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

The media fantasy fed to me was not the media fantasy I like, and I like fascism, tits, and spraytans

Joe Bodge and Dorene Heselton closed Roselynn Homemade Ice Cream Breakfast and Lunch in Epping, New Hampshire, on Sunday. A sign on their door now reads, "What Happened to Live Free or Die."

"I have decided, and I'll be honest with you, the sheer volume of my customers and people supporting me believe the same thing — we can either exist in fear, and hope to not die, or we can live knowing eventually we're all going to die," Bodge told NBC News on Thursday.

and by "eventually" we mean "next month"

feel like they should make a US-centric remake of 28 Days Later.

within a half hour the population of the US is 500 people cos everybody refused to quarantine and got eaten by Ragers

Would buy a ticket tbh.

funny how when a Muslim woman shows up wearing a hijab at McDonald's, live free or die crowd gets scared enough to call 911.

https://trumpcovidplan.com/

A note of appreciation for Ned's interest in sustaining the thread with updates on the voting tallies, including special oddities like that Florida early vote vs Florida Trump vote point. Not drawing any conclusions from the data, but it's interesting in its own right, and certainly heartening that neither the pandemic nor four years of political exhaustion have suppressed the vote in general.

I'm interested in Ned's postings of the tallies too, it's very encouraging

It's nice to have him around more

Thank you all. I figured now that we’re getting the numbers in it’s important to note, and yes, it is encouraging as sic notes on that level. The hope is that everyone voting pays as much attention to all their local races as well on the ballot whatever they might be — and I’m sure most are.

Latest number BTW is 53.4 million and there’s more to come tonight so that guess of 5 million a day, in essence, looks solid.

In terms of voter suppression it's of interest to note that from a macro point of view things have expanded considerably, thanks to the pandemic -- an unintended side effect, certainly. But it seems likely this bell won't be unrung -- New York, for instance, having early voting is an innovation, and I don't see any reason why they would go back from it, even if it is over a lesser period of time than states like (ironically enough) Texas, Florida or Georgia. As individual states have individual ways of doing things, though -- when to count, when to stop accepting mail ballots, etc -- that muddies waters further exacerbated by, of course, Trump and company. So where things go from here isn't by all means totally clear yet, yet at the same time the sheer amount of the early vote total, whatever it finally is, is going to be a de facto argument for accepting it, and had it not been Trump, the GOP would likely be equally on board in that they've generally been more than happy to have absentee voters in close contests before. But here we are.

(A final thought for now -- I've seen mentions here and there about how the increasing COVID rates in most states here could mean that by the time Election Day happens things could be dicey as hell when it comes to crowds, long lines, voting held indoors, etc. This could be projection as much as anything else but I wouldn't rule it out, and again, if you have one party very clearly going the 'hey vote and get it done now, please!' route with that as a subtext -- why face a risk when you don't have to, and/or if you want to do it directly, why not do so earlier before it's a crunch? -- then that's something to bank. Again, the somewhat belated effort on Trump's part to go 'uh yeah, early voting, good idea' -- itself loaded since he's supposed to be dropping off his ballot but again, that just signals to all and sundry that's an option too, undercutting concerns about mailing it in as a result -- shows this, and my guess is he'll still screw it up somehow.)

"the sheer amount of the early vote total, whatever it finally is, is going to be a de facto argument for accepting it"

counting on this

yeah I voted absentee in 2018 and probably will never go to the polls on election day again

last time I voted on election day was 2004

I regularly voted on the day when l lived in OC — my polling place was just down from my apartment building and the waits were minimal. The only time there was a crowd and a different location was when Schwarzenegger won the recall. But ever since I moved to SF I’ve gone early and I’m fond of just going up to Civic Center to drop off my ballot. Nice walk!

Oregon was the first state to go to all-mail-in balloting, some time in the 1990s iirc. At first it was a bit awkward at first because it took a few election cycles for the counties to update their diverse equipment, purchased with in-person voting in mind, to systems that worked smoothly with simple to use, black-ink, fill-in the square paper ballots. No problem getting poll-workers during a pandemic when it's all geared to mail-in or drop-off and has been for a very long time.

All respect goes to former Oregon Secretary of State, Phil Keisling, who grabbed the idea, knew it was good, and pushed it through the legislature.

New York, for instance, having early voting is an innovation, and I don't see any reason why they would go back from it, even if it is over a lesser period of time than states like (ironically enough) Texas, Florida or Georgia.

New Yorker here and, yes, I've always voted on election day until, uh, today, when I voted absentee by dropping my and my wife's ballots off at the county Board of Elections. Early voting starts tomorrow, 10/24, but felt more comfortable dropping it off today, because I think live, in-person early voting is going to be insane.

A data point (or three).

Young people are showing up like woah pic.twitter.com/FvQRN3dmjZ

— Ahmed Shihab-Eldin (@ASE) October 24, 2020

According to Pew, the 18-29 age group splits 59 Biden / 29 Trump / 12 Third Party by preference.

Without adjusting for partisanship (probably more D internals than R in here I would guess), recent congressional district polls would imply an 11 or 12 point shift toward Biden from 2016 results, i.e. that he's up by around 13 or 14 points nationally. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://t.co/nTe1UqjQkx

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 24, 2020

just in case the significance of this is not obvious...

generally speaking, congressional district polling is much lower quality. sample sizes are smaller, it's more likely to be commissioned by people with skin in the game so it's biased, etc. and it's extremely heterogenous so it's hard to use as input to something like the 538 model. so generally 538 et al. ignore district polling and focus on state and national polling as input.

but it has a couple of big advantages that make it, not better than national/state polling, but potentially complementary. those are: 1. there is a lot of it! there are more districts than states. and 2. very few districts get polled multiple times by different pollsters. this is a bad thing if you want to figure out how good pollsters are. but it's a good thing if you want lots and lots of completely independent measures of the "national mood". state and national polls suffer from "herding", i.e. tendency of pollsters to converge on agreeing with each other because they don't publish or fudge outlier results. herding literally cannot happen in a congressional district with only one poll.

so with that in mind, these very back of the envelope results, which come with caveats above, imply that *if* there is a polling error in the national/state polls it's in the pro-biden direction.

i know people hate david sirota but

https://www.dailyposter.com/p/a-bfd-biden-finally-rejects-the-gops

At the final 2020 presidential debate, that success culminated in one of the most important moments in the entire campaign.

During a discussion about the budget, Biden brushed off his old deficit hawk buddies, outright rejected GOP talking points, and instead made the point that the federal government must spend what it takes to rescue cities and states.

“Every single state out there finds themselves in trouble — they’re gonna start laying off, whether they are red or blue, cops, firefighters, first responders, teachers, because they have to balance their budget,” Biden said. “The founders were smart. They allowed the federal government to deficit spend to compensate for the United States of America.”

Overall the debate was demoralizing and depressing, but this moment wasn’t. It was a moment that won’t get a ton of attention from a media obsessed with frivolity, but it wasn’t some small matter. It was everything. If a new administration accepts deficit concern trolling and the Beltway’s austerity frame, then it is doomed to fail. If a new administration rejects that frame, then the possibility of real change remains alive.

It is hard to overstate how big a shift this is for Biden. He was the guy who spent decades touting his work with Republicans trying to cut programs like Social Security in the name of budget austerity. Now he’s expounding on the need for countercyclical deficit spending. To use a Biden-ism, that’s a BFD.

Gotchu pic.twitter.com/oyi92rJtqj

— LadyPolitik (@Ladypolitik) October 24, 2020

shout out to his family

Again, usual caveats, etc., but the Lincoln Project people put up two big billboards in Times Square not for votes (it's New York City) but to pick a fight with Ivanka and Jared. Those two dickheads took the bait and sent their lawyer to make some threats, and the Lincoln Project essentially responded by telling them to go fuck themselves in dramatic fashion:

Jared and Ivanka have always been entitled, out-of-touch bullies who have never given the slightest indication they have any regard for the American people.

We plan on showing them the same level of respect.

Our full statement: pic.twitter.com/M3K5nOE5qd

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 24, 2020

those billboards are great

huh?

Lou Dobbs is telling South Carolina residents not to vote for Lindsey Graham pic.twitter.com/vQ67BZZN6P

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) October 23, 2020

someone in the responses says it's old footage

It's from yesterday!

There was a post I saw here or somewhere mentioning a C-Span caller who claimed he was undecided stating he was starting to lean closer to Trump *because* no one in congress or the media was pursuing the Hunter Biden story. This might be one of those same spite-your-face situations, that Dobbs is so far over the edge and he's mad that Lindsey is not following him.

That's pretty hardcore a week and a half out from the election....

anyway gift horse etc

Early voting amounts now 56 million, over 40 percent of the 2016 vote total. Texas is now over nearly 75 percent of their vote total.

insane

(If in fact 6 million turns out to be a weekday average over next week that pumps up the early vote to astonishing levels: 104 million by Election Day itself, over 2/3 of the current projected vote. Let’s see how this plays out — and what happens to that average that New York has begun voting.)

Trump is voting in person early in Florida today which is strange because he has run hundreds of Facebook ads claiming he voted by mail and urging his supporters to do the same.

Many of the ads included what purported to be a picture of his signed mail-in ballot

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) October 24, 2020

Are there pictures? Because I voted "in person" with a mail-in ballot, too. I filled it out, sealed it, went to the polling place, waited in the shorter line and dropped it in the box.

that lou dobbs segment is wild.

lou dobbs:
"graham has betrayed president trump at almost every turn. he has betrayed the american people and his oath of office. he's done absolutely nothing to investigate #obamagate, except to tell everyone 'stay tuned', time and time again. 'stay tuned'. senator graham needs to be 'tuned out' in South Carolina"

if i were graham i'd just be like ok...you dick

lol I’d put money on Dobbs self-harming when Trump loses. what an absolute lunatic.

there are the republicans who talk about #obamagate, and then there are the ones like lou dobbs who seem to actually _believe_ it. wow

It would be great if Dobbs could move the needle, but it would also be horrific if he could actually move the needle.

The Dobbs Paradox

lol

yeah his unwavering faith in Trump really mirrors the most insane maga Facebook boomer mindset. he would totally be out on the street corner doin this shit for free. I don’t have cable but I’m guessing of all the honest-to-god True Believers, he’s gotta have the biggest reach/ audience? maybe?

(ftr as much as the Ingrahams and the Hannitys et al love the racism and tax cuts,
I do believe they acknowledge & admire the grift)

Hadn't thought about that as a possibility, people falling on the ir swords cos thet great trumpian reich falls. That'll be a shame won't it.
Hope its a big enough trend.

It's good to remember that the generals who tried (and failed) to assassinate Hitler by planting a bomb under the table during a meeting were all loyal generals of the German armed forces, who had previously been quite happy to conduct a war of European conquest for the greater glory of the Reich. They simply recognized that Hitler was an incompetent imbecile who was rapidly losing the war. They were fine with winning it.

Now, about that Lincoln Project...

Hahah by chance I caught an old trailer for Valkyrie last night and was thinking about that. "Yeah, you weren't all heroes all the time here..."

Dobbs never met a white supremacist he wouldn't devote all his credibility to.

I remember his exit from CNN very well, but don't remember this (from Wikipedia): "After Dobbs left CNN in 2009, he gave an interview where he did not rule out the possibility of running for President of the United States in 2012, saying the final decision would rest with his wife."

Thank you, wife (although maybe if he'd run and embarrassed himself, that would've spared the world Trump in 2016).

It's not just that half of PA's mail ballots have been returned, its also that registered Democrats have returned them at a much higher rate than Republicans, a pattern happening across the U.S. https://t.co/dX0UoXDxen https://t.co/a998AdAwj2 pic.twitter.com/we1nhX2tbr

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) October 24, 2020