US Politics, September 2024 -- “I’m Not Going to Apologize For Posting a Joke”

is Russia bad now it's so confusing

If Harris wins PA along with MI, and WI (where she's ahead) she will have 270 EVs and can afford to lose AZ, NV, NC and GA, which are "most" of the swing states.

and its hard to envision her winning PA without winning both WI and MI

Likewise, if Trump wins PA, along with NC and GA he would have 270 and could afford to lose MI, WI, NV and AZ

sorry I mean either NV or AZ

I want a “childless cat dad for Kamala” shirt

As RFK Jr. fights to get off ballot in some states, his team files to get him on Mississippi’s
https://mississippitoday.org/2024/09/03/kennedy-ballot-mississippi-trump-rfk-jr-swing-states/

idgi

He seems to want to be on the ballot only for states Trump has locked up...as to why, though, ditto--not sure what it accomplishes. (Maybe he thinks he'll take votes away from Harris in such states, thus narrowing the popular vote?)

He has some dumb idea about getting 5% nationally so his "party" will get federal funds. But dropping out of the race tends to shrink your vote total.

Trump is throwing all of his thoughts and prayers into GA and PA
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F089ec98c-45f2-4987-b826-358cb96404f2_1279x1237.png

A contrary opinion (I guess): Dems, afflicted with PTSD since losing Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2016, think and act (right) as if they're battleground states; but, really, wasn't 2016 a fluke? So long as they keep their governors and state legislatures blue, they've got those states. I realize Trump sings that siren's song for rural Pennsylvanians and those from former industrial districts, but is it that much more compelling eight years later?

With the union endorsements, its blue governor, and Walz on the ticket, I tend to think, "Nah, they got Pennsylvania so long as they don't get cocky."

yeah there isn't much evidence that PA is really in play, the thing that worries me is that Fetterman barely won despite his opponent being fucking Dr. Oz, but who knows maybe they figured out how much Fetterman sucks before the rest of us

Yeah. Also: political media, in an attempt to keep boredom at day, keep talking up the Blue Wall.

I think WI is stronger for Harris than PA, but I don't know if I have evidence for that beyond vibes.

i.e. I do think the nightmare scenario is alive where Trump wins PA and Harris wins WI and wins GA very narrowly and the election comes down to whether SCOTUS upholds openly corrupt vote-dumping by local GA election officials is really alive (wait, maybe I should put this in the Trump containment thread)

or find a riverbank and tell it to the reeds

The polling advantage for Harris is currently narrower in PA than in MI and WI, though I've also seen some people say that there hasn't been much high-quality polling there within the past few weeks, so there's a lot of uncertainty around what the aggregates are showing.

This goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: none of us are gonna relax until we win this thing. 2016 is a fresh wound.

she has been getting some really good polls out of Wisconsin lately

none of us are gonna relax until we win this thing. 2016 is a fresh wound

and here's hoping it's a popular vote blowout... that'll make their chicanery less viable

Towards the end of the August thread--or maybe it was in the containment thread--someone posted a tweet from someone in Pennsylvania saying the worry was just a rerun of 2020 and that Harris was doing fine.

In a way it's ridiculous that Trump is even competitive in PA. There's only been one GOP governor term there since 1987.

Meanwhile, North Carolina GOP sure picked a doozy of a gubernatorial candidate. Not gonna be any coattails for Trump there. Not into porn-shaming, but even at that this sounds like uh fairly egregious behavior.

https://www.theassemblync.com/politics/nc-election-governor-republican-mark-robinson-porn-allegations/

Why polling-based election prognostication is bullshit:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/03/election-forecasts-data-00176905

That's hardly what he actually concludes:

It’s still possible that these forecasts may end up being the best way to predict the outcome of presidential elections. But right now, we simply do not know if these models are particularly accurate. And we certainly do not know if small fluctuations in the probability of a candidate winning represent anything other than modeling error or meaningless random variation.

Which I think amounts to "we're not sure yet."

My hot take is that polls can accurately tell us that a race is close, as opposed to a shoo-in. But in a close race polls can't tell us who will win, because they just aren't accurate enough for that. In the Electoral College, this clearly is a close race right now. Unless the polls change to reflect something very different, that's about as far as they can take us.

speaking of polling

A new USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Tuesday shows Biden’s approval rating rising from 41 percent in late June, shortly before his fateful June 27 debate with Donald Trump, to 48 percent today. While Biden was more than 15 points underwater in his approval back then, his approval rating is now nearly even with his disapproval rating (49 percent).

Those are Biden’s best numbers in Suffolk polling since he was inaugurated in January 2021.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/03/biden-is-suddenly-seeing-his-best-polls-years/

filing that with things that make you think

>> Which I think amounts to "we're not sure yet."

As Niels Bohr (or maybe Yogi Berra) said, prediction is hard, especially about the future.

(xpost) How can we miss you if you won't go away?

(Okay, you went away, so now we miss you.)

(xpost) Right, which I think is what at least one leading pollster concedes: "So, who’s gonna win the election? Well, honestly, we don’t know — but we can give you our best probabilistic guess."

Is it okay for the Washington Post guy to offer a hedged guess about the accuracy of polls, but not for the polls to offer a hedged guess as to who'll win the election?

And anyway, isn't the Washington Post itself part of that awful media cohort you bemoan, not to be trusted about anything?

imagine if this happened? trump would lose it all. unlikely , but still...

"Vice President Kamala Harris trails former President Donald Trump by 5 percentage points in Texas, shaving off nearly half the Republican nominee’s one-time advantage over President Joe Biden from earlier this year, according to a new poll released Thursday."

"imagine there's no texas/it's easy if you try..."

uh, when a polling company offers a hedged guess about who will win it will have more real world effects on voters compared to when some Washington Post guy makes a hedged guess about the accuracy of polls. viz. confirmation bias is more strongly at play over who wins and that ensures the hedging will be widely ignored.

the day a Democrat wins Texas the GOP is over

This is a pretty weak sauce year for the Texas GOP. Most of their ghouls in Congress are locks, and Cruz is running on the Border Security bill he voted against.

Nothing like the biannual "Texas is turning purple/blue" fall delusion - only for the blobfish or evil goblin statewide GOP candidate to run up every rural county 85-15.

the day a Democrat wins Texas the GOP is over

LBJ won texas by 63.32%

jimmy carter won texas.

Henry V winning Agincourt has roughly the same relevance to 'Murrica 2024

I could almost see them sacrificing Cruz in favor of grooming new blood for 2030(!) except said prospective new blood is somehow even more embarrassing (Troy Nehls, anyone?).

The Senate is too close for the GOP to sacrifice any incumbent.

LBJ & Carter stats are void given 95% of those voters are dead.

ann richards was governor in the..late 80s?

The parties took a long time to re-align -- in the case of the Dems to shake off the remnants of the Solid South.

Ann Richards was governor from '90-'94. Jim Hightower or someone like that won a railroad commission seat in '94 and that was the last Democrat to win a statewide office.

2016 is a fresh wound

I keep thinking that was 4 years ago

women though...in texas...there are some...there...abortion?

Mods...?

seriously, haven't we gone through this three or four times already?

U.S. Politics, October 2024 -- “They smear because they fear”

Yeah, I had held off banning PD because I wasn't 100% sure they were gabbneb, but 99.9% is enough.