"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

Small thing but worth noting that New York early voting won't start until Saturday the 24th -- if the overall numbers before then approach the 2016 level of early voting at 47 million (and there's a good chance it could), the final total will be a hell of a thing.

If Biden wants to try to persuade Republican senators to work with him, I say go for it. But he needs to quickly pivot once it becomes clear that they have no interest in doing so. It can't be a prolonged courtship that prevents Democrats from moving forward. (Hopefully, we won't need them, anyway.)

it worked last time he was in the white house!

so will there be another October surprise to sink Trump the Friday before (and not a long-promised dump that never surfaces)?

bets here

The n-word tapes haven't made an appearance yet...

A useful note in a new NYT piece here:

“Our base loves the stuff about Hunter Biden, laptops and Mayor Giuliani,” Mr. Kochel added. “But they’re already voting for Trump.”

Lol welcome to Southern California where this is the main story

I’m in Newport Beach, where the president is holding a fundraiser this afternoon. Trump supporters are significantly outnumbered by a group of Armenian Americans holding a protest pic.twitter.com/DQfSyxOgAs

— Arit John (@aritbenie) October 18, 2020

WTF is it with Blue states with short early voting windows? Maryland’s early voting is only one week, starting next week. Meanwhile Georgia and Texas have already begun.

Good question. I feel it's usually longer where I am, too. This year the earliest I can vote is tomorrow, though I know early voting started weeks ago in other parts of the state.

DC doesn’t start early voting until Oct 27!

hope all Red States do late voting

Too Late Voting.

I was on the fence, but she makes a really good point!

I’m voting for @realDonaldTrump because he’s NOT a politician. I voted for him 4 years ago for this reason and shall vote for him again for this reason. He gets things done quickly and he will turn the economy around quickly. There you have it folks there you have it🙄

— Kirstie Alley (@kirstiealley) October 17, 2020

can someone remind me what Gov Whitner (MI) did, again, to prompt conservatives across the country to want to "lock her up"?

honestly, i can't remember - is it anything beyond her attempts to keep people safe from covid-19 infringing on the freedom of patriots? every time i hear trump or someone else advocate for violent revolution in MI, that seems to be the only thing they bring up. nasty woman, very mean. "that governor". doesn't cooperate on covid-19, doesn't express appreciation for the president's help. trump tried to help, that woman refused. freedom.

is there anything else?

She, in true Nazi fashion, tried to limit large social gatherings and make people wear a mask to keep them from catching and spreading a deadly virus.

they are just morons who like chantings "lock her up"

The Azerbaijan/Armenia situation threatens to blow up into something enormous that destabilizes the entire Middle East and it's a shame it hasn't gotten more attention in the US. I see Pompeo finally said something weak about Turkey's involvement but I don't expect aa Trump admin or military will get involved and I suspect if they could it would be to side with Erdogan (apparently Iran is backing Armenia which is a major 'politics makes strange bedfellows' moment)

It’s got a ton of coverage in LA because LA has like the third biggest Armenian population outside Armenia and Ukraine. There’s a story about it in the LA Times most days afaict. But yeah it’s under the radar everywhere else. I can’t imagine trump knows much about it.

Also lol presumably he’s seeing some internal polling

Oh my // Cornyn initially described his relationship with Trump as “maybe like a lot of women who get married and think they’re going to change their spouse, and that doesn’t usually work out very well.” https://t.co/YD3OVlJN3h

— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) October 18, 2020

"maybe like a lot of women who get married and think they’re going to change their spouse, and that doesn’t usually work out very well.”

that's a very strange thing to say. uhhh...why is it specifically women who do this and why doesn't it work out well for them?

The Azerbaijan/Armenia situation has been front-page news in France nearly every day, but yeah in the usa that's just extended flyover country.

The Azerbaijan/Armenia situation threatens to blow up into something enormous that destabilizes the entire Middle East and it's a shame it hasn't gotten more attention in the US.

Honestly if it wasn't for Armenian American friends of mine I wouldn't've have known about it.

I mean, I know it's a fundraiser but why is Trump spending any time in California?

Thread from Nancy Pelosi’s least favorite LA council candidate explaining what’s up

LA is home to the largest population of Armenian people in the world outside of Armenia. Today, many are rightfully terrified by violent aggression from Azerbaijan and Turkey in the region of Artsakh.

Here's what's happening, and why we stand with Armenians. (thread)

— Nithya Raman (@nithyavraman) October 12, 2020

xpost It's in Newport Beach, it's one of the few places that he would want to go to there, trust me.

If you want to put those Texas numbers upthread a bit in a further context:

Texas shatters another election record with 16.95 million registered voters https://t.co/9qtX3QjHx1

— Dallas Morning News (@dallasnews) October 17, 2020

Making the 3.9 million total of people who have already voted close to a 1/4 of the total electorate there. Pretty big!

I mean, I know it's a fundraiser but why is Trump spending any time in California?

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-18/trump-fundraiser-california basically this

Yeah I've been trying a little to follow the Armenia/Azerbaijan thing and to an outsider it's extremely hard to tell what's going on or who to believe

Is it really true that Republicans like voting on election day and ONLY election day? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this one.

(Biden) predicts that with Trump gone, "there's going to be, I promise you, between 4 and 8 Republican senators" willing to work with him.

If the Democrats take the Senate with at least 52 votes then this is probably a good prediction. If McConnell attempts to filibuster every bill he knows there's a very high chance the filibuster will be shitcanned.

Nobody’s ever tried to suppress their vote so it’s straightforward for them.

The Biden campaign got the Beastie Boys to license Sabotage for this new ad. https://t.co/RQZg7cpre3

— Josh Dorner (@JoshDorner) October 18, 2020

Is it really true that Republicans like voting on election day and ONLY election day? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this one.

Is it really true that Republicans like voting on election day and ONLY election day?

For quite a few elections early in this century Republican absentee ballots outnumbered Democrat absentee ballots and helped to swing some close elections. The Kool Aid that mail-in ballots are rife with fraud is just a little something Trump cooked up for this election, as a new means of vote suppression and to pre-justify litigation to invalidate large numbers of votes, especially from carefully selected locales.

The fact that he has been successful in selling this nonsense is a tribute to the gullibility of millions of Republicans who require zero evidence for anything Trump (or FOX news) says is true.

It used to be that everyone waited for the wave of absentee military votes to spill in for the GOP, but I'm not sure that trend is so secure anymore.

Good tweet

There is a suburban GOP-held House seat that Romney won by 15%+ and Trump won by 10%+. Today, at least two private surveys I've seen have Trump *down* 10%+ there.

In the past few weeks, I've heard the word "bloodbath" uttered in multiple convos w/ GOP pollsters/ad makers.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 18, 2020

thank god

"maybe like a lot of women who get married and think they’re going to change their spouse, and that doesn’t usually work out very well.”

that's a very strange thing to say. uhhh...why is it specifically women who do this and why doesn't it work out well for them?

― president of my cat (Karl Malone), Sunday, October 18, 2020 5:00 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh my jesus he really said that.

I have received 11 emails from the Trump campaign since last night, and 7 between Friday night and Saturday. I haven't read any of them, but the tone of the subject lines has gone from (over the months that I've been on the list) chest-beating confidence to blustery demanding-my-money to skittish pleading. They haven't gone full Gil-from-the-Simpsons yet, but by next week, who can say? I will say that the fact that they're still pounding on me, someone who has never given them a nickel, shows that they're basically turning over the couch cushions, endlessly re-tilling even the deadest soil in hope of grabbing anything at all. (N.B.: even after he got the rona, the emails offering the prospective donor the chance to "Meet Donald Trump!" never stopped.)

the man's about to get wrecked

Apologies if this has been posted already, but this is the most comprehensive overview/explainer I've yet seen on what to anticipate in the coming couple of months, and should be widely shared. Fair warning, sobering stuff:

https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1aqmM4xtwrQICCu5KldYePLf3Zk_TMzRo71wRvyPmLfk/mobilebasic?usp=gmail&gxids=7628

xp to aimless

I get the Republican aversion to mail-in voting, but not to early voting. To me, it just seems like a matter of convenience and I don't get exactly why it would have a partisan bent.

Like is there really any reason to believe there's a massive republican movement to hold off on voting until election day?

xp hadrian, i hope that stuff doesn't happen.

someone on ilx said that we can throw cabbages at him until a giant cartoon cane from offstage comes in an pulls him away. in this process his wig may fly off his head as outlined in article 12 section 8 of the US Constitution.

Apologies if this has been posted already

I saved it off to my local computer to read later. thx.

xp well yeah, the thrust of it is we should avoid "hoping" it won't happen, but rather be fully prepared for it to happen, and to rest assured that in the event of any outcome short of a landslide, the opposition will stop at nothing to take the office by litigation, not to mention faithless electors.

I think the dates are important to understand and good to have organized like this.

I do worry that the lessons of 2000 still haven't permeated.

i'm glancing over it now

blue texas would be an amazing thing

Yes, it would. It's quite a long shot, but also the outcome I want more than anything else in this election.