PBS Called Warner (VA Senate) with a huge graphic showing Warner behind 45% to Gade 55% and <1% in. Probably true, but man, the execution is way off... get your graphics aligned with your call people.

I'm gonna have to move to something stronger than Kombucha... maybe some Drambuie - orange for American Solidarity Party

Invoke the originalist meaning of First Past the Post.

Biden 3
Trump 8

Not looking good for Biden...

Is it over yet?

Different feeds then... I haven't seen any 'smart' conservatives calling it for Trump with any confidence... I've seen the usual sort of rallying/cheering/bucking-up the faithful types of calls.

In fact among the 'smart' non-Lincoln conservatives Henry Olsen predicts a blood-bath... and he's an actual data kinda guy.

ASP made it onto 8 official ballots.

Didn't make it onto 9 at all. The other 33 are a flavor of write-in. Definitely requires an organization that's distributed in all 50 states and within those states many require signatures from every county... so have to organize across the entire state as well. It's a process that requires actual ground troops, not simply an idea and some $$.

Oh sure... wait for *all* the pre-election polls to come in.

Harshing my buzz man.

Well... assuming my Twitter feed is a neutral observer... it's gonna be a BIG day for Solidarity... like YUGE.

[Is that how Twitter works?]

Plausible... but a little depressing. Neither side will concede on election day (nor should they, probably)... I'm just hoping the process while delayed is at least organized, competent and swift.

The narrative building BS will be overwhelming though. Give us strength to remain properly agnostic through it all.

Working on my Post Mortem of how I failed to correctly pick the winner...

"I know why Biden lost, but I know not how."

SOLIDARI... ok, maybe not. But hey, at least my candidate personally thanked me on Twitter. I told my family that it will be cool to see our votes individually tabulated in Virginia as the count goes from 4 votes to 9 votes.

In years past I would assume the Libertarian vote would follow the Liberal Social issues into supporting the Dems if someone like Trump were on the ballot. But, from what I'm reading, I'm not getting that vibe at all. I am not a libertarian expert, but the vibe I'm getting from that faction is that the Left is the bigger threat to liberty. But on the contrarian hand, I'm not sure that we won't see an increase in third party voting. So... my prediction is that we see the same (or nearly the same) levels of third party votes. But if I'm wrong, the break will be mostly for Trump.

Yeah... this is it (I still think the Riots are local vs. National factors, esp compared to Covid).

Part of my unscientific analysis comes from my small Red area and my even smaller parish. Covid is *the* dividing line... about half are wearing masks, but about 80% would be gettable Trump (well, Republican) votes. The fact that half are wearing masks is a real divide.

Sociologically it's interesting... the Mask/No-Mask doesn't break by Theological, Liturgical, or Economic position... seems to be correlated directly to support for Trump (or the Republican Party). It makes me sad that this became part of political wars, but it did.

Berlusconi is a good comp.

Berlusconi's schtick crumbled with actual populists (left and right) who came after him.

As a critique from the Horseshoe Right... it isn't lost on me that the best defense of Trump is that he's Jeb! without the magnetic charm. That *ought* to be disqualifying in its own right... at least by Trump's own definition of a successful Trump Presidency.

Yeah, I'll stick with my prediction from the previous thread that Biden will win a significant EC victory.

BUT, I'm epistemically prepared to say to myself, "huh, I guess I really underestimated how the influx of all these "new" voters were going to vote." Which is to say, my read on people who willingly voted for Trump last time remains the same (98% renewal), and my read on how the folks who unwillingly voted for Trump seems to be breaking about how I expected (50% willing / 25% unwilling but yes / 25% staying home or 3rd party)... so a slight net loss for Trump (which would be enough to undo the EC - assuming the trend is more than local). But, I just don't have a read on the influx of "new" voters. I think the bias is that all these voters are people fed-up with Trump (and maybe they are!), but I won't be surprised if the raw vote counts show significant growth for Trump. I'll be surprised if Trump wins a majority, but I won't be surprised if Trump garners 10%-15% more votes than last time and depending on where those votes land... whelp... my hindsight will be 20/20.

* of course, they aren't necessarily "new" voters... its just that when we have 30%-40% who regularly sit out elections, its hard to say what's gonna happen when 10% - 20% decide to show up.

It wasn't the Ides of March, it was the brunch.

Plausible.

Now I'm kinda hoping. This is how you get fascism.

I don't remember reading this in Arendt.

"What is a beheading without avocado toast and a mimosa?"

Not sure, but if we're making it a thing I expect the other guys will come up with something equally suitable.

Hey, I said I had an original copy of Crunchy Cons. I'm OG Dreher...before he sold out to big Benedict.

I have an original copy of Crunchy Cons and keep track of Dreher's meanderings and Douthat is at the top of the Punditry game right now.

The problem with being the Pointy-end-of-the-massively-offline-TradCath-Hispano-Uprising is that all of my people only write letters. With fountain pens.

My role as the sacrificial-online-layman is to circulate an illustrated manuscript with the week's goings on. This week's manuscript features a picture of my closest inner circle on a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time.

Every time I go to Costco my wife hands me a validation slip that I have to give to a nice person at the door who then puts a smiley face on it. I feel like I've earned some secret "pusher of the heavy cart" award. The heavier the cart and the longer the validation slip... the bigger the smiley face.

Congrats on the 5k. Whenever I see a number and a 'k' my mind goes back to the Camino and my ankles start to hurt.

Understood. Thanks for at least reading the comment.

Goosing the economy with printed money isn't navigating our way towards a better or more sustainable politico-economic model. It isn't reckoning with Labor Arbitrage; it isn't accounting for productivity gains being allocated poorly; it isn't in any way "boosting the economy" for a period greater than getting Trump elected. This is precisely what I mean by the way his promises and actions actually undermine the people he's proposing to help... at best he's kicking the can down the road (which is his #1 objective in governing) at worst he's setting us up for a harder fall having done none of the 'difficult' work of trying to address the underlying issues.

I agree that the Left doesn't really have good ideas here either... but just because the Left has bad ideas doesn't mean Trump's are good for not being their bad ideas. They are just bad or short-sighted policies unique to his own self.

With regards Foreign Policy it isn't enough merely to avoid some conflicts; we still need to build a Military and Diplomatic Framework that helps us achieve our goals... like with the Economy, he isn't charting a new path... he's making ad hoc decisions that may be ok for this, but maybe not for that... but there's no particular assurance that the next time he assassinates a general that it won't escalate. He hasn't in any meaningful way curbed the Saudis as a proper client state... he hasn't pulled us out of the atrocities in Yemen. We're getting all of the down-sides of a Russian reboot with none of the upsides. He's not building a better foreign policy because he has none... he's reacting to other actors and that's a merely a short term snapshot in time that will be adequate until its not... like dealing with a Pandemic.

Since you ask, that's what I'm seeing and it strikes me that *I'm* the consistent one...

I can't answer why 83% of Republicans like him... I haven't been a Republican since I was maybe 12. I get not liking the left, but not liking the left doesn't strike me as a reasonable requirement to like Trump. And that's why supporting Trump for negative partisan reasons will not address the Economic issues we're facing, and we're not any closer to a better Foreign Policy. You're not getting what you paid for.