The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yes, Silver repeatedly cherrypicks what he emphasizes to make it sound as bad as possible for Harris. Frankly I am disgusted with him. But someone else likes him a lot.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

But it is working out well for him.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Not good news.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, more on why Nate Silver is full of shit.

[RoseMorninStar]

Historian Allan Lichtman, who has predicted 9 of the last 10 elections, predicts Kamala will win based on his metrics. The NYT had a video on it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here is Lichtman speaking on CNN about his prediction. He would be a little more believable if he actually pronounced her name correctly but still.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/news/al ... rp#details

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Sorry to keep harping on this, but this really illustrates how batshit crazy Silver has become. He gives Patriot Polling more weight that YouGov. That says everything.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, if this is not a Twilight Zone moment, I don't know what is.

[N.E. Brigand]

Silver is quite explicit that his model is not designed to reflect the current state of the polling, or even the future state of the polling, but rather the probability of winning in November.

The challenge with all such forecasts is they are unfalsifiable. We will never be able to prove that Silver or any other forecaster was correct or incorrect on Sep. 5 about what would happen on Nov. 5. Or even that what they forecast on Nov. 4 was right or wrong. We saw this in 2016: every forecaster projected Hillary Clinton to win, right up to the final day, although Silver at 538 had less confidence than most. And when Clinton lost, they all said, "We never said she had 100% odds of winning." And since they never will do that, they can never be proved wrong. Which also means they can never be proved right.

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Meanwhile, more on why Nate Silver is full of shit.

Adam Carlson on Twitter:
Polling avg (per FiveThirtyEight) in swing states three weeks ago (8/16, pre-DNC) vs. today: AZ: R+1.1 shift, GA: D+0.7 shift, MI: R+0.6 shift, NV: D+0.8 shift, NC: D+0.2 shift, PA: R+0.6 shift, WI: D+0.1 shift. Average swing state shift over last 3 weeks: R+0.1.

OK, I got curious about what those shifts might mean. There are eight and a half weeks until the election. If we assume the trends that Carlson identifies continue at the same rate, then these would be the outcomes in those seven states:

Arizona: Trump +0.5 now >>> Trump +3.6 on 11/5
Georgia: Harris +0.5 now >>> Harris +2.5 on 11/5
Michigan: Harris +2.0 now >>> Harris +0.3 on 11/5
Nevada: Harris +0.7 now >>> Nevada +3.0 on 11/5
North Carolina: Trump +0.6 now >>> Trump +0.03 on 11/5
Pennsylvania: Harris +0.8 now >>> Trump +0.9 on 11/5
Wisconsin: Harris +2.9 now >>> Harris +3.2 on 11/5
(National: Harris +3.1 now >>> Harris + 2.8 on 11/5)

Putting those results into the helpful interactive map at 270 To Win, and assuming nothing else changes, then Harris wins 273-265. That's a super close race, and it scares me. I really don't want Harris to lose Pennsylvania, because Georgia going to Biden in 2020 seems so much like a fluke.

In Carlson's own replies to that post, he notes that changes in the New York Times swing state polling averages over those three weeks all favor Harris. (She'd win pretty convincingly if those trends continue.) Silver relies, in Carlson's view, on too many low-quality polls. (I repeat my prior argument that Silver is consistent: he's not changing things now to generate the result he wants.) Carlson's conclusion: "The story of polling in the presidential election polling is really quite simple: at this moment, every single swing state is extremely close and could go either way."

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Historian Allan Lichtman, who has predicted 9 of the last 10 elections, predicts Kamala will win based on his metrics. The NYT had a video on it.

Licthman is not as reliable as people claim. Two months ago, Lichtman was arguing that President Biden would win if he stayed in the race and that those calling for his withdrawal were "foolish." Lichtman predicted Al Gore would win in 2000 and only afterwards clarified that he meant that Gore would win the popular vote. And Lichtman predicted Donald Trump would win the popular vote in 20167 and only aftewards said that he meant to say the Trump would win the electoral vote.

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As regards the state appeals court decisions in Michigan and North Carolina, I wonder if RFK Jr. timed his lawsuits, or at least the one in Michigan, with this result in mind: that an appeals decision would likely go his way on what is supposed to be the last possible day to make any change. I also wonder in North Carolina specifically if the judges are now breaking the law, which apparently says that ballots have to be mailed today. They've already been printed to include RFK Jr., but the "court also told a trial judge to order the State Board of Elections to distribute ballots without Kennedy’s name on them." It will take something like two weeks to replace the ballots. What's the penalty for breaking this law, and are the judges subject to it?

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It's important to remember that Hillary Clinton outspent Donald Trump in 2016, but Trump still won. With that noted, big news today from Kamala Harris's campaign, which announced today that it raised $360 million in August and has $404 million cash on hand. (They should probably spend it all in Pennsylvania.) The Trump campaign announced earlier this week that it raised $130 million in August and has $295 million cash on hand.

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In other news, Axios has channeled journalists' frustration with Vice President Harris's limited press availability into a bizarre call for accountability. That piece says the most important question Harris needs to address is "Why did President Biden's top advisers routinely leak work they found her performance as vice president disappointing or episodically problematic?" And the very first policy shift that Axios wants Harris to explain is dropping her opposition to plastic straws. And also Axios gets a bit racist and says Harris needs to explain why she changed her position on "reparations for slavery," even though they immediately acknowledge she's never taken a stand on that issue.

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Donald Trump used his appeal of the first E. Jean Carroll verdict today as an occasion to put his denials in front of a larger public who might not have been following the news a year ago. As part of his speechifying from the courthouse, he suggested that the photo of him meeting E. Jean Carroll might have been generated by artificial intelligence. He also told his lawyers in front of the press that he was "disappointed" with their work. He also went into great detail about one of the many other accusations of sexual assault that has been made against him.

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Meanwhile, if this is not a Twilight Zone moment, I don't know what is.

"Acyn" on Twitter: [Liz] Cheney: Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris.

Matt Yglesias quips: "Shooting your friend in the face by accident is extremely brat", and he notes a 15-year-old Republican meme that read "I'd rather be hunting with Dick Cheney ... than driving with a Kennedy!"

And at the same event, Liz Cheney also encouraged Texans to vote for Colin Alred rather than Republican Ted Cruz in that state's U.S. Senate race.

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Here's a Republican Congressman from Tennessee harrumphing that "an illegal was just picked up ... in Knoxville for attempted murder with a pickaxe. The Department of Homeland Security doesn't give a damn about Americans being killed. WE HAVE TO TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK."

On Tuesday, a natural born American citizen was arrested for murdering four people in Florida. That suspect's natural born American citizen father was arrested yesterday for aiding and abetting the crime. WE HAVE TO .... GIVE OUR COUNTRY BACK? FROM OURSELVES? Nobody ever frames most crime that way.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Putting those results into the helpful interactive map at 270 To Win, and assuming nothing else changes, then Harris wins 273-265. That's a super close race, and it scares me.

It scares me too, but that would should still imply that Harris should be slightly favored to win the electoral college, not a significant underdog as Silver claims.

Silver relies, in Carlson's view, on too many low-quality polls.

See my other post about him weighting "Patriot Polling" higher than YouGov. Silver may end up being right about how the election will end up, but I think it is objectively clear that he is purposely weighting the data to show certain results.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Which results in this:

[N.E. Brigand]

In Michigan today, both the Democratic and Republican parties held their state conventions. There was a little tension at the Democratic event during the nominations for the state board of regents, where the pro-Palestinian candidate who lost demanded a recount. At the Republican event, the former chair -- a Trumpian election denier -- was escorted out as persona non grata, and the current chair -- who was Ambassador to the Netherlands in Donald Trump's administration, was met with resounding boos.

The candidate at the Michigan Democratic state convention who failed to get the party's nomination for the University of Michigan's Board of Regents is suing the state Democratic Party, claiming that the race was rigged against her. Democratic activist Charles Gaba flags some potential issues in her campaign expense disclosure. What's most amusing to me is that she spelled "university" wrong on her ActBlue fundraising page.

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Also in Michigan:

As regards the state appeals court decisions in Michigan and North Carolina, I wonder if RFK Jr. timed his lawsuits, or at least the Michigan one, aiming for this result: that an appeals decision would likely go his way on what is supposed to be the last possible day to make any change. I also wonder in North Carolina specifically if the judges are now breaking the law, which apparently says that ballots have to be mailed today. They've already been printed to include RFK Jr., but the "court also told a trial judge to order the State Board of Elections to distribute ballots without Kennedy’s name on them." It will take perhaps two weeks to replace the ballots. What's the penalty for breaking this law, and are the judges subject to it?

Michigan's Secretary of State is appealing to the state's supreme court. As noted here, the Natural Law Party, whose candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was in Michigan, wants to remain on the ballot. And I'm not sure why he should get to overrule them. He was always just trying to game the system.

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Meanwhile, if this is not a Twilight Zone moment, I don't know what is.

"Acyn" on Twitter: [Liz] Cheney: Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris.

And Dick Cheney has followed up with a statement confirming this.

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Sen. Vance was asked today to comment on U.S. fetanyl deaths rising during Donald Trump's presidency -- going from 19,500 in 2016 to 56,894 in 2020. His reply was to lie by claiming that the opposite happened.

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Apparently Vice President Harris conducted an interview ("una entrevista exclusiva") today with Univision Arizona, a Spanish-language station, but I can't find video thereof.

[N.E. Brigand]

One of the first things that Donald Trump said at the start of his remarks outside the courtroom in New York today, where he is appealing the finding by a jury of his peers that he sexually assaulted and defamed E. Jean Carroll, was that the jury's determination is part of "a long and complicated web" that originated with the Dept. of Justice, Vice President Harris, and President Biden -- it was a civil case that had nothing to do with anyone of them -- and includes our "rigged election system," regarding which, he feels that yesterday's "Russia, Russia, Russia" indictments are part of a "scam."

Trump's team said that today's remarks were to be a "press conference," but Trump spoke solo for more than 45 minutes and took no questions.

(Apparently far right commentator Sebastian Gorka says that he was approached by Tenet with an offer for a deal like those Tim Pool and Benny Johnson got as reference, he was suspicious that it was too good to be true, didn't get a good answer, and turned it down.)

[N.E. Brigand]

The CEO who asked Donald Trump about his plans to help Americans with childcare expenses at the Economic Club of New York yesterday appeared on CNN tonight and said that Trump's answer downplayed the difficulty that families have meeting this cost and that Trump didn't offer a solution.

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I wonder if there's a chance of getting Nikki Haley to rescind her endorsement of Trump. Today she tweeted at Lauren Chen, the now former co-CEO of Tenet media, the company that knowingly engaged with Russian operatives to peddle propaganda online. In June 2023 -- before the deal was struck that paid Tenet podcasters Tim Pool and Benny Johnson $400,000 per month each to share Russia's preferred talking points -- when Haley said she supported funding for Ukraine, Chen tweeted "Nikki Haley should move to Ukraine and run for its presidency, then." Now, fifteen months later, Haley replied, "Karma's a bitch, Lauren Chen." As many have noted, if Haley supports Donald Trump, then she's giving Russia what they want.

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Speaking of Chen, she's an immigrant from Canada, but part of her schtick has been railing against immigration policies and even singling out the late Ronald Reagan, beloved by most Republicans (and the subject of a fawning new biopic starring Dennis Quaid), as erring in being so welcoming to immigrants. Now that we know she was Vladimir Putin's pawn (or worse), attacks on Reagan make more sense.

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As regards the state appeals court decisions in Michigan and North Carolina, I wonder if RFK Jr. timed his lawsuits, or at least the one in Michigan, with this result in mind: that an appeals decision would likely go his way on what is supposed to be the last possible day to make any change. I also wonder in North Carolina specifically if the judges are now breaking the law, which apparently says that ballots have to be mailed today. They've already been printed to include RFK Jr., but the "court also told a trial judge to order the State Board of Elections to distribute ballots without Kennedy’s name on them." It will take something like two weeks to replace the ballots. What's the penalty for breaking this law, and are the judges subject to it?

The North Carolina State Board of Elections is appealing to the state's supreme court. While they await word on whether the appeal will be heard, they will begin creating new ballots without RFK Jr.'s name. "More than 2.9 million ballots had already been printed" and "there are 2,348 different ballot styles statewide." In other words, it's a lot of work. And I think RFK should have to pay for it.

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Drew Sawicki makes a good point: the Democratic equivalent of Donald Trump making jokes about the attempted murder of Nancy Pelosi's husband, as he did today at a rally in North Carolina and as he has done before -- would be Kamala Harris making jokes about the attempted murder of Trump. Imagine the outrage that would erupt if Harris did that.

But the mainstream media continues to prefer Donald Trump and, as one wag put it this week, "sanewashes" him.

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Edited to add a link to this article in Vox, based on Arlie Russell Hochschild's forthcoming book Stolen Pride, which argues that "Those most enthralled with Donald Trump were not at the very bottom — the illiterate, the hungry, [but instead are] "the elite of the left-behind," [i.e., those] "who were doing well within a region that was not."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

You would think this would be a basic standard that more people would apply.

[Frelga]

Relatable.

20240907_013753.jpg (82.94 KiB) Viewed 284 times

[RoseMorninStar]

It's so very strange. Up is down and down is up. Not unlike those who think 'guns good, books bad' .

[Frelga]

This bit, shared as a screenshot from an article without a link, is supposed to ctiricise Harris as a difficult boss.

Edit: it was WaPo.

Some of Harris's early staff was also discomfited by her prosecutorial leadership style, former staffers said, which included pointed questions from Harris about footnotes in their reports or the reasons behind why certain items had been added to her schedule.

"It's stressful to brief her, because she's read all the materials, has annotated it and is prepared to talk through it," said one former aide.

"You can't come to the vice president and just ask her to do something," said another staffer. "You need to have a why."

That behavior manifests in other encounters, the staffer continued, such as when someone pays her compliments. "She'll turn to them and say 'why?,' and that throws them off," the staffer said.

THIS IS THE BARE MINIMUM OF EXPECTATIONS FROM A STAFFER!

My jaw is still on the floor.

Maybe Vance should have asked his staff for some preparation before they bundled him into that donut shop. Maybe then he wouldn't have looked like live model decoy in front of the whole nation.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Be human.

[narya]

Apparently Vice President Harris conducted an interview ("una entrevista exclusiva") today with Univision Arizona, a Spanish-language station, but I can't find video thereof.

https://www.univision.com/musica/entrev ... ncia-video

Entirely in English! About 10 minutes.