The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[Voronwë the Faithful]

There was a time when I thought that Dick Cheney and Karl Rove was the absolutely epitome of awfulness.

[RoseMorninStar]

There was a time when I thought that Dick Cheney and Karl Rove was the absolutely epitome of awfulness.

I'm of the thought that some of the stuff they pulled is exactly how we got the MAGA/Republican party of today. They are founders of a sort, even if such results were not their intention. There are some from the old Republican party who recognize that what they did lead to Trumpism and regret it.

[N.E. Brigand]

Vice President Harris has allergies which sometimes result in a runny nose, red eyes, and even hives.

Her doctor's report, released by her campaign, uses the technical terms: "allergic rhinitis and allergic conjunctivitis" and "urticaria."

Or as Donald Trump put it: she suffers from "a very messy and dangerous situation. These are deeply serious conditions that clearly impact her functioning."

This was in a message he posted online after midnight in response to Harris's call earlier in the day for him to come clean on his physical and mental condition.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This is a big legal win in Georgia, though not unexpected.

More on this, with a tie-in that makes it particularly relevant here.



That's pretty cool, but I couldn't resist pointing out to Anna that the actual line that Tolkien wrote was "You cannot pass!"

[N.E. Brigand]

That's pretty cool, but I couldn't resist pointing out to Anna that the actual line that Tolkien wrote was "You cannot pass!"

I like that she responded to you.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Me too! I'm very impressed with her.

[N.E. Brigand]

At this link, David Frum debunks several stories purporting to show that Donald Trump is a charitable man, starting with the false claim that Trump "went out of his way to send his plane to pick up Nelson Mandela after he was released from prison". Trump did no such thing. He leased one of his planes to Mandela for the latter's first tour of the U.S.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump was interviewed at the Economic Club of Chicago and the questioner at least tried to make him respond coherently:

Q: "Should Google be broken up?

A: "[Sigh.] Uh, I just haven't gotten over something the Justice Department did yesterday, where Virginia cleaned up its voter rolls and got rid of thousands and thousands of bad votes, and the Justice Department sued them, that they should be allowed to put those bad votes in, illegal votes back in, and let the people vote, so I haven't, eh, I haven't gotten--I haven't gotten over that. A lot of people are saying they can't even believe it."

Q: "But the question is about Google, President Trump."

It's common for politicians to change the subject, but usually they do it in a way that seems to address the question!

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In the same event, after Trump said "Only stupid people put old, you know, you don't put old in," referring to Presidents making appointments to the Supreme Court, and the interviewer (John Micklethwait) had the presence of mind to say, "You're a 78-year-old man running for president." But Trump just kept talking and apparently never responded to that observation.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm convinced that the crazier and stupider Trump acts, the better he will do. Americans are just looking for someone who reminds them of themselves.

[Jude]

There was a time when I thought that Dick Cheney and Karl Rove was the absolutely epitome of awfulness.

There may come a day when you post "There was a time when I thought that Donald Trump was the absolute epitome of awfulness".

The stuff of nightmares...

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thanks for that lovely thought.

[RoseMorninStar]

There was a time when I thought that Dick Cheney and Karl Rove was the absolutely epitome of awfulness.

There may come a day when you post "There was a time when I thought that Donald Trump was the absolute epitome of awfulness".

The stuff of nightmares...

Oh good lord let's hope not!

_____________________

Georgia: “‘Inappropriate and unprofessional’: State Election Board chair wants his Republican peers to back down”

The chair of the State Election Board says his Republican colleagues have gone too far, taking the law into their hands by passing new Georgia election rules since Donald Trump praised them at a campaign rally.

“Our job is to clarify law, not create new law,” John Fervier, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, said in an exclusive interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “This doesn’t need to be an activist board. This board needs to stay within its boundaries.”

(...)

“We all represent every voter in Georgia, and we should act like that,” he said. “This hyper-partisanship doesn’t serve anybody, and it certainly doesn’t serve this board, and I think it creates dissension.”…

Forgive me if this has already been posted, I tried to search but couldn't find anything. Tweets do not show up in the search feature (at least not for me).

Let's hope more Republicans stand up and try to claw back what has happened to their party.
________________

On another note that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere here are the dog whistles/coded language that Vance uses for far right groups such as Christian Nationalists and 'TheoBros'. They are even more extreme than Project 2025, and downright frightening. From the MotherJones article:

Many TheoBros, for example, don’t think women belong in the pulpit or the voting booth—and even want to repeal the 19th Amendment. For some, prison reform would involve replacing incarceration with public flogging. Unlike more mainstream Christian nationalists, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, who are obsessed with the US Constitution, many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments.

[N.E. Brigand]

After more than two months of steady decline, the price of Truth Social stock bottomed out at about $12 per share on September 23rd, then rebounded slowly through October 4th, when the share price reached $16.50. Then the stock's price climbed much more swiftly, and I noted yesterday that it closed at $29.95. Today it was climbing fast again to start the day, reaching $33.50 (up 12%) by 10:30 a.m. before this happened:

"Trump Media stock mysteriously plunges. Former President Donald Trump's social media company suffered a sudden nosedive in the stock market Tuesday that briefly halted trading and left traders scratching their heads. ... Nasdaq paused trading for Trump Media at 2:42 p.m. ET for five minutes, a routine cooling-off period that exchanges are required to impose during times of heavy volatility." And the stock closed at $27.06 per share, about 10% below where it ended yesterday.

Why? One analyst "suspects the selloff was caused by technical factors ... when Trump Media’s share price failed to break through its 200-day moving average, a closely-watched technical level, traders "flipped' to bet against it." The article notes that some experts say that the stock's recent large gains were "driven by polling and betting odds that suggest the race for the White House could go either way," but with "meme stocks, where many of the holders are playing short-term momentum strategies, when the tide turns, everyone wants to move in the same direction."

Donald Trump accordingly lost more than $700 million today.

(Meanwhile the Dow Jones, after closing at a record high yesterday, was down a little today, closing about where it was last Friday.)

[N.E. Brigand]

What a crazy, upside-down world we live in!

Ian Jaeger on Twitter: "BREAKING: Karl Rove is rallying support for Kamala Harris today in Pennsylvania."

(To be fair, this isn't so much Karl Rove rallying support for Kamala Harris as it is his rallying support against Trump.)

That tweet now has a community note attached, because the clip of Karl Rove criticizing Trump was filmed in California in February.

[N.E. Brigand]

NBC reported earlier today that former KKK leader David Duke endorsed Jill Stein on his radio program. Duke has previously supported Donald Trump, but he says that only Stein is committed to stopping Israel's war against Palestinians and that Trump is in the thrall of the "Jewish lobby." (Duke even noted some irony in that Stein herself is Jewish.) To be fair to Stein, her campaign quickly denounced Duke's endorsement.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I was just coming here to post about that, with that caveat that I wasn't convinced it was true. But apparently it is.

[N.E. Brigand]

Vice President Harris today was interviewed by Charlamagne Tha God, a radio host whom Rolling Stone has described as "hip-hop's Howard Stern."

The host described Donald Trump as pushing a fascist agenda and asked Harris, "Can't we just say it?"

Harris concurred.

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The Democratic National Committee is targeting Jill Stein in Pennsylvania and other swing states with billboard that read "Jill Stein helped Trump once. Don't let her do it again."

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Georgia saw a record number of people (234,000) for the first day of early voting, but who knows which party that benefits.

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Trump was asked in Chicago about reports that he's spoken with Vladimir Putin on multiple occasions since leaving office. He repied, "Well, I don't comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it’' a smart thing. If I'm friendly with people. If I can have a relationship with people, that's a good thing, not a bad thing in terms of a country."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The Democratic National Committee is targeting Jill Stein in Pennsylvania and other swing states with billboard that read "Jill Stein helped Trump once. Don't let her do it again."

Actually, I think it was Putin that she was and is trying to help, but it is the same thing.

Georgia saw a record number of people (234,000) for the first day of early voting, but who knows which party that benefits.

Thank you for putting it like that. I've seen a number of people point to the record first day as a reason why Harris is going to win Georgia, when there is no way of knowing that.

[N.E. Brigand]

As noted here, Donald Trump is getting a lot less flack for referring to some of Kamala Harris's supporters as the "enemy from within" (and promising to use the military to control them) than Hillary Clinton got in 2016 for referring to some of Donald Trump's supporters as "deplorables."

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Donald Trump told Glenn Beck today that a "shadow government" rather than President Biden is running the government, adding, "I think it's a, it's a committee of people, and they might not even know who the committee is. They may not even know themselves. Does that make sense? It's a group of people at that are in different levels of DC." I think Allison Gill is right to remind readers that many of Trump's accusations eventually prove to be confessions.

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Apparently somebody sent text messages last week to "thousands" of young Wisconsin voters reading as follows: "WARNING: Violating WI Statutes 12.13 & 6.18 may result in fines up to $10,000 or 3.5 years in prison. Don't vote in a state where you're not eligible. STOP2END." But in Wisconsin as in a number of other states, colleges student from out of state can choose to vote in Wisconsin rather than in their home state. These texts are voter intimidation. (And I think we all have a first guess as to who is behind them -- and I mean the specific two people who would top any list of suspects.)

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I recommend this analysis of what happened at Donald Trump's town hall event last night. It appears the second of two people had been carried out when Trump decided not to take any more questions and just listen to music. And the comment I cited last night about "losing weight" was apparently aimed at the second person. Accordingly, I think this person is on the right track in suggesting that Trump wasn't so much confused as "incensed that two people in the audience fainted—which has increasingly been an issue at his events—so he basically just canceled the event in midstream without telling anyone he was doing that ... he just stood awkwardly—silently fuming—for 40 minutes."

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You may recall that a conservative activist named Christopher Rufo, having offered a $5,000 reward for such evidence, purported to have found video of Rwandan immigrants grilling cats in Dayton, Ohio, which he presented as proof that Haitian immigrants were eating cats in Springfield, Ohio. The two cities are about 45 minutes apart and of course Haiti and Rwanda are about 7,000 miles apart. And the video wasn't clearly and arguably showed chickens rather than cats on the grill.

Well, now a reporter named Jacqueline Sweet has tracked down the location where the video was shot, and what she learned doesn't seem to bear out Rufo's claims. Sweet spoke with the family who now lives in that house, who denies telling Rufo's outlet what they reported, and the man who shot the video said he would only answer Sweet's question if she paid him. She reached out to Rufo and to his reporter Benjamin Roberts, who declined to provide evidence that would contradict what she learned.

[N.E. Brigand]

The interviewer in Chicago today corrected Donald Trump when Trump referred to California's governor, Gavin Newsom, as "Newscum." Trump said that was the first time anyone had corrected him on that point. The interviewer noted that the audience they were addressing includes CEOs would be fired by their boards if they publicly referred to rivals that way. Trump responded by whining about how he's been unfairly treated.

There are more examples than the several I've shared of how this interview didn't go well for Trump, but his acolytes on Truth Social are working very hard today to portray it as a major success for him.

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About 60% of Latinos in Nevada support Kamala Harris. Joe Biden won 61% of Nevada Latinos when he narrowly won that state four years ago; Harris needs to match or exceed that number. Latino men in particular favor Trump, but this story also features a Latino woman who inclines toward Harris but isn't sure she's going to vote at all because she feels that neither Republican nor Democrats have done enough to help single mothers.