Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde will have you know that Tammy Baldwin is a known thespian!!
This is actually probably a good sign for Baldwin because she has been in the Congress since 1999 and as far as I know always openly gay so he is getting desperate.
Bezos made the decision not to endorse according to the Washington Post: https://www.opb.org/article/2024/10/23/harris-needs-young-voters-of-color-to-win-a-new-poll-finds-cracks-in-her-support/
"An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources."
The link doesn't work but I am highly suspicious of anything that has White Females in the Millennial and Gen Z bracket supporting Trump more than White Males in the same age bracket.
1. 2021 to 2024 did make me understand why politicians are afraid of inflation
2. What Chip said. It is very mansplainy to think inflation matters above all and it was risible to have a money manager write an op-ed about why a bunch of Joe the Plumber types are voting Trump because of inflation
I actually still have decent to strong optimism that Harris is strong for November. Early voting appears to be pretty good so far (though it is not always indicative). Plus I think the pollsters are undercounting Harris' likely supporters (young women) and too focused on things which are not likely to be true because "ooh shiny, paradigm shift!"
I also think the aggregators are less good at containing and minimizing right-wing flood the zone polls than they think they are and they are too addicted to being data nerds to remove them generally. Even then, TIPP Insights/American Greatness went from + 2 Trump on Sunday to + 3 Harris today and I automatically discount ActiVote ("we can't be gamed because we say so"), Trafalgar (Murray is only up by 1.7 in Washington in 2022, she won by 15 points), InsiderAdvantage and some others.
Note though that Harris has not changed any of her positions and Liz Cheney is telling anti-abortion women that they can vote for Harris with a clear conscious because of the stakes and banning abortion is not worth it if the cost is Donald Trump.
Dick Cheney endorsing Harris does not make her a conservative. It means he has the wherewithal with recognize that Trump is a danger and disgrace and can put country above party and ideology.
I'm sure this is going to crush Harris' chances in California. Oh no, Harris is still gonna crush Trump in California
The truth is that the billionaire owner doesn't want to endorse Harris because something something pay their fair share in taxes hurts his fee fees but he is smart enough to realize his staff and readers will revolt if he states they should endorse Trump. So he mandated no endorsement.
1. According to NBC, early voting in most states is looking good for Democrats in key states. Some people consider this Voodoo but I don't think it is completely without merit. NBC also reported Harris leads among people who intend to vote early.
1a. Nevada and Arizona maybe outliers here and they are a bit behind in Georgia but still have a punching chance. Harris appears to be doing very well in PA, MI, WI.
2. The weekend had a flurry of GOP flood the zone polls but more substantial polling places like Ispos and Morning Consult gave Harris +3 and +4 edges nationally.
3. Emerson apparently has her leading with late deciders by 24 points.
FWIW, I don't think Trump exactly has a 50 percent chance of victory, it is probably a bit less despite the aggregators and Nate Silver. It is really the bloody electoral college that gives him an advantage. If Trump were running in the popular vote, this would be like when the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan for the third time and were mocked for it.
That being said, peoples views on the economy are radically out of joint with the actual state of the economy and people have soured on immigration and it seems impossible for the media not to normalize Trump even when it tries hard not to.
Ezra Klein has a dreck of an essay which amounts to Trump Faboyism, select quotes with commentary:
"I don’t think Walz has this right. Trump did not freeze up on that stage; I’m not going to accept that. He did not lose where he was in the moment. If anything, he was all too present. But Walz is saying something Democrats really want to hear right now."
"But Donald Trump, at 78, is nearly as old as Joe Biden. He exhibits his own cognitive irregularities. He rambles, and he lies and makes things up and seems to get strangely lost in these digressions. His speech is associative and circular. It can read like gibberish on the page. And he goes on bizarre riffs, like this one, which is somehow about the dangers of electric boats"
Cognitive irregularities is a hell of a euphemism.
"There is this fury among many Democrats about the pass they feel Trump has been given. And I’ve struggled with this myself. It’s not that Trump’s age is unknown or that in the media it is uncovered. But even when we do write about it, I can tell you, it doesn’t connect in the same way. The media doesn’t actually set the agenda the way people sometimes pretend that it does. The audience knows what it believes. If you are describing something they don’t really feel is true, they read it, and they move on. Or they don’t read it at all. And I don’t think people believe — to be honest, I don’t believe — that the core problem with Trump is his age.
Over four years, we really did watch age change Joe Biden. It made him different than he’d been before. But is that what has happened to Donald Trump? Is he different than he was before?
Because I would say Donald Trump in 2024 is like Donald Trump in 2020 and like Donald Trump in 2016. I don’t think he has so much changed as he is distilled. But this is where the critics are right: We had the language to talk about what was happening to Joe Biden. Age is a delicate topic, but it’s one we know. And so we did talk about it. We spoke about it relentlessly."
Being a pundit means never having to say you are sorry.
"We’ve never had good language for talking about Donald Trump. We’ve never had good language for talking about the way he thinks and the way in which it is different from how other people think and talk and act. And so we circle it. We imply it. I don’t think this is bias so much as it’s confusion. In order to talk about something, you need the words for it. But for me, something clicked watching him up there, swaying to that music."
Yes, we have plenty of good language for talking about Donald Trump. The words racist, authoritarian, corrupt, venal, sexist, anti-Semitic, fascist, criminal, degenerate, profoundly stupid, and cognitive decline all come to mind but the media refuses to use them.
"There are vast swaths of political opinion you’re not really supposed to talk about. A lot of people believe that immigrants are bad and dangerous and that we shouldn’t have so many of them in this country. That free trade is ripping this country off and it’s the fault of these corrupt idiots in Washington lining their own pockets. That China isn’t our ally or our partner — it’s our enemy. And that the great threat to America comes from within, that other Americans are disloyal, that they are the enemy and the power of the state should be turned against them.
It’s not that no one else in politics held these views before Donald Trump. But for the most part, it’s not how they spoke about them. That was the failure in the system that Trump exploited: the lie that just because politicians didn’t talk this way, voters didn’t feel this way. One of Trump’s verbal tics is to say, “Many people are saying.” But it’s the opposite. He’s saying what many people want somebody to be saying. He’s saying what people are saying in private but often are not saying in public."
Ohh look at that outrageous scamp!! How can he say these things? This is like Ganz's view on how left-wing intellectuals view right-wing intellectuals with a bit of a crush but right-wing intellectuals see the left ones and state "Look at all these Jews."
Morning Consult has Harris up 4 in its October 17-20 poll, Ipsos/Reuters has her up 3. TIPP Insights (right-wing) went from +2 to + 1 to Even in three days. Trafalgar Group and Insider Advantage (both risible in their blatant right wing partisan undies) have a bunch of swing states even or try to have Trump winning but he is winning in states where early voting data shows strong Democratic turn out.
ActiVote, the polling app which swears it can't be gamed has Trump with +9 in a 400 LV poll between October 7-20.
Why am I supposed to take any of these clowns seriously or at their word?
Josh Marshall on flooding the zone: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/are-right-wing-pollsters-flooding-the-zone/sharetoken/893b671b-a39b-47b6-a11a-233c08d084ed
It's possible but I think the House could be a Democratic pickup and there is a far but not implausible chance of Democrats retaining the Senate in a 50-50 with Walz as the tiebreaker.
1. Negative partisanship might mean we are headed for an era of one-term Presidents. This is a distinct possibility
2. The trillion dollar question with Trump is whether he is one of a kind. So far the next generation of mini-Trumps or local Trumps has fallen flat on its face. Maybe some will squeak a victory this November but most, if not all, of the non-partisan polling a good deal of the R-partisan polling has shown safe leads for the Democratic candidates for Senate in swing states. Arizona was a very narrow Biden victory in 2020.
So what happens to the GOP if Trump is one of a kind in his ability to excite low propensity voters in ways Vance and Hawley are not?
I don't think anyone is being complacent but I don't think I need to take pollsters word for it at partisan polls flooding the zone having no effect because all they do is say it. They don't quite show their work.
Quantus turns out to be for Rs as well
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
Activote does their polling via app and that just seems like a bad system.
Garbage In, Garbage Out is a thing.
Anxiety is good to an extent but it also looks like silly season and there is nothing wrong with a little steel and confidence too
On “From The Washington Post: On Political Endorsement”
The media is obeying in advance: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/bezos-kills-washington-post-endorsement-guardrails-falling/comments
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/21/2024”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/us/politics/wisconsin-senate-race-tammy-baldwin-sexuality.html
Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde will have you know that Tammy Baldwin is a known thespian!!
This is actually probably a good sign for Baldwin because she has been in the Congress since 1999 and as far as I know always openly gay so he is getting desperate.
But it is dark days that this stuff is coming up.
On “From The Washington Post: On Political Endorsement”
He is doing obeying in advance/pascal's wager:
1. If Harris wins, his AWS contracts will not be canceled probably because Democrats don't roll like that;
2. If Trump wins, there is a chance he keeps his AWS contracts with the government too.
"
Bezos made the decision not to endorse according to the Washington Post: https://www.opb.org/article/2024/10/23/harris-needs-young-voters-of-color-to-win-a-new-poll-finds-cracks-in-her-support/
"An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources."
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/21/2024”
I would believe that Trump gets some uptick among black and Latino men but not the amounts suggested here.
But young (under 40) women are overwhelmingly pro-choice and other data shows a shift to the left largely.
The way this might make sense is if they overwhelmingly interviewed young women at Ole Miss and Bama.
"
The link doesn't work but I am highly suspicious of anything that has White Females in the Millennial and Gen Z bracket supporting Trump more than White Males in the same age bracket.
On “From The Atlantic: Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had’”
I agree and disagree.
1. 2021 to 2024 did make me understand why politicians are afraid of inflation
2. What Chip said. It is very mansplainy to think inflation matters above all and it was risible to have a money manager write an op-ed about why a bunch of Joe the Plumber types are voting Trump because of inflation
"
I actually still have decent to strong optimism that Harris is strong for November. Early voting appears to be pretty good so far (though it is not always indicative). Plus I think the pollsters are undercounting Harris' likely supporters (young women) and too focused on things which are not likely to be true because "ooh shiny, paradigm shift!"
I also think the aggregators are less good at containing and minimizing right-wing flood the zone polls than they think they are and they are too addicted to being data nerds to remove them generally. Even then, TIPP Insights/American Greatness went from + 2 Trump on Sunday to + 3 Harris today and I automatically discount ActiVote ("we can't be gamed because we say so"), Trafalgar (Murray is only up by 1.7 in Washington in 2022, she won by 15 points), InsiderAdvantage and some others.
"
On the one hand, Trump talks about the enemy within and unleashing the military and/or his goons on opponents and dissenters.
On the other hand, Harris talked like a politician and had some maybe canned responses to questions at the CNN Townhall.
Does anyone see a problem?
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-soft-bigotry-of-our-trump-expectations
"
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/harris-slams-trump-for-reported-praise-of-hitler-while-in-office-222488645711
On “From Semafor: Los Angeles Times won’t endorse for president”
Note though that Harris has not changed any of her positions and Liz Cheney is telling anti-abortion women that they can vote for Harris with a clear conscious because of the stakes and banning abortion is not worth it if the cost is Donald Trump.
"
Another D- troll.
Dick Cheney endorsing Harris does not make her a conservative. It means he has the wherewithal with recognize that Trump is a danger and disgrace and can put country above party and ideology.
You're a clown.
"
I'm sure this is going to crush Harris' chances in California. Oh no, Harris is still gonna crush Trump in California
The truth is that the billionaire owner doesn't want to endorse Harris because something something pay their fair share in taxes hurts his fee fees but he is smart enough to realize his staff and readers will revolt if he states they should endorse Trump. So he mandated no endorsement.
All in all, another D- troll
On “Campaign Scratchpad: Known Unknowns”
Concurred completely/
On “The Election’s Home Stretch”
1. According to NBC, early voting in most states is looking good for Democrats in key states. Some people consider this Voodoo but I don't think it is completely without merit. NBC also reported Harris leads among people who intend to vote early.
1a. Nevada and Arizona maybe outliers here and they are a bit behind in Georgia but still have a punching chance. Harris appears to be doing very well in PA, MI, WI.
2. The weekend had a flurry of GOP flood the zone polls but more substantial polling places like Ispos and Morning Consult gave Harris +3 and +4 edges nationally.
3. Emerson apparently has her leading with late deciders by 24 points.
https://jabberwocking.com/kamala-harris-leads-trump-by-24-points-among-recent-deciders/
On “Campaign Scratchpad: Known Unknowns”
FWIW, I don't think Trump exactly has a 50 percent chance of victory, it is probably a bit less despite the aggregators and Nate Silver. It is really the bloody electoral college that gives him an advantage. If Trump were running in the popular vote, this would be like when the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan for the third time and were mocked for it.
That being said, peoples views on the economy are radically out of joint with the actual state of the economy and people have soured on immigration and it seems impossible for the media not to normalize Trump even when it tries hard not to.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/21/2024”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/opinion/donald-trump-ezra-klein-podcast.html?unlocked_article_code=1.UE4.Vul5.qrxypmVNxcC1&smid=url-share
Ezra Klein has a dreck of an essay which amounts to Trump Faboyism, select quotes with commentary:
"I don’t think Walz has this right. Trump did not freeze up on that stage; I’m not going to accept that. He did not lose where he was in the moment. If anything, he was all too present. But Walz is saying something Democrats really want to hear right now."
"But Donald Trump, at 78, is nearly as old as Joe Biden. He exhibits his own cognitive irregularities. He rambles, and he lies and makes things up and seems to get strangely lost in these digressions. His speech is associative and circular. It can read like gibberish on the page. And he goes on bizarre riffs, like this one, which is somehow about the dangers of electric boats"
Cognitive irregularities is a hell of a euphemism.
"There is this fury among many Democrats about the pass they feel Trump has been given. And I’ve struggled with this myself. It’s not that Trump’s age is unknown or that in the media it is uncovered. But even when we do write about it, I can tell you, it doesn’t connect in the same way. The media doesn’t actually set the agenda the way people sometimes pretend that it does. The audience knows what it believes. If you are describing something they don’t really feel is true, they read it, and they move on. Or they don’t read it at all. And I don’t think people believe — to be honest, I don’t believe — that the core problem with Trump is his age.
Over four years, we really did watch age change Joe Biden. It made him different than he’d been before. But is that what has happened to Donald Trump? Is he different than he was before?
Because I would say Donald Trump in 2024 is like Donald Trump in 2020 and like Donald Trump in 2016. I don’t think he has so much changed as he is distilled. But this is where the critics are right: We had the language to talk about what was happening to Joe Biden. Age is a delicate topic, but it’s one we know. And so we did talk about it. We spoke about it relentlessly."
Being a pundit means never having to say you are sorry.
"We’ve never had good language for talking about Donald Trump. We’ve never had good language for talking about the way he thinks and the way in which it is different from how other people think and talk and act. And so we circle it. We imply it. I don’t think this is bias so much as it’s confusion. In order to talk about something, you need the words for it. But for me, something clicked watching him up there, swaying to that music."
Yes, we have plenty of good language for talking about Donald Trump. The words racist, authoritarian, corrupt, venal, sexist, anti-Semitic, fascist, criminal, degenerate, profoundly stupid, and cognitive decline all come to mind but the media refuses to use them.
"There are vast swaths of political opinion you’re not really supposed to talk about. A lot of people believe that immigrants are bad and dangerous and that we shouldn’t have so many of them in this country. That free trade is ripping this country off and it’s the fault of these corrupt idiots in Washington lining their own pockets. That China isn’t our ally or our partner — it’s our enemy. And that the great threat to America comes from within, that other Americans are disloyal, that they are the enemy and the power of the state should be turned against them.
It’s not that no one else in politics held these views before Donald Trump. But for the most part, it’s not how they spoke about them. That was the failure in the system that Trump exploited: the lie that just because politicians didn’t talk this way, voters didn’t feel this way. One of Trump’s verbal tics is to say, “Many people are saying.” But it’s the opposite. He’s saying what many people want somebody to be saying. He’s saying what people are saying in private but often are not saying in public."
Ohh look at that outrageous scamp!! How can he say these things? This is like Ganz's view on how left-wing intellectuals view right-wing intellectuals with a bit of a crush but right-wing intellectuals see the left ones and state "Look at all these Jews."
On “Campaign Scratchpad: Known Unknowns”
Let's look at the polls after the weekend of anxiety where the only things coming out were from right-wing pollsters:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/
Morning Consult has Harris up 4 in its October 17-20 poll, Ipsos/Reuters has her up 3. TIPP Insights (right-wing) went from +2 to + 1 to Even in three days. Trafalgar Group and Insider Advantage (both risible in their blatant right wing partisan undies) have a bunch of swing states even or try to have Trump winning but he is winning in states where early voting data shows strong Democratic turn out.
ActiVote, the polling app which swears it can't be gamed has Trump with +9 in a 400 LV poll between October 7-20.
Why am I supposed to take any of these clowns seriously or at their word?
"
Josh Marshall on flooding the zone: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/are-right-wing-pollsters-flooding-the-zone/sharetoken/893b671b-a39b-47b6-a11a-233c08d084ed
"
It's possible but I think the House could be a Democratic pickup and there is a far but not implausible chance of Democrats retaining the Senate in a 50-50 with Walz as the tiebreaker.
"
Maybe, maybe not.
1. Negative partisanship might mean we are headed for an era of one-term Presidents. This is a distinct possibility
2. The trillion dollar question with Trump is whether he is one of a kind. So far the next generation of mini-Trumps or local Trumps has fallen flat on its face. Maybe some will squeak a victory this November but most, if not all, of the non-partisan polling a good deal of the R-partisan polling has shown safe leads for the Democratic candidates for Senate in swing states. Arizona was a very narrow Biden victory in 2020.
So what happens to the GOP if Trump is one of a kind in his ability to excite low propensity voters in ways Vance and Hawley are not?
"
I don't think anyone is being complacent but I don't think I need to take pollsters word for it at partisan polls flooding the zone having no effect because all they do is say it. They don't quite show their work.
Quantus turns out to be for Rs as well
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
Activote does their polling via app and that just seems like a bad system.
Garbage In, Garbage Out is a thing.
Anxiety is good to an extent but it also looks like silly season and there is nothing wrong with a little steel and confidence too
"
I think "he is an existential threat to democracy but I can work with him" is a very mixed message but your mileage may vary.
Everyone is ignoring early voting data
"
It is a coin toss.
"
Or it is correct? I remember when everyone panicked in 2022 and it was wrong
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.