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

a whole day of xps but

anybody that drives in FL can tell you, dem's not great odds

the one time I got badly rear-ended, you could see it coming a mile away. dude driving a van on 95 South in Miami lost his tire in the middle of the right lane and made zero effort to get his car off to the breakdown lane. I was third behind him, the first car stopped in time, car in front of me stopped in time, I stopped in time, car behind me stopped in time, redneck not paying attention behind him just plowed on ahead and caused a 6 car accident.

I still made it to the Dolphins game tho

The cover on my right passenger rearviewmirror flew off last week on the Palmetto Expressway. The state with the prettiest name!

NEWS: The FBI is making an announcement tonight on what the agency is calling a “major Election Security” issue. Scheduled 7:30PM ET start time.

— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) October 21, 2020

...

Don’t fall into the traps set by our enemies.

View any sensational claims related to votes & voting systems with great suspicion. https://t.co/r1wfmaY4Ir

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) October 21, 2020

oh they finally found out who was in the Oval Office huh

O shit they found out about Kanye

apparently it's those proud boys emails in FL. they're from iran lmao.

hilarious that Ratcliffe implied that the Proud Boys were trying to hurt Trump with their campaign.

what a PoS. also trying to interfere with FBI investigation on the Hunter Biden emails and whether they're part of disinformation campaign.

is there anything to stop Ratcliffe from trying to do a Comey 2.0 (I know he's not FBI but you know what I mean)

just the usual attempts to jail his challengers, politics as usual

President Trump and his advisers have repeatedly discussed whether to fire FBI Director Christopher A. Wray after Election Day — a scenario that also could imperil the tenure of Attorney General William P. Barr as the president grows increasingly frustrated that federal law enforcement has not delivered his campaign the kind of last-minute boost that the FBI provided in 2016, according to people familiar with the matter.

The conversations among the president and senior aides stem in part from their disappointment that Wray in particular but Barr as well have not done what Trump had hoped — indicate that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden, or other Biden associates are under investigation, these people say. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal discussions.

In the campaign’s closing weeks, the president has intensified public calls for jailing his challenger, much as he did for Hillary Clinton, his opponent in 2016. Trump has called Biden a “criminal” without articulating what laws he believes the former vice president has broken.

People familiar with the discussions say that Trump wants official action similar to the announcement made 11 days before the last presidential election by then-FBI Director James B. Comey, who informed Congress he had reopened an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state after potential new evidence had been discovered.

Firing an FBI director? Man, that takes me back.

Play the hits, maaaan.

Close this thread in honor of Morbs.

seconded

We'd only have to start another and we'd be back at it within the hour. Not exactly a lasting tribute.

what if we....weren't back at it?

That would be fitting though, in light of his own inablity to stay off these threads for more than a day or two after storming off.

:(

I think the good doctor would actually be disappointed if we didn’t carry on the fight without him.

Otm.

Especially if we fight each other.

And there really is a fight to carry on for Morbs right now.

The right to be sick with dignity, and not have to weigh one's health against the cost of living.

It's just fucking unacceptable.

hear hear

otm

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/us/politics/grenell-maduro-venezuela-trump.html

Could have been a big win in the eyes of both American voters who care about Venezuela.

"Department and ACLU revealed last night that they cannot find - they cannot find, they cannot find - more than 500 of the parents."

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/926051647

Steve Inskeep almost blew a circuit this morning. Can't say I blame him.

Lee Gelernt says they're not going to stop until they've found every one of these families, no matter how long it takes.

(Note: Transcript translated from Spanish to English): "Hello? Mrs. Alvarez? Yes. Good. We want you to know we've finally located you in order to reunite you with your daughter (reads) Esmerelda - I hope I pronounced that correctly - we tore out of your arms when you crossed the US border in 2018. Yes. That's right. 22 years ago. She's 23 years old now. Yes. It's been a long time searching for you. But now we can finally deport her back to Hondouras so you two can be reunited."

Email update: I have received 22 emails from the Trump campaign in the last 24 hours. All of them were requests for money. They have no GOTV operation going at all, as far as I can tell — it's all just rounding up as much cash as possible (for the eventual escape to some non-extradition country).

We’re not a party.

We’re a movement. pic.twitter.com/0odzR9BXVk

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 21, 2020

they're gonna form a massively influential think tank next year aren't they

Some of y'all will consider this response a hedge. I think it works. It'll give him cover when he expands the court:

Joseph R. Biden Jr., who for weeks has declined to clarify his position on expanding the Supreme Court, said in a new interview that if elected, he would establish a bipartisan commission of scholars to study possible court overhaul more broadly.

“I will ask them to, over 180 days, come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court system because it’s getting out of whack,” he told CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell, according to an interview excerpt that is expected to be broadcast Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

“The way in which it’s being handled, and it’s not about court packing, there’s a number of other things that our constitutional scholars have debated and I’ve looked to see what recommendations that commission might make.”

i'll never forget the time he said he would get something "back in whack" and wish he had said it then

Chris Hayes (on twitter) has raised a point I've been thinking about for a while: if the Dems don't win the Senate, there's no way any Biden nominee would be granted a hearing. So how does Breyer take a chance at retirement? What happens if a justice dies? Apparently (according to McConnell's 'rules') we simply wait until a party controls the presidency and Senate at the same time....so theoretically we could have 8, 7, etc. justices until that happens again. Seems bad.

Congress could force his hand, and it might.

I think it's adequate, though, yes. Study broader reforms that might include expansion, and might not.

Thw statement may pacify a centrist or republican who already is concerned that the courts do too much "legislating from the bench."

Biden's job right now is to win the motherfucking election. Fixing everything that's wrong is secondary.

the GOP Senate made it clear -- McCain specifically -- in '16 that Clinton would get no nominees.

Early vote count now almost 45.3 million. As I mentioned yesterday, the 2016 early vote count of 47 million will be crossed today, maybe not this morning but at some point. Also the early vote count is now 1/3 of the overall 2016 vote total.

Also of interest.

Texas #earlyvote is near 2/3rds of their 2016 *total* vote! 👀

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) October 22, 2020

And it's going up... minute by minute

This moment in history feels particularly precarious because all the sycophants, psychopaths and assholes Trump has surrounded him with are apparently not bad enough.

(Xp Because, see the tweet is from Michael McDon... oh never mind)

Haha I liked it

I wish early voting was indicative of anything more than generic enthusiasm. Because I've heard the occasional murmur of Republican registration being up, and Republican enthusiasm being up also, at least in some places. Fortunately, even if true, 2016 was a squeaker, enough so that even Republican enthusiasm might not win this one if they're just a hair less enthusiastic than last time.

we heard whispers of Republican enthusiasm being up too in 2018, and that we should recalibrate our expectations about the Blue Wave, which might just be a blue trickle, and we heard that for months prior to midterms, even a few days after election day 2018, and then we won 40 seats.

No guarantee that'll happen now, but just points out worrying about it will just give you new medical ailments to pay for after Trump loses.

I heard a GOP strategist say that while new GOP registration is up since 2016, it's not enough to make up for the republican voters who have died in the past 4 years

I wish early voting was indicative of anything more than generic enthusiasm. Because I've heard the occasional murmur of Republican registration being up, and Republican enthusiasm being up also, at least in some places. Fortunately, even if true, 2016 was a squeaker, enough so that even Republican enthusiasm might not win this one if they're just a hair less enthusiastic than last time.

If Trump gets the exact same number of votes he got in 2016, he loses. Because the Democrats are fired up, have been fired up for four years (see 2018), and the third party vote is approximately 50% of what it was four years ago. The assholes who voted for Jill Stein or whoever are either not voting, or falling in line for Biden. The "how bad could it get?" voters have all learned exactly how bad it can get.

I don't think this country can take another four years of Asshole. Like, even if he did nothing but order fast food take out every night and post pictures of it.

I keep having to remind friends (not necessarily here) that, you know, 2018 happened.

I'm just grateful that after telling my kids that they were going to wake up to the first female president they don't think *I'm* the asshole. At least not to my face.

the narrative around Trump (even here in some corners) was "he's just saying things to get elected, and he'll pivot to the middle". easier to vote for someone when you can convince yourself of that rather than waking up and looking at the coronavirus death toll each day.

I don't think this country can take another four years of Asshole. Like, even if he did nothing but order fast food take out every night and post pictures of it.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, October 22, 2020 9:56 AM bookmarkflaglink

post pictures of his food, or his asshole

Unscientific, I know, but my feeling is that turnout is key, regardless of how many more republicans vote this time around. Because there are simply more democrats or democrat-leaning (potential) voters.

as 538 pointed out, people continually neglect the Independents, who largely swung the vote to Trump. they broke for him in 2016. they're breaking away from him now. no Republican registration increase can offset this huge demographic he had and is now losing.

Republican enthusiasm might not win this one if they're just a hair less enthusiastic than last time

Enthusiasm would be a useful measure if you were allowed to vote multiple times if you were rilly RILLY enthusiastic.

The measure that matters is intent to vote, and follow-through on that intention.

Cf. Rachel Bitecofer. This isn't the year of enthusiasm. It's the year of negative partisanship. I don't need to love Biden (and I don't). I just need to hate Trump (and I do).

Well, to be fair re: enthusiasm, it's still a pretty sure thing that tens of millions of eligible voters *won't.* Real enthusiasm gets those asses off the bench.

Anyway, I do feel relatively comforted by the signs of momentum over the past 4 years. 2018 was such a necessary salve, yet those feelings of (political) elation have been few and far between, because so much has been at stake each time.