It’s sure looking like the Trump takeover of the RNC is going about as well as Trump Steaks and Water: [gift link]
With fewer than 100 days before the election, local GOP officials in battleground states have raised alarms about the scant presence of Trump campaign field staff. For the large armies of paid and volunteer door-knockers and canvassers who typically drive turnout in presidential elections, the campaign is largely relying on outside groups such as America First Works, America PAC and Turning Point Action.
The FEC has allowed Trump’s campaign to coordinate closely with those PACs, but this is the first time that’s happened. Anyone who’s worked in a campaign wouldn’t like the sound of this:
The Trump campaign’s shrunken in-house operation resulted from its takeover of the Republican National Committee in March, when Trump secured the nomination. The RNC had been planning an extensive field program, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Thosenow-discarded plans included 88 staff members and 12 offices, and goals to knock on 3 million doors and make 2.4 million phone calls, in Pennsylvania. In Arizona, the RNC’s plan called for 62 staffers and seven offices, aiming for 558,000 voter contacts.
Also, counting on Elmo is a fool’s game:
The Musk-backed program is in flux, a person familiar with the operation said, after it cut ties with a firm that had been hired to handle much of the operation. It is unclear what the group will do next.
Of course, the Harris campaign is sticking to their original plan of organizing via the campaign.
It’s more than a little ironic that the Trump campaign might fail because they ran the Republican playbook of outsourcing everything.
sdhays
As I recall, the Kerry/Edwards campaign did this and it didn’t work very well. And the outside groups this time around are going to be grifting first, organizing second, at best.
But Republicans seem to do a better job of showing up without prodding.
ssdd
I have been expecting this ever since I read about how Trump was reverting to the “lean” campaign of 2016 versus the 2020 “Death Star.” I read that as “too many people not named Trump getting ‘his’ money” and wouldn’t you know it, looks like that’s the case. It’s the biggest reason I still had hope Joe could win despite the weak polls, and now that it’s Harris the Dem ground game is poised to roll right over Donnie.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I used to hate the parable of the scorpion and the frog. “It’s my nature”. The scorpion wouldn’t do that, I thought. It’s a pointless story.
I am now old enough to understand that the scorpion would indeed do that, and I think of that parable every time I think of the RNC letting The Former Guy take it over.
Frank Wilhoit
Now that Trump “owns” the RNC, anything they spend on, you know, actually doing what it says on the sign comes out of his pocket. He wants the propaganda machine to do all the work as a gift to him. And so far, that has been working pretty well for him.
dmsilev
@ssdd: Oh yes, the Death Star. What a brilliant idea, naming your campaign apparatus after a fictional construct best known for being blown into a zillion pieces. Twice.
Frank Wilhoit
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Real scorpions wouldn’t; only cosplay scorpions.
dmsilev
I posted this yesterday, but if you read down through that article, you come to a description of a training session that Turning Point is running for their ground troops, and it belies belief:
<ThisIsFineDog.PNG>
Matt McIrvin
Trump won in 2016 without having much of a campaign operation and I think they’d been banking on a repeat of that. Probably still are hoping that the general positive feeling about Harris’s chances are like the Hillary Clinton 2016 inevitability narrative, doomed to be burst unexpectedly by the actual election results. So far, though, I do think it’s different. I hope that people who care don’t think Harris has this in the bag. I got the impression that in 2016 a lot of people were not particularly enthusiastic about Clinton but just assumed she was destined to win.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Hillary never enjoyed uniform positive feelings. She battled the whole way through and in the end was undone by Comey.
Another Scott
Is your 3rd blockquote correct? It’s a repeat of the 2nd one. From your intro sentence, I was expecting something else.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steve LaBonne
@sdhays: The actual Republican playbook is “everything is a grifting opportunity”.
RaflW
Sounds like the Georgia rally went off about as perfectly as we could want (WaPo):
Kemp went on socials this morning and said he’s “focusing on winning in Nov. … not engaging in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past”. Sounds both butthurt and like Trump’s dominance game still works on fellow Repubs. Pathetic. And delicious.
dmsilev
@Matt McIrvin: One big difference is that Trump is no longer a novelty. He’s using the same playbook, the same behaviors, that got him past Clinton in 2016. Only, the Democrats have seen it before. Hell, even some of the media have learned from their experience over the past nine years to call him a liar flat-out. Not enough of the media, not by a long shot, but some. And, as the nonsense with “now, a debate on Fox!” yesterday showed, even the worst offenders like the NYT were pretty quickly cowed into changing their headlines into an accurate description of “Trump backs out of debate he agreed to, pulls alternate idea out of his ass”.
BR
I see Felonius Musk has given up on stoking hate for the moment in the US and has turned to saying that civil war is “inevitable” in the UK. Good to know he’s for fascism everywhere.
M31
lol speaking of weirdo clowns, here are some Project Veritas veterans ‘infiltrating’ pro-Palestinian groups in Dearborn, by going to a hotel and getting rip-roaring drunk, being so disruptive they get the cops called on them, then the ringleader refusing to leave and calling the cops ‘f*gs’ and ‘I can take 3 of you’ until he’s arrested.
The Aristocrats!
https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/hatched-plan-infiltrate-palestinian-groups-started-drinking-rcna163821?
Snarki, child of Loki
For the Trump campaign, grifting is job ONE!
..and two…
There’s RUBES to be fleeced, and time is short, so expect those “auto-donate” checkboxes (pre-checked!) to change from “monthly” to “daily” sometime soon.
It’s not about “winning” an election. It’s about winning the aftermath.
RaflW
@Matt McIrvin: I think it’s very different than ’16. I was a loyal foot soldier for Clinton, because I want and even need Democratic wins (queer people are not safe with GOP presidents generally, but Trump, no one is safe).
But I see people like an IT nerd/casual friend in Ft. Collins posting about feeling hope for the first time in many years (he doesn’t post politics at all typically) and I think “Something is getting thru. Energy is moving.”
I should not go on anecdata and vibes. But at the same time, the vibes are so much better than ’16 IMO.
gene108
I don’t think this means much or is a sign of a floundering campaign.
Trump’s 2016 campaign relied heavily on third party groups plugging gaps that campaign could not handle.
This seems normal for a Trump campaign.
MomSense
There is an old video of trump at a hearing in CT and it is seemingly about a development project. It’s just horrific. He’s going on and on about how they don’t look Indian to him. I saw it posted by the comedian Raj Sharma. It’s going viral and that’s a good thing. Tangerine Tinpot has always been such an asshole.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Another Scott: Fixed, thanks…
Falling Diphthong
*fist pump*
Back in March I predicted that putting Trump in charge of the party finances would go poorly. He’s got very little incentive to help out down-ballot Republicans, and pretty much none if he feels he might lose and so absconding with the cash benefits him the most.
OzarkHillbilly
@RaflW: I thought Kemp’s reply was about as good as it could get. He defended himself from rump’s attacks and did so without explicitly mentioning them or even uttering *rump’s name*. Like rump is just another loser, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
**in the quotes I’ve seen anyway
gene108
@sdhays:
White people, especially older white people, are the most consistent group of voters in the country.
I think Asians are second, but they’re still a relatively small demographic versus other groups.
Eunicecycle
@dmsilev: you mean, “Don’t be Weird”?
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, that’s my recollection as well. And by the time they realized that Comey could be costing her the win, it was already Election Night and the votes were already being tabulated.
I think the genuine enthusiasm for Harris is a big positive we have this time that we didn’t have in 2016. And I don’t think many people on our side are going to regard her win as inevitable until the votes are counted and she has 270 or more EVs in the bag.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@MomSense: Yeah that was back when Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, the Connecticut Native American casinos were I believe poised to start eating the Trump Atlantic City casinos lunch. And they did. Good times.
Tradersym
You don’t need a campaign when you have election deniers installed as election officials in key swing states.
Betty Cracker
From CNN:
By all means, fire the professional scumbags like Wiles and LaCivita and restaff with the caddies, cabana boys and failsons who were in place when half a dozen black swans landed in the 2016 race. What could possibly go wrong?
Daoud bin Daoud
@dmsilev: Trump’s Death Star is in a long line of extremists using symbols of defeat and failure (Nazi & Confederate flags) to declare their “invincible” power.
Eunicecycle
@OzarkHillbilly: but he indicated he was still voting for Trump! I think his wife was going to write in Brian Kemp’s name. Maybe she’ll really vote for Kamala.
Suzanne
@sdhays:
This is also my sense, but I don’t know how true it is. I know we spend a lot of our efforts on trying to turn out our voters, making voting plans, reminding people about the election, checking their registration status, etc. I don’t know how much Republicans do this. I have literally never seen it in the places I’ve lived, but that’s just anecdata.
We seem to spend little effort on persuasion, and I think that’s a real shame. Feels like the GOP might be trying to make inroads here. #harpteachers #BENORMAL
Geminid
@RaflW: I think Brian Kemp is ignoring Trump here, and not submitting to him. Kemp has reasons to support his party’s ticket but he will do it on his own terms, not Trump’s.
AnonPhenom
Has everyone heard of ‘Ziklag’
Kay
CBS poll is all good news.
BR
@Geminid:
I was hoping Kemp would break with Trump but that may be too much to ask for.
Starfish
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4809725-kamala-harris-campaign-gop-initiative-prominent-republican-voices/
Harris is getting endorsements from Republicans.
OzarkHillbilly
Not surprising. If one wants to have a future in today’s GOP one must bow to the King, even if not quite so obsequiously.
Bugboy
Which is what I’ve been crowing about my entire professional career in public service. Privatize at your own risk, something MBA’s should have a grip on, right? RIGHT?
ETA: Also, about “Death Star” analogies, how typical that they missed that part about what actually, you know, HAPPENED to the Death Star?
Anoniminous
@Matt McIrvin:
Trump won in 2016 because of the archaic Electoral College. He almost won in 2020 because of also-ditto. The last GOP candidate to eke a win with a majority of votes was Bush in 2004 at 50.7%.
Kay
@Suzanne:
It’s true but only when Trump is on the ballot. Democrats now reliably turn out in specials and midterms and Republicans don’t. The Trump voters wil turn out. We’ve only matched them in enthusiasm for the last two weeks. We’re not going to win on turnout alone. It’ll be a wash.
Terraformer
As soon as T***pCo took over the RNC, anyone paying attention should have recognized that doing so was only ever about pocketing the funds rather than actually using them for their intended purpose. It’s always and forevermore about the grift with these people.
Daoud bin Daoud
@BR: Lex Luthor on ketamine loves creating chaos.
BR
@Kay:
Not trying to be a doomer, but the poll doesn’t look that great to me. Tied or behind in the blue wall states. (And somehow there are almost no undecideds in this poll.)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Matt McIrvin: Hillary was supposed to be a sure thing in the 2008 Dem primary. Perhaps people should have paid attention that she was never a sure thing?
Kay
@BR:
It’s a 6 point shift. It’s great. If she can reduce Trump’s 18-20% share w/Black voters further he really starts to struggle.
Jinchi
@dmsilev:
Yes the “Death Star” language was hilarious for so many reasons. Why not just write “Yes, we’re the baddies” on your campaign literature.
I used to think members of his campaign were trolling him with these stupid ideas, but I’ve come to realize they’re legitimate idiots.
Kay
In 2004 Democrats relied on outside groups in Ohio – hotly contested state. It was terrible. Lots and lots of people getting paid for doing nothing, no coordination, just such a disaster that locals got fed up and just tried to do it themselves. You have to manage 20 year olds. You can’t just dump a bunch of money into it and go back to your yacht.
RaflW
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t disagree, but Kemp was forced to make some fairly bitter lemonade if ya ask me.
More GOP infighting is coming, and I’m here for it.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
Evangelical churches, whose congregations are as overwhelmingly Republican as African-Americans are overwhelmingly Democratic, strongly encourage their members to vote, and leave little doubt of who they should vote for. But it’s less visible to the rest of us because it takes place within their churches, and friend-to-friend outreach from there.
BR
@Kay:
That is something I’m confused by. Trump got 12% of Black voters in 2020 according to exit polls. I don’t get how he would be getting even more now.
Bugboy
@lowtechcyclist: Nothing burns my biscuit worse than organized religion exploiting the tax-exempt loophole to influence elections.
Anoniminous
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
And her racist attacks on Obama didn’t create warm fuzzies in the black population either. White people forgot about that. I assure you black people didn’t. Black turnout in 2016 fell from 66% to 59.6% and that was the ballgame in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
AnonPhenom
When Elmo finds out he sucks at motivating people to register to vote he’ll revert to the ratphucking he knows best, turning the data he scrapes from people’s accounts over to eastern European troll farms, duplicating GRU/Putin’s 2016 effort, while claiming he iNvEnTeD the concept.
Geminid
@BR: If Kemp intends to win the Republican nomination in 2028- and I think he does- he needs to publically support Trump this year. And as the effective head of Georgia Republican party, he also wants to avoid blowing up the party over this election.
But Trump could be making a big mistake here. I saw a reference to a June AJC poll showing Kemp had a 68% approval rating among Georgia residents. This no way to win a 50-50 state.
Kay
@BR:
The big risk with Harris is that white voters would flee. It just isn’t happening. Men aren’t fleeing either- she’s picking up more women than Biden had while holding men, and all this using 18% share of Black voters for Trump, which would be almost 2x what Trump got in 2020.
That’s why we saw the “Black outreach” from Trump this past week and yesterday in GA.
M31
Happy “Kamala Harris Meets with the VP Candidates Day” to all who celebrate!
lol come on Harris announce your pick so we can stop fretting about who it might be and order some signs already
UncleEbeneezer
@lowtechcyclist: At this point in 2016, there was still a substantial number of people on our side actively whining about how they didn’t want to have to
eat their broccolivote for Hillary, and spreading anti-Hillary smears all over social media. Emailz, Goldman-Sachs, Crooked Hillary, etc. Not to mention flirting with voting for Stein or just not voting at all. There’s very little of that shit now. I don’t see hardly anyone showing any interest in Kennedy or West beyond some performative schmucks who will never learn. And nobody is bashing Kamala.BR
@Kay:
I’m just hoping the enthusiasm we’re seeing is real and is translating to significant on the ground efforts in swing states. Sitting here in California I can’t really tell, and the most I can be useful for in swing states is postcards.
Kay
@BR:
9% in 2020. So 18 is 2x.
Because literally every single poll for more than two years says he’ll get more now. I know Democrats resist this but I think they have to allow that it will or could be a factor. It’s just not realistic to ignore it or deny it. If it’s wrong that’s great, right? She’ll win by 7 instead of 4. But it’s probably not that wrong.
gene108
@BR:
Misogyny isn’t limited to any particular race or ethnic group.
Jinchi
There’s the actual vote on the day of an election and there’s “I’ll probably vote” 3 months out.
The better comparison would be to see how Trump was polling 100 days before the 2016 and 2020 elections.
lowtechcyclist
@Bugboy:
Which is what I’ve been crowing about my entire professional career in public service. Privatize at your own risk, something MBA’s should have a grip on, right? RIGHT?
Well, you know how government workers are portrayed. We’re lazy slackers who are impossible to fire, so of course the private sector can do a better job.
Having been a Federal employee for 25 years (now happily retired, but it was a great career), I can say that there are a few like that, but they’re the exceptions, and by and large we’re motivated by our work. And good luck finding a contractor that isn’t first and foremost about the profit margin rather than the work.
BR
I guess now that I think of it, Trump was particularly racist in 2020 — George Floyd, handling of COVID, etc. and that could have driven Black voters towards Biden, and we don’t have those forces right now.
Jinchi
@BR:
Kamala raised $300 million in 2 weeks from small donors. The enthusiasm is real.
gene108
@AnonPhenom:
Musk is turning the data over to his old business partner Peter Thiel, who will run it through his company Palantir’s software to figure out how to micro target these voters.
Do not underestimate the support the Trump campaign gets from rich fuckwads who have their own screwed up agenda to advance.
Scout211
I’ve read so many news articles and opinion pieces that the author seems to believe they can foresee the VP choice with their super secret anonymous sources and extra smart brains that I’m about to scream or LMAO.
It’s Shapiro! It’s Walz! It’s Kelly! It’s _______!
I’m just impressed that the real news has been kept from the press until the announcement.
Anoniminous
@BR:
He’s not. The polls are Bullshit because our Infotainment Mediums are run and staffed by bullshiters:
“The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn’t care whether what they say is true or false”
they only care about accumulation of eyeballs to sell to advertisers.
Kay
@BR:
The “field” thing is hard to judge because enthusiasm for a candidate can make it seem like “field” (paid organizers) are magicians and really it’s just that people showed up and worked hard because they were motivated by a good candidate. Romney had a good “field” – people he paid- but Republicans in Ohio complained that they “never saw anyone” because there there just wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm for Mitt Romney. I would say it like this – a good field operation can help a good candidate but field can’t rescue a bad or mediocre one.
Tenar Arha
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Frances Langum (Bluegal) of the Professional Left Podcast & CrooksAndLiars has convinced me with her coverage DJT is bankrupting the RNC, & siphoning small dollar donations in the GOP overall, with the help of Lara & Jared (via WinRed). She’s been hypothesizing the news won’t really cover it until after the campaign & the bankruptcy is filled.
ETA typo
Jinchi
Maybe I’d be a terrible politician, but I’d have no problem smacking down any candidate who personally attacked my family. I lose all respect for those who grovel before Trump after he pulls a stunt like that (and he does it a lot).
Kay
@BR:
Example. In 2012 our Democratic group did an event at a community college for Obama. The college invited Republicans, understandably, to make it bipartisan. This paid organizer showed up for Romney – a tattooed veteran and genuinely nice guy – we chatted with him all afternoon. Showed up alone. So Romney had a “good field” but no enthusiasm.
rikyrah
The Hill (@thehill) posted at 9:46 AM on Sun, Aug 04, 2024:
US Embassy encourages Americans in Lebanon to leave on “any ticket available” as tensions rise https://t.co/tQfsjtCex2
(https://x.com/thehill/status/1820108957744071055?t=Gj_LieCYrtE2APSrbf1Upw&s=03)
Jinchi
@Kay: The strangest thing about that CBS news poll is that they list six candidates for president: Harris, Trump, Kennedy, Klein, West and Oliver.
Oliver….?
WTF is Oliver?
RaflW
@Kay: As a guy I follow on Bsky says all the time while posting improved poll numbers, any poll is a snapshot not a prediction (and Kay, I know you’re a seasoned Ohio vote mover so you know this).
There’s three months to move that Black number significantly back towards 9%. It’s sounding like Harris’s visit to the Black hellenic folks is producing positive results.
(Personal sidenote: Decades ago, I tried to date a college Black Republican. Super sweet and attractive guy. But his internal struggle — his parents were successful Black entrepreneurs and fairly socially conservative, he was pretty closeted — just made it too difficult since I was a pretty strident queer campus activist. I occasionally think about him and the b.s. he tolerated from fellow “Log Cabin” Republicans.)
Ivan X
@Kay: I volunteered in Ohio in 2004, directly for the local Democratic Party, and it was total chaos with all the third party groups — the voters were confused by it and sometimes sick of it.
i did write up a short blog of my adventures there, which I’m still proud of, at https://ivanx.typepad.com — amazing that it’s still online.
Kristine
@dmsilev:
I remarked elsewhere that this sounded so Galaxy Quest. The Thermians going door to door in human disguise.
But a combo plumber/harp teacher? Totally one of ours.
Another Scott
OpenThread?
Happy F-16s Flying in Ukraine Day (fer realz this time)! Tendar (Twitter version) has pics and video.
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
AM in NC
@BR: misogyny. It was black men where he was gaining.
Harris might keep that number down.
Mike in NC
If Fat Bastard is counting on the Space Nazi to help run his campaign, he’s as stupid as we all know he is.
jonas
@Anoniminous: I don’t recall Hillary personally playing the race card in 2008, but she had some awful lieutenants like Geraldine Ferraro who definitely did.
rikyrah
That they don’t see a problem with it😒😒😒
@tiffanydcross (@TiffanyDCross) posted at 8:05 AM on Sun, Aug 04, 2024:
There was a panel on cable news yesterday discussing (Vice) President Harris racial identity without a single Black person on the panel. This kind of thing has to make it past the host, the bookers, and the executive producer. It’s beyond foolish. Have at it guys.
(https://x.com/TiffanyDCross/status/1820083732662960635?t=XIRlvrTYF2AavrC_Squ5pg&s=03)
Omnes Omnibus
I have trouble accepting that 18-20% number. I accept that the GOP is attracting a more diverse crowd (I don’t understand it, but I accept it), but I really doubt that they have nearly doubled their Black vote in four years.
ETA: I am calling shenanigans.
Glory b
@gene108: Ahem, actually, black voters are the most likely to turn out, especially black women.
Remember that Steve Kornaki checked in the back for a typo when it was reported that over 90% of the voters in the black belt of GA (specifically, Albany) voted in 2019.
I laugh thinking about the Republicans who claim cheating because many black precincts report zero votes for Republicans. No, we just REALLY don’t like you.
As they say in my community, put some respect on our name.
https://about.bgov.com/brief/election-demographics-and-voter-turnout/
Kay
@Jinchi:
I think he’s the Libertarian :)
I have some vague memory of grifter RFK Jr. trying to attach to their ballot line like the parasite he is and they didn’t buy it, in a funny way.
p.a.
tRump has the active help of the BBC- Billionaire Boys Club, the JCTE- Jeebus Chose tRump Evangelicals, the WSWTD- Who Should We Threaten Don? gunners, and the passive help of the MSM. The MSM isn’t aiding him currently, but you know in their hearts what they want to do. Should not be enough without a good party apparatus. Oh, he also has the g-d damned Constitution: Electoral College.
We have the usual suspects and, importantly, the Fed Gvt this time around. Garland needs to be proactive in protecting the electoral process, not reactive. Don’t forget: official Presidential Acts are protected!
KatKapCC
(Don’t know if any blog people will see it in the previous thread — the term is “Tikkun Olam”, not “Tikkum”. Correction, please?)
gene108
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think mostly men, though some women too, are attracted to Trump’s brand of machismo. The loud unapologetic fuck you to people he’s cross with, whether he’s telling the truth or not doesn’t matter.
Democrats welcoming gays, transgender people, neurodivergent people, being concerned with women’s issues, worrying about illegal immigrants, etc. isn’t the sort of tough talking “leadership” some people, including minorities, are interested in.
Another Scott
I was bored, so I did some poking around OpenSecrets just now.
TCFFG’s fundraising numbers? $75,000,000.00 of it is from one guy – Timothy Mellon. To TCFFG’s “Make America Great Again, Inc.” $50M on May 31.
TCFFG was convicted on 34 felony counts on May 30.
Taxes are far, far too low on the MotUs. We need to fix that.
TCFFG will have plenty of money, but he does not have grass-roots support the way Kamala and Democrats do. We need to remember that and take advantage of it.
Grr…,
Scott.
Kay
@Ivan X:
Oh, that’s funny. That you remember it too. I wasn’t following politics online in 2004 so I missed the entire “Kerry actually won” kerfuffle – I’m grateful to have missed it. I knew we had lost by 3 PM though. I was the person who went to precincts and recorded the numbers they post and called it in to Kerry people in Toledo. I knew their religious fundamentalist turnout was very good, including Catholics, just because I am very familiar with this area. I knew they were going to beat us. I had to arrange my face when I went back to the volunteers because I didn’t want them to be discouraged. It was horrible.
gene108
@Glory b:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voter-turnout-2018-2022/
p.a.
I tend to agree, but I wonder if the growth of “storefront” churches- among the Latinx also- is changing the minority political calculus relative to mainline AME & African-American Baptist churches and Hispanic Catholic churches.
Omnes Omnibus
@gene108: My point is more that that I have difficulty believing that the 18-20% number is accurate. That makes me iffy about polls that use that projection as part of their method.
NotMax
It is unclear what the group will do next.
Do the phrase “cut and run” ring a bell?
//
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think it’s the best information we have. If it’s wrong, well, nice surprise on election day but I don’t understand the utility in dismissing it. It means Trump will work harder for Black voters and so will Democrats. Nothing wrong with that.
Rand Careaga
@Anoniminous:
Fun factoid: the last time the Republicans took the White House with a majority of the popular vote without someone named either “Nixon” or “Bush” on the ticket? 1928.
Starfish
@M31: We’re not fretting. We are speculating so we can write our fan fiction. Whether she picks the astronaut, the transportation secretary who just wants to be a dad, or Santa Claus, we will support her at least 85%.
RaflW
@Another Scott: “Taxes are far, far too low on the MotUs. We need to fix that.” Yeppers!
Here’s why a-holes like Mellon (and a lot of other richie-riches) hate Dems: “The Inflation Reduction Act created the CAMT, which imposes a 15% minimum tax on the adjusted financial statement income (AFSI) of large corporations for taxable years beginning after Dec. 31, 2022. The CAMT generally applies to large corporations with average annual financial statement income exceeding $1 billion.”
That’s a lot of words, but what matters is: Profitable corps can no longer ‘deduct’ and ‘write off’ bullshit to pay no federal tax while reporting tons of income to Wall Street. Good, g-dammit. We need moar of that!
Kay
@Starfish:
Lol.
I will speculate on the VP race anytime. It’s fun.
Villago Delenda Est
The motivation behind outsourcing for this crowd is to maximize the grift. It’s the only thing these hideous people think about.
Villago Delenda Est
@RaflW: Also, bring back Thomas Jefferson’s estate taxes. Stick it to worthless drones like Mellon, Uday, and Qusay.
Kay
@Starfish:
i have enjoyed watching the VP candidates compete with one another while pretending that it’s all “organic” :)
Glory b
@jonas: I don’t either. She was very strong with black voters, she & Bill have a long, very positive relationship with black voters. We did better economically under Clinton than we had since slavery.
The mothers of the movement, mothers of innocent black police victims, spoke movingly at the convention, with other black women essentially threatening Bernie disruptors to just try it.
The Clinton’s always knew how popular they were with black voters & preserved the relationship.
XeckyGilchrist
As long as they have enough for some lawyers and legislators and collaborators to “win” the election in court, none of the rest of that matters.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Don’t we want an accurate picture of where we stand? If we see a piece of data that doesn’t fit historical patterns, shouldn’t we take a closer look at it? First, to see if it is true. Second, to see why? Like I said, I can accept that the GOP is getting more diverse. Doubling their Black vote in four years without a significant policy or candidate switch causes me to want some more digging to be done.
Villago Delenda Est
@Steve LaBonne: You got there way before me, and I want to acknowledge that!
Starfish
@rikyrah: I think the point she is making is that you need to have Black people on your staff that can point these things out to you. A lot of news organizations are not nearly as diverse as the community they are supposed to be serving. There was some New Orleans paper that won some prize, and they had a picture of the newsroom and everyone there was white.
Starfish
@Omnes Omnibus: Both numbers are under the crazification factor so I am willing to accept that these numbers are driven by forces beyond my understanding. But how do you reduce numbers that are under the crazification factor? You have to convince crazy people to vote for your person or stay home.
Glory b
@gene108: I think the change has to do with voters suppression. It’s faded into the background, but there are still many places where black voters wait for hours outside (at least they repealed the laws making it a crime to give them water, food or a seat for an elderly person) because their original polling places are closed, etc.
There’s a state, I can’t remember which one) requiring ID but also not taking zppoin6to get ID until January 2025.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s poll after poll after poll after poll. I don’t want to get back into this but if you didn’t accept that Biden had deteriorated among Black voters since 2020 (which I accept) then you’ll probably have trouble accepting 18% for Trump. Harris has made some of it up. She could make up still more. In the meantime we should work for every Black vote. The only downside would be we get a surprise like North Carolina.
rikyrah
Chris D. Jackson (@ChrisDJackson) posted at 6:38 PM on Sat, Aug 03, 2024:
Headline when Trump leads by 1.5%: “Trump Holds Clear Lead Over Biden”
Headline when Harris leads by 1.5%: “Harris and Trump Are Tied”
The media’s double standards are so insufferable. 🙄 https://t.co/fi0X3LioBk
(https://x.com/ChrisDJackson/status/1819880523663339809?t=e1Z33foTwUNDM7X6x5dgcQ&s=03)
Matt McIrvin
@dmsilev: Fandom for the bad guys in Star Wars is a weirdly persistent meme among assholes. You could already see Dick Cheney doing it back in the 2000s. They’re really attracted to the idea that you’re not truly tough until you embrace the Power of the Dark Side. “The Empire was right” is a popular sort of contrarian meme and video theme. And they kind of ignore how that actually works out in the movies–I guess they buy some elements of the fantasy universe but not others.
(Granted, it can be tempting. Right after the candidate switch, I made a joke on John Scalzi’s blog about how we can “now witness the power of this FULLY OPERATIONAL KHive.”)
oldgold
Everyone has, including me, predicted a tight race. Now, I think there is a decent chance, not probable but well within the reasonably possible range, that there could be a Democratic landslide.
A lot of Trump’s political strength has been premised on the notion he is going to win. Cast that in serious doubt and he is a fat Elvis afternoon lounge act – just a sad, sweating, sneering curiosity from yesterday.
Glory b
@lowtechcyclist: Black churches had “Souls to the polls” Sundays, making going to vote a post church service outing on Sundays, people offering rides, sometimes donated food (grandma’s pound cake!), making it a fun thing to do.
Then, Republicans eliminated Sunday voting as soon as they realized it wasn’t favoring just white evangelicals after all.
lowtechcyclist
@Jinchi:
Wasn’t he the tyke with the big appetite?
I think someone said yesterday that he’s the Libertarian Party candidate.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Trump still wins on the “toughness” question and “who will make you financially better off?” which is evidence of how ridiculous these perceptions can be.
Starfish
@Kay: Someone shared some YouTube video about the young folks discussing memes and explaining the entire brat thing. These young folks did not appreciate that memes have been around as long as they have been alive.
Back in the LiveJournal days of blogging, there was a johnxjohn community that posted pictures or animated gifs of the true love between John Edwards and John Kerry.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Starfish:
The goal of statistics, sampling, polling is to separate signal from noise. The raw data do not in and of themselves give a clear picture of the underlying truth. I am no statistician, but I have been fortunate to have learned from one.
So, don’t ignore the numbers. Just keep in mind that you may not understand what they are saying.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
The “toughness” doesn’t bother me because this country operates exclusively (and in a backward way, frankly) on a strictly stereotypical male version of “tough”.
But I agree with you on the economics questions – that makes me want to bash my head into the table.
Shana
@Bugboy: kind of like how the right tried to co-opt Born in the USA without actually listening to the lyrics
RaflW
@Villago Delenda Est: Yep. My dad’s estate paid taxes. It was all kind of a surprise, he’d laid aside more than any of us knew, and he happened to go at a time when the stock and bond markets were irrationally exuberant, and the estate tax threshold was a lot lower.
I looked at it as a reflection of good luck & certain privileges. But also a long bet the gov’t had made: They paid for his college via ROTC, and his Int’t MBA via the G.I. Bill.
The public investment in his leadership (he also worked for three years as an Ensign and Lt. JG) paid off literally 60 years later as a small bit of estate tax (small relative to clever assholes like Mellon who I’m sure have structured their estates to evade as much tax as possible. My dad didn’t expect to expire rich, so no loophole-seeking.)
Kay
@Starfish:
George W Bush won Ohio by demonizing gay people. That was what dragged him over the finish line – hatred and fear of gay people. I hope gay Republicans understand that.
M31
@Shana: There was a Dr Who episode where they time travel to what at first seems to be the Titanic, but then it turns out to be a space ship doing tourist runs to Earth, and they ask ‘Uh, why did you name this the Titanic?” and are told “We named it after the most famous Earth ship” and the Dr asks, “did they tell you WHY it was famous?”
lolol
RaflW
@Kay: Gay Republicans are, to use an au courant theme, weird. Or so obsessed with taxes that they willfully blinker themselves. Oh, and some gay people are racist as heck. There’s that, too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Please note that I said in both of my comments that I believe that the GOP has increased its support among African Americans. If it has actually doubled its support, I would like to see more information about why this happened.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: A few months ago, there were all these supposedly liberal pundits speculating about how Trump would be better for Palestinians than Biden because he was too much of a tough guy to let Netanyahu roll him. And I just couldn’t believe it. It was like they had forgotten what happened every time Trump got in the room with some authoritarian leader he’d been blustering about. He LOVED those guys. He’d just roll over and every one of them would become his new best friend.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@AnonPhenom: Purging has been a strategy for many election cycles. I expect we have people fighting it but I don’t know specifics.
PA has an online system for checking your registration and mail-in ballot status, and I check our status every few weeks to make sure no hanky-panky has occurred.
That said, the voter purge thing is unamerican and fucking infuriating and I would love to know how we could disable it permanently as a strategey.
Starfish
@RaflW: I think that I knew some gay AND trans Republicans last election. They were not wealthy. They took Trump’s gay outreach seriously.
This is from 2017.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-gay-backers-no-longer-see-him-as-the-great-straight-hope
RaflW
@oldgold: Fat Elvis, or really just a washed up insult comic playing regional casino lounge sets.
MomSense
@Kay:
There was evidence of vote tampering in Ohio but Kerry felt that it wouldn’t go well if he challenged it. There was also classic voter suppression. It was pouring rain and voters in predominantly black precincts in Cleveland waited three or four hours in the storm because there were not enough voting machines.
I believe a few county employees were convicted of vote tampering in Cuyahoga County – at least one and maybe as many as three but it has been a long time since I knew the details and I’ve had to purge a lot from my hard drive since then.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Too bad the Devil’s Dictionary doesn’t have a definition of “pundit.” My admittedly inferior submission: “someone who is willing to be paid to say stupid things in public.”
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Right. It’s really prevalent in the US, even among liberals. It’s partly our media. We have really conventional people in political media. The kind of people who think Harris’ husband’s affair before he was married to her is scandalous front page news. They’re brittle. They don’t adapt and adjust well.
Matt McIrvin
@oldgold: It’s nice to think about a landslide but, no. Not in the sense of the landslides we used to have in the old days.
I think that ONLY the Republican Party could even conceivably have a landslide win in the modern environment, because about 40-45% of the electorate is bedrock committed to voting Republican in every single election and there’s no way to break that.
But even that would take some kind of catastrophe. Democratic loyalty is weaker but still strong in the sense that most of our core is not going to switch Republican, they just might stay home or leave some races blank. So every election is a game of inches. I don’t see anything different in current polling, either–all this enthusiasm is just the way to motivate your base to win the game of inches. It’s good but it’s not indicative of a gigantic wave.
RaflW
@Starfish: Y’know, any subset of America is going to have a spectrum of folks. That the gay or LGBTQAI community has folks who are low-info voters or just glance at a few headlines, well that’s just more fuel that outreach to those around us matter.
I was at one of the big nat’l LGBTQ conferences the weekend of the Women’s Marches (NGLTF, Philly 2017). Randomly sat next to a guy who was a member of Mar-a-Lago. He said Trump was always really welcoming and cordial to his gay clientele and he hung some hope on that.
I thought he was deluding himself. Trump was just buttering up his marks, and didn’t discriminate when it came to making bank. But the incentives changed for Donnie when he managed to grab the WH.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@BR:
Speaking of Musk, I’m currently reading Trevor Noah’s autobiography Born a Crime. Noah describes the flip side of the system that benefited Musk, what it was like being black and mixed-race under apartheid. It’s pretty horrific. This book is a difficult read.
It somehow makes me hate Musk even more.
MomSense
@gene108:
Misogyny? Biden was losing Black and Hispanic voters before the debate. We are hoping to get them back now.
bbleh
@rikyrah: WaPo less than an hour ago:
CBS poll shows Harris gaining on Trump
“Vice President Harris has a one-point edge nationally against former president Donald Trump …”
“Trump and Harris are tied in key battleground states …”
At NO POINT in the story is there any mention of Trump being ahead in any way in any place.
And yet … she’s “gaining” on him.
Kay
@MomSense:
I disagee with who is responsible for this. It is the job of the county Bds of Elections to make sure there are enough voting machines. The Sec of State doesn’t make granular decisions on precinct level supplies and staffing. One of the things we did with Obama in 2008 and 2012 is go thru a checklist on issues like that. If there was a problem we fixed it, county level. It can be taken care of months ahead. If you’re setting up a precinct in a college county and you don’t allow for higher youth turnout that’s your fault. 100%.
Matt McIrvin
@Starfish: It’s seemed to me like there are a lot of single-issue gun voters out there with wild ranges of opinions on other things, but they wholly buy the rhetoric about guns guaranteeing all other political rights by securing the right to revolution, and they’re gonna vote Republican to keep their guns.
I’m thinking now of a trans woman I know who consistently voted Republican back in the 2000s even though she despised most of their agenda just because the Democrats were all gun grabbers. Don’t know how she’s leaning in this cycle.
Kay
@MomSense:
Every Ohio county has a Bd of Elections with 1/2 Dems and 1/2 GOP (or an occasional Independent). There’s just no excuse for the Democrats on that board not ensuring they have enough voting machines. They can’t control state laws that suppress votes but they can do everything else possible for their voters.
RaflW
@Kay: God help me, the ‘scandal’ involving Emhoff is infuriating. Just the worst instincts of our hyena press.
Who the fuck cares what happened inside the private, previous marriage of the spouse of the candidate? Melania’s nude porn pics didn’t get this much salivating coverage (nor did her use of possible falsehoods on her immigration application).
I suppose some of it is the idiotic obsession with ‘balance’. The press has been forced to write some pretty bad headlines about Vance and even Trump. Here’s a chance to be tough (cough, bullshit) on Democrats.
gwangung
@Omnes Omnibus: Mayyyybe 18-20% with Biden.
But that’s not a number that’ll be stable with Harris. Absolutely will not be. Being Black probably stops any leakage or trend; the quasi-Obama vibe (where Black people SEE the enthusiasm from white people) is gonna drop it down to 2020 levels or below.
Baud
@bbleh:
Good catch.
Starfish
@RaflW: These were not low-information voters. They were people who actively sought out information on Trump and his gay outreach. That thing where he had the pride flag, even though it was upside down, that was meaningful to them.
I am thinking that maybe he has lost some LGBTQAI support given all the anti-gay stuff happening in schools. LGBTQAI parents are going to care about that.
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh: Honestly? From an Electoral College perspective, one point ahead is behind and “gaining on him” is accurate. Judging from 2016, we need at least a three-point margin, probably more.
Kay
@RaflW:
I refused to read it. They are stodgier than the local Rotary Club, the media’s political teams.
Starfish
@Matt McIrvin: I agree! There are a significant number of trans gun voters because they are going to protect the home that they have for themselves.
catclub
Vladimir Putin.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Mr. Bemused Senior: You got me paging through The Devil’s Dictionary for other suitable words. So far my best candidate is Contributor.
Matt McIrvin
@Starfish: As the anti-trans stuff becomes more overt, though, “vote for me because I’ll protect your right to shoot my guys when they come to murder you” probably isn’t that attractive a pitch.
Starfish
@RaflW: Here is a good article on that topic that I read today.
https://dianeravitch.net/2024/08/04/robert-hubbell-get-ready-for-the-media-to-turn-cynical/
RaflW
@Matt McIrvin: One of the reasons I really want Walz (but will accept the veep no matter!) is that I think he can make a pretty good argument that he’s a hunter and the Democrats are not out to take your guns.
Will it persuade many voters? I suspect gun-humpers are pretty inflexible. But why not be positioned to try? We can oppose assault rifles and support background checks without banning everything (an impossibility anyway with 400M guns in circulation).
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Another reason we need to make sure as many people as possible see that Helsinki pic where Putin looks smug and Trump looks like he’s been taken to the woodshed.
Baud
I hope everyone becomes a Republican. Then the Democratic Party can focus on what I think is important.
RaflW
@Starfish: His concluding paragraph is absolutely right (all of it is, really). No letting off the gas. Push back on media cynicism and laziness. Get offline and go help!
(Oops, I’m online now… :) )
LadySuzy
@Tradersym: You don’t need a campaign when you have a national TV channel, plus the majority of AM radio stations, brainwashing its audience and sending them to the voting booth.
lashonharangue
@MomSense:
I have a hypothesis but no data. Those demographics were disproportional economically impacted by Covid restrictions. Any jackal know of data to support this?
jonas
@Kay:
Well, at least it’s just the candidate’s spouse and a former marriage at that. Can you imagine if a major party’s nominee had done something like this, or banged a porn star or something? ZOMG the media meltdown….oh, wait.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
The problem is that many voters are inclined to look more favorably on the ‘tougher’ candidate. So you can’t just not be bothered by it unless you want to give up on those voters.
LadySuzy
@Suzanne: in the case of the right, the persuasion is done on TV (FOX) , on the multiple right-wing radio stations, and in many evangelical churches. That’s why elections are close, even if republicans don’t have a big ground game and don’t knock on a lot of doors.
Media wise, there’s nothing comparable on the democratic side.
Citizen Alan
@OzarkHillbilly: He’s still a cowering fool. As if personally delivering georgia for donald trump would protect kemp and raftsberger from retaliation during trump’s second term revenge campaign. I If they had any sense, they would recognize that their political futures, if not their lives, depend upon donald trump losing and act accordingly.
catclub
@Jinchi: The ‘Predictit’ elections marketplace also listed 5 or 6 candidates. Gavin Newsom was one.
I was thinking of taking the no side on the no-hope candidates like RFKjr. It think the commissions will kill your 1 cent per contract profit.
Matt McIrvin
@Starfish: At the 2016 Republican convention, Trump literally said he was going to have an LGBT-friendly administration. Seemed like he was straining to read the abbreviation “LGBT”, but he said it. I recall speculation that that was Ivanka’s doing. The true observation that Trump actually did not personally give a shit about these issues was part of the “Actually, Trump is a moderate” buzz that went on in that cycle.
But of course the problem with voting the person, not the party is that in practice, the party is what you’re going to get. Trump not caring about LGBT rights meant that he was also willing to humor reactionaries’ preferences on this if that gave him power.
Bill Arnold
@Tradersym:
Election theft committed by such officials would be the opening shots of a civil war, which might start out non-violent but would not remain that way. There would be no forgiveness.
catclub
@MomSense: I think I saw that via either Meidas Touch or one of the Lincoln project spinoffs.
What that tells is what the Lincoln project says in that recent ad. Trump is unchanged in 20 years ( at least). Still a crook, still a racist.
jonas
@lashonharangue:
Unfortunately I can only offer anecdata, but Black and Hispanic men were disproportionately affected not just by Covid, but by the inflation a few years ago, and for a lot of them, wages did not keep up with the COL in a lot of places. In fact, higher wages, esp in the service sector, has allowed employers to be more selective about hiring and there’s a perception — no idea if it’s true — that this has advantaged women more then men without a high school degree.
This leaves a lot of men of color susceptible to the argument that Bidennomics has stacked things against them.
jonas
@Bill Arnold:
Unfortunately, that’s precisely the Republican game plan — install a bunch of election officials at various levels who will simply refuse to certify any Democratic win. Tie things up in court forever and just count on the ensuing chaos (and possible violence) to favor MAGA.
Mr. Bemused Senior
And yet there are still people [how many?] who will tell you that they admire Trump because he’s a successful businessman. Hell, to judge by the market value of Trump Media I suppose you can look at it that way. A sucker born every minute.
Michael Bersin
@dmsilev:
“…or neighborly gestures such as recommending plumbers or harp teachers…”
That’s a tiny universe. Also, generally, a very liberal one.
As “an official harp mover and patron of the arts” (my spouse is a harpist) I assisted at the recent national harp conference in June. There were around 300 harpists who attended.
There is a minimal level of affluence associated with that step of searching for a harp teacher – you not only have to have a harp (ranging from very expensive to you’ll be paying off that concert grand from your gig income for the next twenty-five years of your life) you need a harp moving vehicle (also more expensive than your average vehicle).
In our right wingnut state, according to my spouse, there are approximately 20 professional working harpists and approximately 100 serious harp students.
That’s not a particularly large universe of marks for the grifters…
MomSense
@lashonharangue:
They were also uncomfortable with his age. I know I was in denial about this for a long time but that’s how voters assessed him.
WereBear
It seems that the Republican party offers a hate for almost every demographic.
On the other hand, a slur like “childless cat ladies” affects everyone who knows and loves a childless cat lady. There’s lots of them who do community organizing and support. Rescue people are a likeable bunch!
I guess it really depends which side of that ancient Egyptian balance one’s heart truly lies.
Citizen Alan
@M31: And then more recently, a bunch of rich hubristic assholes decided to name the submarine they would use to take people down to ghoulishly explore the Titanic wreckage as the Titan. With predictable results.
Michael Bersin
@WereBear:
The Venn diagram of harpists and “cat ladies” is pretty much a circle.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: Black unemployment is at an all-time low and the white-black gap in employment has actually narrowed substantially, though it’s far from gone.
The racial wage gap for men expanded during the pandemic recession but contracted afterward, and is also at an all-time low–though, again, it’s far from gone. So I guess the question is whether voters are comparing things to where they were or to where they should be.
Matt McIrvin
@RaflW: Does “the Democrats won’t take your hunting guns” work any more? My impression is that most people who are single-issue gun voters don’t care about hunting guns, they want an AR-15 with a bump stock. We ARE coming to take their guns.
catclub
Mark Burnett has a lot to answer for.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Margarine Traitor Green and Brad Raffensperger have been purged from the Georgia voting roles by the GQp’s idiotic take them off the rolls portal.
Villago Delenda Est
@Matt McIrvin: The AR-15 was designed to hunt man. It’s what it’s good for. That’s what these dickweeds want.
Villago Delenda Est
Which is why the Murdoch media empire is leading the charge.
Eunicecycle
@Kay: tthat’s absolutely the truth. With the gay marriage (banning gay marriage) amendment on the ballot people came out in droves. I’ve voted in the same precinct for over 35 years, and never before or since did I see the turnout there was that day. Of course the amendment passed and GWB won Ohio.
Kent
I lived through it like everyone else.
I think there was also an element of “we beat McCain and Romney easily. How the hell hard can it be to beat a ridiculous grifter like Trump?!?
The polls also led to a false sense of confidence
Today in 2024 no one underestimates Trump. Nor do they have absolute faith in polling.
Eunicecycle
@Villago Delenda Est: that was Raffensburger’s idea so I think it’s great. I’m sure it was meant as a way to depress Democratic turn out, but people never learn most weapons like this are double-edged.
Kent
Not so much the bump stocks. They are pretty niche. But hunting has transitioned away from traditional bolt-action maple stock rifles to AR style rifles.
An actual AR-15 with the standard .223 round is too light for big game and even large deer. But gun manufacturers are increasingly coming out with larger caliber rifles with AR or military styling.
But most gun nuts don’t really do much if any hunting. Or they have a big gun collection that includes both AR and hunting style rifles along with shotguns and handguns. I have relatives like that
The thing to remember about gun politics is that guns also serve as a proxy for race. Abortion does the same thing. No one questions a GOPer who says they are voting for Trump because of 2nd Amendment rights. But they would look at him crosswise if he said he was voting for Trump because of race. With the GOP everything is about race. Guns and abortion are just convenient camouflage to hide the real issue.
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: Not quite a doubling, as far as I can tell, more like a factor of 1.5. Trump got 12% of the black vote in 2020, which was already an improvement over previous cycles (that’s from adjusted exit poll crosstabs and is consistent, probably correct).
The most recent polls of the Trump-Biden 2024 race I can find, from the spring, had Trump’s level of black support anywhere from 9% to 23%, seemed like the median was somewhere around 18% or so.
I’m guessing the switch to Harris is going to be a big reset here. But there isn’t really good data yet. She could surely lose some guys on misogynistic grounds but there’s no way that’s going to be the dominant effect.
Matt McIrvin
…Just saw a CBS/YouGov LV poll showing that Trump still gets 18% of black voters against Harris… but that one also showed 24% of them going for Trump in July, one of the better ones for Trump.
It also shows a big boost in “definitely will vote” enthusiasm among black RVs, which could suggest a shift in the turnout situation.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-harris-trump-cbs-news/
terry chay
@gene108: 2020 had incumbency advantage.
2016 doesn’t take into account that while Trump may not have spent as much as Clinton, the RNC did. Look up all the “yard sign in the rust belt” stories in 2016 showed that the RNC had internal polling that the blue wall was gettable and they must have spent heavily there (it’s not like those Yard signs but themselves). They also coordinated heavily with the Russians who heavily invested in a bot network specifically targeting urban minorities in those states. It is the drop in that cohorts turnout that barely tipped the election (the actual Republican vote actually declined in those states cs 2012).
So the question centers around whether raiding the RNC coffers not only takes away the GOTV, but does it disrupt the data modelling and coordination signallng? I don’t know, but my thinking is likely yes. They depended on incumbency advantage in 2020 so the republicans have been flying bribe and not adjusting to things for almost 8 years now. Go take a look at The Rio Olympics facilities to see how quickly things can fall apart if you neglect them.
Shalimar
@Glory b: If there are 10 votes for candidate X in a district and you want to cheat, you change the result to 2 or 3, not 0. Because with 2 or 3, the actual voters might talk to each other and think they were the only ones who voted for X. With 0, they know their vote wasn’t counted. So 0 votes is almost always 0 actual votes.
terry chay
@Rand Careaga: Eisenhower and Reagan be like?
Gvg
@Matt McIrvin: admiring the empire was a thing right after Star Wars came out and always has been. They had cooler uniforms and music. Lucas did that rather deliberately because he was mimicking the films post WWII that he watched as a boy where the allies, especially Americans were portrayed as rather scruffy and the Nazis had really good looking uniforms but were horrible people….who lost in the end. Not choosing looks over right was part of the moralism and virtue signaling of the time. So naturally some people missed the point and they tended to be of a certain type of course.
I was a kid and I noticed it by the next Halloween if not sooner.
Also started noticing that some people don’t separate fiction from real life that well about then and didn’t understand authors are trying to make a certain point, and pick the circumstances.
Bugboy
@lowtechcyclist: I’ll have 40 in FRS (Florida Retirement System) by ’27, which as long as the geniuses trying to sell off the government don’t screw that up I’ll be sitting pretty. I have a pal that had a brain tumor removed then stroke on the O/T, lost most of his right side functionality and the ACOE took absolutely the best care of him and kept him working to boot.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: In my experience contractors are about a) the money and b) using the fact that they have a contract with the government to get more business. We had one manager at our uniform company tell my boss that they bid our contract at less than it cost just so they could tell other companies they had the city contract! He seemed to think that made giving us shitty service ok.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: People seem to think TCFG can bring back 2019, except for the lower wages. It’s a delusion. “I was better off under TCFG” is all about being before Covid.
Betty Cracker
@Kent:
It’s almost as if the primordial drive to control women doesn’t exist in that scenario.