And Sleepy Joe Will Get The Credit: US Politics January 2021

<FARTS>

"We've found the votes!"

"Trump's Philtrum" says that if it makes zero sense (leaking this call himself??) he's probably responsible

The tape pretty clearly came from Raffensperger's office. I can't remember which outlet reported this yesterday, but Raffensperger's people taped it and he told them he wouldn't release it unless Trump came at him again publicly. Which of course Trump did, because he can't help himself.

xpost I mean, it does kinda make sense as filtered through his diseased brain. It's proof of criminal obstruction on the part of the GA SoS!!! So, yeah, I can imagine his dumbfuck ass leaking it.

Oh, it was in this NYT story: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/03/us/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia.html

Officials in the secretary of state’s office recorded Saturday’s call, and Mr. Raffensperger told his advisers that he did not want to release a transcript or a recording unless the president attacked state officials or misrepresented what had been discussed, according to a person familiar with his direction.

As expected, that attack came in a tweet on Sunday morning, in which Mr. Trump claimed that Mr. Raffensperger “was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”

In a response on Twitter, Mr. Raffensperger wrote: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true. The truth will come out.” The recording of the call was made public several hours later.

Given Trump's malicious idiocy you'd have to be a fool not to record him.

Trump claims to have recorded the call but when he played back the recording, it was side 1 of a-ha's Hunting High and Low

It started on Saturday when Trump and his team reached out to talk to Raffensperger, who, according to an adviser, felt he would be unethically pressured by the president. Raffensperger had been here before: In November he accused Trump ally and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham of improperly exhorting him to meddle in the election to help Trump win Georgia. Graham later denied it.

So why not record the call with the president, Raffensperger’s advisers thought, if nothing else for fact-checking purposes. “This is a man who has a history of reinventing history as it occurs,” one of them told Playbook. “So if he’s going to try to dispute anything on the call, it’s nice to have something like this, hard evidence, to dispute whatever he’s claiming about the secretary. Lindsey Graham asked us to throw out legally cast ballots. So yeah, after that call, we decided maybe we should do this.”

gotta be scrupulously fair I didn't hear a fart in that clip

the truth will come out about that fart, which came not from Trump, but from the Deep State

you might call the anus the human body's Deep State.

there it is

the Deep State has been behind some explosive leaks

PUanon

the most controversial fart since Martif Pharti threw that party

was this a voice-only conference call? the idea seems quaint.

it was fart-only

Talking with Trump is always a gas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01O62CDOKUE

Presidential Fart Joke at 3:33

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywCH3HN2S7E

So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.

Dammit I was just trying to post that

xp

The Fart Of The Deal

A+

an A+ for that?

I think it stinks

where are we at with polling? does it make any sense at all to look at the GA polls? are we back to throwing dice and appealing to the gods with sacrifices?

ossoff and warnock have edged ahead in polls, but the margin of error is thin, and I think Dems tend to underperform in GA elections compared to polling. this election is so weird though that anything could happen imo

the democrats have small leads roughly equal to how much the pollsters screwed up by, so it's a toss up.

(screwed up by in november)

also trump is going on stage tonight to call everyone running the election a criminal so you can imagine that being worth a few thousand votes.

The 538 averages look good--+2% for both Warnock and Ossoff. And yesterday can't help the two Republicans; maybe it'll depress turnout a tiny bit.

this is the one that makes me cautiously optimistic

https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/news/ga-sen-122/

I'll defer to caek on polling, though.

I do think the whole election fraud nonsense is going to depress republican turnout to some extent, but not convinced it will be enough.

i'm not convinced of anything, but it's plausible to me that literally anything could be enough to make the difference in a state that biden won the state by less than 12k votes out of 5m cast.

I'm still surprised Biden won Georgia, I'm not holding out a lot of hope for the Senate races. But I'd be happy to be surprised again.

just over 2 people in a 1000 made the difference in november. i don't think anyone knows if any one "thing" is big enough to change the outcome in that environment.

that said, i find it easy to imagine more than 2 people in a 1000 changing their mind about whether to vote after watching OANN for past 8 weeks, so i see no reason to think the GOP can afford this nonsense right now.

just to be clear, i think pure 50/50 toss up is right, but i don't think it's _insane_ to call the democrats the favorites based on what we know today (they just won the state, they're leading polls from pollsters with known GOP bias, etc.)

obviously winning both would be great for biden's ability to govern but there's another reason why it would be good for the country: if they do lose both of them, that would result in a civil war in the congressional GOP in which one side is 1) completely insane and emotionally unable to back down 2) pretty obviously the reason they lost.

it sucks that they have to win both, I'm reasonably confident that they'll win at least one. would imagine the results are somewhat correlated though - would be weird if one of the Rs got a full margin of error but the other didn't

honestly have no clue how Trump is gonna effect future elections. obviously he drives turnout up but he also drives turnout against him way up as well, idk how that translates in elections where he's not on the ticket. fwiw Dems have been doing quite well since 2016, I'm not sure that changes now

wouldn't it be weird if they just won one? who would vote for one of the dems but not the other?

i cannot imagine two D wins in GA unless each is like +7 in the polls prior. obv not because i know anything, i am just so poll-scorched at this point.

xp one of the democratic candidates is black, so ... many american voters?

oh yeah

like there's no crosstabs here so it's difficult to be sure, but it looks like 20 ossoff voters said they wouldn't vote in the other race, or 10 ossoff voters actually switched to the GOP:

https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/news/ga-sen-122/

(to be fair, there have been polls in which things are the other way around. the point is, again, both elections will be close, and only takes a couple of people to split tickets or abstain in one race for the outcome to be one senator each.)

that said, i find it easy to imagine more than 2 people in a 1000 changing their mind about whether to vote after watching OANN for past 8 weeks, so i see no reason to think the GOP can afford this nonsense right now.

Honestly wonder whether 2 in 1000 people watch OANN/newsmax

It’s gonna be relentlessly creepy when they start showing those stations in airports and stuff

when will we ever visit airports again

are those like premium cable stations?