts, if you look up ‘Endless Loop’ in the index, it will refer you to ‘Loop, Endless.’ One guess what the latter index entry reads.

    Endless recursion? Which leads back to Endless loop?

  123. 123.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Sebastian: Trump has lost white voters, especially women. He has nowhere to make that back. It’s over.

    And the elders, the only group that has any love for Trump are ignorant white bois and that’s not enough.

  126. 126.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @HumboldtBlue: I know, that’s my real fear is how much damage these fucktards will do when it’s rubbed in their stoner faces (again) they are luzers. It’s not like white, dumb and uneducated have things like a job to keep them out of trouble.

  127. 127.

    James E Powell

    @Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:

    I think the “Pennsylvania Too Close to Call” headlines are what’s really freaking me out.

    I think we’re seeing “Pennsylvania Too Close to Call” headlines not because Trump is closing in, but because saying Wisconsin or Michigan is clearly insane and if they don’t have one of the 2016 Treason States to give to Trump, he can’t win and they have no horse race.

  129. 129.

    James E Powell

    @HumboldtBlue:

    It’s amazing and a little scary to realize that white men with no college hate the rest of us so much that they are willing to destroy the country just to spite us.

  130. 130.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @James E Powell: Having grown up with them, think more a child throwing a tantrum and throwing his meal on the ground because they know the adults will clean it up the mess.  I think that’s one of the odd reasons for Biden’s popularity “look, dad’s finally here to deal with the mess Donny made on his coke bender”

  131. 131.

    Baud

    Good.

    United States Senator is a very important job

    …

    Joe Biden’s team is considering an informal ban on naming Democratic U.S. senators to the Cabinet if he wins — which would effectively block Elizabeth Warren for Treasury or Bernie Sanders for Labor — people familiar with the discussions tell Axios.

     

  132. 132.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:

    Makes sense. He’ll have plenty of able executives to choose from. He will need the Democratic party’s best Senators to remain in the Senate. He will also need Bernie to remain in the Senate.

  136. 136.

    Humanities Prof

    @Baud: That would be incredibly smart, if true.

    I’d be very much in favor of a “No Governors, No Senators” rule in any situation where it wouldn’t be 100% guaranteed that the successor to the official tapped for Cabinet duty would be another Democrat.

    Sorry, Senators.  It’s not about your qualifications.  We know you could do the job.  We know you’d be good at the job.  But we need you where you are.

  137. 137.

    evap

    I really want Warren to stay in the Senate.   I think she makes a great Senator.

    For those freaking out about it getting closer in Pennsylvania and other such headlines, the following helped me relax a bit.   In 2016 Clinton was ahead in PA, WI, MI, but was in the 40s.  There were lots of undecided voters, and they ended up breaking for Trump.   Right now Biden is ahead in PA, WI, MI and is over 50% in all three.  There are almost no undecided voters.  Even if Trump gets close to Biden, if Biden is over 50% it’s over.    Here are the numbers (from electoral-vote.com)

    PA  51/45   MI 51/43  WI 52/45

    Even if all undecideds break for Trump, he still loses.  That wasn’t true in 2016, obviously.

  138. 138.

    Geminid

     

    @Humanities Prof: if Bernie Sanders asked me to support his bid for Labor Secretary, I’d say, “Sanders, you’ve been in Congress almost 30 years. If you want to help American workers, isn’t  there some some legislation you can put forward and help get enacted?”

  139. 139.

    David ?Booooooo!? Koch

    Who the hell was mentioning Bernie as Labor Secretary.

    An 80 year old man with a bad ticker who hasn’t worked a daily job since 1989 isn’t in shape to run any cabinet department.

     

    I mean, hasn’t Labor suffered enough?

  140. 140.

    evap

    At some point, Biden said that we shouldn’t pay attention to reports about cabinet picks, etc.   I suspect these speculations are not coming from any insider knowledge but just people making guesses and hoping they are right.

  142. 142.

    JMG

    Nothing any of us can say to each other will erase the anxiety and dread we’re all coping with. But I’ll try anyway. It would be foolish to say Trump can’t win, because in any contests between only two people or teams, both have a chance and always will. BUT, if he does, it’ll be an upset that’d make his win over Clinton look like the Lakers winning the NBA title in probability terms. Either the entire discipline of social survey research is completely useless nonsense or Biden is gonna win.

  143. 143.

    debbie

    @JMG:

    The man is a gasbag, but he’s often backed down from a real showdown (ie, with North Korea). I’m hoping this will be another such instance.

  144. 144.

    Matt

    @Glyph2112:

    If trump wins, we really are a nation of racist low information people.  This isn’t an election about policy, it’s about values and decency.

    If he loses, we’re still a nation where an almost-majority of voters are racist assholes.

  145. 145.

    Kay

    @James E Powell:

    I think we’re seeing “Pennsylvania Too Close to Call” headlines not because Trump is closing in, but because saying Wisconsin or Michigan is clearly insane and if they don’t have one of the 2016 Treason States to give to Trump, he can’t win and they have no horse race.

    True. Obama polled at +7 and +4 in PA, 2008 and 2012, so right where Biden is and I don’t think anyone believed McCain or Romney had some special Pennsylvania magic yet they were basically where Trump is. Trump is polling in PA where McCain and Romney were.

  146. 146.

    Kay

    What we should be talking about is whether Democrats can breach the GOP’s “red wall” in the south. If Biden succeeds let’s see if that’s mentioned, like the “blue wall” was.

    Since 2008 we have gone from VA being a swing state to NC and GA being swing states. That’s kind of amazing and clearly not a good trend for the GOP.

  147. 147.

    Kay

    If this goes well for Democrats, Republicans will have traded everything for a guy who polls the same in PA, MI, and WI as McCain or Romney but loses some southern states and is also a horrible criminal who has seeded corruption at every level of the Party.

    Some trade.

  148. 148.

    schrodingers_cat

    Doom posters give it a rest. When Republicans say jump you don’t have to say how high? Biden’s leads have been remarkably stable and Rs lost big in 2018.  Nothing they have done since has increased their popularity. Winning their base is not enough to win the election.

  149. 149.

    Kay

    So I guess they traded everything for Ohio, when Republicans mostly won Ohio anyway. They do get better Presidential numbers in Ohio though- I’ll give them that. That must be the Trump Advantage. Seems small to trade your entire Party for, but whatever.

  154. 154.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Kay: But our R leaning media doesn’t dwell on this much. It is always, Reagan Democrats this and Obama to T voters that.

  157. 157.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Kay: How about Texas of all places being an effective tie. It’s almost game over for the GOP as a national party because that one state.

  158. 158.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Actually let explain how a stoner affords a new truck and fire arms while underemployed since I had a housemate like that; mommy and daddy are middle class, pay juniors rent or let him live at home.  Junior gets what ever crappy job some stoner luzer can get, and since all of junior’s expenses are pay by his parents, all his pay  goes to his toys like a new truck or AR15s.

    Since Stoner’s parents are boomers they are at the end of their lives, now Stoner is facing the end of his parent welfare and crappy job prospects because he spent the last 30 years getting fired  and in and out of jail. Thus working class anxiety about his future.

  159. 159.

    The Other Bob

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:   Or Stoner/Loser is actually in his 40’s and is on some sort of disability like a big chunk of northern Michigan.  He lives in some cheap house in the middle of nowhere, but drives a truck on a seven-year loan and can afford an AR he purchased at Walmart.

  160. 160.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Sab: To be pedantic: Convenient verbal contractions.

    “Y’all” <= “you all”

    “Yinz” <= “you’uns” <= “you ones”

    “Youse” <= plural of “you”

    Lots of other examples spread across languages. Someone once tried to convince me that the German informal goodbye (Tschuss!) was a version of ciao. I didn’t buy it; they don’t sound alike at all. In fact it’s a corruption of the British informal goodbye Cheers!** Which may have been brought back to das Vaterland with the many Germans who’d been working as waiters in London before they came home to enlist for the Great War, or popularized by British occupation forces post-WW2.

    ** FTR this came to me in an instantaneous insight about 20 years after I first heard the term. Go figger.

  163. 163.

    WaterGirl

    @Matt McIrvin: Mary has a point, though.  Isn’t that amplifying the Republican message?

    It’s not unlike the foolish people who retweet something the dumpster fire or one of the Rs says, and then writes “P.S. I Don’t agree with this.  They are spreading the R message.

  164. 164.

    J R in WV

    @Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:

     

    I think T will will the Electoral College, although not the popular vote. I so want to be wrong. Y’all can have a fiesta of telling me how wrong I was.

    But I think T will win.

    ETA: I can’t stand it. I’m so fucking scared.

    I can relate to this fear, I share it to a degree.

    But I don’t think or believe he’s going to win… I just fear that he will cheat enough to pull it off. We have champagne chilled to drink in either case, to celebrate if Biden/Harris win, to mourn if not.

  165. 165.

    J R in WV

    @frosty:

    Freshman year, first semester. FORTRAN. Do loop. This is what cured me of ever writing a computer program again. My stack of cards kept getting thicker and thicker and the program still didn’t work.

    First lesson of programming bugs — they often can’t be fixed with more code, you have to find the bad code and fix or remove it.

    Another case of “less is more.”

    Worst case is when the code is correct, but there’s dirt in the data you’re working with that causes a loop. Late nights looking for that bug!! First I put in a trip to stop after N iterations, then added a print out when multiple iterations occurred, which helped a lot.

    But learning that data and not just code can cause an infinite loop, that was a breakthrough.

  166. 166.

    J R in WV

    @Sebastian:

    Anyone willing to take a bet when NY AG Letitia James unveils indictments against DJT?

    And before you respond “but but DOJ Policy forbids indicting a sitting POTUS” remember that DOJ has to formally act and I’d like to hear who at DOJ would actually file the paperwork.

    My bet is Fri November 6th.

    The Department of Justice is a federal agency that has no control over what state law enforcement agencies do or prosecute. They have nothing to do with what NY AG James decides to do. AG and Trump lawyer Fat Billy Barr can make noise, but that’s about all he could do.

    She could have dropped indictments this morning. Since that didn’t happen, I’m not sure at all when she will drop those indictments. You might be spot on correct. Friday News Drops seem to be common now with this administration.

  167. 167.

    Brantl

    I can’t imagine Jason Miller finding anyone whom even he would label  a “smart democrat”, who would ever speak to him.

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