US Politics, October 2018: next week will be even longer

Xp well it's his house so

We clearly need to start making the 'tsk tsk' finger much more emphatically in Russia's direction. And I don't think it's out of line to suggest that we furrow our brows even more deeply.

If we're lucky maybe we'll get another one of these faces!

https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video_thumb/CHKiKaJUgAA1pBH.png

Short-term lease: In interview, Nancy Pelosi says she she's herself as "transitional figure" if Democrats win back House and make her speaker again. “I have things to do. Books to write, places to go...: https://t.co/WjGSfmtYoj

— Mark Z. Barabak (@markzbarabak) October 19, 2018

would kick it with Nancy and a bottle of white wine tbh

Oh man yeah

Pelosi has quietly been grooming potential successors, among them Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, and though she said she would be delighted to hand the speaker’s gavel to another woman — “Oh, yeah!” she exclaimed — she has no plans to try to force a choice.

“Whoever is next is not up to me,” she said. “If I were saying, ‘I want so-and-so to be my successor,’ that’s not right.”

Hadn't occurred to me before but Schiff seems like a not-bad choice. Younger, decent public profile. Dunno how he is at vote-counting, which is what really matters.

Looks a lot like Andy Kaufman .
has seemed pretty good on pretty much every appearance I've seen by him.

the congressional campaigns of Antonio Delgado (NY 19) and Abigail Spanberger (VA 07) have been inspiring I think

way to fuck it up, Bredesen:

Inside the Blackburn surge in Tennessee: Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the GOP Senate candidate in Tennessee, has argued for months that her opponent, former Gov. Phil Bredesen, is a Democrat and would vote that way, something he says his record belies, reports Yahoo News National Correspondent Holly Bailey. And she has sought to tie him to Hillary Clinton and to unpopular party leaders like Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader who helped recruit him for the race.

But the contentious battle over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court appears to have given her campaign new life. A New York Times/Siena College poll last week had her up 14 points among likely voters, a dramatic shift after spending much of the summer in an average 50-50 tie with Bredesen.

Part of the shift is a turnaround with women. Before the Kavanaugh vote, Bredesen led Blackburn by an average 10 points among likely women voters, but the NYT/Siena poll found the congressman with a 3-point edge — a result still within the survey’s margin of error but a trend that has Bredesen supporters worried. The former governor was attacked by Blackburn for taking weeks to say whether he would support Kavanaugh’s nomination. And when Bredesen ultimately did say he would have voted for Kavanaugh, he appears to have angered some of his own supporters.

I just got a phone call from Russia. They must have forgot to spoof their number.

xo yeah that was unfortunate, seems like a political move. I still hope he wins. I shudder at the thought of Marsha Blackburn being a senator

(xp)

Blackburn’s gonna win, Bredesen just blew any enthusiasm from his base

maybe you're right but in a new vanderbilt poll they are now neck and neck

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/18/politics/bredesen-blackburn-tennessee-poll-narrow/index.html

Huh wtf

Do pollsters take into account gerrymandering?

gerrymandering wouldn't be an issue for a statewide race like a senate election. but voter suppression definitely would

(but I also wonder how pollsters or a poll aggregation site like 538 would ever take gerrymandering into account)

(sorry in my last post gerrynandering = voter suppression)

Good to know

Well they poll the individual races in gerrymandered districts

but if the issue is voter suppression they have no way of knowing who's actually going to be able to cast a legitimate vote. this seems like an issue in the Georgia governor election right now

voter suppression seems like a bigger issue in statewide races (senate, governor) than in congressional districts, which are gerrymandered to perfection

yeah that was unfortunate, seems like a political move.

Speaking as a TN resident, it was 100 percent a political move, but not an obviously stupid one. Bredesen is in a really tough position. He didn't want to weigh in on Kavanaugh at all, but Blackburn was using it as part of her "He's going to be Chuck Schumer's boy" shtick. He's probably going to lose no matter what, but his only possible way to win is to get moderate Republicans who don't like Blackburn, of whom there are many. It definitely cost him enthusiasm in the base, but the base is mostly going to stick with him for pragmatic reasons, and anyway the base can't get him elected in a state that voted for Trump by a 25-point margin.

^interesting. can't help but still hope he's going to win

so the Saudis did kill Kashoggi

Omg no way

It was self-defense. #standyourground

"killed in fight"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/saudi-claims-that-khashoggi-died-in-a-brawl-draw-immediate-skepticism/2018/10/19/e10d4186-d3ef-11e8-83d6-291fcead2ab1_story.html?utm_term=.8775635b66b1

Embassy brawl. Been there, man.

Tale as old as time.

As if killed in fight somehow justifies chopping him up into pieces and spiriting him out.

insert 'that escalated quickly' meme here.

a fistfight! with a fifteen member Saudi team with a bone saw

It's like what happened w/Eric Trump and those hookers 12 times...

a twelve member hooker team saw a boner?

Is this caravan likely to be a rallying point for right wing voting, seems a little transparent that blaming it on the Dems is openly propagandistic.
Would think it was also a thing that would be better timed if it was a Dem thing since right now is the time of the midterms and it is more likely to be responded to in terms of voting by one side than the other isn't it? Or is it also a rallying point for the left.

Just thinking it could be much better timed in terms of knock on effect.

wait, what? The caravan is "planned"?

Scott Simon interviewing some hack about "America's moral leadership" ... I lol'd

Would think that the caravan might be a catalyst for higher GOP turnout which would be pretty negative.
& it happening at almost any other time would be better.

& I have heard it referred to several times as a leftist ploy.
But no I don't think it was planned by anybody in the U.S.
Does seem to be organised to some extent though, seems like a lot of people to just keep chancing into each other otherwise.

GOP excitement already high. I'm not worried.

People are self-organizing and they will seek to maximize their chances of survival in what ever way seems most likely to succeed. In a tiny group, they are easily preyed upon at every turn as they travel through strange territory. Banding together around a common goal and seeking safety in numbers is a very obvious and intelligent strategy.

https://i.imgur.com/3ZWWMC2.png

The fundraising numbers are so good for Democrats — and so bad for Republicans — that it’s hard to know quite what to make of them. From a modeling standpoint, we’re extrapolating from years in which fundraising was relatively even, or from when one party had a modest edge, into an environment where Democrats suddenly have a 2-1 advantage in fundraising in competitive races. Moreover, this edge comes despite the fact that a large number of these competitive races feature Republican incumbents (incumbents usually have an easier time raising money than challengers) and that most of them are in red terrain.

If Democrats beat their projections on Nov. 6 — say, they win 63 House seats, equalling the number that Republicans won in 2010, an unlikely-but-not-impossible scenario — we may look back on these fundraising numbers as the canary in the coal mine. That data, plus Democrats’ very strong performances in special elections, could look like tangible signs of a Democratic turnout surge that pollsters and pundits perhaps won’t have paid enough attention to. Right now, in fact, the polls are not showing a Democratic turnout advantage. Instead, based on a comparison of likely-voter and registered-voter polls, they’re projecting roughly equal turnout between the parties, with Republicans’ demographic advantages (older, whiter voters typically vote at higher rates in the midterms) counteracting Democrats’ seemingly higher enthusiasm. If turnout among Democratic-leaning groups actually outpaces turnout among Republican-leaning ones, Democrats will beat their polls and our projections.

It’s just as easy to imagine the error running the other way, however. Maybe — precisely because fundraising has become easier and candidates are winning contributions from out-of-state and out-of-district donors — fundraising is no longer as meaningful an indicator of candidates’ grassroots appeal or organizational strength. Maybe the demographics of the Republican coalition have changed such that they’ll no longer raise as much money but will still get plenty of votes. Or maybe the GOP can make up for their lack of individual fundraising with more money from outside groups. If that’s the case, our model could overestimate Democrats’ chances.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-the-democrats-unprecedented-fundraising-edge-is-scary-for-republicans-and-for-our-model/

meanwhile, at the NYT

https://i.imgur.com/Bngz2Oj.png

On fundraising, we have an interesting case here in Knoxville -- a state house race in a rare genuine swing district. It's the third time in a row the same Democratic and Republican candidates have faced off. The first time, the Democrat was the incumbent, and the Republican beat her by about 80 votes. The second time, he beat her by 150 votes. She just outraised him in the 3rd quarter by $70k to $46k, and she's cumulatively outraised him for the year to date. If that translates into even a small increase in Democratic turnout, she will probably win. We'll see.

See, that's what puzzles me about that FiveThirtyEight story. Is Silver's theory that people are willing to donate money to candidates, but then don't show up to vote? That seems weird to me. It seems logical that someone willing to give money to a political candidate would also be willing - even eager - to show up and vote for them. Even if they're donating to a candidate in another part of the country, that should indicate a willingness to vote for that candidate's party locally, yes?

Even if they're donating to a candidate in another part of the country, that should indicate a willingness to vote for that candidate's party locally, yes?

Sure, but if you're donating money to a House candidate in contested district but not able to vote in that district AND the race you can vote in is not a contested race, then the predictive value of your donation for the contested race is nil.

Well, outside of how much a big war chest can help a candidate, which seems difficult to really pin down?

oh cool, they played "Sympathy For The Devil" as entry music for the Montana rally, what a nice wholesome song