Kevin Drum

It's not over yet, but things are looking grim for Kamala Harris. Was it all down to inflation?

Here's what the exit polls say about inflation over the past year:

Needless to say, this is crazy. It's perfectly sensible to see big partisan disagreements about abortion or guns or taxes. But a huge partisan split on how much inflation has hurt you?

I think we can say that, obviously, inflation affected everyone roughly the same. It didn't affect Republicans any more harshly than Democrats—not by more than a handful of percentage points anyway. And yet a huge number say it was a severe hardship over the past year. The past year! There's hardly been any inflation over the past year.¹ Maybe Annie Lowrey has it right:

Perhaps. But even assuming that people interpret "the past year" as "ever since Biden took over," it still doesn't make sense that the partisan divide would be so big. This isn't the kind of question that automatically triggers tribal identification, the way some questions do.

In the end, it might be the simplest of things: inflation made people mad. And when they're mad they vote for the out party. They don't care whose fault it was or anything like that. They're just mad, so they vote for a change.

Or maybe it was Fox News banging away about inflation 24/7.

Or maybe there are still just too many men who simply can't bring themselves to vote for a woman. Especially among Latinos.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

¹2.4% to be exact, almost exactly the average from 2000-2019.

Amendment 4, the abortion rights initiative in Florida, received 58% of the vote. In Florida! A state so red that Donald Trump is winning by 13 points. That's a remarkable showing.

But it takes 60% to win in Florida, so it's going down to defeat. That's depressing. Nonetheless, the pro-life forces should be on notice if they can only manage 42% of the vote for an abortion ban in the deep South. They are not holding a winning hand.

If you're jittery and looking for something to do, get up off your butt and go vote. Already voted? Do it again! It's like the All-Star game: you're allowed to vote as often as you want. You just have to show your secret Democratic Party registration card or your Mexican citizenship card.

Little known fact. But it's true. I have it on good authority from Elon Musk himself.

As of 6:50 Eastern time approximately 0.26% of the votes have been counted nationwide and Donald Trump is leading 61.6% to 38.4%. ZOMG!

Um, that's in Kentucky and Indiana. I guess maybe we should wait a little longer to assess things?

Here's some more quasi-election related news to while away the hours until polls close. Stock in Donald Trump's scam company behaved very weirdly today:

The stock had been trading fairly normally all day and then suddenly plunged nearly six points in the 13 minutes from 2:41 to 2:54 before trading was briefly halted. As I type this, it's trading about $7 below its high for the day.

What happened? After the closing bell Trump Media issued a surprise earnings report, which showed a drop of 6% in sales and a Q3 loss of $19 million. This is par for the course, but it's still hard not to wonder if someone got advance notice and then started dumping shares. But no one knows.

In any case, this is nothing compared to what's likely to happen tomorrow. Depending on the election results, DJT will either skyrocket at the opening bell or plummet to nothing. If Trump wins, he'll be the first candidate in history to make billions of dollars in addition to having exclusive control over our nuclear forces.

Here's a quasi-election related chart to ponder today:

The remarkable thing isn't that fewer and fewer people are checking off the box on tax forms that funds the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. The remarkable thing is that anyone still checks it. But six million of us continue to check the box even though no presidential candidate since 2008 has accepted money from the fund.¹

As a result, there's $400 million idling away in the PECF going unused. You could buy a tenth of a Virginia class sub² for that! Or four F-35 fighter jets!

Or use it for election administration. Or state races. Or just get rid of the whole thing and return the fund to the Treasury (what we sophisticates like to call "a down payment on the national debt.") But surely we ought to do something?

¹This is because you can only receive PECF funds if you agree to a spending limit that's laughable by modern standards.

²That's a tenth of the model that includes an extra four tubes for launching 28 Tomahawk missiles in case the original 12 aren't enough.

Today, for some reason, YouGov retweeted a survey they did a few months ago about the Roman Empire. It turns out that 76% of Americans say they know at least a little about the Roman Empire and 49% have a favorable view of it.

But why? YouGov asked the 76% of Rome-knowers what they admired about it:

Roads, art, buildings, literature, etc. Fine. Military conquests? Sure, I guess. But slaveholding? Only 68% were firmly against it and 5% thought it was great. Where does this stuff come from?

Anyway, you all know where I'm going with this:

This is the rose window at the Votivkirche in Vienna, built by Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian to thank God for saving the life of his brother the emperor after an assassination attempt in 1853. It was completed in 1879.

The top photo was taken inside with the organ pipes partially blocking the view. The bottom picture was taken from the outside at night.

A votive is something offered as thanks for a prayer fulfilled. I think we can all hope for that today.

Yes, I know there's an election today. I'm not deliberately ignoring it, but unless something big happens I just won't have anything to offer until the polls close and results start coming in. Until then, the Prime Directive remains in force: the election might or might not be close, but inherent uncertainties in polling mean the results are wholly unknowable and nobody can make a meaningful prediction.

Except for me. Kamala Harris is going to win the presidency. Democrats will win the House. Republicans will win the Senate. Satisfied?

The new hotness in data centers is to sign deals with nuclear power operators to supply them with reliable 24/7 electricity. There are two ways to do this. First, the data center connects to the power grid normally and just uses a lot of juice. This is called "in front of the meter." Second, a data center can connect directly to the nuclear plant for a specific amount of power. This is called "behind the meter."

Late last week, behind-the-meter hookups took a hit:

Late on Friday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected Talen Energy’s request to increase the amount of power that it could provide directly from its existing Susquehanna nuclear power plant to Amazon’s data center from 300 megawatts to 480 MW. That hamstrings Talen’s ability to step up the amount of power it sells directly to Amazon, whose co-located data center has a potential capacity of up to 960 MW.

Data center owners like behind-the-meter deals because they're quick and provide a reliable amount of power. Nuclear operators like them because they can charge a hefty premium for the power.

The FERC decision isn't final, and it might be revised later after they collect more data about the cost and impact of behind-the-meter deals. For now, though, they say that overall grid reliability for existing businesses and consumers will remain their top priority.