Lest anyone forget…
Trump wants to lose and the MAGA faithful should honor his wishes. https://t.co/XtPhrGQOEj
— zeddy (@Zeddary) November 2, 2024
Americans in Puerto Rico can't vote for US president. Their anger at Trump is shaping the race https://t.co/JoFngfuESp
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 28, 2024
Nicky Jam, a Puerto Rican and Dominican reggaeton singer, rescinded his endorsement of Donald Trump in the latest blowback over a comedian’s insult at a Trump rally on Sunday that Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage.” https://t.co/Fv8N8MySov
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 30, 2024
I’m here to tell you that even though some have forgotten … I remember.
I remember what it was like when Trump was president.
I remember what he did and said, about Puerto Rico…
About our people …I remember after Hurricane Maria devastated our island…
Trump blocked… pic.twitter.com/oK8LqTUDit— Marc Anthony (@MarcAnthony) October 28, 2024
Xochitl Gonzalez, at the Atlantic — “Trump Pays the Price for Insulting Puerto Rico”:
… As a Nuyorican—what New Yorkers from the Puerto Rican diaspora affectionately call ourselves—I am keenly attuned to any mention of the island and my people. And for most of this campaign, little has been said. So it was a surprise to see that on the same day that Hinchcliffe spoke at Madison Square Garden, Vice President Harris released a video outlining her plan for Puerto Rico and visited a Puerto Rican restaurant on the campaign trail in Philadelphia.
The coincidence was fortuitous, because it offered Puerto Ricans a real-time split screen. Many saw Harris attempting to learn and address the concerns of Puerto Ricans; Trump showed that he was willing to welcome Latinos to his tent only if they were complicit with his racist worldview. The language used at the Trump rally “was so simple, and it just very genuinely showed how they really feel,” Paola Ramos, the author of Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America, told me…
This year, Puerto Rican celebrities including Marc Anthony have already been working to remind voters of all of this while campaigning for Harris. After Sunday’s rally, Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez shared Harris’s video and announced that they were voting for her.
But none of these endorsements has as much significance as that of the musician Bad Bunny’s. His fan base is enormous and young, and includes both men and women. And unlike many stars who avoid bringing politics to their platforms, San Benito, as he’s known to his fans, has made politics, and particularly the politics of colonialism, central to his art. He’s been active as Puerto Rico has approached its election for governor, also happening on November 5, purchasing billboards arguing that a vote for the ruling party is a vote for corruption. His take has weight.
For months, as megawatt celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have thrown their support behind Harris, I’ve heard people asking where Bad Bunny has been. Why hasn’t Bad Bunny been helping Harris? The answer seemed obvious to me: Despite being a U.S. citizen and a global superstar, Bad Bunny can’t vote in presidential elections.
Bad Bunny is a resident of Puerto Rico, and disenfranchisement is just one of the many inequities that define islanders’ second-class citizenship. But even if Puerto Rican residents can’t vote, they can influence the diaspora on the mainland, which can. And that’s what Bad Bunny is doing.
After Trump’s rally, Bad Bunny shared a segment of Harris’s Puerto Rico video with his 45.7 million Instagram followers several times. Specifically, he selected the segment in which Harris says, “There’s so much at stake in this election for Puerto Rican voters and for Puerto Rico,” and where she reminds people of Trump throwing paper towels to island residents after the hurricane…
The more that the “floating garbage” line is repeated—on television, on the radio—the more riled up Puerto Ricans are getting. More Puerto Ricans live on the mainland than on the island now. One result of the botched response to María has been, ironically, the migration of thousands of islanders—many to swing states such as Pennsylvania, where there are now nearly half a million Puerto Rican residents. Tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans currently reside in Georgia and Arizona as well. The Democratic strategist José Parra told The Hill that what happened at Madison Square Garden might make a real difference: “If Pennsylvania swings toward the Democrats, I think you can look back on this as a pivotal moment.”…
Jennifer Lopez responds to Puerto Rico remarks made at Trump’s rally while speaking at a campaign event for Vice President Kamala Harris in Las Vegas this week. pic.twitter.com/ijR6BcJv6D
— AP Entertainment (@APEntertainment) November 1, 2024
The Puerto Rico “joke” kicks open the door to pick out Trump’s past hostility to the island — eight days before an election where four swing states have more Puerto Rican residents than their 2020 margins. https://t.co/YsEkMxpbl5
— Philip Bump (@pbump) October 29, 2024
Puerto Rican Pennsylvania voter: I was leaning toward voting for Trump, but not anymore. Puerto Rico means a lot to me. Those comments at Madison Square Garden changed everything. I have to stand on the right side of history pic.twitter.com/xffLUQNyG8
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) November 1, 2024
Thank you for your service @TonyHinchcliffe! pic.twitter.com/m4hq1Q91B9
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) November 3, 2024
Remember — Sharing is caring!
Baud
The one thing I admire about MAGA, they have some pride when people insult them. So much so that they’ll invent insults just to have pride. It would be nice if the people who MAGA insult had some pride as well. We’ll see.
Jeffro
Chris LaCivita is like, “WHEW…thank you Tony Hinchcliffe, I thought I was gonna get blamed for this Hindenburg-esque ending on Tuesday!”
LOLOL
trumpov’s enemies list will be long as he goes down in flames, but who cares? They’ll all be Republicans who betrayed their country by bending the knee to trumpov. We’re going to need a 10th circle of Hell for them.
hells littlest angel
Digging his way out of this hole is the hardest Trump has ever worked in his life.
NotMax
¡La victoria será nuestra!
hells littlest angel
@Baud: That’s not pride, it’s hair-trigger resentment.
Anonymous At Work
Wow, look at the Dolts on the Divan. Either they are listening to TFG dig his own grave, or [Honestly, I can’t think of anything that isn’t way too horrible].
Peale
@Jeffro: I’m going to assume that they landed on the guy who came up with the “they eat cats” for this “mistake” because he’s fictious.
lowtechcyclist
There is still one day left for GOP pols to repudiate their support for Trump. Last chance, guys.
That they’re still on board with him, after all he’s said and done just in the past week or so alone, says all anyone needs to know about who they are, no matter what the media people say to try to sell this or that GOP pol to us as a decent human being.
They’re all trash,
Baud
Via reddit, good news for XKCD fans.
SpaceUnit
He pissed off Aubrey Plaza too. Now he’s really fucked.
The Audacity of Krope
@hells littlest angel: Not gonna lie, the one time I wish we acted a little more tribal is when a prominent ally makes an imperfect remark.
We’ve underbussed folk for way less than this.
Wait, I love Aubrey Plaza. What happened?
KatKapCC
It is horrible that Puerto Ricans can’t vote in US elections. I hope that’s something that can be changed one day.
Percysowner
@Peale:
Speaking of Springfield in Clark County Ohio, Ohio sheriff lieutenant says he ‘will not help’ Harris supporters who need assistance
He has since “apologized” and is working on the Ambien defense. “I was on sleep medication. I don’t even remember posting. I didn’t know it was on my FaceBook until a friend pointed it out to me!” The sheriff’s department has come down HARD on him /sarcasm, reprimanding him for misuse of social media. Oh, Ohio.
Old Dan and Little Ann
My wife’s friend’s maga mom dressed up as trash on Halloween. We used to enjoy being in her company but that ship sailed many years ago.
Jay
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/01/nx-s1-5168877/2024-election-pac-trump-porn-sites
KatKapCC
@The Audacity of Krope: It was related to the Puerto Rico comments. She’s half-Puerto Rican, I believe. She told the “comic” to go eff himself, among other things.
Baud
@KatKapCC:
They can vote if they live in a state. No solution except to make PR a state.
SpaceUnit
@The Audacity of Krope:
Aubrey Plaza has Puerto Rican roots. She was asked about the “joke” in an interview, and she said that trump can go fuck himself.
West of the Rockies
Is everyone else also getting a donation request about everyone three hours? I wonder how much cash on hand the campaign has. I donated on Thursday and again yesterday.
KatKapCC
@Baud: Right. I know opinion there is probably split on that issue, but it sure seems like something that ought to be considered.
Another Scott
When my dad was young, he had a job setting up radio transmission towers. He said you get used to being 300 feet off the ground on a glorified ladder, eventually.
!!!
One of the places he went on that job was Puerto Rico. He said it was the greenest place he’d ever been.
Here’s to PR startng to get the respect she deserves.
—
Politicians get a lot of grief from people who don’t understand what they actually do and how important it is. Politics is how we address communal problems. It’s not a business, and business skill doesn’t translate into skill in politics.
E.g.
That’s how you do it.
Secretary Pete, and Kamala, and Tim, and lots of other great people on our team know how to do politics. The country needs to support them!
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Starfish
Luis Fonsi endorsed Harris, and I need you to appreciate
the model inhis musicvideomore.Despacito
NotMax
Maybe late to the party;’ hadn’t seen this one before.
Peale
@West of the Rockies: I’ve donated more than I have in past elections, but I stopped last week, though I shoveled a little more to Osbourne. At this point, if they don’t have the staff on the ground at 1000% match isn’t going to help.
mrmoshpotato
@hells littlest angel:
What? Is the orange shitstain even trying?
Nukular Biskits
Good evenin’, y’all.
I’m hoping not only for a Harris-Walz victory, but an outright electoral ass-whuppin’. While that won’t outright kill Trumpism/MAGA, I think it would mortally wound it.
A close election will only continue to feed the stupid conspiracy theories and, I fear, more violence from Trump supporters, incited and encouraged by Trump himself.
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
Yeah, this muddling through is getting tiresome.
NotMax
@KatKapCC
Partially true.
Residents of Puerto Rico cannot cast a vote, Puerto Ricans who are residents of any state or of D.C. can.
Anoniminous
Looking at Iowa numbers from the Selzer Poll and it’s just brutal for Trump.
Independent voters are breaking for Harris led by women voters backing Harris by a 28-point margin. Trump won that group 49% to 35% in 2020. What that means his margin of victory of 138,610 votes has been erased and he’s a little over 2,000 votes in the hole. 65 and older rural women voters favor Harris by a more than 2-to-1 margin 63% to 28%; this is horrible for Trump as that transfers another ~151,968 from him to Harris. Altogether the Selzer Poll is telling us that Trump has lost ~290,578 from his 2020 total. That’s 18% of Iowa’s total vote in 2020 .
Ain’t no frickin’ way there are that many new MAGAsshat voters to overcome that many switcheroo voters AND newly registered young women who support Harris by 60%.
In the general scheme of things Iowa’s 6 Electoral College Votes aren’t all that big a deal. As I’ve been saying for a while I think Harris has Michigan and Pennsylvania which bring her to 260 meaning any of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, or Wisconsin and Harris wins. What flipping Iowa would do is add yet another path to victory by a combination of Nevada and Iowa’s EVs.
Harris’ path to victory keeps widening while Trump’s is narrowing.
HumboldtBlue
@Jeffro:
It was a Vance staffer, some incel fuckwit, who advocated for Hinchcliffe, these stupid motherfuckers didn’t bother to vet him. As is their wont.
schrodingers_cat
I don’t understand this strategy of insulting people to get more votes.
Starfish
@Nukular Biskits: Yes, I want the type of thing where I can say “There, there. I am sorry that your elderly low-energy candidate lost.”
Mousebumples
My prediction is a Harris win (high level of certainty, though 2016 PTSD has me doubting myself a lot).
I’m also predicting a “surprise” flip – Iowa, maybe? Something outside the traditional swing states. (low to medium certainty)
Lastly, I think we’ll get an R to D Senate flip somewhere. (if it’s MO, I will believe Ozark was directing heavenly GOTV, somehow) That’s low certainty, but I think there’s a better shot of Cruz getting fired by voters vs TX turning blue. So we’ll see!
mrmoshpotato
@Nukular Biskits: Pretty sure the Kremlin’s fat, orange, fascist bitch will throw a manbaby tantrum regardless of how much he loses by.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
He’s used to some of the insulatees telling themselves that he doesn’t mean them because they’re special, he means some of those other people.
HinTN
@Baud: The opposition candidate for governor strongly favors independence. Statehood would perpetuate the corrupt status quo in PR.
NotMax
@schrodingers_cat
Not a strategy. As with the proverbial scorpion, it’s their nature.
Baud
@HinTN:
It’s their decision. PR is not like DC, which overwhelmingly wants to be a state.
Ken
@schrodingers_cat: It makes perfect sense if you’re the kind of creep who thinks “negging” is a dating strategy, and the Vance staff is full of them.
Anoniminous
Forgot to add, if Iowa’s rural women voter switch is indicative of a broader trend across all rural areas Trump and the GOP are in deep kim chee. Talking Reagan Revolution Rout deep kim chee. We could very well be talking about Harris Republicans next Sunday.
ColoradoGuy
Crossings fingers here, but maybe this will give some momentum to Puerto Rico’s statehood. It took a long time for Alaska and Hawaii, but it happened.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: The leopards aren’t going to eat MY face!
Dan B
@schrodingers_cat: It’s simple. If you’re insulting people you are courageous – not being afraid of getting
beaten upinsulted (the horrors!). So you are a macho or are supporting-your-man!My partner’s brother is in the
teasinginsulting people is funny. His wife is an attorney who delights in winning debates by, you guessed it: putting people down. I don’t do holidays with them since feeling like I’ve been slimed is not on my holiday list.Baud
@mrmoshpotato: Perfect.
HinTN
@Baud: Absolutely! I like the chances of that opposition candidate. Smart, articulate, engaged. The kids will save us!
Mousebumples
@Anoniminous: we should be. There is such a thing in Wisconsin, with multiple currently Republican elected office holders endorsing Harris.
If memory serves, at minimum, mayor of Waukesha (declared as an independent after 1/6) and the longest serving State Senator in the Green Bay area. He isn’t running for reelection with the new maps.
I think there may be more, but those are the 2 that I remember.
Liz Cheney’s endorsement was valuable for these fiscal conservatives.
Baud
@HinTN:
We’ll find out this week!
KatKapCC
@NotMax: I meant the former, of course.
WaterGirl
@Ken: I had to look up “negging”. Ugh.
karen marie
@Anoniminous:
I hope this shuts up at least some of the “Boomers suck” bullshit.
jonas
I’m of course happy to see how Trump shit the bed with a very significant voting bloc. But with these Puerto Rican celebrities and voters “withdrawing” their support now, wtf were they thinking giving their vote to Trump in the first place? They only noticed just now when a guy at his rally insulted their island and culture that he was a flaming racist asshole? When he was claiming Haitians eat pets, were they just sitting there going “Oh, yeah, well I see where he’s coming from there..”?
Again, glad to have them on board, but sometimes, geez, you really just can’t fathom people’s judgment…
Chet Murthy
@jonas: All of what you say is true. But I’m betting that “Indian Americans for Trump” would frighten you. I think 1/3 of us are voting for TCFG. It’s frightful. So, uh, those Boricuans who came across, are doin’ good!
karen marie
@ColoradoGuy: Yeah, it took overthrowing the government in Hawaii, deposing the monarch, and 50 years to do it, but we managed.
mrmoshpotato
@jonas:
Well put.
Bill Arnold
@jonas:
Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria (2017) [1] (and his comments about Dorian (2019) and Puerto Rico before Dorian, against forecast, missed Puerto Rico) should have made it clear that D.J. Trump learned anti-Puerto Rico racism at his father Fred’s knee.
[1] Not just the paper towels toss: Trump delayed $20bn in aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, report finds – Funding was ‘unnecessarily delayed’ by bureaucratic obstacles, after hurricane killed thousands of people in 2017 (Coral Murphy Marcos in San Juan, 22 Apr 2021)
Starfish
@jonas: There were a lot of disengaged folks who became much more engaged after the insult.
Steve LaBonne
Once again, marginalized people may save “mainstream” America from its own ignorance and delusions. This pattern needs to be broken. White America, get a goddamn grip on yourself and on reality.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Starfish: This must be it but his constant refrain of deporting everyone…how does anyone who’s not white not clue in that he’s talking about them? Like do all the central Americans think he just means the Haitians? And do all the Palestinians think he means just the Mexicans? It’s just nuts that they can delude themselves into thinking he means some other group but not mine.
sdhays
@Jay: The thing about this kind of ban is that it is totally at odds with what you would expect from Trump. No one can believe that he personally dislikes p**n; he fucked p**n star, for Pete’s sake. But he also doesn’t give a shit. No ban on anything will ever apply to HIM, so it doesn’t matter what he personally thinks about something.
I imagine those ads opened a few eyes.
persistentillusion
@West of the Rockies: Yes, you are definitely not alone. I wonder if the H/W campaign isn’t trying to build a war chest for the endless litigation that the Mango Menace and his followers will attgempt.
Eos
Apologies (a) for reposting a question originally posed in the lurkers’ introduction thread, (b) if this question has already been thoroughly thrashed through in these environs, and/or (c) for any incoherence in the following several paragraphs…
Who has good data?
Not necessarily poll numbers (although they presumably comprise part of that), but all the accumulated information gleaned from public databases, volunteered information, two decades of social media, and so forth — the sort of data which were likely weaponized in 2016 (among other elections). Accordingly, it seems reasonable to assume that it is possible to model this election down to the precinct level, and that there are server farms running simulation after simulation after simulation.
At least that seems like what the Democratic campaign must have been doing, because it feels like they identified a potential problem early on — that the media simply would not treat President Biden fairly — and prepared (and then had to execute) a contingency plan accordingly.
But on the other hand, this factually-based, well-organized Harris/Walz campaign has had to contend with an opposing operation which is barely more than an orange-stained agglomeration of spittle-flecked awfulness, an operation which has convinced itself that nothing real — not the lies, not the indictments, not the convictions, not the staggeringly bad ideas, not the candidates’ nightmare-clown personae — could stop their inevitable second illegitimate coronation.
Unfortunately, this is a political environment dominated by media cheerleaders and courtiers, sloppy statisticians, malfeasants little and large, who all seem working to ensuring the fix will be in.
But what if it isn’t?
What if the relevant electoral point of comparison for a Californian candidate isn’t 2020, or 2016, or even 2008…
…but 1980?
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
I so agree and I’m not investing anywhere near the time that many here are in the election.
So, allow me to amend what I posted:
I’m hoping for an electoral ass-whuppin’ of such proportions there will be no way Trump supporters can claim the election was “rigged” … and everyone, including Trump supporters, can take a deep breath (figuratively and literally) and this country can get a well-deserved rest for at least a couple of weeks.
Jay
@sdhays:
Dump plans to hand over the Admin to Musk, JFK Jr. Flynn and the Project 2025 nutjobs and spend his Presidency playing golf and grabbing pussy.
Starfish
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Everyone of one national identity does not vote the same way or think the same thoughts so there really are all sorts of people all over the political spectrum in ways that you would not expect.
kindness
Kudos to the Pennsylvanian/Puerto Rican woman in that tweet who said she had been leaning Trump and now is for Harris. But…
Why was she leaning for Trump previously? His racism hasn’t been a secret and he went out of his way to screw Puerto Rico after Maria wiped the island.
Butter Emails!
@HinTN:
The status quo is remaining a Commonwealth. Both statehood and independence offer the possibility of escaping from the morass of corruption, but there’s no guarantee either way and both paths carry unique risks.
KatKapCC
@kindness: Yeah. And it does give a sense of “I was okay with harm and crudeness being directed at other people but once it was directed at me it became a problem”.
Gloria DryGarden
@Starfish: Lotta joy
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: especially grabbing the pussies of his best friends’ wives…
Jackie
Georgia GQP are scraping the bottom of the barrel with guest speakers:
My bold. Why on earth is TCFG asking loser Walker to speak at his rally???
Gloria DryGarden
@Eos:
What fix?
The contrast is very strange.
After reading about anti villains and ant heroes over on the medium cool thread, I’m struck that folks who had voted for trumpet, or were going to vote for him, but have shifted over his MSG rally, and the trash talk about Puerto Rico
Might be seeing TFG as a villain who does some hero things, but are now seeing him as a hero– so they thought–who does or says some villainous things. (That only now, just finally went over the line for them.)
anti hero, anti villain. .. some of us have seen him as a villain all along. It’s not so amusing in real life, but one hopes all the movies w such characters illuminates and raises awareness.
I feel like I’m constantly appalled, shocked and blindsided by friends who seem so blind, and who still believe in and are voting for such a one.
were I a man, I wouldn’t like him to fuck my wife, and I sure don’t want him to fuck my country any more. Enough already.
Gloria DryGarden
@Mousebumples: I got a text from the Cruz campaign last night around 915 mtn time, said his situation was desperate.
Forgot exactly how he said it, and I deleted it.
But it proves the Republican Party has all the voter information, phone numbers, etc for its registered voters. My phone number used to be my mom’s, and she was a registered republican. It’s weird, the occasional texts I get. I inherited her cell phone and phone line when my dad said she was too far in dementia to use it, and I guess he thought it was time to modernize me into the 21st century. Guess they don’t update their lists; mom is gone.
But Cruz, I’m hoping he is more than desperate. Bye bye bye.
Kathleen
@Percysowner:
Per political reporter Howard Wilkinson, WVXU
Interesting trifecta of endorsements for @SherrodBrown today: Deborah Burchett, the Republican sheriff of Clark County, Richard Finan, the Republican mayor of Evendale and former Ohio Senate President, and former Fox News host Gerald Rivera.
No link because this was on Twitter.
WaterGirl
@Kathleen: Yeah, I started to worry about Sherrod Brown today. How ca these states have truly stand-up senators that have been good for their state contemplate throwing them out for a piece of crap Republican candidate.
At the very least, whatever happened to “the devil you know”.?
WaterGirl
@Eos:
That is certainly true. But then you ask “what if the fix isn’t in?”
I can’t tell whether you’re suggesting that we’ve been misunderstanding their goals, and they really aren’t trying to make sure the fix is in.
Or if you are suggesting that they have clearly been trying, but they haven’t been successful.
WaterGirl
@Jackie:
Water seeks its own level?
Barack and Michelle were drawn to each other. Why wouldn’t we think Walker and Trump would be drawn to one another?
Granted Barack and Michelle are at the high end, ad the other two are at the lowest of the low end.
But same principle?
Another Scott
@Jackie: Tmurp loves, loves, loves Walker, going back to his days in the 1980s with the USFL. He thought that Walker was his ticket to some super team that would crush the NFL, but of course he destroyed the USFL instead. ETTD.
Walker was amazing when he played for Georgia in college in the early 1980s. I didn’t keep up with him much after that, but Tmurp just loved him.
Wikipedia:
[ rofl ]
Being a phenom in college and leaving early quite often doesn’t turn out as great as the promoters promise.
Tmurp was convinced that Walker’s early-’80s magic would make him a shoe-in in the Senate in Georgia. Warnock brought reality to that notion.
Tmurp being stuck in the early-mid 1980s would explain a lot, wouldn’t it…??
Cheers,
Scott.
The Audacity of Krope
@SpaceUnit: I dread the sassing Trump would get if they ever should meet.
Eos
@WaterGirl: That last bit represented an attempt to bridge two different points, between (a) the GOP’s absolute certitude when it comes to election results, which so often is framed in mobsters’ terms (the fix) and mobsters’ assumptions (viz. Rove in 2012), and (b) the possibility that Harris/Walz can win by enough that the GOP’s (and their allies’) actions can’t matter.
Clearly, that was an unnecessary and confusing linkage between two thoughts better left apart. Apologies, again.