There’s a lot of lamentation going on about how Biden had no coattails. That all the talk of progressive priorities is what caused the Democrats to loose seats in the House and prevented them from gaining/flipping seats in the Senate. This was, apparently, part of some screaming at today’s Democratic House caucus Zoom call and some tweets by AOC and the lying shitbird Waleed Shahid. And, of course, how the pollsters all screwed up once again. While I’ve got a couple of specific points on the pollsters, which I’ll save for the end, here’s what I think got missed and ignored. And it got missed and ignored not just by the pollsters, but also by the modelers: Cook, Sabato, etc.
On Sunday night I wrote this:
The political science PhD part of me, in line with Charlie Cook’s projections, looks at the data and information we have and recognizes the high probability that VP Biden wins without much difficult and the Democrats are able to achieve a 52 seat Senate majority. The low intensity warfare professional in me looks at what’s going on and is exceedingly concerned regardless of what happens on Tuesday.
Let’s leave low intensity warfare professional me out of this, as he’s on solid ground, but I clearly got it wrong. And I got it wrong because Cook got it wrong. And Cook got it wrong because the data he had was wrong. And the data he had was wrong because the assumptions underlying the collection of the data were wrong based on a misreading of what happened in 2018.
What everyone missed is that in 2018 if you were pissed at Trump, uncomfortable with Trump, disliked Trump, were concerned about what Trump was doing and you wanted to cast a protest vote against Trump you could only do so by voting for Democrats and against Republicans. And that’s what caused the 2018 blue wave for the Democrats in the House races. And it’s why it didn’t reappear this time.
It didn’t reappear this time because Trump was on the ballot. So if you are pissed at Trump, uncomfortable with Trump, dislike Trump, are concerned about what Trump is doing and wanted to cast a protest vote against Trump you actually could directly vote against Trump and then go and vote how you normally would, how you’re comfortable voting, which was for all the other Republicans just like you always do because you’re a Republican. That’s your team. That’s your tribe. That’s how you identify. And that’s the lens you understand politics and America through. Yes, this means that all these people angry with Trump who voted against him, but voted for all the other Republicans are completely oblivious to the fact that all of those folks enabled Trump, went along with Trump, embraced Trump, refused to stand up to Trump, refused to cross Trump, and are, therefore, just as bad as Trump. They may in fact be worse because they’re not Trump and therefore should both know and be better.
Congressman Max Rose should never have even gotten close to being elected to Congress from his district in Staten Island. That’s not because Max Rose is a bad member of Congress or a sellout or anything else. It is simply that Max Rose, because he’s a Democrat and because he’s Jewish, is a TERRIBLE fit for that district. It shouldn’t be surprising that Staten Islanders, who would normally only vote for a Republican, could actually protest vote against Trump in 2020 by actually voting against Trump in 2020. And that they were then perfectly willing to go back to voting for the Republican running to unseat Rose. Which is what they did.
What the pollsters missed, what the modelers like Cooke missed, and what, as a result, allowed us all to miss because we were working off of their assumptions and data and models is that there does not appear to have been a major shift among suburban white women, and some suburban white men, from the Republicans to the Democrats because of Trump. What there appears to be is that suburban white women and some suburban white men don’t like Trump and will vote against him if he’s on the ballot. When he’s not, they will vote against Republicans as a protest because they can’t directly vote against him.
This is not a fully original theory. My thinking was prompted by this tweet from Dave Wasserman:
A key factor in House Rs' ability to easily hold onto districts that Trump likely lost last night: in 2018, the only way for suburbanites to take out anger at Trump was down-ballot; this year, they could vote against Trump and still vote for down-ballot Rs they like.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 4, 2020
I think there is empirical goodness here that we need to keep in mind going forward.
I said up top that I wanted to make a specific point about the pollsters. I read today, actually reread because I saw someone flag a 2012 article on election technology, polling disparities, and election rigging, and this stood out at me:
The statistically anomalous shifting of votes to the conservative right has become so pervasive in post-HAVA America that it now has a name of its own. Experts call it the “red shift.”
The Election Defense Alliance (EDA) is a nonprofit organization specializing in election forensics—a kind of dusting for the fingerprints of electronic theft. It is joined in this work by a coalition of independent statisticians, who have compared decades of computer-vote results to exit polls, tracking polls, and hand counts. Their findings show that when disparities occur, they benefit Republicans and right-wing issues far beyond the bounds of probability. “We approach electoral integrity with a nonpartisan goal of transparency,” says EDA executive director Jonathan Simon. “But there is nothing nonpartisan about the patterns we keep finding.” Simon’s verdict is confirmed by David Moore, a former vice president and managing editor of Gallup: “What the exit polls have consistently shown is stronger Democratic support than the election results.”
Wouldn’t American voters eventually note the constant disparity between poll numbers and election outcomes, and cry foul? They might—except that polling numbers, too, are being quietly shifted. Exit-poll data is provided by the National Election Pool, a corporate-media consortium consisting of the three major television networks plus CNN, Fox News, and the Associated Press. The NEP relies in turn on two companies, Edison Research and Mitofsky International, to conduct and analyze the actual polling. However, few Americans realize that the final exit polls on Election Day are adjusted by the pollsters—in other words, weighted according to the computerized-voting-machine totals.
When challenged on these disparities, pollsters often point to methodological flaws. Within days of the 2004 election, Warren Mitofsky (who invented exit polls in 1967) appeared on television to unveil what became known as the “reluctant Bush responder” theory: “We suspect that the main reason was that the Kerry voters were more anxious to participate in our exit polls than the Bush voters.” But some analysts and pollsters insist this theory is entirely unproven. “I don’t think the pollsters have really made a convincing case that it’s solely methodological,” Moore told me.
In Moore’s opinion, the NEP could resolve the whole issue by making raw, unadjusted, precinct-level data available to the public. “Our great, free, and open media are concealing data so that it cannot be analyzed,” Moore charges. Their argument that such data is proprietary and would allow analysts to deduce which votes were cast by specific individuals is, Moore insists, “specious at best.” He adds: “They have a communal responsibility to clarify whether there is a vote miscount going on. But so far there’s been no pressure on them to do so.”
Some argue that the Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008 disprove the existence of the red shift. However, this may be a misinterpretation of complex political upheavals that occurred in each of those election years.
While Democrats won a majority in the House of Representatives in 2006, and the White House in 2008, postelection analyses did in fact suggest extensive red-shift rigging. But in both election cycles, these efforts simply failed to overcome eleventh-hour events so negative that they drastically undercut the projected wins for the G.O.P.
In 2006, it was the exposure of Republican representative Mark Foley’s sexual advances toward male congressional pages, and the long-standing cover-up of his behavior by G.O.P. leadership. The scandal swirling around the outwardly homophobic Foley broke in a very ugly and public way, engulfing the entire party and causing a free fall in its polling numbers. The Democratic margin in the Cook Generic Congressional Ballot poll, which had been at 9 percent in early October, jumped to 26 percent by the week of the election.
The collapse of Lehman Brothers months before the 2008 elections had a similar effect on John McCain’s numbers. Pre-election polls showed that the American public blamed the Republicans for the imploding financial markets. “These political sea changes swamped a red shift that turned out to be under-calibrated,” argues Jonathan Simon, who speculates that Barack Obama actually won by a historic landslide, driven by an overwhelming backlash against the policies of the Bush Administration.
There’s a lot more important, solid, and infuriating information at the link! I think the take away is that there has not just been a problem with the professional polling, both in the run up to elections and the exit polling, that is reported in the news media and that is being relied on by everyone to understand what the dynamics are and what is going on, but that the problem is because the pollsters are cooking their own data so it doesn’t make it look like their data is wrong. No one trying to do good faith modeling or projections can do so if the data they are getting is itself misinformation.
A penultimate point about how the reporting of the results is being done. The national news media, especially the campaigning and political reporters have defaulted to their traditional and comfortable framing. If PA, WI, MI, and GA had been allowed to count mail in and early vote ballots like Florida or Ohio are, then by 1 AM at the latest on Wednesday morning we’d be reading about Biden’s historic win, with more of the popular vote than even Obama, that restored the blue wall in the midwest, and that GA had turned purple or was on the cusp of it. But because it’s dragged out, even the best reporting teams that were warning everyone not to be concerned if we didn’t know anything until Thursday or Friday, have now all reverted to horse race reporting, the Democrats are in disarray, why couldn’t Biden do better framing. In reality, Biden did amazing, but the narrative must be observed!!!
The final point I’ll make is that the Senate is still in play, even if the path for Democrats is narrow. Despite everyone being loath to call the Arizona race for Mark Kelly, the margin is too great for McSally to overtake and defeat him. This leaves four Senate seats outstanding: Alaska, both the Georgia seats, and North Carolina. Alaska, even if we didn’t have acknowledged and recognized issues with polling, is notoriously hard to poll. Dr. Gross does have a path to flip that seat, but I have no idea how probable that might be and I don’t think anyone else being honest does. While I’d like to see the Democrats take both the Georgia seats, I think the likelihood is that Warnock defeats Loeffler and Perdue narrowly hangs on, but Ossoff has run better than I think anyone expected, so the seat is in play. As for North Carolina, the state stopped reporting updates because of the Federal court rulings and agreements about how to handle the ballots that are allowed to come in after election day. It is possible that Tillis’s lead has grown, that it has eroded, or that nothing has really changed at all. But we won’t know until next week. The goal for the Democrats is now a 50-50 Senate where they get the majority because a Vice President Harris breaks all the ties. But it is also probable that McConnell maintains a 51 or 52 seat majority. If that happens, expect Schumer to offer Murkowski, Romney, and even Collins whatever they want to not go along with McConnell’s obstructionism.
Open thread!
PS: I told you all for over two months that unless Biden was up by at least 6, if not 10 points in the final Florida polling he was going to lose Florida by 1 to 2 points because there’s something funky going on with the polling in Florida that I’ve noticed as a pattern over the years. I am sorry to write that my concerns were correct.
ruemara
The idea that people do not mix votes like it’s fucking electoral salad bar is ridiculous. Even in relatively normal contests, people make rationalizing statements like “I prefer the democratic candidate at the top of the ticket, but I feel keeping my local republican in office will help provide balance in governance.”
Ok, maybe less eloquent. But this happens a lot, and yes, there were coattails.
Ella in New Mexico
Dang, Adam I love your posts so frigging much. Even if I have to read them sentence by sentence and take notes.
No, seriously. Thank you.
SiubhanDuinne
Kornacki just announced that Trump’s lead in GA has now tightened to <2,500, with many more to be counted from Clayton County. Probably won’t avoid a recount, but it’s a pretty good night right now to be a Georgia Democrat.
(Edit: And now I will read Adam’s post.)
Adam L Silverman
@ruemara: I’m not saying he didn’t. I’m saying that they’re saying he didn’t.
Adam L Silverman
@Ella in New Mexico: Thanks for the kind words. You are quite welcome.
Adam L Silverman
If Goku turns up, someone tell him that the article I linked to is the one that delineates the Ohio election whistleblower I was referring to the other day. I’m going to go walk the day, I’ll be back in an hour or so. Try not to skew any polls while I’m gone.
patroclus
Pa. difference now 48,854.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: Follow this guy’s twitter feed for the GA updates!
https://twitter.com/BrendanKeefe
Geoduck
Whatever your opinion about the man, Rick Wilson has often made the same comment about Florida polls.
Baud
@patroclus:
Ugh. I don’t think I can stay awake for the state to turn. I’ll probably have to celebrate in the morning.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: More than your usual morning drinking?
Quinerly
Great post. I’ve been hoping for something like this. Much appreciated.
patroclus
@Baud: I’ll monitor it for you – I’ve got at least 6 more hours in me. The Pa. SoS said they would finish, so I expect it to turn shortly.
Woo Hoo – Ga. down to 1902!!!!
On edit, I’ll add that this is an as usual very good post by Adam. Sorry to mess it up with all this numbers counting stuff, but we’re trying to dump Trump and I think it’s important.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks!
ruemara
@Adam L Silverman: I know
Baud
@patroclus:
Oh, good news. I’ll try to stay up a bit more to see if Philly drops.
dmsilev
@patroclus: Didn’t the PA folks say they thought the count would be just about done by the end of tonight? Seems like the count is just slowly dribbling in, so maybe tomorrow is more plausible.
Baud
Trump now at 42142 up n PA.
patroclus
@dmsilev: That’s what they said and all the workers are staying all night if necessary. I have my doubts as to whether they’ll actually finish, but I DO expect it to turn before the night is up. So I’m staying until it does.
prostratedragon
Vertigo at 10 eastern on TCM could help pass the time.
guachi
It’d be grand if PA and GA flipped to Biden within minutes of one another.
patroclus
@Baud: I feel like Penny Lane in the movie Almost Famous. It’s all happening!!
schrodingers_cat
Defund the police rhetoric didn’t help. I live in a town that went for Biden about 80% and the very liberal older white people I know, who serve on committees and raise money to run the local library etc were uncomfortable with it.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Fantastic post, and figured out immediately what a thousand navel gazing pieces won’t – the US is a really conservative country with a stupid, easily manipulable, morally debased electorate in a lot of places.
Also, AOC had the Squad really need to stand down and shut the fuck up in other districts. They’re not the future.
Sideshow Bob
This is 100% dead on accurate post. It makes so much sense. That being said, it makes 2022 a scary thought, but it helps explain things.
dmsilev
NYT says that Maricopa County in AZ will report most or all of their remaining votes tomorrow morning at 11 EST. NV is also not reporting anything until tomorrow at the earliest, so tonight is all about PA and GA.
guachi
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah. The defund the police thing, I think, had a major negative effect in the race. And by “major” I mean it was probably 1% or less, but enough to make a difference.
patrick II
@ruemara:
It’s not always just a matter of keeping your local Republican, some will vote, after hearing projections of a democratic senate, for their guy whether they liked him or not. They were voting for the senate not their particular representative.
patroclus
@schrodingers_cat: As was I. I want to increase funding and focus on high-quality recruiting and outreach efforts. I want a better educated, better equipped, more socially-sensitive police force. And that takes money and resources.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@schrodingers_cat:
Yeah – I get it, understand it, think it’s a good idea and sympathize, but you get a lot further with “reform” over “defund”.
Omnes Omnibus
Not really what I read, but you be you.
dmsilev
@Baud: Huh. Looking at your post and patroclus’ earlier one, that’s 6k of marginal gains for Biden in 8 minutes.
localcomment
In looking at the electoral bloodbath of central New York, I wonder if 2018 seduced democrats into thinking that candidates with a progressive flavor would be competitive in this area. I think a fair number of voters did split their tickets.
Kent
Regarding the coat tails thing.
I don’t know if we truly understand how Covid has changed this election. It’s one thing to run a national campaign in a world of Covid. But it’s entirely something else to run a congressional campaign.
Here in Clark County WA (Vancouver) I was involved in both the 2018 and 2020 Wa-3rd Congressional Campaigns for Carolyn Long challenging Jaime Herrera-Beutler. The 2018 campaign was endless energy. Carolyn long was everywhere, going door to door, holding rallies. And supporters were all over canvassing, holding house parties, etc. etc. In 2020 none of that was really possible and the race was basically a low-energy race of competing TV ads and that’s tough because the GOP is so good at just completely lying.
I think Covid hurt the down ballot races more than the top of the ticket. We couldn’t get nearly the energy on the ground that we had in 2018. Dem down ballot campaigns live and die on grass roots campaigning. The GOP just tells lies on Facebook and TV ads. That’s hard to compete against if you can’t go door to door.
Jeffro
Florida polling error has to be at least half attributable to cranky old retired conservatives who not only sit around with too much time on their hands but think it’s great to mislead pollsters. Why not, right? It’s the same mindset that has my trumpov cultist dad registered as a Dem, so that he can vote for the (perceived) weakest D in the primaries.
“Biden? LOVE ‘EM!”
It’s all in line with their ‘cry more, libs’ mentality. It’s all that matters to them. If someone can tease THAT out in an off-year and apply it to polling going forward, they’ll make a million bucks.
(or just use the Silverman Factor and subtract 6-8% from any given Dem’s polling =)
Peale
@SiubhanDuinne: The party did well there, all around. Yeah, it would have been great for Biden to win by 5, add two Senators instantly. Etc. But the ticket splitting that Silverman writes about didn’t seem to be a huge factor in the Congress races. We kept the seat we picked up in a razor thin margin 2018, so Newt Gingrich’s seat remains in our hands – by a few more percentage points even. It looks like we’re also going to be adding a seat that we barely lost in 2018. It seems to me, when all is said and done, the Democratic Party knows how to get its voters out now and hold them together. Its possible that suburban women and men in Staten Island (which is not quite a suburb) and those in Georgia might not have been the same. Georgia Congressional Delegation +1.
schrodingers_cat
Oh and all the Castro love espoused by Bernard the Elder during the primaries didn’t really help in Florida I am guessing. BTW the last few days highlighted the fact as to what an exceptional political talent Barack Obama was.
patroclus
@dmsilev: Yeah, it was Monroe County, just south of Scranton. It’s a Biden County, but the new batch went 71.1% for Biden because of the mail-in votes.
Jeffro
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: second half of this
is correct.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Probably more that Obama made overtures to Cuba. I doubt Cuban American voters attributed Bernie’s statements to Biden.
Baud
MSNBC saying Biden won’t take the lead in PA until the middle of the night.
schrodingers_cat
BTW it looks like we have won the Presidency and flipped at least two senate seats and held the House it is time we started acting like it instead of being mopey. Is it too soon for a Dance Party?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I forgot about Max Rose for a minute, but he, Kendra Horn, Joe Cunningham, I gather Brindisi fits on this list: These are not great arguments for the Pelosi Is To Blame theory. Mucarsel-Powell and Shalala seem to be casualties of the south Florida debacle. Does DougJ have a page for the Clone Ben Wikler Fund?
Dave Wasserman says Lauren Underwood has the votes (yay!). The Chicago Tribune still presents it as undecided, but I think they’re all afraid of the ghost of old man McCormick
rikyrah
Silverman,
Excellent post. Thank you. You always bring it????
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Good Point that I hadn’t considered.
patroclus
@Baud: Biden, of course, was part of rapproachment towards Cuba, but he curiously never emphasized that at all in this campaign
Fox says Pa. has narrowed to 41,962.
Peale
@Baud: Yep. I actually was surprised that Clinton did so well in 2016 because of that. I hope the Biden administration has too much other things to do than to prop back up opening up relations with Cuba. Yeah, I know…its just a harmful policy at this point and its time to move on. But sheez, every election since 2000 I’ve heard that the “younger generation of cubans don’t care about Castro so eventually it won’t matter.” Then it turns out that it still matters a lot. By now, that “younger generation of Cuban-Americans who doesn’t care about Cuba” should be turning 50.
schrodingers_cat
I have been sparring with Indian people on Twitter and on WhatsApp about our elections. That’s why I am hanging out here tonight to keep out of trouble.
(((CassandraLeo)))
Just want to say thanks for being a voice of reason and not losing your cool like so many of us have done, Adam.
I’m almost certain something hinky is going on with many of our elections, and I have been since roughly 2004, so that Harper’s article is interesting to me and now I’m wondering what these groups have been doing lately. In forensics, Locard’s principle says that it is impossible for two objects to come into contact without a transfer of material, and this is commonly accepted to apply to systems as much as to physical objects. There’s almost always a trace of someone’s access to a computer system somewhere, even if the trace is just a log of them erasing evidence of their actions. I suspect these criminals are not that sophisticated, but I have no idea what data analysis tools could be used to examine theft of an election.
I’ve consistently said that 2016 was stolen, and that I think GA and FL in 2018 were stolen as well. Biden’s popular vote totals were clearly too massive for a credible theft of the presidency to occur, but I’m completely sure they whittled away vote totals elsewhere by methods both technically legal and not. I’ve already got a degree in political science and am about a year and a half from wrapping up an IT degree, so I think it’s fair to say that this issue lies at the exact junction of the two fields I’ve studied extensively at university. I’d like to be able to pursue it further, but I feel like I’ve mostly been screaming into the void about it. I’d like to do something constructive. The article dates back to 2012, though – once I finish reading it, I’ll have to research what these people are up to now.
I don’t feel as awful as I do on election night, but I still don’t feel great. I mean, by all accounts, it looks like we’ll win the presidency (I’m trying not to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing here), but I’m still depressed that so many other Americans took a look at the present state of the country and said, “Sure, whatever, sign me up for four more years of this.” We have a colossal amount of work to do. But Republicans look to be even more demoralised right now, and I’m taking a massive amount of schadenfreude from that.
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: oh, and Collin Peterson, MN. He was on the right side of the Dem caucus for most of his tenure, and his district finally got to the right of him
Martin
BTW, Al Gross in AK believes that he’ll win. AK has a lot of mail in voting, and is VERY slow in counting them. Nearly half the ballots there still uncounted – lots of potential room for a swing. We might pull this out yet.
Kent
Exactly.
Four years ago Dems controlled absolutely NOTHING at the National Level. Nothing. We had to depend on Republicans like McCain to say no to Trump.
Two years ago we won back the House which was HUGE.
This year it looks like we won back the presidency (knock on wood).
No one ever said this was ever going to be quick and easy. The orcs are always going to be at the door and the fight is never ever going to end. But we have to just keep fighting.
Baud
I’m going to call it a night, as much as I’d like to celebrate with you all once Pennsylvania turns.
Martin
Biden expected to take the lead in GA by midnight ET. Big batch expected to drop then.
jl
As other commenters and I have said, too early to evaluate the accuracy of the polling, and how that accuracy should be judged depends on how you think the outcome should be measured.
I think nationwide, the polling is too accurate for broad scale election rigging. But, for individual states, I’m not so suspicious of the theory that machines are rigged. And if a lot of it is in Ohio, well… how many of their ex-governors have been spending long spells in jail recently?
Also, article disses the existence of the old school 19th century GOP political machines. Plenty of those to go along with the Democratic ones.
Kent
Based on what I know about Alaska after living and working there for nearly 10 years he could be right. I haven’t looked at numbers. But mail ballots are going to be largely rural and Gross should clean up in rural Alaska. The GOP heart is the Anchorage suburbs which probably didn’t do much of any mail balloting.
Curtis
@Martin: Source?
sdhays
@Peale: I’m fucking tired of a nasty and disastrous national policy being held hostage by small minority in a single state. No one else gives a shit about Cuba if the Cuban block in Florida was smaller or spread out. It would almost be worth giving up on Florida and letting the Republicans have it.
Almost.
patroclus
@schrodingers_cat: I agree, but I’ll wait until the Presidential race is called and the continuing House majority is confirmed and until we know the Alaska Senate race. But winning the Presidency, the House and still having a good chance to take the Senate isn’t bad. No need to mope.
EmanG
Mr. Silverman I just want to take a moment to thank you for your posts here on BJ. I too have to read and reread sometimes because the information is so dense and succinctly presented but I always come away better educated. Seriously, you are appreciated :)
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat:
Agree. It’s a terrible slogan. It sounds scary like police will have no funding and we’ll be living without any law enforcement. So it has to be explained. When you’re explaining you’re losing. It doesn’t matter how good the actual ideas are, if the slogan turns people off many of them won’t look any further.
Jeffro
This sounds about right.
Although I really didn’t dig my own congressional candidate’s attempts (in his TV ads) to please GOP voters here in VA-05. It just seemed too geared to please R moderates that simply aren’t there.
I think these House and Senate elections are getting more nationalized and straight-ticket with every cycle. It’ll be interesting to see what the data says.
Peale
@patroclus: Alaska isn’t going to be reporting for two weeks. So do we really have to wait that long! Can we spread it into two parties or three?
jl
@Kent: Last I checked, only a little more than half the votes counted in AK, small voting population relative to other states, and very likely city votes dominated initial count (if anyone knows different, please comment), big swings are possible.
And, AK likes independents. Gross is sort of semi independent, since the AK Democratic Party endorsed him. I’m not sure at all how that is perceived up there.
Kent
I think the element of political talent is underestimated
Both Bill Clinton and Barak Obama were singular generational political talents. As is, honestly, Donald Trump. Bob Dole, John Kerry, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton were all decent politicians but none had anywhere near the same charisma or talent.
I’m not sure where to put Bush. He certainly hired the very best and most ruthless people who were very very good.
guachi
@Curtis: Some county is posting their outstanding votes by midnight and that should put Biden in the lead.
He’s down 1900 right now.
Monala
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes Yeah. On Pod Save America, they made the observation about polling that Republican anti-government types have low social trust in general, and so won’t trust a pollster and thus are less likely to respond to polls. Thus, fewer Trump supporters probably responded to the election polls.
But that also means those same folks may not be responding to polls about various policies. So all the polls that say that M4A, raising taxes on the rich, etc. are very popular positions — may not reflect the general public as much as we would hope.
Martin
@Curtis: Luntz. 5700 ballots dropping from Clayton county then.
patroclus
Clayton County in Ga. has 5700 more votes to be counted and Biden has been getting 85% there, so when it’s released later tonight, it could put Biden in the lead.
Ga. now 1797!!
Another Scott
Good post, and you were certainly right about polling in FL. Kudos.
I agree there are serious issues with polling and exit polls, and I’m not sure it’s fixable as long as caller-ID exists and as long as 95.837% of unsolicited calls are from scammers. Maybe large-scale polling is broken and politics has to change.
I don’t think this result (to date) somehow shows that the US is a “center-right country” or that “liberals need to shut up” or similar. I think it shows that we’re have bi-modal politics, and that the GOP is more than willing to keep running to the extreme right. In a way, that opens up the playing field for Democrats, if they’re (and we’re) willing to accept that we always have to fight as a team against the other guys. And that in some areas (e.g. Spanberger in VA-7 and AOC in NY-14) candidates can and must run from the party center and will beat up on other parts of the party. Ted Kennedy was more than willing to accept southern Democrats beating up on him, because he knew that it was part of the game and necessary for them to win. The party has to morph to fit the local conditions.
I’m not sure that ticket splitting is a major issue. E.g. Google tells me Cornyn got about 71,500 votes more than Donnie in Texas, but he beat Hegar by around 1.1M.
Probably the best lesson I would take from this is: there are no shortcuts. We have to fight for every vote, every election. Money is important, but it continues to not be enough (see Beto, Harrison, etc.). Building up state and local parties is vitally important and it is a years-long process. Local expertise is even more important when polling cannot be trusted.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@Kent: From what I understand, AK hasn’t counted ANY mail in ballots yet.
Peale
@sdhays: I know it’s tiresome. Maybe we could resettle new arrivals around the country like we do other refugees to seed communities else…Oh wait. Carter did that and if I recall from my wee early days, people really hated that policy.
(((CassandraLeo)))
I should add: I’d certainly rather be in our position right now than the Republicans’.
In any case:
This strikes me as exactly the right take. We shouldn’t forget the immense amount of cheating the Republicans do. We might be able to overcome their cheating in many of our “elections”, but that doesn’t mean we’re playing a fair game. It’s rigged and has been for decades (it was probably only close to not being rigged for a few decades following the Civil Rights era). Every accusation is a confession. Since Trump accuses the elections of being rigged for Democrats, we can reasonably conclude that they are rigged for Republicans. These people aren’t subtle enough to avoid giving their plans away, and we should treat their confessions for what they are and investigate accordingly.
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
Darkrose
@Ella in New Mexico: Seconded. Alan’s posts this week have helped talk me down, and I appreciate it.
jl
@Monala: There are established and reliable ways to figure out who nonresponders probably are, and spot groups that systematically lie, and when ID’d, there are tricky survey tricks to trick them into giving evidence on what they really think. Political pollsters are so breezy in how they describe their methods, I can’t tell exactly what they do. But, more I read the less I think they do much of anything about it, or use reliable methods.
I did read a paper, someplace on my computer now, that said the real problem seems to be angry young HS educated white guys. So, there are more of them recently, and they are currently Trump supporters. Anyway, I hope pollsters give it proper attention.
Edit: another problem is that people often cannot give reliable info on what they’ll actually do when asked long before they have to make the decision. I don’t know how to to fix that, since it seems to be just part of human nature. Could be that when pollsters asked, people thought that they would reject GOP with Trump wholesale, but weeks later when they filled out the mail in ballot or at the polling place, they cooled down, and couldn’t fight the partisan urge. Or Trump campaign switched to the pitch Joe would be a tool of Democratic commies, so voters thought some balance was needed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent:
I always found him smug, phony and dopey, but a lot of people read that as regular fella. And the sneering contempt of the campaign press for Al Gore was like a rehearsal for the way they treated Hillary Clinton.
Suzanne
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I like them a lot. But I think they need to be careful to make it clear that they play on a larger team, not to criticize any of their Dem colleagues in any way, and not get engaged in dumb stunts like Tlaib saying motherfucker. Like it or not, there are plenty of people who won’t vote for a Dem in their district because they associate that person with AOC.
So my cousin ran for state house in Connecticut and won. She’s headed to Hartford.
Steeplejack
All right! Lawrence O’Donnell and Mary Trump just came on MSNBC to fillet Donald Trump’s bizarre talk today.
James E Powell
I posted it below, but I will do here again for the convenience & safety of our patrons.
Website with all the numbers organized in a table – Source is the NYT
Local guy in GA says the outstanding votes are from GA’s bluest county.
Local guy in AZ says outstanding votes in Maricopa are less R friendly.
Getting pizza.
Suzanne
@jl:
Rachel Bitecofer said the same thing.
I like her a lot.
CaseyL
Maybe pollsters, like generals, always fight the last war.
If it weren’t important to let candidates know where best to devote their resources, I’d be in favor of doing away with or ignoring polls altogether.
If campaigns were financed sanely (i.e., didn’t cost millions for a city council seat, tens of millions for a mayoral contest, hundreds of millions for Congress, and a billion+ for the Presidency) candidates could spend their time traveling from city to city and state to state. They wouldn’t need professional pollsters; they or their staff could do their own reads on what’s happening. They could spend their time in office getting to know their constituents rather than on constant fundraising.
Campaign money in politics isn’t just corrupting; it also keeps the political process in thrall to external professionals doing things the candidate/elected official and their staff should be doing.
Sideshow Bob
@(((CassandraLeo))): Yeah, for all of the doom and gloom, this is very true. Despite obstacle after obstacle being put in place, we still gave Biden more votes than any candidate in history. There was a quote I saw online that said that there WAS a Blue Wave – there just happened to be a Red Wave at the same time.
Inspectrix
If you layer on gerrymandering and massive disenfranchisement of nonwhite citizens, the Repubs would only have to tamper around the edges to tip the scales red. The whole system is rigged… and I can’t believe how much I now sound like someone’s paranoid aunt at Thanksgiving dinner.
Quinerly
@Steeplejack: “downward spiral”
Nixon comparison.
Curtis
@Martin: Alright, thanks. That’s great news.
dm
I’ve long thought that Collins and Murkowski were wasting an opportunity to exercise great power in the Senate to get things they wanted (well, before it required a couple more moderate Senators, and getting a larger group to act may have been harder). “No, Mitch, we’re going to play by *my* rules for a while, or we’ll try Chuck Schumer’s…”
Maybe Biden should appoint a sitting Republican Senator or two from a purplish state to, I don’t know, a plumb ambassadorship (Britain? France? New Zealand?). Get a few more special elections at work.
Fair Economist
I read Wasserman’s idea that Trump at the top of the ticket gives Republicans an out to vote against him and for downballot Republicans and —– I’m not seeing it. At least in purplish states, Trump is within 2% of any of the Senate candidates save Collins. In red states, Trump was often well ahead of Senate candidates. I think the results show more the polarization of America.
patroclus
@James E Powell: He’s probably talking about Clayton County – which was discussed above. But Chatham County also has a bunch of votes left, and although it’s not AS blue, it’s still blue. Georgia seems likely to turn at midnight (EST)
Pa. down to 41,305!!
piratedan
GA dropped a few more, lead under 1800 now, only a 430+ vote update, still shaved off 100+ from the Trump lead
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne:
I actually liked that. Tlaib lost me with booing Hillary Clinton. All three of them are extreme examples of what was a pretty widespread bug in the party the last two years: Wildly overestimating the popularity of the Sanders agenda. 2018 showed us a lot more about where the country and the party was, and yet we got I think a quarter of the Dem Senate caucus co-sponsoring BernieCare, Beto running for President of Twitter and Mayor Pete saying “they’re gonna call us socialists anyway…” before remembering he could see cornfields from his house.
CaseyL
@dm: Excellent idea, but the GOP Senator would have to agree to it. They won’t.
Sideshow Bob
@Inspectrix: Just ’cause you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you…
Dopey-o
Bad choice of words. I’m not sure which jeenious came up with that.
Far better is the slogan “Help the police! ” Explain that the police are over-worked and under-paid, that sending social workers and mental health staff will free the police to focus on their core mission.
debbie
Damn, can’t find it now, but I listened to an interview on BBC or NPR about this, and it was pointed out that Trump actually got the same percentage of the Hispanic vote as in 2016. What changed was that he got more votes from Cuban Americans and fewer votes from younger Hispanic voters, but the overall percentage didn’t change. This doesn’t seem to portend a future problem, at least to me.
sanjeevs
@EmanG:
Seconded
Winston
@patroclus: PA won’t finish in Philly, if they remain shut down.
Fair Economist
@dm: Why would you think Collins wants anything different from McConnell? The ACA vote was the only meaningful time she strayed. Otherwise she’s always been Reid’s “vote I don’t need”.
Murkowski is the only one that might switch. But even she’s a pretty hardline conservative. Our coalition couldn’t stomach what it would take to bring her over.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jeffro:
I mean, hell – 15 years ago, I’d moved off of whatever it was that I believed was “conservatism” in a hard way, but I still despised hackey sack, drum circle, giant puppet progressives.
Still do.
I found that what I really loved about Obama was the notion of conservatively applied progressive policies with a lot of buy-in from affected constituencies. It might not be perfect, might be a little tepid, but it was something to build on and learn from – and if it failed, it could easily be retooled without pain.
You don’t have to nominate a “free rent, kill the landlords” activist to run Treasury. The hackey sack stoner doesn’t run DOD, and the lifetime legal aid eviction lawyer doesn’t become AG.
That’s what I appreciated about the Obama Administration.
jl
@CaseyL: There are right ways and wrong ways to use polls. Polls are repeated cross sections of people’s stated opinions, and are just descriptive statistics of what stated opinion is right now.
An example of the wrong way consultants might use polls, that might turn out to be relevant would be as follows: Poll finds Dems up 10 pts, with ‘Hispanic voters’ averaged over many disparate demographics. Next few polls show maybe some decay in support in that overly broadly defined demographic, but not a p < 0.05 change, so consultants say “No problem, we got ‘The Hispanics’ locked up.”
Meanwhile, opposing camp says ‘We should go out and try to put a dent in that 10 percent, check out if that slippage is real’. Other side has already decided it’s not worth the bother to monitor the situation.
You use statistics in a very different way depending on whether you want to describe what is happening without any intervention, versus when you want to use it to control an outcome
Edit: a gold star and half a brownie point for spotting the stat mistakes in the above example! Extra credit for using opaque buzzwords.
schrodingers_cat
Does anyone remember the endless debates about M4A and the minutiae of health care policy in the primaries that was fucking unreal.
zhena gogolia
@sanjeevs:
Thirded.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Dopey-o:
Undoubtedly coined by some hackey sack stoner in his 60s, completely ridiculous and thoughtless as to the negatives.
Served
If you think a slogan that was not even adopted by the party is the root of any Dem loss this year I have some news for you about the root of Dem wins in every swing state….
patroclus
@debbie: Trump also specifically targeted Venezuelan Americans with a lot of criticism of Chavez/Maduro.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@schrodingers_cat:
2010 – “The sellouts won’t even fight for M4A. Best to turn them out and punish them….”
Fuck Jane Hamsher. Fuck David Sirota.
Yutsano
@schrodingers_cat: Adam discussed it before, but there was a massive propaganda attack focused on the Cuban population in Miami-Dade county. That undercut Biden a lot there. Plus the olds voting for Biden might have been there but it wasn’t near enough.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Eh. The motherfucker thing was just a personal brand-enhancing exercise. Did nothing but raise her profile.
Now. Pelosi, Schumer, and the rest of the damn Dem leadership needs to think about a succession plan, like, yesterday. There are plenty of very talented younger politicians who want to have a long career in politics and yet the leadership is on average about ten thousand years old. CHRIST almighty.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sideshow Bob: There is no reason for doom and gloom. We beat Trump.
debbie
@patroclus:
Right. That was also mentioned. Sorry.
Peale
@debbie: Yeah. In a post about how the polls were off, we’re going to have to consider that exit polls are off as well. I think the drop off in support was noticable in SW Texas and Florida. But was that drop off evenly distributed? We had to gain something or Hickenlooper wouldn’t have won. Nor would Arizona be close. Unless we replaced those voters with something. Someone voted for us who didn’t vote in 2020.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: Bingo. I now have a Millennial voter under my roof again, and the gerontocracy is really a sticking point with his cohort.
That, and the fact that Schumer is fucking useless.
dm
@CaseyL: Some of them may be tired of the way the game is played in the Senate, now, and may surrender to Biden’s charms.
So, I keep plumping for ActBlue’s pages for (the italics is good enough to search out the groups on ActBlue):
I view these as infrastructure for the future. We have to view this as long-haul.
In addition, Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight is the main reason we’re on tenterhooks for the news from Georgia. She’s taken the group national, aimed with her characteristic brilliance and pragmatism at voter suppression.
Aside from John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, where are you going to spend those dollars freed up from no longer needing to donate to the Biden, Hagar, Harrison, McGrath, etc. campaigns?
N M
@Adam L Silverman: Let me add to the chorus, love your posts Adam!
Quinerly
Clayton County, GA coming in soon. Will Rep John Lewis’s old district put Biden over the top in GA? ???❤️?♥️
schrodingers_cat
RW ecosystem of disinformation needs to penetrated, social media has made the problem much worse.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, we are not going over the cliff in that particular car anymore. We can turn our attention to less dire and immediate threats.
Moping and blaming because we didn’t get everything we wanted, or sitting on the victory complacently are both silly responses.
mali muso
@Suzanne: did you see her take on what Dems need to do going forward? Persuading the low info crowd ain’t it. Twitter thread.
sanjeevs
@Yutsano: Republicans may have improved their social media microtargetting a lot since the last election. Which might explain the sudden gains they had in Miami and Rio Grande.
Sab
@Adam L Silverman: Which article link? You have lots.
Tim C.
So here’s another anecdotal point that may not have any real meaning.
As a high school teacher in a small exurban school, I get a window into things. Most 18-20 rural redneck kids give no shits about politics at all, they didn’t care about McCain, or Romney one bit. Boring.
But Trump’s anger, and his willingness to do anything tickled them to no end. Trump is like the 16 year old white shithead who isn’t violently racist and actually has no real ill-will directly toward any non-white kid they actually know, but who also enjoys writing the N-word on the desk cause they know that’s the best way to get the teacher mad. Trump speaks the language of the asshole. Now if, as it looks like is happening PA or GA flips and it’s over, great. But let’s game that out a little.
There’s a lot of assholes like that though who will utterly disengage if Trump isn’t on the ballot. That’s a large chunk of votes that down ballot Republicans won’t get next time. Not only that, Trump seems to be just as mad at the GOP elements not rushing to his side as anyone. He’s not going to into quiet retirement like Bush I or Bush II. If he turns his wrath on the institutional GOP, it could be devastating for them. Likewise, if Trump runs again in 2024 (assuming he isn’t dead or in jail) He could easily win a Grover Cleveland style non-consecutive terms. (The next four years will suck thanks to Economics, Climate Change and Covid-19)
So all that said, I think there’s a bit more potential outcomes in the next 2-4 years, hard to predict.
waratah
They are now mentioning the military vote in these mail votes, am I the only one worrying these votes being counted now?
Cheryl Rofer
Saw a comment on Twitter that it makes much more sense from a security viewpoint to announce a state putting Biden over 270 in the daytime. sounds about right to me. I’ll stick around for a while, but I don’t expect to hear anything definitive until tomorrow morning.
Also, the state officials are going to want to check, double-check, and triple-check before they make that announcement. I wouldn’t be surprised if two (PA-GA?) or more coordinated.
ruemara
I swear, menfolk think everything requires their additional commentary.
Suzanne
@Gin & Tonic: I am sick of voting for old people all the time. And it’s not healthy for the long-term. If we want to have a functioning party in a decade, we needed to start in 2016. We have lots of excellent younger talent.
patroclus
Fox has Pa. margin down to 41,118. In Georgia, all eyes turn to Clayton County to overturn the 1775 margin.
Sideshow Bob
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, head over to the Big Orange Satan… countless Woe is us! and The Polls betrayed us! posts.
Yarrow
@Another Scott:
I don’t think Hegar ran a great campaign. She apparently didn’t reach out to the well respected African American state Senator she beat in the primary runoff. That seems like bad politics. Last I saw he hadn’t endorsed her and he claimed she “had a problem all along with black folks.” It’s possible that it lost her some AA support. Also, her ads were very meh early on. I think the influx of money she got allowed her to hire better ad people because they did improve but only in the closing weeks.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sideshow Bob: Fuck ’em.
batgirl
I work in a public library. I’ve met one too many persons who voted for the candidate for US/State Rep that showed up at their McDonald’s when they were having their morning coffee, shook their hand, and “seemed nice.”
Kent
HS teacher here with 15 years experience in both WA and TX.
This exactly tracks with my experience.
By FAR the worst kids who give you the most heartburn without question are the rural white redneck kids who come to school with a massive chip on their shoulder. They are by far the biggest assholes in class.
Black kids can be noisy but are generally much more good natured. In 10 years of teaching classes that were about 1/3 Black I never had a serious problem with a Black kid. At least not with the boys. Some Black girls have been a handful. Same with Hispanic kids. But white kids who’s dads are things like cops, truck drivers, ranchers, or unemployed meth heads? They are the worst. And they are the ones who showed up to football games with the confederate flags in the backs of their trucks and shit like that, long before there ever was such as thing as a Trump Parade.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think it’s up to those younger, talented politicians to think of their own succession plan, by building the kind of networks in their caucus and in the national party to put them in a position to take over. It’s not obvious to me who those people are in the House. Easier to speculate about eh Senate just cause there’s fewer of them.
The Moar You Know
Solid analysis. I will say this because one of the tweets you cite mentions it; the Democratic Party, going forward, is going to lose most of the so-called “Hispanic” vote (I say so-called because Hispanics are not a monolithic group with one set of priorities; hell, just here in CA I can break out about ten different groups with their own sets of priorities and issues). We needed to prepare for that a decade ago, but the warnings have been ignored. Now would be a good time to figure it out.
Ridnik Chrome
@Suzanne: I live in AOC’s district, and I’ve voted for her four times now (two primaries, two generals). I think she’s a very savvy woman who understands something that most people on the left don’t, i.e. that you’re not going to change a damned thing by being a prophet in the wilderness (like Bernie). Right now her main interest is finding allies, but she wants them to be her own people; that’s why she’s making a point of supporting young left wing insurgents, instead of cutting deals with the current leadership. She’s playing a long game, and I respect that.
jl
@waratah: ” They are now mentioning the military vote in these mail votes, am I the only one worrying these votes being counted now? ”
Well, if they are legit votes, gotta count them. As for their effect on the outcome, Trump has lost support among military enlisted, I don’t think he even has substantial majority anymore. Or maybe it is now 50-50. Trump has pulled a series of stunts that have really pissed off the military, from top to bottom.
If anyone knows that stats on his erosion of support, please put in comment.
Matt McIrvin
@James E Powell: That page is THE BEST.
Kent
States never make any sort of announcement or “call” of election results. They just keep counting away until the very last vote is counted and then ‘CERTIFY’ the election weeks later.
It’s only the media that “calls” elections. And I doubt the news networks are going to sit on anything if they can be the first to break something.
patroclus
@Sideshow Bob: I think it was about 6-7 threads ago, but I’m not so sure the national polls are all that wrong. The RCP average had declined to about 7 points on Monday and Biden is currently winning by about 3%. But a LOT of California, New York and Illinois votes are still being counted and I fully expect at least a 6 million national popular vote margin and probably more. That’s still a poll inaccuracy, but it’s not THAT much and partially accounted for by margin of error.
debbie
@Suzanne:
Name a younger Rep who is as good as Pelosi at herding cats. Name a younger Rep who is more interested in promoting an overarching policy that represents the entire party than in their own agenda (hint: its not AOC).
Jeffro
Have to second this. It’s time to turn over the keys.
piratedan
pa lead for Trump now 36.5k, 8k vote dump came in, nearly 80% in favor of Biden
Kent
Also the provisional ballots still need counting. In GA they tried to purge Black voters off the rolls and Black voters who showed up at the polls to find they were not registered would have had to fill out provisional ballots. So presumably they would tilt heavily Biden. But that’s just a wild ass guess. And I’m not sure how many there are statewide.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: The most recent polling I saw was from the Military Times a few weeks ago. It got some attention here. It showed Trump even more under water with officers than enlisted.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jeffro:
Yup.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There is no succession if Boomer generation Dems hang onto their jobs forever. Steny Hoyer? Come the fuck on. That dude should have retired a decade ago. Always train your replacement. True in both business and politics.
jl
@Jeffro: I agree too. Compared to other national legislatures around the world in democratic countries, that I see on youtube, most people in ours looks too old, too rich, too white, too male, too grifty, or some combination of the above.
Edit: don’t mean to be ageist, but I don’t mean 65 or 70, I mean really really old old… and some are not old in years, but old in the head.
marcopolo
I pretty much agree with the Wasserman hypothesis about the difference between 2018 & 2020 being unhappy Rs could take their ire out on Trump this year. There was also a second part to his analysis which was that Donald Trump is a singular force for supercharged motivation of low propensity R voters to get to the polls. In the down ballot races that House Ds lost this year, they all earned more votes than they did in 2018 (makes sense cause that was a midterm, right?) but the Rs that won even more outperformed.
The two GA senate runoffs look like they might shed a little more light on this. Trump will not be on the ballot. So what will R turnout look like? I guess there is some infinitesimally small chance that Trump could go all out to try to boost turnout in these races but its much more likely that once the Presidential race is called against him he turns nihilistic narcissist & goes ballistic about any and everything around him.
Sab
@schrodingers_cat: Black people I know in my town were also uncomfortable with it. My dad’s nurse’s aide has idiot twentysomething gangsters shooting up her neighborhood all night every weekend. Eight year old accidentally murdered sitting in her families car. The whole neighborhood often sleeps on their floors under the bed while the guns go off. This used to be a stable law-abiding black neighborhood. It still mostly is except for the fools with guns.
The police blame the mayor. City Council blames the police. The problem is simply too many kids with guns, which is completely out of the control of anyone in town.
But us allowing the police to go as nuts and feral as they are in Cleveland certainly won’t help. The police have the support of the locals, but they can’t count on it forever if they head down the path they are on.
Kent
Adam Schiff is the only Congressman I can think of at the moment who I think has the gravitas for the position. But I don’t know how good he is at whipping votes and that sort of thing.
The Moar You Know
@Kent: Bush had good instincts and the best of his dad’s people picking out his people. That being said, I am convinced to this day he was likely to have been a one termer save for Osama Bin Laden, who gave him the biggest assist any US President has even gotten. And he and his administration made the most of that opportunity. They didn’t squander it.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kent: What I said was
That’s not a state “calling” anything, but giving out their numbers. The state authorities can add just as well as we can, and they have a strong interest in not having disturbances during the night, which are much harder to deal with than in the day. There are already Trumpie demonstrations in several places.
If I were a state authority, I’d consider that.
patroclus
@piratedan: YES!! It’s all happening!
The current House projection shows 208 confirmed Dem seats (218 is the goal). I’ll await commenting on leadership succession until our majority is confirmed and we know by how much.
piratedan
@debbie: i think that there’s a fair bit of potential out there…. folks like Porter, Lieu, Salwell, etc I think a good bit of it is getting your feet underneath you and getting comfortable.
Part of the grooming process has to be taken out of the media punditry who controls who gets seen and getting yourself out there, showing up prepared when on C-Span, having your ducks in a row and working on your media game to be able to break down complicated into what is important for the average voter and why this shit is important.
dm
@Fair Economist: Collins wasted an opportunity, is all I’m saying — she could have been getting things that Maine needed, for example (and the Democrats can think of lots of ways to make that happen that would have benefits beyond just Maine).
Same for Murkowski. She may be conservative, but there are things that would directly benefit Alaskans that Democratic partners in the Senate would be happy to make possible.
But for it to have happened, they’d have to act together — and up to now, it would have required a couple more Republican Senators to go along with them, which just makes the coordination problem harder.
Matt McIrvin
@Kent: In my experience the bully problems I experienced in junior high and high school (western NoVa in the 80s, when it was whiter and less urban than today) came from two groups. There were the chip-on-shoulder white redneck kids you’ve described… and then there were the upper-middle-class faux redneck kids whose dads worked for defense contractors, with the shiny, shiny pickup trucks. They could be the worst.
Did I get any crap from black kids? Eh… I can only think of a couple of marginal incidents. Mostly they didn’t cause trouble.
jl
@Kent: Ted Lieu? I read someplace that he is one of Pelosi’s proteges and lieutenants.
Edit: I like him because he can do effective push back on GOP BS, from what I’ve seen.
schrodingers_cat
One of the black women I follow on Twitter says AOC stands for Always on Camera. She is always on camera undercutting Dems.
Yarrow
@Suzanne: I didn’t have any problem with her saying motherfucker. (I mean, duh.) The part I had a problem with was the “We’re going to impeach” part. It wasn’t smart politics. It was basically saying they were just coming after Trump and that’s no way to get people thinking you’re treating impeachment as a serious decision used only when absolutely necessary. It was frivolous, unserious and a dumb thing to do.
Miss Bianca
Awesome post, Adam. Thank you.
patroclus
Pa. margin 26,319!! At least 57,000 votes remain to be counted in Philly. It’s not quite yet time to stick a fork in this one, but the fat lady is warming up. If I were at the network calling desk, I’d be calling this puppy, right here, right now.
Kent
He’s more likely to rage-tweet against them as losers and traitors for not winning Georgia for him. A lame duck Trump isn’t going to waste time campaigning in GA. That’s not who he is.
Obama, Biden, Harris, and the entire chorus of Dem all-stars. I expect them to be there.
Another Scott
@jl: This reminds me – I’ve been wondering how the USC Dornsife poll did this time around. They were one of the few to come close to being right in 2016.
https://election.usc.edu/
They blew it too.
Since they polled people in the same group over time, they should have seen any changes in opinions and didn’t see any. Their poll seems to be broken too.
Their last numbers were 53.5% Biden, 42.6% Trump. (Google has it at 50.5% Biden, 47.9% Trump at the moment.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@debbie: I think Adam Schiff would be amazing. Or Ted Lieu. Or Castro or Demings or Porter, or any number of them. The point isn’t that Pelosi quit tomorrow and leave the Party unprepared. They need to start moving younger reps up the ladder. But Schumer, Hoyer, Clyburn, etc are holding shit up.
Martin
When do they start counting the Kanye votes? Because that’s going to blow this wide open for Trump.
Kent
Where you seeing this. NYT still has it at 36,572
Adam L Silverman
@Geoduck: I know Rick. He knows his business.
N M
@Tim C.: I strongly agree with your theory. I do think there is a “Trump as Pied Piper” effect; there’s people who would vote with Trump on the top-line, but will wander away from politics with him gone (if only temporarily – let us hope a “Trump 2024” is not in the cards). He was a well known celebrity and, to borrow a phrase, “a poor person’s idea of a rich person” (h/t to various as outlined in this James Fallows piece).
Related, it will be interesting to see if the “Trump flag on pickup” is the new “Confederate flag on pickup” going forward. But make no mistake, I think that’s a “Trump” flag, not a “GOP” flag.
marcopolo
@debbie: Not sure how we can know and evaluate their leadership talents if those younger D House members don’t have access to the car keys. Though I think Katie Porter, Ayanna Pressley, Lauren Underwood, and a few other folks are quite good at articulating D policy priorities.
I’d also point out to all the folks complaining about the ages of Pelosi, Clyburn, and Hoyer, that Hakeem Jefferies was brought onto the D House leadership team after 2018. That’s at least a start.
Finally, hasn’t Pelosi indicated that this would be her last term? My memory, which isn’t perfect, is telling me that she made that remark during the 2018 leadership race to pacify some of the folks who wanted to replace her.
Suzanne
@Yarrow: I don’t give a shit about the profanity. I thought it was stupid for exactly the reason you just described: it just looked petty, and it was just a stunt to get attention, not to be smart or strategic.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Remind me how Schumer is holding up movement in the House leadership ranks.
patroclus
@Kent: MSNBC this time.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@ruemara:
I think you misspelled “know” there.
Male jackals, of course, generally do not labor under that delusion.
debbie
@piratedan:
It’s the younger, newer members who have been so vocal who should not be in leadership. More input, sure, but they’ve already been negatively branded by the opposition.
jl
@Another Scott: We really need to wait until the final numbers come in. Seriously. After 10 minutes on a spreadsheet I just gave up. No point to it at this stage.
But, where polls most likely to be far off is House prediction. But range of uncertainty in both realized outcome as of now, and forecast uncertainty, that could range from a complete and humiliating forecast fail, to being spot on. We’ll just have to wait until all the races are called to know.
Kent
Oh yeah, the rich white jock types can be total douches. But not so much in class to teachers because they generally care about their grades and getting into college. The poor white kids who don’t give a shit about grades are the worst.
But for bullying of other students. Yes, the rich kids can be horrid too. Perhaps more so.
piratedan
@patroclus: looks like just under 15k votes dropped, with it being 87%+ for Biden….
danielx
@Tim C.:
I go with this, except for the part about “no ill will”, which a lot of them do possess along with too much weaponry. I commented to the spousal unit the other day the Trump isn’t just an asshole, he’s an asshole’s asshole – an asshole’s idealization of a president. The guy they wish they could be – rich, powerful, doesn’t give a fuck about anything or anybody except attention for himself. That doesn’t extend to all Trump supporters, but it includes a lot of them.
Oh all right, everybody who voted for Trump is an asshole to varying degrees.
ETA: far too much weaponry.
N M
@Kent: +1000, of a piece with Tim C’s comment I replied to above. Trump ain’t gonna be out there on the stump, working the rally magic for GOPers.
Ksmiami
@patroclus: that doesn’t sound good / help me here
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: I never specified that the only problem was House leadership ranks. I specifically called out Schumer in my very first post on this topic. The dude is a fucking fossil.
Martin
@Another Scott: 4.5M votes in CA yet to count. Hillary picked up over a million vote additional gap after election night. I think Biden will pick up even more. I’m guessing we’ll be closer to that 53 than we are to 50.
Remember what’s important about USC Dornslife and what they admit about 2016. Their poll is not a likely voter poll. And it cannot adapt to changing voter interest. Their poll is useful in benchmarking how the electorates view is changing. Rasmussens’ polls change by changing the makeup of the sample electorate. USC Dornslife controls for that, and gives up turnout accuracy.
It’s not designed to be predictive of the turnout, it’s designed to be predictive of the change in public attitude. It has a very useful, very specific purpose, but should not be predictive of election result. In 2016 they got lucky, and they say that.
Cheryl Rofer
As I said,
dmsilev
@Kent: NYT has updated as well. Big batch of votes from Philadelphia.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@marcopolo: she has. I believe she’s also said she was going to step down from the leadership in 2017 Congress, but after trump was elected she looked around and there were no women at the table.
patroclus
@piratedan: Yep. It was The City of Brotherly Love!
jl
@Suzanne: ” The dude is a fucking fossil. ”
Fricken Congress could be another fossil national monument, in age, mind and spirit.
Darkrose
@schrodingers_cat: Adam mentioned the concentrated disinformation aimed at Spanish-language media, and specifically the racist attacks against Harris. There’s a big elephant in the room there about how anti-blackness is huge in the Latin American community, and I don’t know that this is the right place to discuss that, but it’s a real thing, especially among Cuban Americans, many of whom are deeply invested in their white-adjacent privilege.
Adam L Silverman
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: It isn’t that the US is a conservative country. Frankly using conservative, liberal, or progressive to describe Americans actual policy preferences doesn’t work real well. All the data shows widespread support for what all of us would call liberal to progressive policy outcomes.
Rather, the reality is that 1/3 of Americans are authoritarians and would be quite happy with a herrenvolkish democracy where white Christians and select allies (orthodox Jews, Mormons who I do know are Christians, but the Evangelicals don’t think so, traditionalist Catholics, orthodox Hindus maybe…) are first class citizens because they’re considered white and everyone else is on a scale from second class citizen to untermenschen. This is not knew.
We forget, as a society, that in the 1938 midterm elections 2/3 of Americans voted for openly pro-NAZI, pro-fascist, and/or pro-anti-Semitic candidates.
We forget there was an attempted coup in 1933 where a bunch of the ultra wealthy tried to install a fascist co-president who would really run the country while FDR served as a public figure head. Fortunately, they picked the wrong Marine to try to lead the coup. Maj. Gen. Butler went straight to Congress and the news media.
We didn’t just round up Japanese Americans and put them in concentration camps in WW II, we did the same thing with German Americans during WW I. It just wasn’t at the same scale and it didn’t get the same amount of publicity. Hell, Wilson’s administration was both functionally white supremacist and totalitarian.
Zzyzx
It feels like a race between GA and PA as to which is going to flip first at this point.
Fair Economist
@dm:See, you are thinking Collins wants to do nice things for Maine. She’s a Republican elected official, and thus a sociopath. She doesn’t care. She wants more money and no rules for her and her cronies. She’d be delighted for McConnell to win everything, she just has to pretend to oppose him now and again to keep her seat.
Murkowski, I think, is a shade less sociopathic and might not always want to go along with McConnell. But as a Republican, she doesn’t care about her state either.
Neither missed the opportunity to benefit their states. They aren’t dumb; Collins in particular is very deft. They just aren’t interested.
debbie
@Suzanne:
I’m totally fine with your list, but maybe focus on appointing them as committee chairs rather than removing the current leadership now.
MisterForkbeard
@Cheryl Rofer: So they won’t announce any more votes until the morning?
piratedan
@debbie: well to be honest, I think AOC has a rapier like social media game…. The rest of the squad appear to be treated as her handmaidens because of their demographics…
I don’t mind them when I see them on C-Span during questioning or debating law, they all appear to be good questioners, passionate about working for what concerns their constituents. What bothers me is that they appear to equate getting media attention as a platform for broader positions when it seems like they are being framed by the media in a less than flattering light.
That’s my biggest concern with them/for them, I think MSM is doing their best to paint them not as the voices of their constituencies, but rather as all Democrats and I think that is means to fuck over Dems on a whole when the media applies a GOP framing to the issue, as they are won’t to do.
debbie
@marcopolo:
They’re good at articulating their priorities.
patroclus
@Kent: One Trump strategy not mentioned here was that they heavily targeted advertising to the Walking Dead fans, with LOTS of ads. Younger males love this show because, uh, the non-Walker survivors get to brutally kill the zombie-like Walkers. That’s the sort of crowd you’re talking about…
Martin
@Zzyzx: What’s genuinely helpful here is that it doesn’t appear there will be a scenario in which if counting stopped that Trump would win. Biden was leading from the outset, there was a moment when Trump was ahead before CA polls closed, and then Biden has been ahead ever since. Stop counting now, Biden wins NV and AZ. Stop counting in 4 hours, maybe Trump wins AZ but loses PA. There’s no snapshot in time when Trump is winning, and that’s an impossible spot to argue from.
jl
@Martin: Yes, that is a good point. You need to look deep in the weeds of polling methodology to understand what each poll is measuring. Silver just takes everything and hopes that his approach to statistical adjustment for historical poll predictive performance, and averaging every damn thing he can find, will take care of all problems.
He does ban obvious frauds, but he defines that as making up data or outrageous misrepresentation, or hiding conflicts of interest. I think Trafalgar might be worth banning for that last, since he caught them passing off partisan polls they were paid to do by campaigns as neutral.
tam1MI
Which groups do you suggest that the Democratic party try to bring in to their coalition to make up for this loss?
AnotherBruce
Call me paranoid, but Nevada and Arizona are still counting ballots. These states electoral votes give Biden 270. Is there any kind of race for the eastern states. It looks like Trump is being competitive in those 3 states. Crap, I don’t know how this works. I hope Pennsylvania comes through with enough votes.
Omnes Omnibus
Maybe we should wait to see what the leadership of the next Congress looks like before we get overly wound up about it.
dmsilev
Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the slow count in Philly is due to Trump campaign lawsuits. Because of course it is.
The Moar You Know
@Darkrose: You can drop the “especially Cuban-Americans” part. It’s just flat out an enormous problem amongst Hispanics. Has been for at least three decades. I don’t know how you address it.
sdhays
@N M: The most annoying thing about Republicans is that they really don’t get disappointed. They get their own ass to the polls all the time. That’s why a total shitshow like the Dump campaign can still have maximal turnout.
We Democrats have to organize and work hard to get every single Democrat to the polls.
It’s super annoying, but I have to respect it.
Kent
It’s not just a Cuban thing. Go to any construction site in Texas and ask the mostly Hispanic construction workers why there aren’t any Blacks working in construction and you’ll get an earful.
A lot of Hispanic Texans are basically wannabe white working class with the big trucks and such. Especially the men.
Matt McIrvin
@Adam L Silverman: And part of the process of various immigrant groups becoming accepted as white is that they start participating in racism against (a) black people and (b) whichever immigrants are next in line. That’s evidently still happening.
debbie
@piratedan:
I just don’t see any of them being a spokesperson for the entire party.
patroclus
@Zzyzx: Indeed. I think Georgia will flip at midnight (EST) when Clayton County comes in. I think Pa. will flip at about the same time. I don’t think the networks will call it for reasons Cheryl mentioned, but savvy observers (us) will know what’s what.
jl
@marcopolo: My understanding is that the deal she made with factions that came to her with demands (during the Ryan coup plotting stunt, and they never got around to even talking with Pelosi) involves her accelerating advancement of more diverse group of younger members, and she’d pass the torch by 2022. Anyone know for sure?
Jon Marcus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I’ve heard (and liked) “reforge” the police. Pretty much the same as reform.
But reform sounds all libtard and googoo. Reforge is hard and metallic. Sounds stupid and trivial, but if it gets through to just a few more people…
Darkrose
@schrodingers_cat: Like I said yesterday, that wasn’t coming from the party. I get that it scared people, but that’s because the media amplified fringe voices and acted like that was the party platform even though Biden repeatedly said he didn’t support that. I mean, he chose Harris as his running mate even though the online left spent the primaries screaming about how “Kamala is a cop!” I don’t know how the party is expected to combat that media framing without alienating part of our coalition.
piratedan
AZ just surreptitiously dropped another 1200 or so votes, this batch came in at Biden 67%, so his lead kicked up by 400+ votes
Sab
@Sab: Most of the blacks I know are very supportive of the police. But the local police haven’t uttered a peep against George Floyd’s killer. They could say this isn’t how we behave (and it isn’) but they haven’t said that.
The blue wall defending behavior totally outside what is acceptable in your local department is a big problem. Akron City Council is having stuff codified (by Council and by electoral propositions) that is current state law, and the police chief is complaining to the newspaper. What is his problem. That behavior is against state law, so who cares if it is against city ordinance also. Unless you are planning to reverse it.
That’s where we are. Trust our police, but with a side eye. But also we know all those guns are out there and the cops are in the front lines most nights.
Suzanne
@debbie: Appointing them as committee chairs with the express goals of moving them up into leadership, helping to train them and grow their network of influence…. is exactly what I mean when I refer to a succession plan. Raise their national profiles, too, so that it isn’t just the Squad sucking up all the air.
James E Powell
@Tim C.:
As I high school teacher in South Central Los Angeles, I can tell you that he has the exact same appeal to a very large percentage of Mexican American and Salvadoran American high school males.
sdhays
@jl: Yes, she said she would be done after 2022. I don’t know if that means she’ll retire or just step down as Democratic leader.
marcopolo
@debbie: Yeah, no. You are just wrong. I chose those three freshmen members on purpose.
Each of those three support broadly popular policies and programs. In fact, Katie Porter is a bit of a stand out model as a new D House member that flipped a double digit R leaning district (something like +15 R) in 2018 and is doing such a good job that she didn’t have to sweat re-election this year.
Kent
Honestly, I think Black men like Obama are going to be a lot better at it than Black women like Harris. I don’t see her playing well in ultra-macho Hispanic society. Educated black women (or white women) are going to be toxic for young macho Hispanic men.
Sure Lurkalot
@Suzanne: Likely I have a couple of decades on you but I agree. Please make a plan. Nancy may be good for the moment but Chuck has never done much for me. The pols that excite me are Stacey Adams, Katie Porter. They bring it!
Tim C.
@danielx: I think you have a point, but really it’s a range,
My favorite story of the last few years:
Two kids in class are being idiot A-holes and get caught drawing swastikas on their papers. Thinking they are being funny. One kid was as you say, an asshole’s asshole, and in a later year went full nightmare on another teacher (The teacher being A woman of course, cause these one’s always have mommy issues or learned such nonsense from their Dad), But the other kid was different. His parents were a same-sex couple, he had a list of food allergies a mile long and was frankly the kind of kid that you would have thought would have gotten beaten up by the first one. But nope, they were bonding over the feeling of being naughty in class.
Likewise, there’s a couple I know of who are actually pretty close to a number of non-white kids that they know, while still imagining that all the ones that live in “the city” are “different” That’s BS of course, but they are too limited to imagine otherwise.
Yarrow
@marcopolo: I would think that Katie Porter would be very good at herding cats. She seems to have that kind of mom energy.
YY_Sima Qian
On “Defunding the Police”, indeed the slogan is terrible. I was shocked with disbelief when I first heard it. Policy wise, I think there is no alternative in a lot of places. See the undisguised insubordination of many local law enforcements in refusing to enforce mask mandates or lock down measures, in a raging public health crisis of historic proportions. They almost function as organized insurgency against Democratic administrations (or even just sane administrations), free from meaningful oversight or constraint.
Of course politics is the art of the possible. If the ill conceived slogan makes the policy impossible, then it is counterproductive.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m definitely not blaming Pelosi.
Sideshow Bob
@James E Powell:
As a private school teacher, I can say he appeals to rich white shitheads too :)
So, in a way, Trump brings together shitheads of all races and creeds… that truly is a post-racial America, isn’t it?
I’ll show myself out.
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: Thanks for the kind words and you’re quite welcome.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: Trump is trying hard to slow down the PA counting process with legal/”poll watcher” harassment. I could see him getting a lead in AZ before he loses his in PA, and the campaign might be trying to create a brief interval like that so they can try to shut everything down then.
I think everyone is sick of their bullshit, though, and the media will not play along and legitimize it. Also he’ll probably lose the Georgia lead first, which kills that strategy.
Kent
Trust me, they don’t need to wait to start on the racism.
You want to see some serious racism, visit Guatemala sometime. I worked there for 2.5 years in the Peace Corps. The small African American population that lives on Guatemala’s Caribbean coast gets some serious racism. I understand Mexico is the same way. They don’t need to wait until they immigrate to the US to learn it. They bring it with them.
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: Anecdata, historical. In 1975 I was nine and visiting my grandparents in Alabama. I’d bought my skateboard with me and was a typical SoCal kid who was pretty damn tan. So I’m skateboarding in my grandparents driveway and some kids came up. Asked “what’s that”? Told em it was a skateboard. Asked me where I was from. SoCal, I explained.
“So what are you, a fucking Jew?”
Well, I was from SoCal and my parents were non religious, and I didn’t know shit about anything, so I asked them “what’s a Jew?” Had no idea, really. They looked stunned. I truly had no idea and I think they could tell that much. And then they left.
I figured out the deal soon after. Probably lucky they didn’t kick my ass. There was still plenty of anti Semitism going around the south even at that date.
dmsilev
Even by airline standards, Ryanair is awful, but I think we can all still admire this:
jl
@sdhays: Why not retire? Life is short. I don’t understand why some of them want to hang around until they keel over. If people need advice, there are still phones. Look at Reid, he keeps his finger in the pie, he can still monitor his NV machine, which seems to be clunking along fine.
Suzanne
@Kent: There’s also the fact that there are many Americans of Mexican descent who feel that they or their parents or grandparents “waited in a long line” or did what they needed to do to immigrate legally, and don’t really look kindly on undocumented immigrants. Also, realize that Mexico is not a homogenous place: northern Mexico is regarded in much the same way the American South is by Americans.
Calouste
@jl: IIRC one of the things that came out at the start of the current Congress was that the a Democratic Speaker would be limited to 8 years in office, which would mean 2022 for Pelosi. I don’t know how that affects other leadership roles.
Butter emails
@jl:
Reid retired because he got cancer.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: If 1/3 of the country is happy killing people and 1/3 of the country looks on and isn’t bothered to do anything about it then that makes 2/3 of the country people who suck. That pretty much tracks with my view.
Kent
If you knew anything about the House you would know that a freshman Congresswoman would NEVER in a million years be under consideration for Speaker. Maybe in 10-15 years. She’s a rising star. But she isn’t going to get 200 votes from mostly older members who have been around a LOT longer.
jl
@Suzanne: My experience growing up is that people from northern Mexico are broader minded than a lot of people in the south.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sure Lurkalot: Why do the Speaker of the House or the Senate Majority Leader need to excite you? They need to be able to count votes and herd cats. Ability to raise money is good. That’s it.
PIGL
@Another Scott: I think you have to pick a random sample of individuals, Seek them out and poll them. Probably with the administration of a truth serum or something. So accurate polling would be possible but fiercely expensive. No expert here at all but it’s looking to be like you cannot be done by phone or any of the other traditional sampling methods.
sdhays
@jl: I would expect her to retire, I just don’t know if that’s actually the plan. Supposedly, she was planning on retiring if Hillary had won.
marcopolo
I haven’t read every comment in this thread and am going to have to go off and do shit in the real world, but has anyone mentioned the elephant in the room policy stance that I just don’t understand why the D party hasn’t embraced with open arms: legalizing maryjane!
Marijuana legalization was on the ballot in 5 states on Tuesday, including crimson red South fucking Dakota and Mississippi (as well as MT, NJ, and AZ) and it easily passed in all of them! Can someone please explain to me why the Ds haven’t jumped on this bandwagon (and the associated topic of nullifying sentences related to marijuana and expunging marijuana related criminal records). Hell, we now have had several years of it in a few places so we can judge its affects–including how bringing MJ into the realm of gov’t taxation can help state gov’t budgets.
I think its a no brainer but maybe I’m missing something.
Quinerly
@patroclus: I would like to see GA (with its military ballots) and AZ be the states to put Biden over. Aren’t both states essentially run by Repugs? PA can be gravy later…
jl
@Butter emails: Thanks, I didn’t know that. OK, I retract my assertion that Reid has more sense than many of the others. His health forced his hand.
Kent
Yep, northern Mexico is basically their wild wild west where civilized Mexicans would never stray. It’s all full of big trucks, cowboy hats, drug cartels and that sort of thing. At least that’s how urban Mexicans think of it.
I’ve driven back and forth between Guatemala and Arizona a couple times. Mexico gets wilder and wilder the further north you get.
patroclus
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t think there’s much of a chance of Trump taking a lead in Zona tonight. It’s still possible that he could catch up (in theory) but it won’t be tonight and probably not ever. Trump’s strategy, it that’s what it is, isn’t going to work, in my view. I think in about an hour, Pa. and Ga. will both flip
Ga. margin now 1805 – Trump gains a smidge.
Cheryl Rofer
@MisterForkbeard: That’s what it looks like.
And Georgia says they just got another bunch of votes and sound like they may be shutting down for the night.
Even vote counters need to sleep.
Yarrow
@Kent: Jeez, I’m not saying she should be Speaker now. But she’s got those kinds of skills. Why the insulting comment and tone?
Kent
Oh sure. I think her real skill set would be to be put in charge of a subcommittee that she could rule.
jl
@Cheryl Rofer:
” Even vote counters need to sleep. ”
Hell with them, the political betting markets never sleep. What about all the ex day traders who still need to lose the rest of their money? Huh? What about them?
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow: Tone is hard to read on the internet, you vomitous mass.
patroclus
@Cheryl Rofer: Well, they also said Clayton County is coming out at midnight (EST). I think they’ll stay up for at least that.
Felanius Kootea
@Kent: Thank you! We are so predisposed to look at what could have been that we sometimes lose sight of what is. Where we are now is absolutely remarkable, given where we were four years ago, having lost the presidency, house, and senate. That turnaround is most definitely worth celebrating, especially given the structural challenge with the senate!
And thank you Adam for that perspective on down ballot races and Republicans who disapprove of Trump but still like their party. I had never thought of that.
J R in WV
@waratah:
In the military news media Trump doesn’t get the high marks other R leaders have gotten. Calling fallen Troops Losers and Suckers might not have been the brightest idea Trump ever expressed out loud. Trump hasn’t done anything to support the military, ever, at all. And they all know that.
Having said all that, do I expect the military mail-in vote to go Biden? No. But I also don’t expect it to break hard for Trump.
The Moar You Know
@Kent: Pecking order. The Guatemalans kick the shit out of their blacks, while Guatemalans trying to cross Mexico’s southern border aren’t greeted with a wall. They’re shot on sight. Dems need to start understanding some of this stuff.
Bill Arnold
More precisely, polling in Florida doesn’t match reported election results.
The anomaly bugging me ATM is that the polling in Minnesota was accurate (multiple polls and pollsters[1]), but wildly wrong in e.g. Wisconsin. A sane person would rule out systemic, long term cheating in statewide races, but … (I’m willing to think about insane things, often.)
(I haven’t read the Harpers article yet.)
[1] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/minnesota/
Suzanne
@jl: My point is that, just as there is a large north and south cultural divide here…. there is also a similar vibe there. So there is not necessarily the kind of solidarity one might expect.
patroclus
Trump’s Alaska margin cut to 51,382!
Darkrose
@Sab: I do not support the police. I think “defund the police” is a bad slogan for tactical reasons, but I fully agree with the sentiment. Let’s be clear: I’m at the point where I think that policing in this country is irreparably broken and the only way to fix it is to tear it down and start from scratch.
Yes, that’s radical. But it’s only been two years since Stephon Clark was shot 18 times in his grandmother’s backyard and left to bleed out because cops claimed they thought his cell phone was a gun, and the Republican DA in Sacramento County refused to prosecute. I’m still nervous when I see cops in the grocery store, because I have no idea when or why they might decide that a short chubby glasses-wearing 50-year-old librarian is a threat because I’m black. I can’t trust them.
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: He does. I have no reason to second guess him. And they’ll be bringing those ballots in by dog sled.
Kent
@jl: Stock market has sure as hell gone up the past few days as a Biden win looks closer and closer. It’s been on a tear all week while no one noticed.
Adam L Silverman
@EmanG: Thank you for the kind words and you are quite welcome.
Zelma
@Suzanne:
I think highly of Pelosi and her skills but she and Hoyer and Clyburn have not developed their successors. What is interesting is how many talented and promising Reps have left because they have seen no path for advancement. The leadership team she has now is pretty inexperienced. I’m not sure who is ready to move up.
sanjeevs
@Felanius Kootea: Four years ago? Look where we were in March, debating whether we’d go with Bernie or Bloomberg.
Kent
@Darkrose: I think the Police in many cities are going to come to rue the day they went full MAGA and all in for Trump. Who the hell is going to stand up for their budgets and shit in blue cities when they have made themselves the enemy. I don’t know how this ends. I think a lot quit and we hire new cops including a LOT more women and women of color who change the politics of policing in big cities.
Peale
@The Moar You Know: O.K. great. Now that we understand that, do we start shooting Guatemalans? Its pretty difficult when the Hispanics who are actually voting for us probably don’t think that is the best policy choice. I’d also like to see white liberals give up on the love affairs with left wing authoritarians abroad when we need the votes of the people who fled those countries when they move here. But since white liberals have no problem demotivating themselves if they feel shat upon by those of us who want to win elections, and we can’t really win elections without them…
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, this! Plus, Trump’s management team tried to kill off Stars and Stripes newspaper not long ago, which only lasted for about a week, or less.
I never saw a copy of Stars and Stripes while I was in the Navy, but I never left the continental US but for being out to sea. But I bet hearing that Trump wanted to kill off a storied military news organization didn’t earn him a single vote!
Omnes Omnibus
@Darkrose: I am nearly translucent, but I agree with your take. I would sure hell as hesitate to call the police in all but the most extreme circumstances because I think they are more likely to make the situation worse. I don’t want any action of mine to get some innocent POC killed.
Another Scott
@PIGL: My understanding is that the NORC at the University of Chicago does that for the General Social Survey (GSS). They pick the people they want to poll and move heaven and earth to get them to participate.
https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/
It’s great for seeing how national trends change over time. But I agree that it would be very difficult to do that for rapid-turnaround political polling.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
Well, it will be in the mail, so probably float planes from the smallest towns
Bodacious
@Kent:
Wow, spent ~30 years in Vancouver WA, and Herrera-Butler was pretty smarmy. She was looking out for Vets, but couldn’t be bothered by a single other issue for the district. Constantly having “town halls” via phone conferences that were unpublished.
First thing I did after looking at Pres/Senate outcomes this election was check on her race.
I commend you for trying to do the district justice.
Omnes Omnibus
@sanjeevs: ARRRGGGHH!!! There were still Democrats in race. Like the one who won.
Sorry. That situation drove me up a fucking tree.
debbie
@Suzanne:
Your original post sounded more like you were referring to those in the Gang of Howevermany rather than the committees, so I apologize for misunderstanding.
Peale
@patroclus: They count votes so slowly there. I really hope there is never a day when the entire election hinges on Alaska. We’d be on edge for 3 weeks.
Adam L Silverman
@Suzanne: Congratulations for your cousin!
Kent
@Peale: Yeah. Che Guevara posters and t-shirts were still pretty popular when I was in college in the 80s.
I think the answer is that we just need candidates who are a little bit badass and not so wonky. Like that Lt. Governor guy in PA with all the tattoos. Much as I like Buttigieg, I don’t see him winning over the Latino community.
CaseyL
Well, schools tried to deal with the race issue in the 70s by integrating. It didn’t work out very well, and I don’t know how much of that was because of white backlash that killed true integration in its cradle, or because kids aren’t blank slates but are influenced by their parents, or because people who dislike one another (for whatever reason) aren’t going to start liking each other just because they’re in proximity to one another.
I suspect de-racializing society will be impossible while the economic inequities are so bad. I do not, most emphatically do not, mean that I agree with BernieBros that economics is the only real issue. They go hand in hand.
People who are continually, seriously, and extremely stressed out about their finances (of the most basic sort: can I make rent? Can I buy food?) do not have the resilience or energy to reshape their world view to a more inclusive one. They’re swimming as fast as they can just to keep their nostrils above water. Perhaps, maybe, once you get that extreme terror out of their lives, they can think about something other than survival. Or their kids can.
Peale
@Omnes Omnibus: “I hate the Democrats! They never have your back.” Solution: Let’s bring in the rich guy who switched from Democrat to Republican and Back, plus the other guy who refuses to be a Democrat and thinks he can win by bringing in more people who actually hate the Democrats into the party.”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Yeah, voters want balance and then complain that they just argue in DC and don’t get anything done.
NotMax
@J R in WV
That commie rag?
// :)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Zelma: I believe she was expecting Joe Crowley to take over from her, but he 1) got lazy 2) ran into a pheenom. I think before Crowley Chris Van Hollen was discussed as a caucus leader, but he wanted to run for Senate.
Maybe the game has changed with fund-raising and chit-gathering, but I still think the talents that make caucus leaders are the type even we political junkies don’t always see.
Suzanne
@Zelma:
Exactly.
There are young and ambitious people who want longer careers, and the House is not where to go for it. Beto is a perfect example. This isn’t to say that Pelosi and crew haven’t done well; I am a big NANCY SMASH fan. But none of them are going to be around forever, and they shouldn’t all leave at once.
Another Scott
@Kent: I’ve heard speculation that the traders, banksters, and MoTU figure that the government is going to be divided so that Biden won’t be able to clamp down on abuses, etc., as much as they previously feared.
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
patroclus
Pa. now 24,484 (Delaware County).
Peale
@Kent: Yeah. Looked at the photo of him today and thought “yeah. put him up for governor then run him for president.” I hope he’s a nice guy! But based on what my betters are telling me, the WWC, African American Men, and Hispanic Men are all looking for someone who doesn’t look like someone you’d bring home to meet your suburban wine mom.
Kent
It probably won’t flip until Vancouver grows more and all the redneck timber areas like Longview, Hoquium, and Chehalis shrink more.
Carolyn Long was an especially unsuited candidate for the district. I really wish someone else had stepped up. Some sort of local charismatic Asian-American businesswoman I think might have won. Carolyn Long was basically a carpet-bagging Portlander who taught Poly Sci for years at WSU-Vancouver but commuted up from Portland until she decided to run for Congress. As you know, Vancouverites have an inferiority complex vis a vis Portland and a Battleground and Ridgefield native like Beutler is always going to have an advantage of a native Portlander like Long.
Adam L Silverman
@sanjeevs: Thank you and you’re welcome.
Tehanu
I have never understood why anybody pays any attention to polls. The pollsters might as well be wearing turbans set with fake glass jewels and muttering, “Tell your fortune, honey?”
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: Thank you too. And you too are quite welcome.
Kent
NPR marketplace commentators were saying it was more the idea that additional stimulus is more likely to pass under Biden. They may be wrong about that without a Dem Senate though.
Adam L Silverman
@N M: Thank you for the kind words as well and you are also quite welcome.
jl
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
” Yeah, voters want balance and then complain that they just argue in DC and don’t get anything done. ”
Yeah, stupid voters. That nice Mr. Trump is trying to explain that democracy would work better without them, but no one will listen.
PIGL
@Another Scott: Very interesting to know that…i must Read up on it. Thank you.
NoraLenderbee
@Kent:
I see this here (CA) too, and it disgusts me. Are we going to have to send the women back to the kitchen and tongue the balls of young macho misogynists just so they’ll maybe possibly vote for us? Those people are not on my side.
Kent
Update from Nate Cohen regarding Georgia military ballots is encouraging. I don’t know how to embed tweets so I’ll just quote it. There aren’t 9,000 still to count. Most have already been counted. 9,000 is how many potentially could still come in if every one sent out gets sent back.
patroclus
@Tehanu: We pay so much attention to polls because our media does and they talk about and hype them so much. They do this because they are either unable or unwilling to focus on policy. Periodically, like in 1936 with the Literary Digest fiasco, or 1948 with Truman beating Dewey, they get their comeuppance and we (and the media) pay relatively less attention to them. But then, they get them right (that is, their “snapshots” become arguably predictive) and we start relying on them again. We want to know what’s going to happen and the pollsters pretend to be able to do this – forecast the future. But they really can’t be accurate and the cycle continues. Maybe their failures this time will teach us (and the media) a lesson. I suspect not.
debbie
Colbert’s gone serious tonight.
Kent
No, of course not. But part of it is understanding the issue and working around it. Not just assuming that say Hispanic men are automatically going to pick a Black woman candidate over a white man because they are both “people of color” or whatever.
Adam L Silverman
@Sab: The link to the Harper’s article in the post up top.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Tehanu: before this cycle, I think most national polls were pretty accurate for the last couple of decades
Peale
@patroclus: Not sure how to get around polling. I mean, we see the public polling. The Democratic party raised a ton of money this time, but that isn’t always the case. Those resources have to be allocated somewhat rationally in the system and polls + models are still the best that we have. Otherwise, we’ve go back to someone like Steve Israel allocating money based on whatever criteria he was using to pick winners and losers.
Another Scott
@Kent: Speaking of, …
:-)
Cheers,
Scott.
piratedan
@Kent: unsure if that’s actually encouraging, because the website I am checking says that we have roughly 9200 ballots still to count, so if those military ballots have been counted, what’s left? the one GA county precinct?
J R in WV
Adam,
As usual this post, like all of your posts, is well thought out and argued.
Are you an academic?
;~)
Thanks again for all the insight and information.
West of the Rockies
@Kent:
Toxic masculinity is a real thing. I wrote that here a few weeks ago and someone took exception. I did not coin the phrase. You can look it up online. The word “toxic” is key. Regular masculinity is fine.
Anyway, it is harmful to those who practice it and to those upon whom it lands.
Adam L Silverman
@marcopolo: I think he’s on point with both of those assertions.
patroclus
Fox is saying Pa. now 24,297.
cain
@schrodingers_cat:
I follow you on twitter, how come I never see any of it on my time line? Twitter algorithms are really wierd.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: Hakeem Jeffries appears to be Pelosi’s choice to succeed her. My understanding is this will be her last go round. Even if she stays in Congress past 2022, she’s said she’s going to transition out after this incoming Congress.
Zelma
@Peale:
Fetterman is a most unusual politician. He’s solidly liberal. Began his career as mayor of a failing steel town where he did some good against heavy odds. Came to Braddock as an Americorps volunteer. Has a Harvard degree. His wife was an undocumented alien, I think. He’s probably a lot less rough than he appears. I’m sure he has his eye on the governorship. Wolf is term-limited. Fetterman as governor would be something else.
cain
@Kent:
My.. you have been around, haven’t you? That’s cool.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: You’re welcome. Thanks for the kind words.
Fair Economist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:The *national* polls probably won’t end up that far off once Cali finishes counting. The problem is state polls. As somebody mentioned upthread, MN was spot on and WI off 7%. That is pretty odd.
patroclus
CNN says Pa. at 23,953.
piratedan
@patroclus: I’m seeing 23,953 is the lead…. in PA
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Yarrow:
God, I tried over and over explaining this to my uber progressive friends. They accused me of not respecting African American voices. I told them ‘Defund the Police’ scares suburbanites and was going to end up in GOP ad after ad. Of course, that came true here.
sanjeevs
Very fine people.
https://6abc.com/philly-police-investigating-pa-convention-center-attack-plot/7689932/
Kent
I think there are actually 9200 regular ballots left to count.
What Nate is saying is that there aren’t actually a pile of 9,000 military ballots left to be counted after all this is done. There were 9,000 sent out that haven’t yet been returned, that could still show up at anytime and be counted up until a week or so from now as long as they were properly postmarked I guess. How many of those 9,000 are actually still in the mail is anyone’s guess. Perhaps a large portion will never get returned because whoever requested them never got them or just didn’t bother to fill them out.
At least that’s how I take his tweet.
patroclus
Both Ga. and Pa. have said they’re going to try to finish “tonight.” So I’m expecting some more reported votes quite soon. In Pa, the margin is 22,576; in Ga. it’s 1,805.
Nelle
@Kent: I was going to object to float planes at this time of year. But my experience was in Fairbanks and Kaktovik. And who knows how climate change is affecting freeze up.
Kent
Is anyone you are following keeping updated projections as to the final vote counts in each state based on outstanding ballots and projected percentages?
I’m just curious as we get closer how the final estimates are changing and getting refined by the wonks.
Kent
Well, they still land on the regular runways. They have wheels in the floats. Or just take them off and swap them out for skies.
I don’t think much mail actually goes by float plane. Probably more just regular plane from gravel runways in the bush.
Quinerly
@patroclus: 175,000 votes in PA to count. All mail in votes.
Correct me if I am wrong, please. Little sleep.
guachi
@Quinerly: I think that’s about right. Also, doesn’t PA have mail-in ballots that arrive after Nov 3rd being segregated pending a court case?
I can’t remember at this point.
Ridnik Chrome
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: “Demilitarize the Police” might have been better.
Haroldo
Adam,
As always, your posts are illuminating and entertaining. Thank you.
patroclus
@Kent: Kornacki says 175,000 remaining votes in Pa.; Nate said 9700 votes in Ga. (That’s excluding military, overseas and provisionals). In Pa, Allegheny (Pittsburgh) won’t release until tomorrow morning
But I should add that I’m not sure they’re right.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Suzanne: Steny’s not a boomer, Adam Schiff is a boomer.
Viva BrisVegas
If anybody is not happy because of the slow counting, just realise this:
Trump is sitting in front of the TV watching his early leads in swing states slowly shrink ever smaller.
It must be excruciating.
Stormy Daniels can sympathise.
Ridnik Chrome
@Quinerly: PA still has 423,000 votes outstanding, according to the Guardian.
Quinerly
@guachi: it does.
I think PA is over tonight… At least to be able to call it for Biden tonight. Lindsay Graham has been on Hannity. They know what’s coming tonight. He’s saying it’s all so corrupt that the state legislature (Repug) should declare the winner (“Philly is as crooked as a snake.”)
patroclus
@Ridnik Chrome: Yeah, I saw that too. I don’t think anyone really knows for sure. Which is why I’m really just going by raw vote totals. To me, what’s “remaining” is speculative.
patroclus
@Quinerly: Yeah, but on CNN, Rick Santorum quoted the Republican Majority Leader in Pa. as saying the legislature has no power to appoint electors and laughed at Lindsey.
NotMax
Feel sorry for the reporter and crew assigned to spend multiple days this week in PA’s capital, Harrisburg. One of those tired, shabby, past its prime towns which make one unconsciously press down more firmly on the accelerator when passing through in order to leave it behind ASAP.
;)
Quinerly
@guachi: I want GA and AZ declared for Biden before PA. Both GA and AZ run by Repugs. Clayton Co (John Lewis turf) still not in for GA. Also 8000 military votes. Supposedly these losers ? in the military from all those bases in GA might not be Trump friendly. To me that scenario would be cool… GA (John Lewis) and AZ (McCain) for the win… PA icing on the cake
Quinerly
@Viva BrisVegas: I love this. Have been saying the same thing all day. You actually said it better. I want Fox to be one to call either GA or PA before anyone else.
Kent
From the NYT
According to my math, the margin is now 22,576 so Biden would only need to get about 57% of the remaining vote to win. At a 70% rate he would net 70,000 votes, giving him a win in the 40,000 vote range. I think he is doing better than 70%.
patroclus
@NotMax: In one of my prior jobs, I used to go to numerous state capitols to meet with state treasury officials and some (Austin, Madison, Columbus, Boise) are really cool places to visit – probably because the state flagship universities are located there. Not so Harrisburg, Pierre and some others…
West of the Rockies
@Quinerly:
Why is that loser (Lindsey) still seeking Trump’s approval? Clump shredded him repeatedly lately.
guachi
@Quinerly: It’s UP TO 8000 military ballots. Depends on how many actually got returned.
cain
Schumer is useless. I’d like to put warren or someone else in charge. I just don’t think he can stare McConnell in the eye and tell him to fuck off. Let’s get someone younger and more hungry to accomplish things.
Kent
@Quinerly: If Biden wins GA it will be due to Stacy Abrams more than any other 10 people combined. She will have earned a ticket to any job she wants in a new Biden Administration. ANY job. While she waits out a second run for governor.
Quinerly
@Ridnik Chrome: I think that was before the last dump. Do you have a time? I’m on MSNBC… Kornacki with thesw same pants he has worn since Mon. ?
mrmoshpotato
Steve’s a madman.
Kent
Patty Murray would be next in line.
Bill Arnold
@Dopey-o:
If you do a twitter search – #defundthepolice until:2020-01-30
you’ll see the hash tag goes back to 2016 and the early boosters can be seen. Then it spikes up incredibly after George Floyd. (e.g. #defundthepolice until:2020-05-30 since:2020-01-0 )
Some analysis should be done to see who was amplifying the tag.
piratedan
@Quinerly: not as picky, I don’t give a fuck as to who calls it or who puts us over, after three fucking days, I just want to KNOW and have it done. Right now, Hallmark moments are not a concern.
I do note that style matters but in a fight with a bunch of fekking fascists, panache is not as high on my dance card…
would it be nice, yes, do I want to wait another night for it…. no.
sorry, will break down the soap box now…
Quinerly
@mrmoshpotato: I’m very involved with him this week.
Kent
Agreed, Harrisburg is a pit. Amazingly so for a state capital.
And then there’s Tallahassee, which still isn’t cool, even though it does have a major flagship university.
patroclus
@Kent: Dick Durbin would be next, but he was next after Reid and Schumer jumped him. It’d be an election, so there’s really no way to know about any successor. But I think we should actually await the results of the election…
Quinerly
@piratedan: but this is torture for Trump.
We all know how the numbers will end up. That part became clear yesterday.
Rest up. ?
Aziz, light!
Because Trump knows what Graham is desperate to keep secret and threatens to reveal it.
Kent
@piratedan: Based on available data, they would already have called PA for Biden hours ago. I expect they aren’t because that’s the whole ball game and it wouldn’t look good to make a call when the vote totals still show Trump ahead. So they will wait until Biden has at least a comfortable lead before calling it on their maps.
patroclus
@Quinerly: Indeed. At this stage, Pennsylvania is “knowable” but not “callable.” Georgia – who knows?
James E Powell
@Kent:
Check out this website. It has all that information for all the states still counting.
Quinerly
@Kent: agree… Makes it all even better. My point is Trump is bellowing about PA being corrupt because run by Dems. Cool to me if 2 Repug run states put Biden over the top before PA.
Loving the Abrams aspect of bringing on his downfall.. We all know how he feels about Black women.
Quinerly
@patroclus: I feel like Biden has GA… Based on what’s left to count… Unless Kornacki has misled me. ?
piratedan
AZ just snuck in another vote drop
5700+ votes counted, Biden got 53% in this batch, lead increases north of 47K again…, 309K still to tally
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Aziz, light!: this would make sense, but I don’t believe Graham could have kept that secrets in a twenty-five year political career in which he has pissed off a lot of people in a relatively small world
I think he’s just a bitter, twisted little man who got himself lost in the last couple years. It’s small comfort, but I’m sure when he goes from Hannity to Ingram to Tucker, he’s thinking “Tim Russert used to show me deference, Cokie Roberts invited me to dinner, I used to hang out with Warren and Annette in Sedona” (that’s true, btw, I read not long ago that the Beattys were his fellow houseguests the first time McCain invited Lindsey to the Swinging Tire Ranch, and he gushed about it for weeks)
mrmoshpotato
@Quinerly: Watching NBC News’s map is enough for me. (And I don’t have cable.)
NotMax
@Kent
Not quite there yet but the whole schmear occasionally skirts being like sitting through an all-Ent production of the Ring Cycle.
patroclus
Well, I love me some Stacey Abrams, but I think we should probably give at least a little bit of credit to, uh, Joe Biden. I mean, I’m never going to join his personality cult and I’m pretty sure he’ll never have one, and I thought he was a self-important ass for much of his career and I really despised him during the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill brouhaha and he certainly wasn’t my first choice way back in the pre-COVID Before Times during the primaries, but I kind of think he should get a little credit
Ga. at 1709.
PJ
deleted
Quinerly
@piratedan: ?
rikyrah
Um,
We need a new political thread.
Pretty please??
Mary G
@patroclus: His team is stupendous; a lot of younger women, and BIPOC, and all the ad makers were excellent. All he to do was mostly just stay out of the way, and to his credit, he did.
patroclus
@rikyrah: TBOGG!
cain
I’m told that Blacks feel the same way about Hispanics – that they were somehow below them. I don’t know first hand, but my gf was telling me about it as an example of racism by black folks.
Generally, if you’re human – this is going to happen. Your melanin level does not confer upon you wisdom and defense against real human tendencies.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman:
That was pretty much the breakdown during the American Revolution, 1/3 supported breaking away from Britain, 1/3 were pro-Crown and 1/3 didn’t give a shit.
Quinerly
Lindsey Graham has offered to donate $500,000 to Trump’s campaign to fight the results. I didn’t see/read this first hand. Apparently part of the Hannity interview.
Adam L Silverman
@AnotherBruce: Jon Ralston called Nevada for Biden around 2 eastern this afternoon. No one knows Nevada better than Ralston.
My understanding of what is still out in Arizona and where it is out means that his lead may continue to tighten, but there isn’t enough to allow Trump to pass him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s just crazy talk!
Searcher
… what keys?
Pelosi isn’t the Speaker because she found a secret, magic amulet giving her control of the House Democrats. She’s the Speaker because she is the Democrat with the respect and support and trust of more of the caucus than anyone else.
That isn’t something she can just gift to someone, someone else has to earn it for themselves.
She could just refuse to be Speaker but … why? It’s not like we have an “off season” for the next Speaker to get ready in, so Pelosi not being Speaker just means we have chaos and uncertainty during whatever brief period we continue to hold the House, and the longer she holds the reins the more time her successor has to build their own web before they’re put in the spotlight.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: Yep.
Quinerly
Kushner hasn’t found his “James Baker” for Trump’s legal team. But Pam Bondi is on board.
patroclus
@cain: I think we can handle the problem the same way we fought the old trope that African-Americans were predominantly anti-gay. I mean, maybe they were but so was everyone else, so it wasn’t all that unique and gradually everyone changed their minds when they were actually exposed to LGBT human beings in their lives. I haven’t even heard that trope in years.
mrmoshpotato
I don’t understand. What would these people be if they weren’t walking piles of trash?
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I sure hope that’s true. Seeing how many once disgraced shitheads keep popping up with lucrative gigs a few years later, I’m not holding my breath.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mary G: Sure, and who put the team together?
sdhays
@Quinerly: Isn’t Rudy in the “James Baker” role?
ETA: And why isn’t Kushner himself doing that? Being a lawyer can’t be that hard for someone has solved the Israel-Palestinian conflict, infrastructure, medical care, PPE distribution, ventilator distribution, vaccine development and distribution, etc. (I can’t even remember the whole list.)
RaflW
I’m extremely late to a very long thread, but I did want to comment that I saw Charles Blow flip out in the past 24h that LGBTQ people were horrible because, based on one not-yet-even-fully-baked exit poll, he claimed that 25% of LGBTQ voters in America voted for Trump.
I smell some very very bad bullshit in that exit poll.
Are there some racist, shitty white gay men? Yes. Sadly. But whatever damn sample size, methodology, locations etc the exit pollster that the NYT used to then blow that up to 25% of queer voters coast to coast?
Yeah that’s garbage.
Searcher
@cain:
Warren is two years older than Schumer.
Adam L Silverman
@YY_Sima Qian: What needs to be done is the police unions need to be disbanded. I grew up in a union household and have belonged to three different ones and am generally very supportive of them, but police unions started out toxic and have never evolved. The first police union was in South Carolina and was established for plantation police and slave patrol officers. That’s the origin of police unions in the US. It is also the origin of policing in the US. We don’t teach that, we teach that formal policing starts with Peale in London and then just sort of let the students assume we adopted that model. And while eventually that model was adopted, the real origins of formalized policing in the US was in policing slaves in South Carolina and other slave states and localities.
cain
I see Black men and women discuss a lot of issues amongst them online – and at least they are discussing it. The BLM movement definitely opened up some wounds about how black women feel about black men and vice versa.
I don’t know if such conversations happen in the various latin diasporas. I can’t say about Indians, but Schrodinger’s Cat might know better than I since she clearly is much more engaged there than I am.
NotMax
@Quinerly
Commencing such a search after the polls have closed ain’t the height of strategery.
;)
piratedan
@Searcher: and goddamn, if ANYBODY has the receipts, its Nonna Nancy.
I think she IS actively grooming the newbies, doing her best to guide them, trying to warn them that the Press is not always going to be their friends and what they believe is a cogent intelligent plea is just as likely to be cut down to a 10 second out of context throwaway quip that could cost you your seat as have the 45 second meat of your passionate argument presented in full.
I really like how the majority of the newbies have handled their time in some of the more publicized opportunities, but we need sausage makers and wonks too, not everyone wants to be seen, some just want to work.
It takes all kinds…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Searcher: also, younger doesn’t matter, hunger doesn’t matter, telling him to fuck off doesn’t matter. Having 51 votes matters. That’s it.
Quinerly
@sdhays: seems that way.? Also reading that Corey Lewandowski has joined the legal team. “only the best.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Peel.
sdhays
@RaflW: Why would anyone believe polls right now? Someone must not be getting enough sleep.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: It was right around 1975 or so that something finally tipped in most parts of America and Jews became widely accepted as white by other (Christian) whites. The inability of white Christian Protestants to understand the difference between an ethnonationality, which they understand as a race, and a religion that has some specific cultural components (ethnoreligiosity) is astounding. Ethnic Catholics from all over Europe all went through the same process.
Kent
@RaflW: I could maybe buy 25%. I know plenty of conservative gay men. Especially in states like Texas. One of my daughter’s best friends from Texas (who I had in class) is a young gay Republican who now lives in Savannah. He grew up in a hard core Republican family. He’s in some kind of sales and surrounded by other white southern Republican douche types.
Quinerly
New thread up.
I just feel like when these mail in votes come in from Clayton Co, someone will call GA. I have poured a glass of wine.
Omnes Omnibus
@RaflW: Other people are blowing up because they saw a stat that said 20% of Black men voted for Trump. My guess is neither stat is true and most hot takes are stupid.
sdhays
@Quinerly: I wonder why they haven’t called up those guys that Dump tried to dump on the Federal bench who had basically just completed some online courses. Didn’t one of them not even know what “habeas corpus” was or something?
I expect that guy’s free.
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: As someone who has flown RyanAir, fortunately a short flight from Frankfurt to Dublin and back and another to Glasgow and back, it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t great, but it could’ve been a lot worse.
piratedan
@Adam L Silverman: funny enough, I think it may have actually been the The World At War British TV series that started to turn the tide in the minds of many. The graphic mages that couldn’t be faked and the no nonsense delivery of Olivier starkly laying out the truth of matters. I know it ran on a LOT of PBS stations during the mid 70’s.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: Your math is correct. However, I think a lot of that third that can’t be bothered is just checked out in general for a lot of reasons. They don’t follow the news, the don’t vote. They’re just trying to get by. Or they’re at the other end, they’re well enough off that they can tune everything out as noise.
Kent
Oh sure. But the educated types who have discussions of this sort on twitter are most definitely NOT the same types as those who work construction all day and spend their hard-earned money on big American trucks so they can cruise around cities like Waco looking for chicas and a little action on weekends.
There is a class divide in Black and Hispanic culture, just like White culture. The university grads aren’t the issue here.
NotMax
@Quinerly
Good plan to have that at the ready for when done swigging the rest directly from the bottle.
:)
Adam L Silverman
@marcopolo: I expect it will be in a legislative package originating in the House sometime in the spring. Biden has some concerns, but I think some of that is based on the fact that he has a song who has addiction issues.
YY_Sima Qian
@Adam L Silverman:
Surely a lot of this is carried over from the “Old Countries”? Anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic bigotry ran deep in the predominantly Protestant countries that supplied most of the settlers to North American until the latter half of the 19th Century.
MobiusKlein
@Kent:
In the tech company I work for, with many Guatemalans and a few black folks, I have seen zero indications of racism from my Guaté crew against Black folks. Possibly because they are somewhat more educated, and we don’t tolerate that shit at the office.
Possibly helps that the head of the business unit is also Black.
Quinerly
@NotMax: have we met?
Quinerly
@sdhays: good question. A couple of those guys had never even been in court. They need the practice. Working on Trump’s big voter fraud case would be good practice.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Never had the pleasure (or displeasure) of flying Ryanair.
Best flight experience memory was going from Paris to Edinburgh on Dan-Air.
Omnes Omnibus
@YY_Sima Qian: To be fair, Anti-Jewish and Anti-Protestant bigotry ran deep in the Catholic countries during the same period.
Quinerly
Why is Ed Rendell on my TV?
Adam L Silverman
@Suzanne: If Beto had run for the Senate against Cornyn, he’d be a senator elect right now.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Straws are over-rated – no matter how silly.
YY_Sima Qian
@Adam L Silverman:
Wow, did not know that! Learn something from you every day!
Yea, police unions are toxic. I once made the mistake of making a small donation to the NY Fraternal Order of Police (I think that’s the name), two decades ago, feeling sympathetic to cops who work in such threatening environments (compared to other developed countries). I have never been treated so brusquely as when someone from the organization called me up a year later, and I declined to make another donation. It was basically verbal abuse!
Kent
Well yeah, educated urban folks are an entirely different world from rural campesinos. Trust me. The Guatemalan town I lived in had cock fights and gun fights on the weekends.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman: you don’t think he shot himself in the foot with “Damn right we’re gonna take your AR-15 away!”?
Adam L Silverman
@Kent:
Adam L Silverman
@piratedan:
YY_Sima Qian
@Omnes Omnibus: Absolutely, and if the French never sold off the Louisiana territories, it would be the WASP migrants fleeing overcrowded conditions along the Atlantic coast being recriminated against by the Catholics who dominate the shores of the Mississippi.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: You’re welcome and thanks for the kind words.
Adam L Silverman
@Haroldo: You are quite welcome.
Omnes Omnibus
@YY_Sima Qian: The French were never going to win that fight. They never had the numbers.
Adam L Silverman
@patroclus: I’m not a fan of the PA state Republican majority leader, but he’s written an op-ed stating this and then stated it publicly at least three other times including today in response to that stupid Mark Levin tweet.
Adam L Silverman
@Quinerly: @mrmoshpotato: Here’s the real story of Steve Kornacki.
Kornacki is actually a statistics doctoral candidate who died in a horrifying, but tragic card reading machine accident in 1962. MSNBC uses that coffee Joy Ann Reid drinks to always be wired on air, combined with datura stramonium (Zombie cucumber) to reanimate him for election season. The rest of the time they keep him on ice in the 30 Rock basement.
Kent
For fuck’s sake. None of us were even voting for President on Tuesday. We were voting for the Democratic slate of electors in our state. What is the point of even having an election if the legislature just appoints the electors they want. I’m pretty sure, at least in my state (WA) the election determines the electors, not the legislature and there is no legislative role in approving of them or swearing them in or whatever
Once the secretary of state certifies the election result they are the official electors.
Adam L Silverman
@Aziz, light!: He knows what Lindsey did for a klondike bar?//
Adam L Silverman
@YY_Sima Qian: Most likely.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That didn’t help either.
Quinerly
@Adam L Silverman: ?
Adam L Silverman
@Quinerly: It explains a lot!!!//
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Quinerly:
I thought that was Rudy, I’m sure Rudy did.
Darkrose
@Kent: It’s definitely not just a Cuban thing. I think–and I don’t have citations to back this up–that it’s also a regional thing as well. The intergroup and coalition dynamics look very different in New York, Florida, Texas, and California.
Darkrose
@Bill Arnold: People are more upset by the Defund the Police slogan than about the fact that Derek Chauvin is out on bail.
Dan B
@Adam L Silverman: You’re just checking to see if any jackals are still reading. And you got the one who knows what Datura is – me. It helps to have the left coast time advantage.
BTW Amazing piece you wrote. Sometimes I read your posts and nod my head. Other times I feel like I’m going to be so much more aware and smarter too. This one is the latter. Thanks!
Dan B
@Darkrose: And that truth is very disturbing.
Darkrose
@cain: I mean yes, some Black folks are prejudiced against Latinx people. A lot of it, IME, is because of the perception that other immigrant groups came over and got to jump in the social hierarchy by virtue of not being Black, and specifically, embracing anti-Black racism. In Spanish colonial America, there was a strict race-based hierarchy that has carried over into today, with people of African descent at the bottom of the pyramid.
Darkrose
@patroclus: A lot of that was driven by white gay men–looking at you, Andrew “Dick Size” Sullivan–who wanted someone to blame for Prop 8 passing, and for some inexplicable reason didn’t want to blame the out-of-state Mormons who poured tons of money into the Yes on 8 campaign. When people actually looked at the results rather than just the initial exit polls, it turned out that the majority of Black voters were No on 8, and in any case, there weren’t enough Black voters in California to have swung the needle either way.
Darkrose
@RaflW: Sounds like he’s doing the same stupid bullshit Andrew Sullivan and Dan Savage did after Prop 8 passed. Gah!
Yes, Log Cabin Republicans exist, but I’m deeply skeptical about that 25% number. I’m also skeptical about any exit polling that claims to have reliable numbers for LBGTQ+ voters; how exactly do they identify such voters as they’re leaving the polling place? What about mail-in votes? I’m pretty sure there’s nothing on my ballot that identifies me as queer.
Darkrose
@Adam L Silverman: Thank you Adam. I’m a proud union member and the daughter of union members, but police unions are at the heart of the problem, because they protect corrupt, murderous, and racist cops. No meaningful policing reform will happen as long as the police unions support militarization and so-called “warrior training” that dehumanizes the communities cops work in, and actively work to block even minor attempts at holding police accountable for their actions.
lurker
@Adam L Silverman: Is Charles Stross your nom de plume ?
Peale
@RaflW: I know 4 bona fida gay Trump supporters. 2 Filipino, 1 white American and 1 Syrian.
I wouldn’t be shocked if the results were 75/25. I think we’re a 70/30 split group. Sorry. We haven’t abandoned the party. We just didn’t have this huge threshold to begin with.
Peale
Hmmm. Reading the article in the post, I wonder if the party that should be asking for a recount in Wisconsin isn’t actually Biden. Maybe pay for it “just to prove that Trump’s claims are baseless”.