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

Good morning

Where’s the mail in ballots?

I’m sure this will go somewhere

“The market’s troubles have caught the attention of Congress — with one New York lawmaker calling it a “ticking time bomb” for banks as nearly $1 trillion in commercial real estate loans are coming due this year. Faced with vacant office buildings and a shortage of millions of homes to meet demand, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is trying to make it easier for developers to convert underused properties into housing.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/02/office-property-values-fed-00174697

cc unperson is this a big deal?

Been hearing whispers that the Tester camp has quite a dossier of oppo against Sheehy

They may be holding most of their fire until post-Labor Day when voters are paying closer attention

Hard to say how electorally potent this kind of stuff will be but could be the first of many https://t.co/bppGjJqzwf pic.twitter.com/YaLJnf7fEw

— Adam Carlson (@admcrlsn) September 2, 2024

Xp to Ray, not a terrible idea, but I doubt Congress will be able to pass anything, or if so, something ineffective.

Oh, I agree! I don’t have faith in their ability to take this anywhere, especially right now. (But it would be cool)

I feel like "convert the empty commercial building to residential" has been discussed here before, and iirc a big issue is that the plumbing is done completely differently, with bathrooms centralized, it's not insurmountable but you can't just convert w/no remodeling

oh boy, the legendary oppo dump rumor, now that one takes me back

it's going to be a huge oppo dump, the biggest of them all. it will be apocalyptic in the sense that everyone knows it's coming but no one knows the exact time.
it will start with a plop and then turn into a torrential downpour with fizzy-bursts with announcements, and it will destroy the entire system. there will be splashback of an extent which cannot be predicted. the bottom of the toilet lid will be covered with human shit

^^that's the poop joke i would have made years ago during the legendary oppo dump rumor era, but you could say i've done some growing up between then and now

skyscrapers of tribal families with communal bathrooms and no cooking areas and no means of getting out alive is how i understand most of the world anyway tbh

see thread title

jd vance says the things about jokes that we're all thinking but are afraid to say!

jeezus biden won't stop talking. let kamala talk please. i know i know IT'S NOT A JOKE.

i think he had 25 "folks" and 25 "it's not a joke".

that's number one number two

If you already know who you are voting for, why would you waste your time watching political speeches? It’s nonsense. Anything noteworthy will immediately be clipped online. Nothing is going to change anyone’s mind.

i have problems apparently. i haven't really been feeling the nfl lately. i guess i just feel like following something. tim walz was good today. all union gung ho. they are all in on the union gung ho. i keep waiting for walz to bust out with "BROTHERS AND SISTERS BROTHERS AND SISTERS IT'S TIME TO...KICK OUT THE JAMS MOTHERFUCKERS". if he did that in a detroit union hall i think people would lose their shit.

Kick out the Vance MFers

Rama lama fafafa poll-lead reducer

brother dont i know it

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GWh2QC4W4AEWsWy?format=jpg&name=medium

now here's a scoop

listen bud cornpop is my friend and theres nothing you or anyone else can do to change that

We used to have Scoop

BUT ITS OVER NOWWWW

Not many posts this month...long weekend? Nothing happening? Or: the early rush of excitement has levelled off, some anxiety creeping in?

Long weekend, no anxiety yet.

No one pays attention to the Presidential race until after, uh, yesterday

Lolz at mark g

Anyway it's all over:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/09/03/kamala-harris-beats-donald-trump-us-election-poll/

saw some thing predicting whoever won PA had a 90%+ chance of taking the whole thing

Basically if Harris wins PA she can afford to lose most of the other swing states

(xpost) Your hero agrees.

https://i.postimg.cc/rmCYKLsk/nate.jpg

Anecdotal indicator: In 2008 and 2012 when I drove around North Philly there were Obama signs everywhere. Thus far I don't see too many Harris signs. Maybe too early.

Right, the point is, these are all correlated, so a candidate who wins one is disproportionately likely to win all three

vote power index, love me some vpi, gimme vpi alerts on my phone

Apparently signs keep selling out, was told there won’t be more until sometime this month.

Signs, signs--everywhere a sign.

(xpost) Your hero agrees.

― clemenza, Tuesday, September 3, 2024 12:44 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

that was the thing i saw lol

Just fuck up vote certs in georgia pa and mich then? mich has made that a little harder by law and has a dem gov, dunno about pa hit it seems like shapiro has some authority over it, and ga seems like a playground with a gop gov. def start by fucking up ga.

https://www.votebeat.org/2024/08/22/presidential-election-certification-delays-trump-republicans-disputes-georgia-board-rule/

Ah but Georgia's governor hates Trump

he does but he also supports him. that said I think GA would be foolish to allow the sort of fuck ups he pushed for last time this time around.

the good thing re: PA is that it's a big union state and unions really dislike Vance. also I don't think Trump palling around with Elon Musk is gonna be doing him any favors

saw some thing predicting whoever won PA had a 90%+ chance of taking the whole thing

― lag∞n, Tuesday, September 3, 2024 12:38 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Basically if Harris wins PA she can afford to lose most of the other swing states

― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Tuesday, September 3, 2024 12:39 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

first point is true, winning PA makes you very likely to win, but only because winning PA is correlated with winning a bunch of other states. it does not mean you can lose most of the other all the other states. and winning PA does not *cause* you to win the states.

the tourist shop near my office has been selling trump t-shirts since the conviction/assassination. no Biden shirts. they added Harris t-shirts last week. I've seen enough.

how many of these did they have
https://res.cloudinary.com/teepublic/image/private/s--NyV2QroO--/t_Resized%20Artwork/c_crop,x_10,y_10/c_fit,w_470/c_crop,g_north_west,h_626,w_470,x_0,y_0/g_north_west,u_upload:v1571669489:production:blanks:jaeeqnv4r8crsxalh03n,x_-395,y_-325/b_rgb:eeeeee/c_limit,f_auto,h_630,q_auto:good:420,w_630/v1723928254/production/designs/64600815_1.jpg

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?

A lot of stuff could happen. Texas could become a swing state but Minnesota could turn into Wisconsin and Wisconsin and Michigan could turn into Ohio. You just never know. Loosely speaking, I think states with big cities and cheap houses that a lot of people are moving to are going to get more Democratic (as has already happened in AZ and GA), while states that are getting older, poorer, and sparser are going to get more Republican. Admittedly my theory does not explain Florida but my other theory is that Florida is fucked up and bullshit.

its wild Trump has been a part of the daily political news cycle for nearly 9 years now I just want him to go away forever

I mean his horrible political views are just part of it, the thing I really despise is that he's just such a massive asshole about everything, all the time, his entire campaign strategy is shitting on everyone, he doesn't have a single nice thing to say about the country he wants to run. its just so exhausting, the only bigger asshole I can think of is probably his running mate

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

Yes, but like Milo pointed out there's a ton of rural areas dominated by Evangelicals and other patriarchal fucks.

not sure it'll have any real effect, but still fun to see:

Republican Voters Against Trump launched an $11.5 million ad buy in key swing states on Tuesday, marking the group’s largest ad buy so far this cycle.

The group is targeting voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona. Additionally, the ad buy will also run in Nebraska’s competitive 2nd Congressional District. $4.5 million of the ad buy will be spent in Pennsylvania, while $3 million will be spent in Michigan and $2.2 million will be spent in Wisconsin. The group will spend $1.5 million in Arizona and $375,000 in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.

I think it will have an effect. Gotta convince some people it's OK to stay home on Election Day.

yeah, I just mean that in the current political ecosphere, 11 million unfortunately ain't jack shit

11 million is OK if it's carefully spent. it's not like Republican Voters Against Trump has to finance a ground game, just plant seeds in voters' minds.

Just saw a Trump ad that was weirdly old-fashioned (and kind of lame): "The debate we've all been waiting for," followed by clips of Harris on the left detailing poor economic indicators, contrasted with Harris on the right extolling Bidenomics. Guessing they had to beg Trump to okay it. "But where's the insulting nickname?"

what might have been...

It is unclear whether Trump was genuinely considering choosing Kennedy as his running mate at that stage. Days later, at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, he announced JD Vance as the vice-presidential nominee.

But as recently as April – at a time when he was lambasting Kennedy as “a radical left Democrat” – Trump was apparently also considering him as his vice-president and musing about he liked the sound of a “Trump-Kennedy” ticket.

makes you think

Lol

Too bad about that voice

and the bear corpse and the beheaded whale

Those are pluses

his face and voice do kind of herald the end of a civilization. he's the embodiment of the rot in privilege.

Unperson, what say you

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/us/politics/tim-sheehy-native-americans-montana.html

More on North Carolina. New voter registration is up, and skews to women and younger women in particular. Combined with some terrible statewide GOP candidates, NC is going to be close this year.

Well, hello North Carolina. We have a voter reg update. In week 15 this year (July 21st), the total number of registrants was almost 50% higher than it was during the same week in 2020 (17,178 to 12,426).

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) September 4, 2024

I wonder if more people voting in person will make the counting less of a shitshow than 2020

Across a group of six key battleground states, an average of 15% of likely voters said they have yet to make up their mind on who to vote for in the upcoming general election, new CNN polls by SSRS found.

lol they really don't start paying attention until after Labor Day, do they?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/opinion/how-the-presidential-election-got-this-close.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IE4.AZep.71pCIGtBYhlA&smid=url-share

I guess like the last couple of elections the polls can't tell us much other than it's very close, and the outcome will depend upon enthusiasm, ground game and follow-through. It probably helps that the GOP nominee is vacuuming up all the money for himself.

The best outcome is maybe he does a Baltar on election day and flees the country for somewhere without an extradition treaty before losing at the polls

wonder where in the world wouldnt give him up russia maybe

Idi Amin’s Saudi villa is might still be unoccupied.

saudis would send him right back

He has mentioned Venezuela.

i think even venezuela would send him back if usa asked, it would need to be a country who wants to publicly antagonize america, theres just no angle there, unless youre already maxed on on americas shit list, its russia

US just impounded Maduro's plane, so they might be more open to it now

Isn't the whole thing with Venezuela that it doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US? At least that's what The Spanish Prisoner taught me.

North Korea of course.

saudis would send him right back

...in pieces.

Would love to see Trump broadcasting propaganda for South Korea

Isn't the whole thing with Venezuela that it doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US? At least that's what The Spanish Prisoner taught me.

― jaymc, Wednesday, September 4, 2024 11:38 AM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lots of places dont have extradition treaties but that doesnt mean they wont send someone back if a country asks, like if tajikistan calls cambodia and is all hey we believe our most prolific serial killer is living in your country can you pick him up for us theyll prob do it regardless if they have a formal agreement in place, conversely if the crime is tax fraud theyre likely to ignore it, spanish prisoner great movie btw

"hey, can you extradite a few tacos for me? I got you next time!"

exactly

i refuse to believe DJT would move somewhere with a primarily POC population

Belarus then

Needs a steady supply of poverty stricken blonde white women

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7kra3m5l4sl2pa6w5l35mi5f/bafkreietleqytpxzqiglla3lvextdakp4x2sjctkru63drbmefggwohs74@jpeg

That is quite an imbalance in MI and WI. NC too--Trump's ahead there, but by less than a point.

If Trump can flip PA and GA and the 2020 map otherwise stays the same, then that's the ballgame (though at this point I'd probably try harder to hold NC).

“If Trump can flip X state a decade into his political career” is a hypothetical on the level of “if Trump can throw a kettlebell over Mar-a-Lago’s roof”. Again I ask, who is he bringing into the tent that was not there before? Harris is absolutely kicking his ass with the “oh wow, I guess I’ll vote this year after all” crowd.

Tbf, he won PA and GA (and MI and WI and AZ) in 2016.

Furthermore, we're talking about close elections. In 2020, Biden won PA by 1.17% and GA by 0.23%. It's not crazy to think that a couple of thousand voters could move in the other direction for whatever reason.

"Again I ask, who is he bringing into the tent that was not there before?"

Republican presidential nominee former President Trump is outperforming his 2020 support among Hispanics, who prefer him on immigration during the 2024 race, according to a new poll.

You gotta dig into that story a bit:

Republican presidential nominee former President Trump is outperforming his 2020 support among Hispanics, who prefer him on immigration during the 2024 race, according to a new poll.

Hispanic voters give Trump a 42% to 37% advantage over Democrat presidential candidate Vice President Harris regarding immigration policy, Reuters/Ipsos polling shows.

Among the broader electorate, 46% preferred Trump on immigration over the 36% who preferred Harris, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted on Aug. 21-28.

Hispanics, described as a diverse and fast-growing section of the electorate in the United States, prefer Harris' approach over that of Trump by 18 points for health care and 23 points for climate change, according to the poll. On the economy, the survey found registered voters overall prefer Trump's platform over that of Harris by 45% to 36%.

Hispanic voters prefer former President Trump's approach on immigration over that of Vice President Harris, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.

But Trump and Harris drew equally on the economy among registered Hispanic voters, garnering 39% support from that base each.

The lede is slightly misleading.

He's a got a clear lead on immigration, according to the poll, not everything else.

But this is the most important part:

Harris currently has a 13-point lead among registered Hispanic voters, the poll showed. The Hispanic vote went to Biden by 21 points four years ago, according to a 2020 Pew Research exit poll analysis

I think Harris is probably going to win too, but unperson's continual insistence that Trump cannot attract new voters is not panning out in reality.

Right! It's more accurate to say "Kamala Harris is below Biden's 2020 numbers among Hispanic voters," not the other lede.

and every single day, an angry young incel turns 18

and every single day, an angry old man yells at clouds for the last time

OH MY GOD IT'S REAL. THIS IS ON THE OFFICIAL KAMALAHQ TIKTOK ACCOUNT. THEY HAVE SUBWAY SURFER GAMEPLAY NEXT TO A CLIP. pic.twitter.com/RucxMWZerG

— Joe (@electionsjoe) September 4, 2024

i think KH is going to get way more votes than Biden did in 2020! people like her for one thing. 2020 was all about NOT TRUMP. now it is NOT TRUMP + candidate i can really like and am excited by.

yeah but brat summer is officially over

(except in the southern hemisphere)

I don't know if I'd place any bets about either candidate getting more votes than 2020 given that it had 25-30 million more votes than the previous three elections.

despite what the polls are saying I'd be pretty shocked if Harris doesn't win, she's a much better candidate than Hillary or Biden was, while Trump is somehow even worse. I don't know how Trump is going to win over that last 1-3% he needs. hard to see how the "everything's going to hell if Kamala wins" attack is gonna stick given she's been the VP for 4 years. ditto for the "I will fix everything and make everybody rich" thing, not sure if people are gonna buy that given he was already president for 4 years

you never know though, this country is real fuckin dumb sometimes and I can't help but thing the increasingly toxic political climate benefits Trump

and trump, as usual, has a women problem:

An ABC News/Ipsos poll published Sunday showed Harris with a huge lead over Trump among women, 54 percent to 41 percent, while Trump enjoyed a more modest 51 percent to 46 percent lead over Harris among men.

surprised it’s that close

interesting finding

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/09/04/election-poll-low-income-voters-harris-trump/75018088007/

Low income voters − those making less than $20,000 a year − now support Harris over former President Donald Trump, 58%-35%, the biggest jump among all groups, according to the poll. It is a reversal from June, when Trump, at 39%, was three points ahead of Biden, at 36% with voters of this economic group.

What about the Poorly Educated? Do they still love Trump?

lol pic.twitter.com/PCfy7GAXdq

— Zeeshan Aleem (@ZeeshanAleem) September 4, 2024

"When he tried to make mac & cheese.. now get this... he used skim milk!"

“When he said something was a ‘nothingburger’, it was invariably a ‘somethingburger’.”

More like Tim Floorz, amirite?

Sometimes funny things happen:

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/a-big-ripoff-white-nationalist-nick-fuentes-blasts-trump-for-admitting-he-lost-the-2020-election/

(The final two paragraphs are a delight.)

wonder if this is gonna convince the independants

https://i.imgur.com/7N6BywQ.png

Cool bro!

But even funnier/more telling:

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2024/09/04/indictment-russians-tennessee-company-tenet/75074263007/

Per a summary from the indictment:

Their eventual contact was allegedly $400k/pm to commentator-1 who is presumably Benny Johnson, and $100k/video (weekly) for commentator-2 who is presumably Tim Pool

more on Walz's shameful past

https://theonion.com/sources-allege-tim-walzs-aw-shucks-persona-merely-facade-concealing-true-gee-whiz-tendencies/

CapsLock never coming off... lower case is for LOSERS

all harris ads should just be random trump statements. about bacon and wind. that's all you really need.

man, I've got friends losing their shit over this:

https://www.mediaite.com/news/trumps-advantage-in-nate-silvers-model-expands-harris-campaign-hasnt-found-2nd-gear/

I think there are plenty of reasonable things to dislike about Nate Silver, but being mad about his numbers isn't something with a great track record tbh. I hope they improve and/or he's wrong, but I'm not gonna yell at polls I don't like.

The best response as always is, this election is winnable — go out and win it. The game hasn't been played yet.

It's not a matter of being mad at Nate Silver, it's a matter of not paying attention to trends while concentrating on what a pollster said today.

Yeah, I agree. There are reasons to feel optimistic! But mostly imo there are reasons to feel like the Democrats CAN win this and SHOULD win it, so they need to do it. I think the worst thing about polls and projections is the sense of inevitability or momentum they can create in one direction or another, which can be bad whether they're hyping people up or bumming them out.

but I'm not gonna yell at polls I don't like

what happened to Rasmussen this time around? I don't think I've heard a peep out of them

this was the poll that called retirement community landlines at 11am on tuesdays and always had trump in front

Nate Silver's whole thing is an extended act of self-harm; no matter how good his numbers are, he taints the output by being such a smarmy piece of shit. He's almost as bad as that fuck who ran for office in Minnesota recently and got blown out, whose name I can't remember.

Rasmussen is still around

I'm just gonna keep mentally repeating "turnout models suck, nobody knows." It might even be true.

Liz Cheney says she's voting for Harris:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/us/politics/liz-cheney-kamala-harris-vote.html

https://i.imgur.com/5AXTpmT.png

There are moments during this thing where I hope it never ends.

Dude makes Ted Cruz look like Fonzie.

Liz Cheney says she's voting for Harris

I think McCain's son has said the same

Oh my god what is that

How awkward can a person BE

(Vance trying to greet a constituent, not Cheney)

Are you sure he's not just intercepting a wild punch?

“It’s a marked shift from when New Hampshire was among the bluish battlefields where Trump’s campaign boasted it could expand its electoral map as President Joe Biden faltered. Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley said days after the June debate that the party had started to “engage” in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Virginia. A post-debate survey showed Trump had erased Biden’s polling lead in the Granite State, leaving Republicans gleeful and Democrats spooked.

Today, New Hampshire stands as the latest sign of how Trump’s map is constricting in his run against Kamala Harris. A trio of surveys have shown the vice president opening an outside-the-margin-of-error lead over Trump — one that she aimed to cement on Wednesday with a campaign event at a brewery on New Hampshire’s Seacoast where she touted her new plan for small business tax breaks. Race raters have shifted the state to the left. And Republicans here are privately bemoaning the Trump campaign’s lack of investment in this state where Democrats outnumber Republicans in field offices by 17 to 1.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/04/new-hampshire-donald-trump-shrinking-electoral-map-00177390

Sounds like everything's great over there:

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ig5djks6d6e6kyet32abh5zs/bafkreiblnamkeitg7gtfg6ucgdhnoyfyjgee5zc6o4xeonly6w6hyrey4u@jpeg

“Onward to victory!”

gotta love it when the dont leak email immediately leaks

I'm not sure there's a 'hot story' but there are plenty of smaller leaks about internal bickering and conflict, they're all over the place.. not something we're hearing from the Harris/Walz ticket

'because you spoke out of school' is odd, unless the entire staff are interns

or maybe it's this from yesterday, lol:

Trump campaign ‘no longer thinks New Hampshire is winnable and is pulling back from state,’ leaked insider email claims

Did they even fix their security

Trump X'd about some 'enormous gigantic breathtaking announcement' a few days ago that would leave the Dems whimpering & quivering in their boots, but nothing materialized as far as I know

or 'troothed' I mean

The announcement is that Biden is running again, surely:

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4usmserhjqkvhldgedfjb3jw/bafkreibf5nhg2ipt6ylgmj5dt2v6eqdiehvjhravej42js7ud676cjensy@jpeg

i thought he would boot JD and replace with Tulsi as the anti-Kambalah, swinging technodork Bernie-bro left with free IVF and abortions / alternative health care for all, legal weed and recreational whatevs, tax breaks for sex workers and crypto, universal basic income, paid for by rounding up and taking assets from illegals, democrats and teh woke. but they are even too dumb for that.

I don’t know how important this Dave Rubin/Tim Pool Russian dupes story is, but it sure is funny

It is hilarious and so dumbly transparenet. Real Boris and Natasha work. Got Turning Point tangled up in it too. I don't know if it's a big big deal, but it's quite a web. People are going to be unearthing damning clips for days.

There's some definite tip-of-iceberg stuff happening, I suspect. I think there's more roffles to come at least.

transparent, that is

Yes, definitely more to come.

Got Turning Point tangled up in it too. I don't know if it's a big big deal, but it's quite a web.

Considering that Turning Point is handling GOTV for the Trump campaign at the moment, it could be a very big deal (in terms of distraction leading to major mistakes).

that was Vance meeting Ohio Dem Rep Kaptur btw:

That time @JDVance1 and @RepMarcyKaptur met at the picket line... #UAWonStrike #UAW pic.twitter.com/j0Wu8Mt1Jt

— Justin Billau (@photogbillau) October 6, 2023

"first time here?"

This is Tim Walz’s family from Nebraska.

🤣👏🏻 pic.twitter.com/zTXuTUDWsN

— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) September 4, 2024

Did someone share that last night? Apparently they're all his distant cousins. I def wouldn't wanna be judged by my racist relatives.

Stupid fuckers can’t use apostrophes.

I don’t know how important this Dave Rubin/Tim Pool Russian dupes story is, but it sure is funny

― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Wednesday, September 4, 2024 11:13 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

amazing how much money is constantly shoveled into the worst rw bs, they should be made to get real jobs

Yeah Tim Pool’s best defense is that he’s an idiot who totally thinks some random company wanted to give him hundreds of thousands of dollars because he’s such an awesome dude.

tbf it does happen a lot the money is just usually coming from american billionaires

Another one of those NYT focus groups, this one of PA voters:

1. Strong, 39 year old 2020 Biden voter;
2. Likeable, 69 year old 2020 Biden voter
3. Drunk, 50 year old 2020 Trump voter;
4. OK, 55 year old 2020 Trump voter;
5. Naive, 63 year old 2020 Biden voter;
6. Fraud, 52 year old 2020 Trump voter;
7. Liberal, 57 year old 2020 Biden voter;
8. Unserious, 61 year old 2020 Biden voter
9. Bright, 40 year old 2020 Biden voter;
10. Ok, 34 year old 2020 Biden voter;
11. Lucky, 56 year old 2020 Trump voter;
'12. Untested, 43 year old 2020 Biden voter.

Walz:

1. Positive, 43 year old 2020 Biden voter;
2. Pass, 39 year old 2020 Biden voter;
3. A Good Man, 69 year old, 2020 Biden voter;
4. Liar, 50 year old, 2020 Trump voter;
5. Pass, 55 year old, 2020 Trump voter;
6. Useless, 63 year old 2020 Biden voter;
7. Unknown, 57 year old 2020 Biden voter;
8. Dad, 61 year old 2020 Biden voter
9. Lovable, 40 year old 2020 Biden voter.

The first set is for Harris.

it's a real talent to be able to dig people like this up

this guy gets it

10. Ok, 34 year old 2020 Biden voter;

"drunk"???

That crucial drunk demographic

there's a right-wing rumor that Harris has a drinking problem

They found a 2007 photo of Harris at a Chili's.

KamaLUSH, amirite?

She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em bot' up

id like to see the campaign lean harder into the kamala enjoying the good life angle stopping in at the best local northern thai spot, shaking hands near a food truck, doing events at a brewery, her just being like did you try this its so good, actually eating the cheesesteak asking for extra wiz, socials full food pix

totally

"tonight on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives"

see also: Hot Ones, as has been noted

*mouth full of nachos* president putin must be made to understand...

lolllll

greasy mayo stains on her suits

calm down, sailor

Harris 2024: "You Gonna Finish That?"

hungover wear sweats drinking a gatorade on meet the press

Saturday night meets Sunday morning

I dunno, lots of state fair food pics have not proven politically advantageous
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTBhDmiQcJTsj8-e3iVZsrCQK9eBCi-zmsEsQ&usqp=CAU

Just received an email in which the NY Times was described as "the idiosyncratic mobile gaming company that publishes a dead-tree newspaper". I laughed.

Wordle you talking about?

not looking good for Tester in Montana:

Republican challenger Tim Sheehy is leading Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Tester by 6 points, 51 percent support to 45 percent, among likely voters in Montana, according to a new poll commissioned by AARP.

and the Dems don't really have any other likely states where they can pick up a seat. Without the Senate majority and without McConnell at the head of GOP Senate caucus, seems entirely possible Congress would refuse to certify a Harris win.

Maybe Harris could hold a rally in front of the capital and tell the crowd to fight like hell

according to a new poll commissioned by AARP

Ummm...

And didn't Tester say two weeks ago that he wasn't endorsing Harris?

according to a new poll commissioned by AARP

About the only people I'd trust to poll Montana TBH. This is a gray-haired state.

And didn't Tester say two weeks ago that he wasn't endorsing Harris?

I don't think he said anything explicit, but he was one of Montana's electors and he didn't vote to certify her.

He said he's not going to make an endorsement in the Presidential race.

FTR, here's what I said elsewhere today:

Tester really seems to be running what looks *to me* like a very bad campaign, playing defense ("yeah, I'm a Democrat, but not like those others") when offense ("fuck these assholes! if you're a decent human being, you should vote for me") is what's called for. I'm seeing good "Tim Sheehy is a crooked piece of shit" messages from third party organizations, but the Tester campaign is falling down on the job IMO.

I think gubernatorial candidate Ryan Busse is running the campaign Tester should be running — his slogan, "let's get your Montana back," is very strong, and considering his focus on property taxes, access to public lands, and abortion rights and the fact that current governor Gianforte's approval rating is below 40 percent, I think he's got a real shot. I'd like to see Monica Tranel (who's running against Ryan Zinke) take it, too, but I can't really gauge her appeal right now based on nothing but a few YouTube ads (I don't have TV).

from the Guardian.. a good response to all the GOP 'socialist' talk

To state the obvious: free lunches – ensuring that poor kids won’t go hungry – are not communism. The one time in recent history that the US clearly resembled the Soviet Union – empty shelves and long lines outside shops – was under Trump; to be sure, other countries also had supply chain problems during Covid-19, but the former president proved exceptionally irresponsible and incompetent. But there’s another, less obvious similarity with the late Soviet Union in particular: the experience of being at the mercy of bureaucrats. No, not the DMV, but vast private corporations with quasi-monopoly power, something with which Trump’s Republican party, unlike the Biden administration, is evidently fine.

Fucking Karl Marx heading the Dems:

Ms. Harris has at the same time effectively embraced much of her Republican opponent’s signature legislative achievement by pledging not to raise taxes for any household making less than $400,000 a year, which amounts to roughly 98 percent of the population.

Campaigning in Nevada last month, she also adopted Mr. Trump’s plan to exempt tips from taxes, despite economists and tax experts having criticized the idea. She has also floated several additional tax cuts, like offering a larger child tax credit and expanding a deduction for new businesses, and at times she has adopted traditionally conservative rhetoric about taxes on the campaign trail, emphasizing that she would want to cut taxes for many Americans to allow them to “keep more of your hard-earned money.”

So what's the deal with Harris' father? He doesn't seem to support her in any way--like he wasn't at the DNC or anything. Also, he sent out a nasty press release when she made a joke about Jamaica and pot smoking back in 2020.

Harris 2024: "You Gonna Finish That?"

― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Thursday, September 5, 2024 9:48 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

“Guys, there’s gonna be a lot of things we don’t tell Mr. Emhoff.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYt0khR_ej0

Haven't seen that for ages--great! "There's gonna be a whole bunch of things we don't tell Mrs. Clinton."

(Which, yes, is lot more of a problem today than then.)

Looks like the Magic Oracle is going with Harris.. (he thought Biden should've stayed in the race)

A notable elections forecaster predicted Vice President Harris will win November’s election, according to his model of 13 keys.

Allan Lichtman, a historian who has successfully predicted the outcome of nine of the last 10 presidential elections, revealed in a New York Times video that he believes that Harris will clinch a victory over former President Trump. His election model is based on 13 true-or-false questions that ignore polls and pollsters.

“Kamala Harris will be the next president of the United States — at least that’s my prediction for this race, but the outcome is up to you, so get out and vote,” he said at the end of the video.

two of his 13 points of prediction lol

* The incumbent party candidate has charisma
* The challenger is uncharismatic

* The incumbent party candidate is a drunkard

both those things are very important and def I think a big part of why Trump beat Clinton, worth mentioning that Trump looks and sounds like shit these days though

xp she should start appearing with a carafe of cabernet on the lectern, it'd be good for California vintners

Trump is absolutely repellent to a wide swath of the American electorate

Sadly he was not repellent to 74,223,975 people last time.

but his repellence did inspire 81,283,501 to vote for the animal magnetism of Joe Biden

Ah yes:

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:3dy6xttodkmml2c6crmm75ps/bafkreibhdvo6lkvkyakosvptzlqx3sifficrhyaaxqhgdqki6ihr3kbwn4@jpeg

is that specific enough for you?

What the fuck is he even saying?!?

"mmm pizza"

i can't believe anyone suggests that Kamala produces word salad when there's a full Jello Waldorf salad running against her

https://i.imgur.com/oMYyGhN.jpg

here's hoping terrines & aspics never make a comeback

So Trump wants Musk to run a Government Audit...

well look what he did for twitter, dude know his stuff

I'm cool with aspic making a comeback in album titles for a future nostalgic revival of King Crimson style progressive rock

I don’t think Texas (presidential or senate) is going to flip any time soon but you can make a polling case that dems would be better directing senate money there (or Florida) than Montana.

I'm not sure Tester can even accept dirty demoncrat money

In re Trump's rambling incoherence, this Parker Molloy piece from the New Republic may have already been posted here (apologies if so) but it does a good job of calling out how crazy it is the way Trump gets reported on. Like, just no indication that what he's actually saying at any of these events is bizarro nonsense. I know it's partly because of Trump fatigue all the way around and a sense that "people already know what he's like," but they actually DON'T know necessarily. Any given speech or appearance he says 4 or 5 things that would have ended the careers of generations of candidates before him, and a lot of them only get reported by partisans on social media.

https://newrepublic.com/article/185530/media-criticism-trump-sanewashing-problem

The consequences of this journalistic malpractice extend far beyond misleading headlines. By laundering Trump’s words in this fashion, the media is actively participating in the erosion of our shared reality. When major news outlets consistently present a polished version of Trump’s statements, they create an alternate narrative that exists alongside the unfiltered truth available on social media and in unedited footage.

Voters who rely solely on traditional news sources are presented with a version of Trump that bears little resemblance to reality.

here's hoping terrines & aspics never make a comeback

I know it was a long weekend, but what he said last Friday about public schools as trans factories should've gotten end-to-end coverage. We know why not.

_here's hoping terrines & aspics never make a comeback_

I’m pretty sure that aspic salad would be making a comeback shortly after I ate it

My Story.
My Perspective.
The Truth. https://t.co/ZCTwZSqZND pic.twitter.com/HHGQaA6d5v

— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) September 5, 2024

these people are fucking loons.

that just makes me realize how little I've heard her speak. not since her 2016 convention speech, maybe.

Is this going to be the most purchased and least read book in history?

this'll be at the Dollar Tree in three months, max

His name is PBKR.

many xps, but wanted to say that tipsy is 1000% otm

interesting to think about what punishment these conservative 'influencers' wouldn't have faced in 1959 for accepting Russian money to distribute propaganda domestically

^^^ WOULD've

I know it was a long weekend, but what he said last Friday about public schools as trans factories should've gotten end-to-end coverage. We know why not.

Yep. Its pathetic that this insane assertion that public school employees are doing sexual reassignment surgery has gone nearly unmentioned. But he also gets to keep repeating his assertions that immigrants are from insane asylums and countless other lies constantly with no pushback

"We know why not" = gays are cool, trans people aren't cool, as we know from the NYT's coverage.

The Times was doing to gays in the 80s what they’re doing now to trans people.

1) Yes, the column by @GregTSargent is very forceful and important.

2) Yes, @mikebarnicle had an important and on-point blast this morning about the incredible, irresponsible, and un-changing "normalization" by main outlets.

3) Yes, Trump's performance last night would lead to… https://t.co/ECUy5jXMxV

— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) September 5, 2024

fallows always been such a resistance dem or is he losing it a bit

Fallows has been leaning more into media criticism lately, esp. in his newsletter Breaking the News (an extension of a book he wrote in the '90s with that title). I think he generally makes some astute points on the subject, in the vein of folks like Jay Rosen and Margaret Sullivan, who have also examined how the media's biases and incentives often benefit Republicans and downplay the danger they pose, but this kind of thing can sometimes tip into hysterical exasperation when expressed on Twitter.

I know my boy Rick Scott has never won anything but a nailbiter but this surprises me:

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.) are locked in a dead heat in Florida’s Senate race, according to polling released Friday by The Hill and Emerson College Polling.

Scott leads Mucarsel-Powell 46 percent to 45 percent among likely Florida voters, well within the survey’s plus or minus 3.4 point margin of error. Nine percent of voters said they are undecided.

Among independent voters, 47 percent said they back Mucarsel-Powell and 34 percent broke for Scott, while 19 percent said they are undecided. Mucarsel-Powell leads Scott by 5 points among women voters, and Scott led Mucarsel-Powell by 8 points among men.

The poll also found Mucarsel-Powell polling ahead of Scott with the state’s Hispanic vote by 6 points, while Scott led Mucarsel-Powell by 19 points among white voters.

The Hill/Emerson College Polling survey shows the tightest race yet between the two Floridians.

A Florida Atlantic University poll released last month found Scott leading Mucarsel-Powell 47 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, while a University of North Florida poll also released last month showed the same margin. Prior to the poll’s release, The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ average showed Scott leading by 4.3 points.

Greg Sargent touches on the most frustrating aspect of all this for me, it’s absolutely wild that the media cannot just come out and say the man has no fucking clue what he’s talking about, he has no actual policy, he is rapidly losing his mind and at this point would likely fail literally any job interview. It’s one thing to launder his extreme views, they’ve been doing that for years, but now they’re laundering how utterly incoherent he is, pretending he actually has something to say, it’s maddening. Fuck I’m getting mad about it right now!!

why wouldn't they do this? they want him to win

Rick Scott looks like that weird dude from The Hills have Eyes.

That guy is afraid of Rick Scott

“Critically important column” is an oxymoron

I would suggest that it really helps to have an idea both what the ideological purposes of major legacy American media outlets actually are, but also what strata of media professional is responding to which incentive and which limitation, because it’s not the same between reporter, editor, and publisher, shall we say.

One of the examples of this is the self-selecting nature of who gets hired for what media job, and how that person isn’t getting the job who will actually call this shit out. There’s a reason why guys like Chris Hayes won’t say things on the air that he might on even on his own podcast. Not that the things he says on-air don’t necessarily have value, but there’s a more than likely a reason why there’s a difference.

Similarly, shit like why most major American political media just sounds like upper-middle class types talking to other upper-middle class types.

Part of these reasons would probably relate to why they just can’t say that Trump’s been in obvious decline or that it’s a big sign of massive problems across all system-wide that our ruling class types are all senescent.

because it hurts their bottom line

I mean I think it's true that the main MSM bias is in favor of drama, they love shifting narratives and drama, if they stated the obvious that one of the two candidates literally cannot answer a single policy question it would upset the balance they're trying to strike

that said it really is so fucking irriating to see, like Biden took so much shit for saying things like "we defeated Medicare" at the debate that he was basically forced to drop out, well guess what Trump says shit like that every time he opens his mouth

that thing the other day where trump was talking about people in new hampshire voting for biden in this election...

don't remember if someone put that clip on here.

Alexa stanning for Harris

Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant has caused an uproar among conservatives after viral videos showed the device giving supportive answers about voting for Kamala Harris, while refusing to respond to similar questions about Donald Trump.

The issue was due to a software update intended to improve the quality of Alexa’s functions and its artificial intelligence operations, according to leaked documents obtained by the Washington Post.

When asked why someone should vote for Harris, videos showed the device listing positive qualities of the Democratic nominee. Asked the same question about Trump, Alexa gave a stock answer that it could not promote or give answers about specific political candidates.

at some point we need to accept that the simplest explanation is that the NYT (institutionally and at the individual reporter level) wants trump to win. i don't know why people tie themselves in knots to avoid that when they're happy to assume it about CNN or Fox News or the WSJ or whatever.

to be fair Trump does not really have a single positive quality, in fact it's actually difficult to imagine a worse human being, unless you looked at say his running mate

well guess what Trump says shit like that every time he opens his mouth

To what extent is this the same ol' literally-but-not-seriously / seriously-but-not-literally divide?

Similarly, shit like why most major American political media just sounds like upper-middle class types talking to other upper-middle class types.

Part of these reasons would probably relate to why they just can’t say that Trump’s been in obvious decline or that it’s a big sign of massive problems across all system-wide that our ruling class types are all senescent.

― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Friday, September 6, 2024 1:54 PM (forty-three

Actually, even Morning Joe has devoted two consecutive shows to "this guy is losing it" this week

Trump's mental incapacity would get more coverage if Republicans were the ones pointing it out, because then the story would be "Senator So-and-so breaks with Trump," which would be a surprising, exciting news story and would allow the media to air the idea without having to bring it up themselves (and subject themselves to accusations of liberal bias). On the other hand, if Trump is saying crazy stuff, and Democrats are the only ones getting worked up about it, then that's the status quo and seen as not newsworthy.

Actually, even Morning Joe has devoted two consecutive shows to "this guy is losing it" this week

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, September 6, 2024 1:40 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

its not even the "we're gonna deport 13 million people on Day 1" stuff anymore it's him turning simple questions about abortion and the budget into long rants about Venezuelan crime gangs and how he's been treated worse than every president in history

Indeed, there's been so much additional media coverage of his rambling lately that Trump felt compelled to issue a defense, the Theory of the Weave, which purportedly greatly impressed his alleged coterie of English professors.

lol that was in response to YMP's post actually

I'm not invested in the Greg Sargent and Jay Rosen takes because I do consume some media and, yes, while Peter Baker-type hacks still cling to their on the one hand/on the other hand reporting style, shows like, as I pointed out, "Morning Joe" devote 15 minutes to showing, "Here's Kamala Harris addressing tax policy, you may disagree but she sounds coherent; now here's Donald Trump, who sounds like a sixth grader faking his way through a book report of a book he didn't read." That was just this morning (I happened to be flipping channels as I exercised).

MSNBC shows are a pretty notable exception to that rule

People younger than me don't watch Lester Holt -- they're on TikTok. I've no idea how they consume news or if they care. So I don't know who needs convincing. The Trump-is-crazy-don't-you-SEE approach has an overtone of pleading. Hence the success of the Harris campaign -- they're pointing out his insanity without asking why. "Here it is, aren't they WEIRD?"

I'm not saying the media needs to make the case that Trump is insane, I'm saying they need to present what the man is actually saying. Do not write headlines like "Trump reveals his plans for curbing inflation" to cover a press event where he rambled about crowd sizes and Hannibal Lecter for 90 minutes and then said some bullshit about tariffs where he gets all the facts exactly wrong. Cover him the same way they did Biden!

OK, maybe Jon Tester is running the right kind of campaign for Montana after all. He held an event in Bozeman (the state's most expensive and newcomer-stuffed city) yesterday alongside Planned Parenthood Action Fund President & CEO Alexis McGill Johnson and said this:

“We’re all here tonight because of freedom. That’s what’s on the ballot. If there’s one thing that makes you a Montanan, it’s your love of freedom. You don’t want a politician, or a bureaucrat, or a judge, telling you – especially if you’re a woman – what health care decisions you’re gonna make. Roe v. Wade being overturned was the biggest reduction of freedom in my lifetime, and yours too. But we’ve got some things we can do about it: We’ve gotta go to the polls this November and vote. Elections matter.”

The only way this video from last night's meeting of the Saline County GOP could have been any better would be if a vagabond squirrel had started the fight by jumping onto the head of one of the participants.

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

Okay so apparently Overalls Guy said "go polish your nose ring" to a woman named Kandi Cox. Pink Shirt guy rose in defense of Cox, and believes himself to have been acting in self-defense when he threw the first punch. He later blogged, "I am like country music—I’m here to stay."

But I agree a squirrel would have improved things.

incredible story. tbf “go polish your nose ring” is both an objectively funny thing to say and also acknowledged as fightin’ words in all 50 states iirc - yet somehow not the most legendary thing to be said that evening

man that is a beautiful punch. he has to jump to land it, which isn't ideal, but he plants both feet first, he's thinking two steps ahead, and he drops the guy like a sack of potatoes.

tired - "go get your shine box"
wired - "go polish your nose ring"

Enjoying all the tut-tutting in this piece:

https://www.bentoncourier.com/news/fight-breaks-out-at-saline-county-republican-committee-meeting-saline-county-officials-call-for-abolition/article_0031132a-6c66-11ef-b3ae-fb0095165179.html

If you want to know what kind of guy Overalls Guy is, well, unsurprising:

https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2023/04/18/things-got-wacky-in-fight-over-childrens-books-at-saline-county-quorum-court-meeting

Ha, I've been to Saline County. My ex-gf's mom used to ask me to drive to the next county to buy beer... I think there was 'Last Chance Liquors' on one side of the road, and 'County Line Liquors' on the other

The creativity of the species at work.

how is Kandi Cox not a porn name

It’s hard to know how much of the “media needs to talk about Trump’s incoherence more” talk is reacting to a real thing and how much is just an expression of frustration at how little any negative framing of what Trump does seem to matter. And then how much of the issue is a feedback-loop mixture of the two: we’re perceiving the media not bothering to focus on the issue much because they don’t feel like their attempts will be received as newsworthy.

It’s useful to compare with the media coverage of Vance, which feels more relentlessly negative. I wonder if it actually is, or it’s just that we and the media implicitly acknowledge that by them writing and us reading these takedowns we are joining hands in a project of defining who this person “is” for political purposes - so what feels like a harsher tone is really just an awareness of potential real world impact. I think if Vance had said the exact same thing about gender affirmation surgery in schools it would have been a much bigger story.

Regardless of tone, coverage of Trump’s awfulness always has a world-weary feel to it. “Trump said this awful thing, if you even care.”

at some point we need to accept that the simplest explanation is that the NYT (institutionally and at the individual reporter level) wants trump to win. i don't know why people tie themselves in knots to avoid that when they're happy to assume it about CNN or Fox News or the WSJ or whatever.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, September 6, 2024 2:30 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is not true and I can’t figure out why someone would think it was true.

Which part seems untrue to you? The Times has a ton to gain from another Trump term: chaos sells subscriptions, Trump has a weird parasocial bond with Maggie Haberman which ensures them a steady flow of interviews (unlike Biden and Harris, who have frozen them out), the owners are rich and will benefit from Trump's presumed tax policies...

yeah I totally believe the NYT publishers are looking forward to another Trump term, it's pretty fucking obvious

Maybe the money people but the statement was that the reporters want Trump too, which is just bullshit

Dunno how good it is for Harris that the most evil VP in recent US history is supporting her over Trump but maybe it will convince some conservative fence sitters to not vote for Trump

yeah, was thinking the same.. maybe it'll give permission for more of the old guard to follow suit

I was more surprised that Liz Cheney endorsed Colin Allred over Ted Cruz.

no one fucking likes Ted Cruz

She'd endorse Bernie Sanders over that toad

Well, yeah.

Cruz also a huge J6 guy who talked a ton of shit about her & Kinzinger.

Maybe the money people but the statement was that the reporters want Trump too, which is just bullshit

i talked about that on one of these monthly threads. how they just shrugged their shoulders at trump's "wacky" "hyperbole" from day one. any other candidate would have been taken 100% seriously. he was a cartoon. and treated like one. that was the fatal mistake.

anyone else would have immediately been asked "where do you get these numbers that 20 million murderers and rapists are coming into the country illegally. can you show us where you get this information." but trump just gets to repeat this shit for 9 years.

yeah he lost three billion dollars because of Kamala in San Francisco, but he didn't care, didn't care

he was a cartoon. and treated like one. that was the fatal mistake.

yeah tbh the libs ate that heel act up as well

It’s hard to know how much of the “media needs to talk about Trump’s incoherence more” talk is reacting to a real thing and how much is just an expression of frustration at how little any negative framing of what Trump does seem to matter. And then how much of the issue is a feedback-loop mixture of the two: we’re perceiving the media not bothering to focus on the issue much because they don’t feel like their attempts will be received as newsworthy.

we know that Trump is corrupt, evil, racist, etc., we know conservatives don't give a shit because they believe their kind should be able to get away with everything, none of that is new. but there's another story that the media just seems to launder, that he's genuinely saying the kind of shit that would get you to put your parents in a home, he cannot answer a single question, there probably is not a single job on the planet he's qualified to do right now, much less the goddamn President of the United States. instead of reporting on this the media writes shit like "Trump delivers contentious remarks on the economy"

we know that Trump is corrupt, evil, racist, etc., we know conservatives don't give a shit because they believe their kind should be able to get away with everything, none of that is new. but there's another story that the media just seems to launder, that he's genuinely saying the kind of shit that would get you to put your parents in a home, he cannot answer a single question, there probably is not a single job on the planet he's qualified to do right now, much less the goddamn President of the United States. instead of reporting on this the media writes shit like "Trump delivers contentious remarks on the economy"

I just watched the pundits-go-back-and-forth segment on PBS NewsHour, where David Brooks and a "liberal" (usually Jonathan Capehart, but tonight it was Kimberley Atkins Storr of the Boston Globe) talk about the issues, and Storr hammered on the idea that Trump's brain is broken, that he can't finish a sentence, that he can't answer the simplest questions — she said "child care is a gimme question, everyone on the campaign trail gets asked about it" — without rambling out some bullshit. She said that if the Democrats had to have a family sit-down after Biden made one or two low-level mistakes, that it's long past time for the Republicans to talk about their candidate's mental state. Brooks completely sidestepped the question.

Do you have some other source of information for what they believe in their hearts than the endless articles they write that excuse or normalize trump, or grade him on a curve?

Maybe the fact that about 90% of the people who work in the news media are Democrats, which is why it’s so ridiculously easy to get them to treat Republicans with kid gloves so they won’t be accused of bias.

Not talking about the news media. Talking specifically about the politics desk at the New York Times.

I'm not going to harp on this point, but I know or have known several NYT Beltway reporters, all Dems, some with gay or trans kids -- but who cannot, will not, get away from how J-school taught them that Both Sides Matter. It's as simple as that.

They are true believers in on one hand/on the other hand because this is Fair Journalism.

If that’s what they’re doing then they’re going go too far. So far in fact that it’s easier to explain with the assumption that they support him and want him to win.

Certainly their observable behavior is indistinguishable from that.

They are hideously wrong and I have told them so and will be as relentless in critiquing Trump over drinks one on one, but in print will go with the "divisive language" bullshit

I'm telling y'all: I face this problem with my own student newspaper kids. Their training won't allow them to call out evil as evil -- it's Both Sides, Man.

I think Occam’s razor favors Alfred’s explanation rather than the idea that a bunch of Ivy League journalists from one of the most Dem-heavy professions are secret MAGA chuds.

that doesn't explain all the "and that's why that could be bad for Biden" headlines that aren't op/ed.

I remember during the (first) Trump Presidency the MSM really wrestled with e.g. openly calling out (including in headlines) the fact that Trump was outright lying etc, but eventually most of them got there, despite their training making them instinctively reluctant. It was like watching right handed people being forced to write with their left hands.

The ongoing debate over how to frame Trump’s incoherence reminds me of that period and process.

they can frame trump stuff in a way that is just the facts that makes trump look insane if they wanted to. they could have a headline that simply says "TRUMP CLAIMS THAT 20 MILLION MURDERERS ARE FLOODING THE BORDER. AND HERE IS WHY THAT IS BAD FOR BIDEN."

but then at least explain that its all made up shit from a shitmaker. but they never ever do that.

which has always driven me crazy.

and yeah 45 minutes of demented garbage and 10 minutes of barely coherent policy is "TRUMP COMBATIVE DURING ECONOMIC ADDRESS."

which is, as tim heidecker would say, bullshit.

I dunno, the first headline on the WP website re Trump’s recent behaviour is:

“ Trump rants, resurfaces sexual assault allegations for 49 unfocused minutes

The Republican nominee spoke in an appearance billed as a ‘press conference’ that sometimes verged into a stream of consciousness that was hard to follow. He took no questions.”

Is this “laundering”? I think only in the sense that it is expressed in polite language,

Alexandra Petri gets it.

The Wonderful Trump Headline Machine

I found it! The machine! The wonderful machine that they have at all news production headquarters. Its input is Donald Trump’s remarks; its output is headlines. Everything makes sense now.

It functions somewhat like a juicer. You insert Trump’s remarks at one end, turn a crank (you have to turn it pretty hard; the machine does a lot of heavy lifting and twisting) and then — Presto! — out comes the headline or chyron produced by those remarks. I had long been wondering where we were getting these headlines and chyrons. You glance up idly at a muted television and see “DONALD TRUMP DELIVERS REMARKS ON ECONOMY,” and you think, “Ah, presidential at last!” And as long as you do not make the mistake of unmuting your television, the machine’s work is complete. If you are silly enough to unmute your television, you find yourself thinking, “I don’t know what those are, but I would not describe them as remarks about the economy.”

A similar process occurs in print. If it were not for the machine, we would have headlines every day like “Would-Be President Rambles Unintelligibly For Eighty Minutes After Promising He Would Speak About The Economy; At Intervals We Glimpsed Something In The Torrent Of Words That If Pulled Out And Dried Off Might Become A Policy Idea, So We Sent Several Guys In After It, But None Of Them Returned Alive, Except For One Guy Who Just Said ‘The Horror, The Horror’ After We Retrieved Him And He’s Now Staring Off Silently Into The Void. Is Donald Trump Entirely Well? Harris Also Delivered Remarks But Not As Many As We Wanted.” Maybe we should have those headlines, but, thanks to the machine, we don’t.

Just for fun, I started putting other strange, incoherent things into the machine — bits of old horror movies, certain reader emails — to see what headlines it would spit out. “The Silence of the Lambs” gave me “In Impromptu Remarks, Buffalo Bill Stresses Importance of Moisturizing.”

I put in Jack Torrance in his isolated hotel in “The Shining,” typing “ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY” over and over again and emerged with: “Writer Produces Lots of New Pages At Winter Retreat.” Something I can’t print here produced: “With Reference To Female Anatomy, Reader Expresses Disapproval of Column.”

This view is really stupid:

Dana Bash has hit back at critics of her interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, saying she knows it was “just right” because it “p**sed off” both the left and the right.

...

"The fact that nobody in their entrenched camps was happy makes me think that I probably was in just about the right place,” Bash told The Daily Beast.

...

“The right wing was super p**sed off at me because they said I was too soft on her, and the left wing was super p**sed off because they thought I was too hard on her, or used Trump talking points, which I don't even really understand, because the questions to ask her are the questions to ask her. Whether or not Trump uses them or not—they are what they are."

haha, there you go. she's a gem.

x-post

"The fact that nobody in their entrenched camps was happy makes me think that I probably was in just about the right place,” Bash told The Daily Beast.

This idea persists.

Completely unmoored thinking that leads you to think the right number of people to kill is 3m, because one side wanted 0 and one side wanted 6m.

There was an article a while back (maybe in the Atlantic) about the MSM’s “bias towards coherence” being a key factor in their normalisation of Trump.

When you think about Trump, the incoherence is at (at least) two levels: his explanation of how tariffs will enable better funding for childcare was both incoherent in the sense of being actual gibberish and also in the sense that whatever point he was trying to make also wouldn’t make sense even if delivered clearly.

I think one reason that the coverage of Biden’s declining coherence felt so oppressively omnipresent is that it’s a lot easier to calibrate and emphasise the incoherence of a phrase like “we finally beat Medicare” when you know what he was trying to say and also think that the underlying concept basically makes sense a positive policy achievement.

It’s almost like a reporting equivalent of the narcissism of small differences.

Also: when a party positions itself -- rightly -- as the only opposition to ethnofascism it's going to be treated as if it were normal times.

people with brains do tend to get held to a higher standard. nobody called trump on his shit for so long because everyone thought his base was so dumb it didn't matter to them what trump said. people still say this now on the news! and, again, that was their fatal mistake. there were a lot of fatal mistakes. what if you just decided to treat trump supporters like they had brains and held trump to the same standard as every other person running for high office. it might have made a difference. maybe not though.

does that even make sense? it might not. my brain is turning into trump mush.

it was partly snootiness too. "ah, trumpers are rabid dogs. you can't tell them anything." but what if every trump lie was explained in detail for nine years instead of hand-waved away as hyperbole...and trump was called on them everywhere he went...

(then again, the news likes to make money. so, there is that gain for them in just letting the dark juggalo circus play out...)

I mean, there was a tremendous amount of fact-checking of Trump while he was in office. It was a whole industry. It produced equally tremendous blowback from the right, which I think was sadly effective. Now I think a lot of places are kind of cautious about it. They shouldn’t be, obviously, they should just do it. I think this little wave of pressure on them is good.

sometimes i think dems should just hit trump hard on the tariffs non-stop, really drive it in that they're going to lead to a new massive wave of cost-push inflation. trump is very committed to the tariffs; his policy team have signalled that they're very serious about doing it, and he can easily implement it all by executive order. it would put trump on the defensive on the dem's weakest issue

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/07/us/politics/harris-trump-rally-crowds-size.html

NYT wants Trump to win so much that they did an article showing that Harris has bigger crowds

at least his hands are bigger than hers, right?

It’s hard to know how much of the “media needs to talk about Trump’s incoherence more” talk is reacting to a real thing and how much is just an expression of frustration at how little any negative framing of what Trump does seem to matter.

Much of it is the disconnect between how Trump is handled vs. How Biden was handled.

good morning!

It was also the case that Trump talks to the press often and blathers whatever is on his mind constantly, whereas Biden was seen to be hiding, his handlers trying to conceal his decline.

The second is more of a story.

The times would never publish this https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-stumbles-whether-prioritize-child-care-costs-rcna169922

No? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/06/us/politics/trump-vance-child-care.html

“Their Non-Answers Said a Lot”

What did the non answers say? I’ll read the article to find out.

“Mr. Trump’s rambling answer handed Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign an opportunity to press one of its central messages”

Oh you’re not going to tell me what the “non answers” say. You’re going to say what “the other side” would say. Joke approach to journalism.

that Mr. Trump is so out-of-touch with normal problems facing most Americans that he cannot be expected to find the solutions.”

They quoted him verbatim.

I think you’re looking for something that isn’t journalism.

quoting him verbatim is not sufficient. they're not stenographers.

i'm looking for them to write about US politics the way they write about politics in other countries.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/07/latino-voters-shift-election-00177812

i just need to get this off of my chest: AOC AND DICK CHENEY ARE VOTING FOR THE SAME PRESIDENT.

"unprecedented"

*vomits*

Much of it is the disconnect between how Trump is handled vs. How Biden was handled.

It’s not like the media were devoting a lot of inches to Biden’s obviously melting brain until the debate made it unavoidable.

Lol, that makes me question my choice, skot.

well then lets see how they report on this

CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 8, 2024

Skullduggery!

"Your honor, my client can't be charged with a crime that he's not actually done committing yet"

in 2016 the media was pretty happy just to treat everything he said as a joke but the one thing they did kinda take seriously was his threats to put Hillary Clinton in jail, that was like no no you can't do that, that's just dictator language straight up. wonder how they respond to his threat to put uh...everybody in jail

If you don’t want to go to jail just don’t vote

if you dont wanna go to jail just get elected president

Kamala Harris just went to Penzeys Spices and bought Creamy Peppercorn Dressing Base, Fox Point Seasoning, Trinidad Lemon-Garlic Marinade, Turkish Seasoning, and Tuscan Sunset Salt Free Italian Seasoning.

— James Hohmann (@jameshohmann) September 7, 2024

That Fox Point blend is good

Laura Loomer is convinced that Harris's visit to Penzey's, which included a photo-op with some visibly emotional customers, was staged because ... the CEO of Penzey's is an outspoken liberal. As though it would be unusual to encounter Harris supporters in Summer Lee's congressional district.

Suddenly convinced that Allan Lichtman is a Michael Showalter character

https://i.imgur.com/KSb4oCc.png

I mean, not a spice connoisseur or anything, but that tweet was exciting

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/07/walz-vance-school-shooting-00177872

If you want to find Harris fans in any town in America a Penzey’s Spices is a decent place.

I mean, not a spice connoisseur or anything, but that tweet was exciting

She's thiiiis close to going on Hot Ones

A canvasser came to my door for Harris yesterday, and asked whether we would commit to voting for Harris in November. I replied “we’ll commit to voting for the vice president when she commits to ending the genocide of Palestinians.” didn’t even think before i said it.

canvasser said “i understand “ and walked away.

<3

Worth the read: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/07/latino-voters-shift-election-00177812

Some of the observations track with what I deal with in Miami-Dade.

Worth a listen for a sense of (some of) Trump’s strategy, such as it is.

https://crooked.com/podcast/trump-tours-the-manosphere-russia-funds-maga-influencers-and-hawk-tuah-girl-cashes-in/

Trump will be better for Palestinians. Good for you sticking it to the Harris team.

Yeah, he’ll probably arm the hell out of the IDF genocide machine.

i don't like reading this. i don't want trump to be popular with harris voters for any reason. people are notoriously greedy.

"Among Harris voters, Trump’s proposal to end taxes on Social Security benefits is wildly popular, drawing about 80% support."

Most people already pay minimal income tax on SS benefits, because most people don’t get that much from them. My parents live on SS+IRA and haven’t paid any income tax in years. But sure, it sounds good to say I guess.

Saw this on Twitter and it made me laugh.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GWz7RRAXkAE4Tcf.jpg

Democrats should try promising people unworkable or irrelevant shit that sounds like free money.

free snow tires for everyone. that would do the trick.

Free air conditioning down in these parts.

Negronis for everyone!

.⁦@KamalaHarris⁩ took a break from debate prep and visited Penzeys Spices in Pittsburgh on Saturday. She told the pool she was honored to have Dick Cheney’s endorsement and it’s time to turn the page on divisiveness and bring the country together. pic.twitter.com/EEZimHLsri

— Nandita Bose (@nanditab1) September 7, 2024

i've never been to a spice store. must be the kind of place those WEST COAST LIBERALS go when they need a rub for their TOFU.

lol I actually went to a spice store...just pre-pandemic I think? in Berkeley where I was visiting a friend, like a full-on "oh you're in this very curated feeling neighborhood and of course they have a SPICE STORE," but I had a good paying gig that weekend so I did indeed venture into the spice store and fuckin A those spice mixes were delicious. overpriced no doubt but very delicious, one of them we mixed with sour cream to make a very delicious dilly dip. well that's what I have to say about spice stores

Posted this before a while back:

On January 14, 2022, CEO Bill Penzey sent out an email newsletter announcing that he would be renaming the extended Martin Luther King Jr. Day sale weekend to "Republicans are racist weekend", with the reasons given including alleged voter suppression in red states and their response to the George Floyd Protests.[10]

those damn WOKE spice mixes. probably come from Eye-ran.

i need to buy spices actually. i was looking at my pitiful selection the other day. definitely some pre-pandemic jars in there! yeesh. i could use some good mixes. i didn't know that there was a spice store chain! spice store CEO kind of a rad title.

I got a nice jar of Himalayan pink salt crystals today, and some palm sugar. We are usually stocked to the gills on spices.

xxp yes Penzeys has ruthlessly trolled Republicans for years

I recommend this local place for delicious organic spices and blends

https://mountainroseherbs.com/

A few years ago I attended a friend's birthday dinner where I sat across from a Penzey's scion who wrote a book about spices.

my epiphany awhile back: i bought this local-ish chicken rub and it tasted so good i just ended up putting it on everything when i cooked and i felt like an idiot thinking all that time that i HAD to use mixes and rubs for whatever the label said they were for. you can use them for anything! its spices! i take things so literally sometimes.

mmm yes, see also Midyetts rub

they only have one spice product with variations but Zwita's harissa paste gets an A+ (despite the cost)
https://zwitafoods.com/

must be the kind of place those WEST COAST LIBERALS go when they need a rub for their TOFU.

fwiw Penzey's is headquartered in the Milwaukee suburbs

If you spend enough at Penzey's they give you a bumper sticker that says "love people / cook them tasty food."

But with a quick snip of scissors, it can say "love people / cook them."

and then serve them

I loved going to Spice Ace in SF's Fillmore district, it was an amazing store, but it closed in 2019. They still have a great book though called Secret Blend Recipes from Spice Ace

I hear it closed because its name was too close to that of another nearby niche business, Space Ice.

You Thought I Was Feelin You? - A Thread for Spice Ice

xxp - I frequently use lighter steak sauces on chicken; seafood rubs or marinades on chicken or turkey, and generally mix & match sauces, marinades, and rubs made for meats and seafoods with good results. "Suggested uses" are just that.

What if Harris didn't get a post-convention bounce because all the coverage of the handoff from Biden was her effective coronation publicity blitz

That was Silver's argument I think

"I loved going to Spice Ace in SF's Fillmore district, it was an amazing store, but it closed in 2019."

I heard that COMRADE KAMALA destroyed the spice industry in California. sad. very sad.

Im so tired of this shit

its genuinely crazy that the entire country isn't sick of him yet

That was Silver's argument I think

the original Matlock t.v. show went away after 9 years. Walker, Texas Ranger went away after 8 years. its Trump's time to go. he is literally talking about sharks. that's how you know!

Never mind, it's OK to like polls again.

Harris leads Trump 50-46% among all adults and registered voters alike, and 52-46% among likely voters, per latest @ABC News/Ipsos poll.

Closer assessment shows movement to Harris in some groups when comparing all adults with likely voters.

Read more: https://t.co/Es0eiqapeZ pic.twitter.com/keKcGoo7X4

— ABC News (@ABC) September 9, 2024

isn't it an older poll?

Yes, that poll was conducted Aug. 23-27 and released by Ipsos on Sept. 1. Not sure why ABC is publicizing it now.

Yeah it's from the end of August. Not that you can tell from the article.

xpost

oops sorry! I just saw it was on the timeline now. Never mind, polls are bad.

A spectre is haunting Kamala

Shadow of Tulsi Gabbard looms over Harris ahead of Tuesday’s debate
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/08/tulsi-gabbard-kamala-harris-debate-00177869

Current entirely fictitious and repulsive talking anti-immigrant point being circulated by people including Elon and Jim Jordan is that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, are eating good honest white Americans' pet cats and dogs.

There's also a fake story about Venezuelan gangs taking over an apartment complex in Aurora, CO.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13829557/owner-sells-colorado-aurora-apartment-complex-venezuelan-migrant-gangs.html

Hells Angels took care of that problem

"When they came for the cats, I did nothing, because I was not a cat..."

xp - I almost posted about that Ohio thing earlier, it's disgusting. I stumbled on it (in the replies to an account focused on architectural photography no less!) and couldn't believe how horrifically racist the whole thing is.

Why are they so obsessed with cats? Weird.

Jim Jordan is such a stupid asshole.

so let me get this straight, the GOP candidate is a 34x felon with 3 criminal trials pending who tried to overturn an election on the basis of zero actual proof, is now currently campaigning on throwing all Democrats in jail while claiming that Kamala Harris is going to get your pets eaten alive, and according to polls this is a toss-up

People like their pets

he's giving the people what they want

the stories circulating about Aurora CO are maddening, I can't tell if it it's willful disinformation or what; as of a week ago it looked like legit news orgs were reporting stuff about videos with people with guns in the building. Now the people who live there say nothing of the sort happened. Was it somewhere in between? completely false? this shit is going to get worse and worse, and on a bigger scale, very soon; aided by AI, I can imagine film clips of really heinous, terrifying shit being widely disseminated with no good way to counter with the truth outside of eyewitness reports. I mean this stuff was already happening with the Syrian civil war a few years ago, no doubt it's happening with Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Gaza.

also, she might not have even worked at McDonalds!! sham candidate!

x-post

flashback to two weeks ago:

Does anybody think Harris has finished climbing in the polls?

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Wednesday, August 21, 2024

I worry that she may have.

just yesterday I saw this video of some Walter White-lookin fuck talking about how his granddaughter had to be pulled out of preschool because she didn't speak Spanish and that the school was demanding they hire a full-time interpreter, it is so fucking stupid and yet it had like several million views. I guess once you've convinced people there are litter boxes in schools now because of wokeness you can pretty much just say anything

at least they have released a platform now:

https://kamalaharris.com/issues/

harris stalled with the gaza bullshit

xxxxpost afaict with the Aurora, CO situation, there is a building owned by a slum-lord who refuses to get it up to code or fix anything. The tenants just stopped paying their rents, and the landlord went to the press with a BS story about how he can't enter his building because armed Venezuelan gangs are squatting inside. Of course this was swallowed whole by Fox News and the like.

Didn't know they had Penzey's in PA, as mentioned it's a Wisconsin company. There are a couple in town here and we go all the time, it's a delight. Their newsletter certainly goes hard, but also has crazy deals (often a free bottle of something if you spend any amount in store, or even without purchase).

Penzey's got a bunch of negative Yelp reviews after Harris visited.

I think I thought Penzys was a PA company, as I'd only seen it in Pittsburgh.

That's Yenzeys

Would be cool if Bill Penzey became the liberal Mike Pillow Guy.

Isn’t he kind of already that?

Penzey's got a bunch of negative Yelp reviews after Harris visited

'I tried the Woke Coriander and the Trans BBQ rub and they both stunk! Also they don't even stock Lawry's Seasoned Salt...'

I thought the costco guy was the liberal pillow guy.

Akm, perhaps you've seen this documentary from 1997?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWZmT_k1uxg

flashback to two weeks ago:

Does anybody think Harris has finished climbing in the polls?

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Wednesday, August 21, 2024

I worry that she may have.

My take is that Harris has had enough time to pick all the low-hanging fruit. Trump picked his long ago. From here forward it will be an all-out battle for the meager number of undecideds and more importantly to motivate their voters right up until they've voted. Tuesday's debate should barely move the needle, but then very little is likely to move the needle more than by small increments now.

honestly platform is low on any specifics and pretty high on vague platitudes and saber-rattling. i’ll pass.

Yeah. Harris cleaned up Biden's damage and probably a few more to her total in the form of likely voters; now let's see how independents break.

She cited Dionne Warwick and Luther Vandross ("A House is Not a Home"). What more can you possibly want?

Good news: I'm seeing a lot more Harris/Walz lawn signs.

Bad news: They are visually indistinguishable from signs for randos running for school board or whatever

https://lakedems.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/harris-walz-yard-sign-photo-v2a.png

lake county democrats need to work on their kerning.

She cited Dionne Warwick and Luther Vandross ("A House is Not a Home"). What more can you possibly want?

I am volunteering for her campaign because of this. I was the specific target

Yeah. Harris cleaned up Biden's damage and probably a few more to her total in the form of likely voters; now let's see how independents break.

A buddy and I were talking yesterday and we both agree that Tim Walz was a perfect choice, but it seems that we're WRONG:

Pollster Nate Silver says Vice President Harris missed a major chance to pick up voters in the center when she passed over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) as her running mate.

Harris “blew one big opportunity to tack to the center with her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) rather than Josh Shapiro: that a tiny minority of progressives objected to Shapiro was an argument in Shapiro’s favor, if anything,” Silver wrote in a post on his website.

The election was a 50-50 chance 6 months ago, it was 50-50 when Harris became the candidate, and will likely be 50-50 on election day.

some yeah, others probably went to Trump after the RFK endorsement

as I understand it the story of 2016 and 2020 is quite simple, independents/swing voters went 2:1 for Trump in '16, then 2:1 for Biden in 2020. most indications are that Trump is not exactly winning those folks back. I can buy that his base has expanded among very online young men though.

Yeah, there's a bunch of loser incels who've turned 18 since November 2020.

Beltway Dems are fucking this up by playing civility with Lincoln Project Republicans, when no actual voters are begging for any such collaboration or intervention.

That's most of what Beltway Dems know how to do. They already have drinks with a lot of those guys anyway.

Where they all get together and bitch about Gaza protesters, obviously.

i saw a *white dudes for Harris* lawn sign the other day.

As Debate Looms, Trump Is Now the One Facing Questions About Age and Capacity

With President Biden no longer in the race, former President Donald J. Trump would be the oldest person ever to serve in the Oval Office. But his rambling, sometimes incoherent public statements have stirred concern among voters.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/09/us/politics/debate-trump-age-capacity.html

be cool if harris repeated trump's line about biden: "i don't think he knows what he said". that would be funny.

xp yeah, just heard the editor from The Atlantic talking about the same thing on NPR - glad to see this is gathering mainstream attention

if Harris is smart (she is) she will wait until Trump starts complaining about how they replaced Biden/how long did she know he was mentally incompetent etc. and then take the opportunity to turn it around on him, how he is also old and incoherent but won't get out of the way because he is not a patriotic public servant etc.

"I agree, no one that old and senile should be running - oh I meant YOU"

The election was a 50-50 chance 6 months ago, it was 50-50 when Harris became the candidate, and will likely be 50-50 on election day.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR),

although there's only a 10 percent chance of that

it is too bad that this is too long for next month's thread title.

“It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that — because the child care is, child care, it’s, couldn’t, you know, there’s something, you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly — and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care.”

Wow, that's the first Peter Baker byline worth a damn

But his rambling, sometimes incoherent public statements have stirred concern among voters.

Dying @ this. "His threats to murder congress and dissolve the nation have raised eyebrows among some corners of the electorate."

nelsonlaugh.gif

The Nevada Green Party accidentally filed the forms to put the words "Jill Stein" up as a public referendum question instead of as a candidate for President

— charlie 🇺🇦🇵🇸 (@baranskocracy) September 8, 2024

Text: "The Nevada Green Party accidentally filed the forms to put the words "Jill Stein" up as a public referendum question instead of as a candidate for President"