Haul out pretty much any front page and the political news is nearly identical every day now:
- Donald Trump said something repellent again.
- Voters are still mad about inflation.
- The race is a toss-up.
There's nothing new, no October surprise, and virtually no change in the polls.
Is Kamala Harris doing something wrong? I don't really know her strategy in the first place, so I don't know. But I still think she's going to win. Like everyone, I have Reasons™, but in the end I guess I'm just hanging desperately onto my hope that the American public isn't irredeemably foul and lost. Fingers crossed.
"but in the end I guess I'm just hanging desperately onto my hope that the American public isn't irredeemably foul and lost. Fingers crossed."
Amen, brother. Amen.
The only poll that's private is the only poll that matters.
The Regiment of Women.
https://youtu.be/jlsd1wZ9jF4?si=H4pRmr4f0SlLJM5n
I love this. And, thinking about the vote in 2022, I agree. Women will vote for Harris in very large numbers. Their men will be shocked.
"Like everyone, I have Reasons™, but in the end I guess I'm just hanging desperately onto my hope that the American public isn't irredeemably foul and lost." I sincerely hope you're right. But I fear you're not.
I kind of wonder if mail-in voting has killed the October Surprise. Too hard to coordinate timing with a particular day.
I do believe that there is a "silent" non partisan segment of the population that is tired of his nonsense. At least that's what I keep telling myself.
So tired of it that they don't pay attention and don't vote.
Finally got a bead on how Democrats are controlling the weather,
it's plain, ordinary cloud seeding, but they're not ordinary cloud seeds, they're more like Scooby Snacks. The Democrats scatter these extra attractive snack seeds in front of hurricanes and the hurricanes just follow along snarfing them up until they're over the target, then they let loose.
So simple it's diabolical. Nancy Pelosi is in charge.
40% of every group isn't comfortable living in a liberal democracy, and would rather live under a strong leader.
Getting to 51% requires scaring the undecideds into that same fearful mindset.
Just ask yourself if those undecideds are scared of anything right now.
Puerto Ricans are about to provide the October Surprise.
I saw a focus group of undecided in Pennsylvania. The Democracy is at risk/Trump is a fascist argument/s were not persuasive with this group.
Perhaps Harris is now moving to a turn out focus, versus an effort to try and still persuade. Or maybe, the Harris camp has different data than the finding of the focus group.
The 8 person focus group you mean? Yeah, that's definitive.
I've been canvassing for Harris for several weeks now. When asking people who they are voting for we also ask for their primary issue. Virtually every single person voting for Harris whether D, I or R are voting for her because she is not Trump. I was a bit surprised by this. Most of the ones voting for Trump are voting for him because they are republicans and they always vote republican. I believe if a normal republican were running they would be running away with this election. BTW, I'm canvassing in the Philadelphia suburbs.
I live in Philadelphia County and firmly believe if he had accepted defeat in 2020 with no J^, he would be crushing Biden/Harris now.
If you ask people why they vote for Trump are they going to say they do it because they are racist? Many may vote for Trump because they have always been Republican and higher income people may do it because they will be getting tax cuts (one thing that a Trump admistration will certainly do), but MAGAs vote for Trump because he supports White Christian Supremacy.
If Republicans did not support racism they would lose a huge number of lower-income whites. These people voted Democratic before the party switch on racism fifty years ago because Democrats have always represented their economic interests (at least more than Republicans). A politician who advocated trickle-down economics but did not at least tacitly support racism and religiosity would have little chance. In fact virtually no such people are left.
I think it's a new thing in US politics to insult multiple subsets of voters ten days before Election Day, so that counts as an October Surprise in my book. And they are all groups that the GOP is going to lose; only question is by how much.
I was watching CNN and they showed three polls, which taken together showed Harris winning a notably larger share of women's votes than TFG was winning of men's; they also noted that women vote at a higher rate than men. I don't see a chance that TFG wins the popular vote, but then there's the EC.
I'm also encouraged by the Stupid Party (TM) running a total nutjob in North Carolina, and failing to block woman's-choice referenda in Arizona and Florida. (Not that Dems are likely to flip Florida, but the news coverage and ads must spill into neighboring Georgia.)
Fingers crossed.
Her strategy seems to be to call him a "fascist" which he then helped along by holding a really fascist rally on the TV.
I think Harris has run a fine campaign. Yeah, I think you can find a hundred different opinions of, "I wish she had done this. I wish she had said that.". But she's taken this seriously. She's been out there campaigning. She hasn't had any major missteps. If she loses, I'm not going to blame her. It's on us. It's just who we are as a people. It will depress me to no end that's who we are, but that's our problem, not hers.
+1
and another +1
+1
Well, this is new--though like January 6, not surprising--two fires at drop boxes early this morning destroyed hundreds of ballots in Washington and Oregon. Both fires appeared to be arson and police believed they were connected. Gee, do you think adherents of any particular party (or cult) did this? I wonder which one?
Or to paraphrase The Clash:
Reichstag Fire, we wanna fire
Reichstag Fire, a fire of our own
The polls are stable because virtually everyone decided months ago. The "undecided" are mostly not. I don't understand why people like to tell other people that they're undecided when they really have. Maybe they think it makes them look thoughtful.
Those few low information voters who really are undecided aren't going to change anything. If they haven't got enough information by now, what are the chances they're going to go on an information binge with one week left? They are like the person who bets on a sports team because they like the color of the uniforms. They might vote, but because they're uninformed, it's a coin toss and they'll cancel each other out.
BTW, if you haven't seen it, here's a good article on polling:
https://goodauthority.org/news/election-poll-vote2024-data-pollster-choices-weighting/
Brian Klaas has a good writeup in The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/presidential-polls-unreliable/680408/
The polls are stable because virtually everyone decided months ago.
They're not stable. This is an artifact of Drum's reliance on a single poll. The polling consensus shows a roughly two point shift in Trump's favor—from about 3 points at the beginning of October to about one point now.
None of this means Harris can't or won't win—there average gap between polls and actual vote has been about three points over the last several presidential elections. There are also indications Trump's Electoral College advantage is weaker this year than in 2016 or 2020. But the polls aren't stable—that's pure poll trutherism.
There's an enduring group of voters who will sit out the election, convinced Harris and Trump are no different in how they'll treat Palestinians.
For those folks, man, ignorance means blissfully never having to live with the consequences of their choices.
The IMF just announced that the US economy is the envy of the world.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/imf-lifts-us-growth-forecast-marks-down-china-sees-lackluster-global-economy-2024-10-22/
But many Americans think we are suffering from a bad economy.
H. L. Mencken 1926
No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.
Cross all paired body parts for Kamala!!!!
Meanwhile, the American Psychological Association says the election is a significant cause of stress...
https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/stress-in-america/2024
Kind of a "well, duh..." non-discovery, but nice somebody noticed I guess.
Trump will sort this one out (by cancelling elections).
Inflation as an issue really seems to have died out in the last couple of months.